Debates of Nov. 26th, 2013

Presence in Gallery

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

It is my pleasure today to welcome to the House of Commons athletes Katie Saunders, Matthew Judson, Aura Wilkinson, and Katie Isenor and her coach Jacquelyn from Canada’s Special Olympics team.

On behalf of all members, I congratulate them on their achievements at this year’s World Winter Games held in the Republic of Korea.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

The House resumed consideration of the motion.

Opposition Motion—Prime Minister's Office

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to this opposition day motion from my colleagues down the way.

I will review a bit, some of what is worth reviewing. It is important for people to understand what we are talking about, especially when there has been a pause for question period in the debate. The motions says:

That, given the recent sworn statements by RCMP Corporal Greg Horton, which revealed that: (i) on February 21, 2013, the Prime Minister’s Office had agreed that, with regard to Mike Duffy's controversial expenses, the Conservative Party of Canada would “keep him whole on the repayment”; (ii) on February 22, 2013, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff wanted to “speak to the PM before everything is considered final”; (iii) later on February 22, 2013, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff confirmed “We are good to go from the PM once Ben has his confirmation from Payne”; (iv) an agreement was reached between Benjamin Perrin and Janice Payne, counsels for the Prime Minister and Mike Duffy; (v) the amount to keep Mike Duffy whole was calculated to be higher than first determined, requiring a changed source of funds from Conservative Party funds to Nigel Wright’s personal funds, after which the arrangement proceeded and Duffy's expenses were re-paid; and (vi) subsequently, the Prime Minister's Office engaged in the obstruction of a Deloitte audit and a whitewash of a Senate report; 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...

It reminds the Prime Minister of his own code of conduct for ministers, which surely applies to him. It 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 Prime Minister is a minister. He is one of the ministers to whom that rule ought to apply, so it is hard to understand how he could think he should not take responsibility for the actions of his own staff if it were the case that we were to believe he did not know what was going on, which is a little hard to believe in his case. Therefore, the cover-up continues.

The Prime Minister's Office fraud squad have really been the authors of a scheme whereby we have seen the bribing of a sitting senator and seen it swept under the rug until the truth leaked out by CTV's Robert Fife.

I see across from me the cowering Conservative caucus members. The silence from that side today has been deafening when only one of them stood to speak to the motion. It is a remarkable thing. Aside from vitriol from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, no one else on that side has deigned to make a speech on this all day long.

[An hon. member]

It is not true.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

One of them said it is not true. If that is not true, let us hear those members speak. There is a lot of time this afternoon. I hope we will hear from a number of them. They can speak on this and tell us what they really think, because we know some of them are telling the media what they think, although they are doing it anonymously. They are saying that they are concerned about this. They are not happy with the Prime Minister's actions or his office, and the way this has been handled, in their view, has been slipshod. Why do they not get up now in the House this afternoon and talk about that?

It is a sad day for democracy and accountability. Canadians who I have talked to in recent weeks have been shocked to see the level the government will go to cover up its misdeeds.

Canadian taxpayers also want to know who will take responsibility for the ethical rot that has beset the Conservative government. Let us think about that. Who should take responsibility? Should it be perhaps the person who appointed Senator Duffy? Should it be perhaps the person who hired Nigel Wright to be his chief of staff? Should it be the person who promoted the other key players involved in this corrupt scheme to seniors jobs in ministers' offices?

Sadly, the person, and we all know who we are talking about, refuses to accept any responsibility and comes up with story after story. It is an ever-changing story.

It is a sad day when even Mayor Ford is more open and honest about his behaviour than his fishing buddy, the Prime Minister. Of course, Mayor Ford was caught and admitted it after he was caught.

The fact is that nobody on the other side of the House wants to defend this ethical rot. It is clear that even Conservative backbenchers recognize that what started out as a Senate scandal has spread well beyond Duffy and Wright and has now engulfed about a dozen senior Conservatives and even the Prime Minister himself. It is clear, as more and more Conservative members are saying in private, that the strategy of crisis management from the Prime Minister's Office has been a disaster from day one.

Let me turn to something I found in this week's The Hill Times, which quotes senior Conservatives as saying:

Everybody needs people who will ask you the questions that you don’t necessarily want to be asked. Everybody needs to be challenged a bit. It makes you think better.

These senior Conservatives were talking about the Prime Minister and the fact that a prime minister needs people in his or her office who challenge him or her.

Could any of us in the country really imagine that from the current Prime Minister, that he would want to have that? We have a Prime Minister who has such determined control not only over his own office, but over his ministers and what they are allowed to say and even what the backbenchers are allowed to say. Everything has to be approved by the PMO.

It is clear to me that the Prime Minister is not interested in having the kind of people in his office that these senior Conservatives are suggesting he ought to have. Apparently he knows better than anybody else and does not need to have anybody's advice or anyone really challenging him. That is not good enough.

