Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to take part in this debate. Attempts have been made in recent years to hugely minimize the impact of this sponsorship scandal. We should be very clear. Beyond the fact that we are talking about $250 million, 40% of which went to kickbacks to the ad agencies, it is primarily the democratic principle, and the fact that they were trying to buy something, that should be our focus here.
Madam Speaker, I wish to indicate to you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup.
Beyond the $250 million and the 40% in kickbacks to the ad agencies, there is a democratic principle which I believe has been violated. They tried to use an advertising campaign to buy the soul and conscience of Quebeckers. Obviously, this did not work. Still, one would have to have a rather low opinion of the conscience and soul of Quebeckers to think that visibility operations could be a means of selling Canadian federalism to the Quebec nation. This is an abuse which must be denounced over and above the financial scandal as such, which is unacceptable.
In a democracy, it seems to me totally responsible for a government, first of all, to go about the proper spending of taxpayers’ money. We have had an example, which was mentioned in the debate. Unfortunately it is not the only one.
Consider firearms control, for example. How do they explain to us that they reached nearly $2 billion in spending for a program that was supposed to cost $2 million a year? Certain computer firms certainly benefited from this. I hope that the Auditor General’s report will enlighten us as to where this nearly $2 billion went.
There is also the whole scandal surrounding the billion dollars spent under the Canadian job creation program, which was used for all sorts of things, including hiring dancers in bars. I even believe that this was here, in the Outaouais region. Another billion dollars irresponsibly spent by the Liberal government. There is no end to the other examples that can be added here.
From the standpoint of good governance, the Liberal government, the federal government under the current Prime Minister, as under the other one, Mr. Chrétien, no longer has the moral authority to govern. The polls tell us so, especially in Quebec. People no longer have confidence in this government so far as good governance is concerned. As I was saying earlier, this abuse of having employed visibility operations to try and buy the soul of Quebeckers must also be denounced.
On the international level, the damage is quite major. I am not saying that it is irreparable, but it is major for Canada. Members were able to see in the newspapers, as I did, that Canada's position in terms of various indices related to transparency and good governance has greatly dropped. This drop is largely due to the government's management.
It is important to go back to the conclusions of the Gomery report. Not only did the government mismanaged taxpayers' money, not only did it try to buy the conscience and soul of Quebeckers, but, in doing so, the operation went further astray, because it became an operation to fill the coffers of the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party of Canada. The facts are obvious and cannot be denied. Judge Gomery himself mentions this on page 7 of his summary: “certain agencies carrying on their payrolls individuals who were, in effect, working on Liberal Party matters”. These are not coincidences or unfounded allegations, since Judge Gomery wrote this himself. Earlier, he talks about:
Five agencies that received large sponsorship contracts regularly channelling money, via legitimate donations or unrecorded cash gifts, to political fundraising activities in Quebec, with the expectation of receiving lucrative government contracts;
It is not only the government but also the Liberal Party of Canada that committed wrongdoing and that must be punished in the next election.
They cannot wash their hands of it. The current Prime Minister cannot wash his hands of it. He was number 2 in the government as the Minister of Finance and was the vice-chair of the Treasury Board, whose job it was to oversee all government spending.
On a number of occasions, Mr. Chrétien himself told us so. He turned to his ministers on the Treasury Board, including the current Prime Minister, saying that he heard things —I imagine it was more than hearing in his case—about there being difficulties, asking them what should be done. He was reassured a number of times. So the Prime Minister had to know. I am not saying that he was directly involved in the management of the program, any more than certain Liberal members were. However, he knew. He could not be unaware of the existence of this system.
In this regard, the present Liberal Party of Canada, the current Liberal government and the current Prime Minister are all just as responsible as the former Liberal Party of Canada under Jean Chrétien, the former Liberal government under him and former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien himself.
They cannot wash their hands of it. Quebeckers know that very well, and I am certain that this is the case in Canada. Canadians are well aware of it. Polls indicate that some 70% of people questioned do not believe the current Prime Minister was unaware of what was going on.
They can also tell us—and this is the argument of the current Prime Minister—that there was an undeclared leadership race and that Jean Chrétien kept things from him. That does not hold water. A candidate in a leadership race, as is currently taking place in the Parti Québécois, tries to keep a listen in all regions and listening posts at all levels of the party they hope to lead. The current Prime Minister should therefore have been aware of even the rumours circulating in his party. It does not hold water.
Furthermore, toward the end of 1999, as we know, the papers were already alluding to some difficulties—I am using the term difficulties as a euphemism—with the sponsorship program, to such an extent that not only were the rumours persistent, but the facts troubling. In the Bloc Québécois 2000 election platform, to which I contributed, we identified the very agencies that are now named in the Gomery report as responsible for some of the misappropriations that occurred in the sponsorship scandal. In 2000, the Bloc Québécois knew it. I certainly never dreamed that the current Prime Minister or any Liberal MP read the Bloc Québécois 2000 platform, but they should have at least read the papers.
Hiding behind the fact that they did not know is not a valid excuse in a democracy. I believe that Quebeckers and Canadians are entitled to penalize this government as soon as possible because it no longer has the legitimacy to govern.
Whether we like it or not, election campaigning has already begun. In my home region of Lanaudière I have never seen as many federal Liberal ministers walking around as I have in the past few weeks. Last week the former President of the Treasury Board was in the region, as was the Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec. This is the first time we have seen them in years. The hon. member for Bourassa comes quite regularly, but—I will share a secret—he got married at the Joliette cathedral and is therefore a member of the community.
The opposition parties cannot accept the fact that the Liberals are already campaigning with taxpayer dollars in yet another attempt to buy the conscience not only of Quebeckers, but also of Canadians. It is the moral duty of the opposition to ensure that this government is brought down and that it is penalized by voters as soon as possible. The Bloc Québécois is prepared to fully assume this responsibility.