Madam Speaker, I am rising on a question that I originally asked on May 9 when I was questioning the trust that people have in our Minister of National Defence when it comes to the lives of those who serve.
He has made misleading comments on numerous occasions, from embellishment of his record to the capability gap he fabricated about our fighter jets, and other misleading comments in Iraq and on other issues.
Last night, during adjournment proceedings, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence actually built on to the embellishment of the minister's record, saying in his closing comments:
His missions as a reservist in Bosnia and his three tours in Afghanistan make him an example to us all.
I agree with that 100%. As a veteran, he did that.
However, then he went on to say:
We all know he helped fight Daesh.
First and foremost, the minister never fought Daesh. He was fighting the Taliban. He was fighting al-Qaeda. Again, it is a bit of stretch of the truth. We definitely know that as a minister, he has provided policy and some direction to our Chief of Defence Staff, who then directs our special operation forces, those who are out there helping our allies and coalition partners in Iraq and Syria in the fight against ISIS or Daesh. However, the minister himself never directly fought Daesh. I just want to point out that embellishment by the parliamentary secretary.
The credibility of the defence minister goes to a number of different issues. We talked about the embellishment of his record in Operation Medusa, that many have also called “stolen valour”. However, there is more than just that. It is more about the transparency of the minister and the government. It is about how we do not get technical briefings anymore on Operation Impact and other deployments that Canada is involved in, such as in Latvia, Ukraine, and elsewhere.
We know that the minister has embellished the truth as to whether or not we should have pulled our CF-18s out of the fight against ISIS in Iraq, when that was done back in December 2015. He had meetings with Iraqi and Kurdish officials and said they had not had one discussion about the CF-18s. However, through access to information requests, we have seen the memo for government officials who accompanied the minister in those meetings who were told that the Iraqi and Kurdish forces were very upset that we were withdrawing our CF-18s.
It was brought up not just once, not twice, but in the memo it actually said that it was brought up on numerous occasions when the minister was asked to consider the decision. This is significant, again, in terms of how the minister has been fast and loose with the truth.
We went through this whole ordeal last spring, when the minister had okayed the reduction in danger pay for our troops involved in Operation Impact, with those serving in Kuwait going to see a cut to their pay and taxable benefits of $1,500 to $1,800 per month. One soldier who spoke to me off the record said, “It feels like we got kicked in the stomach.”
It took a lot of embarrassment to force the minister to change that. Even through the summer, he was still struggling to find a way through that. Then of course there is the defence spending.
I am just putting it on the record again that the minister continues to mislead Canadians, has not been transparent, and that Canadians deserve better.