There is another angle to this that we have not heard a lot about. That is how what we had here last winter was a problem for the Conservative Party. It was a Conservative Party political PR problem. What was it solved with? It was solved with a $90,000 contribution. Of course, any individual in Canada can make a maximum contribution to a political party of $1,200, so we know that $90,000 is an illegal contribution. That is in addition to the other aspects of this in terms of making payment to a senator to make some kind of a deal.

Let us go through the record, which clearly shows that the Prime Minister is not being completely open and honest with Canadians about his involvement in this corrupt cover-up scheme. The Prime Minister says that he never knew anything. He heard no evil, saw no evil and spoke no evil. Nigel Wright's own words show that this is unbelievable.

On February 22, an email, let us call it email the first one on that day, went from Mr. Wright. He said he wanted to “speak to the PM before everything is considered final”. An hour later or thereabouts, we had a second email. He said “We are good to go with the PM”.

Most Canadians and most sensible people would say that he must have spoken to the PM during that hour. There must have been a conversation between Nigel Wright and the Prime Minister between those two emails. It sure sounds like the Prime Minister gave the okay.

The Prime Minister claims that all he ever said was that Mr. Duffy had to make the repayment himself. If that were the case, surely he had been saying that for days and even weeks before February 22. Surely he had made that very clear already, so why would Nigel Wright have to go to him to get him to approve what he had already been saying had to happen? That does not make much sense.

The only thing that really makes sense is that Nigel Wright went to the Prime Minister, told him, it seems, that the Conservative Party was prepared to pay $30,000 at that point to pay off Mr. Duffy's debt, which would be equally improper. It would appear the Prime Minister thought that was okay. It was good to go. The Prime Minister gave the thumbs up.

That is certainly the interpretation that most sensible people would take from those two emails. It is hard to imagine any other conceivable interpretation. Talk about a smoking gun.

What about Nigel Wright's statement to the RCMP? He said, “The PM knows, in broad terms only, that I personally assisted Duffy when I was getting him to agree to repay the expenses”.

That one statement makes it crystal clear that the Prime Minister knew that Wright personally assisted Duffy. It leaves not a lot of doubt. It is clear that, as the RCMP alleges, Conservative operatives in the Prime Minister's Office and the Prime Minister's hand-picked Senate leaders either broke the law or took part in a cover-up designed to make the scandal go away. That is shameful.

The Prime Minister's story regarding the PMO ethics scandal has fallen apart. This is obviously a very serious issue, and hence the motion today, which is very appropriate. Today's motion talks about the PMO fraud squad's potential and criminal cover-up in a series of events that the RCMP believes may have violated three sections of the Criminal Code, not to mention the Elections Act in terms of election spending or donations to political parties, which effectively this was.

Today's motion also talks about the role of senior Conservative operatives and senior senators, hand-picked by the Prime Minister., who participated in a whitewash of a Senate report and apparently attempted to influence an independent audit being conducted by Deloitte. The record is pretty clear on that as well. We have seen lots of reports on this in the media. They come directly from the documents obtained by the RCMP.

The list of suspects in this caper is indeed long and probably going to grow. On the Senate side there are Senators Carolyn Stewart Olsen, Marjory LeBreton, David Tkachuk, Irving Gerstein, and, of course, former Conservative poster boy Mike Duffy. In the Prime Minister.r's Office, either now or formerly, we have Nigel Wright, Benjamin Perrin, Ray Novak, Chris Woodcock, Patrick Rogers, and David van Hemmen. A bunch of them have been promoted since this all took place.

It is quite a twisted story, with a lot of conflicting accounts that need to be cleared up so that Canadians can have confidence in Parliament. That is why there ought to be hearings on this and testimony from people such as the Prime Minister.

For instance, Senator Duffy said in a statement from the Senate that the Prime Minister's former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, had provided assurances to him that his behaviour was acceptable and that he would give him a $90,000 cheque to cover the Prime Minister's tracks. Senator Duffy also confirmed that he was told to take the $90,000, keep his mouth shut, and go along with the cover-up or the Conservatives would kick him out of the Senate. That is the threat that he alluded to.

We are here today pushing for more transparency. We have been pushing the Conservatives for that for quite a while. We are here today trying to get to the truth for Canadians.

Of course, there are many other things we ought to be discussing in the House of Commons. Canadians have many other concerns, such as job creation; youth unemployment; the environment; pipeline issues; the debt loads of individual Canadians, which are very high; the cost of post-secondary education; the situation in Syria; and the new agreement with Iran and the government's attitude toward it. There are these things and many others. The Auditor General's report released today expresses concern about the basic safety measures that are supposed to be overseen by the government, especially when it comes to rail and food safety. We have seen things like the listeriosis crisis.

However, instead of talking about these important things, we are mired in this scandal. Why are we still talking about this scandal? Why are we mired as we are? It is because the Prime Minister refuses to answer questions. He refuses to come clean. He refuses to allow the House to hold a hearing and to testify under oath about what he knew and did not know and what happened here.

