Mr. Speaker, I thank my Liberal colleague for his excellent question. This is indeed an aspect that I did not address in my speech.
I have to say that Mr. Mulroney did in fact sue the Canadian government, claiming that he had been unfairly accused. In the statements he made at the examinations for discovery, he did not tell the lawyers everything. The decision to give him $2.1 million in compensation was made on the basis of his statements, which were incomplete.
One of the questions he was asked was about his business dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber, and he denied them. He did not report that he had received $300,000. He did not report that he had been retained—perhaps also because he was not—or report his business dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber.
And so the former Minister of Justice, Allan Rock, who appeared before our committee and who acted in good faith when he gave him the compensation—or rather when he, as Minister of Justice at the time, allowed him to be given compensation—told the committee, and subsequently said it publicly, that if he had known, the negotiations would have been handled differently.
If we have the common sense of the public, who are listening to us, the common sense of the people, the voters, who are also taxpayers, we can assume that if everyone had known this in 1999 or 2000 when the action was settled and the compensation paid, and if Brian Mulroney had been candid about his dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber, there would have been no compensation.
That being said, the commissioner who is to hold a public inquiry will have to examine this question. I think that he will inevitably come to the conclusion that the settlement will have to be revisited.