Debates of Feb. 19th, 2019

Opposition Motion—Transparency and Accountability

[An hon. member]

The member is not wearing a tie.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I understand that the chamber is a little longer, but the member does have a tie on so this is not a point of order.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Madam Speaker, perhaps we can give the government members glasses to help them see their colleagues across the way.

The specific question I was asking had to do with Canadians' confidence in the independence of the judiciary. This scandal is clouding judicial independence, which is why we have to shed light on it.

Can my colleague comment on that?

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, if what the former attorney general is reported to have done is true, that she stood up to the PMO and refused their advances on SNC-Lavalin, then I think she did our justice system a great service. Am I confident in the government's oversight of the justice system? With the recent reports and what we have learned over the last two weeks, it has thrown a lot of that into disrepute.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to talk about this issue. I am going to read the motion first. It is important because it is a straightforward motion that is important for this debate and important for the vote that will come up. Instead of getting into the weeds on things, it gets to two specific areas that I will touch upon. The motion is this:

That the House: (a) call on the Prime Minister to waive solicitor-client privilege for the former Attorney General with respect to allegations of interference in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin; and (b) urge the government to launch a public inquiry, under the Inquiries Act, in order to provide Canadians with the transparency and accountability promised by the Liberals in the 2015 election campaign.

Our leader, Jagmeet Singh, has been clear about the need for a public inquiry. As a criminal defence lawyer, I would argue that his skills are very much needed here in Ottawa. It is important that we get due process for this because this is touching some of the cornerstones of old political power and the colonial type of structure that still influences our democracy today.

It was interesting that when the issue of SNC-Lavalin first reared its head, the first things I heard were the catcalls and the heckling from the Liberals asking why we were against jobs. One of the most important things that I have noted, having been in the House for 16-plus years, is that before something goes into a media frenzy as this case has, especially with the Prime Minister's chief of staff Gerald Butts' resignation, there is the fact that the sensitivity of that thing gets to the magnitude it did already.

It is important to distinguish that, even through our local procurement projects in Windsor, what we are talking about here is, of course, concern about the jobs of the people at SNC-Lavalin and their innocence, but the reality is that those jobs still exist in the procurement field regardless.

One good example of that is the Gordie Howe international bridge being built in Windsor. Ironically, it is being built by Aecon Construction as part of a larger consortium and it was the New Democrats who fought against Aecon being bought by the Chinese government. We knew that this type of acquisition by a Chinese state-owned organization would lead to further complications. In fact, having them build an international border bridge between Canada and the United States, which we have so much dependency on in my region, the U.S. being 35% of our daily trade, would be hazardous and foolhardy.

Reluctantly, the government finally blocked that sale. Aecon eventually won the bid for the bridge being built between our two countries. The runner-up was SNC-Lavalin. The important lesson is that the jobs are going forward and the construction is taking place. We want to make sure that people in this situation are going to be protected, but there is a corporate culture problem at SNC-Lavalin that, if we do not deal with it now, will continue to re-emerge. There is a pattern of behaviour.

The government in an omnibus budget bill that is 600 pages long tried to bury a change. This is important for Canadians to understand. The government was trying to protect individuals from criminal liability who we know at the very least were doing business with Moammar Gadhafi that was sketchy. They were doing sketchy, despicable business with a dictator from Libya and the government was allowing people, basically, to pay a parking fine for the criminal convictions that could take place. The unbelievable truth behind all of these matters is that we would instill a process right now that would further encourage that. The reality is that it would reward potential criminal problems, rather than eliminating them, because people would know they could just buy their way out of it.

Imagine the Liberal government members, who talk about the platitudes of human rights, social justice and all those things, changing this in a budget bill. This way they avoided committee and avoided parliamentary oversight. They avoided bringing in witnesses, whether they were for or against this type of bill. They avoided that process. They avoided the public and the media having an opportunity to have that dialogue. They avoided this chamber having a discussion about that.

Therefore, we will let dictators and despots, basically those we were doing business with by some of corporate Canada, have a free pass and the people who were complicit in this behaviour, whether it be drug smuggling, human trafficking or arms dealing, and all of those things, can basically be let off the hook as if paying a parking ticket. That is what the Liberals have done with our democracy. That is what they have set as an example.

This is the first case to come forward that we know of, but this country used to stand for something. It used to stand for some international rules and standards that set us apart and made us an example. Instead, what the Liberals have done is what they usually do in a lot of different things. It is ironic that their scandal, which is leading to resignations in the PMO, is not over child care and the fact that they have not done anything on that. It is not over gender equality and the fact that we still have a gap between men and women on living wages and the problems that we have. It is not over the numerous issues we have with indigenous affairs and our communities. It is over the fact that the Liberals have a culture and a community of corruption that is part of the foundation of the Liberal Party.

In fact, the reality in this situation is that, from 2004 to 2011, Liberal candidates and Liberal members received over $100,000 in political donations by SNC-Lavalin that were illegal. We know that as a fact. We have people who are voting in this chamber to this day who could have received illegal campaign donations. I have been around this where we have seen Conservatives in the past, one even having to resign related to this in terms of illegal campaign donations.

