Madam Speaker, I begin my remarks by thanking the hard-working people of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, whose support and constant words of encouragement allow me the privilege of being their elected representative in the Parliament of Canada.
Motion No. 163, which we have before us today, mentions the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO. I have been a member of the Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association for almost 20 years. Four of those years I had the privilege of serving as chairperson of the association. After serving my tenure as chair, I was succeeded by the member for Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill who worked with colleagues and officials throughout NATO on Canada hosting the fall 2018 conference held in Halifax. To set the record straight, it was her hard work that made the conference a success.
The member for Etobicoke Centre, whose motion we are debating today, after being the beneficiary of a Putin putsch, orchestrated by our so-called feminist Prime Minister, had the nerve to stand in front of the NATO delegates and marginalize the efforts of the member for Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill. By that single act, the member for Etobicoke Centre negated everything Motion No. 163 says and what the government claims it is trying to promote.
I heard recently that the hon. member for Etobicoke Centre is retiring at the next election. As someone who has served alongside him in Parliament for over 10 years, I wish him well in his future endeavours and will welcome back Ted Opitz, who was an officer and a gentleman.
The member for Etobicoke Centre was someone who once mused about challenging the current Prime Minister as leader of the Liberal Party with such memorable phrases like, “Party elite needs to be ousted” and that he is hoping to "unwedge the backroom boys”.
Knowing his history, I thought that the member would seek a better legacy than being the front for the Prime Minister's most recent act of useless virtue signalling, Motion No. 163. But then again, saying one thing and doing another is the very definition of being a Liberal.
Of course, the most outrageous example of saying one thing when the Prime Minister's actual behaviour demonstrates something very different is the incident now known to feminists as the “Kokanee grope”. For the benefit of Canadians watching this debate, the Kokanee grope refers to an unwanted sexual advance made by the Prime Minister to a woman in her workplace.
I am told that south of the border the Prime Minister has been referred to as the Bill Clinton of the great white north, in general reference to the behaviour that almost got Bill Clinton impeached as president of the United States. The Kokanee grope incident was first published in an editorial in the Creston Valley Advance, a community newspaper in British Columbia. The Prime Minister, who was in Creston to attend the Kokanee summit festival put on by Columbia Brewery, admitted later to inappropriately groping the reporter while she was on assignment. In addition to being on assignment for the Creston Valley Advance, the female reporter was also on assignment for the National Post and the Vancouver Sun.
While the reporter's connection to the big city newspapers have prompted remorse after the fact, that is a topic for a proper investigation. The allegation came into wider circulation the first week of June, when photos of the Creston Valley Advance editorial were widely shared on social media and it received further comments when prominent online media outlets finally reported on it that same week. The now former female reporter for the Creston Valley Advance community newspaper, the Vancouver Sun and the National Post confirmed that the Prime Minister groped her, or in his words, “inappropriately handling”, while she was on assignment at the festival.
After the incident, the reporter wrote an unsigned editorial blasting the Prime Minister for his misconduct. The editorial confirmed that the Prime Minister told the female reporter that had he known that she was working for a national paper, he never would have been so forward.
This is what the Prime Minister stated on CBC Radio on January 30, 2018 before details of the groping incident were reported in the national and international media, “I've been very, very careful all my life to be thoughtful, to be respectful of people's space and people's headspace as well. This is something that I'm not new to. I've been working on issues around sexual assault for 25 years. My first activism and engagement was at the sexual assault centre at McGill students' society where I was one of the first male facilitators in their outreach program leading conversations—sometimes very difficult ones—on the issues of consent, communications, accountability, power dynamics.”
The Kokanee grope occurred after the Prime Minister claims that he was active at university. What are Canadians expected to take away from this incident of groping that took place between the Prime Minister and a young female reporter?
First and foremost, this incident is about hypocrisy, saying one thing and applying a different set of rules to one's own behaviour. It is about believing women, until it happens, then it is deny and hope the clock runs out on the media cycle. It has been noted by the CBC that there is no dispute that this incident happened. In 2018, the excuse, "I did not think I was doing anything wrong", does not pass the smell test.
It was not my intention to speak to this motion. However, as a member who represents Garrison Petawawa, Canada's largest army base, I have an obligation to defend the women and men in uniform who are members of Canada's armed forces. It will be our women and men in uniform who will be sent into harm's way to implement the lofty phrases contained in Motion No. 163, which we are debating today.
“Never again” must be the response of all members of Parliament to sending our soldiers into harm's way without proper equipment and resources. The decision by the Liberal Party to play politics with military purchases, with the policy decision to interfere in the equipment procurement process and the subsequent decision to cancel the EH101 helicopter contract, cost the lives of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. Without strategic lift to transport our soldiers off the roads that were mined with improvised explosive devices, IEDs, soldiers died.
It cost taxpayers over half a billion dollars to cancel the helicopter contract and another $700 billion or $800 billion to eventually by an off-the-shelf version of the same replacement helicopter.
Death does not discriminate on the basis of gender when a soldier is sent into conflict without the proper equipment. Parliamentarians need to be very careful before committing Canadian soldiers, women and men, to so-called peacekeeping missions where there is no peace to keep.
My constituents in uniform fear that this motion is another tactic to cover up another broken promise made by the government on military procurement. It is no secret that our military leadership does not believe the government has any actual plans to spend the money the federal government has earmarked for the military over the next century. In fact, according to a senior defence official, Julie Charron, who testified before a parliamentary committee, “We are not in the position at this point to provide you with the information itemized by project simply because there may be some delays in the projects.”
The promise to inject billions into the military budget is always after the next election, which is the same as saying that it is not going to happen at all under the Liberals' watch. That is already the case, as the last two budget statements made by the government made no mention of defence. No more phony photo ops or selfies for the Prime Minister with veterans or soldiers.
The peace and stabilization operations program, which is used to implement the women, peace and security agenda, has budgeted expenses of $450 million. At the same time the Prime Minister told a veteran in Edmonton that he was asking for too much, the Prime Minister had $2 billion of taxpayers' dollars to fund a feminist international development agency.
As pointed out previously in debate, the position of a women, peace and security ambassador, which this motion would create, does not include a budget. Is the Liberal Party proposing to add another billion dollars to the deficit while the Prime Minister attacks veterans for asking only what was promised them in the last election?
It will be these same soldiers, women and men, who will be ordered into conflict. Does the government not believe it has an obligation to its own citizens first before it runs off and tells other countries how to run their affairs?
The presentation of this motion is rather symbolic. Unfortunately, it is symbolic of what we have come to see of the Liberal government. It includes a lot of talk and discussion on women, women's rights and women's protection, yet starting with the Prime Minister, and then to the mover of this motion, what Canadians see is just more virtue signalling from the government. It is time to move from symbolic virtue signalling to something that starts with an apology from the Prime Minister.