Mr. Speaker, I notice that this is a very touchy subject for the Liberal member. He is not happy to hear the truth about his party. I will repeat so that all Canadians who follow our debate get a good idea of the real extent of the scandal. The Liberals stole the taxpayers' money to finance their activities. That is the reality. The party must face that fact.
We cannot seriously believe that the Liberal Party will return that money one day. That is the reason an account must be created right now for the Liberal Party to begin to reimburse the money. We cannot wait because it is not possible to expect that the party will return the money on its own.
As an example, this week or last, the Prime Minister told us that he never met Claude Boulay. However, the Prime Minister did meet him. According to public testimony, they even had lunch together. And today, the Prime Minister refused to answer questions amount that meeting. He said that he had never talked about sponsorships with Mr. Boulay, but that was not the question. The question was whether they had lunch together. That was a very simple question, but the Prime Minister refused to answer. That is what we saw today.
Two or three days ago, our Minister of Public Works and Government Services wanted us to believe that an audit had been done of the Liberal Party's finances. He said so two or three times right here in this House. We learned yesterday, though, that no audit was done; there was a review. In addition, the companies that did the review said that the Liberal Party did not provide all the facts that were needed for it. This shows that the Liberal Party is hiding something. It does not really want to pay taxpayers back for the money that it stole.
A motion is needed, therefore, that says specifically that the money must be paid back starting now, because we have no confidence that this party will reimburse the money. I am proud to be working today with Quebeckers, Ontarians, Albertans and British Columbians to defend the principles of honour and honesty and thus to support this motion.
The motion states what taxpayers want to hear, which is that the dollars that that party stole to finance at least two election campaigns, if not three, must be paid back immediately.
I will review some of the occasions when we have been misled by the government on the subject of the ad scam just in the past week.
The Minister of Public Works claimed there had been an audit. We now learn there was no audit at all. There was merely a review conducted by two firms which now reveal that they were blocked access to key information. They were blocked access to the Liberal riding associations in the province of Quebec to which the money was initially funnelled through Liberal ad scamsters. That is the first contradiction that we have seen.
The second contradiction we should point out is that the Prime Minister originally said he did not meet Claude Boulay, one of the chief ad scamsters. Now he is admitting that there had been certain social occasions at which they had met. Two testimonies under oath by two separate individuals revealed that they actually had lunch to discuss federal government contracts. He still will not answer the question as to whether that lunch occurred, even though he has been asked in the House of Commons on roughly a dozen occasions.
These two examples that have occurred just in the last five or six days demonstrate that that party cannot be trusted to repay the money that it stole from taxpayers. That is why we must put in place an account immediately to see that those funds are eventually repaid.
We are not talking about a small amount of money. We are talking about $2 million or more. That is an enormous sum of money in a political campaign.
In my campaign we relied on the dollars of voluntary contributors, middle class people who wanted to see a change in the democratic process. They made financial sacrifices to support accountability at election time.
At the same time, the party across the way was financing its campaigns by funnelling money through the sponsorship programs into the pockets of Liberal friendly advertising firms which then kicked the money back to the ultimate destination, the Liberal Party of Canada. That is the reality.
It puts right into question the actual election results of the last three elections. Elections Canada ought to consider reviewing this, because electoral financing is a key part of the democratic process. If a party had stolen votes to win an election, we would consider it a massive undertaking of fraud, and it would be. That party has stolen money to win elections. What do we call that? It is fraud. It is electoral fraud. It is theft, Liberal theft, the very worst kind.