Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me some time to talk about the Mulroney-Schreiber affair.
This morning, the hon. member for West Nova painted an excellent picture of the Mulroney-Schreiber, or Mulroney-Airbus affair. As far as we are concerned, the person involved is a former parliamentarian. This also concerns the ethics committee, which, as we know, is the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. I will refer to it as the ethics committee.
This committee has been dealing with the Mulroney-Airbus affair. The person we are most interested in is Mr. Mulroney, because he is a former parliamentarian. In fact, he is the former Prime Minister of Canada and it was his actions that worried us. At first we were concerned about his actions, but after what we have heard we are now worried. It is for these reasons that, as you heard a few moments ago, the committee has presented a motion to this House asking the Prime Minister to launch a public inquiry as soon as possible to shed light on this whole affair.
The hon. member for West Nova painted an excellent picture, provided an excellent summary of what has happened since the early 1980s, and even the 1970s. It is a very complicated story. I say “story”, but I know that is not the right word. It is not a story; these are events that occurred one after the other and some even overlapped. Some 20 years later it is quite difficult to understand.
Four books have been written on the subject. I invite those watching us to read them. The first book that was written was On The Take. Then there was A Secret Trial, and then Presumed Guilty, followed by The Last Amigo. All these books were written in English and, to my knowledge, have never been translated. They shed light on some of what has happened since Airbus decided to flood the North American market.
That is why the committee is calling for a public inquiry and asking that it be launched as soon as possible. Furthermore, the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, promised on January 11, that there would be one. The Prime Minister—