Mr. Speaker, I want to indicate at the outset that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Brandon—Souris, home of the Wheat Kings.
The motion itself is a very straightforward motion calling for the expanding of the mandate of Mr. Justice Gomery to allow the reference to give the commissioner the capacity to name names and to assign responsibility. It is a very straightforward attempt to give Canadians the answers they are looking for.
The commission has been sitting for some time. I would suggest that giving the commissioner the ability to, upon the conclusion of the evidence, now weigh the facts and make determinations as to responsibility is what most Canadians are expecting.
It is a major deception that has taken place through the political machinations that the Prime Minister perpetrated on the country. Members of his cabinet have tried to deliberately distract away from the real issue, which is one of accountability, one of a deliberate Liberal Party conspiracy and an effort made to deliberately divert public money through Liberal friendly ad firms into the Liberal Party coffers for the purposes of perpetrating and preserving power. We saw in recent days those desperate attempts.
All of this bears further witness to the fact that the Prime Minister will stop at nothing to hold onto power. I also would suggest, as my colleague has alluded to, that there are so many other scandals. This is the most scandal ridden government in Canadian history. History will bear that out and show it to be true.
We know that the real fear of the Prime Minister is that upon a change in power the incoming government will shine the light in all the corners. It will look at the various other programs that have gone awry. Need I mention the gun registry, the HRDC scandal and the helicopter cancellation? The list goes on and on. Massive amounts of public money were diverted, wasted and in some cases stolen. In many cases, that money wound up back in the coffers of the Liberal Party through a very deliberate and well thought out plan on its part.
Now, who was responsible remains the crux of the matter. Why would we not want to shed more light on that critical issue? Why would we not want a complete and transparent finding of fact? Why would we not want to give Justice Gomery the ability to do just that? The reference in clause k for Justice Gomery states that:
--the Commissioner be directed to perform his duties without expressing any conclusion or recommendation regarding the civil or criminal liability of any person or organization and to ensure that the conduct of the inquiry does not jeopardize any ongoing criminal investigations or criminal proceedings;...
No one wants that. We are not asking for that threshold of criminal or civil responsibility to be met, but simply that the assigning of responsibility be made by the commissioner after his having heard a great deal of evidence.
Justice Gomery himself, on the terms of reference from which he is working, stated that:
Accordingly, the Commission may not establish either criminal culpability or civil responsibility for sums of money lost or misspent, or damages; it does not have the capacity nor does it intend to do so.
He went on to say:
Its future findings of fact and statements of opinion will be unconnected to normal legal criteria, and will be intended to serve as the basis for the recommendations which I will be making as required by paragraph (b) of the terms of reference. It follows that there will be no legal consequences arising from the Commission's findings and Reports, and they will not be enforceable in, and will not bind either civil or criminal courts which might consider the same subject matters.
What we are talking about here is simply allowing the commissioner to make findings of responsibility, not to interfere, not to cast a pall, not to in any way diminish or distract away from the criminal investigations that may or may not be going on. We know there have been criminal charges laid so there are some criminal investigations that have proceeded. Are there others? The Prime Minister refused to answer that question today.
We are not looking to somehow empower Mr. Justice Gomery himself to lay charges, as was alluded to by some. To assign civil or criminal responsibility is a different standard. We are looking to simply allow for the naming of those individuals, which would be clearly based on his findings.
No one has ever denied that this was going on. The Prime Minister, in his well publicized mercy plea to the nation, never denied that this happened or that it was the Liberal Party doing it. It is not a Quebec scandal. It is not any other party's scandal or any other government's scandal. It was a Liberal Party scandal that went on for upwards of 10 years in a very deliberate way.
With his usual bombast and professorial, condescending way, the Minister of Justice cites selectively from statutes and case law. The reality is that section 13 does not contemplate an inquiry such as the Gomery commission making findings against persons, but that section requires notice. There is a requirement that notice take place. No notice has been given to any witnesses who have testified or who are yet to testify.
In fact, we have heard testimony under oath that was at first subject to publication bans and which did involve persons who were criminally charged, including one who has now pled guilty. There was in fact no attempt whatsoever to jeopardize those ongoing investigations, no prejudice, and no similar conclusions would be reached on civil or criminal matters.