Here we have, right now, a situation in front of our democracy where the Prime Minister will not even waive client privilege to get to the root and the facts of this. That is the reality. We still do not know where that $100,000 went to. Why should that $100,000 not be tracked down? When campaigns are won and lost on a few percentages and a few votes, that money matters. It makes a difference in local ridings. It is the ads they buy. It is the people they influence with regard to advertising or having volunteers who turn into paid staff working on different things and the muscle they can put behind their campaign. Money, unfortunately, in politics makes a difference.

Ironically, it was Jean Chrétien who ended some of the corporate attempts to influence government because at that time, and I was here in this chamber, we had the Martinites and the Chrétienites fighting each other, which led to the new law that we have, which is a good law, limiting corporate donations and union donations to the parties. The mere fact that we have our system today was actually to devolve ourselves from that.

However, here we have at this moment now an influence that exists in the House and we do not know who that is and why that is. We know the $100,000 is out there. I hope there is going to be more investigation into this because people either in the House or through campaigns are wandering around, having campaigned with dirty money either knowing or not knowing. That is crucially important as we go through the series of examinations as to how power and how influence take place. That is why a public inquiry is so important, as Jagmeet Singh has called for. He has called for that because the public inquiry would allow people to glance into the window of what should be shaking the foundations.

I was here for the discussions and the stonewalling that took place with regard to the Gomery commission with the Adscam, or sponsorship scandal, as it was known in the Ontario area. For months, the government denied that it was taking place. Finally, it ripped the band-aid off and our democracy got better from that public inquiry.

I would argue that we need the same thing here. When we look at SNC-Lavalin, there is a history of fines, penalties, political-donation schemes, lawsuits and a series of different things that shake the foundations of many people's lives, not only the people who work at the company but also the other people who lost jobs because they lost bids because of this behaviour.

[Arif Virani, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and to the Minister of Democratic Institutions, Lib.]

Madam Speaker, I have one clarification. My understanding is that there was indeed improper funding of money to both the Conservative Party of Canada and the Liberal Party of Canada by SNC-Lavalin, but every single amount of those monies has been returned. That is important to state for the record.

The second point is that my friend, the member for Windsor West, has indicated a lack of transparency. I want to again outline for the House that there was a one-year consultation on the remediation agreement. It is flagged in the budget and it is presented in the budget bill. That budget bill is debated in this chamber. It goes before three different committees, finance, justice and a Senate committee, and then it is gazetted.

The third point is that I know the member opposite to be a fierce defender of the rights of workers and the rights of labour and that is important. In the context of that, where remediation agreements allow us to look after prosecuting the corporate leaderships and holding them accountable so that the workers under them, who are not responsible for the leadership decisions, are able to maintain their place of employment, is a remediation agreement in that context useful and is that the reason why it has been done in five members of the G7 thus far?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I know that the new minister served on the industry committee as a parliamentary secretary and was recently elevated to one of the most important positions in the House. It was rather unexpected, by any means. It is important that there is at least some time to look at these things.

Perhaps the member and the parliamentary secretary would understand, though, that even though the campaign donations were returned, it does not mean that they were not used for political advantage at the time when the money came in. We have seen that in other campaigns. We saw that with the Conservatives and Dean Del Mastro, for example, where money was used to get power and there were still consequences. Returning the money afterward is not sufficient.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Madam Speaker, the government cannot hide behind solicitor-client privilege. The government must provide the House of Commons or its committees the information with respect to what happened to the former attorney general.

There is good precedent for this. This past fall, the British government would not release the legal advice that U.K. attorney general Geoffrey Cox gave to the government regarding Brexit. The U.K. attorney general also refused to provide that information and advice to the U.K. House of Commons. On December 3, 2018, Speaker Bercow ruled that the government was likely in contempt of the Commons and the next day the Commons voted to hold the government in contempt. It was only then that the prime minister and attorney general released the information to the Commons.

There is precedent for this in Speaker Milliken's ruling of 2010, where he found the government in contempt for refusing to release information because the government said it was injurious to national security. On May 2011, the House of Commons voted to hold the government in contempt of Parliament for refusing to release information. Both the Canadian and U.K. Houses of Commons have rights and privileges and immunities that guarantee us the right and privilege to get this information from the government. Therefore, the government should quit hiding behind this solicitor-client privilege argument and tell us what happened to the former attorney general.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I agree with the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. I had a chance to meet Speaker Bercow with an all-party delegation during the Brexit discussion that continues there. There is a stronger and better democracy for it.

The parliamentary secretary mentioned the Criminal Code and provided an explanation with regard to allowing corporate criminals to get off. We did not have to have an either-or situation with this law. The reality is that we were not allowed to go through the proper parliamentary process to submit amendments. We could have a law that does both things, protects those who are innocent and also gets criminal convictions against people who commit the most dastardly deeds, as opposed to what is happening here. Liberals are protecting the strongest component of the corporate culture that still exists and they decided to side on that element and that protection now as a get out of jail free card, which is totally unacceptable. This type of behaviour is just not acceptable.

Doing business with Moammar Gadhafi, getting off scot-free and having to pay a fine, is that really what these Liberals are about?

