Mr. Speaker, I asked a question on February 11 about the Mulroney-Schreiber affair, but I did not receive a satisfactory answer.
We know that this story is extremely troubling. While he was still a member of Parliament, and a few months after his mandate as prime minister ended, this Conservative prime minister accepted large sums of money, namely three times $100,000 in $1,000 bills given to him in a hotel. He did not deposit this money into a bank, but into a safe. He did not provide a receipt for this money, nor did he report it. What is more, no one on earth could describe his mandate. No one knows why he received this money and why Karlheinz Schreiber gave it to him.
This prime minister received three times $100,000 from Karlheinz Schreiber, a very powerful lobbyist at the time, who himself had received more than $2 billion worth of contracts from Brian Mulroney's Conservative government, which earned him hundreds of millions of dollars in commissions. The public, everyone, could think that in those circumstances it was money that was perhaps given to the former prime minister as a thank-you for those contracts.
When we asked the government for a public inquiry, Stephen Harper himself told us—as it says on his site—that he would appoint a commissioner once the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics had completed its hearings. The committee wrapped up its hearings at the end of February. The Conservatives then said that they would do it once the committee had finished its work and submitted its report. The committee submitted its report on April 2. The Prime Minister then sought further advice from his special adviser, David Johnston, who submitted his report on April 5.
He received the reports from the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics and from his special adviser, David Johnston, over a month ago. What has he done since? Absolutely nothing. He has not done a thing. He has neither set up a commission nor appointed a commissioner. He did nothing when the ethics committee recommended that an in-depth and completely public inquiry be initiated as quickly as possible. The Prime Minister himself promised that the commission would begin its work once the ethics committee completed its hearings. He then delayed it until the committee completed its work. Our work and our hearings were done over a month ago, and we have not heard anything from the government since.
This government has been dealing with its share of embarrassing situations lately. They have been at the centre of scandal after scandal, and I do not even want to talk about the lead news story earlier today on CBC's French television network about the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
I will ask my question one more time in the hope of getting a satisfactory response. When will the Prime Minister launch a public inquiry? When will he appoint a commissioner to conduct that public inquiry?