That is all he has to do: testify. It is time for the Prime Minister to speak under oath and tell the truth. That would get us on to other things, I would hope.

The Prime Minister's parliamentary secretary has been here today showing contempt for hard-working Canadian taxpayers, as he has shown, unfortunately, in question period for weeks. Really, he and the Prime Minister are showing contempt for the values their party once prided itself on and on values the Reform Party also prided itself on.

Of course, the parliamentary secretary has memorized the words that the kids in short pants in the Prime Minister's Office have given him to say. He has memorized them very well, and the Prime Minister and his parliamentary secretary would like nothing more than to sweep this whole affair under the rug. That, of course, was the original idea when Nigel Wright and others in the PMO were overseeing what was happening in the Senate and trying to manage this whole thing so that it not only would not come out in the Deloitte report but also so that the Senate committee, they hoped, would whitewash it after Deloitte had done so. Thankfully, in the end that did not happen.

It is clear that this scandal falls squarely on the shoulders of the Prime Minister. It is time that he and his parliamentary secretary stopped stonewalling. It is time they stopped trying to cover up. It is time they were held accountable to Canadians for what has occurred on their watch.

[Dean Del Mastro, Independent, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know this member to be a very decent person, but I would like to ask him a question that goes more to the spirit of this motion.

The Liberals seem to be saying on one hand they would really like to see transparency, but on the other hand they do not provide transparency. I have been here since 2006, and I have never heard a Liberal member stand up and say, “We demand to know which Quebec Liberal riding associations got illegal sponsorship money. We would like to have Elections Canada look into this and determine it”. They have never once said that.

When at least three of their members were caught charging rent to this place, the House of Commons, and paying it to their children, which is contrary to the rules of this Parliament, the Liberal Party actually participated in covering that up by allowing the members to simply pay it back and sweeping it under the rug. The information was completely covered up and kept from taxpayers.

If the Liberals really want to have this kind of transparency, why will they not stand up and demand it of their own members? Why will they not demand accountability for Colin Kenny?

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I note that my hon. colleague from Peterborough is no longer a member of the Conservative caucus, yet he is certainly defending the Conservatives here today.

Why is he no longer a member of that caucus? It seems to me it is because he has been charged under the Elections Act. I believe strongly in the presumption of innocence, so we are going to presume that he is innocent, and I wish him well with whatever happens with those charges. However, he is no position to be attacking this party about transparency in the way that he has.

What we are really talking about here today is the record of the current government and the way it acted in this event, and that is important.

It is important, in fact, that if an individual is no longer a member of the Conservative caucus, he or she shares the responsibility of holding the government to account. I can recall lots of times when we were in government when Liberal backbenchers took part in that process, especially in committees, where they acted independently and insisted that the government be held to account and that it answer questions. I can recall as a minister being asked some tough questions from my own members, not just the lob-balls we see on the other side all the time.

These are things that my hon. colleague should reflect on.

[Bruce Hyer, Independent, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal motion is quite good and I am going to support it for sure. The member for Halifax West is always eloquent and well spoken, and he was logical today, and I thank him for that.

It is clear to most Canadians that the Prime Minister not only knew about this, but quite likely ordered the bribery and the cover-up. At least, that is the way it appears to many of my constituents. That is worrisome, to put it mildly.

However, I and many Canadians feel this is really a symptom of a more basic problem: an undemocratic electoral system; House and committee rules tailored to ensure undue control by the main parties; and especially since 1970, the requirement that party leaders basically choose the candidates and control them.

My question for the hon. member is this. Can he think of ways that we can reduce the power of the parties to control backbenchers, and even ministers, and increase democracy in Parliament?

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's question is a little off the topic we have today, although I can see the link that he is making to the topic. That is fine.

He talks about the fact that the Prime Minister, he feels, ordered this cover-up. Whether he ordered it or knew of it, it seems clear that he ought to have known about it, and most Canadians think he probably did know about it.

The member goes from there to our electoral system. That is a bit of a stretch from this topic. We have had a discussion about where we would go, and I am not one of those who favours what his preferred route is for proportional representation.

Yesterday I read an article that talked about the economic situation in France these days. It talked about the inability of government to move and said basically that the government was either in the hands of the far right or the far left, that both of those groups had far too much influence, as I think can happen with that system and the coalitions that result. The government's survival can depend upon a small group with an extreme point of view. The result is that it does not move forward in a way that represents what most people want.

The fact that we are having open nominations in our party will go a long way to making sure people can choose the candidates they want, and I am sure they will.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Liberals for the motion today and I will be voting for it. Unfortunately, in the media the topic is being referred to as the Senate scandal, and it is really not a Senate scandal. It is the Prime Minister's Office scandal.

