Vic Toews

[Supply, February 17th, 2004]

That is good advice, Mr. Speaker. The point has been made and obviously the sensitivity on the other side demonstrates that my arrow has hit its mark.

Now that the Auditor General has confirmed what the official opposition has been stating for years, the Prime Minister announced yet another meaningless public inquiry. He has created a flurry of media attention, made public apologies, and has uttered threats against the nameless evildoers to get the Liberals past the next election.

The story changes every day. I assume what is happening is that the story is told then the polling is done. If it does not wash with the people, another story is told. I refer to the first story as the case of the conspiracy of the 12 monkeys. There are 12 people hidden away in the labyrinth of government somewhere gratuitously shelling out money to ad companies with close connections to the Liberals. They then kite these cheques, as the Prime Minister said, and the money goes on to friends and some of it just stays.

What I found objectionable is that the government, or whoever these nameless individuals are, used agencies like the RCMP to accomplish its purposes. These individuals traded on the good name of the RCMP so they could send an ad agency a cheque for $3 million. The ad agency kept $1.3 million and $1.7 million went to the RCMP. What happened to the $1.3 million? The ad agency and obviously these nameless individuals hiding in the bowels of government were trading on the good name of the RCMP to perpetrate this scheme on the people of Canada using taxpayers' money.

Canadians are entitled to know, why did the Prime Minister say nothing when he was in a position to stop this unprecedented financial abuse? We have heard from Liberal members that, since 1999 in their caucus, these rumours have been circulating. The former Minister of Canadian Heritage said that the now Prime Minister, then finance minister, the vice-president of the Treasury Board, must have known. It was obvious he should have known if he did not know.

Government does not operate by setting up a program for a quarter billion dollars and not have that go through the Treasury Board process and through the senior minister in the province where the money is to be spent. It was convenient. I am saying that as a result of my own public service experience as a member of the attorney general's department, as an elected official and a cabinet minister in Manitoba. What these Liberals are trying to get Canadians to believe about this mysterious organization and funnelling money to their friends is simply ludicrous.

Everyone knows what the process is. If the process was not followed, there is only one individual who is to blame, and that is the person who had his hands on the levers of power when he was finance minister, when he was vice-president of the Treasury Board, and that is the Prime Minister.

Now the Prime Minister is trying to distance himself from the previous 11 years of Liberal government. “I had no idea what was going on”, he said. Yet he never hesitated over the last 10 years to tell us how he was an integral part of the government. He knew where every dime was going. Suddenly, he is out of his office. However, he was an MP. He was here every day in the House I assume. Yet he did not hear any of the rumours that we heard.

When we spoke up about this, the Liberal members shut down the committee hearings. When we wanted to ask Alfonso Gagliano a question, the Liberal members shut down the hearing. Why did we not speak? It was because the member over on the other side shut us down.

It is shameful that those Liberals were involved in this cover-up when everyone over there knew what was going on. When the people of Canada were entitled to know what was going on, they shut down the inquiry. They refused to allow us to ask questions. Now they say to us that we are all in this together and that we should resolve it together. It is like somebody being caught breaking into a house and going down to do time asking if anyone wants to share time with him. I say, “No, thank you. You are doing your own time”.

[Supply, February 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, if it makes the member opposite feel better, I can use a term that the Auditor General used, and that was fraud. That is what the Auditor General said, and in law, as a former prosecutor, I can tell the member that the mental intent between stealing and fraud is no different. So, let us use the word that the Auditor General did because that is what we are discussing.

[Supply, February 17th, 2004]

The members asks, will I state it outside the House? It has been distributed. His colleague, the minister, has it, so I will certainly be more than pleased to give him a copy of that letter.

Recently, on the CBC news, The National , a pollster, Mr. Allan Gregg, dismissed the idea that the Auditor General's revelations were significant. He stated that the Auditor General was exaggerating and that the sum of money was relatively small in the scheme of government operations.

