Odina Desrochers

[Supply, February 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I note that the Jean Lapierre strategy has already been adopted by the Liberals. The only comment Jean Lapierre was capable of making when given the nod as the Liberal candidate for Outremont, was that the Bloc Quebecois had no reason to exist, although he himself was a founding member of that party. I have trouble understanding the Liberals and their inconsistency.

When we are told we are doing nothing but ask questions, let me tell you that our questions are what has made it possible to cast some light on this scandal. There have been more than 450 questions concerning the mess with Groupaction and the boycotting of the public accounts committee. Action was needed. Some heavy guns were required to get to the truth. They did not take kindly to that. So much for transparency and democracy. They are beginning to learn their lesson but it is taking a while.

[Supply, February 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, in fact, in the agricultural sector we are getting crumbs once again. This government is the expert in announcing the first phase. The second phase is being studied and perhaps there will be a third phase. The reason they say there is a first phase, a second phase being studied, and perhaps a third phase, is that they claim they have no money.

There is a problem here, because they had the money, but they spent it badly. They spent it so badly that they let some situations get really rotten, such as the mad cow crisis, the softwood lumber crisis and their continued stealing from the unemployed.

The way the money is managed at the moment, or the way it was managed by the former finance minister, the current Prime Minister, and the current Minister of Finance does not change. Why not? Because it can only be described in one way. This Liberal government is dishonest; it penalizes the little guys and fattens the big.

[Supply, February 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, our presence here today is the result of a political event that occurred in October 1995, the referendum. Fifteen days before the referendum, the polls clearly showed that the Yes camp was winning.

So, there was panic here in the House of Commons, particularly among the federal Liberals. Quebeckers had to be shown that Canada was a beautiful country and an ad campaign was needed to do that. That is why the sponsorship program was created, and that is also where everything started, like the famous love-in held two days prior to the referendum.

So, when I am told in the House that the current Prime Minister, all of the current ministers and all of the federal Liberal members did not know what was happening, I must say I have serious doubts because everyone knew that Jean Chrétien's Liberal government had to flex its muscles to save the country. That is what we were told by the person who set up this program when he testified in July 2002 about the sponsorship and Groupaction scandals.

Do you know what Mr. Guité said? “We were at war. Something had to be done. The separatists were going to win”. What more proof do we have to give here in the House? The sponsorship scandal is inextricably linked to the future of Quebeckers. Now, today, they are trying to tell us that the present PM did not know what was going on.

I remember my days on the public accounts committee when we tried to have some witnesses appear who could cast some light on this. You should have seen the stonewalling that went on, as the federal Liberals systematically prevented the Standing Committee on Public Accounts from doing its job.

Today we hear from the new President of the Treasury Board. It was he who opposed those amendments, before the present Prime Minister came along, when we were debating the importance of the Public Service Act and when the Bloc and the NDP were trying to introduce amendments to protect public servants who might act as whistle blowers about ministerial political interference. The Liberals themselves blocked those amendments to Bill C-25.

This morning, it is quite fantastic what the President of Treasury Board can say when he talks to us about democracy and transparency. I need not remind hon. members that, the night before the Auditor General's first appearance to explain the content of her report, an emissary of the PMO called together the Liberal members of the Public Accounts Committee. I would call that interference and controlling behaviour.

Today they are trying to make us believe that transparency and democracy exist among the Liberals, but I am not buying it. You know what the press is saying today? Today's headlines describe the PM's actions of yesterday as “damage control mode”, in other words that he was in a panic. Do hon. members want to know what the PM reminds me of with his protestations of not being aware, that he will clean house, that he is outraged, and so on? He reminds me of someone who claims to have left his past behind, but then keeps on talking about it. After two hours of hearing about it, one is tempted to say “Hey there, you have not left your past behind you at all”.

That is what the Prime Minister is doing now. He keeps on saying he knew nothing, keeps on saying his government will change its behaviour, change its mentality, that his government will become the most democratic government anyone has ever seen in this House of Commons.

