Debates of Nov. 26th, 2013

Opposition Motion—Prime Minister's Office

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

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.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I really am compelled to comment on what I regard as disgraceful comments from the member opposite. When he takes a statement and says “the Conservatives are known to be tough on crimes, so what about Mr. Woodcock?” or when he refers to Mr. Perrin as part of a “fraud squad”, he is slurring the reputations of innocent people, against whom there has been no allegation of criminality.

Through slimy innuendo, half truths and gossip, he is in effect saying things under the privilege of the House, this august and sacred chamber, which allows us to speak freely. He is abusing that privilege to slur the reputations of others.

The fact is that the RCMP has not even suggested any criminal conduct against anyone other than Mr. Duffy and Mr. Wright. The RCMP has said in black and white that there is no evidence that the Prime Minister was in any way aware of what Mr. Duffy and Mr. Wright did. It has not suggested any criminal conduct against anyone else.

Quite frankly, this is a new low that I did not expect from that member in particular, who I thought had higher standards. It should be stopped.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate the member for Kitchener Centre was not listening thoroughly to my comments. What we are asking is for government members to stand in their place. I applaud the very few who have. The member might be the second one. I hope to see him stand in his place and defend the Prime Minister. I would like to see others standing in their place and defending the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's Office.

Everything I alluded to in all of my comments have been attributed to over the last number of months and reported on in good part by many different media outlets. Everything I have said should be of no surprise to anyone inside the chamber. That is why the challenge to the government is to stand, much like the member for Kitchener Centre just did, and deliver its arguments as to why this opposition motion should not pass.

I did not hear that from the member. That is the challenge.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I noticed that the member for Charlottetown and the member for Winnipeg North made comments that sort of scurried around the comment about the Senate, trying to say that it was actually about the PMO, but the Senate is involved.

Premier Davis of Manitoba convinced his own upper house to abolish itself in 1876. Manitoba has functioned for over a century without that upper house.

Canadians know that abuse in the PMO is nothing new. Whether it is red abuse or blue abuse, it continues to abuse the office and Canadians are tired of that. Conservatives try to cover up the abuse of taxpayer dollars and corruption in the Senate. When will the Liberals do something to actually answer this corruption in the Senate?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I started off my speech by commenting on my disappointment in the New Democratic Party's inability to realize what we were debating here today. The New Democrats can continue to go on their own little ways about the Senate and whatever it is that they plan to do with it, possibly some time in the future. We know they do not know what reality is. They do not understand the issue of the Senate.

However, that is not what is under debate here. What is under debate is the scandal that is taking place in the Prime Minister's Office. As the official opposition, the New Democrats would do a better service to Canadians if they focused on the issue of the corruption that has taken place within the Prime Minister's Office. They have the opportunity. They get 15 questions to our first 3 to really zero in on the issue. I hope they will get their priorities correct on this.

It is almost like the New Democrats get a bonus mark if they can throw in the Liberal Party. This is not about the Liberal Party either. If they think they are completely scandal free, we should sit down and I could talk to them about the New Democrats and some of the corruption that lies within the NDP in Manitoba.

Do not preach holier than thou.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Winnipeg North for observations, which were quite accurate, about what is going on in the Prime Minister's Office. He postulates on why Conservatives are not getting up to defend the Prime Minister. I suspect they are in as much disbelief as all the opposition members and Canadians are. The Prime Minister is not believable.

I will refresh everyone's memories on why people do not believe it. Mr. Wright himself said that he needed to speak to the Prime Minister before everything was considered final. He said that on February 22. An hour later, he said, “We are good to go from the Prime Minister”. There is every reason to believe the Prime Minister knew and every reason to doubt what he tells us now.

He started out by saying that Mr. Wright acted alone, then he said that he acted with a few people and then we find out there were 12 people involved. He said that this was Mr. Wright's own idea, that he apologized, he was a good man and he quit. Then we find out, in fact, that the Prime Minister fired him. He cannot be believed.

Does the member for Winnipeg North have any doubts now as to why Conservative members are not standing in defence of the Prime Minister?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I can speculate as to why, and I suspect it would be fairly accurate. Never before has a prime minister had such absolute control over his backbenchers. We have seen how effective he can be. With one statement out of the PMO, he can silence all 100-plus of them. Not one of them outside of the one who is responsible for damage control has actually stood in his or her place to deal with the issue in the form of debate. Yes, questions were asked, but only the man responsible for damage control has been allowed to speak today. We have not even heard from the Prime Minister.