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will sharing my time with my colleague from Oxford.

I am very pleased to rise today to support the NDP motion. We rarely agree, but for once, we will fully support the motion moved by our NDP colleagues. It may not seem like it, but this might be a historic moment in Canada's Parliament.

Let us review this whole story. It all started not that long ago, on February 7, 2019, when The Globe and Mail broke the bombshell story that there might have been some political interference in Canada's justice system. Events unfolded from there. First, we learned why the former attorney general of Canada had been demoted, removed from her position and sent to Veterans Affairs. Many things became clear.

Every day for a week, or nearly 10 days, we saw the Prime Minister weaving a tangled web of stories. He even went so far as to say that it was because Scott Brison left, and yada yada yada. It was all hooey.

How did we get here?

It all comes back to the problems with SNC-Lavalin, a company facing corruption charges all over the world, including here in Canada. It is a very complex issue. The important thing to understand is that the Liberals agreed to give that company a helping hand. They will say they did it in order to save jobs. We are okay with that. They are trying to say that we in the Conservative Party are talking out of both sides of our mouths and that we do not want to protect jobs. That is false. We realize that there are employees who have nothing to do with the corruption the company is charged with. However, something still needs to be done to punish those in charge, the ones responsible for the corruption.

Let me start at the beginning. In response to pressure from that company, the government worked secretly. This comes as no surprise from the Liberals. They slipped a provision into the budget to amend the Criminal Code regarding section 715.3 and subsequent sections. They included this in an 800-page omnibus bill last year.

We all know how it works. We obviously did not read all 800 pages. That approach is used when a government wants to push something through quickly without anyone noticing, but our colleagues on the Standing Committee on Finance noticed. Even the Liberal member for Hull—Aylmer was very surprised to see that. The Liberals said that this measure was to protect white-collar criminals, but they did not really say what it was doing in the budget. Everyone saw it and said that the so-called remediation agreement was going to help someone, but things went no further.

Now, we know that the measure was created and implemented to help SNC-Lavalin. This story has been gaining momentum over the past two weeks. In September, the director of public prosecutions looked into this approach. She said that it would not work and that it was a boneheaded approach. I am speculating here because I do not have an exact answer. Today, we know that the measure that was drafted and included in the law will not help SNC-Lavalin. That was one part of the problem.

The second part of the problem occurred when SNC-Lavalin was informed of the situation. I have here the message that the company sent to its shareholders in October. It advised them that the director of public prosecutions had warned the company that she would not be able to hold discussions to negotiate a remediation agreement.

Enter the budget bill. In September, the justice analyst said that it would not work. Then, in October, SNC-Lavalin acknowledged that it would not work. After that, there is silence. We would not have heard anything anyway because we did not go there. It was not up to us. The justice system would deal with it.

There was a cabinet shuffle after the holidays. Well now, what did the justice minister, our attorney general of Canada, do to be demoted like that? In a fine little Facebook post, she said that she would always stand up for justice and for the law. That was around the middle of January. We did not really understand what was going on. Then, along came that fateful February 7, and we figured it all out.

All the pieces are falling into place. Something happened between October, when SNC-Lavalin representatives indicated that they were unable to make a deal with the government, and the cabinet shuffle. That is when a problem arose, and that is what the motion is all about. We need to conduct an inquiry because it seems that there was political interference in the justice system.

Someone, somewhere, probably in the Prime Minister's Office, asked that something be done to resolve the problem. It is likely that the then attorney general replied that the law would not permit it. Then the other person reiterated their request. I think that is probably pretty much what happened.

Since February 7, as I just mentioned, the Prime Minister has been saying all sorts of things. For our part, we moved a motion on February 13 to call nine people to testify, including the former attorney general, former adviser Gerald Butts, Ms. Telford and six other people working in the Prime Minister's Office.

I was at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights last week. Instead of adopting our motion and shedding some light on this matter, our Liberal colleagues pulled a fast one on us. They showed up with a nice little watered-down motion, saying that they would hold meetings to examine the Shawcross Doctrine and that the new Attorney General would be reconvened, along with two others. The political games persisted. They clearly had no desire to shed any light on this matter.

Yesterday, another bombshell hit Canadian politics. The Prime Minister's friend and adviser, the man who had been behind him from the very beginning, whose strategies got the Prime Minister to where he is today, was leaving. He said that he was leaving but that he had done nothing wrong.

Today they are trying to convince us that there is nothing to see here, but the fact is that things have gotten even more interesting because the head strategist, the power behind the Liberal Party of Canada and the Government of Canada, the guy who told everyone what to do and what not to do, is leaving, and he says he did nothing wrong.

The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights is meeting in camera at this very moment. Obviously, Liberal friends do not want this to play out in public. The Liberal Party is awfully fond of secrecy. During question period, I got the news via a tweet by a Liberal committee member that the committee will be calling the former attorney general to appear. Things are getting interesting indeed. First they try to make someone obey, but she stands up and says no, so she gets the boot. Then another guy says he is out of here but did nothing wrong. Suddenly it seems like things are working out after all, and the former attorney general will probably come back as though nothing happened.

