Gilles Duceppe

[Sponsorship Program, February 19th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, as of December 31, there were still certain secret funds, and these have now been incorporated into the party coffers. Who were the contributors to those funds?

Mr. Kingsley, the head of Elections Canada, wants to know. If anyone has documents to produce, it is those who had the secret funds, and the unnamed persons who contributed to those trust funds.

Are we going to find out whether or not any sponsorship companies paid into those secret funds? We are now being prevented from finding out whether the Liberal Party did indeed profit from them. That was December 31, 2003. Enough of the hypocrisy.

[Sponsorship Program, February 19th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, as far as the Liberal Party is concerned, transparency has its limits. The Quebec wing of the party is getting its books audited, but we already know the source of its funds. Where they refuse to look, however, is in the hidden funds, places like Liberal Party Trust Fund 2, which paid $46,000 and $38,000 respectively to the member for Outremont and the President of Privy Council during the 2000 election campaign, without anyone knowing the source of the funds.

Will the government admit that, in order to thoroughly investigate whether the Liberty Party profited from the sponsorship scandal, what is required is a list of who was behind these secret Liberal funds, and that list must be released immediately?

[Sponsorship Program, February 18th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, there has to be limit in the end, because the Prime Minister is going all over the place telling people he is innocent. But when we put questions to him in the House, he is the democratic deficit incarnate. He will not answer.

If he is as transparent as he claims to be, I would ask him to answer our questions, instead of trying to hide behind the public inquiry. He says he is prepared to answer. Let him answer in this place.

Why is it that what his Minister of Public Works and Government Services said completely contradicts what he said?

[Sponsorship Program, February 18th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister says he did not know about the sponsorship scandal until May 2002.

Yet, his Minister of Public Works and Government Services told us that there was a comprehensive internal audit in the fall of 2000, but that in the fall of 2001, in the latter part of that year, they realized that there were more than just administrative problems, adding that, in January 2002, Alfonso Gagliano had to resign for these reasons.

Everyone knows that. Only the Prime Minister apparently did not know about it.

How does the Prime Minister explain the total contradiction between his version—that he knew nothing until May 2002—and that of his Minister of Public Works and Government Services?

[Sponsorship Program, February 18th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, anyone who says the BDC is not involved in the sponsorship scandal should read the Auditor General's report. BDC is one of the Crown corporations that was used as a smokescreen. It is linked to groups, Liberal cronies, receiving commissions.

I have the following question for the Prime Minister, who says he wants to clean up this mess. Did he check to make sure that none of his ministers was involved in the sponsorship scandal, or did he turn a blind eye to the involvement of some of his ministers, including the Minister of Industry?

[Sponsorship Program, February 18th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, Jean Carle said in court in 1998 that as soon as he arrived at the BDC from Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's office, the mandate given to him was to improve the visibility of the Government of Canada. To do so, Jean Carle acknowledges having met Chuck Guité and a number of ministers including Alfonso Gagliano, Marcel Massé, the member for Outremont and the current Minister of Industry.

How can the Prime Minister say he wants to get to the bottom of things when he has kept in his government a minister involved in the sponsorship scandal?

[Sponsorship Program, February 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, he is like the Prime Minister, he changes his version from one day to the next.

What he told us yesterday was that it was clear as early as 2001 that there were problems. He went on to say that it was so obvious that Alfonso Gagliano had lost his job because of it. Everyone knows that. There is not a soul in Quebec or in Canada who is not aware that Alfonso Gagliano lost his job because of the scandals. He knew that. Everybody knew that.

How can anyone claim the Prime Minister did not know, when Gagliano had done the rounds of the TV studios, as the PM did yesterday, to spread his falsehoods?

[Sponsorship Program, February 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, in one interview after another, the Prime Minister is claiming he knew nothing about the sponsorship scandal, at least not prior to May 2002. Yet his own Minister of Public Works and Government Services contradicted him yesterday by telling the House that, as early as the end of 2001, it was clear to everyone that the problems with the sponsorship program were far more serious than just some little administrative hitches.

How can the Prime Minister state without turning a hair that he knew nothing at all, when his own minister says that the fraudulent nature of the sponsorship scandal was common knowledge as far back as 2001?

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

Mr. Speaker, there is no need for a commission of inquiry to provide an answer to a clear question.

In the sponsorship scandal, the Prime Minister has said repeatedly that, if any ministers knew and did nothing, they should resign. I wonder what fate he plans for those who blatantly broke the rules. In any case, during the Prime Minister's reign in finance, there were five public opinion surveys and no reports were provided.

Is it not true that the Auditor General's report clearly shows that the Prime Minister, who says he wants to shed light on the sponsorship scandal, broke the government's rules himself, by having no report, as was the case with Coffin Communications?

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

Mr. Speaker, when he was Minister of Finance, the Prime Minister paid Earnscliffe, the communications firm that worked on his leadership campaign, very handsomely to advise him on the state of public opinion. The problem is that, in many instances, there is no written proof that the work was actually done, as the Auditor General has pointed out in her report.

Will the Prime Minister admit that he broke the rules and that this is exactly the kind of behaviour the Auditor General has denounced in connection with the sponsorship scandal?