The scandal is that the Prime Minister's Office has allowed this kind of insular control freak operation to exert itself over all aspects of government policy. It has been incremental. I will accept that it is incremental, since the notion of such a thing as the PMO was first put on the agenda back in 1968, but the PMO is not in our Constitution. The PMO, unlike the Senate, would be easy to abolish. It is just a question of how much money the House, this Parliament in charge of the public purse, is prepared to allow an unaccountable partisan operation that bullies and oppresses people throughout the system to be allowed to continue to exist.

Earlier in this debate, my hon. friend from Thunder Bay—Superior North quoted a current Conservative, who describes it as “the Stepford wives” for the PMO throughout the system who no longer have the moral compass to say when something is wrong.

Will the Liberal Party assist us in dismantling PMO?

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I remember reading The Stepford Wives. I think it was back in high school that we were required to read it, and I thought it was quite illuminating. It was an excellent book and it made one think about the condition of women in our society, but that is not what the member is talking about today. In particular, she is talking about the situation in the Prime Minister's Office.

In relation to the question that this has become a very insular Prime Minister's Office in which there is a determination to have absolute control, that is a reason to be concerned. Does her prescription for it solve the problem, or is it the right answer? I have seen a number of prime ministers' offices over the years, and they have not all been like this one.

What the resources of the Prime Minister's Office should be is certainly open to debate. I do not share the member's view that it should be abolished, but what we need most of all is a Prime Minister who has the confidence in his team and in Canadians not to be a control freak.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague on an excellent presentation, but I want to ask him a question. My colleague from Malpeque earlier today quoted the Prime Minister as saying during the ad scam that if the prime minister knew about ad scam, it was unconscionable, and if he didn't know, it was incompetent.

I would like my colleague to comment on this aspect. The Prime Minister continues to say he did not know and that everyone around him was deceiving him. Is that incompetence? If he did know, is that unconscionable? It has to be one of the two, and I would like my colleague to answer.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's logic is inescapable. This is a Prime Minister who we know takes an interest in everything going on in his government. I think it is difficult for most Canadians to imagine that he did not know what was going on in his office when there were as many as a dozen senior Conservatives, some in his office and some in the Senate, who knew about and were part of this. How could he not have known, given the way he has his hand into everything? If he did not know that surely indicates incompetence and if he did know it is unconscionable.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, for the second time in three weeks the Liberal Party of Canada has placed before the House of Commons a motion calling for the Prime Minister to testify and to do so under oath. I hope the House will be patient as I read the motion into the record. I realize that was just done, but there is a lot contained in the motion that is quite instructive as to why we are here today.

The text of the motion is as follows:

That, given the recent sworn statements by RCMP Corporal Greg Horton, which revealed that: (i) on February 21, 2013, the Prime Minister’s Office had agreed that, with regard to Mike Duffy’s controversial expenses, the Conservative Party of Canada would “keep him whole on the repayment”; (ii) on February 22, 2013, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff wanted to “speak to the PM before everything is considered final”; (iii) later on February 22, 2013, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff confirmed “We are good to go from the PM once Ben has his confirmation from Payne”; (iv) an agreement was reached between Benjamin Perrin and Janice Payne, counsels for the Prime Minister and Mike Duffy; (v) the amount to keep Mike Duffy whole was calculated to be higher than first determined, requiring a changed source of funds from Conservative Party funds to Nigel Wright’s personal funds, after which the arrangement proceeded and Duffy’s expenses were re-paid; and (vi) subsequently, the Prime Minister's Office engaged in the obstruction of a Deloitte audit and a whitewash of a Senate report; 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 of his own Guide for Ministers and Ministers of State, which 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,” 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.

That is the Liberal motion we are debating today.

From the outset, the people of Canada should know that only one Conservative rose in his place today to deliver a speech to the motion. Despite the fact that the Conservatives have many speaking spots, they chose instead to remain silent. Silence speaks volumes to the command and control style of the Prime Minister's Office. This party, whose leadership day in and day out pretends to stand up for right and wrong, is today the party that is silent in the face of potential criminal activity in the Prime Minister's Office. This party, whose leadership pretends to be tough on crime and holding others to account, remains silent today. We can only conclude that the muzzle has been applied to backbench MPs.

Of course Canadians can read into this as they wish. To me, it speaks to a deep sense of worry in the Conservative hierarchy.

As a result, the Prime Minister has silenced his backbench today. No one is allowed to speak except the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister. The parliamentary secretary, who speaks on behalf of the Prime Minister, just happens as well to be the only one allowed to speak today. Why is the Prime Minister again muzzling Conservative members?

For many Canadians, uncertain as to who knew what and when, this sordid affair emanating out of the Prime Minister's Office is troubling. These Canadians expect to hear from people in the House of Commons and expect us to hold the Prime Minister accountable.

Let me be clear on this point. It is not just the job of opposition MPs to hold the government accountable. It is the duty of all MPs to hold the Prime Minister to account. It is our duty because the questions swirling around the truth, or lack of it, oblige us all, on all sides, to speak up and ask tough questions. This includes Conservative backbench MPs.

