Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the chair of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, for moving concurrence in the report from our committee today. As I remember, it was a very straightforward and simple report. It simply announced to the House of Commons that our committee had concluded the witness phase of the study into the Airbus Mulroney-Schreiber scandal, as it has come to be known.
First, I want to thank my colleague, the member from Mississauga, for the work he has done on that committee and for having the fortitude and the wisdom that it takes to be a good chair juggling a very difficult issue of national importance and of interest to the whole country. I think he has done a great service to Canadians by keeping an even keel on this study and making sure that it moved forward to its logical conclusion.
I would like to remark on a few of the points he made.
First, there is no excuse any more for the Government of Canada to postpone the full public inquiry that this report calls for. The Prime Minister said he did not want to begin the public inquiry because there might be overlap between witnesses that the ethics committee calls and witnesses that the public inquiry calls. We have finished with witnesses. We have announced that formally. Our chair stood in the House of Commons and made a public declaration. We are done. There is really no excuse or reason not to begin the public inquiry.
I will also say that there is no excuse for the Government of Canada to announce a very narrow public inquiry, limited, for instance, to just the cash payments given in hotel rooms to the former prime minister, because as recently as today, as my colleague points out, this ground that Dr. Johnston said has been well-tilled and adequately researched is still revealing new truths.
Just today, a senator in the current Parliament of Canada has revealed how important that Bear Head file was to the former prime minister, Mr. Mulroney, how it was key and paramount, and how it was the very first file given to him in the newly struck ACOA portfolio that he was given.
I have a simple question for my colleague. It is my view that no amount of bafflegab will ever take the stink off those sacks full of cash and secret hotel room meetings. There is no amount of excuses that the former prime minister can offer Canadians to defend that, but let me ask my colleague if it is not just as important that we go beyond the sacks full of cash and research the genesis of the scandal, which is Karlheinz Schreiber, an unrepentant Nazi, which is what the German media calls him, interfering with Canadian politics by buying our next prime minister.
That is shocking: the CEO of Airbus creating a prime minister and then having that prime minister buy airplanes from him. If that is not worth investigating, I do not know what is.