44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 30, 2022 11:00AM
- May/30/22 5:40:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking my colleague for her clear statement, which provided a timeline of events that, let us be honest, happened a very long time ago, and that the Liberals tried several times to sweep under the rug.
I would like my colleague to tell us about the wrongdoing that was seen during her committee's study and the important recommendations that came out of it. Does she have one or two recommendations that she would like to bring to the attention of the House so that we can avoid this kind of disgraceful conflict of interest in the future?
I am asking on behalf of the honest, hard-working citizens who pay taxes that end up being squandered on cronies. I would like her to tell us about it.
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- May/30/22 5:40:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I said something about it right at the beginning.
How is it that if a member makes a mistake by not reporting that they received a gift or perk worth $200 or more, that is not a violation? When billions of dollars are involved, why are there not violations?
Of course, if the violation involves a few thousand dollars, that is not a user fee. For starters, it is not enough to say that a situation needs to be analyzed, reported and publicized. It also needs to be ultimately considered a violation. That is something we discussed.
Another one was contracts awarded without a particular process, or untendered contracts. For example, non-profit organizations that collect as little as $10,000 have to bang out endless tenders just to serve their clients. Conversely, parliamentarians in government do not have to deal with that. They are above that.
Those are two examples from all the recommendations.
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- May/30/22 5:42:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is somewhat disappointing when the Bloc seems to want to follow the lead of the Conservative Party. That is what we are seeing in this situation. If the Bloc, along with the Conservatives, feels so passionate about this particular issue, why does the member believe the Bloc or the Conservatives have not used any opposition days to talk about this specific issue?
Does the member really believe the real purpose of bringing forward the concurrence report was just to try to have a discussion this afternoon on this issue as opposed to talking about government legislation, which is now very limited in terms of the number of people who are going to be speaking to it? There are going to be nowhere near as many people speaking to it because the Conservatives brought forward this motion.
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- May/30/22 5:43:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to say that it is easy to say that we stand with someone, that we are joining forces with someone else, that we are voting in favour of something or that we have changed our minds. We have seen a lot of things this afternoon, but what it all comes down to is finding out what is important for us to know.
My answer to my colleague is that the Conservatives hit the nail on the head and it was important for us to see things through to the very end, so that is what we did. I demonstrated that.
What is shocking is that, at the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, which is supposed to be trustworthy and above the fray, people realized that the hours and hours of filibustering were a way of showing that the government was hiding its head in the sand. Perhaps it was really embarrassed and maybe even ashamed, like we were.
Obviously, I will say that, so far, I have not become corrupt, and I will make sure that we do the right work with the money and that we use it wisely. Regardless of whether it comes from the government side or the official opposition side, we will be there to support anything that is important to Quebeckers and that serves their interests.
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- May/30/22 5:45:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am fairly certain that, during her discussion this evening on this topic, the member made reference to the fact that Frank Baylis was involved with the automobile sector. That is absolutely false. I am wondering if the member can inform the House as to where she got that information, because my understanding is that Frank Baylis never was employed or worked in the auto sector.
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- May/30/22 5:45:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will do what the government never does, which is admit that it may have made a mistake.
What I was trying to do was make the connection. It may not have been the auto industry, but I do not have my notes and I apologize for that. How was it so easy for a former MP to claim to specialize in ventilators so he could secure a $237‑million contract? That is what we wanted to highlight.
I retract what I said, and the changes can be made. The point I was ultimately making was about why there was no effort to be transparent in advance.
We now have to spend time on this. I should mention that I did some research while the member was asking the question. On March 24, 2021, there was an opposition day on this topic, which might help my colleague opposite who was wondering, but I did not have that information earlier.
That said, the answer is that we are doing it, but I do not think that is enough because we worry about what comes next. Three times is already far too many. One plus one plus one is three, and three strikes is an out. That sums up our feelings about the government in 2022.
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- May/30/22 5:47:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I made reference to this year and the Bloc and the Conservatives. It is amazing.
Would the member not recognize there are literally hundreds, going into thousands, of contracts that are issued by the Government of Canada? Many of the recipients of those contracts happen to be Conservatives. There might even be some Bloc members. If one cites specific individuals, what is critical is to have an independent and transparent system that allows for Canadians and businesses to be able to apply for contracts. Does she not believe there are people of all political parties who receive national contracts?
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- May/30/22 5:47:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased that the member brought up contracts because—
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- May/30/22 5:48:03 p.m.
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Order. The hon. member for Laurentides—Labelle has the floor and is trying to answer a question. She may continue.
