moved that the 22nd report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, presented to the House on Tuesday, June 18, be concurred in.
Mr. Speaker, I will be dividing my time with the member for Lethbridge.
I have mixed emotions about bringing this motion forward to the House today. I feel it is necessary that it be done. On the one hand, I am very proud and happy to do it. It is an issue that has been verballing around now since the last referendum in Quebec. It is something that should have been brought to a head with the report from the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs and it was not.
By not bringing this issue to a conclusion in the report, the Liberal majority in the House has allowed this to continue to percolate. The feeling of sadness I have about this is that this will come back to haunt us in the days and years to come.
What happened is now a matter of public record. The member for Charlesbourg sent around a communique, now known as the Jacob communique. It asked members of the Canadian Armed Forces to consider joining up with the Quebec armed forces in the event of a yes vote. It was brought forward at a very tense time in Canada's history when, as members know, we came within a per cent of losing a very important vote to keep the country together.
It is a matter of record that the communique was sent out indiscriminately to Canadian Armed Forces members. It asked them, I think, to contradict their oath of allegiance to Canada. It asked them to consider their position in a new Quebec army, an army that had not yet even been formed.
Due to the diligence of the member for Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt, he brought this to the attention of the House and to the attention of the Speaker. You ruled, Mr. Speaker, this was a very serious matter and should be referred to the committee on procedure and House affairs to deal with.
The reason I have mixed emotions about this is that I had hoped it would have been dealt with and that a contempt of Parliament would have been rendered. The reason I say this is that we will be dealing with this again in the next referendum campaign. No action has been taken by the House and by the committee. No action has been recommended against the member for Charlesbourg and no one here has found it necessary, now that the crisis is over, to give
advice to the Canadian Armed Forces on how to handle its affairs in the future.
When the crisis was on, it was called by the government whip "dangerously close to inciting mutiny in a moment of crisis". It is now being sloughed off as "it may be a mistake, but just let it go". The Minister of National Defence said this was a serious matter and that we could not have members of the House saying those kinds of things. Those were the minister's own words. However, a few months later he says "well, it is over now, let's just forget it". That is unacceptable.
It is unacceptable for the House to brush aside something that was dangerously close to mutiny and unacceptable behaviour, by the government's own admission, and then a few months later it says let us hope it does not happen again. It will happen again.
The member for Charlesbourg says-