Peter MacKay

[Main Estimates, 2002-03, June 6th, 2002]

That is exactly it.

[Main Estimates, 2002-03, June 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows all too well, the problem is there is a much different standard for a criminal investigation than there is for an ethical breach. That is where the rubber hits the road.

The RCMP can investigate criminality within a department, but where is the standard for government itself to be accountable, to be open, to be transparent and to be ethical? This has all been covered up and it is somehow suggested that the RCMP is looking into it and the auditor general is looking into it.

We can put lipstick on a pig. This is improper, unethical and immoral behaviour on the part--

[Main Estimates, 2002-03, June 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the hon. member opposite. He raised a number of very penetrating and relevant questions. I share his frustration. The House can imagine the degree of frustration that we must feel, if a member of the governing party is unable to get important information. He is quoted in The Hill Times as saying, “Where's $12 billion?”. That is a very relevant question.

The member speaks of the need for trust and the need to renew faith of Canadians in the system. That is a wonderful sentiment as well. Yet on something as basic as how the finance minister and the Prime Minister came to part company, we cannot get a straight answer, whether he was fired or whether he quit, something as basic as that.

That is relevant because it sets the tone for basic honesty and basic disclosure of information and the government is not able to communicate something in a straightforward way.

With respect to the allegations, corruption and the ongoing concern about where the money is spent and how it is being spent, why would the member not support a full public inquiry with a mandate to go where the money is and where the trouble is with allegations that involve poor documentation as pointed out by the auditor general? I know the hon. member opposite is a very strident member when it comes to documentation and when it comes to backing up a claim and giving factual information. The auditor general talked about oral contracts being handed out. She pointed out specifically that some of these so-called arm's length quasi-crown corporations were not under her gamut or her ability to observe and to investigate.

Therefore, it reiterates the point of a full public inquiry with a mandate to go where the potential criminality might lie to find out if ministers were in fact making improper interference in files. The member is right. It is not fair to smear all departments and all bureaucrats, but there is evidence to which the auditor general has pointed. Why would the member not support a full public inquiry?

[Main Estimates, 2002-03, June 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary for my friend from Yukon.

It is fine to suggest that somehow now the services and the delivery of those services may be affected, but the problem all along has been that money has gone missing, that money was not accounted for, that money was not properly given out in the first instance. Reports were paid for that were not complete. Money that was supposed to be helping to foster business was going to numbered companies in the HRDC scandal. There were untendered contracts for jets for $101 million, which is the exact amount that the PCO is seeking here.

This is all about hiding the actual use of taxpayer dollars, not being accountable to the public and, in essence, setting up a scheme in which money is going to handpicked friends, relatives and donors of the Liberal Party to perpetrate power. That kind of chicanery, duplicity and patronage system is unprecedented in the country under this administration.

[Main Estimates, 2002-03, June 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the hon. member with interest. I know he has a very deep and genuine understanding of the need for greater democracy, which is also very much a part of this debate and very much a part of the effort that has to be undertaken by governments of all levels to reinforce and reinstate some ethical standard and some public confidence.

I want to go directly to the question that I believe has raised the ire of Canadians when it comes to obligations that exist, perceived or real, and the response by government to in essence enter into a power buying arrangement wherein it receives something of benefit and in turn the obligation to support, either through electoral or through financial means.

What does the hon. member suggest we should do to ensure that there is greater transparency, greater openness, leading to greater public confidence in that regard? Part of it is the issues that I believe he feels very passionately about. That is increasing the sense that the general public has in a control, a mechanism in which it can participate directly between elections.

I would like to give the hon. member an opportunity to speak to that.

[Main Estimates, 2002-03, June 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, that is very telling. As the member says it is disturbing that a minister would make that kind of statement. However it is indicative of a sentiment that is growing. Individuals who have been the recipients of some of these contracts recently stated quite openly that one does not have to have a Liberal membership or make a donation to the Liberal Party but it sure does help.

There is this growing connection of money donated to the Liberal Party resulting in contracts being awarded. That is the problem. Nine years of that type of behaviour has led to a fat, arrogant and sassy government. What we have seen indicates that Canadians are crying out for a change. They will have to find an option. We are saying we are that option.

[Main Estimates, 2002-03, June 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, that is very much apropos to what has happened. We know the rules were broken, and that ethical and moral standards were crossed. We know that ministers of the government, as recently as six months, took benefits. We do not know whether in fact pecuniary interests were then passed on, but we know that the appearance was there.

The problem is that this information is not volunteered. There is no transparency and no ability to shine the light in. There is the complete opposite. There is the effort to hide that information. There is the immediate clampdown on any disclosure. There is the reluctance to discuss it let alone reveal what has happened. It is untouchable to get to the root of the conflict.