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- May/30/22 5:48:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what we are experiencing right now has been going on for hours, and why is that? It is because it is a very sensitive subject, I admit.
The objective is due diligence when it comes to contracts. A number of experts told the committee that it is important to take the time beforehand to check things properly.
As I said at the outset, just a few moments ago, why is it that some organizations that might be struggling are accountable to no end, when the government, which has a structure that could be described as extraordinary, is able to turn around quickly and offer $500 here or an emergency benefit there? It is a huge system.
Ultimately, there is no reason why the experts and officials in each department should not be working proactively to ensure that we have all the elements needed to make reasonable and ethical decisions.
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Madam Speaker, again, I look at it, and the member says how important it is to have a debate on this issue. If it was such an important issue, why would the Bloc not support a concurrence motion or an opposition day? Why use it strictly on a government's debate day for legislation, when we have already put in the issue of allocated time for Bill C-18? In other words, every minute we are debating this motion today—
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- May/30/22 5:50:03 p.m.
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We have to give five seconds to the hon. member to answer.
The hon. member for Laurentides—Labelle.
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- May/30/22 5:50:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would turn that question back to the member. Why have we been working for weeks under a gag order and time allocation when we should actually be debating this in great detail? That is for him to answer. We will talk more about this later.
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Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to this concurrence motion. Those watching at home might be wondering what a concurrence motion is. A report has been tabled by a committee in the House. Very rarely would there be a concurrence motion like this to vote on a report. It is, in my opinion and as the member for Winnipeg North indicated earlier, nothing more than a tactic by the Conservatives to jam up more House time.
What makes this particular concurrence motion even more remarkable is this. We start off with the rarity by which reports are dealt with in a concurrence motion, but this one is not even a report from the current ethics committee. This is actually a report from the previous committee. I am sorry, I should not say that. All of the work was done by the previous committee. It developed the report, put together the report, studied it, questioned the witnesses and put it forward. All the current ethics committee that exists in this Parliament did was retable that report.
We start from a place where it is very rare to have a motion like this on a report. To make it even more bizarre, it is not even a report that the current ethics committee dealt with. It did not interview the witnesses. It did not ask questions or form the recommendations. It is going off of work that was done before. People might ask themselves why it is doing this or they might become skeptical when we accuse the Conservatives of using this as just another political opportunity. It is very clear, when we look at the games they are playing, that they are willing to go to any lengths to make sure that we cannot get government legislation through.
For those watching, what we otherwise would have been discussing right now is Bill C-18. Bill C-18 is a bill that the Conservatives, at least in their election platform, support. It is a bill that would provide supports to news outlets throughout our country to make sure they can continue to be independent. Rather than doing their job and following through on commitments they made during the election campaign to Canadians, they see no political win or political gain out of this particular bill because the vast majority of members in the House, if not all, already support it. They are looking for blood, quite frankly, and they do not see any here. That is why they say, “Rather than spend time talking about Bill C-18, a concept that we agree with, why not go after something that we can actually attack Liberals and individual Liberal members on?” That is exactly what we are seeing here with the introduction of this concurrence motion on this report that has been tabled by the committee.
One of the comments that I found very interesting, and I was surprised to hear from the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, of all people, was when she questioned the member for Winnipeg North as to why he was using time to debate this. That criticism or question might hold water if nobody else in the room was speaking to it, but Conservatives are. They are using the time, burning the day, by debating and talking about this particular motion. The question then becomes: Why would we not use our designated slots to speak to this and to tell Canadians what is going on?
I find it quite interesting that we would be accused of wanting to speak to this just because we do not want to talk to it. That is like saying that we should not be speaking to it because we do not want to be talking about this anyway. Of course we do not want to be talking about this. We want to be talking about Bill C-18, but the reality of the situation is that through their political games the Conservatives have put us in the position of having to debate this right now. We are clearly going to use that opportunity to debate it and show Canadians what is going on right now. I would expect, to be completely honest, that question to come, in a very cynical way, from my colleagues across the way, but I was surprised to hear it from the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands. Maybe she has had an opportunity to reflect on it and thinks differently of it now.
I would like to talk about this report specifically. I realize there are 23 recommendations in this report that were put forward by the previous Parliament's ethics committee. It put forward these recommendations. When one starts to read the recommendations, it becomes very clear how incredibly focused they are on individuals: the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister's wife and people who work in the Prime Minister's Office.
We heard a Conservative member talk earlier about wanting to get certain staff to come before the committee. One of the deep criticisms was that the government would not allow staff to go before the committee to testify. Instead, the President of the Treasury Board, if I remember correctly, offered to go to the committee to speak, but the Conservatives, the opposition, were not interested in that. They wanted actual staffers to go there.