I repeat, the Prime Minister, who is at the centre of all of this, is not allowing any of the Conservative MPs to speak. Yet, I am convinced that at some point the PMO muzzle will eventually be replaced with voices seeking some accountability. I said two weks ago when we debated a similar motion calling on the Prime Minister to testify under oath that there is a great many good and decent Conservatives on the backbench. They were elected to be the voice of their constituents. I submit that they have a right to speak today.

These Conservative MPs are team players in normal circumstances. They are not parliamentary secretaries appointed by the Prime Minister. They are not ministers in the government appointed by the Prime Minister. They are not committee chairs appointed by the Prime Minister. They are the backbone of the caucus. Each and every day they come here to the House of Commons seeking to do their best for their constituents. Although many would perhaps like to have one of these high offices and positions, they remain, for the moment, loyal to their party.

However, what they were not elected to do was to be props for the Prime Minister. They were not elected to clap on cue as directed by the front bench. That is not the role of an MP.

Conservative MPs know something does not add up in this PMO scandal. They know deep down that all of the changing stories simply do not add up. They know that this scandal should not have happened and they understand that the current Prime Minister has allowed this scandal to distract from other issues facing their constituents. They understand because they represent their constituents, not the Prime Minister. They know that all of this secrecy and doublespeak raises serious questions about the leadership of the Prime Minister, yet today, of all days to have a voice, Conservative MPs are silent.

However, I am asking that my colleagues from the Conservative caucus be bold. I am asking them to make the tough decision to do what is right. I am asking them to speak out. I am asking these Conservative backbench MPs to set aside their party loyalty and do what is best for the country they love and the constituents who allow them to serve in this place.

It is true that in our party, as it is with the NDP, the Conservatives and the Bloc, we belong to teams. These political teams have meaning for all of us, regardless of party. We socialize together, share similar ideologies and are naturally drawn to each other because of the team. However, we can only be a team up to a point. There are some moments when we must simply follow our conscience and do the right thing. Therefore, I am asking my colleagues in the Conservative Party to set aside their instincts to be a team player and do the right thing.

Perhaps some of the Conservative backbench are grateful to be muzzled, and I can understand why. I would not want to destroy my reputation defending the Prime Minister and his office who are, at their very best, incompetent, and at their very worst, involved in potential criminal activity.

There are Conservatives speaking up. Today in the Toronto Star we read thoughts about this scandal from the hon. member for Edmonton—St. Albert. He is a Conservative. He was elected a Conservative and he embraces Conservative values. He remains to this day a member of the Conservative Party.

Last spring, however, he made what I imagine was a very difficult decision. He made the decision to leave the Conservative caucus, all the while maintaining his membership in the party. He left the caucus out of principle over concerns about the overwhelming control applied to the caucus by unelected officials in the Prime Minister's Office.

Allow me, then, to read an excerpt from his blog that appeared in today's Toronto Star. Although the words are not mine, it hardly needs mentioning that I agree with them in their entirety. He says:

Currently, the PMO spin machine is dismissing all of the incendiary e-mails referred to in last week’s RCMP affidavit on the Wright/Duffy scandal. According to that machine, all that matters is the one passage confirming the Prime Minister was unaware of the $90,000 personal cheque. Amazingly, the PMO is so insular that it would seem they actually believe the document exonerates the Prime Minister. On the matter of the $90,000 cheque, the PM’s ignorance appears to be confirmed. But this story ceased to be about Nigel Wright and Mike Duffy weeks ago. As salacious as a millionaire paying the ineligible debts of a now-expelled Senator might be, the bigger story is what their transaction (and who knew or didn’t know what and when) says about how business is conducted in Ottawa. Section 119 of the Criminal Code makes it an indictable offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison to offer or accept “any money [or] valuable consideration” to a Member of Parliament “in respect of anything done or omitted […] in their official capacity.” Accordingly, if someone offered a sitting legislator $90,000 in exchange for his co-operation in sanitizing a report by a Senate Committee on an independent audit into that very legislator’s housing expenses, it could certainly qualify as criminal. But since the Prime Minister has established, at the very least, plausible deniability of his involvement in all but the “broadest of terms” of that transaction, the legal question is secondary at this point. What is more relevant and more threatening to our democracy is that the executive was interfering and attempting to micromanage the Senate — a body that exists to provide an independent check on government, not to be a PMO branch plant. The Prime Minister’s Office was heavily involved in this operation. The February 22 e-mails, wherein Wright, then the chief of staff, appears to seek the PM’s approval for a scheme to have the Conservative Party reimburse Duffy’s expenses (then estimated at $32,000) and a subsequent confirmation (“good to go from the PM”) are particularly troubling. It appears the plan was run by and approved by the Prime Minister.

