Madam Speaker, I rise this morning to speak to the opposition day motion that relates to the sponsorship program.
There is no doubt that in recent weeks we have heard disturbing charges and very serious allegations at the Gomery commission. These allegations disgust me, if they prove to be factual. I and all Liberals demand that those responsible, the guilty parties, be punished to the full extent of Canadian law.
I have no intention, nor does our government have any intention, of defending the indefensible.
We want Justice Gomery's report and we want to know the truth.
Our government, our party and, most important, our Prime Minister and leader are singularly determined to get to the bottom of this issue. This may not be the most politically expedient approach. However it is the right thing to do.
I am opposing this motion from the separatist Bloc Québécois today, a party that continues to play politics with a very important issue for Canadians. The Conservatives and the Bloc want to get to the polls but Canadians want to get to the truth. Our Prime Minister and our party stand with Canadians to get to the truth, the truth that Canadians deserve.
Let me explain why I will offer an amendment to the motion today. Our Prime Minister has taken, and continues to take, vigorous, bold and courageous action to address this terrible situation. I personally commend the Prime Minister for his strong hand and decisive leadership on this issue.
He deserves our respect for having made the right decisions.
He has put country before party, principle before strategy and courage before opportunism.
When the Prime Minister took office he immediately cancelled the sponsorship program. Then, when the Auditor General tabled her report last February, the Prime Minister responded forcefully. He set up an independent commission of inquiry into the sponsorship program and appointed Justice John Gomery of the Quebec Superior Court as its head. The Gomery commission has been given a broad mandate and the necessary resources to get to the bottom of this matter.
The Prime Minister took the remarkable step of providing cabinet confidences to the commission dating back 10 years and, in fact, more than 12 million pages of documents have been provided by the Government of Canada to Justice Gomery's commission.
He also appointed a special counsel for financial recovery to pursue all possible avenues to recover funds that were improperly received by certain parties involved in the delivery of the sponsorship program. This effort, in fact, when launched several weeks ago, was attacked by the leader of the Conservative Party.
However, as we know, last month, despite the attacks and the criticism for this action, the government filed claims in the Quebec Superior Court for $41 million against 19 companies and individuals. This includes a claim of $34 million against Jean Brault and Groupaction. We reserve the right to file further claims as further evidence and information presents itself.
There is much more. It was the Prime Minister who established the new, independent Ethics Commissioners, one for the House of Commons and one for the Senate. There are new conflict of interest codes for ministers and members of Parliament, and all the travel and hospitality expenses of ministers, their political staff and senior public servants are now posted on the Internet, as are the details of all government contracts over $10,000.
The Prime Minister has re-established the Office of the Comptroller General and made sure that there are now comptrollers to sign off on new spending initiatives in every government department.
The Prime Minister has brought in whistleblower protection to protect public servants who in good faith disclose wrongdoing. The Prime Minister also recalled Alfonso Gagliano.
Our Prime Minister has extended the Access to Information Act to many crown corporations. We are in the process of changing the governance of crown corporations to the Financial Administration Act and the accountabilities of ministers and public servants. It was our Prime Minister who overhauled government advertising and brought in a more rigorous and competitive process.
Furthermore, the Prime Minister asked the RCMP to investigate all allegations of criminal wrongdoing and criminal charges have been laid, including fraud charges against Jean Brault.
Numerous changes have been made at Public Works and Government Services Canada. I would like to point them out to Canadians.
We have overhauled our contracting processes and our management of government advertising. In fact, the new ethics program of the Department of Public Works and Government Services Canada has been judged a best practice model in both the public and private sectors by the Conference Board of Canada. At the same time we are transforming the way our department does business to show respect for taxpayers and their hard earned dollars.
I am tremendously proud of our department and of the changes we are making both in our procurement practices and in our office building portfolio. Those savings will amount to over $3.5 billion over the next five years.
I want to take a moment to congratulate the Parliamentary Secretary for Minister of Public Works and Government Services, the member of Parliament for St. Catharines, for the visionary and important work he performed in the procurement processes of the Government of Canada.
Quite simply, the department is working to deliver better services for Canadians at better value for Canadian taxpayers.
Let us get back to the task at hand and some of the testimony coming out of the Gomery inquiry. Let us be clear. If there were profiteers who took advantage of the unity crisis to achieve inappropriate gain, we want to make sure that justice is done and we want the guilty to be punished. If there were profiteers who took advantage of that battle against separatism to benefit personally or financially, we want to see justice meted out.
The separatists and their collaborators in the Conservative-Alliance Party continue to hide behind the privileges of this great House of Commons, to make a steady stream of slanderous statements, comments that they would not dare make outside of the House.
Let me quote from yesterday's Ottawa Citizen :
What is going on here is hysteria, a lynch-mob mentality...and political opportunism that threatens to derail the...pursuit of justice in the whole truth.
Reputations are being casually smeared, the self-serving claims of accused fraud artists...are accepted as gospel and incendiary fragments of testimony are flung across the Commons aisle everyday...
I want to remind members that it was the Prime Minister who set up the Gomery commission and who appeared before it. We know that there are political consequences to setting up the inquiry, but it is the right thing to do.
The Prime Minister has said that the true test of character is where one does the right thing when it is difficult, not just when it is easy. Canadians look to their political leaders to take responsibility and to demonstrate character.
Our Prime Minister did take that responsibility.