Nevertheless, I can assure the House that we will keep digging. We moved a motion today, and our NDP colleagues will work with us to shine a light on what happened. The only way to do that is to launch an inquiry to get the real facts. We see what the Liberals are up to, and it is not okay. Things have not been okay for three and a half years, but now they are worse than ever. I am not really surprised, because it is in the Liberals' DNA, but for the sake of Canadians, we need to shine a light on this.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his intervention and for supporting our motion calling for an independent public inquiry to get to the bottom of this scandal, which has become surprisingly complex.

I am also pleased to see the Conservatives' new passion for independent, transparent and open committees, rather than in camera meetings. Considering what I experienced between 2011 and 2015, I am surprised to see their new passion for transparent committees. We will see if that holds for the future.

That said, I would like to know whether my colleague, like most Canadians, believes the Prime Minister's version of the facts, since this is essentially about public trust in the Prime Minister and what he says.

Based on the information we have so far, and after everything that has happened over the past week and a half, is my colleague satisfied? Does he believe the Prime Minister's version of the facts, or would he say that he is not satisfied and would like to take this further?

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Sherbrooke for his question.

I promise him that as of October 22, we will always be as open as possible with our colleagues.

My colleague asked me a question on a fundamental point. He asked me whether I believe what the Prime Minister of Canada is saying. My answer is no, I do not believe him at all.

We believe it is abundantly clear that there have been incidents and interference. I cannot prove it, but I can say that when I am asked whether I believe the Prime Minister of Canada, the answer is no.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my friend from Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles whether 8,700 employees of SNC-Lavalin are guilty of a crime and therefore should lose their jobs.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

Since the scandal broke on February 7, the Liberals' communications strategy has been to claim that we want to attack the employees. It is normal to want to defend oneself when faced with a difficult situation and when in trouble.

I hope with all my heart that SNC-Lavalin employees, the engineers and staff, will continue to be employed. The fact remains that I have always said that the company's executives should be brought to justice, that they should be punished and suffer the consequences of their actions. I believe that the two parties on this side of the House are on the same page in that regard. We understand that the employees should not pay the price. Is that easy to do? No, it is not.

The Liberals included a piece of legislation that does not even work in the omnibus bill. They created the problem. In September, the director of public prosecutions had to tell SNC-Lavalin that unfortunately, she could not help them and that she would have to proceed with a criminal prosecution.

The Liberals should look in the mirror. There are 40 Liberal MPs who are lawyers, and they were not even able to address the situation correctly.

They really should not be lecturing us.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles for his recap of the events.

As everyone knows, the member was previously in the military, but he also founded a magazine. At one time, he was a journalist.

The Globe and Mail published a hard-hitting front-page article by three veteran journalists. Based on his experience in the publishing world, could the member tell me whether this is major news that is deserving of all this attention because it is raising all kinds of questions for Canadians?

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent for his question.

Indeed, when Robert Fife and Steven Chase, both journalists for The Globe and Mail, publish a front-page story like that, it certainly cannot be called fake news.

This is the age of fake news, but these are credible journalists. The stories they publish are based on facts. That is guaranteed.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Calgary Shepard, Carbon Pricing; the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, Health; the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, The Environment.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Oxford.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak in support of the motion put forward by the New Democratic Party.

The Conservative Party stands with the NDP to call on the Prime Minister to waive solicitor-client privilege and to urge the government to launch a public inquiry to provide Canadians with transparency and accountability with respect to allegations of interference in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.

The rule of law is a framework of laws and institutions that embodies four universal principles.

One is accountability, the idea that the government as well as private actors is accountable under the law.

Another is just laws, laws that are clear, publicized, stable and just. They are applied evenly and protect fundamental rights, including the security of persons, contract and property rights, and certain core human rights.

A third principle is open government, such that the processes by which the laws are enacted, administered and enforced are accessible, fair and efficient.

The fourth principle is accessible and impartial dispute resolution, such that justice is delivered in a timely fashion by competent, ethical and independent representatives and neutrals who are accessible, have adequate resources and reflect the makeup of the communities they serve.

Any member of a police force, and I as a former chief of police, understands how the rule of law dictates our daily life. This continues to be something I aim to uphold as a member of Parliament. It is important in our roles as politicians to uphold these core principles of the rule of law, as they must be upheld for any democracy to function.

Last week the Liberal Party blocked all attempts of accountability at the justice committee meeting. There was an opportunity to be open and transparent on the SNC-Lavalin affair. Instead, the Liberal majority at committee attempted to cover up and block the search for the truth on this affair. Opposition MPs worked together to come up with a reasonable witness list, with three key individuals. The Liberal Party offered up its own watered-down motion that excluded key witnesses and called for a closed-door meeting, with no media present or transcripts provided.

Though the Liberal members hold a majority on the justice committee, they had an opportunity, with the motion they put forward, to make an amendment and not hold the consideration and selection of witnesses in secret this week. Though it may be a tradition that those deliberations be done in camera, there was an opportunity in these exceptional circumstances to avoid the perception that there is something to hide. I must say that earlier today, one of the Liberal members publicly posted a tweet that she was going to ask the former attorney general to speak. That was not done in private, but certainly in public.

