Debates of April 11th, 2005

Sponsorship Program

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Charlevoix—Montmorency, QC]

Mr. Speaker, these ordinary supporters were misled by Liberal Party of Canada leaders. In addition to having paid bogus fees to senior Liberal Party officials, Groupaction also paid bogus salaries to Daniel-Yves Durand, Serge Gosselin, John Welch, Marie-Lyne Chrétien and Georges Farrah.

Are we to understand that the Prime Minister intends to ask the Liberal Party to refund the salaries paid to his cronies in the party as well?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party acted quickly to engage two auditors, in fact, Deloitte & Touche and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Both audits found that all contributions were receipted, handled and accounted for properly. These reports are in fact posted on the Liberal Party website and have been for some time. They have also been given to the Gomery commission, as of last December.

If there were any profiteers that operated below the radar screen of the officials in the Liberal Party, the Liberal Party, the government and all Canadians want those profiteers to be punished.

[Jack Layton, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister stands alone, because apparently he is the only one who believes what he is saying. Although he has had the floor for 15 years, we have stopped listening, because pollution is on the rise, increasing numbers of children live in poverty and jobs are still being given to Liberal cronies.

Instead of making yet another empty promise, why does the Prime Minister not ask the Liberal Party to pay back the dirty donations from Groupaction to taxpayers now?

[Paul Martin, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, I have already answered this question. The Liberal Party is certainly prepared to repay all funds received inappropriately.

The leader of the NDP is talking about the situation in Canada. If we look closely, we see our government's initiative with regard to the national child benefit. If we look at the most recent budget, we see that we have again increased the guaranteed income supplement; that we want to move forward with the national child care program for young children; that we have reinforced social programs; and that we want to introduce new programs. This is what the Liberal government is doing.

[Jack Layton, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

More broken promises, Mr. Speaker, just more broken promises, and Canadians are tired of it. The Prime Minister may think his biggest problem is the confidence in his government, but let me tell him that the bigger problem right now is confidence in our country, because Liberal corruption is putting far more of a criminal and corrupt face on federalism as a result of the Liberal Party.

What Canadians are looking for is not to see their money going into the pockets of Liberal friends instead of to the programs and assistance they need. What they want is simply a little bit of contrition, someone to say they are sorry and give them a refund. Will the money come back to the taxpayers or not?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, last week the NDP member for Sackville—Eastern Shore said this on CBC radio:

To be completely honest with you, what's going on in the House of Commons is nothing short of really quite sad. Everyone is just talking about the Gomery issue and everything else. We're not talking about seniors or veterans or children or families or the environment or anything else. We're just...trying to all score cheap political points on the Gomery trial and I think Canadians in general have had enough of this and we should focus on the issues that matter to Canadians and allow the Gomery process to happen.

That was from the NDP member for Sackville—Eastern Shore.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party of Canada financed its 1997 and 2000 elections on money stolen from Canadian taxpayers.

Government contracts went to ad firms that added Liberal Party workers to their payrolls. These workers did nothing other than campaign for the Liberal Party.

During this time the Prime Minister was Mr. Chrétien's hand-picked man, his number one man in Quebec. How are Canadians to believe him when he says he knew nothing about these arrangements?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, the Globe and Mail editorial on April 9 said that “the public should reserve judgment until Judge Gomery has stitched all the pieces together and weighed conflicting accounts...The Prime Minister did, after all, shut down the sponsorship program as his first order of business and appoint the Gomery inquiry early last year after the Auditor-General issued” her report.

The fact is the Globe and Mail and Canadians realize that only Justice Gomery can get to the truth. They trust Justice Gomery to do that. That is why we support Justice Gomery, because Canadians deserve the truth.

[Vic Toews, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Brault told Canadians when he testified that among the people he illegally put on his payroll was Georges Farrah, one of the Prime Minister's parliamentary secretaries.

Did the Prime Minister know that Mr. Farrah had a no-work contract for Groupaction when he appointed him as a parliamentary secretary? Where was the wire brush then? How did he escape those bristles?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, that hon. member would be the last person in the House who should be asking questions about breaking financing laws for campaigns.

Even Bernard Landry, as the Prime Minister said earlier, does not believe that Jean Brault is credible. Yet it is interesting to hear the opposition treat one individual's testimony, Jean Brault's, as sacrosanct when the deputy leader of that party has referred to the Prime Minister's testimony as a sham.

I trust the Prime Minister of Canada more than Jean Brault. The Prime Minister has dedicated months to getting to the bottom of this issue, has taken real risks to do the right thing to get to the bottom of this issue for Canadians, and I trust him to do exactly that.

[Rahim Jaffer, Conservative, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, Jacques Olivier is the mayor of Longueuil and a former federal Liberal minister. He gave Jean Brault the following advice, “Tag along with Corriveau, it will open doors for you”. And what doors! Through his affiliation with Corriveau, Brault donated $1.4 million to the Liberal Party of Canada, in exchange for sponsorship contracts amounting to $61 million.

How can the Prime Minister continue denying the facts, when all his associates knew where to get dirty money?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, once again those members are commenting on one individual's testimony, testimony that has in fact been contradicted by other testimony prior and since. That is the point. One day's testimony and one witness's testimony can be and in fact is contradicted on an ongoing basis.

