Debates of Nov. 5th, 2013

Opposition Motion—Instruction to the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics

[Brent Rathgeber, Independent, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would be the last person the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's Office would take any advice from on this issue or any other.

As some members know, before I served in this place I also had the honour of serving in the Alberta legislature. In that capacity I served under former, now deceased, premier Ralph Klein. He had a very different methodology when it came to dealing with problems or even crises.

He would get in front of the issue and would hold a press conference. He would have a mea culpa. He would explain what he knew. The media was very responsive and he found out that the Alberta electorate could be very forgiving. I think a little contrition and openness and transparency would go a long way to restoring the confidence of Canadians in the government.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be part of this debate in a sense. I wish we did not need to have this debate on a motion calling on the information, privacy and ethics committee to be instructed to examine the conduct of the Prime Minister's Office regarding the repayment of Senator Mike Duffy's expenses and on the Prime Minister to be ordered to appear under oath as a witness before the committee for a period of three hours.

It is to some degree humiliating to the Prime Minister, to his members of Parliament, to the Conservative Party and to Canada that we have to put a motion forward asking the head of the government to be honest with Canadians. How humiliating it must be for the Prime Minister to have one of the former members of his party and his caucus, the member for Edmonton—St. Albert, plead for an honest response from his former leader, the Prime Minister, as to what he knew and when he knew it. How humiliating it must be for the Prime Minister to be begged to take responsibility for what occurred in his office, the office he is in charge of and a government he is in charge of, which is led by a party of which he is the leader.

As an official observer at the recent convention of the Conservative Party of Canada in Calgary, I was struck by the initial subdued atmosphere at the convention, but it was also an atmosphere of waiting expectantly. That was not just the atmosphere at that convention, but the atmosphere across the country where Canadians, who have been following this, were waiting for the air to be cleared.

We are in a situation where well over half of Canadians do not know whether to believe their Prime Minister's or Senator Duffy's version of what took place. When two-thirds of Canadians are unable to trust that their Prime Minister is telling the truth, that is a humiliation not only for the government, but also for our country. One out of two Conservative voters do not trust that their Prime MInister is telling the truth and do not know whom to believe when there are two different stories. That is a significant and very worrisome situation when there has been systemic lack of clarity on the part of the Prime Minister, whose story has changed again and again.

As the member for Edmonton—St. Albert just declared, this is bad for our country. He was very eloquent in talking about the consequences when the integrity of the Prime Minister of the country is in question, that it is bad for our political system and for our democracy.

That expectant atmosphere in Calgary was awaiting the Prime Minister's speech on Friday night. The Prime Minister had an opportunity to speak to the nation and address this crisis in his government, which has been mounting since last February. I will give examples showing the changes in the Prime Minister's version of events that are symbolic of a lack of integrity and the question that has built in people's minds about whether he is telling the truth.

On May 16, the Prime Minister's Office put out a statement with regard to Mr. Wright who was the chief of staff to the Prime Minister in the PMO. The statement was, “Mr. Wright will not be resigning...Mr. Wright has the full support of the Prime Minister”.

On May 19, the Prime Minister's Office put out a statement from the Prime Minister, which said:

It is with great regret that I have accepted the resignation of Nigel Wright as my Chief of Staff. I accept that Nigel believed he was acting in the public interest, but I understand the decision he has taken to resign. I want to thank Nigel for his tremendous contribution to our Government over the past two and a half years.

On June 5, the Prime Minister stated the following, in the House of Commons:

—it was Mr. Wright who made the decision to take his personal funds and give those to Mr. Duffy so that Mr. Duffy could reimburse the taxpayers. Those were his decisions. They were not communicated to me or to members of my office.

We know that is not true.

On October 28, the Prime Minister stated, in a radio interview, “look, I think the responsibility whenever things go wrong is for us to take appropriate action. As you know, I had a chief of staff who made an inappropriate payment to Mr. Duffy. He was dismissed”.

First, he resigned, then he was dismissed.

On October 29, the Prime Minister said the following, in the House of Commons:

—on our side there is one person responsible for this deception, and that person is Mr. Wright, by his own admission.

Now it has gone from supporting this person, to regretfully accepting his resignation, to accusing him of deception.

