Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Through you, we put the challenge to my colleagues across the way that they need to recognize an opportunity to defend the Prime Minister. If they are not going to defend the Prime Minister, then at the very least I would argue that they should be voting in favour of the motion. Do not allow the parliamentary secretary to be the only person to get on the record on this particular issue.
There is one very compelling aspect that I found personally in reviewing some of the emails that were provided through the investigative work of Corporal Greg Horton from the RCMP. There were three emails to which I would like to refer.
On February 21, Benjamin Perrin, one of the fraud squad group, stated that the Prime Minister's personal lawyer in the PMO and Senator Duffy's lawyer exchanged emails detailing the plan to have the Conservative Party pay Duffy $32,000 in bogus housing claims, as well as his legal fees.
The agreement describes this as keeping Duffy “whole on the repayment”. That was on February 21.
On February 22, Wright confirmed with Gerstein, the fundraiser for the party. In essence what took place is that Wright confirmed with Gerstein that the party would pay the expenses and the legal fees. Later on the same day, Wright emailed Perrin and stated, “I do want to speak to the PM before everything is considered final”. Less than an hour later, Wright sent a follow-up email to Perrin and said, “We are good to go from the PM once Ben has confirmation from Payne”.
Canadians have not been told the full truth as to what has actually taken place. We know there have been serious allegations of laws having been broken. Canadians have lost trust and are losing more faith in the Prime Minister every day in which he refuses to address this issue head-on.
We call upon all members of the House to support the Liberal opposition motion today so that we can get the truth from the Prime Minister.