Mr. Speaker, I listened to the speech made by my colleague. I would to remind her that, in our opinion, the leaflet in question presents a summary of what is called the sponsorship scandal. It presents proven facts.
I am wondering how she can pretend that it is libellous. To back up what I am saying, I will read a few of Mr. Justice Gomery's conclusions that are found in the summary of his inquiry, the first being:
The Commission of Inquiry found:
—clear evidence of political involvement in the administration of the Sponsorship Program;
The publication, in the leaflet, of the picture of the ministers who appeared before the Gomery Commission is quite normal.
The Commission also found:
—insufficient oversight at the very senior levels of the public service which allowed program managers to circumvent proper contracting procedures and reporting lines;
We are saying the same thing about a political agent, Mr. Charles Guité.
The report says further:
—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;
This is the same information we used in our leaflet. We cannot see any libel.
Here is another finding of Mr. Justice Gomery:
—certain agencies carrying on their payrolls individuals who were, in effect, working on Liberal Party matters;
—the existence of a “culture of entitlement” among political officials and bureaucrats involved with the Sponsorship Program, including the receipt of monetary and non-monetary benefits;
The last finding of the Commission of Inquiry is this:
—the refusal of Ministers, senior officials in the Prime Minister’s Office and public servants to acknowledge their responsibility for the problems of mismanagement that occurred.
The subamendment proposed by the Bloc seeks to indicate that our householder was made after the end of the Gomery commission's hearings. Finally, is the information published in our leaflet not simply the same as the findings of the Gomery commission? In a sense, we are rendering a service to democracy. The leaflet contributes to a better democratic debate in order to clean up the system. We are sending a message to Canada as a whole by saying that the time has come to change the government, to give a lesson to the Liberals and punish them.