What are Canadians to believe when a prime minister changes his story?

When one reads this, the responsibility when things go wrong, on our side there is one person responsible.

Canadians when they hear “responsible”, they believe it is the Prime Minister who is responsible. It is the Prime Minister who is effectively the president and CEO of this organization. That is what heads of organizations do. They take responsibility when there has been an action where funds have been paid to silence a sitting senator and funds have been paid to pay the legal bills to negotiate a cover-up. This is a serious matter. Who is responsible?

Back to Calgary. The public was expecting to hear some words of acceptance of personal responsibility for the situation. The president and CEO, effectively, of the organization, the dual organizations, the Conservative Party of Canada and the Government of Canada, is the Prime Minister. Was this person going to accept any responsibility whatsoever? The public was expecting that would happen and my guess is the Conservative members of his party were expecting that would happen. One out of two Conservative voters who do not know whether to trust that the Prime Minister has told the truth.

My guess is that the Prime Minister's caucus was in Calgary anticipating that the Prime Minister might accept some personal responsibility for the situation. He could have acknowledged that he was the head of this organization, that he personally appointed Nigel Wright and Mike Duffy so he was responsible. He could have told them what he would do to accept his responsibilities and how he would demonstrate his integrity in this situation and take action.

Did he do that? Absolutely not.

He spoke, once again, about responsibility as if it was something he understood and then failed to take one molecule of responsibility in the situation and essentially went on with a continuation of blaming other individuals and other organizations for the situation.

That is why the Prime Minister, who is completely out of touch with the expectations of normal human beings, a person in charge would take responsibility, have integrity and tell the truth, is being subjected to the humiliating situation of a motion requiring that he testify under oath in a televised committee so Canadians can find out what actually happened.

This is a government and it is a party that prides itself on its connections with the private sector, with the business community.

I will not go so far as to say that it is doing a good job in terms of the economy, but it is certainly a government that would claim that free enterprise and the private sector is one of its important constituents.

How does the Prime Minister explain to the private sector how completely out of alignment with any norms or ethics, in terms of responsibility for problems, the Prime Minister's behaviour demonstrates he is? It is antithetical to what we expect of any organization where there has been a mistake made, where there has been an error in judgment. There is no longer a corporation in this country that would have this kind of scandal, corruption, bribery, cover-up, or change in story by the CEO and president of the organization without clear repercussions. In any corporation that made a mistake or had a problem, responsibility would be accepted at the top.

In the private sector, if it was the president and CEO who was implicated, as it is in the case of the Prime Minister, the head of this organization, who met with the senator in question and the chief of staff, according to Senator Duffy, and who has changed his story, that president and CEO would be shown the door by the board of directors immediately.

I had the privilege of working in the private sector for 25 years before entering politics. The organization I worked in had a number of contract crews. In the early days, they were completing contracts for our clients in reforestation across the country. The project manager in the field was responsible for the results of a project. Even if the weather was not co-operating, even if somebody else let them down, even if a vehicle had problems due to someone else's actions, even if some of the equipment was taken in an unauthorized way and was not available, it was the project manager who was responsible for the result of that contract. That is what we do when we are in charge. If we are in charge of a project, we take responsibility. In the private sector, one does not point fingers and say, “Yes, I'm in charge, but it is not me. Somebody else has to be responsible.” One takes responsibility.

It has been shocking to me, as a businessperson, to see the head of this organization fail utterly on that level. The private sector could not function if this were the norm. If the head of an organization demonstrated a lack of integrity, changed his or her story, blamed others for what happened, hid the truth, allowed it to leak out bit by bit, and tried to manoeuvre around it, changing the story bit by bit, that organization would have absolutely no credibility.

If we had a pipeline company, and the pipeline leaked, and the CEO and president of that company pretended that it did not happen, and when he or she could no longer pretend that it did not happen blamed whoever had pointed out that it had happened—maybe the homeowners whose water and fields had been contaminated by the oil—and changed the story as the truth came out, that CEO would be history. He or she would have no more credibility in that or any other industry.

Integrity is key to effectively working in groups and leading projects. This is a prime minister who is at the head of a government. It is unbelievable that we can have this kind of modelling of poor integrity for the young people in our country who are potentially interested in politics and how this country operates.