I am still quoting from the member for Edmonton—St. Albert. He says:

As a Member of the Conservative Party, I actually find the prospect of the party paying these ineligible expenses more troubling than Wright paying them. Moreover, the fact that the plan was subsequently halted may not insulate those who made the “offer” from prosecution under section 119. The Prime Minister’s response in Question Period that he was “good to go” with Duffy repaying the expenses himself is illogical. Such an obviously proper course of conduct would not have required the approval of the PM. The PM’s personal credibility is further eroded by his imprecise recollection of the days following the breaking of the story. The PM has stated several times that upon hearing of the cheque he took immediate action. But for several days in May, the entire PMO spin establishment had “full confidence in Mr. Wright.”

That is an excerpt from a blog post published by the member for Edmonton—St. Albert this morning.

We know there are other Conservatives who feel the same. There are others who are troubled by what is happening. It is time for them to be heard. It is time for them to set aside their loyalty to the Prime Minister and to put the interests of the country and their constituents first. That, it seems to me, is the only honourable thing to do in these circumstances.

Let me close with this. For a Prime Minister who has had complete control over the entire operation of his government, from top to bottom, since 2006, to suddenly claim that he knew nothing about a payment to a sitting senator and the subsequent cover-up is, to be generous, simply not credible. In fact, it would be incredible if he did not know.

Canadians want to know the whole story. Canadians want to know if the Prime Minister is telling the truth. We know that many Conservatives over there wonder, as well, if the Prime Minister is telling the truth. It seems to me that the only way to get to the truth is for the Prime Minister to testify under oath.

There is an old adage that says that a half truth is a full lie. Let us finally have the truth—the whole truth. It starts with Conservatives across the aisle having the courage to vote for this motion calling for the Prime Minister to testify and to do so under oath.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I completely agree that the Prime Minister should answer all of the questions being asked of him and that he should be completely honest in doing so. I believe that my leader has done an exceptional job asking him questions.

I would like to ask my colleague if he thinks that a forced testimony from the Prime Minister, under oath before Parliament, would be admissible in court. Would this positively or negatively affect legal matters involving the existing corruption in the PMO and the Senate?

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her question. I fully agree that the NDP leader has done a great job during question period in recent days, trying to establish the truth in this scandal. It is clear that he was not entirely successful.

I believe that the Prime Minister's sworn testimony should be admissible in court as part of a legal process. There is no doubt that, sooner or later, there will be a criminal process in this case. That testimony would be highly relevant in that type of process.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly want to thank my colleague from Charlottetown for his remarks today with regard to this particular motion.

I think it is fair to say that all of us within the Liberal caucus feel very strongly that the Prime Minister should testify, under oath, in this particular circumstance. It is also quite obvious that in doing so, the same level of control would not be there for the government. Maybe that is one of the reasons it has not supported this.

I want to ask my colleague how this is playing out in his home province of P.E.I., which we know has been in the news a lot as it relates to this particular issue. What has been the opinion of the hard-working, law-abiding citizens of Prince Edward Island when it comes to this particular scandal around the PMO and the Senate?

I would also like to ask my colleague, who has been practising law in this country for quite a number of years, what his opinion would be of how such ethical practices would be looked upon by those within the Law Society or within the practice of law in comparison with how we are seeing these things dealt with within the PMO and within the government.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, there is, indeed, a lot in that question. I regret that I have only a minute to deal with it. It is also somewhat awkward. I realize that out of respect for parliamentary tradition, I have to speak through the Speaker to the member who is sitting beside and behind me.

I go door to door one day a month in my riding, and the response from Prince Edward Islanders has been consistent and damning. Not only are they disgusted with the conduct within the Prime Minister's Office, but they are, frankly, embarrassed that Prince Edward Island has been cast in this light because the Prime Minister decided to appoint someone from Kanata to a Prince Edward Island seat. That is the first part of the question.

The second part is with respect to a tie-in with what is happening here and my previous career as a practising lawyer. Members would know that the practice of law is built on integrity. It is built on someone having complete faith that when something is said to a lawyer, it will be held in confidence. That is why, in the practice of law, if any comment is made, for example, to you, Mr. Speaker, by a client, all of your partners are deemed to know it.

Interestingly, we have something that is, arguably, akin to that in A Guide for Ministers and Ministers of State, where it says that “Ministers and Ministers of State are personally responsible for the conduct and operation of their offices and the exempt staff in their employ”.

It is also quite telling that when Nigel Wright answered the question, he said that he acted within the scope of his employment. We, as lawyers, would know that acting within the scope of one's employment triggers vicarious liability, as opposed to being on a frolic of one's own.

What I would say is that the rules within the practice of law are built to maintain the integrity of those who practise. It is quite clear that no such rules are being applied in this case, whether they exist or not, and that speaks very poorly to the integrity within the Prime Minister's Office.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague.

I would like my colleague to speak to the vision for the short, medium and long terms, since there is no doubt in Canadians' minds that the Conservatives' position on the Senate is the status quo.

In the medium term, we can contemplate an NDP government arriving in 2015 and dealing with the Senate once and for all. In the meantime, I quite agree with the motion the Liberals moved today, but they did not support the NDP motion just a few weeks ago to set up guidelines for the Senate and send a clear message to all Canadians that it is possible to do so.

