Mr. Speaker, as the scandals pile up, the Conservatives are continuing with operation camouflage. Senators may be lounging in luxury at taxpayers’ expense, falsifying their residence claims, inflating their travel expenses and cashing in $90,000 cheques from the Prime Minister’s Office, but the Conservatives keep repeating that they saw nothing and knew nothing, that they did not do it and that the guilty party acted alone. It is almost like listening to the former mayor of Montreal, Gérald Tremblay. How pathetic.
While one hides, the other defends the status quo and his privileges. The Liberals are arguing for the status quo that gave us Mac Harb, Raymond Lavigne and a number of other senators with questionable ethics, which does not make a lot of sense. The Conservatives still will not answer questions about this scandal, which is the direct result of the Prime Minister's partisan appointments, but the NDP's position is clear: the Senate is not elected, not accountable, not ethical, not representative, and not relevant. It is time to shut down this relic of the past. The NDP will do so with enthusiasm and a sense of relief in 2015.