Mr. Speaker, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to rise on debate in the House. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to tell the people of Canada about the strength of the opposition in the House, because if it were not for the Bloc Quebecois—and I give them full marks—if it were not for the pressure of the Conservatives and also of the Reform Party, this kind of motion would never have come to the House. This kind of action would never take place under the Liberal government.
It absolutely astounds me, with the encroachment of organized crime into every part of Canadian life, that the government just basically sits on its hands.
I look at the fact that the speaker just immediately prior to me, in answer to a question from a Bloc member, said that under the auspices of the chair of the committee on justice that everything will go well. I remind the House that the chair who is presently in that seat is the former solicitor general. It was under that solicitor general that many of these pieces of inaction in fact continued to fester.
I draw the attention of the House to a specific case. Let us take a look at some specifics. As a result of coverage in the news media, I and members of the House have learned that in 1997 RCMP Corporal Robert Read reported a cover-up of incompetence, negligence and corruption within DFAIT and immigration and complained of criminal misconduct by his superiors. This related to activities that had happened in the very late eighties and early nineties in Canada's office in Hong Kong.
The RCMP did not acknowledge that complaint much less investigate it. In January 1998, Corporal Read took his documented complaint to the RCMP Public Complaints Commission. He was told it was the wrong venue, and indeed it was the wrong venue. The reality is that within the purview of the government, within the bureaucracy of the RCMP, there is no correct place for that complaint if the RCMP hierarchy will not act on allegations of this nature.
In January 1999, he took the same complaint and documentation to the auditor general. None of these investigative bodies are investigating this complaint, and Corporal Read is a veteran insider. None of them are investigating the complaint that a major cover-up is continuing today within the government's bureaucracy.
Mr. Speaker, I apologize, I have to parenthesize. I failed to mention that I am sharing my time with the member for Surrey Central.
I have personally questioned Corporal Read. He has confirmed and detailed his allegations to me. As a matter of fact, I have seen pages and pages and pages of documented evidence that clearly substantiates that there must be an investigation into his allegations of cover-up on the part of the RCMP.
The purpose of this cover-up is to protect the government from the public humiliation of being systematically deceived by its own employees. The effect has been damage to Canada's national security.
It is all very well and good for the government to say that a wonderful measure has been put forward by the opposition. It thinks the Bloc motion is a good one and that it should be proceeding with it. I want to know from the government in this debate today why the allegations about which I have just informed the House have not been acted on by the government. Why has the government been sitting on its hands in the face of this stonewalling?
It started in 1997. After two years of bureaucratic stonewalling Corporal Read made his complaint public. What happened? He was suspended. Rather than the RCMP actually doing anything he was suspended. To the best of my knowledge there has never been any further action taken to investigate the allegations about Corporal Read to this date. Corporal Read's findings of negligence, incompetence and corruption have not been challenged. It appears no one will investigate even though the complaint is substantial and has been documented.
This is a first step. Thanks to the opposition, issues of this type will come before the standing committee. I can tell the House what I fully anticipate in committee. There will be further stonewalling by the majority representing the government in that committee. Furthermore, as I pointed out, the chair of the committee is a former solicitor general who in 1997, when these events were taking place, was the solicitor general.
Will the current solicitor general appoint an independent prosecutor to examine the evidence of Corporal Read? Not only the evidence of Corporal Read. A lot of the evidence is substantiated by pages and binders full of information, graphs and flowcharts on information compiled by Brian McAdam, a former immigration official in the Hong Kong office at the time of the alleged incidents.
I do not understand how we can end up in Canada with a professional bureaucracy that would allow this kind of situation to continue to fester. Why has this never been properly investigated? If the solicitor general will not act, will the Speaker of the House order the auditor general to report directly to the House?
These are serious allegations. I am fully aware of the seriousness of the allegations I am relating to the House. I am taking responsibility for that as a member of parliament. I will repeat. These allegations have been brought to the RCMP. These allegations are part of what led to the start-up of the investigation called sidewinder. We all know what happened with sidewinder.
Sidewinder was a two year investigation by a combined force of CSIS and the RCMP. They compiled information for a full two year period. They look into the kind of allegations that Brian McAdam brought forward. What did they do? At the end of two years someone at CSIS decided to terminate the sidewinder investigation.
That was not good enough. Instead of just terminating the investigation they terminated all the e-mails and all the written documentation. They made sure to the best of their ability that all information on electronic files was also terminated.
This was absolutely scandalous because it was going on at exactly the same time as the government was not appointing people to the Security Intelligence Review Committee. SIRC was set up under the legislation which established CSIS in the first place. Its purpose was to have civilian oversight of a top secret organization.
The government neglected, and I use that word in its strongest, most pejorative sense, to put people into positions of trust and responsibility in SIRC so that SIRC could continue to oversee CSIS.
As a result of the government leaving the SIRC position open, CSIS basically ran rampant. When it came upon some results, which it presumably did not like, it decided not only to terminate it but to destroy the whole thing. Guess what? SIRC found out about the destruction of sidewinder as a result of reading about it in the newspaper.
The government is completely out of control. It has no idea what we are looking at in the area of organized crime. The very least I can say is that I am thankful the government will support the motion put forward today by Canada's opposition which has embarrassed it into action.