Mr. Speaker, I must say today that the situation that prompted this motion may have come as a surprise to a lot of people, but it did not surprise me or the people in my riding. Once again, the government is trying to use taxpayers' money to reward friends of the new regime. After a few short months in power, good old Liberal habits seem to have won out over the accountability and transparency that the Conservative government wants to bring in.
The government is getting ready to pay $224 million over the next 25 years to Minto Developments Inc. to lease office space in the JDS Uniphase building in Ottawa, without a public tendering process. Minto bought the building last June for $30 million. One day, perhaps, the Minister of Public Works and Government Services will explain to us what logic told him that this was a good deal, but as you know, the minister was not elected by the people and unfortunately does not sit in the House of Commons.
Let us not forget that this government campaigned on a platform of accountability and transparency. When we look at the connection between Minto and Fred Doucet and the connection between Mr. Doucet and the current government, we can understand the transaction more easily. In 2003, Fred Doucet was a key member of the leadership campaign strategy committee of the current Minister of Foreign Affairs. Now things are making more sense. Let us not forget that this government campaigned on a platform of accountability and transparency. Mr. Doucet is the middleman between Minto and the government. I wonder what my Quebec colleagues who were elected under the Conservative banner think about this attitude.
What does the Minister of Transport think? These people promised major changes in how the country is governed. They promised accountability and transparency to the people of Quebec. Where are accountability and transparency when the government is going to spend more than $600 million on a building worth $30 million? Where is accountability when the government is going to pay $23 million a year in rent for a building worth $30 million?
Try offering any Canadian the opportunity to rent a house for $75,000 per year instead of buying it for $100,000. What do you think the response would be? The Minister of Public Works and Government Services said, “I'll take it”. Why? We would have to be in the Senate to know the answer to that. We would have to be sitting in the Senate to ask that question.
What do Conservative members from Quebec—who stood to vote against their fellow citizens on the fuel price issue last week—think? Do they represent Quebec in the government, or do they represent the government in Quebec? They condemned Liberal cronyism, so how can they now accept the Conservative variety?
Irony of ironies. Not so very long ago, the Liberals perfected the art of cronyism, and now they are condemning the Conservatives for practising it. Earlier on, the Liberal member for Hull—Aylmer condemned Conservative cronyism, never mind the fact that in his six years on the government bench, not once did he rise to condemn Liberal corruption and scandal. That is the kind of conduct that is giving cynicism license to run rampant among Quebeckers.
The saddest part of this story is their contempt for the Outaouais region. In 1984, the Liberals and the Conservatives promised to resolve the issue of locating 25% of public service jobs in the Outaouais and 75% in Ottawa. It is now 21 years later, and nothing has changed. During the last campaign, the Minister of Transport promised to use his position to help the region. Last week he backed away from the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology issue and tried to pretend he had never promised the people of the Outaouais anything. Still nothing has been done. This government has not proposed anything to rectify the job distribution situation.
And yet we have a minister in the region. This should give the Outaouais some prestige, but there is still nothing. I invite the Minister of Transport to drop the fine speeches and deliver the goods to the Outaouais.
It is quite ironic to see, again this time, our colleague from Hull—Aylmer huffing and puffing about the 25-75 distribution. He forgot to mention that during his six years in government he did nothing tangible about this except to put forward a single motion on November 10, 2005, some 18 days before the last federal election. It took him four elections and six years and seeing the Bloc Québécois in his rear view mirror to start getting interested in his riding and the Outaouais in this matter at the end of the Liberal cronyism mandate.
Where was my colleague during the last election campaign, the night offices were being moved from the Hull sector in his riding of Hull—Aylmer to the Vanier sector in the City of Ottawa? You have to want to see this issue through to get anything done. The hon. member for Hull—Aylmer had six years to defend the Outaouais to his government. If he had done his job, like the public expected him to, he could not now denounce this situation because in speaking out against the 25-75 problem, he is speaking out against himself for not being equal to the task. Between 2000 and 2006, only 21.4% of the jobs in the national capital region were in the Outaouais. That is still far from 25%.
I believe the public expects better from a government that promised responsibility and transparency. The government has a chance to kill two birds with one stone by agreeing to take a step in the right direction in the matter of distributing public service jobs and showing true responsibility and true transparency.
Therefore, I invite the President of the Treasury Board and the Minister of Public Works and Government Services to ensure that the leasing of office space is always done through a public tender process. It is a basic rule of transparency. On this subject, I would ask the minister responsible for Quebec, who is from my region, to look closely, with his colleague from Treasury Board, at the issue of public service jobs on the Quebec side of the Ottawa river. Previous governments introduced a policy of equity between the two shores. But there is a serious shortfall on one side that must be corrected, and I invite the government to propose a plan to restore the proper balance. I am prepared to work in a constructive manner, putting all partisanship aside, to correct this situation once and for all. I will see to it that members from the Outaouais region work with the Bloc Québécois for this particular region of Quebec.