Mr. Speaker, in response to the member for South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, I must say that as I understand it, on January 11, the Prime Minister said that he would launch a public inquiry as soon as the committee wrapped up its hearings.
Furthermore, the Conservative Party's House leader repeatedly said in the House that he did not want to launch the public inquiry until we had finished our hearings, because he did not want two public hearings to overlap.
There is certainly no danger of that happening. Everyone knows that it can take six months from the time an inquiry is launched to the time it begins its hearings. In the case of the Gomery commission, it took seven months.
But those were just excuses. The Conservative Party seems to be using one excuse after another to delay the public inquiry for as long as possible. The Conservatives are doing everything they can to delay the inquiry, and they are doing it in the committee too. As Justice Gomery said—and this was reported in the papers this morning—if they have nothing to hide, why are they hiding?
I can see that I have very little time left and that I will not benefit from the regulation time, so I will move on to my conclusions. I will then return to the beginning of the argument I wanted to make.
Here is the most recent explanation I have heard: the money Mr. Schreiber paid to Mr. Mulroney was a private transaction, and none of the government's, the public's, the voters' or the taxpayers' business.
Canadians learned that their former Prime Minister had received $225,000 or $300,000 in cash from one of the most powerful lobbyists around. They learned that that same lobbyist had cashed in on a windfall of contracts that allowed him to collect $225 million in commissions, and those were just the commissions that he told the committee he had received. The contracts themselves were worth some $2 billion.
The $225 million was spread around to people in the former Prime Minister's entourage. Right after he left office, and perhaps even before then, Brian Mulroney began depositing cash into a bank account. People in my riding—if not those in South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale—cannot help thinking that the cash he deposited was received in return for services rendered while he was in office. That is why the transaction in question is not a private transaction, and that is why we have to look into this affair.
We have heard some contradictions. The member from Mississauga pointed out several of them. Indeed, there is a long, endless list of these contradictions, facts that do not add up and people playing tricks on one another. When there are so many contradictions, some light must be shed on them.
Furthermore, some light needs to be shed on the correspondence addressed to the Prime Minister's Office. We know that Mr. Schreiber sent some letters to the Prime Minster denouncing some of the facts that were heard during the hearings held by the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. Some light must also be shed on how that correspondence was managed within the current Prime Minister's Office.
Several things must be taken into consideration. Why did Brian Mulroney make this mistake? Why did he admit—mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa—that he had made the worst mistake of his life?
Here is what we must ask him: why did he make that mistake? Why did he accept so much cash from one of the most powerful lobbyists under his government? Why did he do it? What was clouding his judgment at the time? How did he rationalize it? What were his motivations?
He must be asked these questions. Brian Mulroney told us that Schreiber always paid in cash. Marc Lalonde told us the opposite. Mr. Lalonde, who is a former justice minister of this House, also added that it made no sense to sell armoured vehicles to China, as former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney claims was the case. Instead of correcting the negative perception of his actions, Mr. Mulroney tried to show that he did nothing illegal.
Brian Mulroney should have corrected that negative perception, but he was too busy showing us that he had done nothing illegal. He told us a preposterous story which did not add up.
This is about a contract, but what contract? The two parties do not agree on the nature of the contract. I have never seen such a thing; it is quite extraordinary. The parties do not agree on the amount of the contract. Obviously, one of the men is telling the truth, and the other is lying. One is talking about $300,000 and the other is talking about $225,000. Clearly, one of them is lying; that is the only explanation. One man said that he got the contract to travel the world, and the other man said that he awarded the contract for lobbying the Government of Canada. This is also rather unbelievable, because at that time, it was no longer a Conservative government. The two versions are unbelievable.
Furthermore, Brian Mulroney reported the money to the tax authorities five years later, when he started to worry that the truth would come out, because Mr. Schreiber was having legal problems and was facing extradition.
Brian Mulroney and Karlheinz Schreiber will have to provide solid evidence to prove that the money that changed hands, whether it was $225,000 or $300,000, was not a payment for services rendered or a thank you or a bribe for the contracts awarded to Karlheinz Schreiber by Brian Mulroney's Conservative government.
Taxpayers have a right to know whether or not their taxes directly or indirectly paid for commissions so that large corporations could obtain government contracts. They have the right to know whether these taxes then helped pay—too much—for airplanes or helicopters or anything else as part of the contracts obtained by Mr. Schreiber. As I said earlier, all the contracts obtained between 1984 and 1993 by Karlheinz Schreiber totalled at least $2 billion, which would be $225 million in commissions. And those are the amounts we have been told about; we do not know about the rest.
A public inquiry must be launched as quickly as possible, with as broad a mandate as possible, and it must absolutely require proof. Brian Mulroney will have to testify, and this time, he will have to do so under oath.
Back now to the contract I mentioned earlier. The Mulroney-Schreiber contract was dealt with as if there was something illegitimate about it. The very nature of the contract was questionable. Both explanations that were given are equally unbelievable.
In addition, Brian Mulroney contended that he had the approval of his law firm to accept contract work as a sideline, so to speak. I realize that may not be the proper term, but it says what I want to say. We asked him how come his law firm would allow him to accept such contracts, such sideline work. He told us he was allowed to do so and would provide us with the contracts signed with his firm. We have asked him on several occasions to produce them and, eventually, a sheet of paper with a single paragraph, and a very vague one at that, was produced. There was no proof that this paragraph on a sheet of paper was part of a legitimate contract between the firm and Brian Mulroney and that the clause in question was indeed in effect at the time when Brian Mulroney accepted money from Karlheinz Schreiber.
The public inquiry will have to demand from Brian Mulroney's legal associates office that they provide the actual contract and scrutinize it to determine whether that clause is indeed part of the contract and was in effect at the time when Brian Mulroney was accepting contract work outside his law firm.