That is the complete opposite of what the Prime Minister promised. He promised many things and among them was to clean up government and to raise ethical standards. His own people, those closest to him who observe him, have said that he has done the opposite. He has lowered it to a new all time low.

[Main Estimates, 2002-03, June 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, what my colleague from St. John's is referring to are priority needs. Let us be frank about this money and where and how it will be spent. I do not feel it is consistent with those priority needs that the member enunciated.

I do not think that money will be spent in the area of pharmacare, increasing educational standards in the country or on basic things like increasing the CHST transfers that so clearly have to be addressed because they impact on so many things in the everyday lives of Canadians.

It is with sadness that I cannot in any fashion equate what this department is asking for in terms of its increase with the priorities of Canadians. I do not see how it jibes. I do not see how we can possibly support this increase in spending nor do I think that the Prime Minister is even remotely connected or understands where those priorities are, given his behaviour in office during the past nine years.

[Main Estimates, 2002-03, June 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I have great respect for the hon. member and it is a salient point. What I am suggesting is that a minister, a parliamentary secretary, or a person in government, with a greater ability to influence the decision to fund a certain project or to send money in a certain direction, has a higher degree of responsibility.

Clearly when it comes to the decision within his or her own department to make a decision that affects a friend, a relative, a close party person, that ethical standard is hot because there is not the ability of an opposition member or even a backbench member outside of cabinet to affect that delivery. That is why it is important, particularly in the private dealings that ministers have with persons in business, in their employ, and in their own family, that they meet a higher degree of standard. The problem is we do not have those clearly defined standards for members or cabinet ministers, as the hon. member knows.

The point is, yes, there is a difference between the ability to actually deliver as opposed to the ability to influence through lobbying when it comes to a minister of the crown crossing over that line, particularly within his or her own department after a decision has been made. There has been evidence of occasions where a decision has already been taken, and senior bureaucrats and heads of elements of a department have been lobbied directly by ministers. That is when it crosses the line; that is when one is out of the grey and into the black.

[Main Estimates, 2002-03, June 6th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, we are here today to talk about government spending, ethical standards and whether in light of its behaviour the government is within its rights to stand before Canadians and make a request to spend more money, responsibly one would hope, on their behalf.

We have registered our opposition to the estimates for the privy council and the Prime Minister's operations to draw the attention of Canadians to the Prime Minister's failure to provide a basic level of good government. I point in particular to the government's non-ethical standard of behaviour. I point to the words spoken in the House by the Prime Minister, members of his government and his party which have been printed in Hansard , the public record. What they have said and what they have done are polar opposites.

We expect that Liberal members will disagree. In so doing they will be telling their electors they continue to support a Prime Minister who puts his own interests ahead of those of the country. Similarly, the former minister of finance who was fired has no moral high ground to stand on. He was the most senior member of cabinet with the most power over the public purse. Yet he chose to let these things go by the board because he ultimately had the power to say no, his department would not spend money in that fashion.

Yet the person with the public strings, the person with the ability to stop that sort of irresponsible behaviour in government turned a blind eye. Now it is coming out. Now it is leaking under the door. We are seeing dribs and drabs of information come forward. It is not as if it has been voluntarily served up to Canadians. The information has come about begrudgingly, through access to information. We have had to drag some semblance of accountability, kicking and screaming, out of members of the cabinet through question period which has become a spectacle day after day.

The internal fights in the Liberal Party have taken priority over the responsible governing of the country. That is why we have filed these objections, particularly with respect to the Privy Council Office. It all starts at the top or is supposed to. The bar has been set very low.

Let us talk momentarily about the sordid, squalid chronology of the Auberge Grand-Mère file. It was the first and most blatant incident where we saw the style of governance that was to come from the current Prime Minister. As Canadians will recall, the information was dragged from the Prime Minister after he initially denied making inappropriate interventions. It was then revealed in a roundabout way that he had contacted the president of the Business Development Bank in an effort to influence a decision that would be made for his own riding and, worse than that, would personally benefit the Prime Minister.

This is the type of conflict of interest that appalls Canadians. It leaves them in awe of the spectacle of a government which came to power railing about the need for greater transparency and public accountability. The Liberals made campaign promises to raise the ethical bar, get rid of the GST and renegotiate free trade. All that has been completely contradicted by the government's actions in the last nine years.

What do the Liberals do when confronted with the facts? They immediately try to deny them. They then try to distract attention away from them and blame someone else such as bureaucrats, the opposition, journalists, the governor of the Bank of Canada and, last but not least, their own backbenchers. The government has tried to blame unknown, nameless, faceless persons within their party who are betraying it through leaks or, in other words, telling the truth. This again highlights the need for whistleblowing legislation.

Without going through chapter and verse of the sad, sordid tale of what took place in the Prime Minister's riding of Shawinigan, because the accusation will be that it is just more partisan talk, I will refer to a Canadian public servant.