As we speak, this meeting is happening. However, the Canadian people will be unable to see or read what transpired. This is not the open and transparent government that Canadians were promised during the last election. The Prime Minister tried to assure Canadians that nothing unethical took place, citing that the former attorney general's presence in cabinet would speak for itself. Lo and behold, the former attorney general resigned, making it crystal clear that the Prime Minister is trying to hide from the truth with respect to the SNC-Lavalin affair.

It is clear that the Liberal Party has no interest in finding out the truth. The former attorney general has once again been denied an opportunity to speak.

To top it off, yesterday one of the Prime Minister's closest and most trusted political advisers resigned from office. This resignation is the clearest indication yet that there is much more to the SNC-Lavalin affair than we know.

The events that have transpired in the last several days are not the actions of someone with nothing to hide. This resignation does not settle this matter; instead, it only presents more questions that must be answered.

Canadians are rightly concerned about this issue, and we want to make sure that Canadians understand what has happened. My office has been flooded with emails and phone calls from Canadians across the country. They are concerned about this issue. My staff have received calls and emails from Canadians—not constituents of mine, but Canadians across the country—who have been unable to reach the offices of their Liberal MPs. We are hearing from frustrated Canadians expressing their disbelief on how the government is covering up this affair.

One email says that something is still going on in the justice committee. All the writer asks is to have the justice committee follow the rules, do the job and respect the rule of law to fix a serious problem for this country.

There have been troubling allegations with respect to possible interference by the Prime Minister's Office in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin and inconsistencies in the response from the Liberal Party. This is not a government that shows Canadians it is under control but a government in total chaos, and it raises critical questions of ethics and conduct from the highest-ranking office in this country.

The Conservative Party supports the NDP motion to call on the Prime Minister to waive solicitor-client privilege and urges the government to launch a public inquiry.

In 2015, the Liberal Party promised transparency and accountability during the election campaign. Today, we call on the Liberal Party to uphold that election promise.

Canadians are rightly concerned about the allegations of political interference in a criminal prosecution. Canadians expect the truth, and we have the power here to make sure they get it. The Prime Minister refuses to waive solicitor-client privilege as prime ministers before him have done when the public has demanded it. This would allow the former attorney general to speak, to tell her story, but the Prime Minister has kept her silent.

The story has been unfolding in a bizarre way, with almost daily changes to the Prime Minister's versions of events. High-profile resignations and coordinated cover-up manoeuvring suggest this is not an ordinary political scandal.

I am proud to stand with my colleagues today to support this motion urging the Prime Minister to waive privilege and launch a full public inquiry.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, the member across the way expressed some interesting comments. I cannot help but reflect on whether it is that member or other members of the New Democratic Party who, it would appear, have lost confidence in the independence of the Ethics Commissioner, and there is also a concern in regard to the standing committee and the procedures I have witnessed over the last number of years. We even have a Liberal member who made reference to it in his comments. A Liberal member has put forward a notice of motion for the committee to actually hear from the former minister, but the member seems to see that as a bad thing.

We will see, through the independent office of the commissioner and by allowing the committee to do its work, a positive outcome for the government and the Prime Minister. I believe the Prime Minister did not assert any sort of pressure in regard to this issue.

My question is this: Why the loss of faith in the Ethics Commissioner's office, and does he not have any faith in the Conservative members of the committee?

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member opposite raised so many issues. He is right that one of their members today sent out a tweet that she was going to bring forward a motion to allow the former attorney general to come to committee. Last week, they would not do that.

The other interesting part is that it is going to be at an in camera meeting today. No one is going to know what happened and whether she will be allowed to speak or not.

There is no question that I have faith in the Ethics Commissioner. I am not sure that what the Ethics Commissioner does will make Canadians feel any better, because so much of what he will do will also be behind closed doors.

I will tell members who I do have faith in: the RCMP and other police agencies. I have faith that if there is criminal activity here, they will get involved and investigate the criminal activity so that Canadians know exactly what happened.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and his support for our motion.

As a member from Quebec, I am keenly interested in the issue of jobs. There seems to be some suggestion that the Prime Minister's bad behaviour can be forgiven because he was standing up for jobs. We all want to protect jobs and the flagship companies of Canada or Quebec. What we take issue with is corporate corruption, of course, but also the fact that the Prime Minister is using workers to justify unacceptable behaviour in a society founded on the rules of justice and law. Let me elaborate.

Why did the Liberals change the law so that Air Canada would no longer have to meet its legal obligations with regard to jobs at Aveos?

Why did they decide to force Canada Post workers back to work when all they wanted was pay equity and a pension system that was not two-tiered?

Why did they reject the NDP's proposals to update the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to protect retirees who worked at companies like Sears or Nortel?

The Prime Minister tends to support companies, not workers. Can my colleague tell us why it is suddenly so important for the Prime Minister to help his friends? Why can he simply not state that this was unacceptable behaviour? Why not shed light on this controversy?

