Mr. Speaker, at the outset I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with the honourable, the esteemed, the illuminating member for Saanich—Gulf Islands. If hon. members think my speech is exciting, they ain't heard nothing yet. Wait until he speaks.
I would like to remind the people who are watching, especially that sea of eager Liberals over there who have the power of government in their hands, what we are talking about today. We are talking about accountability, openness, transparency—all of the things which the now Prime Minister promised in the election campaign of 1993, and probably re-promised in 1997, although I do not remember it explicitly at that time.
In 1993 it was a promise of the Liberal Party that it would restore integrity to government. It would cause people once again to have trust in public institutions. It would have an ethics counsellor. There would be all sorts of things. The Liberal government, if nothing else, has an almost perfect record of inaction on its promises.
Do we have an ethics counsellor? Oh, yes. Is that ethics counsellor independent? No. That ethics counsellor reports to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister says “We have a little problem. Please look into it for us”.
I have a lot of respect for our present ethics counsellor. I am sure he is watching this debate today because part of his responsibility is the ethics of government. I have a lot of respect for him personally, but his hands are tied. He, unwittingly, with or without his consent, becomes part of the damage control team. He is part of what it takes to make the government look as if it is doing the right things, when there is a mounting sea of evidence that it is not doing the right things.
There are two main themes that I think of when I approach this subject. One is the whole concept of accountability. I need to watch my words very carefully because we have this tradition in the House that none of us is capable of doing any wrong or saying any wrong or thinking any wrong, although we have no way of reading each other's minds, and for that I am frequently grateful. We have this tradition, which really stifles debate, because we are all fallible.
I suppose this will come as a surprise to the House, and I think I am within the parliamentary rules, even though I am overtly criticizing a member of parliament in the House, but I am going to confess right here that once I made a mistake. It was actually last week. I told my friend who was nearby that this was really a blow to me because it was the end of May and usually I make my first mistake of the year sometime in October, so I will be under a lot of pressure for the rest of year.
Mr. Speaker, you know of course that I am being totally facetious. How many of us do not make one, two or three errors a day, or maybe even an hour? It is really quite unrealistic of us to tie up debate in this place and make it unparliamentary to even suggest that another member may have made a mistake.
I know that we want to do that in the good spirit of honest debate. We want to do it in a congenial fashion, in the same way we correct each other in our families. If my wife happens to be aware of when I make an error, she takes it upon herself to correct me. Wives have a strange way of pretty well knowing everything that their husbands do that is done wrong. I do not feel rejected by her when she suggests to me that I said something I should not have. In fact, I take it as a positive and constructive criticism. That is what we are trying to do here, within the confines of the language of the House of Commons.
There is an old phrase that I remember. I was a math-physics major when I was at university. I always loved the sciences. This is really quite out of context for me, but I liked a bit of literature and history too in my youth. I hope I have this phrase close to being right because I am speaking totally from memory. I think it went something like this: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive”. I do not remember who said that. I am sure there are thousands of Canadians who are bemoaning my ignorance of important literature, but that was not my specialty. However, I remember that. I think that is part of the nub of this problem.
We have a problem in HRDC, in the grants granting business, in terms of accountability and reporting. Evidence shows that mistakes are being made. What we have now is an inability to really say it as it is in the House because of the rules. Meanwhile, the minister and/or the upper echelon of the department are in full damage control. They are doing everything possible.
Again, I did not bring this with me, so I speak from memory. I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong. If I remember correctly, our party issued an access to information request on January 17. On January 19 the minister called a press conference. With great fanfare, she made public the audit which was called for in our request for access to information.
Subsequent to this we made mention of the fact that the minister did not disclose this audit, did not make it public until it was apparent that due to the ATI, the access to information request, it would become public anyway. To minimize the damage, the Liberals said it would look better if it looked as if they had done it voluntarily, instead of being forced to do it by the official opposition.
The Liberals denied that it was our access to information request. They said that they had released it before the request came in. Again, I am speaking from memory, but it threw itself at me. Being a person who is mathematically oriented, numbers throw themselves at me, and I remember seeing a copy of this memo that was circulated, and there it was.
In trying to cover this up, I do not think it was the minister who would have requested it of the upper management levels in the department. I cannot believe it was the other way around. I do not know where it came from, but there was obviously an attempt to cover this up. Here we have a memo dated, say, January 18. I think it was dated January 19. It says “Your request for information was received January 20”. One would have to be clairvoyant to speak on January 18 of January 19 as if it were in the past tense. It is obviously a case where the Liberals tried to change the facts retroactively.
This is the type of thing that an independent inquiry would lay to rest. An independent inquiry, which is what the motion of the day calls for, would go into these details and find out who did what, when, and perhaps even a certain amount of why, and Canadians would be able to find the truth of the matter.
I will do my usual begging routine, which I do at the end of every speech. We have a very important motion before the House. I appeal to all Liberals over there, those who have the power of government in their hands because of their slim majority, I appeal to all of them, from one end of the Chamber to the other, when the vote is called on the motion tonight, to stand and vote in favour of the motion; else Canadians will be saying again that if government members are against a public inquiry, then they really are trying to hide something and do not want it to be made public. Voting against the motion would be ill-advised. I appeal, I beg, I cajole members opposite to vote in favour of this motion. They should show their independence from their whip.