Everyone can make a mistake, so it is not about never making a mistake. It is not about being perfect. It is about taking responsibility for one's mistakes. It is about taking responsibility for the organization one leads. That kind of behaviour is important for young people and for the rest of our society to see in the head of our country, which is our Prime Minister. We are not seeing that. That is why I call this a humiliating day, not just for the members opposite, their leader, and the Conservative Party but for Canadians, our parliamentary system, and our democracy.

We are calling on the Prime Minister to accept responsibility and end the response of attacking others. What we have heard from the Prime Minister are untruths about the Liberal Party and the motion in the Senate. They are to distract Canadians into thinking that this is about a Senate motion and a Senate debate and that this is about the actions of one, two, or three senators. No, this is actually about the absence of the integrity of the Prime Minister, a cover-up in the Prime Ministers office, a bribe to pay off and silence a senator the Prime Minister was concerned would tarnish the reputation of his party, and potentially illegal activities. We know, because the RCMP are now investigating the Prime Minister's office, that potentially criminal actions have taken place in the Prime Minister's office.

The integrity of our parliamentary system requires the Prime Minister to step up and accept his responsibility and be willing to clarify what happened. No more changed stories, no more attacks, no more distractions, and no more punting the questions over to a parliamentary secretary who wants to talk about bologna pizza. This issue is far more serious than that. It is the integrity of the government that is at stake. It is the believability of the government that is at stake.

A person of great eminence in our history, Mahatma Gandhi, said that the moment a person's word is in question, everything he does is tainted, and that is what we have with the Prime Minister. This is a person whose integrity, whose word, is in question, and that means that everything he does is tainted. What the Prime Minister said about the Canada-EU free trade agreement is no longer believable. It is tainted.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Oh, come on. Get serious.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Name the legislation or policy; the moment a person's word is in question, everything he does is tainted. We are in a country now where the head of our government, our Prime Minister, is tainted, and that is simply not acceptable to Canadians.

The public of Canada expected the Prime Minister to clear the air and take personal responsibility in Calgary, and he completely failed to do that. The Liberals are providing the Prime Minister with another opportunity to do just that. He should accept that offer in the spirit in which it is extended. It is extended in the spirit of clarifying his role, clarifying his responsibility, clearing the air, and returning a scrap of integrity to the role and the office of the Prime Minister. We encourage him to do that.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and for Intergovernmental Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know what it is with the Liberals and why they so dislike my family stories about pizza. The vast majority of Canadians enjoy a good pizza every once in a while. They do. I know they do, because the store was very busy. It is only the Liberals who are defending these senators and who, for some reason, do not like pizza.

They want to bring this to the ethics committee. I like the member for Avalon. I think he is a very good guy. I get along with him. I do not always agree with what he talks about. In the ethics committee, he will get one question. I am not sure what that question is going to be, but if he has it ready, that one question he will get at the ethics committee that is such a great question that it will help to clarify everything, I am prepared to let him ask that question right now.

In reality, this is just continuing Liberal nonsense. They want to protect the status quo. They want to get it out of here quickly, because they are actually embarrassed by the fact that they cannot add anything to the debate. They are embarrassed by the fact that the Leader of the Opposition has kind of taken the spotlight away from their leader.

The New Democrats have made this their priority. I might disagree with that, but as their priority, they have been asking questions. The Liberals have been completely absent, and now they are saying that one question in the ethics committee is all they need, and that is the end of it.

I want to hear from the member for Avalon. What is that one question that is so important that he needs to have it at the ethics committee?

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

I would point out to the Parliamentary Secretary that it is the Chair who decides who gets to ask questions. The member for Vancouver Quadra currently has the floor, if she wishes to respond to the comments.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an amazingly bizarre way to take the spotlight away from the Liberal Party leader. He is changing the story, blocking reasonable questions about what occurred in the Prime Minister's office, and inflaming the mistrust and concern of the public by not telling the truth. What a way to go.

