Madam Speaker, she said, “[He] gives his word, and he breaks his word. If I can’t have a leader that I can look up to and respect, I have no need to be part of something that is not honest and above board.”
Even a long-standing member of Parliament many of us respect, who is no longer in Parliament as he resigned his seat last year, who was the member for Dauphin--Swan River, said that his staff was contacted by party officials during the 2006 election campaign. He said the officials asked if they could deposit several thousand dollars in his campaign account and withdraw it later to buy advertising. He wondered why they would given him money and take it back. It did not make sense, so he said, “no thanks”.
There are many people with some integrity who thought that it did not smell right. We know the old saying that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like duck, it has to be a duck. A lot of people thought they saw a duck and did not want to participate in the scheme.
However, there are other issues. We have a sense that the government always, whenever someone asks questions about accountability or asks it to explain certain things, it has a tendency to start blaming everybody.
First and foremost, we have a parliamentary secretary who said, “It was not just us. Everybody else did it”, and started naming the people who did it. In fact, Elections Canada did not accuse any of the political parties or members who were named of anything at all.
The next thing that was said was, “Elections Canada does not like us. Obviously, Elections Canada is out to get us”. So there is the second tranche of people who do not want to take responsibility, who are becoming very paranoid and saying, “They are all doing it because they do not like us”.
Then there is a third piece. The parliamentary secretary said, “We believe that we did not break the law”. So it was immediate denial. Then he said, “I know the Court of Appeal said I broke it, but that's okay. The law has been made by this government and the law should be broken by this government if this government did not particularly like the law."
In all of this we see a government that is defensive and sometimes dismissive with answers in the House with members of Parliament laughing and thinking it is very funny, making it sound as though it is no big deal, that a member does not know what he is talking about and everyone is out to get the Conservatives and that it never really happened. It is beginning to sound like a petulant eight-year-old who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and is now saying, “Don't look at me. It's not my fault." This is not mature behaviour. This is not the kind of behaviour we expect from a government that ran in 2006 saying it was going to be accountable, that it was going to do everything above board, that it was going to bring in a new generation of ethics to this place.
We have seen none of that happen. We have seen some members who were liked by the government but given the back door immediately when they stepped on the wrong foot. We have to remember the former secretary of state for status of women who was kicked out of caucus without anyone finding anything wrong and they still have not found anything wrong. Yet, we see ministers sitting in the House day after day who have been caught with their hand in the cookie jar, who have been caught falsifying documents, who have been caught using the office of the minister to do party work and they are still here. We see senators who have been charged with illegal activity, whether they have been found guilty or not, still sitting in the Senate.
What about the double standard? I really would like to understand the double standard that the government likes to use when it talks about anything that it does.
If the government felt and the Conservative Party felt that it was doing no wrong, why did it not co-operate with Elections Canada and give up the documents?
The RCMP had to go into its offices and seize the documents. That is a real indictment on the attitude of the government that feels it does not have to be accountable to anyone at all. I have never heard of political parties and governments not co-operating when they are asked to give information or when they are asked to hand over documents.
It is obvious that the Conservative Party knew that it had done something wrong and documents had to be seized from it by the RCMP.
Finally, it is the party that closed down government and prorogued--