Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Canadian Heritage made an error. He regrets his intervention to the CRTC on behalf of one of his constituents. He admits that his decision to write this letter was imprudent.
My question to the Minister of Canadian Heritage on October 28 raised a number of issues I wanted to clarify as they related to the minister's mistake. I wanted to clarify how the mistake occurred, how to prevent such an event from reoccurring, how to address the damage done and how to restore the lost credibility of the CRTC.
In his response, the minister suggested that I did not understand. He stated that his letter was not an intervention. This is not true. The facts are clear and simple.
On March 15 the minister wrote a letter to the CRTC on behalf of a constituent. On March 29 the minister received a response from the CRTC. Its response made it unequivocally clear that the minister's letter was received by the CRTC, stamped as an intervention and included in the Daniilidis application as a letter of intervention. The secretary general of the CRTC has concurred with these facts as they have been presented thus far. They are indisputable.
Further, the Prime Minister stated that the Minister of Canadian Heritage had made an error in judgment, that the letter was an intervention and he too wished the minister had not written the letter.
The sad fact is it is not I who is confused but the minister himself. Mr. Daniilidis, the CRTC, the Prime Minister, the cabinet ministers also named, the opposition and the Canadian public all know the minister intervened. The question is not if he intervened but why and how does he plan to clean up the mess he created.
When the CRTC wrote back to the minister on March 29 it was clear that the letter was understood to be an intervention. The minister stated that he moved quickly to remove this understanding.
The minister took no action for 199 days. Is this what he calls quick action? This complacency and inaction is exactly why Canadians have lost faith in politicians. Only when this issue became news was the minister stirred to react. The facts are that his actions belie his rhetoric.
This scandal has served as a lightning rod for all Canadians tired of lying politicians, tired of coverups and tired of repressive rhetoric. Errors like this one should not be tolerated.
As my questions to the minister continued, I focused on the issue of influence peddling. I asked about the influence of the letter of intervention on the application process. The minister, contrary to fact, denied that his letter was an intervention. As well, he chose not to address the issue of the damage he had caused to the credibility of the CRTC.
My office has been in contact with Mr. Daniilidis and some of the interveners in the process and everyone is concerned with the negative influence brought about by the minister's meddling. The minister's letter of intervention was received by the subcommittee prior to its rejection of the CHOM application. The subcommittee membership for the CHOM and the Daniilidis applications had overlapping membership. Given that the minister's letter supported the Daniilidis application prior to the CHOM rejection and given that the committee membership was the same, it is clear that the minister's letter had some influence.
However, once this whole affair became public, once the question of potential influence was posed, the CRTC had no choice but to reject the Daniilidis application.
The minister has an obligation to rebuild the credibility of the application process. He has an obligation to rebuild the credibility of the CRTC. He has an obligation to remove the blemish on his ministry. It is a long, long climb especially for a ministry weakened by such gross incompetence.