There is no doubt that he controls a very tight ship. There is that glass bubble that circles the PM's Office and nothing gets out of it unless it is from the Prime Minister himself. That is why Canadians find it difficult to believe the Prime Minister.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, usually I would thank the member opposite for his speech, but I really do not feel he has actually addressed some of the concerns raised by the member for Kitchener Centre or the official opposition member who spoke previously.

Opposition days are to provide an opportunity for opposition parties to bring forward things, but if they do not construct a rational set of facts to debate, if they make their facts up or throw out allegations, as the member for Kitchener Centre said, and smear people, we will not respond. This is a sacred chamber, as the member said, not an echo chamber where the member can simply dismiss other people's views because we do not agree with the smears he throws out as facts.

When the member stands and says we should be defending, I would point out to him that he should be listening and maybe change the way he discusses issues in the House.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we need to recognize that we are talking about an RCMP affidavit. That is pretty serious stuff. The allegations are very serious. There could be former employees from the Prime Minister's Office going to jail as a result. It is pretty serious stuff.

He talked about opposition days and trying to justify it by saying it is an opposition day and members of the opposition are supposed to be speaking out. I have been here on opposition days and the Conservatives are more than happy to stand in their places and speak. This one is making them feel uncomfortable and the PMO does not want any loose tongues on this issue.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the question to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment is as follows: the hon. member for Drummond, The Environment.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Vancouver Centre.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I guess one has to go over this and explain it very slowly, over and over, before the penny drops across the way with the Conservative caucus.

This Liberal motion has followed the thread of the RCMP investigation, the timelines of that investigation, with emails and affidavits that show that on February 21, 2013, the Prime Minister asked Senator Duffy to repay his expenses. Nobody has a problem with that. Everyone thinks that is fair. That is what the Prime Minister should have asked him and that is what he should have done.

Then the very next day, February 22, the Prime Minister's chief of staff wanted to speak to the Prime Minister before everything was considered final, and he did. He got confirmation from the Prime Minister's Office, according to the RCMP affidavits, that in fact things were good to go once the PM had got confirmation from the lawyers, Benjamin Perrin and Janice Payne. This is an important piece of the thread that we need to talk about.

The PM was aware that his lawyers were looking at this, that there was something going on and discussions were obviously going on between Mr. Duffy to repay his expenses.

Suddenly the amount for Senator Duffy's expenses was larger than everybody thought and then the tactic changed and it was suddenly an arrangement between Nigel Wright and Senator Duffy, when Mr. Wright paid it out of his own personal expenses.

After the $90,000, which was paid by Nigel Wright, it was found, again, according to the RCMP affidavits, that the PMO was engaged in what should be called, and what it calls it, obstruction of the Deloitte audit and the whitewash of the Senate report.

We have two other things in which the Prime Minister's Office seemed to be involved. The question is that the RCMP, looking at these emails and affidavits, concluded that it believed, according to that thread of information, that there was a violation of sections 119, 121 and 122 of the Criminal Code.

This is clear. This is not made up. This is fact. These are affidavits. The questions we are asking, and a lot of people on this of the House are asking, is this. Did the Prime Minister know about this? Is he fully aware? Some of the emails say that up to a particular point, when it comes to whether his lawyers were okay about it, that he seemed to have known and then suddenly the communication stopped. Nobody decided to talk to the Prime Minister after that. Everything just disappeared.

This is really unbelievable. It is illogical, to say the least. I am not a lawyer. It seems to me suddenly strange that the Prime Minister had his lawyers involved and then, kaboom, nobody wanted to talk to the Prime Minister after this. He did not know what was going on. He was absolutely deaf and could not hear or people kept him out of the loop. This is the question we are asking. These things do not make sense, and we want to make sense of them.

If they are simple, if they are explicable, if the Prime Minister can say this is true, why does everybody just say they have a great explanation for why the Prime Minister suddenly, after his lawyers were involved and he said “good to go”, he was shut out of everything.

There should be an explanation. If the Prime Minister is clear about all this, he could stand and say that he could explain it all. However, we are not getting these explanations. We are getting the same kind of pieces of talking points that go on and on which actually do not even answer the questions, but continue to slander everybody else in the House about what they did, whether their mother wore combat boots and whether they were in a pub one night, things that have absolutely nothing to do with the questions.

