Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the question of privilege raised by the hon. member, and I must admit that I fail to see a matter of privilege, since the allegations are the following: the hon. member contends that his name was unjustly associated with the track of money in the sponsorship scandal.
First, I understand that government members resent a mass mailing being done to inform the public about the abomination that the sponsorship scandal is. In terms of misuse of taxpayers' money, the sponsorship scandal is an unprecedented example of such misuse in Canada.
There is a second point. If the use of graphics irks government members because they give a clear picture of how things unfolded, the hon. member should also raise a question of privilege with the Toronto Star , which published a full page document, albeit not the same one, explaining everything with arrows, multiple arguments and the names of the people involved at one level or another. The name of the member for Bourassa was one of those published.
Raising a question of privilege on this is tantamount to raising a question of privilege against the media as a whole, because none of the information contained in the document had not already been made public in the news media, on television, in the papers, and what not.
Also, the hon. member claims that his good name was unjustly damaged by having been associated with the sponsorship scandal. I will simply say that, if he took the trouble of reading the flyer carefully, the member would see that it very clearly refers to members of cabinet. This expression is marked with an asterisk, in the box containing the names of four ministers, including two current ones, namely the hon. member for Bourassa, who was minister at the time, and Mr. Gagliano. At the bottom, the note explaining the asterisk states, “Have appeared before the Gomery Commission”.
I can understand that the hon. member for Bourassa found it unpleasant to have to appear before the Gomery Commission, but what can I do? What can the Bloc Québécois do about it? The fact is that the information is very clear. The four members of cabinet whose names are shown in that box have appeared before the Gomery Commission. That is an unmistakable fact.
These are facts of information, and there is no breach of parliamentary privilege when truth is told. I am sorry, but the hon. member for Bourassa was indeed summoned before the Gomery Commission. I was not, but he was. So, his picture was published. Mine would have been as well, but I was not there.
As for use of public money, one has to be shameless to have abused public money as the people opposite have done, to have misappropriated it for the Liberal Party. That party has been implicated to its very core — public servants, politicians, the Prime Minister’s Office—