James Moore

[Sponsorship Program, April 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is the Minister of Transport who should be answering these questions who, unlike the Prime Minister, chose to show up today.

[Sponsorship Program, April 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, if the minister respects the rule of law he may want to call the proper authorities to enforce the rule of law when it comes to Liberals breaking the law. That might be an idea.

Yesterday, in response to a question from the Bloc Québécois about lobbying for Cossette, the Minister of Transport said, “I have never been paid for any lobbying whatsoever”.

I am asking him if he ever received money from Mr. Cossette or from Cossette Communication for any reason whatsoever?

[Sponsorship Program, April 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, we are not asking about the Gomery inquiry. We are asking about another Liberal scandal, a new Liberal scandal. I know the minister is up to his neck in defending Liberals from scandal, but this is a new scandal that only the transport minister can answer.

The transport minister lobbied the federal government for a $100 million contract without registering as a lobbyist as is required by law. The transport minister must stand in his place and do the right thing and resign. Will he do it?

[Sponsorship Program, April 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, these are very serious allegations. Did the Minister of Transport meet with Cossette Communication and Alfonso Gagliano to discuss the $100 million contract with Cossette Communication, yes or no?

[Sponsorship Program, April 19th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, on April 14, the Prime Minister denied having dined with Claude Boulay, but Alain Renaud has stated that the Prime Minister did dine with him. Now we learn that, when the PM was finance minister, Mr. Boulay received over $67 million in sponsorships.

Why is the Prime Minister denying his relationship with Mr. Boulay? Is it because this would directly implicate him in the sponsorship program?

[Sponsorship Program, April 19th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, Claude Boulay, who worked on the Prime Minister's leadership campaign, to whom the Prime Minister writes very glowing and very personal letters, received $67 million in sponsorship cash when the Prime Minister was the finance minister.

The Prime Minister's campaigns and the Liberal Party were financed by Boulay and Boulay was financed by dirty money from the sponsorship inquiry.

Why will the Prime Minister not tell the whole truth about his relationship with Claude Boulay? Is it a guilty conscience?

[Justice, April 19th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, in a recent survey, criminal justice issues ranked as the most important concern of my constituents and with this Liberal government, it is little wonder.

Liberals have done nothing to fight marijuana grow ops. Conservatives will shut them down.

Liberals have done nothing to fight street racing. Conservatives will make it a crime.

Liberals have done nothing to fight the rise in home invasions and auto theft. Conservatives will get tough on property crime.

Liberals have done nothing to fight date rape drugs. Conservatives will protect women from those who abuse them.

Liberals have done nothing to fight child pornography. Conservatives will raise the age of consent, have an effective sex offender registry and ban all forms of child pornography.

Liberals have done nothing to fight violent criminals. Conservatives will impose consecutive, not concurrent, sentencing for violent thugs to hold them accountable.

The Liberals have had 12 years to make Canada safer. They have failed. However, hope is around the corner when Canadians throw out these corrupt Liberals and elect a new Conservative government.

[Supply, April 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, in a country as wealthy as ours, when the government is already overtaxing Canadians to the degree that it is and businesses and families are struggling to survive and succeed in the way that they should be financially, and want to move forward and have more choices and freedoms in how they choose to live their lives, this Parliament should do all its due diligence to treat every taxpayer dollar with an incredible amount of respect. It should not be treated and abused in the way that the Liberal Party has abused taxpayer dollars.

When we look at the reality of filthy emergency rooms across this country, infrastructure that is not being built, our armed forces not being up to the standards that they should be and all kinds of other issues that need to be properly addressed with taxpayer resources, it will not happen as long as we have a Liberal Party that does not think about the country first but thinks about itself first.

The Liberals are so arrogant and utterly out of touch with Canadians that they think the best interests of the Liberal Party are in the best interests of the country. What they will find out in the next campaign is that what is in the best interest of the country is to throw the Liberal Party out on its ear.

[Supply, April 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, speaking of hypocrisy, the fact is, if the member looks at the data, that the Liberal government has voted more with the Bloc Québécois than the Conservative Party has. Of course he turns a blind eye to that fact.

Second, if the member from Etobicoke really does not like the fact that the Bloc Québécois is sitting here in the House of Commons, he might think about having a conversation with his transport minister who created the Bloc Québécois as a force to destroy this country.

The reality is, from the Conservative Party, to the New Democrats, to the Bloc Québécois, to now the independent member of Parliament from Edmonton, to a number of Liberals who do not even show up in the House in question period any more to get the Prime Minister's back, there are millions of Canadians and a majority of the members of Parliament in the House who want to get to the bottom of this scandal because it is the worst and most ugly corruption in Canadian history. We want to get to the bottom of it.

