Mr. Speaker, I will serve notice at the beginning of my speech that I will be sharing my time with the member for Windsor—Tecumseh.
As the vice-chair of the ethics committee, I have spent the last three months totally immersed in a very dark and troubling period of Canadian history. It seems there was a time when our great country was hijacked by some very bad people, people who abused the power of their office for their own self-interest and benefit, who would break faith with the Canadian people by abusing the checks, balances and rules that we put in place to preclude such a thing from ever happening.
We have been studying an era of Canadian politics where corporate lobbyists were running roughshod over everything that was good and decent about Canadian politics and our democratic institutions. We have been studying an era where corrupt politicians abused the power of their office to line their own pockets. We have been researching a period of history where there were mandatory 5% minimum kickbacks on public works projects.
These are facts. These are not theories before our committee. Some of those corrupt politicians were caught, tried and convicted in subsequent years. Some continue to enjoy the spoils of their malfeasance and their abuse of our system. Some of the key actors in fact of this era continue to operate unmolested in exactly the same way today.
This might be one of the most disturbing things that we realized as committee members. Some of the very key actors in this, the darkest period of recent Canadian history, continue to operate in the same modus operandi that so offended the sensibilities of Canadians at the time and in subsequent generations.
The question as to whether there was political interference in the Airbus purchase for Air Canada has taken us on a long circuitous journey, a journey where we have learned of a parcel of rogues perhaps unparalleled in Canadian history. We have witnessed the dark underbelly of Ottawa, some place that I never care to go again, some place frankly that nauseates me as a Canadian, as it would offend the sensibilities of all good people in our country who expect better from their public office-holders.
Our research took us back to a disturbing period in Canadian history where foreign money undertook a silent coup in Canada. Franz Josef Strauss, premier of Bavaria, a man who the media in his country calls an unrepentant Nazi, and also the CEO of Airbus, rigged the 1983 Conservative convention to unseat Joe Clark and six months later put in place Brian Mulroney. That alone should have been enough to horrify Canadians. They should have taken to the rooftops to scream their derision over this political interference by foreign powers, an unrepentant Nazi from a foreign country running roughshod over our democratic process in Canada.
This was orchestrated by the team that put Brian Mulroney in place: Walter Wolf, Karl Heinz-Schreiber, Frank Moore, Gary Ouellet and the Doucet brothers. Yet Brian Mulroney claimed he had absolutely nothing to do with the Airbus purchase. However, as soon as he was in power, put in place by this dirty money from an unrepentant Nazi, one of the first things he did was fire 13 of the 15 members of the board of directors of Air Canada and put in place 13 Conservative allies, one of whom was Frank Moores, the chief lobbyist for Airbus.
We also took note that the CEO of Air Canada at the time was Pierre Jeanniot. Where did he retire to? As soon as the Airbus purchase was officially announced in 1988, Mr. Jeanniot retired to Toulouse, France, home of Airbus. It was an odd choice, coincidence, I suppose.
These are the things with which we have been dealing. That is where the story started.
We now move on to the issue of the $2.1 million that Canada paid out in the defamation lawsuit that Brian Mulroney filed against the Government of Canada. Brian Mulroney filed a lawsuit for $50 million to sue the people of Canada because they implied that he took money from Karlheinz Schreiber. We now know that he did take money from Karlheinz Schreiber in the most shady of circumstances. This phantom lobbying where he claims that he earned the $300,000, he admits that it was a mistake, but now he would have us believe he earned that money legitimately.
Let me say at the outset of this particular section that no amount of bafflegab will ever take the stink off the image that is tattooed, that is emblazoned on people's minds of a former prime minister of Canada taking sacks full of cash from an arms dealer in secret hotel room meetings. We could have studies for years and explanations by hired mouthpieces on behalf of Brian Mulroney for years. Nobody will ever forget that image and we are horrified even as we speak of it today.
The reason I say “phantom lobbying” is because the very company he says that he was lobbying for, ThyssenKrupp, the arms of Krupp, did not know that Brian Mulroney was on its payroll. We have all read our history books on the second world war. Those are the guys who armed the Nazis and they now own one of the largest companies in the world in terms of arms dealers. How Brian Mulroney could be lobbying for such a huge international corporation and how a huge corporation like that did not know that a former head of state of a G-7 nation was on its payroll, defies credulity, and some of us on the committee simply cannot accept that without some more proof.
We asked Mr. Mulroney to please present some documentation to prove that he did meet with the leaders of China, Russia and France to earn the $300,000 he was given. Some of us think that was awfully rich compensation for three brief meetings with three heads of state, but it also begs the question as to why Mr. Mulroney would he be trying to sell tanks to China right after Tiananmen Square when he was so outraged and we had international agreements to not arm those Communist countries at that time. The story simply begs for further investigation and validation.
Our committee was wrestling with a number of issues that time does not permit me to go through, but let me know say that as of 12:10 today, the chair of our committee introduced the third report of the Standing Committee on Ethics which clearly states that the work of our committee is now concluded. We are not hearing anymore witnesses. I am proud of the work that our committee did. I would be happy to debate any of the armchair quarterbacks who have criticized the work that we did, mostly Conservative Party members in the country who do not like this era of Canadian history being dredged up.
We did a great deal in a short period of time at no cost to the taxpayers because, I remind colleagues, that our committee meets every Tuesday and Thursday whether we have Brian Mulroney as our witness or anybody else. It was at no cost to the taxpayer and we moved the puck down the ice a great deal in the struggle to shed some light on this dark era. It is now time to pass the puck to those best able to put it in the net and that means the public inquiry should begin without delay. This is the subject of our opposition day motion we are debating today. The Liberals are trying to change the channel from the humiliation of having to vote in favour of the Conservative budget, so they want us to talk about Schreiber-Mulroney, which is fine, we have this opportunity.
The Prime Minister of Canada and the justice minister have both stood in their place promising Canadians that there would be a full public inquiry. They said, “let's wait until the ethics committee finishes hearing witnesses”. We are finished. All some of us want to do is go home, take a shower and pretend it never happened, but we now are passing the files, passing the baton over to the public inquiry. It should be implemented and begun without delay. We understand that it takes some time to set up a full public inquiry but that process should begin today.
