Thank you, Madam Chair.
I think it's really important for Canadians to understand why this is such a big deal. You have come from a very partisan past, what some might describe as a hyperpartisan role, given the fact that you have served in executive-level positions. I think you said that nationally you were director of the Liberal Party and president of the youth wing. You were parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister right up until the beginning of this fall session. Those are roles in which you were very close with the government and very close with the Prime Minister himself.
When you ran for Speaker or once you won and transitioned into being Speaker, members of Parliament had to kind of park that history of yours and trust that you were going to be non-partisan and objective.
The fundamental rule of being Speaker is also one of the easier rules to follow, and that is that you don't do partisan things. You don't participate in partisan events. You don't say things publicly or certainly while wearing the Speaker's robes in the Speaker's office that would have any connection to partisan activities or partisanship or indicating partisan favour.
You did an interview with The Globe and Mail in which you praised a sitting Liberal politician. He's currently an MPP, and he's given every indication that he's going to run again as a Liberal in Ontario, so it's not as though it was a retirement party or that he was going off to do something else. He's going to continue being an active partisan player in Ontario politics. You referred to the Ontario party as “our party”.
All of this has come to light. In addition to this, we understand that your chief of staff—and I understand your hesitance to name certain people at committee, but he is listed on a public website, the government employee directory service—Tommy Desfossés, was very close with the current Prime Minister, Prime Minister Trudeau. He was his executive assistant at one point, and now he's your chief of staff. You have had a hyperpartisan role in your very recent past and you hired someone very quickly out of the PMO who has very close personal relationship with the Prime Minister, and now this has come to light.
You talked about the arbitrator and you didn't quite address the nature of my question. If you were a hockey player and you were about to play a game and you just saw the referee in his uniform giving a pep talk to the locker room of the opposing team, it wouldn't matter what the context was—would it? You wouldn't want that official refereeing your game. If you were involved in some kind of dispute that needed an arbitrator and you saw that judge in his robes at an event with opposing counsel, no matter what the context was, you couldn't unsee that.
You've now acknowledged that it was a grave error in judgment. As many colleagues have mentioned, you are trusted to make on-the-spot decisions without time to run things through filters or decision-making trees, and we have to trust that those decisions are coming from a non-partisan and objective place. I would suggest that the fact that you didn't see that shows that you're still too close to the partisanship of it. You're too close with these partisan players if you don't see how, for members of other parties, that would be a problem.
Again, I ask you this: Would you want to hear your case adjudicated or would you want to play in a sports game, having seen the referee or having seen the judge or arbitrator involved in that type of display with an adversary or an opponent? Having seen that would you trust that process?