Michel Guimond

[Election Expenses, April 30th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is—

[Election Expenses, April 30th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative Prime Minister has reached the heights of grandstanding in this House.

Yesterday, answering a question concerning allegations by Ms. Dixon from Retail Media, the Prime Minister said, “it is not necessary to deny it because that is not what she said. The leader of the Bloc should be truthful.”

I am now calling on the Prime Minister to be honest and answer me if he can. Can he reaffirm—

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, that is quite the tactic.

Does the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities acknowledge receiving an email from Michael Donison on December 19, 2005, with the subject line, “Quebec candidate, media buy”, in which the scheme to be used is explained, whereby the party would exceed the national electoral spending ceilings?

I would like the minister to answer this question that he did not deign to answer today during oral question period.

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech by the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. Although he is an experienced parliamentarian, there were a number of times when he could have been called on relevance. The motion being debated today reads as follows:

That the House express its full and complete confidence in Elections Canada and the Commissioner of Canada Elections.

That is what this is all about.

My first direct question for the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities is the following: will he and his party support this motion and thus express the Conservatives' full and complete confidence in Elections Canada?

Second, my colleague, the leader of the Bloc and member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie, was not here to hear all the wonderful comments about his achievements and the files he has worked on on behalf of the party. I remind members that when the minister was talking about a high-speed train and all kinds of other things, it had nothing to do with today's debate.

Third, he mentioned that the Prime Minister was someone who kept his word. I would tell him that in 2001, when the Prime Minister was the president of the National Citizens Coalition, he harshly criticized the Chief Electoral Officer, accusing him of being a perfect politician who was able to give answers to questions no one was asking.

In conclusion, I will once again ask the question I asked the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities today during question period, for which he did not even bother to rise. I hope this time he will. Did he see the email that was sent to him by Michael Donison, the organizer of the Conservative Fund Canada, on December 19, 2005?

[Elections Canada, April 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, we understand why the political lieutenant, the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities is not rising. This is confirmation that he was perfectly aware of the scheme being used by the Conservatives. As proof, I refer to an email dated December 19, 2005 explaining the details of this scheme to him.

Is this not additional proof that the scheme was explicitly intended to get around the rules by using Conservative rules and by filing phony invoices in order to claim electoral fund reimbursement from Elections Canada out of the public purse?

[Elections Canada, April 29th, 2008]

During the January 2006 general election, the Quebec lieutenant of the Conservative Party was the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. Was that minister aware of the scheme of his party, the Conservative Party, to spend more than the allowable limit, contrary to the law, as Elections Canada alleges?

[Elections Canada, April 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I would remind the Prime Minister that only Conservative candidates are being investigated by Elections Canada and only the Conservative Party has been the object of an RCMP search.

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the hon. member's remarks and I would like her opinion on the following.

We know that the Conservatives were particularly keen on attacking the Liberal Party of Canada on the sponsorship scandal. The hon. member was not a member of Parliament at the time, but the Conservative Party was strutting around and patting itself on the back for being as pure as the driven snow, and particularly for having a Prime Minister who was the Mr. Clean of transparency.

But when something happens that the Prime Minister does not like, or the Conservative Party does not like, there they are attacking the credibility of others. They do not just attack the credibility of other opposition parties, feeling as they do that they alone have a monopoly on the truth, they tell us that Elections Canada is an imperfect institution. They proclaim themselves to be the champions of transparency, and, whenever they have an opportunity, they tell us how wonderful they are for having implemented C-2, the Accountability Act.

I would like to hear the hon. member's opinion on why Justice Gomery, two years after having submitted his report, is complaining about the Conservatives' delay in putting his findings into effect.

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the remarks of my hon. colleague from the Liberal Party and I would like to hear him on something that happened in December 2006, when the Conservative Party admitted having omitted to disclose to the Chief Electoral Officer hundreds of thousands of dollars that it had received. We will recall that these were fees charged to Conservative delegates to attend the party's convention in May 2005. The party having been forced to consider registration fees as contributions, the report stated that the Conservative Party then discovered that three delegates, including the Prime Minister himself, had exceeded the $5,400 yearly limit for contributions to the party and, as a result, the party was forced to return $456 to the Prime Minister and two other delegates.

Granted, these may seem like insignificant amounts, but something more significant is hidden behind them. The Conservatives who, at first, claimed that they had followed the law were eventually forced to backpedal, hence the similarity with this in and out scheme with respect to election expenses.

Will the member recognize that the Conservative Party would have been expected to act in this instance as it did when it admitted that illegal contributions were received in connection with the party's 2005 convention?

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I would expect a minimum of intellectual honesty from the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board. I would also like to settle the matter once and for all. When he quotes the report published after the 36th general election by the former Chief Electoral Officer, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, he should quote the whole paragraph and not only the sentence that suits him. That would make a big difference. By quoting only parts of sentences one can give a false impression.

I want to come back to the issue for one last time to have it on the record. The Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board must quote the whole Kingsley report. Since he probably does not know, I will inform him that Mr. Kingsley was commenting on the Somerville v. Canada (Attorney General) case from 1996, which had been heard in the Alberta Court of Appeal. By the way, Somerville was suing the Attorney General in the name of the National Citizens Coalition, a group that the present Prime Minister knows very well because he took Elections Canada in court.

That case he quotes was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1997, in the Libman v. Quebec (Attorney General) case. So, let us get our facts straight.

I would like the Conservatives to stop playing the victim and saying that all parties did it, in order to justify their own actions. We have all had our election expenses reimbursed after producing our election reports, but not the Conservatives.