I would also say that the Parliamentary Secretary, day after day, comes in here and insults the intelligence and concerns of Canadians about the integrity of our parliamentary system by talking about things that have nothing to do with it, as if this were a joke. This is not a joke. This is at the base of the integrity—

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Order, please. I advise all members that when the Chair takes to his feet, the members should resume their seats.

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister has a point of order.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure if it is parliamentary what the hon. member just said about me. I can respect the fact that she might not necessarily like how I answer questions, but the member disparages my character in saying that I do not care about the Canadian people.

I can say that I was elected by one of the highest margins in the country. More people voted for me than any other—

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

That is not a point of order. I do not know if the member for Vancouver Quadra had finished with her response.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I am not sure where I was when this bogus point of order cut me off.

What I was saying was that it is insulting the intelligence and concerns of Canadians, Conservative voters, Conservative Party members, and Conservative caucus members when the Parliamentary Secretary stands up and talks about pizza, when there are real questions that go to the heart of the integrity of our parliamentary system and whether the Prime Minister is telling the truth.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I like the member for Vancouver Quadra. I travelled with her a number of times when she lived in New Westminster. She is okay in my book. We probably did not vote for each other, but I do not know.

What I want to point out is that we, of course, support the motion. We want to get to the bottom of the various Senate scandals on the Conservative side involving Mike Duffy, Patrick Brazeau, and Pamela Wallin. I could go on and on.

However, there is another set of Senate scandals that are Liberal-oriented Senate scandals. I can remember, in the previous Parliament, Andrew Thompson, a Liberal senator who lived in Mexico and came in three days a year to do his Senate work. We had Raymond Lavigne, who is currently serving a sentence. We have Mac Harb, who purposely, to get around the rules on expense claims, bought a house 101 kilometres from Parliament Hill so that he could illegally fleece the taxpayer.

We have had just as many problems from Liberal senators as we have had from Conservative senators. Our position is very clear. We think the place should be abolished. Most Canadians agree with us.

I would like to ask the member for Vancouver Quadra why her party continues to flog this completely undemocratic and illegitimate Senate, when Conservatives and Liberals have proven that the Senate should be abolished? That is in the interest of Canadians.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the member that this motion is about the Prime Minister's Office and the Prime Minister, not about the Senate. It is the Prime Minister's Office that is implicated in potential bribery, corruption, cover-up, and silencing of a member of the red chamber, and that is why we need some honest answers and a clearing of the air by the Prime Minister.

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

Mr. Speaker, what really resonated with me after what the member for Vancouver Quadra said is the issue of personal accountability.

Like her, I am a small business person. If I do well, I love to take the credit and reap the benefits and profits, but if I screw up and make mistakes, or even if my staff make mistakes because I provided inadequate management, it is not appropriate and really not professional to try to shift the blame to my employees or others. That resonates with me.

I would like to reread a line that I quoted earlier today, something the Prime Minister said in 1996. He stated, “Many of Canada’s problems stem from a winner-take-all style of politics...” I would like to personally end that quote by adding “where we are always right, they are always wrong, in the mindless tribalism that happens on all sides of the House”.

When we get past this horrible mess that is interfering with the function of Parliament, I hope that we deal appropriately with the procedures of the House to make it more democratic, more balanced, more fair, and more effective.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Thunder Bay—Superior North for his deep commitment to democracy and for respectful parliamentary procedures. His comment is in line with that.

Personal accountability, as he pointed out, is critical for the private sector, and in this place ministerial accountability is very much part of that tradition. Ministers take responsibility for problems that happen in their ministries. They step down or step aside—or it used to happen, that is, until the current Conservative government, led by a Prime Minister who is demonstrating a whole other type of lack of ethics in behaviour.

I would like to add to the description that the member just provided. The current government has a principle that the end justifies the means, and that is what has gotten the Prime Minister into trouble. That leads to a downward spiral in terms of democracy. We are to be a model in the world for democracy, yet what is happening is the demeaning and degrading of the very underpinning and principles of our democracy in Canada.

That has to change, and we are going to give the Prime Minister an opportunity to start that change with this motion.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade]

Mr. Speaker, what troubles me as a parliamentarian spending my first year in the House is that my friends in the NDP and the Liberal Party like to ask a lot of questions, but they do not tend to listen to the responses, nor do they really care about the responses. It is the same for the independent member for Edmonton—St. Albert.

