Thank you very much, Chair.
It's incredibly frustrating to find ourselves in the third day of a Liberal filibuster to stop the release of documents that deal with the corruption scandal involving Justin Trudeau.
There's been a theme since 2015, and it's not openness by default; it's that every time Justin Trudeau needs to cover up his actions, he makes Liberal members pay the price. We saw that with all-night voting to block Daniel Jean from testifying. We saw that with all-night voting when the Liberals didn't want Jody Wilson-Raybould to be able to talk about the SNC-Lavalin scandal. Now we're back, and we see the Liberals filibustering to stop Canadians from getting answers in the Prime Minister's latest scandal. He's under investigation for a third time, twice having been found guilty of breaking ethics laws.
Here we are debating a motion that was approved by this committee. The committee debated and voted on receiving these documents, and we were to receive them. However, the Prime Minister shut down Parliament. On that same day, he released illegally redacted documents and then blamed the parliamentary law clerk for having redacted them, which we now know was not true. At the time, the Prime Minister said, “Well, we're proroguing, but there will be lots of time for questions.” It seems that was as disingenuous as a lot of things that we hear from the Prime Minister.
Now, across multiple committees.... We had a shutdown of a committee at PROC. We had the finance committee shut down. It was suspended for a week, and it's being filibustered concurrently with this committee. At the immigration committee, the meeting was adjourned—while they were dealing with a motion on COVID, I might add. They adjourned the meeting. The same thing happened at the health committee.
We heard from the Prime Minister this week. He got very upset that the opposition would dare to exercise their constitutional obligation to hold the government to account and said that we need to talk about COVID. The only people stopping parliamentarians from talking about COVID are the Liberals. That's it.
This could have been resolved in 10 minutes at the first meeting, and this is true of multiple meetings. That they filibustered the health committee is I think the supreme irony. It's the biggest tell that the Liberals have no interest in accountability. They have no interest in actually doing for Canadians what they claim they want to do, because if they did, the hours we're pouring into these filibusters could be devoted to all kinds of other things. This was a choice made by them.
Reading newspapers into the record, reading PCO memos into the record, reading the committee mandate and asking for the committee mandate in meeting after meeting does not get results for Canadians. That's being complicit in a cover-up into corruption in Justin Trudeau's government and around his cabinet table.
I've heard from members of the committee that this isn't Main Street, that this is the Ottawa bubble, and this isn't what people want us to focus on. Well, I can tell you that folks of any political stripe don't like corruption and they don't like cover-ups, and that's what this is.
The Ethics Commissioner is investigating the Prime Minister for breaking the law for a third time, but we have the ability, we have the power, to order these documents. This motion is in order; it is consistent with the mandate of this committee.
The individuals involved who are named in the motion are relevant to the matter at hand, and to try to skate around this and say it's some kind of a game that is just meant to delay getting results for Canadians.... We've shown as members and the official opposition and all opposition parties have shown that when the rubber hits the road, we're there. We're there to improve the programs that the government proposes and to pass them into law quickly when it is necessary to do so. To say that is just a shield to try to protect against the scrutiny—the rightful and lawful scrutiny—of what has gone on with this government.
When you talk about the pandemic and about measures to help Canadians, that's how this happened. That's how we got here. When given the opportunity to help students, when given the ability by parliamentarians, by Parliament, to create these programs and to help students, what did the government do? They found friends of the Liberal Party. They found insiders and tried to shovel some cash out the door to them. That's why we're here.
This is specifically about COVID, because instead of doing the right thing, the Liberals did what they always do, just as they did in Adscam. We saw it before under the guise of an altruistic purpose. They were helping out insiders and giving cash to their friends. While I'm sure we are going to be here for a very long time, that choice is one that's being made exclusively by the Liberals. For my part, I'm being consistent with exactly what we said we're going to do when the Prime Minister shut down Parliament, and that's to get these answers for Canadians.
It's surprising to me that the Liberals are taking it in such great stride across many committees with the coordinated cover-up efforts, and I'm certain that I'm going to hear I'm being partisan, that the Liberal members on the committee would never do such a thing and that this is about doing what's right. I have to say that if the shoe were on the other foot, I can guarantee you that Liberal members would be looking for accountability. I guarantee you that if across the border members of the President's family received half a million dollars in payments and then the company that paid them was asked to administer an agreement worth half a billion dollars, we would hear a lot of commentary. Those same members would be saying that we're certainly not like that. They'd say we have moral superiority, and never would that happen here, but it is happening here. It's happening inside the Liberal cabinet room. Now it's spreading into the Liberal caucus room and into the committee rooms.
The power to stop it is with the people who are sitting in on this call right now. I will cede the floor, Mr. Chair, and let all of the members of the committee make their contributions. Then, I'm sure, we'll hear supplementary contributions and then tertiary contributions.
We're here to get results for Canadians. Once this matter is disposed of, we can move on to other business, but the decision to travel this circular path is one that has been made by the Liberal members.
Like many people, I'm here in search of answers and accountability. We find ourselves here because of one person, and that person has twice been found guilty of breaking ethics laws and is under investigation for a third time. That person is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In the same way that he had members vote for hours and hours and days and days to stop accountability in the past, it seems that history is repeating itself.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.