Mr. Speaker, I am glad we are in questions and comments. I appreciate the comments of the member for West Nova, who also was very active on the committee, but I am very disappointed. He needs to talk to the chair of the committee, because unfortunately his picture did not make the report. I do not know why, but it has everybody else who was on the committee.
I do not know what the question was or if there was a question, which is fine. The hon. member is able to make comments. However, I can say that as a committee member it made me a little bit nervous when I found out that the member for West Nova, who was on the committee and asking questions, was also having dinner with Mr. Schreiber.
He made an accusation tonight that there was some connection with the Mulroney group or something, but he also said that based on my questioning. I can tell members that is an absolute falsehood. There was no such connection in any way shape or form.
Mr. Speaker, if you check the blues and see the kinds of questions that my colleagues and I asked of Mulroney and his team, they were not lob balls by any stretch of the imagination.
We had no preconceived favourites, as the member would like to indicate through his comments this evening. We were there to do a job. We did the job I think very professionally, no matter who the witness was, and we did not do any extra activity in terms of having dinner with Mr. Schreiber and getting involved with witnesses we were going to see or had seen and were going to see again.
As for Mr. Schreiber's extradition, his case was before the Supreme Court and he asked not to face his accusers in Germany. He got the extension to come before the committee. From my understanding, all those options have now been exercised and he will now have to face his accusers in Germany for about three or four different types of charges, including fraud. I am sure that process is happening.
The Prime Minister was clear from the very first day when the Leader of the Opposition in the House asked a question demanding a public inquiry on this matter. The answer came from the Prime Minister on the very first question in the House on that particular topic when he stood in his place and said yes, we will engage a public inquiry on this matter.
As for characterizing this side of the House and the leadership from the Prime Minister's Office on this topic as something that we were trying to avoid, and there then being public pressure on us to do something, that was not the case. The fact of the matter is that the Prime Minister, as he does on many important policy issues, uses the House of Commons as it should be used, to make those announcements, to tell Canadians and all parliamentarians the direction this government will be taking. He did it in this case and he did it on the very first question he got from the Liberal opposition leader at the time.