Madam Speaker, he said “All that needs to be said has been said”. I wrote it down. I am saying to him that is not accurate, that all that needs to be said has not been said. I will have some more things to say about this issue. I am sure that other members will have other things to say about the issue because the subject matter of the motion that the member put this morning is a very serious concern to all Canadians.
I want to read the motion again. The motion moved by one of my colleagues and seconded by me indicates that the charge against the Minister of National Defence of making misleading statements in the House be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
My hon. colleague knows that with the Speaker allowing that to take place, it is a very serious concern. With the advice of the experts sitting at the Clerk's table, to allow that motion to take place and go to a committee is something Speakers do not do all that often. That is the importance of the issue before the House today. The fact is that the Speaker has made his very important ruling and a debate will take place in committee.
The issue of whether the Minister of National Defence should resign for misleading the House has come up in this debate many times. It is a very relevant point, particularly with regard to the charge of contempt.
In 1976, following comments André Ouellet, the then minister of consumer and corporate affairs, made on the acquittal by Mr. Justice Mackay of the sugar companies accused of forming cartels and combines, Mr. Justice Mackay cited him for contempt of court. Mr. Ouellet resigned his cabinet post over the incident.
A charge of contempt by the House should be considered just as serious, if not more serious, as a charge of contempt by a court. The minister should do the honourable thing and resign his cabinet post while the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs considers a charge against him because it involves a matter of confidence.
We may have 100 reasons to ask for this particular minister's resignation over various other charges. However, a charge of contempt standing alone is sufficient to seek the minister's resignation, as André Ouellet did in 1976. Others will say that the judge cited him but it has not gone to committee yet. Our point is that the minister is in charge of our troops and they are at war. He is going to have to spend a lot of time going to a committee to defend himself on this issue while taking his mind off the very important issue of our troops and the war.
I know that this morning the Deputy Prime Minister had quotes from generals stating that they do not want the minister to go now. I can understand their concerns. The fact is we know that the minister has other issues and other problems. This is another one he faces before committee. He should resign and allow someone to take over that portfolio full time while this investigation is going on.
During my speech on the motion to adopt the recommendations of the modernization committee, I brought up some unfortunate omissions from that report. I was hoping the committee would recommend some wording clarifying ministerial responsibility. We have lots of documents written by PCO and academics but the House has never made a statement of its own. It is ironic since ministers are responsible to it.
The U.K. passed a resolution regarding ministerial accountability, which we find on page 63 of the 22nd edition of Erskine May. It states:
--it is of paramount importance that ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament....Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister--
As the Speaker has already ruled, the minister already has given two different versions of events to the House. One of them has to be correct and one of them is incorrect.
There are even further issues. Those involve the Prime Minister. When did he really know? On Monday the events were hypothetical, but did anybody in the PMO hear from the Minister of National Defence during that week? If they did not, I am shocked.
I can tell the House that if I were the Prime Minister of Canada and our troops had just captured some of these terrorists and criminals, I would want to have a press conference to tell the Canadian people that our troops were successful. Yet here we are a week later and the Prime Minister is saying that it was hypothetical. I think that is terrible. It is poor management and the Minister of National Defence is in charge of that management.
This is not the first time the Minister of National Defence has been caught stretching the truth. In early October 2001, the minister announced that the JTF2 special forces would be made available to the coalition war effort. For two months he broadly implied that Canadian Forces were already in the field without directly saying so.
On November 22, 2001 the member for Renfrew--Nipissing--Pembroke questioned whether the troops were actually there.
On November 27 the minister finally admitted, after weeks of playing coy and letting people infer that our soldiers were on the ground, that they had not even left Canada.
Then we had the incident in early January when the deployment of 750 soldiers from the PPCLI was announced. The minister said that we had chosen to deploy with the Americans because the Americans had asked Canada to participate. That is why we joined the U.S.-led offensive operation, not the multilateral peacekeeping operation. Then General Richard Myers said that Canada had offered our troops to the U.S. mission, contradicting the minister.
We have also seen many contradictions in the timing of the helicopter contract with the minister still saying that they would be delivered by 2005, while Ranald Quail, the deputy minister of public works, is saying December 2006 at the earliest. Many experts are saying 2010.
Unfortunately, the minister has shown by his past actions that he cannot be trusted and that he changes his stories. This is not the kind of minister that Canadians or our troops deserve. They deserve a minister who will tell the truth all the time on matters as important as the actions and safety of the Canadian Forces.
We need this matter to go before the committee.