Madam Speaker, I have a couple of quick responses to the last member who spoke. I want it to be very clear that it was not the Conservative Party that set up a war room or spin room spending millions of dollars of taxpayers' money preparing witnesses, I would argue, inappropriately. That would be clearly a party problem.
As far as the 20,000 pages of testimony, let us remind ourselves that this was a Liberal Party scandal, not a Quebec scandal, not a Government of Canada scandal but a Liberal Party scandal. The Liberal Party could have come clean and told us the truth right from the beginning and saved us all of the pain we have had to go through the last year. We have had to drag it out of the government, kicking and screaming, one day at a time.
I am pleased to rise to speak in favour of our notice of opposition. The intent of our motion is simple. We are asking the House of Commons to remove a small portion of the Privy Council budget, roughly equal to what the office has used for blatantly partisan purposes.
As the sponsorship scandal demonstrated, we should not be using taxpayers' money for partisan purposes. Nevertheless, that is what is happening with the PCO funded war room monitoring the Gomery inquiry. This hastily created spin bin operates out of the Privy Council Office. It has an annual budget of $1,068,000 to monitor Justice Gomery on behalf of the federal government and provide advice to the Prime Minister's Office on how to mitigate the damaging testimony.
Liberals claim that they fully support Justice Gomery and have nothing to hide. If they have nothing to hide, why did they create a war room in the first place? The truth needs to be spoken, not spun.
Let us not forget that the PCO war room was created in February 2004. That is ironically the same time the Gomery commission was announced. From the very beginning the Liberals were working hard to ensure that Justice Gomery's message did not reach the ears of Canadians unfiltered.
This agency apparently is not only there for damage control but to prepare government witnesses. Preparing witnesses to do what? I am pretty sure it does not cost $1 million to tell someone entering the court room to tell the truth and answer the questions or that this advice should be given to a witness. Millions of dollars are being spent to prepare and spin, I would submit, Liberal witnesses.
This Liberal war room also helps prepare questions and answers for question period. Again, this is a very poor investment if one reviews the facts. One million dollars is an awful lot of money to pay, so that the Minister of Public Works and Government Services can stand everyday and say, “Let the commission do its work”.
I want to point out that it was the minister opposite who just suggested that we are trying to impede Justice Gomery from doing his work. Let us ensure that every Canadian knows that the Conservative Party has been fully supportive. It was not our former Prime Minister making applications to federal courts to have Justice Gomery removed and making secret deals with the current Prime Minister to reserve the right to bring forward more applications to do whatever.
The minister's non-answers are embarrassing enough. We certainly should not be spending money so that he can be reminded each day to keep saying nothing. For weeks and months we have received virtually no answers from government members when they are asked very direct questions. It is important to realize that these millions and millions of dollars of taxpayers' money funnelled to the Liberal Party is a Liberal Party scandal. Members know all the details on that side of the House. They have all the facts at their fingertips. They know all the players. It is all intertwined.
They could have chosen to come clean. The Prime Minister could have laid it all out on the table. Instead, we had to drag it out of the government kicking and screaming. The $40 million in four departments to prepare witnesses is unacceptable. The amazing part is that the government was spending $40 million to prepare speakers and so on for the commission. What did it do? It decided to blame the commission itself for spending $80 million.
It was Justice Gomery who had to put on the record the fact that the commission had spent roughly $32 million on budget. It was the Liberals who were spending more than the commission itself just to prepare witnesses and doing some spin control. Some $40 million was spent by the Department of Justice, Department of Public Works, the Treasury Board and Privy Council Office. The government claimed that this was for legal and administrative costs. Did it need $40 million for photocopies?
How many lawyers does the government need to hire to do damage control and obscure the truth? More than any department the Gomery war room in the PCO is set up as a blatantly partisan war room. That is what parties do during elections. They set up war rooms to get their message out. Governments do not set up war rooms. They do not use taxpayers' money.
To add insult to injury, with the largest scandal in Canadian political history, the government's response is to take more taxpayers' money to do damage control and spin control. It is completely unbelievable. The Liberals will look at us stunned, yet the facts speak for themselves. They will shake their head and they will somehow blame us because that is what they do. It is always someone else's fault. Originally, it was Justice Gomery who was spending $80 million on the commission, which was completely wrong.
Recently, the CBC broadcast a story discussing how the war rooms ran in the last election and how the truth can be obscured by them, and how they get their message out. That is exactly what is happening with the commission. I would suggest that the government has the responsibility to act on behalf of the people of Canada, not the Liberal Party of Canada. The Government of Canada is sent here to represent every single Canadian and not the Liberal Party.
That is what we are seeing after the Liberal Party stole millions and millions of dollars, stuffed it into suitcases and envelopes, and sprinkled it throughout ridings in Quebec. It is so fundamentally wrong. The Liberals believe they have an inherent right to stay there and govern after this type of behaviour. The Gomery war room is designed to assist the Liberal Party of Canada. Another million dollars of taxpayers' money wasted for partisan purposes.
The House needs to send a very clear message that this is not okay. It is not okay to spend $1 million. The government will say that $1 million is not a lot of money. It can waste that in just a matter of milliseconds around here. That is just pocket change. However, that is a lot of money to every single Canadian. If we were to begin adding up these partisan expenditures from one department to another, it would become hundreds of millions and eventually billions of dollars.
It is time that the government accepts the bad news from Justice Gomery. It is time that Liberals owned up to the facts that have come out from the numerous witnesses and all the evidence that has been submitted to Justice Gomery. It is time that the Liberals actually showed an example and got rid of the spin bin where millions more of taxpayers' money is being shuffled to control their messaging and do damage control. They would have a heck of a good start by removing this $1 million from the Privy Council Office, even if it is only a symbolic gesture, so that Canadians can believe that they are actually going to do things differently.
They keep walking the talk; they should show us. They should demonstrate to Canadians that there is actually an ounce of sincerity and an ounce of honesty. They should demonstrate that by removing this million dollars that is clearly being used for blatant partisan purposes. They should do that before we get the Auditor General writing another damning report against this current corrupt Liberal government.