Mr. Speaker, the hon. member quotes from the report. Our position was always that the evidence spoke for itself, as tattered as it was. So many questions were raised by our triaging of the evidence and Dr. Johnston picked up on most of them. Where I would say he has failed, because we probably failed in the way our testimony rolled out and our awkward questions, is on two very important aspects about which the Canadian public will never know.
The first, and I already spoke about in a question, was the settlement of the libel suit for $2.1 million of taxpayer money. Allan Rock said that he would not have settled that case had he known the evidence Mr. Mulroney gave in Montreal was false.
The second aspect is we will never know where the money for Airbus and GCI went. It seems Dr. Johnston has closed that door. It seems the Prime Minister, with the door closed by the adviser who is only relying on our imperfect evidence, will not open that door again because he has something in his craw about his previous defence and glorification of Mr. Mulroney.
I have always said this to my children and other people. The Prime Minister is a good person, but he is very sensitive to criticism and he is very sensitive when he makes mistakes. I am sure in that world over there the Prime Minister never makes mistakes, but he made a mistake in this case. He got too close to Brian Mulroney and he knew it, and he distanced himself after the proverbial started hitting the fan.
The Prime Minister is a very proud man. We should have a proud leader of this country. That is fine, but pride goeth before the fall. In this case the Prime Minister will not open the doors that Dr. Johnston has been forced to close on the libel suit, on tracing Airbus to GCI. He will tie the hands of the future commissioner of inquiry by suggesting that there be confidential interviews, that we do not open doors to subjects about which Canadians want to know.
Ultimately what happened in the 1980s is the Conservative Party of Canada had a party and the party lasted a long time. There were lobster tails, shrimps and scallops all across the country in every PC club 500 reception across Canada. Frank Moores was the chief piper at the party and a good part of that money came from corporate Canada and corporate Europe. Sadly, Mr. Schreiber represents an end, hopefully, of an epic period where foreign money influenced Canadian decisions.
I am not as conspiratorial as my friends in the NDP who see a conspiracy under every coaster on every table, but I do think that foreign money and what Mr. Schreiber symbolized in saying was involved in Conservative Party politics in the 1980s. We will never know now.