Mr. Speaker, first, I am somewhat surprised to hear the Minister of the Environment suggest that we are drawing out the debate. In fact, we are debating a motion by the member for Bourassa, which was ruled in order in this House. An amendment and a subamendment were brought forward, because of the direct link to the Gomery report. It takes a lot of gall for the Minister of the Environment to go on like that considering the situation.
The reality is that this leaflet summarizes what we can call the sponsorship scandal. It lays out known facts. As for the members who raised the question of privilege, the leaflet only states that they appeared before the Gomery commission. Those are facts.
If the Minister of the Environment interprets it otherwise, that is his problem. He is the one who sees things where they do not exist. The best way to draw conclusions is probably to read the summary of the Gomery report and the document that we have here.
I am going to quickly read the findings of Justice Gomery. I am not making this up. It states:
It is those facts that allow me to draw the following conclusions:
The Commission of Inquiry found:
clear evidence of political involvement in the administration of the Sponsorship Program...
the use of the Sponsorship Program for purposes other than national unity or federal visibility because of a lack of objectives, criteria and guidelines for the Program...
certain agencies carrying on their payrolls individuals who were, in effect, working on Liberal Party matters...
And the last conclusion, but not the least:
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.
In reality, our document and Justice Gomery's report make the same statement in two different ways. The image we included in the leaflet is the reflection of what the report says. That is why we moved a subamendment to indicate that our leaflet was distributed after the end of the hearings. Everybody was able to draw conclusions from the hearings. Justice Gomery drew his and documented them in his report. I just quoted four of them. In much the same way, we published our conclusions in our leaflet. A majority of the population agrees with us.
I have a question for the Minister of the Environment today. Are the documents tabled here not the proof that our leaflet mirrors the Gomery report? The then ministers whose picture appears in the frame were called before the commission. The key political actors have been identified, and the political executive, the sponsorship program and the financial kickbacks to the Liberal Party highlighted. That is the whole context.
In the end, is the right solution not for the government to take responsibility, call an election and let the people be the judge? This government is responsible for the single most important political scandal in the history of Canada since the Constitution. It is the most glaring example of mismanagement by the federal government. If federalists have to be responsible for something, this is it.
Indeed, the Conservative Party—