Mr. Speaker, I would just remind the member that when the Auditor General first released her report she said that every rule in the book had been broken. Judge Gomery also confirmed that basically every rule in the book had been broken and that this was a conspiracy. The effect of the conspiracy was to unlawfully take tax dollars away from Canadian taxpayers to pay for the Liberal Party and its friends and to run election campaigns and so on.
This matter goes much further than just being a civil tort. The plea of innocence on the part of members opposite is rather strange because the Gomery report confirms that the rules were broken and that the Liberal government was behind this plan to abscond with millions of dollars of taxpayer money. We all know that Judge Gomery could not assign individual criminal liability because the Inquiries Act prohibits him from doing so.
However it raises suspicions in a lot of minds about the list of people who were actually embroiled and directly involved in this massive fraud committed against the Canadian public. I have often been asked by constituents in Saskatchewan where the charges are and when these people will be before the courts and pay their dues. They see it the same way as they saw Enron or WorldCom or, as I mentioned in my speech to the House, the Devine administration where 14 people were convicted on the political side and served time in jail. People in my riding are asking when it will happen here and how far it goes.
For members in Quebec to say that they did not know anything about this program is really hard to accept.