We know that the Canadian public service is supposed to be permanent and non-partisan. I am speaking now of a very esteemed individual by the name of Gordon Robertson who is perhaps one of the most revered and independent individuals to comment on this entire affair that has unfolded in the last number of weeks and months.

Gordon Robertson, now 83, spent his entire professional life as a public servant beginning in 1941. He worked for Mackenzie King. He was Pierre Trudeau's superior in the Privy Council Office between 1950 and 1952. He served as the Clerk of the Privy Council to John Diefenbaker, Lester Pearson and Mr. Trudeau. He was the first secretary to cabinet for federal-provincial relations. He is a very distinguished individual, a very pristine career.

What did Mr. Gordon Robertson have to say about this government's performance and in particular the Shawinigan scandal? He said:

What happened in Shawinigan never would have met the standard set in Pearson's ethics code.

He went on to say:

I should know--I drafted it. This Prime Minister has lowered the bar.

Quite clearly he has lowered the bar.

That is completely contrary to the words spoken in elections, in campaign literature, in words in Hansard . The Prime Minister repeatedly through a litany of promises said he was going to clean up the government. He was going to be the Eliot Ness of Canadian politics. It turns out he is Al Capone. It is completely the opposite when one looks at it.

We on this side of the House hoped that an opportunity to examine this in detail would be forthcoming, but no, even under the current public works minister we see more attempts at distraction, more attempts to suggest somehow that the auditor general will do her job. She is doing an admirable job, let me be the first to admit, but she has a limited mandate. She has no ability to go further afield to examine some of these contracts in greater detail, no ability to assist in the effort that is needed to pinpoint who was giving the direction to senior bureaucrats within the department.

It is hardly a career enhancing move for senior bureaucrats to make an arbitrary decision to not document it, to do so orally and agree to pump money into Liberal ridings in the hope that this is somehow going to help the country or help their careers. There had to be direction. Follow the money. Follow the chain of command.

Now we see it mired in scandal. Some of this is beginning to touch on the Prime Minister's own actions. He tells people he is a fighter, but what is he fighting for? Is he fighting for Canadians? Is he fighting for the poor? Is he fighting for regions of the country like Gander--Grand Falls, like Pictou--Antigonish--Guysborough, like Saint John, New Brunswick which are sadly in need? No.

He is fighting for himself. He is fighting for a legacy, a legacy that will elude him unless that legacy be one of scandal, be one of that word of which we cannot speak, hypocrisy. This type of behaviour leaves Canadians completely and utterly desperate in searching for someone, some person or some group of individuals who will come forward and tell the truth.

We are seeing today the government's attempt to get $101 million for an untendered new aircraft. What delicious, disgusting irony that we see that the same amount the Privy Council is asking for matches almost to a dollar the amount that was spent on those jumped up fancy new jets that were purchased to fly the Prime Minister and the cabinet around the country. Compare that with the 40 year old Sea King helicopters that navy pilots in our armed forces are forced to fly, knowing that the lives of those men and women are at risk each time those helicopters go up. It was pure political vanity and stubborn ignorance that prevented the Prime Minister from purchasing the type of helicopters that were originally ordered. We will not see new helicopters until the Prime Minister leaves office.

The Prime Minister continues to fight to defend his broken promises on ethical standards of his cabinet and to justify broken promises to establish an independent parliamentary officer who would report directly and police cabinet ethics. That has not happened. That joins the litany of promises that were made and broken and betrayed.

Where is the openness and transparency? Where is the commitment that was made throughout previous elections, those red faced, red book promises that remain unfulfilled?

The Prime Minister fights to suppress any dissent, including the suppression of parliamentary dissent by the unparalleled silencing of parliament, the shutting down of parliament, as he intends to do in a matter of days, notwithstanding the rules of the House. He attempts to shut down his own cabinet and expel anyone who raises ire.

The Prime Minister fights to remove over $7 billion from the consolidated revenue fund to patronage bodies that are open to abuse and are exempt from the oversight of the auditor general. I am talking about these arm's length bodies that currently the Liberals can funnel money through and they are outside the scope of what the auditor general can examine. Is that the type of openness and transparency that was promised? I think not.

The Prime Minister is consumed with putting in time to get to that 40th anniversary of unbroken service in the House of Commons, but we know that it was broken. He is no longer putting the country first. He is no longer putting the government first. He is putting himself first.

I fully expect that at the end of the evening the Liberal caucus will vote to support this. It will vote to support giving $101 million to the Prime Minister's PCO fund. I am happy to provide this opportunity so that Canadians will know the priority of all members of the government. This is an opportunity for them to go on the record and say they endorse the ethical standards of the Prime Minister, that they wrap their arms around the standard that he has set and that he has permitted to be pervasive in his government. Personal interest over national interest; that is the legacy.

