In fact, it wasn't just anyone. It was Anderson's father who was responsible for logistics, not Randy. Not a Randy, and then he couldn't verify....
Global News wanted to know the last name of this Randy, and he couldn't say. He didn't know. I mean, this is a guy who's supposedly involved in logistics, one of the key people in his company, and he can't cite his last name. We should trust him, though: It's this Randy, this mysterious Randy without a last name.
Give me a break.
How does that add up? Global News can't find this Randy. Anderson can't remember his last name. Randy Boissonnault can't be bothered, evidently, to pick up the phone and text. I mean, he seems to have been quite comfortable texting Anderson, but all of a sudden he can't text Anderson to ask, “Who is this Randy? I need to clear the air.”
Could Anderson not pore over all of the employment records of the five people who work at the company to find this mysterious Randy? Then Boissonnault said that he turned over his phone records to this committee. He stood in the House and said that he had turned over his phone records to the committee.
It turns out that it was another lie from Randy. He didn't turn over his phone records. He turned over one device. What a coincidence. How convenient. You know, some of this is almost funny, but again, I underscore that it really isn't funny. It isn't funny at all when we're dealing with allegations around a $500,000 fraud and the potential that a minister of the Crown violated the Conflict of Interest Act and is playing Canadians for fools—as if Canadians are foolish, as if everyone is an idiot. No one is fooled by this. No one is. Everyone knows that the Randy in the text messages, the Randy involved in the $500,000 fraud, is the same Randy who sits as a minister in Justin Trudeau's cabinet, and his name is Randy Boissonnault. Everyone knows that.
It speaks to how little respect Justin Trudeau and his ministers have for Canadians and how little respect they have for the law. They think they're above the law. They think the law doesn't apply to them. Dominic LeBlanc didn't think it applied to him. Mary Ng didn't think it applied to her. Bill Morneau didn't think it applied to him. Greg Fergus didn't think it applied to him. Justin Trudeau didn't think it applied to him. Randy Boissonnault doesn't think it applies to him.
Mr. Chair, we need to get answers. When Mr. Boissonnault came before this committee, he didn't answer any real questions. He wasn't fully truthful. In some cases, he lied outright. In other cases, he gave partial answers or non-answers or interrupted, all to avoid accountability. It was not a pretty spectacle, what this committee saw, but it was another exhibit, another example, of how this government and the ministers in it operate.
We need to keep probing. We need to continue to hold hearings. Yes, it's good, and yes, it's fine that this committee adopted a motion today to invite Mr. Anderson and Ms. Poon, who very conveniently have been unable, supposedly unable, or unavailable to attend at this committee until, very conveniently, the summer, when they know the House isn't sitting.
We've dealt with that. We passed a motion today. That's fine, but I don't think it should take, after that, Standing Order 106(4) to continue the probing on this very, very serious matter. If the Randy in the text messages isn't the same Randy who is the minister in Justin Trudeau's cabinet, the air would have been cleared long ago.
I say we need to leave it to the chair. It's in the Standing Orders. If we need to have additional meetings this summer on the matter of Mr. Boissonnault, then we should do that. We don't need to come here for a 106(4) to then schedule additional meetings. Keep it simple. Leave it to the discretion of the chair to call a meeting. Maybe we need to call Mr. Boissonnault back. We probably do after we hear from Ms. Poon and Mr. Anderson. Let's provide the chair with the flexibility to do that. We can continue to have conversations off-line as these matters progress.
That's the case of Mr. Boissonnault, but I would go back to what I said at the beginning, that this is part of a coordinated effort by the Liberals to shut down the work of all committees. Several other committees are holding hearings on Liberal corruption, including the $60-million arrive scam at government operations and the green slush fund at the public accounts committee, a slush fund involving Liberal insiders who, under the watch of Navdeep Bains and the current minister, engaged in 186 conflicts in which board members funnelled hundreds of millions of dollars to their own companies. In some 63 cases involving $76 million, board members at the green slush fund actually voted to funnel money into their own companies.
It's straight-up conflicts. It's straight-up corruption. The public accounts committee has been holding hearings now that we have the benefit of the Auditor General's report, which made those findings, but it's no surprise that the Liberals want to shut down the work of the public accounts committee over the summer as well.