There has been much talk of contrition. I would remind all colleagues in the House that back in May, in Lima, Peru, the Prime Minister addressed this aspect clearly. He stated:

...I am very sorry that this has occurred. I am not only sorry, I’ve been through the range of emotions. I’m sorry, I’m frustrated, I’m extremely angry...

Leadership is not just looking back at those frustrations and emotions; it is about going forward and ensuring that these types of abuses to the public trust do not happen again, which is why we are committed to reforming the Senate.

I would ask the member for Vancouver Quadra to get behind that and I would ask why the leader of her party is encouraging the status quo in the Senate.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in fact Liberals are for Senate reform as well.

I would like to say in response that it is not good enough to do a Mayor Ford-like apology that says, “I'm sorry”, and when asked what he is sorry for, he says, “I'm sorry. Let's move forward.”

For the Prime Minister to go to Peru and say, “I'm angry. Let's move forward” is not an acceptance of personal responsibility and is not being accountable. There certainly has not been honesty from the Prime Minister, and that is what he has an opportunity to correct.

Bill C-7—Notice of Time Allocation Motion

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to advise an agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Orders 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the third reading stage of Bill C-7, an act to amend the Museums Act in order to establish the Canadian museum of history and to make consequential amendments to other acts.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the Crown will propose at the next sitting a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of the proceedings at the said stage.

The House resumed consideration of the motion.

Opposition Motion—Instruction to the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow night, a short time from now, there will be a bit of a watershed moment in the House. Members from both sides will take a decision. They will vote according to their own conscience as to whether or not accountability will indeed reign in the House.

The House will decide whether or not members from various parties, but most importantly individual members, will do what they felt they came here to do.

This will be a watershed moment because when I look back and remember some of the statements that were brought forward by members who represented the Canadian Alliance party, the Reform Party, and then the merger that formed the Conservative Party of Canada, they came forward with very strong ideals that they voiced with passion. They said they would clean up Ottawa. They said they would bring in a Parliamentary Budget Officer with teeth to prevent the kind of shenanigans that they said were going on around here. They said they would empower officers of Parliament to ensure that those agents of Parliament could perform their functions and do their jobs.

It has not quite worked out that way. A lot of good people, very well-intentioned and strong-minded and very vocal and articulate in their opinions, said they were coming here to do their constituents' business, and one of key points of their constituents' business was to clean up Ottawa. No more of these cover-ups, no more sweeping things under the rug. They were the Conservative Party, and they were going to set the record straight.

History has not been quite that kind in terms of their performance. The Parliamentary Budget Officer was someone who just got in the way. Conservatives were trying to do the people's business, and that pesky Parliamentary Budget Officer was getting in the way.

The nuclear regulatory commissioner was going on about people's safety from radiation. Well, she had to shut up; they were going to get rid of her pretty fast, and they did.

The list goes on and on. The Public Sector Integrity Commissioner, the person appointed by the Prime Minister of Canada—the current occupant, whose job it was to ensure the integrity of the public service—was found to be guilty of serious abuse and wrongdoing. The Auditor General of Canada did an investigation and put forward in detail some of his findings.

What did the government and the majority of the Conservative members on that side of the House do? They ensured that the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner was not available to appear before the public accounts committee and that no ministers were prepared to appear before the committee.

That is one of the most important committees of the House. It is an oversight body that reviews the actions of the government. It was a cover-up.

How far we have come. How far the Conservatives have come, because they have now become the problem, the very thing they came here to criticize and be a solution to.

It goes pretty deep, because there has not been any instance that I can recall in my 18 years in this place in which a prime minister himself has been personally implicated in a matter of this seriousness.

Let us review the facts.

The Prime Minister has always said that the buck stops at the Prime Minister's Office. On May 16 the Prime Minister's Office said:

Mr. Wright will not be resigning. Mr. Wright has the full support of the Prime Minister.

A couple of short days later, another statement was issued:

It is with great regret that I have accepted the resignation of Nigel Wright as my Chief of Staff. I accept that Nigel believed that he was acting in the public interest, but I understand the decision he has taken to resign. I want to thank Nigel for his tremendous contribution to our Government over the last two and a half years.

