The hon. member is wrong in his assertion. Those people spoke French on board ships and they worked alongside anglophones as a unit, a team for Canada.
I have asked myself many times over the last couple of days and months since the referendum in Quebec what those young Canadians would say about this communiqué. I know those young Canadians would find this communiqué offensive to them.
Over the last five months I have heard from Canadians from coast to coast telling me Canadians found this communiqué offensive. It crossed the line. It brought those men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces into a debate of secession of a province. They should not be brought into this. They have sworn allegiance to the whole of Canada, not to one part.
Over the last couple of days some questions have been raised in the House about my motion. The motion represents the views of Canadians who have consulted with me for some five months now on the subject.
I am not a lawyer. I stand here and say I am an ordinary Canadian. I do not practice law and I never have practised law. I am an ordinary Canadian. With the resources at my disposal I put together the feelings Canadians expressed to me through letters, telephone calls, faxes. I put those feelings into a motion I presented in the House which the Speaker found to be in order and also to be a prima facie case.
If there is anything wrong with my motion, it is not in the drafting or in the spirit of the motion. It is in the way it is being interpreted by some people in the House who would have been against any motion that draws the line in the sand for Canadians which says clearly: "If you cross this line, it is wrong". That is what I was trying to accomplish. I believe I did in the intent of the motion.
The Liberals are trying to ignore the original charge of seditious and offensive behaviour. Let us talk about that for a moment. There have been accusations in the House that I have prejudged, convicted the hon. member for Charlesbourg. There is nothing further from the truth. In my remarks when I introduced the motion I said this was to be an opportunity for the member to have his day in court, for due process to take place.
If we go outside these hallowed halls and talk to the police, the first thing that must happen when a crime is committed and there is a suspect is that a charge must be laid. That is what I did in the House. I laid a charge.
How can we be certain the Liberals will investigate the specific spirit of what my motion intends to do? We cannot. Once again the Liberals are worried about the politics of this thing. They are so afraid of offending someone from Quebec that they are willing to abandon the possible criminal aspects of this matter and put politics first. They are seeking to once again pursue the mandate of the status quo. They are concerned only with what is politically correct.
As Canadians how do we make our laws? How do we choose what is right and wrong in society? The answer is clear. The answer lies in what is morally acceptable to Canadians. That is what it is all about. It is about what is morally acceptable to Canadians, whether it be in the Criminal Code, whether it is a murder charge or stealing. That is where we draw the line in the sand. That is when we say if you step over this line you will be charged. That is what we are doing here. If that is not what the House is for, this place where we have come to represent our constituents, what are we doing here?
My motion's intent is clear. It is aimed at the House to decide if what the hon. member for Charlesbourg did was over that line. That is what I was asking. The charge had to be laid because there is no way to proceed unless a charge is laid, as there is no way to proceed in a case outside these walls if a policeman comes across a crime and a suspect. Otherwise he would have no vehicle to make his charge.
That is what I have done. I have used the vehicles and the resources available to a member of Parliament to bring this matter forward and debate it in the place it should be debated, the most open forum in Canada represented by every corner of the country, the Parliament of Canada, the highest court in the land. We should all be concerned with the integrity of the House. We should be trying to decide if what has been done is appropriate.
Yesterday I offered to co-operate with all sides of the House to get to the bottom of this situation. I discovered the Liberals had the intent to gut my motion, to rip it apart, to pull the life out of it. At the hands of the Liberal whip my motion has been torn to shreds,
which is a shame for the House, a shame for the men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces and a shame for all Canadians.
Canadians are not getting what they wanted here. Canadians wanted to draw that line to ensure that when there is a threat of secession again members of the Canadian Armed Forces do not get drawn into that debate.
It is not the same as the post office, it is not the same as a crown corporation. Those people are not the same as that. Why? Because of the oath of allegiance they have sworn to their country and to lay down their lives if they have to for their country.
I will shift to what the Liberal government has done with this matter. As a private member of Parliament on the opposition in the third party I took it upon myself to do something that should have been done right over there by the Liberal Government of Canada, which ignored the issue and did nothing. It says it did something.
The Minister of National Defence in many newspaper articles and many media interviews called this act outrageous, that Canadians should be outraged at this communiqué. He said it was inappropriate. He went so far as to say the hon. member for Charlesbourg should be removed as the official opposition defence critic. He also said that he would consult with the Minister of Justice. He said that he would consult with the judge advocate general of the Canadian Armed Forces. He did that and we heard no more.
What did we hear from the Minister of National Defence? We heard nothing. We heard not a word. Now the government says that the judge advocate general has issued a report. Canadians are waiting to hear what this report has to say and we are told: "We are not going to tell you. We are simply not going to tell you what is in the report".
The judge advocate general wears two hats in this country. First and foremost his job is to administer the military justice system in Canada to make sure it operates properly. The second hat he wears is as legal adviser to the executive management team at the Department of National Defence and he is the legal adviser to the Minister of National Defence.
That is why the judge advocate general cannot release the report he was asked to write. He is the lawyer for the Minister of National Defence. He would be betraying a confidence if he did. The Canadian people are out of luck because of this situation with the judge advocate general.
It is a sad situation. Canadians would naturally expect that if the judge advocate general felt there was no basis for a charge in this regard, then what is the problem with releasing the report? One would think there would be no problem at all and it would be natural to release the report saying that nothing has been found. I guess that will not be done unless considerable pressure is put on.
I will go back for a moment to the issue of laying a charge. If for instance a police officer came upon a murder scene and he had a suspect, would he charge the suspect with murder or would he charge him with the misuse of a blunt instrument or the improper use of a pillow or a rock, or probably under this administration poor storage of a handgun? I would say that the charge would have to be murder. There may be other charges but the main charge would not be ignored. Only in this place is that done.
I ask that each member of the House consider if the action of the member for Charlesbourg was offensive to himself or herself. People watching at home, Canadians, ask yourselves the same question. Then each member of this House should do the right thing and vote against the amendment the government has put forward and endorse my motion as originally placed before the House.