What solutions does the Liberal Party advocate in the short term for cleaning up the Senate, including their own senators, and for sending a clear message to all Canadians that we are dealing with the problem?

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. First of all, I certainly do not share his vision for 2015 with respect to which party will form the next government.

The Senate is very important for a small province such as mine. For Prince Edward Island, the mandate of the Senate, when established, was to protect the smallest provinces. It is very important for my province that the Senate not be abolished. However, there are obviously problems to tackle and things to improve.

It is vital that we listen to Canadians, especially those living in the smallest provinces. For example, if the Senate were abolished, Prince Edward Island would have fewer than four MPs and no senators. That is a great concern for us.

Prince Edward Islanders believe that this government is already ignoring our status as a province. When the NDP talks about abolishing the Senate, we take it as an insult.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and speak on what I think is a very important issue for all Canadians. In fact, I have had the opportunity to do a lot of door-knocking, as many other members have, and I can say that it is an issue that is top of mind for many Canadians, I would argue, from coast to coast to coast.

I must say that I am a little disappointed in the official opposition. I think that the NDP has dropped the ball in that this is not about Senate reform. The issue before us deals with the alleged fraud that has taken place in the Prime Minister's Office. That is what we need to focus our attention on.

Canadians want the Prime Minister to be straightforward and to tell the full truth as to what has taken place. The NDP can continue to debate the Senate, something they know they will never be able to realize, but they are missing the point here today. What we are talking about today is how critically important it is that the Prime Minister of our country come before Canadians and explain exactly what, in full detail, he knows. We are not going to settle for anything less.

I find it very interesting that there was an opportunity for five Conservative speakers to stand and talk about the motion. They chose not to do that. One member of the Conservative caucus, the one responsible for damage control on the fraud that has taken place in the Prime Minister's Office, the member for Oak Ridges—Markham, the parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, has been the human shield who has been trying to deflect a very serious issue.

Now we see that the glass bubble around the Prime Minister's Office has made it very clear that if one is a Conservative member of Parliament, one does not stand up and deal with the issue before us today. That is the reason we have not seen one Conservative MP, other than the one responsible for damage control, stand and attempt to defend the Prime Minister or express what he or she feels is going on or went on in the Prime Minister's Office.

The leader of the Liberal Party talks a lot about how important it is that as members of Parliament, we are supposed to go into the constituencies and bring constituents' concerns to Ottawa. He contrasts that with the Conservative government, the Prime Minister, and this PMO, which do the absolute opposite.

The PMO's instructions are very clear. As a member of Parliament for the Conservative Party, one does not represent one's constituents in Ottawa; one represents Ottawa in one's constituency. The Prime Minister has that wrong, and we are seeing it today, because none of them are standing up.

I knocked on doors in Brandon and talked to people. I talked to people in Provencher and to my own constituents in Winnipeg North. One of the issues that came up time and time again was the issue of the Prime Minister's Office and what has been taking place there. I can say that they just do not believe the Prime Minister. They do not believe that the Prime Minister has been straightforward and is telling the full truth regarding what has taken place in what some call the Senate scandal. I think it is more of a PMO scandal than it is a Senate scandal. We need to be very clear on that particular point.

No doubt there were a number of factors in what took place in the province of Manitoba last night. It was an exciting time when we saw a very clear indication that Manitobans are looking at abandoning the Conservative Party. Even in areas where it traditionally had good strength, they are looking for an alternative.

It is the Liberal Party and the messaging and the attitudes we bring that I think is making the difference. What we have seen in a lot of the feedback I received at the door was that people want, and very much so, for the government to come clean on this issue.

What does the resolution actually call for? It is nothing earth shattering. The essence of the opposition motion that was introduced by the Liberal Party today is that we:

...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.

That is all we are asking for. Why are the Conservatives so fearful of being able to address that issue? Why are the Conservatives so concerned that they are not prepared to stand in their place and take a position on this particular motion?

If the Conservatives wanted to canvass their constituents to see what they had to say and were to share those thoughts with the House today, I suspect this particular motion would indeed pass.

It has been a very interesting process. We call it the “fraud squad”, coming out of the Prime Minister's Office. It is amazing, the types of personalities that are actually involved. We talked about Nigel Wright. RCMP Corporal Greg Horton has ultimately alleged that Mr. Wright in fact broke the law with that payment of $90,000. This is coming from the RCMP. It is very serious.

Who was Wright at the time? He was the chief of staff for the Prime Minister's Office. That means he was the go-to person. There was no one closer to the Prime Minister. Well, possibly his wife is. The point is that this is an individual who carried a great deal of influence here in Canada. He had the ear of the Prime Minister. That is just one person.

Remember, the Prime Minister initially said that it was only one person, only Nigel Wright, who knew anything about it and that he was disappointed that Nigel Wright kept it from him, and so forth. That is what the Prime Minister said.

