Mr. Speaker, just to clarify this, Vito Gallo, the mysterious Vito, is an American as far as we know, but we do not know anything about him. We do not know any details.
He is claiming to be the sole owner of a derelict site through a numbered company registered in Ontario. There is nothing about this company that shows any kind of American investments at all. In fact, there is only one investment I have seen that it has made, other than apparently buying into the Adams Mine, which is that the 1532382 company gave political donations to the Conservative leadership in Ontario through this numbered company that is now being claimed as an American investment.
So there is certainly the question of what it was doing giving political donations through this group of companies, but through this dispute mechanism how do we even know who the owners are? There is no obligation under international trade to reveal this to the public or to bring forward evidence.
Therefore, we have a situation where there could be one, two or a dozen investors. We do not know if he is a small investor or the sole investor. He is claiming to be the sole investor right now. Again, the Toronto Star of May 9, 2003, said that Mario Cortellucci from Vaughan township was one of the key owners of that site.
We certainly think that basic jurisprudence would call for a forensic audit of this company to be made public before we would agree to submit to any kind of international dispute tribunal.
There is one final point on this question. Under this consent to arbitration, the plaintiff gets to ask for his own arbiter. He has asked for Professor Jean-Gabriel Castel from Orangeville, Ontario, so I find this situation even stranger. We do not even have a full court of law with full evidence so we do not know much. We know there is a numbered company in Ontario that is asking to have one out of the two or one out of the three arbiters picked by the company, this for $350 million of taxpayers' money.
It is an incredible tale. As for the government sitting back and allowing that to happen, when we think of this money that could be spent on Kelowna or on public transit but that might be going out the window and through a back door process under NAFTA to a donor to the Conservative Party, it is an incredible story. I agree. It is an incredible story.