What is a person supposed to believe? It is obvious that Canadians are asking these same questions, because only two out of ten Canadians are reported as believing the Prime Minister. People are saying, “Oh, come on. We weren't born yesterday. Why can the Prime Minister not answer the questions if they are so easy to answer?”

These again are some of the things that are concerning some of us. Why can he not just answer the question, if it is clear and if the answers are reasonable and fair? Here is another thing. Why did the Prime Minister's Office intervene in the Senate? We not only heard that it intervened in terms of whitewashing a report, we also found out that people from the Prime Minister's Office were in the room when the two co-chairs of the Senate were discussing the report. It is unbelievable that the House of Commons would be there in the room discussing a Senate report with the chairs of the Senate. This House is not supposed to interfere in that place over there.

Here we go, we find this interference going on. Then again we find out that there was a question and an email flow that told us that people were asking Senator Gerstein to try to intervene in the Deloitte report so that it could be modified, moderated, whatever they want to call it. I am trying to be kind here with my language and trying not to be obnoxious with it. I am just saying “moderated” or “modified”.

However, this also is tampering. This is interfering. These are the things that we want to know.

Was there something that people wanted to hide? Why did they want to tamper with the Deloitte report? Did they want to hide something? Why did they tamper with the Senate chairs' report? When the Senate met, the committee had a report. The chairs do not usually tamper with committee reports. There would be heck to pay if our chairs tampered with our committee reports here in the House. Why would that happen there? We have to conclude there is something to hide, that there is something that is irregular and therefore people do not want it to come out.

Those are some of the questions that we are asking in the House. They are simple questions. They should give us simple answers, if everything is above board.

The Prime Minister says he did not know, and everyone in the House has said that is unbelievable, for a Prime Minister who controls every word that comes out of the mouths of his ministers, his parliamentary secretaries and his backbenchers.

We are not making this up. Backbenchers who have walked away from the Conservative Party have subsequently said that they had been muzzled, that they did not like the fact that they were being told what to say, especially some of them who came from the old Reform Party and remain there, who felt that they ran on openness and all the accountability that Preston Manning believed in. They felt in some ways that this did not sit well with them, so some of them left. Some of them refused to run again and they said why. Some of them have left and are now sitting in the House as independent members. As members heard today, they still hold a Conservative card, believe in Conservative values and want to be Conservatives. They just do not like what the Prime Minister's Office is doing, how it has muzzled them and kept everybody quiet, and how the talking points must be exactly as they are told.

This is why I must conclude, in all my innocence, that the only reason we are getting anyone answering questions or anyone standing up and saying anything in the House is that it is the Prime Minister's parliamentary secretary, who has been here with his little script. He repeats his script every day and adds to it some insults for everyone else in the House, to change the channel and deflect.

The question here is simply this. Did the Prime Minister know? Most of us around here find it very difficult to understand or to believe that this Prime Minister did not know what was going on, and that suddenly doors slammed shut and communications ended on February 22 when his lawyers became involved and all of that, and he wanted to talk with his lawyers. Suddenly everything went blank or whatever happened. Whether the Prime Minister went to sleep like Rip Van Winkle and only woke up in May when this whole thing broke loose, I do not know. However, we find it hard to believe that the Prime Minister did not know.

The Prime Minister also stood in the House when he was the leader of an opposition party and asked the former prime minister a very simple question. He said that it was unconscionable, and if the former prime minister didn't know, it was incompetent. I apply that same question across the way. Did the Prime Minister know? If he did know, indeed it has to be unconscionable, according to his own words and to his own moral compass. If he did not know then it is incompetence. What CEO of any company would have his top executives, 12 of them in this case, and his right-hand man in this case, especially since he knew about it on February 22 when his lawyers were involved, carry on under his nose and know absolutely nothing about it, and tell us that he absolutely did not know?

If he did not know what was going on under his nose, then he was incompetent. In CEO-speak in most corporations in our country that would mean he would have to take responsibility for whatever the consequences were of his incompetence.

I want to remind everyone of what the Prime Minister said on page 28 of his “Guide for Ministers and Ministers of State”.

Ministers and Ministers of State are personally responsible for the conduct and operation of their offices and the exempt staff in their employ.