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think my colleague is absolutely right that there is so much in this whole picture that gets blurred. When the Liberals try to defend themselves, not defend SNC-Lavalin but defend themselves, they bring up the issue of jobs. I can tell members that there are people right out in front of this building who are here fighting for 100,000 jobs in western provinces.

We are also fighting for those jobs, and we are fighting for SNC-Lavalin jobs. These are good people. These are engineers and others with SNC-Lavalin. It is not their fault that they are in this position, but we should not throw them into the equation or throw them under the bus, as the Prime Minister has done with the former attorney general. We respect SNC-Lavalin employees. We know that they are good people. They do not all work in Quebec. Many of them work in Ontario and in other provinces.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am rising today to offer some arguments in support of the NDP's motion, which is designed to try to bring some clarity to the scandal that has been dominating Canadian politics for the last couple of weeks. It is alleged that senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office put pressure on the now former attorney general to reach a deferred prosecution agreement with SNC-Lavalin with respect to bribery charges. The allegation is that SNC-Lavalin spent almost $50 million bribing officials in Libya to get contracts there.

Everybody is agreed that it would be inappropriate for the Prime Minister and his office to lean on the attorney general not to pursue criminal charges against a particular individual or corporation. That is a long-standing and well-respected principle, not just of Canadian politics but in Canadian law. It is certainly not one we want to see any deviation from.

However, there are a couple of things that have created a barrier to getting straight answers. One is the Prime Minister's repeatedly saying that the discussions between the former attorney general and the PMO are protected by solicitor-client privilege. Our NDP motion calls for the Prime Minister to waive that and put it beyond any shadow of a doubt that the former attorney general has the freedom to express her views as to what happened so that Canadians can judge for themselves whether anything inappropriate went on.

The second aspect of our NDP motion, beyond just waiving the solicitor-client privilege, is to have a full public inquiry. Canada has seen this before, particularly in instances where Liberal governments' sense of entitlement got the better of them. This seems to be one of those situations, and New Democrats think a public inquiry would be the best way for Canadians to judge whether that is the case. I will come back to this, and apologize if I repeat some of my remarks.

I have heard a number of the Liberal members who decided to engage in today's debate reference some investigations that are already ongoing. One is by the Ethics Commissioner at the request of the NDP, although the Ethics Commissioner chose to use a different section of the act from the one we originally requested, one that does not in and of itself necessitate any public reporting on what may or may not have happened.

The second, if we can call it an investigation, which I am a little leery of doing, is happening at the justice committee, on which the government has a majority of members who have refused to invite a number of key witnesses. Things have changed a little today based on the justice committee meeting. I will not pretend to be apprised of all the details as I am not on the committee and I was not there, but I know there are a number of key witnesses that so far the committee has said it does not wish to hear from.

Essentially, the point I am driving at is that the scope of any one of those two investigations is sufficiently narrow that Canadians are not going to get a real picture of the relationship between the current government and SNC-Lavalin and what did or did not happen between the PMO and the former attorney general. Those are questions that it is very clear Canadians are interested in knowing the answers to. It is going to say a lot, ultimately, about the character of the government. How it chose to conduct its business with respect to this charge and whether the PMO thought it was appropriate or that it had any right to interfere in that process will say a lot about the government.

It is important that we get to the bottom of it, and a full public inquiry at this point is the way to do it. We have seen that government members on the justice committee want to constrain the scope of the study and not get at the core of the issue. While the Ethics Commissioner has important work to do within his mandate, his mandate does not include enough scope to capture that whole picture. That is why a public inquiry is warranted.

I would add at this point for those listening at home, if they are experiencing a sense of frustration, that we are talking about the extent to which the government is willing to protect its insider buddies instead of talking about whether there was a fair CPP increase in the last year or two; whether they have good access to health care services close to home; whether the affordability crisis in Canada is being addressed, which can have do with housing or the cost of prescription drugs; or whether they are frustrated because we are not talking about the imminent and catastrophic effects of climate change. On that I share their frustration, as that is what I ran on and came to Ottawa to talk about.

To people feeling that sense of frustration at home, I will try to explain why it is important that we address this issue. All the conversation in the media and the House over the last number of weeks is not the distraction that we need to be concerned about. However, this discussion is symptomatic of the fact that the government has been distracted from dealing with the serious issues, because there are only so many people in government. Time and resources are limited, and it has clearly been dedicating a lot of its resources to looking out for its corporate buddies.

I will not repeat all the statistics that have been cited in this place today, but we know there have been dozens of meetings with the PMO that have to do solely with SNC-Lavalin, never mind other companies. A number of those meetings have been under the rubric of justice and law enforcement. It is interesting that this company would be meeting with the government on such issues, given that it is effectively a construction company.

We are getting a better picture of why they were meeting, but we need a public inquiry to have the whole picture. Therefore, I share the frustration, but I would tell Canadians that the problem is that the distraction to this point has not been with the business in the chamber, but that the government has been preoccupied with looking out for those people, for all sorts of reasons.

