I am not in the habit of interrupting people when they speak and I would like to be able to continue.
I wish to say that the Canada Information Office is the ideal place to spend money without worrying about the rules. Most of the CIO's contracts go out untendered. That is a fact. It is not something I made up. If it were, the members opposite would be on their feet immediately. During Oral Question Period, the government would have said “That is not true. You are mistaken”.
But no, there is no denying that most of the contracts awarded by the CIO, which were paid for by the public and which should normally go out to public tender, because that is the ethical way of spending taxpayers' money, were not put out to tender. That is a fact, not idle speculation. That is a verifiable fact .
The second point I would like to make is that not only were contracts awarded without calls for tender, but they were awarded primarily to Liberal Party buddies. This also is a fact. I challenge anyone on the other side of the House to put generalities aside and prove me wrong.
Here is a partial list of contracts awarded by the Canada Information Office: BCP, headed by John Parisella, the former executive assistant to Robert Bourassa, former Liberal Premier of Quebec, Administration Leduc et Leblanc, the famous firm where Judge Mongeau worked, an administrative office connected with a firm of lawyers, as is generally the case, but which did communications contracts. We will come back to this.
I like lawyers and respect them. But as communications experts, they sometimes leave something to be desired. The list of contracts also includes the firm GPC, headed by Rémi Bujold, a former secretary of state of the Liberal government and a generous contributor to the Liberal Party. And the list is growing. The paper and notes I have here refer throughout to people close to the Liberal Party.
So, contracts were awarded with public money and without tender, that is, contrary to the rules, contracts were given to good government buddies and contracts were given to firms whose connection to the mandate given them is not always obvious.
In fact, I mentioned Administration Leduc et Leblanc. An honourable judge has just been appointed by the government, a man who was at the same time the lawyer, the legal adviser, for the Canada Information Office, with an annual salary of $192,000. That is not exactly peanuts. It is more than he is currently making as a judge.
This same gentleman collected $40,000 worth of travel expenses in a year. One would imagine he travelled up to Ottawa every morning and back to Montreal every evening, ate in the best restaurants, and managed to do errands in town between the two.
This is also someone with a lot of communications contracts from the CIO. We have checked it out. I challenge my friends over there to prove me wrong.
We have checked it out. We called communications firms, because we have connections with some. There are a lot involved in government work. “Are you familiar with a communications firm called Administration Leduc et Leblanc?” we asked them. Not a soul in Quebec, not a single person in communications, knows the communications firm Administration Leduc et Leblanc. Not a single communications specialist in Quebec, in Montreal, knows this firm, but the Minister of Public Works did.
Or at any rate, he knew Mr. Mongeau. Knew him so well that they appointed him to a judgeship, this Mr. Mongeau, who was on the Liberal Party's legal commission, a close buddy since way back, someone close to the seats of power. On top of his $192,000 annually as legal adviser to the Canada Information Office, on top of his $40,000 in travel expenses for that same year, he was doing communications. He fixed up the commas and periods in the CIO's documents. That is ridiculous.
My colleague from Chambly asked the government a question “Is it normal to award a contract of x thousands of dollars to someone who will report back as follows: We have fixed up the commas, periods and spelling errors in this or that document?” What is more, this will be over the signature of a lawyer who works for the Canada Information Office, who is a legal adviser to the RCMP, who had major civil cases going on at the same time, and who did $40,000 worth of travel in a year, at 38 cents a kilometre. The man worked 28 hours a day; there can be no other explanation.
If this is not going overboard in using public funds for partisan purposes, what is it?
There is a fourth element. Not only does the CIO award contracts without going to tender, not only are these contracts awarded to buddies, not only are they awarded to people who do not have the skills to fulfil them, but the CIO creates files.
Thanks to the insight of the hon. member for Chambly, we have discovered that the CIO has created files in which we find the names of the most famous journalists on Parliament Hill. I was able to find out, because I am nosy and I admit it, which journalists are considered good or bad journalists by the government.
I was able to see that some journalists are considered harmless. They report the facts. They are objective. Others are good because they promote the views of the government on Quebec's sovereignty. They will probably get the government's press releases during the next referendum.
There are also bad journalists. They are those who do not accurately reflect the views of the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. They interrupt him. They sometimes use irony. All this information is on the CIO's files.
I will conclude on that note, because I want to leave the floor to my colleague. We cannot accept that such an office continues to exist at the expense of the taxpayers, of our viewers.