Therefore, whether the Prime Minister knew or did not know, he is personally responsible. He has to take the heat for whatever went on. He said so on page 28 of his own memo to ministers and ministers of state. This is his ethical code, so why is he not taking responsibility? Why is he blaming everyone else? I am not making this up. This comes out of the Prime Minister's mouth. Is the Prime Minister going to stand by his own words or is he going to try to weasel out of them somehow, and say, “I saw no evil, I heard no evil and I therefore speak no evil because it's all not about me at all”?

This is incompetence from any CEO, in a small company, a big company or an international corporation. This is clear incompetence. These are some of the questions that we are asking.

What we are asking is for the Prime Minister to be fair to all Canadians, be open and transparent. That is what his party ran on, saying that was what it was going to bring to what it considered a House full of duplicity, et cetera. The Conservatives were coming in. They were going to form government and be open and transparent and accountable.

If I had about an hour I might go down the list of all the times that the Conservatives were not open and not transparent and not accountable, starting with budgets and with the Parliamentary Budget Officer having to take the government to court, or the Privacy Commissioner having to ask them to divulge information. We have seen this. I do not have to go down the list. This is now history, this pattern of behaviour. The modus operandi of the government is to keep as much secrecy as it can.

I might add, it is a pity it cannot keep secrecy for Canadians. When Canadians have medical information and such, it seems to be able to throw that one out, but it sure knows how to keep its little backroom deals secret. I just thought I would throw that in for good measure.

We are asking the Prime Minister to, under oath, stand up and tell Canadians what Mr. Wright, or any member of his staff or other Conservative, told him at any time about the whole Duffy affair and his expenses and what happened. What did they tell him about interference with the Senate report? What did they tell him about trying to water down the Deloitte report, or whatever happened when they talked to the Deloitte people? What did he know about that? When did he know about it? He said he did not know anything about it.

We have this whole confusion from everyone around who says they do not believe him. Two out of 10 Canadians are the only ones who believe him. About 80% of Canadians do not seem to believe what he is saying. This is purely because of this man's behaviour, the fact that he has been very controlling and suddenly, on February 22, he said he was good to go provided his lawyers who were involved were okay with it. Then suddenly everything ended. It was like a chasm opened and the Prime Minister fell into it. There was nothing, a void.

This is just unbelievable. I like watching Twilight Zone with the best of them, but this is just completely and totally unbelievable in terms of this issue.

We have no questions being answered here. No one is standing up to defend the Prime Minister in the House. There are no backbenchers standing up to do that. Why not? I would hope that if they felt this was unjust they would. We are talking about defending the Prime Minister not lobbing grenades over to this side of the House. We are talking about actually defending the Prime Minister and saying, “No, we believe the Prime Minister did this”. No one is doing that. No one is standing up here to defend him, except of course the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister.

We have a couple of questions to ask. These questions are very simple. Let us go back, the Prime Minister continues to say that the senators are bad, the senators are all wrong, the Senate is horrible and the Senate is a bad place, but this Prime Minister embraced the Senate when he became Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister came here saying that he was going to reform it, but he did not because he was trying to reform it through the back door and not through Constitutional requirements. He could not get anywhere with that. Now, he embraced it wholeheartedly to the extent that the Prime Minister appointed two senators whom everyone knew, for the last 25 years, did not live in the provinces they were supposed to represent. Is that not going to create a problem? Suddenly these senators were going to have to find a primary residence in those places, and they did, indeed.

My colleague, the member for Malpeque, talked about how Prince Edward Islanders were absolutely embarrassed and appalled, and how the person who owned the house that Senator Duffy bought was ashamed and embarrassed that a picture of their little cottage was being seen all the time.

Somewhere at the beginning the rot began. The Prime Minister put people into the Senate to represent provinces that they had not lived in. Now they have to hurry and go find primary residences and make up stories about primary residences and bill according to primary residence. How did that happen? The Prime Minister obviously either did not know what he was doing when he did it, or he did know and he had a secondary reason for appointing these two senators. We all know what the reason was. These were the two biggest fundraisers for the Prime Minister. They went all over the place. They were celebrities. People flocked to listen to them, blah, blah, blah. We know all of that. That is common knowledge.

Here is a Prime Minister who took advantage of the situation for his own gain and his party's gain. Now all of a sudden, he did not know how all this happened. He could not understand why these wondrous people who did not live in their provinces in the first place could suddenly do such a thing. Again, it defies common sense, simple common sense, people do not have to be lawyers to understand. It defies common sense.