Before the story broke in The Globe and Mail on Wednesday of our last sitting week about potentially inappropriate communications between the Prime Minister's Office and the former attorney general, I was standing up in this place during question period, raising the issue of a former SNC-Lavalin executive who had pleaded guilty to subverting Canada's political financing laws to make illegal donations to the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party. I mean, we know this is going on. We know there is a cozy relationship there. We know it is a relationship that is particularly acute in the case of the current government.

However, the last government essentially privatized all the nuclear assets of the country under AECL and transferred them to a new shell company called Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, which is being run by a consortium that includes SNC-Lavalin. We are talking billions of dollars of assets.

There is a project going on right now to rejig, reform, change or alter a central heating and cooling plant in downtown Ottawa and ultimately privatize the operations of that plant, which up to now has been successfully run by the public sector. One of the major members of the consortium that is going to be operating that plant is SNC-Lavalin.

This is a company with its fingers in many pots. It has a former executive who has pleaded guilty to funnelling money to the Liberal and Conservative parties. Unfortunately, this is the kind of thing that promotes a lot of cynicism about politics.

It is frustrating for me to be standing here addressing those issues. It is something I wish would not happen, but it is not going to stop happening unless we get serious about accountability for the people who are allowing it to happen.

Now in terms of legal accountability, one of the things we are upset about today is that the law had changed to make SNC-Lavalin accountable for the bad deeds it is doing in other countries. Libya is the example here, because that is where the bribery is alleged to have taken place that is precipitating these charges. However, Canadian law changed a number of years ago in order to enable us to prosecute Canadian companies to put them on their best behaviour internationally. I have not heard anybody today say they want to rethink that, which is right and good. We should be holding Canadian companies to Canadian standards and having them be good ambassadors for Canada and conduct business well across the country.

The problem is now that the law has changed, the way to get accountability from companies is to make them compliant with the law when they refuse to be. This company lobbied the government not to change that law.

I invite members who are okay with allowing Canadian companies to bribe governments to get up and say so. Nobody is going to make that case today. That law was a good law, but the government said, “Why not change the law to give the company an out?” Instead of holding it accountable under the law, and instead of having it suffer the consequences of breaking the law, the government wanted to give the company a way out.

That is what the deferred prosecution agreement was. The Liberals sneaked that into an omnibus budget bill so it did not get the attention it deserved. The allegation is that the Prime Minister's Office became involved once that was in place, to try to get the former attorney general on board with using one of those agreements instead of laying the criminal charges.

There is no question SNC-Lavalin is one of those wealthy insider companies that is getting special treatment. When the law did not work for it, the Liberals were willing to change the law. When even that was not working, the Liberals appear to have been willing to exert political influence and political pressure in order to make it work.

That is not the way Canadians want their government to work. That is not the way they want their corporate culture to work either. When Canadians think of themselves as competing on the world stage, they think of themselves as good actors. They think that in addition to making money, as Canadian companies do internationally, we are setting an example at the same time of companies that are following the law and abiding by appropriate rules. Canadian companies are competing based on the rules, and winning that competition. We want to think that is what our companies are doing, and we want a legal regime that supports that. Canadians do not want their government circumventing it.

We saw something similar with KPMG. A large scandal was revealed that indicated it had been helping people avoid paying what they owed in taxes through any number of different methods. When most Canadians get into trouble with the CRA, they are dogged until they pay back all the money they owe, with interest. KPMG received a sweetheart deal that made the problem go away.

What is going on here is some unearthing of the process by which that happens. It is ugly. It is messy. People know it is happening in other places, but they expect better of Canada and they should expect better of Canada. It is distressing to see the government's level of complicity in this. We can talk about the complicity of Liberal backbenchers, but in the case of the government itself, it was actively involved in trying to get special treatment for SNC-Lavalin. Joe Canadian would love to have that kind of muscle behind his tax return. I am sure he would appreciate that.

We just hosted in my riding an evening with an official from the CRA, to talk about what tax credits and benefits my constituents are eligible for. We heard a lot of stories of people becoming really frustrated at not even getting a phone call returned by an entry-level CRA employee, never mind getting the Prime Minister's Office to talk to the Attorney General about fixing things up for the company because it made a few mistakes and maybe paid tens of millions of dollars in bribes to government officials in order to get work.

The levels of magnitude involved here are totally different. It makes no sense to pursue the average Canadian with the full force of government, while people who are playing a much bigger game with higher stakes get a get out of jail free card, which is essentially what we are talking about.

I have certainly heard heckling today by Liberal members who say we must not care about the jobs involved. Nothing could be further from the truth. The NDP has done a great job of advocating for jobs for Canadians in this place, and we will continue to do that. When executives of a company break the law and there are serious charges, we should not laugh off the bribery of public officials.

This is not okay. It should not happen. When the executives of a company go out and do that, they ought to be held to account. We can work to find a plan for jobs. A lot of the work SNC-Lavalin does is subcontracting. There is a lot of great construction workers in Canada and if somebody else gets those contracts, they will be subcontracted to do that work too. There is core work for SNC-Lavalin. We are concerned about that too.

However, it cannot be an excuse for being able to go around breaking the law. How is that acceptable? On what planet do we think that somehow because there is a lot of jobs at stake, the company can do anything it likes? Pick a law and have a company break it, and it is okay because it employs a lot of people?

