Mr. Speaker, I am equally concerned about the use of public funds for private fundraising purposes, which we have seen through the sponsorship scandal and through the Liberal Party's mismanagement of public resources. These are public resources that belong to all Canadians and they were misused for private fundraising purposes of the Liberal Party of Canada.
However, where the hon. member errs is by saying that it is without precedent. If he reads the hundreds of pages of documentation that Stevie Cameron put together for her book On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years, , he will see, through the PC Canada fund, the Mulroney Conservatives did the exact same systematic thing by using public funds for private party fundraising purposes. That is what was so deplorable about the Mulroney government, about the Conservative government in power. That is why the Conservatives were virtually wiped out afterward.
Now the Conservatives are coming back and saying “we have changed”. It is up to the Canadian public to determine that. Very clearly in both cases, Conservative and Liberal, we had a systematic use of public funds for private fundraising purposes. Whether it is the Liberal Canada fund for the PC Canada fund, it is the same dirty money. We in this corner of the House oppose both approaches.