I thank you for the clarification, Madam Chair, but I will emphasize the point that a list of at least eight, if not nine, potential subject matter experts was submitted to this committee last Friday, and here we are, 12-plus hours removed, with a potential another 12 hours today, setting aside talking about the merits of this bill without hearing from witnesses.
That could have happened as early as Monday. It could have happened yesterday, and it could have happened today. But—and this is the big “but”—with the assistance of their coalition partners, the NDP, the Liberals are insisting that the Conservatives are silencing one of their own, the sponsor of the bill, Arnold Viersen. I'm not going to repeat the interventions that I had last Thursday on this particular issue, but I think it's important, because we heard at great length yesterday from both Mr. Maloney and Mr. Bittle about the necessity of hearing from Mr. Viersen, and they asked why we are preventing Mr. Viersen from speaking to this bill.
As I indicated to committee last Thursday, and I've emphasized this already in my opening remarks, the Liberals, with their NDP partners, want to play petty politics. They don't want to hear from Arnold Viersen, because he is a true, passionate pioneer when it comes to advocating for victim rights. If this were any other Conservative member who sponsored this bill, we would be questioning witnesses today. We would have questioned witnesses yesterday. We would have questioned witnesses this past Monday, and I dare say that we would have been questioning witnesses as early as last Thursday.
No, what they want to do—and when I say “they”, I'm referring to the Liberal members with the NDP—is get on their soapboxes to vilify Mr. Arnold Viersen for his personal views.
As a case in point, Mr. Maloney, in a Twitter feed—or X feed, I should say—lowered the gauntlet on October 25, 2024, when he stated in a tweet, “Justice Committee is ready to study @ArnoldViersen’s Private Member’s Bill. We’d like him to appear to speak to this Bill before the deadline. Arnold: will you appear? Or is Pierre gagging you because you keep fighting against women’s right to choose?”
That has nothing to do with his position regarding victims, what this bill is about—and I will be speaking about the merits of this bill during the intervention.
Mr. Maloney followed that up with a couple of other tweets. On November 1, he posted, “So do you want to hear from Arnold, or not? Two hours of filibuster, and @ArnoldViersen is still missing in action on his own Bill. Conservatives made one thing clear—they’re blocking him from talking. Makes you wonder…is it something Arnold said?”
He doubled down on that earlier tweet, and then yesterday James Maloney said in a tweet, “How far are Conservatives willing to go to censor their own team? Entering hour 4 of a Conservative filibuster with the sole goal of stopping @ArnoldViersen from presenting his own Bill at Justice Committee. Free Arnold from CPC witness protection program. #WheresArnold”.
You want to hear Arnold's voice. I'm going to be his surrogate and read out Arnold's voice. I'm going to read into the record his debate at second reading.