We know that on June 5, the Prime Minister made another statement in the House:

....it was Mr. Wright who made the decision to take his personal funds and give those to Mr. Duffy so that Mr. Duffy could reimburse the taxpayers. Those were his decisions. They were not communicated to me or to members of my office.

Then, more recently, on October 28, the Prime Minister said:

Look, I think the responsibility whenever things go wrong is for us to take appropriate action. As you know, I had a chief of staff who made an inappropriate payment Mr. Duffy. He was dismissed.

There is a certain disconnect here that people are aware of. There is an incredible disconnect between the truth of what the Prime Minister said initially versus what he says now versus what he said about how many people in his office knew about what went on versus what he says now about how many people in his office knew.

For such an orchestrated event to occur, behind closed doors, among such senior members of his staff, and for such senior members of the party to be complicit in it, and for him not to know, I think the Prime Minister himself recognizes, would bring his own managerial competence into question.

That is the stuff of debate and politics and is eventually for the voters to decide. What is not for any of us to decide is a version of the truth. It is for openness and accountability to occur to allow that light to pour in on the truth.

This party that governs now once actually made a commitment to one of its predecessor parties that cabinet ministers would be required to attend every session of every parliamentary committee, every hearing, on which they had an interest and a responsibility to report.

It was not a question of whether a parliamentary committee could grab a minister for an hour to answer questions on a particular topic. The point of view of that party, put in a platform document, was that cabinet ministers would be required to attend every session of every committee meeting.

Now we have an opportunity to show accountability to Parliament through the committee process. How far we have come.

The text of the motion is as follows:

That the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics be instructed to examine the conduct of the Prime Minister’s Office regarding the repayment of Senator Mike Duffy’s expenses; that the Prime Minister be ordered to appear under oath as a witness before the Committee for a period of 3 hours, before December 10, 2013; and that the proceedings be televised.

It is pretty straightforward. It is part of the process of accountability. It shows that we have an understanding of and an appreciation for the committee structure. Often it is the standing committees of the House that allow us to access or glean information that may not necessarily be available in the cut and thrust of question period. However, the questions and answers that flow in question period will be part of any such study by a standing committee. It will provide the basis for some of those questions that as yet are unanswered.

The crux of this motion is very simple. The Conservative Party of Canada has been communicating not to Canadians. It is more interested in communicating with what it calls its base. Allow me to communicate to the Conservative Party base for a minute.

I do not believe for one second that a Conservative Party donor, someone who truly believed that he or she was supporting a party that was going to do things differently, was supporting a party that would recklessly fire a quasi-judicial regulator of nuclear waste and energy as payback for speaking out. I do not think the Conservative Party base was interested in making sure that the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner was given carte blanche to run roughshod over her office and never be held accountable on the floor of the House or at the public accounts committee or anywhere else.

I do not believe the Conservative Party base members ever thought that when they were giving their $20, $200 or $1,100 cheques to the party that those funds would be used for legal fees for someone whom the Prime Minister had suspicions about, according to his own words. I do not believe they thought the Prime Minister of Canada would allow Mr. Nigel Wright, whom he later implied was distrustful and incompetent, into his inner sanctum.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

He never said that.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

He certainly implied it. No, there is a better word. I have just been prompted by members opposite. I apologize; I did not get it right. What the Prime Minister did say was that Nigel Wright was deceptive. That is what he said.

For a guy who is involved in securities exchange and equity offerings, the last thing he would want to be called is deceptive. Serious, irreparable harm has been done to Mr. Wright. The Conservatives, and the Prime Minister of Canada in particular as its leader, say it was well deserved. I submit it would be valuable for the Prime Minister to explain why someone who had his full and utter confidence as his chief of staff is now being called deceptive.

Remember, the three most powerful people in the political fiefdom of Ottawa, many would argue, would be the prime minister, followed by the clerk of the Privy Council; and the third most powerful person, the person exposed to most secrets, incredibly important information, and given a top secret clearance as a result, would be the prime minister's chief of staff. Whatever the clerk of the Privy Council knows and wants to transmit or convey to the prime minister of Canada, the chief of staff to the prime minister also knows. Now that person is being called deceptive. That is a lot of information to have in the head of someone whom the Prime Minister is now calling deceptive.