I find it laughable that the Prime Minister and the Liberal Party would say that they want the next election campaign to be about national unity.

Let us go from coast to coast. Every province in Atlantic Canada is offended that the Liberal government will not pass the Atlantic accord unless it is piggybacked on to its budget.

The people of Quebec are angry and frustrated with the sponsorship scandal and they will throw every Liberal MP out in the next election campaign.

Dalton McGuinty, the Liberal premier of Ontario, has had it up to his neck with the nonsense and the mistruths of the Prime Minister.

The prairie provinces are frustrated with the BSE situation and the fact that the Liberal government has done nothing.

Alberta is angry with the fact that the Prime Minister appoints senators rather than those who are duly elected by the people.

British Columbia, day in and day out, gets ignored by the government.

Talk about national unity. On top of that, there is not a citizen in this country who is not offended that the Liberal government takes money from taxpayers, gives it to its friends and its friends kick it back to the Liberal Party in order to abuse its power to get elected with dirty money. That is not national unity. That is a national disgrace and the member from Etobicoke should know it.

[Supply, April 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to participate in what is perhaps one of the most important debates in our country's history. Never before have there been such profound allegations of corruption against the party that is in power.

To quote the, until yesterday, Liberal member of Parliament from Edmonton--Mill Woods--Beaumont, “Here we are, a G7 country, acting like a northern banana republic. What country is seen as more politically corrupt than us at the moment?”

Sadly, many in other countries share his views. This Liberal scandal, is damaging our reputation right around the world. China's People's Daily reports, “Canada's ruling party badly hurt by scandal”. CNN calls this, “Canada's version of Watergate”. BBC World News reports, “Scandal anger mounts in Canada”. The New York Times headline reads, “Canadian Prime Minister Struggles to Keep Job”.

In France, the newspaper Le Monde said: “The Canadian Prime Minister is hanging on to power in spite of a corruption scandal affecting the Liberal Party”.

An article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune gets right to the heart of the matter. It states:

In what some say is Canada's version of Watergate, in terms of magnitude and potential damage, Liberal Party members are accused of having taken $818,000 from advertising agencies hired to promote federalism in the French-speaking province of Quebec.

This is truly a scandal without precedent, without equal in our history. Our country has reached a new and frightening low thanks to this Liberal Party.

In an April 12 Toronto Star op-ed entitled “Canada's Crisis of Responsibility”, Tom Axworthy, principal secretary to Pierre Trudeau from 1981 to 1984 and brother of former Liberal foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy writes:

One of the core problems the Gomery commission investigating the sponsorship scandal has revealed is the absence of any notion of responsibility from many of those in high positions. Neither in the 2003 auditor-general's report on sponsorship, nor in the Public Accounts Committee nor in the Gomery commission hearings have ex-ministers or public servants come forward to say, "Yes, managing this program was my responsibility, and I am accountable for what went wrong.”

Before I continue, Mr. Speaker, I want to let the House know that I will be splitting my time with my colleague from Nepean--Carleton.

The Parti Québécois is an example that the Liberal Party of Canada should follow with regard to the sponsorship scandal. When it was accused of having accepted $100,000 in illegal contributions from Groupaction Marketing Inc., it took steps to return the money. Three days later the PQ wrote to Justice John Gomery asking for the names of shareholders and employees of Groupaction from 1994.

That is an example that the Liberals must follow. In fact, on January 14, some Quebec papers said that while in Longueuil, the Minister of Transport promised that the Liberal Party of Canada would reimburse all money that could be linked to the sponsorship program.

In fact, English Canadian papers went further. They used a faulty translation which quoted the minister as saying:

The transport minister said he won't wait for reports from the Gomery Commission, an inquiry into the sponsorship scandal, and a lawyer appointed to study the matter.

Although the Canadian press later clarified the matter, the real reason English Canadian press included the erroneous information was because it seemed reasonable.

In September 2004, the Liberal Party had admitted that both of what the Liberal government now calls audits concluded that the party had received $1.5 million in donations from companies named in the Auditor General's report on sponsorship and advertising abuses. It then stated that it would only reimburse donations from companies whose directors were convicted of crimes.

So when in January the transport minister stated in Longueuil, Quebec that the federal Liberals would reimburse all donations received from groups involved in the sponsorship program, the translator made the fundamental mistake of believing that the transport minister was sincere and that the Liberal Party of Canada would essentially follow a path similar to that which was being taken by the Parti Québécois. What a foolish mistake to trust a Liberal.

There is a huge difference between the reaction of the Parti Québécois and that of the Liberal Party of Canada and it is attributable in part to the amounts of money involved. For the Parti Québécois, it is only $100,000, a relatively small sum, while it is a fortune for the Liberal Party of Canada.

