Mr. Speaker, I am totally thunderstruck by the behaviour of the government today on this motion. This administration is basically done. The Liberals do not realize the stupidity of what they are doing. It has all gone fuzzy for them. I am sorry, but that is the position in which they find themselves.
The government has tried to paint a picture today that this investigation and the court case have gone along full of federal financial resources and without a bump in the road. Contrary to what the Liberals are saying, they have been playing politics with the court costs for Air-India.
I can read a direct quote from the attorney general for British Columbia, where he talks about the fact that there was an impasse between the provincial and federal governments over funding legal aid for immigration and refugee cases. The dispute was over the fact that British Columbia was being asked to pony up in a area of federal responsibility. The B.C. attorney general said:
The reason we made the agreement is that the minister of justice [then Martin Cauchon] threatened to cut off $6.5 million in support funding for the Air India case if we maintained our position with respect to funding immigration-and-refugee legal aid.
That is the kind of behaviour that came from what is now a completely empty government side of the House.
The government is prepared to forget about the death of 329 Canadians. It is being inventive as to why it does not support a judicial inquiry. This insults our intelligence. It is demeaning Canada's international reputation. It is sending a weak message about Canada's true search for justice. This is no less than defeatism and a cover-up by the government.
I am proud of Canada. I am a proud Canadian. The minister's actions today do not meet my standards of what a strong and principled administration would do. This is demonstrating weakness, not boldness.
The government equates agreeing with it as non-partisanship. The Deputy Prime Minister, the member for York West and the member for Etobicoke North have been trying to pry apart our words to find a way to justify opposing this very reasonable call for a judicial inquiry. We are not only seeking closure for the families, we are seeking justice. Whatever happened to the true north, strong and free? CSIS and the RCMP need an inquiry. It is in the national interest.
I happen to read a lot of history books, but one does not have to read a lot of history books to know that whether dealing with MI5, MI6, the FBI, the CIA or other intelligence and enforcement apparatus throughout the world, the worst thing that can be done is not get to the very bottom of a critical failure when the system fails. We have had a critical failure. There are 329 Canadians who are dead. The government is prepared to write them off and say, “We have had 20 years of progress. The world has changed. We are going to move on”. I am sorry but we need to do better than that.
There may be some eminent people around who feel otherwise, but the people overwhelmingly agree that justice has not been served. Canadians who are polled agree with that. The families agree with that. The opposition parties all agree with that.
What is the government doing and why? The fact that the government appears to want to close the door on this issue looks like an ill-fitting suit.
Family members have renewed their calls for a public inquiry. The member for Newton--North Delta, who sponsored the motion today, and the Conservative leader met with family members this past week. The member for Newton--North Delta said this in an article in The Vancouver Sun :
It was really astounding to hear the stories of the families. I think after $130 million, 20 years, 115 witnesses and sometimes 250 RCMP officers, what we got was absolutely nothing. Still Canadians don't know who is guilty and who the terrorists are.
Susheel Gupta, a federal prosecutor who lost his mother in the terrorist attack, said on Wednesday he was “heartened by the introduction of the Conservative resolution”. He went on to say:
This is something we've always asked for. We are happy to see some integrity on behalf of politicians. At least someone in government has taken up the issue and is following up.
The announcement this morning by the Deputy Prime Minister about an eminent person making a decision that this Parliament should be making is an abuse of power. It is a manipulation. It is an attempt to control events and it is an insult to this Parliament.
The Deputy Prime Minister has talked about meeting with the families. All I can say to her is not to patronize them. She comes across that way.
The parliamentary secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister has tried to suggest that somehow our call for an inquiry would get in the way of a provincial appeal. That is utter nonsense. The government has eight more days to make that decision. There was an attempt to use that argument with the former attorney general from the province of Quebec, who firmly argued that, quite the contrary, it would actually be of great assistance and would not be detrimental to any decision the province might make to appeal the case.
Many people and many families have suffered great hurt and pain as a result of this tragedy. Things have changed. The government now has no greater responsibility than to get to the bottom of this issue.
This morning the Deputy Prime Minister made reference to CSIS and the RCMP and basically suggested that all was well. Not everyone accepts those bland assurances. What we have here is a demonstration of Canada under a Liberal administration: soft power, soft on criminals, soft on drugs, soft on corrections and soft on terrorism. There is still the stigma of the Prime Minister attending a Tamil Tiger fundraising operation against the best advice of CSIS. He has never apologized to the House or to the Canadian public for doing so. The government is anything but consistent.
Herb Dhaliwal, the former minister of natural resources and a senior minister for British Columbia, has said the Liberal Party was the one that called early for this public inquiry and it has to occur for the families and for everyone else. He repeated that last month. For the government not to agree with this motion is an affront to Canadians.