The only person who can get to the bottom of this is the judge that Canadians trust to do exactly that. What I ask the hon. member to do is exactly what Canadians want him to do and that is to let Justice Gomery do his work.

[Rahim Jaffer, Conservative, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the transport minister describes high profile Liberal operatives Joe Morselli and Tony Mignacca as “political plumbers, acting behind the back of an unsuspecting party”, yet they are published in pictures with former public works minister Alfonso Gagliano and other influential Liberals. It seems like the sewage is backing up.

By calling them political plumbers, is the transport minister trying to tell us that the real rot is much higher up in the Liberal Party?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, let me make it clear. If anybody was operating as profiteers below the radar screen of the Liberal Party, the Liberal Party wants those people to be treated strongly and to in fact see that justice is done and they face the full extent of Canadian law and are punished.

Let us be clear. In today's National Post , David Asper says:

The melodrama of Question Period is only exacerbating all of this: Many opposition MPs want an election, which would have Canadians essentially put the government on trial...without even having the evidence at hand.

That is the point. Canadians want the evidence, the full truth, and that is why they need Justice Gomery's report.

[Benoît Sauvageau, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Gagliano, Corbeil, Renaud, Morselli, Corriveau, Chrétien, Bard, Pelletier, Bisson, Gosselin, Welch, Wiseman, Béliveau— Will the Prime Minister admit that the theory of a parallel group put forward by the ineffable Minister of Transport no longer holds water and that the sponsorship scandal was set up by the higher ups in the Liberal Party, themselves?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, the guilty will be tried before the courts. The Prime Minister has appointed Justice Gomery, cancelled the sponsorship program, and instituted legal action against agencies to recover funds. We want Justice Gomery to complete his work.

The fact is that this Prime Minister deserves the respect of this House for working to get to the bottom of this issue. He is achieving great things on behalf of Canadians and we will get to the bottom of this issue because that is what Canadians want us to do.

[Benoît Sauvageau, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is not answering any of the accusations from all sides. By not answering, he is not denying anything. Why remain silent?

If all we are learning from the Gomery commission is untrue, what is stopping the Prime Minister from standing up and saying so?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, these are serious allegations, but not facts. There is no verdict.

The only way we are going to have that verdict, that result, is to wait for Justice Gomery to complete his work. We do not fear that verdict, because we want the truth. We are willing to support Justice Gomery until we have that truth because that is what Canadians deserve, the truth, and that is what our government, our party and our Prime Minister want as well, the truth.

Members opposite want to get to the polls. We want to get to the truth and that is what Canadians want.

[Michel Gauthier, Bloc, Roberval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in his testimony this morning before the Gomery inquiry, Alain Renaud stated that the Prime Minister's riding assistant, Lucie Castelli, was on the Liberal Party finance committee along with himself and Jacques Corriveau, who is at the centre of the current mess.

How can the Prime Minister tell us that he knew nothing about what was going on in connection with the sponsorships, when his own riding assistant was on the finance committee, which was where all this was going on?

[Paul Martin, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, every year, the Liberal Party organized a major dinner event, selling tickets to raise money. All parties did so at that time. Lucie Castelli was there to sell tickets—to my supporters, obviously. That is what she was there for, to sell tickets.

[Michel Gauthier, Bloc, Roberval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's riding assistant was on the Liberal Party finance committee with Alain Renaud and Jacques Corriveau. One of these has appeared in connection with the scandal, and the other is scheduled to, since they are at the heart of that scandal.

The Liberal Party's finance committee is where they came up with the gimmicks to finance the Liberal Party. How could the PM's constituency assistant sit on it without him knowing anything about this? This is improbable, incredible, unbelievable and ridiculous.

[Paul Martin, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, there is a reason why we need to let Justice Gomery make his report. What the hon. member is saying is nothing but allegations, unfounded allegations, incomprehensible ones to boot.

Lucie Castelli sold tickets to the Liberal Party fundraising dinner in Montreal. What is she being accused of? This is exactly why we need to let Justice Gomery make his report, instead of listening to crazy statements like these.

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in 1998 Alain Renaud received over $65,000 for fake contracts: money for no work. He then turned around and made a $65,000 donation to the Liberal Party of Canada.

When asked about this money, Brault said, “I knew that the money was supposed to be funnelled to the Liberal Party”. Will the Liberals return this dirty money to the taxpayers?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, first of all the Liberal Party has been clear from the beginning that any funds that were received inappropriately will be returned to Canadians.

Beyond that, the hon. member quotes from the witness's testimony this morning. I think she should also quote that individual contradicting Mr. Brault's testimony from last week. If the hon. member is going to talk about this witness's testimony, she should refer to his contradictory testimony about what Mr. Brault said.

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the minister continues to insult Canadians with his non-answers.

The Liberal government demanded that Groupaction pay a $50,000 fake invoice to Groupe Everest. Groupe Everest then handed the $50,000 over to the Liberal Party. Groupaction was then again rewarded with more government contracts.

When will the Liberal Party return the dirty money to taxpayers?