The two external audits made in September 2004, which revealed that the Liberal Party of Canada had received $1.5 million from actors in the sponsorship scandal were not audits at all, but mere account reviews.

Simply put, both reviews showed that the Liberals received $1.5 million from people and firms involved in the sponsorship scandal. However, that does not include the money that Liberal ridings and candidates received. Moreover, the reviews were limited to four bank accounts and to the documents provided.

In other words, it is almost certain that the Liberal Party actually received substantially more than the $1.5 million it had publicly admitted; $1.5 million in dirty money.

Further, because of the way the money was hidden it is possible that a significant amount of money went to various leadership and riding campaigns, as well as to the 1997 and 2000 national campaigns of the Liberal Party, and we will not find out these amounts for quite some time.

Therefore, if the Liberal Party admits, after an incomplete review based on the balances of four bank accounts and missing documents, that it received $1.5 million in dirty money, one could assume that the real total could be double that, if not more.

If the amount of money that the Liberals will be allowed to spend nationally in the next campaign is roughly $18 million, and if they had received say $3 million from companies and individuals involved in the sponsorship scandal, that would mean roughly $1 out of every $6 that the Liberal Party of Canada will spend in the next election will be dirty money. That is right, $1 out of $6 TV ads alleging Liberal integrity will be paid for with dirty money and, quite possibly, produced by a tainted agency.

The dirty money also paid for one out of six pamphlets, which may have been printed by a company controlled by someone involved in the scandal.

When you see a Liberal advertisement, you can be proud because you paid for at least one-sixth of it.

This is outrageous, hideous and in the literal sense of the word “scandalous”.

The sad truth of the matter is that not only does the Liberal Party not want to return the money, it cannot return the money. In fact, it received millions in dirty money. There is no way that it would consider repaying it or putting it into a special account, as the transport minister has proposed, or putting it into a trust account, as the motion today requires.

Quite simply, the Liberals require all of the money that they can get their mitts on to fight the next election. Their promises to return the illegal funds right now are hollow. In truth, the Liberals would rather campaign with dirty money than have a campaign with less money. It is a most pathetic situation in which the Prime Minister finds himself.

It cannot be said that the Liberals lie; it is enough to say that their conception of truth and that of the Canadian taxpayers do not coincide. So, when they promise to return all monies received illegally or improperly, or from any source found guilty of wrongdoing related to the sponsorship program, I do not believe them.

In his April 11 press release, “Liberal Party of Canada Collaboration with the Gomery commission”, Mr. Michael Eizenga, president of the Liberal Party of Canada, states:

Every single dollar received [by virtue of any illegal or improper transaction] will be returned...It is imperative that we hear from Justice Gomery in order to reconcile the amounts using testimony he has heard.

Nonetheless, in the Prime Minister's open letter to Liberals that can be found on the Liberal Party website, the Prime Minister does not see any possibility of returning the dirty money. He writes:

The Liberal government has filed...a lawsuit against 19 defendants, including several communications companies and their directors, to recover $41 million...With Justice Gomery's conclusions in hand, I will act swiftly and surely to ensure those who did wrong face the full consequence of their actions.

In the same letter the Prime Minister writes:

Canadians are looking for someone to step forward and to be accountable for cleaning up this mess and as prime minister and Liberal leader, I accept that responsibility.

However he does not really want to accept that responsibility and so he refuses to answer any question that might involve him personally. We saw that today in question period when he was asked whether or not he actually had lunch with Claude Boulay of Groupe Everest and whether their conversation resulted in a $500,000 contract for his million dollar fundraising friend Serge Savard.

Finally the day of reckoning is here. Mr. Dithers, the Prime Minister, cannot run away. This motion will force him to choose between truly accepting his responsibility or running a campaign in which he knows that his campaign is being run and financed with dirty taxpayer money.

The Prime Minister could show moral fortitude. He has a choice. I urge him to support this motion and do the right thing in the name of accountability and also to do the right thing in the name of national unity.

I almost had to laugh this morning when I was walking into the office and I grabbed the National Post. On the front page was a story written by Mark Kennedy which stated, “Liberals to make national unity a key election issue”. In 1995, when the Liberal government created the sponsorship program, there were 54 Bloc Québécois MPs in the House. Today, 10 years later, there are 54 Bloc Québécois MPs in the House and they are set to win more seats.

Not only that, sovereignty is on the rise in the province of Quebec and there is not a single Canadian in the country who is not offended by the corruption of the Liberal government.

If the member for Etobicoke North wants to challenge me on the question of who is in bed with separatists, I would be glad to hear it.