Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise on behalf of all of my constituents in an incredible part of this country, Saanich--Gulf Islands, to talk about the budget.
It is coming up to eight years that I have been a member of Parliament and it has been a great honour. To see what is happening now is absolutely unbelievable. There is a media frenzy as we lead up to tonight's vote. I want to talk a bit about exactly what is happening. It is important that we talk about the facts.
I do not think Canadians are fooled by what has been going on. The facts speak for themselves. The government is obviously in a desperate situation because of the Gomery commission, because of the vote buying scheme by the Liberal Party of Canada to try to prop itself up to save its existence. The only way it can do that right now is through the budget. It has taken away all the opposition supply day motions. To be quite frank, I fully expect that the Liberals will be successful tonight from what has happened. However, let us talk about they have done.
Bill C-48 could be called the NDP budget. Applaud the NDP. It was successful. It was able to go to the government and say, “No. What you told us two months ago, just toss that out the window. This is what we want”. In order to save itself that is what it has done.
It is important for every Canadian to know that Bill C-48 is exactly, in English and French, two pages long. In other words, the English version of Bill C-48 is exactly one page. When I flip the pages of Bill C-48, there is nothing on them. It is quite remarkable. The pages are blank. There is not even any ink on the page. Some staples are pushed through the paper, but the pages are absolutely blank.
I want to focus on what happens when the Liberal government comes in with legislation that is blank, with no specifics. What has been the record when we have seen that type of a slush fund?
The gun registry was about a $2 million expenditure. It was very short on details. I am unable to tell the Canadian people exactly what happened. The government sort of panicked, put money into that, and now it has grown into a $2 billion unmanageable database. It is incredible.
In the mid-1990s there was the sovereignist movement in Quebec. Of course the Liberal government was in power when all that happened, the last people to try to keep this country united. The Liberals responded by saying, “We need a sponsorship program. We are going to save the country”. Again what happened? The Liberals came in with no details and said, “Here are buckets of cash”. It is no different from this NDP budget bill. Buckets of cash. Imagine spending $4.5 billion in just a few sentences, maybe about five paragraphs. Not bad. That is probably millions of dollars per word. It is incredible.
We have found out how the government goes about spending money with no details, no substance. Let us look at some of the facts.
Between 1994 and 2001 Lafleur Communications earned 78% of its income from the federal public works department and crown corporations. Jean Lafleur earned more than $9.3 million from the sponsorship program. That one individual earned $9.3 million of taxpayers' money, but that was not enough. The government needed to throw in a little tip. His family members got another $2.8 million. Those are hard-earned taxpayers' dollars. I suggest what is in here has likely ended up with the same type of activity.
Jean Brault of Groupaction testified that he made $1.1 million in contributions to the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party and that those contributions were covered up by fake invoices. Luc Lemay, whose companies took in $36 million in sponsorship contracts, testified that he paid Jacques Corriveau, a close friend of Jean Chrétien, nearly $7 million in commissions over three years. The list goes on and on.
Numerous witnesses have come forward. Benoît Corbeil, former executive director of the federal Liberal Party's Quebec wing, the very top of the pyramid, the boss of the Liberal Party of Canada in Quebec, said that he received $100,000 from Jean Brault and used it to pay volunteers in the 2000 election campaign.
Liberals ran around across the country and sprinkled around taxpayers' money. It is unbelievable. That is the record of this Liberal government in managing the public purse. It is unrefuted. It has never been denied.
I will accept some members' comments that there are discrepancies in the testimony, that there is conflicting testimony. Absolutely there is conflicting testimony, but it is uniformly bad. Witness after witness talks about phony invoices. It is about putting Liberal Party workers on campaign payrolls.
All Liberals should hang their heads in shame, because silence is consent. None of the Liberals are standing up. They are not denying this. How this was done is the most offensive thing I have ever seen. Even worse, to add insult to injury, what have we witnessed in Parliament in the last weeks and months? A government that is embroiled in the largest scandal in Canadian political history.
What was that scandal? Let me sum it up in a few words. In essence, it was a vote buying scheme. It was taking taxpayers' money, stuffing it to their friends in the Liberal Party and volunteers in the campaigns and buying some votes. That is the essence of the sponsorship program.