Mr. Speaker, using the word “clarify” is Orwellian Newspeak.
What the Liberals are doing is let a rich and powerful corporation off the hook for breaking the law, and they are doing it in a retroactive manner that has never before been seen here in the House of Commons. It is properly scandalous for them to claim that this is a clarification.
Thousands of workers lost their jobs because the government is refusing to enforce the Air Canada legislation. When the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount was on the opposition side, he said that Canadians were starting to realize that the government was not honouring what it said about transparency six and a half years earlier. That is quite something.
You heard that right, Mr. Speaker. When that same person stood in the House to criticize the Conservatives, he said that Canadians were starting to realize that what the Conservatives promised six and a half years earlier—to be open, transparent, and accountable—was false. The Conservatives would always shut us down after four or five days of debate, but the Liberals are doing it in one, and they are doing this after only six and a half months in power.
This is identical to the KPMG case. The signal being sent by the government is that there is one law for the rich and powerful and one law for everything else. The basic rule in our society is the rule of law, law that applies equally to everyone. That is being broken by the Liberal government.