Why did this chain of communication end suddenly? Can someone on the backbench get up during questions and comments and answer why the door shut on communications after February 22, and left this big void. Then all of a sudden the Prime Minister found out, and it was oh, my gosh, shock and surprise, shock and awe, he did not know about it. Suddenly he found out about it and what a wonderful man like Nigel Wright had done, this good deed. The Prime Minister praised him to the skies, and then suddenly he stopped praising him to the skies and said he did not know and it was terrible.

These are some of the questions that we want to ask. The Prime Minister seemed to change his story. That is another thing. In question period, the Prime Minister, over a period of time, moving aside the RCMP affidavits and emails that seemed to implicate the Prime Minister, said he did not know yet, he could not understand how that could happen, when the emails tell a different story.

Suddenly the Prime Minister, as we say colloquially, threw everyone under the bus, including Mr. Wright, whom he had first said he reluctantly took his resignation. Then all of a sudden he had fired him. Then he went back to saying he reluctantly took his resignation. I do not know what to believe anymore. My head is spinning.

Why would the Prime Minister not agree to do this, to just openly report the truth to the citizens of this country? Why not? I do not understand the problem. I do not understand why he would not do this.

The other question I have to ask is this. If all of these people kept the truth from him, “deceived” him that way, why did he promote them to minister's offices? Why? Is this a patting on the back for a job well done? What is this? Is this a shut up and I will give you a better job? What is this? I do not know. We want answers. The motion is seeking to get those answers. I am hoping that the motion will pass, and everyone in the House believes that it is time to tell Canadians the truth.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I suspect the members on that side are having a little difficulty hearing, because a number of times this afternoon I have heard the accusation that no members on this side were getting up to speak. However, just in the last hour there have been a number of us on this side getting up to speak to defend the Prime Minister. The RCMP clearly indicated that there is no evidence to link the Prime Minister to the deal between Duffy and Wright.

I cannot help but wonder if the conversation today is meant to somehow take away from the lack of support that the caucus members on the Liberal side have for their leader. Would my colleague stand up today and defend her leader's action in going into an elementary school to promote a reckless plan to legalize marijuana to elementary students?

The other question I have is this. On any given day, does this member know exactly what every member of her staff is doing? Does she have total knowledge of every staff member?

Finally, I am sure she will have a lot of time after answering those two questions to answer this one. Where is the $40 million that is still missing? There has been no accounting provided for it. I would love to have an answer.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, so much for defending the Prime Minister's Office. Once again there are a whole bunch of fly-by accusations.

I would be happy to defend my leader. I am proud of my leader. I am proud of the fact that in the last four byelections, the Liberal Party gained 44,000 votes to 29,000 in total for the Conservatives. Therefore, I have nothing to worry about with respect to my leader at all. That is the first thing. Obviously, Canadians seem to agree with me.

Second, I will answer the member's question as to whether I know what my staff are doing every moment of the day in my office. The answer is that I do not. I must say, though, that if they do something wrong, I will continue to own up and take responsibility for what they have done, as I have in the past, because when they do all of the great things that I get credit for, I accept it. Therefore, if they do something, I will not throw them under the bus. That is what a responsible boss does. A responsible boss knows that he or she cannot always keep an eye out and that once in a while something will slip through.

However, this is not once in a while. Rather, there are 15 people, including lawyers. It is not some little gaffe that somebody on the staff did.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am intrigued by the comments of the hon. member about whether or not the Prime Minister is either complicit or incompetent by not knowing what is going on behind him. Were those accusations that they were either complicit or incompetent not the same accusations that were levelled against Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien in the sponsorship scandal? In fact, somebody did go to jail as a result of that.

As we have come to discover, the Senate is being used by both the Liberals and the Conservatives for partisan political activities on the taxpayer's dime. We in the NDP put forward a motion not too long ago asking that the practice of doing partisan fundraising activities and the like on the taxpayer's dime cease. There are several Liberal senators out there who are doing that on a regular basis, and the Liberals have voted against that motion, so they seem to agree that it is a good thing for the Senate and that it is acceptable for taxpayers' money to be used for political fundraising.

Would the member care to comment?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would be delighted to comment on that point.

