Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I heard my colleague speak vigorously and I want to congratulate him on his very good speech. As committee members, we must all look at this issue. However, I'm trying to better understand where the opposition members' motion is coming from.
I gather that they want to obtain documents dating back to 2008 because they believe that the current Prime Minister and WE were involved in some type of scheming at the time.
Nothing happened from 2008 to 2015, since the Liberal Party was in opposition and was only the third party. However, from 2015 to 2019, the Liberal Party had a majority in the House. At that time, I sat with my colleague Mr. Warkentin on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. In a way, we were trying to correct the idea that if you give contracts to our mother or brother, we'll give you contracts.
From 2015 to 2019, we sat and did nothing, until Mr. Trudeau apparently planned a global pandemic. The government then decided to award a contract to WE, supposedly to please the Prime Minister's family. I've read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and several other fiction books. I've found more truth in those books than in what the opposition parties are saying right now.
According to these parties, the Liberal members aren't being transparent right now. Let me explain how Parliament works. Often parliamentarians who have been here for a long time, such as Mr. Warkentin and Mr. Gourde, seem to forget what they've done in the past. In doing so, they apply a double standard to our parliamentary democracy.
With that, Mr. Chair, I'm just trying to get a good understanding of what the opposition is trying to propose and where they're trying to go with this particular motion.
I have to say that I'm very inspired by Mr. Warkentin's speech and I want to remind everyone on this committee—and we're almost coming up to the seventh anniversary of the November 6, 2013, vote—because I think it's important, that if we are to hold government to account, or any member of Parliament to account, we ought to let the public know where they were on November 6, 2013. On the vote topic I'll have to read the particular motion of where that stands.
On November 6, 2013, it read:
That the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics be instructed to examine the conduct of the Prime Minister's Office regarding the repayment of Senator Mike Duffy's expenses; that the Prime Minister be ordered to appear under oath as a witness before the Committee for a period of 3 hours, before December 10, 2013; and that the proceedings be televised.
Mr. Chair, just to go back and bring everybody back, before prorogation we had the Prime Minister appear before the committee, which is unprecedented by the way. And we had the Prime Minister's chief of staff appear before the committee.
I know that Mr. Barrett and Mr. Poilievre sent a letter to the Ethics Commissioner and they tried to go after the husband of the Prime Minister's chief of staff but the commissioner politely declined. I noticed in the spirit of transparency that both the member for Leeds-Grenville and the member for Carleton didn't particularly share that information with their constituents. I didn't see them tweet any information about how their requests were declined and how they were ridiculed by the Ethics Commissioner. The commissioner said, Mr. Poilievre and Mr. Barrett, we've heard your concerns. We've heard your false accusation, but when you have real proof, please send it to us because it makes no sense at all. They didn't share that information and I'm wondering, in the spirit of transparency, if Mr. Barrett would share that in this particular committee, and whether he shares that in his householder to his particular constituents. Again, it's all in the spirit of transparency. I think we owe it to the population of Canadians, to all of us, as parliamentarians to be transparent with our constituents when it comes to ethics matters.
Mr. Chair, bringing us back to the motion at hand—