From the commissioner's findings, we are simply asking that the commissioner, after having had a very fulsome examination of sworn testimony, witnesses and documents, essentially be allowed to name names. What could be more straightforward than that? What could be more in keeping with the Prime Minister's now laughable claims that he wanted to get to the bottom of the sponsorship scandal, that he wanted to leave no stone unturned, and that he wanted the Gomery commission to have a complete range of access to all of this? That is washed away by the government's opposition to this attempt to expand the inquiry mandate.
The burden of proof of examining the facts is different. This is not making a substantive finding; it is making recommendations.
There is another point to be made on the recommendations. The Prime Minister has empowered someone to implement the recommendations of Gomery, but the recommendations of Gomery will be washed away by an election that is going to come 30 days after those recommendations are made, so that of course again is another massive smoke and mirrors deception on the part of the Prime Minister.
The sponsorship scandal clearly is proving to be the worst scandal in our country's history. We have heard sworn testimony that the Liberal Party received kickback cash for sponsorship contracts. These are not allegations or innuendoes. This is sworn testimony under oath and is subject to perjury charges if it is clearly stated that somehow it was untrue and deliberate. It is testimony that in some cases is tantamount to confessions of fraud, false pretenses and a litany of other breaches of the Elections Canada Act. There was malice aforethought, as they say. It was deliberate. It was intentional. This program was but one program in one department.
The deeds and the direction of the Liberal Party were pure deception from start to finish. The Prime Minister knew, or ought to have known, as the chief financial officer of the country, that this was taking place under his very nose. It is not believable and there is no veracity in saying he did not know; that is impossible. Incompetent or involved are the only conclusions that Canadians should come to about him unless he was in some sort of trance.
This money being used for partisan purposes was used in at least three elections. Again, it was used to buy support, essentially, to buy party workers and to buy a partisan attempt to win elections, which they did and which furthers the fraud, a massive fraud on the public purse and a massive fraud on the public trust, unprecedented in our country's history.
The Auditor General identified $250 million in program expenditures with $100 million going directly to Liberal-friendly ad agencies in commissions, but the Kroll Lindquist Avey audit, an independent audit, shows that there was actually a total of $355 million, with almost half, 44%, going to those agencies as commissions. The amount that has made its way into the Liberal Party of Canada remains unknown. We do know for certain that the $750,000, and again there is this ruse that somehow a trust fund has been set up, would not cover the half of it.
Multiple witnesses claim that they were engaged in this deliberate attempt to funnel part of their royalties from the sponsorship program back to the Liberal Party as a means of ensuring future contracts, about as sordid a political scandal as it gets and a classic fraud: public money for partisan support.
Testimony from the commission shows that many Liberal firms got rich. Many Liberal firms and individuals profited exorbitantly. Claude Boulay and his partner, Diane Deslauriers, from Groupe Everest, earned a combined total of $29.8 million in salaries and dividends. We heard Diane Deslauriers testify that she worked almost every day in the Prime Minister's campaign office in the 1993 election and we know Mr. Boulay worked on the Prime Minister's first leadership bid.
The Prime Minister in his testimony before Gomery barely admitted knowing these people. In fact he was not sure that they were merely more than passing acquaintances. We saw correspondence that put that very much to the lie. It is not believable. His credibility has been shredded daily by examination of facts.
Jean Lafleur and his family earned $14.1 billion. Luc Lemay, owner of Groupe Polygone, earned $13.5 billion. This is a beauty; Jacques Corriveau, a close confidant of former prime minister Jean Chrétien, earned $8 million mostly in fees from sponsorship subcontracts. He also admitted at the commission that he put Liberal Party staffers on his company's payroll while they worked for the party. Jean Brault and his wife earned another $4.9 million from the sponsorship program. Jean Brault paid a number of Liberal Party workers through Groupaction. The Kroll audit found that $1.7 million of the transactions on the books of Groupaction went back to Jean Brault's claim that he effectively laundered money to the Liberal Party.
What was the common denominator in all of those cases? They were Liberals. They were giving money back to the Liberal Party that had come to them through ill-gotten gains. It was public money.
It is a sad day when we have to continually take the time of the House to state the obvious. That party is not fit to govern. That party has breached the public trust in a massive way. Justice Gomery should be given all the tools, all the ability, to expose all the corruption. That is what today's motion is about.