I find that very concerning. I realize that Conservatives have no issue with attacking individual people. For the slightest bit of political gain, they will take down somebody's career. We already know that. They did, after all, for the first time in over 100 years, drag someone before the House, to the bar of the House. It had not happened in 100 years, and it had never happened to somebody who was outside of the government. The Conservatives dragged before the bar the president of the Public Health Agency of Canada. That demonstrates how willing they are to take down anybody if they think they will get the slightest political gain out of it, and that is exactly what we are seeing happen here today.
When the minister who is responsible for these staffers says they are the leader, they will take responsibility, they will go before committee and they will answer the questions, that shows what a leader does. Was that enough blood for the Conservatives? No, of course it was not. They wanted to go after the staffers, the individuals who are employed by the minister responsible, which, coming from the ethics committee of all places, is extremely unethical.
In any organization, there is always somebody who is going to take responsibility for those decisions, somebody who will be the accountable one. The minister wanted to do that. Were the Conservatives and other opposition parties interested in that in at committee? No, they were not. They wanted staff. They wanted individuals who do not have the same power to defend themselves, who do not have a voice in this place and who do not have a voice in the public to be the ones to go in and be berated for two hours.
The minister was not interested in doing that, which should not come as a surprise to anybody in this House. It certainly should not come as a surprise to Canadians, especially when Canadians witnessed the Conservative Party, propped up by the Bloc and the NDP, drag before the House of Commons a public service individual, the president of the Public Health Agency of Canada. Never in the history of this Parliament had that happened, and when it was done before that, it was never an individual in his position.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: Madam Speaker, they are heckling me now. I can always tell when I hit a nerve. I can always tell when the truth is starting to sink in. When someone is calling them out, we can tell, because that is when they start to heckle, and that is exactly what they are doing right now.
When it comes back to this particular report and the committee work that was done, Liberals did participate in this committee at the time. They participated in the committee. They helped studies with the witnesses. They helped to create their own recommendations. I know that three recommendations that came from the Liberal benches, which I do not see in the same form in the report, were never adopted. I would like to read out what those recommendations were.
The recommendations from the Liberal members do not mention individuals' names or look to berate people. They look to set and develop policy. The recommendations, which were in the dissenting report, were that the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics conduct, at an earliest opportunity, a full statutory review of the Conflict of Interest Act with appropriate recommendations.
It seems like a legitimate thing to do. It seems like a legitimate thing to do from a policy perspective if we are is generally interested in trying to fix perceived flaws in our system. That is what we would do, not talk about all these recommendations that they have in here referencing the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister's wife and various other people, as well as how certain information needs to be turned over immediately. The reason I say that is that colleagues will recall that the Ethics Commissioner was already doing his own study on this issue.
Everything that the committee was demanding in the form of recommendations through this study was for no purpose other than to grandstand and put all the dirty laundry of everybody out in public, regardless of what their involvement was. They are attempts to do that. That is all this was. We know that is because the Ethics Commissioner is not going to do this to the same degree as the official opposition wanted the committee to do it. That is all they are interested in.
The Ethics Commissioner was already investigating this, and it was as if the committee said, “No, no; we're better at this. We should do all this work instead of the individual who has been hired to do this in a fair, non-partisan, unbiased way.” That is exactly why this report has been tabled again.
As I mentioned previously, this is not a report generated by this particular Parliament at the ethics committee that sits now, but one from the previous Parliament. They basically just grabbed the report and retabled it so that the Conservatives could continually do this over and over and over.
The second recommendation that the Liberals put forward in that dissenting report was that the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics conduct at the earliest opportunity a full statutory review of the Lobbying Act, with appropriate recommendations.
Again looking at it from a policy perspective, the Liberals were saying that they recognize there is concern out there, that it is possible there are flaws out there, and that this is how they would address it. They would look at the Conflict of Interest Act and look at the Lobbying Act and at ways to make them better and strengthen them. That is what proper policy from a committee should look like, not these arbitrary demands that are being made by the opposition for no purpose other than to try to shame individuals and try to keep a scandal going as long as they possibly can. That is all they were interested in.
The third and final recommendation made by the Liberal members in the dissenting report was that the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics refrain from conducting parallel investigations with any independent office into the conduct of members of Parliament, either directly or by proxy.
