Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I want to acknowledge the work of our Canadian Armed Forces members who are on the ground helping people deal with the flooding in Quebec. We hope the situation will improve as soon as possible and with as little damage as possible. I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Barrie—Innisfil.
As a former soldier, I am pleased to speak to today's motion to give a voice to my former fellow soldiers and those who have no voice within the Canadian Armed Forces. The motion reads as follows:
That the House has lost confidence in the Minister of National Defence's ability to carry out his responsibilities on behalf of the government since, on multiple occasions the Minister misrepresented his military service and provided misleading information to the House.
We were forced to move this motion because the minister has not stopped misleading the House on a multitude of topics since taking office. No one can distort the truth for as long as he has and think that Canadians will continue to support him. Unfortunately, the jig is up for the minister, but he does not seem to be getting the message. He is hanging on to his position like someone who has nowhere else to go.
I would like to remind the Liberals that no one believes the minister. The men and women in uniform no longer believe him and they are ashamed of him. Canadians have lost trust in him as they have gotten to know him. The straw that broke the camel's back with respect to “alternative facts” was the mistruth in the speech given by the minister in India on April 18, when he again said that he was the architect of Operation Medusa.
I said “again” because the minister said the same thing in a speech in 2015 during the election campaign, when he was still an active member in the reserves of the Canadian Armed Forces. Several members of the forces are wondering why he was not called out for violating the Canadian Forces' code. Taking credit for someone else's achievements is a clear violation of the code, but this second instance did not go unnoticed.
It is shameful to see someone who was not even close to the decision-makers claim credit for their work and decisions. We are still wondering why the minister misrepresented the facts to raise his own profile. Unfortunately, the minister did not answer that question. The people on this side of the House, as well as journalists and Canadians, are waiting for an answer. However, the Liberals are not interested in what Canadians want. Liberals have very loose ethics.
The minister apologized for misstating the facts about this file, but he also distorted the truth in a number of other files without ever apologizing or explaining why he used “alternative facts”. Today, I will give a few examples. We have spoken often about what happened in India or during the election campaign in 2015, when the minister proclaimed himself the architect of Operation Medusa. However, in the past 18 months, ever since the minister took office, many other important “alternative facts” have been presented in the House and elsewhere in the course of his duties.
There was much debate in the House over the withdrawal of CF-18s from combat missions against ISIS. No one could understand the reasoning. We asked questions, but never got any answers. The minister said that there was no problem and that our allies, the Iraqis and Kurds, agreed and understood that we would do more. The minister even said that the Iraqis asked us to do more, to help in ways other than the bombings with our CF-18s. The opposite is true. The minister seemed to be the only one who was happy to see the CF-18s withdrawn.
A few weeks ago, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade proved it by way of a formal statement. It said that, contrary to what the minister had been saying for weeks in the House, the Iraqis begged Canada not to do this. The Iraqis asked Canada not to withdraw the CF-18s and said that it was very important to keep up the air strikes. The minister said the opposite. That was the first “alternative fact”.
For months, we asked that our CF-18s be redeployed to Iraq, but the minister said that it was not important and that people did not want that, when a report from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade said the opposite.
The second important “alternative fact” from the short career of my hon. friend opposite as defence minister has to do with the capability gap. For months, the Liberals fabricated a capability gap within our air force. Throughout 2016, the commander of the air force, General Hood, said there was no problem, that we had enough aircraft to carry out the mission. In fact, the Conservatives had put $450 million on the table to refurbish the CF-18s. General Hood said that, for the time being, he had the tools to do his job until 2025.
General Hood first mentioned this at the Standing Committee on National Defence. Shortly after that, the minister started talking about this so-called capability gap. Through access to information requests, it quickly became clear that the problem had been fabricated by the people at Boeing, the same people who sell the Super Hornet, during meetings at the minister's office and even the Prime Minister's office. We have the facts; we know the dates. Two or three days after the meetings, a problem was raised in the House. The minister said that we cannot fulfill our NATO and NORAD missions because we do not have enough planes. On the one hand, we have the commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force saying that everything is fine, and on the other, after meeting with Boeing in offices here in Ottawa, the minister says we have a problem.
Thus, they created another “alternative fact”, a fake capability gap, instead of launching an open and transparent process to procure a new fleet of aircraft, regardless of the model. I am not here to sell one model over another. I am here to show that the defence minister has been inventing things for the past 18 months.
There is a third “alternative fact”. I am not going to speak again about what happened in India and during the election campaign. I am simply going to speak about what we have all witnessed in the past 18 months. This third fact concerns the hardship pay for our troops in Kuwait. From the beginning, the minister has said that it was the previous government that deployed our soldiers without that allowance. There can be nothing further from the truth. We have proof through written Question No. 600, which provides the facts and the details. It is clear. The Conservatives gave hardship pay to the troops deployed. There was a problem during the soldiers' deployment under the current Liberal government. The minister played with this and tried to blame the Conservatives. In the end, he granted half the pay, but not all of it. At present, our troops no longer receive this hardship pay. The government rises and tries to tell us whatever they want. However, it is written in black and white in Question No. 600. If he reads it a few times, he may be able to better understand it.
The minister once again tried to make up a story. We did our homework. My colleague from Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman asked questions before bringing this matter before the House. We submitted written questions to the Standing Committee on National Defence. We asked the minister in person to answer the question. He never wanted to do so, and he once again gave us “alternative facts”.
At some point, the government needs to stop taking us for fools. It needs to stop talking about the minister's military history. Like my NDP colleagues, we all agree with what the minister did in Afghanistan. We do not have anything to say about that. We do not know exactly what work he did on the ground, but we know he did an excellent job. That is not the issue. Like me, he is no longer a member of the military. He is a member of the House of Commons. As defence minister, it is his duty to ensure that his authority over the troops and his attitude are beyond reproach.
Over the past 18 months, we have been told four confirmed “alternative facts”. I am only mentioning four because I am short on time. The most recent alternative fact was the last straw for members of the Canadian Armed Forces. The minister claimed to be the proud leader of Operation Medusa. That does not make any sense.
For all these reasons, the minister has lost all credibility. He lost whatever credibility he had. Yes, he is a man of honour. He is a soldier who had a wonderful career. However, as a politician, he missed the mark. We are calling for his resignation for all the reasons I just mentioned.