The security commissioner who was arrested in Panama, a person providing oversight to the operations of our security establishment, was another appointee by the Prime Minister. Mr. Porter has presumably been exposed to some of the most important secrets and sensitive information that anyone could imagine, not only for Canada's security but for each and every one of our allies. The Prime Minister appointed him, but that is not really consequential because he has been dealt with. Let us leave it at that. Let us move forward.

That whole narrative is just not working anymore. It is not working with Parliament. It is not working with the Canadian public. In fact, the truth is that—however regrettable this may be to the Prime Minister—it is not working with the Conservative base anymore. Quite frankly, I do not think they ever signed up to be members of the Conservative Party—most of them anyway—to be simple props for the Prime Minister's bidding.

“It's terrible when those guys do that; but when we do it, it's okay” is not really a good slogan. It is not really a good slogan for the Conservative Party of Canada and its members. Through my own knowledge and understanding of very good people who are members of the Conservative Party of Canada, I know they are concerned about the actions of the Prime Minister and they have asked for clarity. In actual fact, the base itself is saying that, if it is so onerous to be held to the truth under a situation where one is expected to tell the truth—a standing committee of the House of Commons where proceedings are held under oath with a presumption that one will tell the truth or face a perjury charge—it means one is not telling something and there are other things one wants to ensure are not told.

This is not a small matter. It directly affects the Prime Minister of Canada, his office, its operations and its capacity to deal with not only mundane issues but sensitive top-secret issues related to the safety and security of Canada and its allies.

I have presented to the House a small sampling of circumstances where the Prime Minister's judgment has been shown to be a little off, and the consequence has hurt each and every one of us. It has hurt our ability to stay safe. It has hurt our ability to work well with our allies. It has hurt our ability to have trust and faith in our institutions.

If that is not important enough to take three hours of someone's day to appear before an existing standing committee of the House of Commons that is charged with what the Conservative Party of Canada suggested it came to Ottawa for to begin with—which was ethics—well, maybe someone's ethical and moral compass is being influenced by magnets outside of the compass; maybe someone has to take a break and ask where we are going with all of this.

If the objective of the strategy is to just simply prolong this until some other matter comes up to distract and take away the attention, then that is not leadership; it is management. If the Conservatives are just going to manage this affair instead of leading it, then they should make way for others to become leaders of our country; make way so that someone who is actually ready and able to lead this country can assume that job.

Right now, we have a solid demonstration of crisis management, which is showing serious cracks, unfortunately for the Conservatives. The cracks are showing because the Prime Minister is changing his story just about every time he stands on his feet. It appears that he is taking his cues from what might be being found out from the RCMP investigation or the auditor reports; or maybe he is thumbing through some other senators' expense reports, or whatever. I do not know what it is, but we all find it very strange that a man who says “never apologize, never surrender”, is now all of a sudden changing his story.

A man who had such great respect and support of the Prime Minister has been labelled as deceitful. That is a label that will stick with Nigel Wright for a very long time. I have a feeling that, based on what has been described to me by others about Mr. Wright's character, he will not fink out the Prime Minister, but when he is asked very specific questions by those in authority, I think he will give very straightforward answers. That is what has been described to me. Maybe that is what the Prime Minister fears the most.

The government could simply show a little leadership instead of saying, “Oh well, what about the great railway scandal of 1874?” or whatever, and “Until we solve that issue then I guess we can't get to this issue, can we?”

Leadership is dealing with it when we have a problem, a legitimate problem, showing some credibility and fostering an element of trust with all Canadians. However, if a question is answered with, “Oh well, your shoes are black and you should have polished them, and you didn't; therefore you're just as big a problem”, then we are never going to get to the bottom of this.

If that is the strategy, let us fling muck to the point where everyone is filthy. We will not have to worry about Senate reform; it will be parliamentary reform that we are really going to have to start talking about, because we are showing that this House does not work.

It is a very straightforward motion, a watershed moment for each and every one of us. Can we use the institutions of the House of Commons that already exist to examine a problem that all of us acknowledge exists as well?

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

It being 5:15 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.