41st General Election  Mr. Speaker, I do not remember asking a question about the Liberal Party. This reminds me of the in and out scandal. They denied their involvement until they had no choice but to admit their guilt and pay the maximum fine, so they should be careful with their answers. It did not take long for another failed candidate to confirm that he had nothing to do with the RMG contract.

41st General Election  Mr. Speaker, last week, I asked the Conservatives to explain the new in and out scheme carried out by RMG to fund calls of an indeterminate nature. The answer I got was a bizarre rambling commentary about the Liberals and North Dakota that had nothing to do with anything. What we know is that the defeated candidate in Chicoutimi—Le Fjord said, “I can't really say if I got my money’s worth or not.”

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns  With regard to the costs incurred by the government in settling lawsuits or claims, as identified in the 2011 Public Accounts totaling $654 million, divided by department, what are the: (a) identities of the claimants or organizations; (b) details of the grievance including the (i) times, (ii) location(s), (iii) type(s), (iv) nature of dispute; (c) monetary amounts and any other terms requested in the claimant's initial claim or lawsuit; (d) subsequent government responses including (i) monetary offers, (ii) any other terms; (e) dates of settlement agreements; (f) types of settlements; (g) amounts of the settlements, and all other terms agreed to in the settlements; (h) the amounts that have been paid by the date of December 7, 2011; (i) estimated costs of not settling and using judicial channels; (j) names of government employees involved in the settlements and their role; (k) Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) hours spent on each claim's settlement; (l) legal fees incurred by the government (including those, if applicable, of the claimant) in each claim's settlement; and (m) steps taken to ensure the events leading to the lawsuit or claim are not repeated and any further lawsuits or claims are mitigated?

Democratic Representation Act  Mr. Speaker, I am particularly pleased and proud to be able to rise in the House to support the bill introduced by the hon. member for Compton—Stanstead. I feel that this bill addresses some major concerns of Quebeckers and that it is a step forward. As the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine has just pointed out, this bill is a logical, concrete and direct extension of recognizing Quebec as a nation.

41st General Election  Mr. Speaker, I get the impression that the Conservatives have been doing damage control for the past few days. The first version from the Conservative candidate in Rimouski was that the campaign paid $15,000.01 for services he was unaware of and about which he was never consulted.

41st General Election  Mr. Speaker, the Conservative Party is a bit like a Russian nesting doll: sometimes one scandal might be hiding another. Just a few months after Conservatives pleaded guilty to election fraud, here we go again: another in and out scheme. Last May, it seems that Conservative campaigns in Quebec were used as puppets to pay RMG thousands of dollars in order to get around the law.

Rights of the Child  Mr. Speaker, at least 430 children are detained in Canadian prisons every year. These are children of refugees, children of war, children of famine and violence. Yet what are we offering them? A stay in prison with no education and no psychological support. Why? Because an officer felt that their parent could not appear before the authorities or because that parent could not satisfy the officer as to his or her identity.

41st General Election  Mr. Speaker, the fabulous story concocted by the Conservatives is beginning to fall apart. Now a Conservative has come forward and is asking that the true identity of the guilty party who orchestrated all these fraudulent phone calls be revealed. On one television station, the parliamentary secretary said that his party was not conducting an investigation.

41st General Election  Mr. Speaker, that is a bold statement from a party that did not receive 40% of the popular vote. If I wanted to solve the mystery, I would say that I suspect it was Pierre Poutine of Separatist Street in Joliette with a RackNine cellphone. Unfortunately, we are not playing Clue.

41st General Election  Mr. Speaker, speaking of misleading calls, yesterday, the parliamentary secretary tried to deflect the debate by saying that there was a higher voter turnout. That is an intellectually dishonest answer that borders on the hypocritical and vacuous responses that the Prime Minister is treating us to today.

41st General Election  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for that repeated answer. The NDP has provided everything it knows about this electoral fraud. It is the Conservatives who have the missing pieces of the puzzle. The Conservatives should hand over all their documents and all their contracts, instead of hiding them.

41st General Election  Mr. Speaker, it is the same Conservative scandal, but with new companies. We learned that 11 ministers worked with RMG and four others worked with Campaign Research. Calls made by firms connected to the Conservative Party gave false instructions to people for a single purpose, namely to discourage them from voting and thus violate their fundamental rights.

41st General Election  Mr. Speaker, these illegal calls were made by a firm connected to the Conservative Party. The objective was clear: to mislead voters. That is a tactic used by bums, by goons, something reminiscent of the Duplessis era. The owner of RackNine released a picture in which he is holding a Government of Canada cheque and said that it is true, that the government paid his company.

Government Appointments  Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives were supposed to clean up Ottawa and put an end to patronage appointments, but we now see that their solution is to replace Liberal patronage with Conservative patronage. Another broken promise. We have seen patronage at the Oshawa harbour and at the Port of Québec, where another defeated Conservative, Bernard Généreux, was appointed as the federal representative on the Québec Port Authority, even though he does not have the skills required for the job.

Government Appointments  Mr. Speaker, it appears that the main qualification needed is to be a Conservative. The Conservatives have no respect for public money. They thank their cronies by handing out positions that are paid for using Canadian taxpayers' dollars. Here is another example: the Prime Minister ordered a study on the orange wave.