Madam Speaker, I did make reference to the sponsorship scandal in my speech, but I had to cut a couple of pages of it out to fit my speech into the time allotted.
My colleague is exactly right. It coalesced Canadians on how their government was working. There were no checks and balances on money going out the door from the Liberal government at the time and money going in the back door through political contributions. It was absolutely obscene from 1996 to 2004.
The Gomery commission looked at how all that money was backdoored into the Liberal Party through money given to Liberal friends. It was an awful demonstration of how a democratic country should run itself, and that government was thrown out for $4 million, which was the amount found by the Gomery commission, as opposed to $400 million. I appreciate inflation, but inflation over 20 years is not 100 times the scandal that happened that year.
This is something we have to hold the government accountable for. We have to make sure the public sees that we are doing our job and that the government is providing some transparency and accountability for its actions.