Mr. Speaker, I referred to the scandal involving just Senator Duffy, but I also could have included Senator Wallin. We have lost count of this government's improprieties.
At some point, there are limits to defending one thing one minute and then defending the opposite the next. Talk about a contradiction. The government will have earned its fate. To continue along the same lines as my colleague, I really enjoy being in my riding, and I am sometimes embarrassed and surprised to hear some of the comments from my constituents regarding the Prime Minister and his government. People sometimes even go a little too far in their choice of words to describe the actions of the Prime Minister, who is abusing his majority. Personally, I always accept the will of the people.
The issue we have brought before the House is a very important one. We are talking about the proper, reasoned and intelligent use of public money. The Conservative Party's discount travel system is a very popular concept in the private sector. It helps people save money if they are frequent travellers or if they want to go on vacation for the first time in their life. However, the system is largely dependent on public funds—even money from Conservative contributors—which is truly scandalous, particularly since it is clearly not economically viable.
I am wondering why the Conservatives are defending the indefensible and why they feel they can deflect our attention by saying that they are acting with complete transparency, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence claimed.
In an article published in iPolitics, journalist Elizabeth Thompson demonstrated the exact opposite. She had to resort to the Access to Information Act to prove that one of the Prime Minister's close family friends was able to use the Prime Minister's Challenger at rock-bottom prices. There is no way the competition can match those prices because public money is what keeps them so low.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety was thoroughly incapable of proving that she was talking about real issues. She was completely off-track with her comments about the Prime Minister's security. She said that it is important to deal with terrorist threats and so on. I would invite her to meet with the Minister of Industry as quickly as possible, because he had this to say on October 1, 2001:
There is something else the government can do. If the government wants to show confidence in the commercial airline industry, here is a suggestion. Will the Prime Minister park his Challenger jet and fly commercial skies as other Canadians do as a sign of faith that security works?
That comment is over a decade old. Perhaps the Minister of Industry was lacking in judgment at the time. That said, the parliamentary secretary could always meet with him to talk about it. However, he told the House that it is absolutely impossible, for security reasons, for the Prime Minister to fly on commercial airlines. That is perfectly understandable.
However, the Prime Minister must in turn respect all Canadian taxpayers by not engaging in this type of abuse to benefit such a small circle of friends. I raised the example of Senator Duffy because, like Mark Kihn, he is a major fundraiser. In Senator Duffy's case, he was able to put on a good show. He raised millions of dollars by making thousands of people laugh at Conservative Party events. In both cases, these men were given preferential treatment. The government was even providing privileges erroneously, almost fraudulently, to these people who are so important to Conservative Party fundraising activities.
Let us now talk about the invoices another Hill reporter mentioned and how much Conservative Party fundraiser Mr. Kihn was billed. Mr. Kihn is friends with the Prime Minister's children on Facebook, which shows how close he is to the Prime Minister. For the same trip, no airline in Canada can come close to even double the cost that was billed to Mr. Kihn. There may be some airlines in the U.S. that charge that much, but even that is questionable.
How can my colleagues from the government, especially my colleagues from the west, the successors of the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance, who defended integrity and transparency in Ottawa, continue to defend the indefensible, especially with their noses stuck in their iPads, computers, or newspapers? I just do not understand it. The only thing I do understand is that the Prime Minister apparently continues to keep his caucus in a yoke of ironclad discipline, unless he is in a really tough spot, as he was with former Conservative Party executive director Dimitri Soudas, who really went too far. How many more of these incidents and abuses are my colleagues willing to tolerate after nine years of Conservative rule on the Hill?
Let me be clear. Taken in isolation, what we are debating right now in the House is a mistake that we could consider excusing if the Conservatives would acknowledge their mistakes or their lack of judgment. However, when we look at the big picture, we can point to the in and out scandal of the 2006 election; the robocalls to mislead voters and send them to polling stations that did not exist; all the Senate scandals; not to mention the problems of the Minister of International Cooperation, who had a great deal of difficulty deciding where to put his lunch box and sleeping bag on certain outings to the Quebec cottages of prominent Canadians; and of course we could mention the former minister of international cooperation, Bev Oda, who threw tantrums in order to be able to smoke in her room and treated herself to $16 glasses of orange juice.
It seems to me that there is a limit. Some of my colleagues were elected because of solemn promises they made. Their constituents truly hoped that they would clean up Ottawa. It seems to me that, at some point, some of them should stand up and say that the party is over, that those who abuse the system will be shown the door, and that they will openly revolt and say that this type of abuse will not be tolerated.
As the official opposition, we are pointing out serious problems that, when taken as a whole, are indicative of a well-established and deeply rooted culture. After nine years, this government has amply demonstrated the extent to which it has used public resources for personal gain. That is enough. We will form the next government in 2015 because Canadians really deserve better.