I have a lot of sympathy for those workers. However, if those charges proceed and are ultimately proven in court and if SNC-Lavalin is prohibited, as it should be under the law, for 10 years from federal contracts, the government will then turn its mind to the workers. If it would devote half the energy to figuring out what to do for the SNC-Lavalin employees who will be out of work as it did trying to get SNC-Lavalin executives off the hook, those workers would be well-served. The government has clearly put a lot of time and energy into that, when it should be thinking about the workers first instead of its corporate buddies. If it did that, we would not be in this mess.

In fact, while we talk about the law and jobs, it is a little rich to hear the Liberals say that they do not care about jobs because they believe in the integrity of the criminal justice system. When there was a law on the books that said Air Canada could not outsource its maintenance work, the government just changed the law. Where was the concern for the workers in that? We had a law protecting those jobs. The government changed it and allowed Air Canada to ship that work offshore. There was no concern for the workers there and no concern for the law as a matter of fact.

When we talk about the collective bargaining rights of Canadian workers and concern for workers and their rights, I think back to the debate we had in the fall for Canada Post workers who wanted to go to the bargaining table to engage in fair bargaining. Early on, the government came out and threatened back-to-work legislation and then followed up with it, getting the job done for Canada Post. Where was the concern for workers' rights? Once again, the government used its legislative powers to put workers down.

It is a little rich for me to hear the Liberals say that because we think corporate criminals ought to do their time, somehow we do not care about jobs.

When GM said that it was going to close the Oshawa plant after it won awards for productivity and good service, the same government said that this was the market, that it could not do anything about it. When that happens in the market, the government is powerless to help workers. It is powerless to lean on companies. However, if a corporate executive breaks the law, then the government is not powerless and it can do something. It can change the law to make deferred prosecution agreements possible. Then the PMO can go ahead and lean on the Attorney General. If that is not what happened, then let us have the public inquiry to figure that out.

We have credible career reporters at The Globe and Mail saying that they understand this is what happened. We have no good reason to take the Prime Minister at his word that it did not. If it comes down to a well-documented article by The Globe and Mail and Robert Fife or the Prime Minister's good word, members will excuse me if I side with The Globe and Mail on this one.

The government wants to talk about workers. When VIA Rail just recently awarded a contract not to a Canadian company that was qualified to build those rail cars but to a German company that would produce them in the U.S., the government said that this was the market, that there was nothing it could do.

Let us all get on the same page and be really clear. A government that really cares about workers and jobs in this country would not only care when it is its corporate buddies who have plead guilty to skirting election financing laws to pad its political pocket, that is not the only time the government would care about jobs, if that is what it really cared about.

It is pretty clear to Canadians where the real priorities of the government lie. This developing story is putting that in evidence. If that is not the case, a public inquiry is the way to clear the air. All members of the House should support a public inquiry to get to the bottom of it.

[Arif Virani, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and to the Minister of Democratic Institutions, Lib.]

Madam Speaker, I want to clarify a couple of things in response to the member for Elmwood—Transcona.

In putting aside the notion that we are not concerned about jobs, independent of the lowest unemployment rate in 41 years and the fact that we have created 800,000 jobs, I think it is important to clarify that subsection 715.34(1) of the Criminal Code, which actually addresses the remediation agreements my colleague was speaking about, talks about requiring an admission of guilt, forfeiture of any benefit, payment of a penalty, payment of restitution, a change in behaviour and co-operation with any further investigation. I think that needs to be clearly stated, for the record.

Second, the member opposite, if I heard him correctly, said that the ethics investigation is too narrow. What the ethics investigation actually allows for is the power of the commissioner to summon witnesses and to require those witnesses to give evidence orally or in writing, under oath or affirmation, and to produce any documents or things that are necessary. In these investigations and in this format, the commissioner has the same powers as a court of record

Given that mechanism and those significant powers, I would put it to the member that this is precisely why his party initiated an ethics investigation and why it was agreed to by the ethics investigator. Is that no longer the member opposite's position? Does he question the validity of that process and the independence of the ethics investigator?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, as I mentioned earlier in my speech, we are not saying that the Ethics Commissioner's investigation should not take place, nor have we ever questioned the independence of the Ethics Commissioner. That is just not on. I do not know where the member heard that.

Our concern is that the scope is narrow. I am not prepared to cite the sections of the act, but I do know that we requested an investigation under one section of the act that would require public reporting, the section of the act under which an investigation is being pursued. It is the Ethics Commissioner's right to pursue it under whatever clause he would like, but it does not necessarily entail any public reporting, and it is confined to a more limited question, which is whether the Prime Minister, and again, I am not quoting, was acting to promote the particular interests of an individual. In this case, it could also be a company. I think there is a lot more to this when we talk about the potential firing of a minister and various kinds of political pressure from the Prime Minister's Office.

Our position is not that the Ethics Commissioner's investigation should not proceed or that there is no value in it. Our contention is that the scope of it is going to be too narrow because of the section under which it is being pursued and that there are a lot more questions that deserve a lot more answers than the Ethics Commissioner is going to be able to pursue within his mandate.