In my tenure, since being elected in December, I have seen the most unbelievable cascade of scandals and cover-ups in my lifetime under this Prime Minister and PMO. There is certainly no snickering about that.
I was noting that the Prime Minister was saying that we not believe the Canadian public service. After the fact we get a denial—a tweet, a press release or what have you—but that's not what was said. We have two independent former career diplomats, ambassadors, telling us that's what happened, that they received a call from the assistant deputy minister who told them that the instructions were from the PMO. Was he lying? Is the Prime Minister saying that the ADM was lying?
This is part of that pattern. We were told that the former attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, was lying. We were told that there was nothing to see, but somehow that ended up with the chief public servant, Michael Wernick, resigning in disgrace, and the Prime Minister's principal secretary resigning in disgrace. Two cabinet ministers resigned and were then kicked out of the Liberal caucus, but the Prime Minister said that the story in The Globe and Mail was false.
I will have a hard time believing this Liberal government trusts the media. I think it's very much encouraging the opposite with its undermining of the freedom of the press, undermining free speech by asking former ambassadors to run their comments through the PMO. It's certainly very troubling.
The parliamentary secretary mentioned I was elected recently. Yes, I had a front-row seat at the justice committee for the train wreck that was the SNC-Lavalin scandal. I watched your Liberal colleagues try to slam the door as many times as they could on witnesses: “No, we don't want to hear from the key players in that scandal.”
What we've heard is that this motion on the key players in what is likely another scandal of this Liberal Prime Minister and Liberal government won't be supported. No, we wouldn't want to shine any sunlight on that, certainly.
You'll have to excuse me, MP Oliphant, if I don't—