Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise tonight on a question I raised just last week when I asked the Prime Minister directly about the Vice-Admiral Norman case, and how on that Wednesday before, the Prime Minister refused 24 times to answer any questions about providing to the judicial system the information that is required from cabinet.
We also want to know how many times the President of the Treasury Board met with Irving. It was quite shocking that, of course, again, there were no answers from the government, but the President of the Treasury Board met 16 times with Irving. Those are the publicly disclosed meetings. It does not say anything about how many text messages, emails, or instant messages there have been. We do not know how many unreported meetings have taken place between the President of the Treasury Board and Irving shipyard.
We need to keep in mind that we are not asking the government to violate the rules of jurisprudence. We want to make sure that Vice-Admiral Norman is given a fair trial. He needs all the information that has been requested by his defence team. Of course, the government is hiding behind the excuse of cabinet confidences.
That privilege of hiding information and documents as cabinet confidences can be waived by cabinet itself, and it has been done in the past. When Paul Martin was prime minister, he waived the privilege of cabinet confidence and turned over all documents relating to the ad scam.
I am sure the parliamentary secretary is going to stand and say that we cannot be discussing this because of the rules of the House. Well, first of all, Mr. Speaker, the rules of the House are determined by you on whether or not questions are in order. It is not the parliamentary secretary's job to make those determinations. It is your job.
We are not talking about the case. We are talking about the documents that the government is sitting on, and making sure they are handed over to the defence team so that Vice-Admiral Mark Norman can have a fair trial. I am not asking the government to pronounce itself on whether it believes in the guilt or the innocence of Mark Norman, but that did not stop the Prime Minister from publicly musing on two different occasions on whether or not Vice-Admiral Mark Norman would end up in court after he was suspended on the issue of the leaked documents.
We know that there has been a charge brought before the courts of breach of trust against Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, but that still does not excuse the government from not respecting his right to a fair trial. He has the charter right to ensure that he has due process. All we are asking of the government is to provide those documents.
As I said in question period earlier today, there are other issues surrounding this case that may be addressed which the government has been involved in, and I will address that in my rebuttal after the parliamentary secretary has a chance to respond. However, there is critical information that the government is sitting on, and we need to know who the government is trying to protect and what the government is trying to cover up.
The Liberal government ran on the issue of being transparent. We are getting anything but that. There is a stonewall going on here and definitely a cover-up.