Establishing the Gomery commission has cost our party and our Prime Minister political support, but it was and is the right thing to do on behalf of Canadians. It is needed in order to defend and protect the integrity of our political process, and that matters a great deal more than the ambitions of any one political leader. Therefore, we must let Justice Gomery do his work and get to the bottom of this issue.
Even the chair of the public accounts committee agrees. Last week, he said, “There's no point in going to the polls with rumours and innuendoes. There's all kinds of rumours and innuendoes flying around about what is being said at Gomery. Why don't we wait until we get all the facts about what has been said at the Gomery commission before we think about an election”. I could not agree more, and most Canadians agree as well.
The Halifax Daily News editorial has said, “A snap election is not a good idea”.
On the other coast, the Vancouver Province says, “We strongly advise that they remain patient until the fall when Justice Gomery files his report”.
The Globe and Mail also says, “There is no sensible reason to go to the polls at that point and every reason not to rush to judgment”.
Even the National Post is counselling patience. It said, “Opposition MPs want an election which would have Canadians essentially put the government on trial without having all the evidence at hand”.
The Chronicle Herald has said:
The case [the Prime Minister] laid out in his own defence is stronger than any case mounted against him. He is the one who cancelled the sponsorship program on Day 1 of his tenure. He is the one who set up the Gomery inquiry, who fired those whose fingerprints were on this fiasco, and who is taking steps to recover misspent money. What more could the opposition reasonably expect him to do that he has not already done?
The Globe and Mail describes some of the testimony as shocking stuff. According to the Globe and Mail editorial, “What is the commission's report on the testimony, an assessment of who was to blame and what blame attaches to those still in power”.
When talking about forcing an election, the Globe and Mail says,“It should be for a better reason than the calculation of the opposition parties, like the polls and their desire to trigger an election before voters tune out for the summer. Wait for the Gomery report”.
This morning, Hugh Segal, former chief of staff to Brian Mulroney, said, “It makes no sense to call an election. I would urge everyone in the Ottawa bubble to take a Valium”. I am not necessarily recommending the Valium, but certainly I would commend the rest of his advice.
Yet the Bloc and its new bedmates, the Conservatives, are coming together in a truly unholy alliance to try to force a snap election. In their book, political opportunism always trumps the best interests of Canadians.
Look at what the Leader of the Opposition said in January and contrast it to his sabre rattling today. In January, he said, “We will not tolerate any attempt by the government to see this inquiry fail before it reaches its conclusions”. He said, “Frankly, I think the one thing that the Canadian public expects from the Prime Minister is that he get to the truth of this”. That is exactly what the Prime Minister is doing. He wants to let Justice Gomery do his work because he wants Canadians to have the truth they deserve.
A resounding 87% of Canadians agree that an election should not take place until Justice Gomery has completed his work and submitted his report.
Why is the opposition so dismissive of the public's desires? If it wants an election, it can have an election. However, forcing an election would kill key measures, such as billions of dollars for child care, for cities, for health care, for the environment and for the Canadian military. It would endanger the payment of $2 billion for Newfoundland and Labrador and $830 million for Nova Scotia, as pledged in the offshore accords. A premature trip to the polls would wipe all this out. It is clearly not in the best interests of the Canadian people to have an election without the facts, without the Gomery report.
That is why I will be proposing an amendment to the Bloc motion in a few minutes.
The Bloc wants a referendum on separation and the Leader of the Opposition could not care less. He wants to open the door to the separatists who want to destroy Canada.
The Bloc believes in separatism, and the leader of the Conservative Party does not care.
It is important to recognize that in 1994, just months before a 1995 referendum, when Canada was teetering on the edge of the abyss, the leader of the Conservative Party said in one of his speeches that he did not care whether a post-referendum Canada had one national capital, or two national capitals, or three or four national capitals.
The Bloc believes in a divided Canada and a separatist agenda, and the Conservative leader does not care. The Liberal Party believes in standing up for Canada, and standing up for Canada does not mean lying down with separatists.
I am opposing the motion of the Bloc. According to Treasury Board policy, the government simply does not have the authority to set up the trust fund. That is why I am proposing an amendment to the motion because the Liberal Party has made a complete commitment to return any funds received by virtue of any illegal or improper transaction from any source convicted of wrongdoing related to the sponsorship program.
Let me quote the president of the Liberal Party:
Every single dollar received in this manner will be returned. This is the Prime Minister’s commitment and it is ours. It is imperative that we hear from Justice Gomery in order to reconcile the amounts using testimony he has heard.
We cannot be more clear. Yes, we will act to ensure that this money is returned. Yes, we will hold accountable any profiteer or any guilty party involved in any illegal or improper activities. They will be punished.
If the party received any inappropriate funds, it will reimburse the taxpayers.
This can only be done if we allow Justice Gomery to complete his work.
I would like to seek unanimous consent from the House to propose the following amendment to the motion before us. I move: that all the words after the word “House” be deleted and replaced with the following: “affirms its support for the work of the Gomery commission; and that in the opinion of the House the Liberal Party of Canada should return any contributions determined to be inappropriate once the commissioner has drawn conclusions from the evidence and published his phase one report on fact finding; and that the House agrees with the April 7th statement of the hon. member for Edmonton--St. Albert to the effect that there is no point of going to the polls with rumours and innuendoes and that an election should not occur until all the facts are in hand from the Gomery commission; and that the House affirms its support for the core values of the Canadian justice system such as due process, the independence of the judiciary and the presumption of innocence”.