I found it astounding that an educated man who understands presumably the way Canadians think would state that on air. Of course, that position was immediately denounced by his fellow panellists and by most Canadians. Because much of this money was actually stolen, this is a much more serious state of affairs than even the $2 billion gun registry boondoggle. The CBC revealed that it is now $2 billion as a result of its crunching the documents and the numbers.

However, this quarter of a billion dollars that was stolen or otherwise misappropriated is much more significant. This is not just bad policy; this is criminal conduct.

Last week's revelations by the Auditor General revealed how the Liberal government allowed these dollars to be stolen. They were not improperly allocated, not lost, not wasted through incompetence, but stolen. They were stolen from the public purse and handed off to Liberal friends, advertising companies and crown corporations. The Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues said nothing when he as finance minister signed the cheques that found their way into the back pockets of the friends of the Liberal Party.

One of the--

[Supply, February 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to add my comments to this debate. Speaking of the culture of corruption, I received a copy of a letter in my office last year written by a chief of a first nations community in my riding. The letter was directed at a Liberal cabinet minister threatening the Liberal cabinet minister with exposure of all kinds of corruption if he did not agree with what the chief wanted for his community. He said he would work with the then Alliance in order to expose this corruption.

I wrote to the chief and said that I had received his correspondence and was certainly interested in what this corruption was all about, but I was not willing to make a deal. I heard nothing in response; however, at the Liberal nomination meeting, who was there supporting the Liberal candidate? The writer of the letter of course.

Obviously, he made a deal and that is the kind of deals that go on inside the Liberal Party, and the kind of deal that I will have nothing to do with.

[Government Contracts, February 16th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, yet the government had no trouble firing the former public works minister without any hearing. Even before a public inquiry has started, the Prime Minister has said that heads will roll at a number of crown corporations over this Liberal money laundering scheme. This sounds like Alice in Wonderland ; execution first, trial later.

On what basis is the Prime Minister prejudging the innocence of his former boss and the guilt of everyone else? What else does he know that he is not telling Canadians?

[Government Contracts, February 16th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, Friday the President of the Treasury Board said that there would be no judgments made about the sponsorship scandal without sufficient evidence. However, yesterday the Prime Minister proclaimed that his former boss, the former prime minister, was innocent of any wrongdoing in this disgraceful Liberal money laundering scheme.

If the Prime Minister knew nothing about the sponsorship scandal when he was finance minister, on what evidence does he now bring in this not guilty verdict?

[Resumption Of Debate On Address In Reply, February 16th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, speaking about broken promises, among all of the scandal to do with this Liberal money laundering scheme, we now hear about $2 billion on the gun registry. When I first heard about this I thought no, that was $2 million. I distinctly remember the Minister of Justice saying it would cost taxpayers $2 million. Now the Liberals say it is $2 billion.

Does the member have any comment about the impact on crime that this $2 billion boondoggle is having?

[Resumption Of Debate On Address In Reply, February 16th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to some of the earlier comments of members. I am wondering whether the member has any comments about the whole issue of the gas tax.

It has been very disturbing in a rural area like mine, Provencher. We hear ministers talk about all this money that is going to be poured in to the big cities but the largest community in my riding is 10,000 people. Where does the Liberal scheme leave the small communities? Does the Conservative Party have a better option?

[Resumption Of Debate On Address In Reply, February 16th, 2004]

It won't.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, February 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, just very briefly, let me say that I appreciate the member's statements regarding the power of judges and the power of the legislative arm of government: that they need to be separate and apart.

I also noted the comments about the charter of rights and our Constitution. Liberals always say that the charter protects minorities. The charter does not protect minorities. What the charter protects are principles. Whether a majority ascribes to them or a minority ascribes to them, it protects principles. My concern is that the court has stopped using a principle based approach and simply goes to a minority based approach, which is an unconstitutional way of proceeding.

Specifically to my question, on the democratic reform proposals, I notice in the Speech from the Throne that these proposals really came from the old Reform Party. I am just wondering whether my colleague found the same kinds of similarities between that sort of democratic reform brought forward by that old Reform Party, and I say that never having been a member of the Reform Party.