It really surprises me that the NDP does not seem to care about what went on in the Prime Minister's Office. The NDP members are not the slightest bit interested. Rather, they hype on about this ideological idea that the Senate must go.

The Liberals did not vote for the bill to abolish the Senate because we understand the rule of law. We adhere to the rule of law in this House. It is a constitutional requirement. That question is before the Supreme Court of Canada, and when the Supreme Court of Canada answers the questions, the Liberals will then make a decision based on what the rule of law tells us.

This idea that the NDP can cast aside the rule of law and cast aside process is somewhat intriguing, but I still want an answer to this question: does the NDP not care about what went on in the Prime Minister's Office?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if my colleague could provide some comment on an issue she spent some time talking about earlier. On an opposition day, more often than not we have a rotation in which members from all political parties participate in the debate. They do not just ask questions; they participate. We have now had, I believe, six opportunities for the Conservatives to get engaged in the debate, but on all six occasions they have said no.

Why does the member think the Conservative backbenchers are refusing to debate on this very important motion that we have before us today?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for the question, but I would be presuming as to what I think is going on across the way.

I can only say that it is very strange that the Conservative Party would miss six slots in which they could speak to the issue, lay down the track, talk about what they need to talk about, and rebut some of the things being said here on what the RCMP has obtained from the emails. I don't understand why. The only reason I could think of is that they were told not to speak, that they were muzzled.

The only person who gave any kind of speech in the House was the Prime Minister's parliamentary secretary, who obviously knows who gave him the appointment and what he is doing, and he follows the script.

It is really quite sad, because I know a lot of the members across the way and I have a lot of respect for some of them. I thought that they would want to clear the air. I thought that they would want to stand up and speak to this issue.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to mostly condescending sarcasm over there.

One of the things I learned in my years of police experience is that the last thing one wants to do is to presume the outcome of an investigation. In this place, fairness need not raise its ugly head, but if one wanted to be fair, one does not have to be a lawyer; one need only be a fair person and allow the authorities to do their investigation. If it comes out that there is some criminal liability, charges will be laid, but the police are doing an investigation primarily at the behest of the Prime Minister.

I, for one of those backbenchers, am getting up to say that I believe what the Prime Minister has said. Members should just give the police time to do their investigation. Then, if it comes out the way the member hopes it does or thinks it is going to, the member can get up and do her skulduggery and do her thing. The member should save her head from spinning by putting her mind to some useful things and letting the police do their job.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I find it very funny that I should be accused of condescending sarcasm when what I just heard was condescending sarcasm. We could take lessons from the Government of Canada on condescending sarcasm. Every day in the House at question period we get up, and whether it is the NDP or the Liberals asking questions, the answers are all condescending sarcasm.

All I can say is that I wish I could do as well on condescending sarcasm as the people across the way on the government benches.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to be here debating in this House on behalf of the members of my community in Davenport in the great city of Toronto. I think it is fair to say that they have talked constantly over the last several weeks about the big scandals, because there are several going on, and then, of course, there is another large one going on in Toronto. Somehow the two conflate in the public's mind, because these scandals go to the heart of the political leadership of this country, what leadership is about, the purpose of it, and how we elevate the discourse in this country to a place that all of us here could be proud of.

I think that one of the deeply troubling bits of collateral damage from all these scandals is the public's disintegrating trust in our political culture. Of course, that plays beautifully into the neo-conservative ideology of the government, which is about shrinking government, telling Canadians that government is the problem, and telling Canadians that politicians are corrupt. My goodness, maybe that might actually have happened once in a while. It is what we are talking about today in this motion.

I just want to read part of the motion into the record for those who might be watching in their homes. It is:

...that the House condemn the deeply disappointing actions of the Prime Minister's Office in devising, organizing and participating in an arrangement that the RCMP believes violated sections 119, 121 and 122 of the Criminal Code of Canada, and remind the Prime Minister—

This is what we are doing here today.

I think Canadians watching this debate are shaking their heads and wondering why we have to spend this time, and it is not just the time. I will remind the hon. member in the corner, who seems to have forgotten, that it has been this party, the official opposition under this leader, that has constantly and doggedly pushed this issue so that we are actually at the point where we are debating motions like this.

However, let me carry on:

—of his own Guide for Ministers and Ministers of State, which—

By the way, we have had to remind the Prime Minister and ministers and ministers of state of this guide many times since I was first elected here in 2011.