Of course we found out that it is not true. A lot of people knew about it. A number of weeks ago, the Prime Minister said it was a few people. On my plane ride back to Winnipeg on Friday, I took a snap of something on the Internet. I wanted to try to get a better sense of how many people were actually around. It is quite impressive.

We can talk about some of the senators at play who would have known. Obviously, Senator Duffy would have been one of them. He is in fact the key man here. We have Senator Tkachuk. He was the chair of the Senate standing committee. Remember the bit of a whitewash attempt that was being done there? We have Senator Stewart Olsen, again, a member of that particular standing committee. We have Senator LeBreton, government leader in the Senate.

These are all senators who knew about it, who we know knew about it. What amazes me is the individuals who worked for the PMO. There are individuals like Mr. Perrin, a lawyer, former PMO lawyer, who knew about it.

What about the PMO staffer who now works for the Minister of Natural Resources, Mr. Woodcock? He was engaged and actually very much aware of what was going on. Again, he was working for the Prime Minister. The irony there is, of course, that he still works for the Government of Canada. He now works in the Ministry of Natural Resources.

The government talks a lot about getting tough on crime and issues of that nature. What is happening here, with regard to Mr. Woodcock?

Another PMO staff person was Nigel Wright's executive assistant, Mr. van Hemmen.

What about another PMO staffer's involvement, Mr. Rogers? Again, he now works for a leading minister from Manitoba.

We can talk about Mr. Hilton, who is the Conservative Party executive director, who was also engaged.

We also had Mr. Hamilton, the Conservative Party lawyer.

What about Senator Gerstein? He is the fundraiser. Many refer to him as the bagman for the Conservative Party. I believe he was the individual who made a connection call with regard to the audit.

Those were just some of the individuals I was able to kind of pull together, primarily because of news agencies.

Andrew MacDougall is another individual, the director of communications for the PMO. Christopher Montgomery is now responsible for issues management for the government in the Senate. Ray Novak is the deputy chief of staff to the PM.

Last week, prior to going out to Winnipeg, I talked about Jenni Byrne. She is the deputy chief of staff today, I understand. She had some prime ministerial responsibilities that had to be conducted in Brandon, I understand. She worked very closely with individuals like Dan Hilton and Senator Gerstein.

It is a pretty impressive group. We do not know to what degree or how big the fraud squad really was, at the time. We do not know all of the personalities who were engaged.

All I know is we have the Prime Minister who says there was only one. If I do a quick count, there are a lot more than one.

Yes, a number of months later, he did admit that there were more than one. There were a few.

We believe that there were a lot more than just a few. That is one of the reasons we are challenging the Prime Minister to come forward and start telling the full truth about who knew, what they knew and when they knew it.

These are not just average party Conservatives who we would find in some annual meetings. These are individuals who have been elevated to the highest levels within the Conservative Party, within the Prime Minister's Office. These are the elite who the Prime Minister himself would have, in many cases, appointed or had confidence in. It seems to be a fairly big circle.

What is the Prime Minister saying? He is trying to convince Canadians that he knew nothing about it. That is a hard one to accept.

One member from the other side finally speaks up and he says, “Accept it”. I do not accept it, and I do not believe Canadians are buying it.

It is interesting. It was not that long ago that we had a poll, I believe, that came out saying there were more people who thought that Mike Duffy actually was more believable than the Prime Minister on the issue.

[Some hon. members]

Ah.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I would be saying “Ah”, too. It says a lot about the Prime Minister's Office.

What I do know is that more and more Canadians are finding it difficult to believe that the Prime Minister has in fact been telling the full truth.

The question I would pose to my hon. colleagues across the way is why they do not stand in their place and articulate why they believe the Prime Minister has been telling the truth. What have you got to lose by doing that? You have already forfeited more than two hours of debate inside the chamber. Why would you not take the opportunity to stand and tell the viewers and Canadians why we have it all wrong, that in fact the Prime Minister has been telling the full truth?

I suspect the reason they are not doing that is that there is a credibility issue here, and there are very few within the Conservative ranks who are prepared to stand up in a public fashion and tell it as it is; and that is that there is something wrong here and we are not getting the full truth from the Prime Minister.

That is why we are challenging Conservative members in particular to support the motion that the Liberal Party has brought forward for a vote. All it does is compel our Prime Minister to come before us and tell Canadians exactly what he knows. Why would they not support a motion of that nature?

We have not had the vote yet. I am feeling somewhat discouraged because members are not standing up defending the Prime Minister; they are not standing up, period.

My fear, as I mentioned at the very beginning, is that I believe that the Prime Minister's Office has dictated and stated very clearly that Conservatives are not to speak out today.

Some members laugh. If I am wrong, stand in your place. Let us see you stand up and defend your Prime Minister. If there is something we are missing, why not stand in your place and say, “Here is where we got it—”

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

That is the second time the member has spoken directly to the members on the opposite side. He must direct all of his comments to the Chair.