That is a monumental joke. The people of Quebec are starting to react to what the Prime Minister intends to do, because it knows that the sponsorship scandal is intimately related to our national future.

If current polls are clearly showing that the Bloc Quebecois has made significant gains in Quebec, regardless of what happens in coming months, this means that the people of Quebec understand what took place in October 1995. It means that Quebeckers are a good, proud, and different people.

There are phone-in radio show hosts, in Toronto and Vancouver, and even a minister who are currently suggesting that this whole issue is indicative of Quebec's way of doing things. We have certainly never seen anything of the sort.

The current Prime Minister, who proclaims himself a Quebecker, should take more aggressive action to stand up for Quebec when under such attacks. There is more to come. Anytime the Quebec people sets out to achieve sovereignty, these kinds of racist remarks pop up all over the place in English Canada. Forgotten are all the nice things said in Montreal, one day or two before the referendum.

Light will definitely be shed on this issue. The Standing Committee on Public Accounts has set the process in motion. On Thursday, we will have a meeting where the Auditor General and officials from the three departments concerned will try to explain the complex nature of this program. There are so many complexities that it is hard to make out the authors. All this was apparently done without any political interference.

Now we can see one president after another speak up. André Ouellet said he did not know what was going on at Canada Post. Jean Pelletier—and this is worse—is Jean Chrétien's former chief of staff and now heads VIA Rail. He would have us believe that he knew nothing.

I look forward to hearing what Alfonso Gagliano has to say. He made us a promise and I hope he will keep it. He said he did not want to comment on a political situation while posted in Denmark, but would clarify the whole situation upon his return to Canada. I am sure that, listening to Alfonso Gagliano, there are ministers from Quebec, federal Liberal ministers, who are going to blush.

We are talking about a Prime Minister who says he was not in the loop. It is funny that the same day the report was tabled he held a press conference to announce his measures. He preferred to speak to the media rather than to Parliament. The next day he said that it was a small group. When he felt that people were beginning to have increasing difficulty believing him, he went back to the media at 1:30 p.m., to tell the journalists that it was no longer just a small group, but that it was quite a lot bigger than he thought and that there was some political direction involved.

Not only are the polls unanimous, but all of our colleagues were discussing it when they returned to the House. On the weekend, no one was talking about anything else. We heard how revolted the people felt, especially since this Prime Minister had made cuts in transfer payments for health care and education and in employment insurance, so that the government and good friends could make millions and millions of dollars. That is unacceptable. It does not matter whether the election happens on May 4, May 10, in the fall, or in 2005, the people of Quebec are going to say, “Liberals, begone”.

[Auditor General's Report, February 16th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, how can the Prime Minister justify having paid such sizeable sums for verbal reports other than because they had more to do with the Liberal Party leadership race than with the interests of the Department of Finance?

[Auditor General's Report, February 16th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, according to the Auditor General's report, and also according to an employee of the Minister of Finance, there were five different investigations at Finance Canada without any written report, exactly the same situation as the untraceable reports from Communications Coffin, which cost the government $116,000 and are now the object of criminal proceedings.

How can the Prime Minister exonerate himself by claiming he was not informed of the situation with the sponsorships, when something very similar was going on in his own department at the same time?

[Government Contracts, February 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General said in her report that the Treasury Board approved supplementary estimates for the sponsorships and that her responsibility was to check that everything was in compliance.

Why did the vice-president of the Treasury Board not do this?

[Government Contracts, February 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Hamilton East and former heritage minister said that in her opinion, there certainly had been questions about the sponsorship program at the Treasury Board, and that the vice-president of the Treasury Board and finance minister at the time should have taken the necessary action.

How can the Prime Minister justify doing nothing, when he knew what was going on and it was his duty to act, as the former heritage minister has said?

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, February 11th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, in such a short time, I will give a clear answer. I think it is a sure sign of incompetence not to have been able to keep track of all these matters and various departments.

I hope he will be more efficient as a Prime Minister than he was as a finance minister.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, February 11th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, of course I will be asking the Auditor General some questions. She will certainly provide answers.

