Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I was just extolling your virtues to this committee, Mr. Chair. I just want to say that I do appreciate your changing your ruling, because the fact is that we couldn't have, actually, any debates or any actions that we took after a privilege motion if the Speaker of the House had indeed ruled that my privileges were violated—which, I believe, they would have been if you had continued—and it would have nullified the important work of this committee that took place afterwards. It is really for the sake of this committee that I just clarify this very important standing order point so that we don't waste our time, because, as I said, this is a very important issue.
One thing that's very interesting is that we've had all of these meetings and I feel like there's been a real lack of coordination. I've heard very interesting testimony. We've heard from members of the Sikh community who have raised very serious concerns about their safety in Canada. We have these allegations of electoral interference, and we brought in Mayor Patrick Brown last week, who actually shed a lot of light on the fact that these allegations did not have any impact on the Conservative leadership race.
It just feels like the Liberals, at every one of these meetings, instead of wanting to talk about the broad issue—which is of deep concern to the Sikh community and to all Canadians, frankly—that a foreign government would interfere in any way in our country, especially in a criminal way, when we're seeing that Canadians are being killed, allegedly by agents of a foreign state...we seem to be going down this very narrow path. It's like the Liberals are like a rock climber and they've found this very tiny little ledge that they can attach their fingers to, and we're going down this rabbit hole while ignoring this very broad issue of the concerns of the Sikh community over their safety.
To illustrate what this little toehold is.... I don't think it's even a toehold. It's that, allegedly, my colleague, the Honourable Michelle Rempel Garner, was working on the Patrick Brown leadership campaign and during that time.... I believe this was during 2022. It was a very tumultuous time in Alberta. Jason Kenney was the premier at the time, and he went through a leadership review. He won 51% of the vote in that leadership review but chose to step down. That was a very tumultuous time.
I know that there were a lot of people in Alberta politics who were thinking about how they were going to fill that vacuum, and my colleague, Michelle Rempel Garner—I'm proud to be a colleague with her—was thinking about throwing her hat in the ring to succeed Jason Kenney as the Premier of Alberta, and because of that very.... I mean, it was a very serious undertaking to run for the leadership, because it's not just that she would become the leader of the party, the UCP, but that the leader of the UCP would automatically become the premier of Alberta.
You can imagine, Mr. Chair, how serious an undertaking that would have been for my honourable colleague, Michelle Rempel Garner, and the ability for her to do that while also co-chairing Mayor Brown's leadership campaign. I mean, I like to think I'm a hard-working member of this House, but to co-chair a federal leadership campaign while also running your own provincial leadership campaign.... I don't think there's any person in this room who could credibly claim that they could do both of those things at the same time.
It's very clear from Mayor Patrick Brown's testimony that we had last week, and the words of my colleague, the Honourable Michelle Rempel Garner, that she ceased to work on the leadership campaign of Mayor Brown so that she could pursue.... In the end, you know, she did initially pursue it, but she did not actually follow through with her run for Premier of Alberta.
I think that's a very credible and, frankly, true analysis, but we have the Liberals here who are trying to stake their claim on the idea that somehow the consul general of India relayed to Michelle Rempel Garner that they were unhappy about terminology that Mayor Patrick Brown was using in his campaign.
Mayor Brown certainly didn't think that crossed the threshold, although I did note that last week he said that if there were actual people being intimidated and not buying memberships to support him, that would cross the threshold, but none of that has actually really been, you know.... There has not been any evidence provided at this committee that this happened, so now we have the Liberals proceeding with every little sliver they can get. We're getting a new meeting, and this is going to go on forever.
What we really need to do is take a step back at this committee. We have a tremendous amount of work that we're doing. We still have the study of Corrections transferring the notorious killer Paul Bernardo to a medium-security prison. That report has not been finalized yet. That's something we started over a year ago. We have the auto theft report, which we could have actually completed. We could have gotten to it now. It's very important and we could have gotten to it, yet we're dealing with this ridiculous motion to invite people when the Liberals could just invite them themselves.
I just think that we're going down this road.... We're overly politicizing this issue. I think Mayor Brown made a very good point about this. He was reticent to come to this committee, and that's why he was summoned by the Liberals. He felt that the Liberal government was politicizing this issue and he didn't want to come. He did respect the will of the committee, and he did come.
We don't need to go any further down this path. I think we need to talk about the real, substantive issues, especially the alleged criminal activity that has taken place in Canada, and the intimidation of members of the Sikh community in particular. We just saw it in the House last week. I don't know if you saw this. Actually, you were there, Mr. Chair. I saw it in the House. One of your own members.... After a unanimous consent motion was put in the House, another member of your party came into the House and said that he was threatened in the lobby, the government lobby, by members of your caucus, Mr. Chair. Members of the Liberal caucus are threatening other members of the Liberal team over this issue, and I think that's highly concerning.
I'm not sure if the member is going to be bringing forward a privilege motion in the House, but I can tell you that if any person in this House.... Thankfully, I've never had to endure this myself, Mr. Chair. I've had very collegial relations in my seven years here in the House, but when I saw the member for Nepean come forward in the House and say that he had been threatened by members of his own caucus—
