Mr. Speaker, if anything demonstrates the reason that the government cannot be trusted by the Canadian people it has to be the government's record when it comes to military procurement and, more specifically, helicopters.
As senior minister for Jean Chrétien, the Prime Minister, who was finance minister at the time, was closely associated with every action, program and announcement of the now discredited former Liberal prime minister. The Prime Minister, as Jean Chrétien's finance minister, wrote all the cheques and slashed all the budgets.
Today the Prime Minister is telling Canadians that either his eyes were closed when he was asked to sign the cheques to Liberal Party ad men in the sponsorship fraud for non-existent work or his signature was being forged on the cheques to his Liberal Party cronies. The fact is that the Prime Minister's eyes were open and he knew exactly what he was signing when the cheques were cut.
If the Liberal Party actually believed in Parliament, democracy and ministerial and political accountability, every Liberal MP who was a member of the Chrétien government, particularly if he or she had been a member of his cabinet, would have resigned the moment Justice Gomery delivered his report on November 1.
It was as a member of the Chrétien inner circle that the current Prime Minister wrote the Liberal red policy book for the 1993 federal election.
It is not by coincidence that the only promise that was kept from the 1993 campaign was the one that scrapped the purchase of a new search and rescue helicopter to replace the then 40-year Sea King.
What was not in that red book, which we now know was part of the hidden agenda of the Liberal Party, was the plan to slash billions of dollars from the defence budget.
Canadians, however, are still paying the GST and free trade continues to bring prosperity to Canadians.
There is no way the Prime Minister would not have known the consequences of cancelling the contract to purchase the search and rescue helicopters. There was a financial cost of over $800 million of taxpayer dollars and a human cost in the lives lost which is still being paid today.
This issue is very important to all Canadians because as a result of Liberal Party political interference in the military procurement process, the helicopters that are in use today are ill-suited to the demands that are being placed on them. Since that decision was made by the Chrétien government and his finance minister to play politics with helicopter purchases, pilots have lost their lives. More pilots will lose their lives until the government stops playing politics with our military and implements a fair and competitive bidding process that is open and transparent.
When I asked the Minister of Defence in this House about his decision to scrap the competitive bidding process and go to sole source purchase of the Chinook helicopter, the minister denied that this was taking place, or the decision to go to sole source procurement had not been announced yet. If the Liberal Party had not already made the decision to sole source the Chinook helicopter, why is a picture of it on the Liberal Party's political website under the heading “Defence”?
Chinook choppers have not been part of the Canadian helicopter fleet for over 10 years, when the few remaining Chinooks Canada had were to sold to the Dutch government. By having a picture of a Chinook helicopter on its political website, the Liberal Party is clearly favouring one helicopter over any other source.
While I might be tempted to observe that the government's defence policy is perennially 10 years out of date to match old photos, as a result of the Earnscliffe lobbying scandal and the personal ties of that lobbying firm to the Prime Minister, Canadians have every reason to be skeptical of any excuses by the Liberal Party that the picture of the Chinook helicopter on its website is only coincidental. That picture makes the political statement that the decision has been made.
The Minister of Defence asked that he should sin first or, in layman's terms, get caught lying before being criticized.