However, I will remind the member opposite that we, on this side, have asked 441 questions on the sponsorship scam. We did not get any answer. All we saw was a cover-up. Ministers have been passing the buck back and forth. We saw their faces turn red—which is the right colour for a Liberal, I guess—as they learned about the whole sponsorship issue.

Of course, we will do everything we can in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. We will be the first ones to welcome the Auditor General. We will be authorized to identify witnesses who will be able to confirm what we already suspect, which will help us carry out our duties.

I would just point out to my hon. colleague opposite that I remember the sad scenario that was the Groupaction inquiry, where the Liberals decided that our sittings would be in camera. We heard from Chuck Guité and Pierre Tremblay. I respected the secrecy surrounding those in camera sittings, others did not. Without getting into what was said, I can tell you that the answers they provided matched exactly what the Auditor General said yesterday.

As for the Auditor General, when I asked her if it was the worst report or the worst situation she has seen since she has been appointed Auditor General, do you know what she told me? She said, “I do not dare say it is the worst because each time I do an audit, each time I examine similar issues, I am always surprised.” In her mind, this is not over.

You can therefore imagine all the work that awaits the Standing Committee on Public Accounts and the famous public inquiry. I do hope that the Liberals opposite, who are asking us to cooperate, will also cooperate by postponing the election so that the truth can come out and Canadians can get to the bottom of this scandal.

[Speech from the Throne, February 11th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today on the occasion of the address in reply to the Speech from the Throne.

With yesterday's disclosure by the Auditor General of the sponsorship scandal, we can see that there is a huge contradiction between the PM's desire to spend tax dollars wisely and reality.

The purpose of my speech therefore is to focus on these contradictions, in order to show the public in Quebec and in Canada that the present government is nothing more than a carbon copy of the Chrétien government.

On page 5 of the printed Speech from the Throne, we read the following statement:

To this end, the Government is launching an ongoing process of expenditure review, overseen by a new Committee of Cabinet. This will ensure that spending reflects priorities and that every tax dollar is invested with care to achieve results for Canadians.

Allow me to tell you that, as a longstanding member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, I find this statement by the Prime Minister particularly offensive. The specific purpose of that committee is to scrutinize government spending in order to ensure that the taxpayers' dollars are properly invested, within a democratic process in which all official parties of this House are represented.

Moreover, the committee works in close cooperation with the Office of the Auditor General of Canada to, once again, ensure that the government does not get away with wasting taxpayers' money, as was the case, among others, in the infamous sponsorship scandal.

Mr. Speaker, I should point out that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques. He will, of course, support the numerous points that I am raising regarding this throne speech.

The Prime Minister wants to eliminate the democratic deficit in this House and give more powers to MPs. Yet, he intends to set up a very partisan cabinet committee, without any opposition members sitting on it. This is some contradiction. Where is the democracy in this process? Where is the transparency in this new committee?

We have yet to see whether the new Liberal cross-bencher, the member for Châteauguay, who made some interesting discoveries in the government's extravagant spending, particularly in the sponsorship scandal, will expose other financial scandals. I doubt it.

It is interesting to read in the throne speech that Canadians expect the government to use their taxes wisely and want to have the assurance that public funds, which means their money, will be used properly.

If the past is any indication of the future, Quebeckers and Canadians are justified in not trusting the new Prime Minister to make proper use of their taxes. Let me explain why.

First, as regards the sponsorship scandal, which is probably one of the worst cases of corruption and waste in the history of Canadian politics, the new Prime Minister has the nerve to tell us that he did not know anything about it. Let me point out some facts.

The new Prime Minister was the Minister of Finance and Vice-President of the Treasury Board for most of the time that the sponsorship program was in existence. He is the one who signed the cheques that were used to increase the federal government's visibility all across Quebec.

Yet, he never condemned this abuse of public funds for the sake of Canadian unity and for the benefit of the Liberal Party of Canada and its friends.

The Prime Minister now has the nerve to tell the public that he did not know about it, particularly now that these same Liberals are taking cover behind a public inquiry to try to save face before the upcoming election.

