Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I want to thank you for those profound words. It is very important to remember that people across this country are watching what is happening here, and I think that little exchange about underwear and who is to blame for saying things about underwear represented a very low point in all the committees I have been on, and I have been on some very fractious and bitter committees.
I think what worries me is that this is the first committee in which the actual work of the committee, I believe, is being deliberately obstructed.
We had two meetings on this issue. Back in the summer we were about to get the Speakers' Spotlight documents. The Prime Minister prorogued the House. That shut the work of this committee down for well over a month. Then we came back, feeling that we were going to simply carry on and finish the report, which, I think, we would have easily been finished by now, but we ran into one obstruction after another from government members.
I have reached out to try to broker a couple of compromises because I believe it is our obligation to get these committees up and running. We don't get everything we want when we come into a committee hearing. We sometimes get compromises. It has been said many times that a camel is a racehorse that was designed by a committee. We all wanted the racehorse, but we end up sometimes with a lopsided camel. That is democracy.
I am feeling now a little regretful that I reached out to make those compromises, because I feel that whenever we agreed to change the motion to bring the Liberals onside, the playing field changed immediately.
We were told again and again by the Liberals that it was outrageous that we wanted to include Madam Margaret Trudeau and Sasha Trudeau and how much money they were paid through their work with WE. We were told that it was over the line, that it was a personal infringement, when the relevance to that issue was the fact that the WE group had started to make huge payments to the Trudeau family after the Prime Minister became elected, and when they were trying to get that $900 million program, they were using photos of the Prime Minister's family. It put the Prime Minister into a conflict of interest under section 5 of the act. This was a very legitimate question.
We told the Liberals we would have very strong processes in place to protect that documentation. The only thing we needed from the documentation was to verify it, because we had been given false statements. We had been told that the Trudeau family was absolutely not paid, and that wasn't true. Michelle Douglas from the WE board testified that she had asked straight up whether the Trudeau family had been paid and was told they weren't. Our committee had no reason not to trust the words we had heard. Those documents should have simply verified that, and we could have moved on, but the Liberals drew a hard line there.
I reached out and said that I was not all that interested in how much the Trudeau family were being paid. We had identified that it was a significant amount of money. Whether it was significantly more or not, we had been told that it didn't really change the matter. However, as soon as we made that agreement, suddenly it became terribly unfair that we were asking about the Prime Minister's wife, even though the Liberals had identified in those negotiations that it was husband and wife, Prime Minister and wife, who were the people who should be looked at. As soon as we shortened the focus, they wanted to change it again. I found that very concerning.
They came back in their negotiations and said they wanted us to look at the Frank Baylis deal, yet we have been hearing nothing from the Liberals about how terrible it is that we're investigating this Frank Baylis deal. They have been using examples of other people from PPE companies who make donations and saying that they shouldn't be dragged in just because they make donations to one party or another.
It's not the fact that Mr. Baylis made donations; it's the fact that he's a former member of Parliament. That's significant. Rahim Jaffer was a former member of Parliament who went back in with a new business deal, and he was charged, I believe, and convicted because he was breaking the rules by using his connections.
We just need to verify that those connections were not improperly used. That's a pretty straightforward thing. A committee study does not presuppose guilt. We're looking into examples.
When the Liberals said that they didn't want us to look at Mr. Silver but they wanted us to look at Mr. Baylis, I agreed. Then, suddenly, we were being told how terrible that was and that we were persecuting Mr. Baylis, so I don't have a lot of trust right now for the Liberals, particularly as I sit and listen to them, hour in and hour out, talk about anything other than getting this thing dealt with.
In terms of the Bloc amendment, I believe that the Bloc amendment was out of order, and I said that at the time. I said that if the Bloc voted to shut down the request for the documents, then that matter was finished. However, the chair ruled that it was in order. I can disagree with the chair, but once a decision has been made, then that's the decision that's been made by the committee, and we move on. We don't get to relitigate it, as the Liberals are doing. We don't get to say, “Well, it's not democratic because we didn't like the result.”
What was democratic was that a vote was taken and the chair ruled it in order, so now we need to move on, but we're not being allowed to move on. The Liberals continue to put up all matter of obstructions, even today, with my colleague claiming that the Liberals are actually concerned about the safety of Canadians—meaning what? Meaning that those of us who are doing our work at this committee are not worried about the safety of Canadians? I find that to be very, very offensive.
The sideshow we just witnessed about whether or not Stanfield's underwear, founded in I don't know what year, was unfair or fair, or a drive-by smear about Liberals who wanted to talk about the underwear thing, shows to me that this is obstruction.
I would give my Liberal colleagues two quotes. One is from March 7, 2011:
It has come to this, Mr. Speaker. In order for members of the House to do our jobs and make informed decisions on behalf of Canadians, we need to pry scraps of relevant information out of the [government's] clenched fists and drag it out of them as they kick and scream at committee.
Who said that? Justin Trudeau said that.
Justin Trudeau also said:
Mr. Speaker, bits of blacked-out documents with key information missing are not disclosure. Non-answers in the House are not disclosure. Rhetorical personal attacks are not disclosure. We need to get at the truth.
What has been hidden from us are the documents that were supposed to be released. Many of those pages were blacked out. That's not acceptable.
As far as the Speakers' Spotlight documents go, I was certainly surprised to learn that they didn't have all the documents, but I don't in any way assume that Speakers' Spotlight was involved in any cover-up. I would like to have them come and explain what happened, but I do know that Speakers' Spotlight has said that there is other information.
Let's just get that information and move on, because now the Liberals again have tried to move an out-of-order motion today—it's something they couldn't do—to limit the documents to 2013, when Speakers' Spotlight said that there is information preceding that. I don't think that this should be that big a deal. I think the documents should exonerate the Prime Minister and his wife. If their words are true, there shouldn't be a problem.
If we can get to this motion, we can bring in Speakers' Spotlight, because it is definitely not the work of our committee to insinuate that someone outside of a government has done something wrong. We just need to verify.
Our role here is to come up with a report for the Canadian people that they can use to make their decision, so I'd ask my colleagues to stop arguing about underwear, to stop telling us about how every single PPE mask and glove has been appropriated right down to the penny, to stop coming up with reasons they don't want to discuss this, and have a vote.
We're 33 hours into the vote. The Liberals are wasting taxpayers' money, they are wasting our time and they are making a mockery of a committee that has often been very fractious, often very partisan and controversial and, at times, very bitter, but that committee has always sat, it has always met, it has always voted, and it has always produced reports, so I'm telling my Liberal colleagues that the time has come.
I'd like to ask, Chair, if we could test the room to see if we're ready for a vote or if we're going to be stuck with more obstruction from the Liberals. Can we vote on this?