I get it. I get why they want to shut things down. They don't want to have to deal with all of these scandals that they have to somehow justify and defend, but I can't understand why the NDP would be a partner of the Liberals in this regard. I guess the reason is part of the fact that they're in a coalition with the Liberals and propping up the Liberals not only in matters of policy but in terms of covering up their corruption.
Now, I think this committee is a very busy committee after nine years of Justin Trudeau. Mr. Brock is going to be questioning the commissioner of the RCMP this afternoon on, among other things, the SNC-Lavalin scandal—another massive scandal involving this Prime Minister.
It's a scandal that I'm quite familiar with, because I sat on the justice committee when the justice committee held hearings on SNC. We heard from Jody Wilson-Raybould, who appeared at our committee in the spring of 2019, on what was truly a historic day, but not in a good way. She came before the committee and spoke about all the times she was pressured by Justin Trudeau and those around him, including Mr. Wernick, the clerk of Justin Trudeau's personal department, the PCO; Katie Telford, the Prime Minister's chief of staff; and Gerald Butts, the Prime Minister's then-principal secretary. She was repeatedly pressured to interfere in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, and she laid that out in detail.
The RCMP did launch an investigation into what happened during SNC, and Mr. Brock detailed the fact that it took them five years, and then they, for reasons that are not fully understood, shut down that investigation, an investigation that, among other things, looked into whether the Prime Minister obstructed justice.
One of the things that is important to understand about the RCMP's investigation into Justin Trudeau is that the investigation was obstructed by Justin Trudeau, and that was confirmed when the RCMP came before this committee, including by the RCMP officer who headed the investigation.
How the Prime Minister obstructed the RCMP investigation was by hiding behind cabinet confidence in refusing to turn over key documents to the RCMP, documents that the RCMP had requested be turned over to them. The RCMP requested those documents because the RCMP determined that they were absolutely material to determining whether in fact the Prime Minister obstructed justice.
Now, to provide a bit of background on what the RCMP requested, the Prime Minister's refusing to turn over the documents and what the Prime Minister did turn over versus what he didn't turn over, you have to go back to the spring of 2019. You have to go back to before Jody Wilson-Raybould came before committee. She essentially had a gag that had been placed over her by the Prime Minister, having to do with cabinet confidence. She said, look, there's a lot I'd like to talk about in terms of what went on behind closed doors, but I can't because of cabinet confidence.
I can remember the day that Bill Morneau brought down the budget in 2019. We shouted at him: “Let her speak. Let her speak. Take the gag off Jody Wilson-Raybould.” Well, in the face of significant political pressure, the Prime Minister partially did—partially, but not fully. The Prime Minister lifted or waived cabinet confidence up until Jody Wilson-Raybould was shuffled out as the Minister of Justice. What she could not reveal, what cabinet confidence has not been lifted, is what happened from the time that she was shuffled out of the portfolio of Minister of Justice and Attorney General to the time that she was fired from cabinet altogether by Justin Trudeau.
Why does that matter? Well, according to the RCMP, when they appeared before this committee, the strongest theory that the Prime Minister obstructed justice was that he removed Jody Wilson-Raybould as Attorney General and installed a new Attorney General because that new Attorney General would make a different decision from the one Jody Wilson-Raybould had. In other words, the new Attorney General would do the Prime Minister's bidding.
That is what the RCMP said is the strongest theory on the question of whether the Prime Minister committed obstruction of justice. It's why the RCMP requested cabinet documents during that period. The RCMP did confirm at committee that, yes, that period is absolutely material to determining whether the Prime Minister obstructed justice, and the Prime Minister has consistently refused to lift cabinet confidence during that period, so what we have is a Prime Minister who is obstructing the RCMP investigation.
Now, one can draw conclusions as to why.... Jody Wilson-Raybould has said that there are things she would like to say, but she can't—about that—period. The RCMP says that all of that evidence is material to getting to what is the strongest theory that the Prime Minister obstructed justice.
Could it be that the Prime Minister is hiding behind cabinet confidence because there's strong evidence that he obstructed justice? I would submit or suggest that this is the case. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the Prime Minister, if he didn't cross the line of obstructing justice, came right up to the line in the best-case scenario for the Prime Minister.