That last recommendation was the Liberal members saying, “Hold on a second, as this ethics investigation is already ongoing by the individual who has been appointed to look into this stuff. Maybe it is not a good idea that we do this at the same time.” It would be the equivalent of a judge reviewing a case in court while a parliamentary committee is trying to do the exact same thing on the side. They are trying to influence it. They are trying to highlight and bring everything possible to the surface so that they can try to attack individuals and personalities. They do this time after time.
This brings me back to where I started in the five minutes I have remaining. What we are seeing here today is part of a pattern. It is part of a pattern that has been developed lately by the Conservative Party of Canada, a pattern of continually trying to put up any possible roadblocks. They are moving concurrence on a report that a committee in this Parliament did not even write. They are not even doing the work before trying to move the motion here. They are just grabbing a report from the last Parliament and retabling it here so that they can move concurrence on it. We are seeing this time and time again.
As indicated by the member for Winnipeg North on a number of occasions, the Conservatives have complained, saying they want debate, that they want to debate the issue. They say, “Why won't you let us debate these very important pieces of legislation?”
Then the government says, “Good point. Maybe we do need some more time to debate.” Motion No. 11 comes along, basically saying, “Let us sit later into the evening.” What did the Conservatives do? They tried to filibuster that. We had to move closure on that motion, the motion to try to set our work schedule. That is how incredibly obstructionist they have been.
Earlier today we saw a Conservative member stand up and move an amendment to the concurrence motion. He was just trying to create another vote. He was trying to burn more time. That is what is happening over and over in here. This is not about actually debating policy.
If Conservatives wanted to debate policy today and had a genuine interest in advancing the objectives of Canadians, they would be debating Bill C-18, something we know they care about because it was in their platform, and something they had said they are pushing forward on.
However, it appears as though the Conservatives are only interested in moving it forward if they form government. As we saw, they put it in their election platform and they ran on it. We get here and say, “Let us bring this idea forward.” It should be a fairly easy one to get through, because we know the Conservatives support it, but every single time we bring it up in this House, they put up a roadblock like this to prevent us from actually talking about it.
The Conservatives are only interested in delivering for Canadians if they can be in the driver's seat. That is not how democracy works. Democracy works, in Canada at least, with people being elected from 338 parts of the country, coming together and figuring out the best way forward. If we cannot do it through consensus, which by default we rarely ever could, then we vote on it. Then we move on. We recognize that we played our role in that democratic process, that we helped advance the lives of Canadians for the better. We accept the roles that we have been given in the House.
Canadians will notice that the Liberal Party said that we accept the role we have been given in this House. We accept the role of being a minority government. What did we do? We looked to other parties. We went to the NDP to see if it wanted to work with us to advance issues for Canadians. The NDP accepted its role. It said yes. It had an interest in advancing issues for Canadians and wanted to get together and work together. That is how we got a supply and confidence agreement.
We know what the Bloc's objective is. It is interested in being its own country. I guess, by default, it is going to be a lot harder to work with them for the interest of all Canadians, but at least we know exactly what its position is. We know exactly where it is coming from. The Conservatives, however, are literally rudderless right now. Who is driving the ship over there? I would absolutely love to know. There is no way that they can continue to operate in this way. They do not even know what their role in this House is.
I have no problem voting against this concurrence motion and I have given my reasons. I have referenced the report, but this is not what we should have been talking about today. We should have been talking about Bill C-18, an issue that would genuinely advance the interests of Canadians and make our country more independently focused for news organizations and outlets throughout the world. Unfortunately, we are not there, because the Conservatives are once again playing games.
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Madam Speaker, I enjoyed the remarks from my colleague. One of the things that comes to mind when he talks about the Conservative Party's motivating factor is that this issue was part of an election platform for us back in September, but we were not unique. All political parties recognized how important it was that we take on these tech giants in order to ensure that we have an industry that is so critical to Canada's democracy, along with issues such as jobs.
It is an industry that we need to protect. It seemed back in September that all political parties recognized that fact. Now we have a government that is fulfilling one of many other election commitments. This particular debate that we were supposed to be having today on Bill C-18 was to deal with being there in a very real and tangible way to protect our news agencies, to ensure that we are levelling the field and ultimately ensuring fairer compensation so that we would have more fact-based news and protect our democracy and so many other things.
Could the member speculate as to why he believes the Conservatives are now putting up such a roadblock, when back in September they seemed to support the principle behind it?
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Madam Speaker, I will start by saying that I hope those who tune in to the goings-on of the House recognize that normally when a government member gives a speech, it is very rare that they receive a question from another government member. However, importantly, the very first question is coming from a government member. Where are the Conservatives to ask me questions right now?