—states on page 28 that “Ministers and Ministers of State are personally responsible for the conduct and operation of their offices and the exempt staff in their employ,”—

The point of the guide for ministers and ministers of state is that it assumes that ministers and ministers of state are held to a higher standard, an exemplary standard. That standard telegraphs to the rest in this place and to Canadians across the country that ministers and ministers of state, including the Prime Minister and the government, take their responsibilities and roles with the utmost seriousness and endeavour to execute these roles in a manner that is beyond reproach.

Let me finish reading this excerpt from the motion:

—and the House call upon the Prime Minister to explain in detail to Canadians, under oath, what Nigel Wright or any other member of his staff or any other Conservative told him at any time about any aspect of any possible arrangement pertaining to Mike Duffy, what he did about it, and when.

The leader of the official opposition has been doggedly determined to get answers from the Prime Minister for several weeks now. It is amazing to ponder that the Prime Minister cannot answer these simple questions, but they are not just simple. They are essential questions.

They go to the core of how this place works. They go to the core of the public's trust in government. I can tell the House that this trust has been shaken very deeply. I am in my riding of Davenport constantly, and I hear very little else about politics these days other than the scandal.

We can all agree that this puts a pall over all of us. It is incumbent on everyone here that we endeavour to get to the bottom of these issues. Obfuscation is not helping us in this pursuit, especially because we have so many other pressing issues.

We can talk about some of the Senate appointees and the role of the Senate. Our position in the NDP and the official opposition is clear. It has been clear for 40 years. We feel that the Senate has long outlived its usefulness and should be abolished. It is important to remember that other jurisdictions in Canada once had senates. The province where I come from, Ontario, once had a Senate. We no longer have a senate, and democracy still lives in Ontario. I believe that it will thrive here, notwithstanding a few people's hurt feelings over the ending of the Senate.

We have really important issues to deal with, issues the Prime Minister is not speaking to, as well as the fact that he is not speaking to the scandal before us. We need to get to the bottom of this, hear from the Prime Minister, and hear a clear explanation about what happened. We are past the point where we are prepared to hear little dribbles and nuggets of half-truths. We need the full truth, in part because we have so much to do.

We have the issue of climate change. We still have not got to the bottom of where the heck that $3.1 billion went from the last budget, which seems to have disappeared. That is on top of the $50 million to build a gazebo for the minister during the G20 summit, where the Auditor General said proper accounting was not pursued. We are still waiting for the paperwork on that. We are still waiting to find that $3.1 billion. How does anyone lose $3.1 billion?

The Conservative government likes to spin that it is fiscally prudent. It has posted the largest deficit in Canadian history. It cannot find $3.1 billion. It is trying to sell this canard to Canadians that it is somehow a prudent fiscal manager.

If we take a look at the Government of Manitoba, which has posted serial balanced budgets over four majority mandates, we see what fiscal prudence is all about and why Canadians can be assured that an NDP government would manage the economy in the most fiscally prudent way.

That said, the Conservative government has piled scandal upon scandal. I have already mentioned the $50-million gazebo. There was the robocall scandal. The biggest scandal is how the government has been asleep at the switch on job creation. It talks about the jobs it has created, but it never ever talks about what kinds of jobs they are.

I am in my riding all the time knocking on doors and hearing from people. People cannot live, raise a family, and pay rent in a city like Toronto with a minimum wage job. That is why so many people are working multiple jobs. We wonder how it was that voter turnout, for example in the by-election last night, was as low as it was in many of these by-elections.

People are working all hours. They are working split shifts. They are working multiple jobs, multiple part-time jobs. In Toronto right now, almost 50% of workers cannot find stable, full-time jobs. I thought that is why we came here. I thought we came here to try to make lives better. I thought we came here to try to make changes that would affect the most people. Instead, we have a government consumed with protecting their chosen few, some of them residing in the Senate.

It is worth reminding Canadians who might be listening today who some of those senators are and what their job qualifications are. In fact, since I mentioned the by-elections last night, it is worth noting that the last by-election in Toronto Centre, for example, was in March 2008. Do members know who came in fourth in that by-election in March 2008? It was the Conservative candidate. His name is Don Meredith. Guess where Don Meredith sits today? He sits in the Senate. My goodness, it is kind of cheap to get into the Senate. All one needs is 2,939 votes, which is what Mr. Meredith had in the 2008 Toronto Centre by-election. The list goes on.