When the Prime Minister looks back for a legacy, looks back for some form of pointing to the record to say this is what was achieved, what is there? It is one of caretaking. I would strongly suggest it is one of dishonesty. This is not the type of up front and transparent behaviour that should be expected from the highest office in the land.

We are currently mired in an issue with respect to government contracts and the way in which communications agencies act as the middlemen for funnelling cash, funnelling money from the government into loyal Liberal supporters. That is what it comes down to. We should follow the chain. Public money is being sent out often through untendered contracts into the hands of traditionally, time and time again, those who seem prepared to financially support the government. It is not the merit of these projects that we question. It is the fashion in which they have been set up.

Surely there are other agencies, there are other businesses, there are other projects in the country that do not have these blatant ties, these close, cozy relations to the government. Where is the impartiality? Where is the merit when one starts to examine in detail who is the recipient of these many, many millions of dollars that are Canadian taxpayer dollars?

We see Communication Coffin, Gosselin, Groupe Everest, Groupaction, Lafleur and time and time again there is this inevitable linkage, a close connection to the Liberal Party. Why? That is the obvious question. It is the perpetration of power. It is about not only gaining power but then holding it at all costs. That is not in the best interests of Canadians. That does not lead to the focus on the issues of the day, on the priorities of Canadians.

This conduct in contracting out has rocked Canadians' confidence further. The degree of support and confidence in any government is absolutely plummeting. That again reflects very, very poorly on the Prime Minister's record.

These transgressions, these decisions that were made are deliberate. This is not action that was taken by lack of information. It is quite the opposite. It was deliberate action that was taken on behalf of the government, decisions that were taken by cabinet, decisions that were obviously made, as I said before, to hold on to power at all costs. If it is about reward, if it is about ensuring that one's support will be there, will be constant, this is what erodes the entire system. It is what completely undermines public confidence when the sole purpose is the perpetration and preservation of power of public office.

The vision that was set out, the specific references to what this increased funding would result in is something that again has to be questioned. The words and the actions do not match. The vision that has been enunciated is blurry, unclear and unfocused. One can only look at what is happening now to predict what will happen in the future.

If more money is granted through this process, is there confidence, is there public trust, is there reason for Canadians to believe that this is a responsible use of their money, that we should reward and increase the budget of the Prime Minister's Office, the PCO? I scarcely think that is the sentiment Canadians are feeling inside, a warm and fuzzy confident feeling that the government has spent their money responsibly.

The real fear, because I truly believe we are only getting a glimpse of what has been happening, is that this is pervasive. This is of epidemic proportions throughout other government departments.

We specifically singled out the PCO because again it starts at the top. It is supposed to be the office that would lead by example. It is supposed to be the highest office in the land, yet we have seen this very partisan and personal approach that has been the driving force behind the decisions of the Prime Minister and the government.

It is with regret that we are before parliament and Canadians today talking about why the government's ethical standards should be rewarded and should result in an increase in its budget. Is it warranted? That is again the question. Does its ethical standards measure up?

Why on earth would we want to increase the budget of that office when we know there are such grave needs in other areas? Even though there were promises to increase the ethical standards, even having an independent office on which parliament could rely, we know that is not forthcoming. Even this latest so-called action plan is really a distraction plan because it completely evades the issue of an independent office like the auditor general.

Why would it not be modeled upon the auditor general's office? At least in terms of independent officers we have seen that there is courage and integrity in offices such as that. There is also courage and integrity in the office of the information commissioner who quite ironically, yet again consistent with what we have seen, is embroiled in a lawsuit, with whom? The Prime Minister.

When questions are raised, when an issue comes forward that draws attention, the immediate reaction is to oppose, to take to court, to delay, to distract, to bully the person who is asking the questions and then to hurl abuse and accuse the accuser. It is the oldest trick in the book. Parliamentarians in essence are told not to do their jobs, not to ask those types of questions because there will be retribution and the government will root out and find something inconsistent that has been said.

Let us not forget the role of government versus the role of the opposition. The difference in influencing where that money goes is tenfold on the government side, particularly in the cabinet. To suggest that a member of the opposition who in lobbying for support for his riding somehow has the ability to turn around and make it happen, that is where the line should be drawn.

It is the behaviour of the cabinet that is under examination here. It is its decision to intervene in inappropriate ways. It is its decision to act in partisan rather than patriotic fashion. That is why members of the Progressive Conservative caucus do not support increasing the budget of the PCO, do not in fact support in any way putting more money into a department that has been rife with abuse, that has made poor priority decisions.

That $101 million that coincides almost to a dollar with the money that was spent on Challengers is not an appropriate, ethical or fundamentally honest way to spend taxpayers' money.

That is why this party will continue to press the government not only on issues related to ethics but on issues related to spending, which is what we should be doing in parliament each and every day and why we should continue to be here until we get some answers.