Thank you, Ms. Davidson.
As the chair of another committee, I just want to point out at the beginning that it's sort of a pattern or a motif that we seem to be seeing at the start of this 41st Parliament, where the Conservatives have come on gangbusters to sabotage and undermine legitimate work of the committee by not allowing any opposition matters to be up for a subjective investigation or debate, by pretty much announcing here are the subjects we're going to study between now and Christmas and here are the witnesses we're going to have.
As Mr. Angus pointed out, they don't even seem interested in allowing any contrary witnesses in the studies--CBC, for example.
It really worries me, and it worries a lot of people, that the Conservatives have set out to sabotage and undermine the ability for committees to undertake meaningful work. In fact, they should take note, and I caution them, that they may be doing irreversible damage to the institution of Parliament if they systematically destroy the ability of committees to operate as they were intended to function.
Let me say to you, Ms. Dawson, and we're glad to have you here, that especially the first three-quarters of your presentation was a bit of a civics lesson on what the Office of the Ethics Commissioner does. I think the lesson is especially valuable to my colleagues across, because if there were penalties for frivolous and vexatious complaints, surely this would be one. I think there should be sanctions, especially when it's used to grandstand in such a....
I think Dean is far too good an MP to actually believe that this complaint was properly before the Ethics Commissioner. But he seems to be using a scattergun of stupidity lately, where he's inviting judges to appear before parliamentary committees knowing full well the constitutional separations between the legislative executive and the judiciary, and filing complaints to you, I think misusing the process just in order to grandstand on an issue that he knows full well isn't properly there.
I guess in response to this, there's only one investigation for criminal activity currently under way regarding election financing fraud, and that is the former president of the Conservative Party, the former chief fundraiser of the Conservative Party, the former campaign manager of the Conservative Party--all of whom are senators--for orchestrating the largest election fraud in Canadian history, the in-and-out scandal, which they learned in my home province of Manitoba, I must say, because the only person ever convicted of this is the current Minister of Public Safety, Vic Toews, charged, tried, and convicted of the same in-and-out scandal that became the prototype for the master scandal, the master fraud, that the Conservative Party undertook.
We tried to investigate these things in the last Parliament, as I think we were justified in doing, and this is some kind of revenge. This is some kind of bullying revenge so that they can grandstand and somehow change the channel over the real election fraud going on in this country.
Let me address just briefly some of Dean's remarks here. I mean, you can't tell me that their Conservative conventions don't have a cocktail party sponsored by big pharma or big oil--or “big ass” as my former leader used to call them. Any of those issues being dealt with by Elections Canada...they've found that it's perfectly legit.
The one thing I would point to is that an awful lot of our Ethics Commissioner's time has been dealt with investigating the Dykstra complaint, the Raitt complaint. I mean, let's talk about the propriety of that, of having the minister....
Or take the Paradis issue; let's talk about Christian Paradis, the Minister of Public Works. A bunch of construction contractors in Quebec who want to get Public Works contracts hold a big fundraising event for the Minister of Public Works. Can anybody draw a connection between buying a thousand-dollar ticket to a fundraising dinner for the Minister of Public Works and then, in the next couple of months, getting a big $9 million contract on the West Block, to some gang from...or all mobbed up by the Hells Angels? I mean, do you think there might be a connection there that's worthy of investigation from an ethical point of view?
Or Lisa Raitt; I mean, lobbyists hold fundraisers for her, in the former...you know, as a minister, in the port authority--