Actually, one can spend a lot of money to get into the Senate. David Braley made donations to the Conservative Party and Stephen Harper, among others, totalling $86,000—

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

I would draw to the attention of the member for Davenport that it is not proper to mention any member's name, including the Prime Minister's, as opposed to one's riding.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

My apologies, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Braley made donations to the Conservative Party and to the Prime Minister, among others, totalling $86,500, prior to his appointment. I would like to thank the government members for allowing me the opportunity to repeat that fact, and to repeat it in a clearer way. That is the qualification for Senator Braley's appointment to the Senate.

Some members, especially Liberal members, seem confused as to why we would dare to suggest that, with the gravy train the Liberals rode for so long and that the Conservatives, mirroring the Liberals, are currently enjoying, we would want to see the end of that institution. If one's qualification is that one becomes a name on a ballot as a sacrificial lamb in a Toronto Centre by-election in 2008 or has $85,000 to spare, surely we can set the bar higher than that. I think Canadians understand that the bar should be set higher, which is why the motion is so important today. It is why Canadians are so concerned about this.

The Prime Minister and members of the government like to try to slough off the questions on this. They say that they have been clear and have already told everybody the truth. They say that they have already said these things so many times. Why are Canadians bothering them with all these details? It is the details that are important. It is the details that consume Canadians' lives. It is the price of food. It is the price of rent. It is the cost of gas. It is the cost of a Metropass in Toronto. These are the details of people's lives that people are consumed with and concerned about. These are the kinds of things the government should be concerned about.

We asked months ago why the government was letting companies charge seniors an extra $2 just to get their bills in the mail. At the time, the Minister of Finance went on about a self-regulating code of conduct, as if that is some kind of comfort to seniors who are barely scraping by in expensive cities right across the country.

We want to see a government that is focused on the real needs of Canadians, on the ways that will help them live in cities that are very expensive. That includes young people who are today graduating from university. In my province of Ontario, the average student debt at the end of a four-year undergrad is $37,000. Then they are going out into a job market where they cannot find permanent jobs. Their options are serial short-term contracts, part-time work, and increasingly, unpaid internships. Now there are some excellent internship programs out there that are run well, with proper oversight, but currently, young workers are simply asked to work for free in jobs that were once entry level positions.

We have not seen the government budge on that issue. We have not seen any action on this issue from the government, but it has spent a lot of time on spin and has congratulated and rewarded its supporters handsomely.

Donald Plett, Conservative Party president, is in the Senate too. These are the same senators who, after the House passed Jack Layton's climate change bill, a historic bill, and one we all would have been proud of, including some members on the government side, killed that bill. We are laggards in the international community when it comes to climate change. We are laggards when it comes to democracy here if we are letting an unelected Senate, filled with folks who bought their way in, failed candidates, and party presidents, both Liberal and Conservative, make those decisions.

Some Liberal members and Conservative members whose close friends sit in the Senate try to make this personal, and they say to the NDP, “So-and-so is a good senator; why are you picking on him?” We are not picking on individual people. We are talking about an institution. We are talking about democracy. We are talking about how we do this. We are talking about how we bring the issues of our constituents into Parliament and how we work on those problems together and come out with solutions that help Canadians.

That is why we are here. That is what we are here for. We are not here to protect parliamentarians. We are not here to protect senators who are taking advantage of the public largesse. We are not here to provide cover for them, but we also do not expect the Prime Minister—who, by the way, ran on a platform of accountability and transparency—to duck and weave and to cut and run. We do not expect that. Canadians do not expect that, especially when we have so many important issues to deal with.

In my riding, right across Toronto and right across the country there are thousands upon thousands of immigrants, for example, who have been waiting years to sponsor their parents and their grandparents. They have been waiting years for that. They need answers to these questions. They come into my office, and no doubt they come into the offices of many of my colleagues, and they are wondering why the government is not processing these applications in a timely fashion. Right now it has put an actual moratorium on applications, and when it lifts the moratorium, it will only be accepting 5,000 new applicants.

This is the kind of thing on which we need to put our focus. We need the Prime Minister to stand up in this House and take the responsibility that this motion underlines he must take. We need him to do that, because we need the government to become focused on the very pressing needs of Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

It being 5:30 p.m., it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the business of supply.

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.