If the current Prime Minister had really wanted to act quickly, he would have arranged for the Auditor General's report to be tabled in November, as scheduled, and not during the February session.

Without waiting for the report of the Auditor General, he could have called a public inquiry two months ago, right after he took office. But no, he preferred to buy time.

The fact that he is calling a public inquiry at the last minute is evidence that he is putting the election first, and transparency second.

It has been the trademark of the federal Liberals ever since I was elected here, in 1997. The rest of my colleagues have witnessed what has happened since 1993.

Quebeckers will probably be voting in three months time without realizing the scope of the scam created by the government. They have the fortitude to tell us that each tax dollar will be carefully reinvested, when the Prime Minister and some of his ministers are neck deep in financial scandals like the sponsorship program. It is absolute hypocrisy. Where the Prime Minister is concerned, what we have seen is what we will get.

Let me give you another good example of bad faith that can be found in the throne speech. My political party, the Bloc Quebecois, set up a special committee, the Léonard Committee, to examine federal programs. The committee has decided to review the expenditures of federal departments since 1997-1998, a reference year for the last two mandates of the former finance minister, now Prime Minister.

What we have found out is that the government has completely lost control over government expenditures for the entire period ending in 2002-2003. Over a five-year period, expenditures have gone up by 39%, compared to 9.6% for the inflation rate.

Is that what you would call making good use of taxpayers' money? In comparison, spending in Quebec and Ontario increased by 20% and 19.7% respectively. While the provinces were tightening their belts, the federal government was living it up in Ottawa.

A closer look at federal spending reveals multiple cases of excessive spending on the part of the government during the time when the administration of our country's finances was the responsibility of the current Prime Minister. For example, the government payroll increased by 41%; that of legal services by 141%; that of the federal Department of Health, which does not deliver any services to the public, by 78%; and that of CIDA by 132%.

As finance minister, the new Prime Minister acted deliberately in favouring federal administrative spending over services to the public. And he is the one who just told us, in the Speech from the Throne, that the money of Quebec and Canadian taxpayers must be put to good use.

And yet, had Ottawa increased its spending at the same rate as Quebec and Ontario did, the federal government would have extra fiscal manoeuvrability that would total, and listen carefully to this figure, $5.7 billion a year.

It is a fiscal effort that the Prime Minister refused to make when he was finance minister, preferring to spend freely while making drastic cuts in transfer payments to Quebec and the provinces, particularly in the areas of health and education. Now he wants to call the shots in these two areas that are strictly under provincial jurisdiction by giving out money while controlling its use through national standards.

If the current Prime Minister was not competent as finance minister, believe me, the past will be an indication of what the future holds.

However, the Bloc Quebecois committee is not the only one that has discovered this explosion in government spending. During the same period, the Office of the Auditor General gave repeated warnings about the fact that spending was getting out of control. As member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, I have seen numerous examples of expenditures that were both unjustified and unjustifiable to the public. Our friends opposite can hardly accuse the Bloc Quebecois of producing a partisan document when the Auditor General has come to practically the same conclusions as we have.

I come back to this famous committee. What will this new cabinet committee on government spending be all about? Just like the foundations, it will escape all parliamentary control. This committee will not give a real picture of government spending.

Instead of trusting democratic institutions like the Standing Committee on Public Accounts or the office of the Auditor General, which reports to Parliament, the Prime Minister would rather trust a partisan committee to make sure every tax dollar is wisely spent. Is this a way to erase the democratic deficit? I have my doubts.

Now a word on the throne speech. Besides broad philosophical statements, there is hardly anything concrete, and certainly nothing on rural and regional development. Not a word either on the two big crises affecting the regions: softwood lumber and mad cow disease.

I still have much more to say, but my time is running out. To conclude, let me say that tomorrow, I am going back to work on the public accounts standing committee. Together with my colleagues in the opposition, I will do everything I can to demonstrate beyond any doubt that the Liberal Party of Canada, the Prime Minister included, is responsible for the sponsorship scandal.