Mr. Speaker, it would be intellectually dishonest of me to say that one act of Parliament alone could permanently prevent any scandal from occurring in government. What I can say is that had the accountability act been in place when the Liberal ad scam occurred, it would have been caught much sooner and punished much more swiftly.
I will give some examples. Allan Cutler would have had the ability to go to an independent officer of Parliament and report the scandal, theft and fraud that was transpiring with the sponsorship program. That independent officer of Parliament would have been forced, within 60 days, to report that wrongdoing to Parliament, meaning the public would have known of the wrongdoing within 60 days of the commissioner confirming it. In other words, the public would have known many years before what kind of fraud the Liberal Party was carrying out.That fraud, therefore, could have been stopped in its tracks. All the advertising firms that got money after Allan Cutler had originally come forward internally, we might have been able to have stopped, saving hundreds of millions of Canadian tax dollars as a result.
This is the toughest anti-corruption law in Canadian history. I thank the member for all of his work in helping to bring it about.