Mr. Speaker, we say that we are proud to stand in this House because this is the House of Commons and the House of Commons is the House of the people of Canada. Unfortunately, however, what we are dealing with in this debate today is that the present regime has decided to undermine and show contempt for the people of Canada through secrecy, through misrepresentation of facts, through perjury at committees, and ministerial roles, to take roles that are supposed to be there to represent all the people and use them as the private stash of the Conservative Party. They are up on criminal charges. A minister has been found in contempt of this House.
However, we cannot blame the poor little staffers that the Conservatives throw to the bus every week when someone gets caught. I am not even blaming the hapless minister. The Prime Minister himself has put his imprimatur on every single thing in this regime and it is time the Prime Minister was held accountable .
Let us look at the Conservatives' behaviour in the in and out scandal. They are acting like every busted crook who has ever walked the planet. They did not do anything wrong. They just have a dispute with the prosecutor. Every guy going to jail has a dispute with the prosecutor.
The people back home need to understand what the Conservatives were doing here. This was an elaborate scheme cooked up by the leaders of the Conservative Party to launder money. They took money from the central campaign and they filtered it quickly through some deadbeat campaign in the middle of Palookaville, Manitoba. Then they got the money back immediately to buy national ads because they were trying to get around the democratically enforced election spending limits.
We now hear them say that everybody did this. That is the other line that all crooks use when they get caught. Everybody wants to know why they are the ones being picked out. There is always a conspiracy as to why they are the poor people caught out. They are the only ones up on charges.
However, this was not just a money laundering scheme. The Conservatives show their contempt by taking the two key buddies who made this and they put them in the Senate. Senator Doug Finley sits there for life. Senator Gerstein is a bagman.
The Conservatives told the people of Canada that they would clean up, that they would do something different. What do they do? They put bagmen and party hacks, like Senator Housakos, in the other house that is supposed to have sober second thought. That line is kind of a misnomer. The Conservatives are using taxpayer money to fund their operation.
Not only did they get caught on this in and out scheme and not only has the Federal Court ruled it quite appropriately as a scheme, but the other piece of the puzzle here was that they enticed local ridings to get kickbacks.
I have many friends who are Conservatives and many Conservatives are honest and they refused to participate. We have Conservative candidates who stood up and said that they would not participate in that illegal action. However, the other ones were enticed by the kickback. Because they flowed the money through their bank accounts and took it out, the local riding association was able to go to the taxpayer of Canada to claim receipts that it was not eligible for. Maybe it raised only $9,000 or $10,000 in a campaign but then it walked out with a cheque for $30,000. Even the mob could not give that kind of return on an investment. This is what caught them out. They thought they were flying high. This is exactly like something we would see in Panama.
All these dead dog riding associations that could hardly even find candidates to run, started asking for the kickback they were entitled to. Elections Canada looked at it and said that it was a criminal act.
Canadians look to government to set a certain standard but what do they find with the government? Whenever the government is accused and it needs to do the right thing, it refuses to stand up and be accountable. It hides the evidence. It prorogues and shuts down. It attacks Elections Canada. It is time the government was held--