Thanks, Madam Chair.
To pick up where we left off, I was speaking about the necessity of this committee's undertaking a study of the “Trudeau II Report”. To advance this and to have everyone on the same page, I'd like to describe the sequence of events, the timeline, that has led us to this point.
This comes out of statements by the Prime Minister in 2015 that with a Liberal government, we would have a government that was open and transparent by default. Instead, on the very day this story first broke in February 2019, the immediate response was that it was false. In subsequent months, we heard time and again that the Prime Minister did not pressure former attorney general Ms. Wilson-Raybould. We know that to be not true; we know that was not an honest statement.
The story, which you can say evolved, changed. It changed throughout the months that followed the revelations in February of last year. As it evolved, it went from being false to being....The cabinet shuffle was the result of Scott Brison's resigning. Then we heard it was Stephen Harper's fault, and then we heard it was about jobs.
The jobs refrain got locked-in, and we heard it over and over again. The only reason the Prime Minister undertook the sustained campaign of political pressure on Ms. Wilson-Raybould was in the name of re-election. It was because of the general election that was planned for October 2019.
Even after the Ethics Commissioner released his report finding the Prime Minister guilty of breaking ethics laws for the second time, the Liberals continued to block the investigation of the scandal at every turn.
With this new motion, I want all members of the committee, including Liberal members who share benches with their cabinet colleagues and all opposition members—my colleagues in the Conservative caucus, the Bloc Québécois, and the NDP—to have an opportunity to give Canadians closure on this issue.
We saw the report by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, and he has not reported back to this committee. That's essential. We also heard that the government had confidence and trust in officers of Parliament. Regrettably though, we know that full transparency wasn't granted during the investigation and that obstruction continued in that process.
I expect that my colleagues on both sides of the House would agree that we want to have a Parliament for Canadians where they know that the truth will come out. That should be a strong deterrent to bad judgment or bad behaviour.
One can appreciate the use of certain rules to protect strategy or issues of national security and public safety because these necessitate secrecy in government. For political reasons—and they can be partisan reasons—Canadians expect that when an investigation is undertaken by an independent officer of Parliament, the latter will be given unfettered access. If there's a reason to invoke secrecy requirements, they expect there to be an off ramp for that officer of Parliament to review the information, determine its relevance, and that its reportability to committee and to Canadians then be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Last year, on February 12, there was a letter sent from Andrew Scheer, Leader of the Opposition, to Prime Minister Trudeau, which said:
I call on you to immediately waive solicitor-client privilege in respect of any advice given to you or your staff in relation to the prosecution of SNC Lavalin. Additionally, I call on you to also waive any and all rights to confidentiality in respect of communications to or from yourself or any member of your staff, previous or current, in relation to the prosecution of SNC Lavalin.
It went on to say:
If you do not meet this obligation, Canadians can only conclude that there is something that you wish to keep hidden.
This letter is from the outset last February. While the position of the government has evolved, we have maintained the same position. We want transparency. We want openness. We want accountability from the government, and that's what Canadians expect.
This continued in the justice committee in 2019 when, in an emergency meeting of the committee—and at the time I was a member of the standing committee—opposition members were blocked by the Liberal members of the committee in their first attempts to shed light on this scandal. So from the outset on that committee, we saw government members quickly fall into line with the government. We, of course, persisted, because that's what we heard from Canadians loudly and clearly. From coast to coast to coast, we heard phone calls and saw letters pour into our offices—certainly they did into mine—from people who demanded more from this justice committee.
On February 20 of last year, there was an opposition day motion put forward by the third-place party, the NDP, seeking an inquiry. This motion calling for an inquiry—