This goes back to the point that, if the Conservatives are so interested in this motion they have put forward, why are they not participating in the debate? Conservatives should have had the first question, and they never asked me a question, yet they put forward this motion today because they are so passionate about the issue. I think it proves my point that they are not interested in anything other than just being obstructionist and burning three hours off the clock, which is what we have seen today.
To the member's question, Bill C-18 is a bill that would help many smaller news organizations, in particular. I think of the Kingstonist in my riding, which is a news organization that started from a grassroots level and has slowly worked its way up. It does not have the ability or the reach to compete with some of these other organizations, but it is very good at reporting on the facts. Very rarely will we know the opinion of a reporter at the Kingstonist. It is reporting on the facts, and we need that now more than ever. We need information that is based purely on fact to be provided to the public so the public can make their own decisions as to how they feel about an issue and not be influenced by a pundit's opinion or objective on one thing or another.
Bill C-18 is incredibly important because it would provide the resources to make sure that smaller news organizations, such as the Kingstonist in my riding, will have the opportunity to continue to do the very important work that they do.
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Madam Speaker, I want to rise on this point because I think this debate on an ethics concurrence motion is, of course, an effort at time-wasting, but some of the issues are substantive.
I never really had an opportunity to comment on what I made of the WE Charity scandal. Having attended meetings at finance committee, and having watched the Prime Minister's testimony and the testimony of his chief of staff, I came to the conclusion, for what it is worth, that the Prime Minister's Office did not politically interfere in this at all. It was Rachel Wernick, as a chief public civil servant, discovering that the Prime Minister's favourite pet project to deliver the program for youth was not yet up and running, and civil servants who I think were embarrassed to tell the Prime Minister that the youth service corps was not up and running, who scrambled to find something to cover for an announcement that had already been made. It was the civil servants who came up with the WE Charity as a possible way to deliver the program. That was my conclusion from watching the evidence.
However, I still think we should have been able to get to the bottom of it so all Canadians would have some assurance that we knew what this was. Also, the fact that it got called the “We Charity scandal” points to some other issues that I think are important, and one of them is that we really do need to amend, reform and modernized Canada's charity laws.
This is a roundabout way of saying that I had some thoughts on the matter, but I have never had a chance to get them on the record, and for that I thank the Conservatives for raising this concurrence debate. However, my thanks are rather overwhelmed by my frustrations that we are not debating Bill C-18.
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- May/30/22 6:15:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opinion of the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands as to what the results were. The Ethics Commissioner, in his investigation, came to the conclusions that he did, and that was it.
The member talked specifically about the WE Charity and its involvement in this, but let us not forget that, at the end of the day, WE Charity supported and helped a lot of children throughout this country. However, for no reason other than political gain, Conservatives were willing to walk all over that because they thought they could get an ounce of political gain out of it, and that is what they did.
WE Charity is not a Liberal organization or an NDP organization. As a matter of fact, the provincial government of Manitoba, in multiple budgets, awarded money to WE Charity to do work in Manitoba. WE Charity was an organization that many Conservative MPs had visited, frequented, participated in and encouraged.
WE Charity only became a lightening rod when the Conservatives decided it was time to use it as one for political gain. Up until that point, the Conservatives were all about WE Charity. Both Conservative MPs and Conservative governments throughout Canada routinely built funds into their budgets to give to WE Charity to do work for them.
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- May/30/22 6:17:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the presenter from the other side for his unique viewpoint on how the facts may or may not have occurred. It is quite surprising how the government has continuously tried to cover up the WE scandal.
If the Liberals are so open, honest and transparent, then why was cabinet confidentiality not lifted in this case in order to have the real facts and everything on the table? Unfortunately, that was not the case. Could the member explain to me why cabinet confidentiality was not released?
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- May/30/22 6:17:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the Conservatives for finally participating in the debate. I had to wait for three questions before they decided to be interested and ask me one. We listen to the rhetoric from the member talking about the WE Charity, ethics and a violation, and this and that, but I will remind him that the Ethics Commissioner determined that the Prime Minister had done nothing wrong. The Conservative member looks surprised when I say that right now. Just because his caucus members might be telling him that something was wrong, the Ethics Commissioner did not determine that.
I would encourage him to go back to read the report from the Ethics Commissioner because the Conservatives utilized a national charity that supported thousands of children, and with all due respect to my friends in the Bloc and the NDP, they were right along with them during the process. They utilized the charity, at the expense of those who would benefit from it, for political gain. The member is continuing to do it right now, even after the Ethics Commissioner came to his conclusion on it.
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