Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a question I originally asked the Minister of National Defence back on April 26 about a situation that had occurred on April 20. I will give the House some background.
It was brought to my attention that Colonel Jay Janzen, who is the Canadian Forces director of strategic communications, had taken to Twitter and had decided to criticize the media and us as politicians for raising questions at committee and in the media about the UN mission to Mali. At that point in time, very little was known about the mission, very little was in the news and very little was being said by the Minister of National Defence.
For months we called for a fulsome debate here in the House on the mission to Mali before we deployed our troops. That never happened. The Liberal government continues to stonewall the official opposition and Canadians about providing all the details about what Canadians are doing in the mission in Mali.
What was insulting in the Twitter exchange between Colonel Janzen and I, and other people who were engaged, is that essentially what I saw was disrespect towards parliamentarians and our right to ask the hard questions, to raise issues and to ask about what Canadians need to hear about what the government is doing and how it is using the Canadian Armed Forces.
This comes back to the fact that after the Liberals formed government in 2015, they developed a policy called the weaponization of the Canadian Armed Forces public affairs division. That was actually reported in Defence Watch in 2015. We have had a change in policy.
The director of strategic communications, or public affairs, of the Canadian Armed Forces is meant to be there to help inform Canadians and to help explain what the Canadian Armed Forces is up to, whether it is the mission in Mali, whether it is training here at home, whether it is recruiting or whether it is deploying to other missions around the world. That is its role. They can talk about some of the equipment we are buying and what they are doing with that equipment.
Those are the interesting discussions Canadians are looking for. They want to make sure that they are engaged at that level, but to have a Twitter war appear is something I am concerned about, and others are as well.
As I said to the colonel in one of my tweets back:
Do you have a problem with #transparency, civilian oversight or both? It is arrogant and insulting to diminish the legitimate questions of Parliamentarians and Canadians. We have the right to know how [the Prime Minister] is using our #Canadian Forces to get #UN SecurityCouncilseat.
An explanation was given by Colonel Janzen about the terminology being used properly. I accept that explanation, but the discourse between the armed forces and us as parliamentarians needs to be respectful and ensure that information is being shared and that nobody feels diminished in asking those hard questions.