House of Commons Hansard #389 of the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was c-77.
Alleged Interference in Justice SystemEmergency Debate
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
Once again, I remind members that if they have other questions to pose, especially if they have just posed one, they should wait until it is questions and comments time.
Murray Rankin NDP Victoria, BC
Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to the parliamentary secretary to the minister of justice, and I wonder if people who might be watching this debate recognize what has happened.
First he talked about process and then he talked about poverty, but he never really talked about substance.
The process, he said, was that it is a great day for parliamentary democracy, and then he talked about poverty and what is going on in his riding. What he did not talk about is the testimony of the former attorney general. I never heard him once say that he did not believe her.
I was there. I am the vice-chair of the committee, and I say to Canadians to watch it and believe it.
What she said, among other things, was that people in the Prime Minister's Office do not believe that politically interfering is a problem and that there may be solutions and that although they are not lawyers, there has to be one—in other words, if the rule of law was not applied.
As a fellow graduate of the same law school, is the member not ashamed of what he saw yesterday?
Arif Virani Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON
Madam Speaker, I will respond directly to the member for Victoria and say that I was actually quite saddened to learn that he will not be running again. He has made tremendous contributions to this House as a parliamentarian, and we are all better for having him here.
In direct response to what he said, yes, we do share the same alma mater, which is the U of T law school, and I was very interested in what I heard yesterday, but I was not ashamed by what I heard yesterday, because what I heard is: The Prime Minister instructed the former attorney general that it was her decision to take. I heard that the PMO staff said that they did not want to cross any lines. I heard the former attorney general say that it is appropriate to discuss job impacts. I heard her say that nothing unlawful occurred. I heard her say that she was never directed. Most importantly—and I will return to this again and again—she said that the state of our institutions, the rule of law and the independence of prosecutions are intact.
Pierre Paul-Hus Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
Madam Speaker, my colleague talked about remediation agreements and their provisions. The order in council currently prevents the former attorney general from talking about the discussions she had with the director of public prosecutions.
That is the crux of the matter. We do not know why the director of public prosecutions refused to grant SNC-Lavalin a remediation agreement.
Can my colleague tell us why?
Arif Virani Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON
Madam Speaker, the member raised a very important point.
Cabinet confidentiality is similar to solicitor-client privilege. It is crucial to our democracy and to our parliamentary process.
Waiving this privilege so that we may have a fuller discussion and hear testimony on this matter is extremely important. It is historic. The reason it remains limited is because there are two court cases currently under way. Like all members, the members opposite know very well that it is very important not to influence any matters before the courts.
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Madam Speaker, at the very beginning of this debate, it was mentioned by the opposition that this debate is not at all about deferred prosecution agreements, which I was surprised to hear, because, as the parliamentary secretary mentioned, deferred prosecution agreements require that public interest factors be taken into account. That is not the case in a normal court case, where we focus very narrowly on specific issues.
Points of view about the public interest are communicated in a democracy through democratic institutions, including through the Council of Ministers. Could the hon. parliamentary secretary tell me why he would agree or disagree that deferred prosecution agreements are very much at the heart of this debate?
Alleged Interference in Justice SystemEmergency Debate
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
Order. As I mentioned, if individuals have questions and comments, they should wait for that time. The debate is between the person who just asked the question and the person who is answering it.
The hon. parliamentary secretary.
Arif Virani Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON
Madam Speaker, deferred prosecution agreements or, as they are known, remediation agreements in Canada are central to this debate because they focus on exactly what the member has just mentioned, the public interest. That is not a concept that has been picked up in Canada alone. Five members of the G7 now have this regime in their countries: France, Japan, the United States, the U.K. and now Canada.
This is important because, as I mentioned in my opening comments, it ensures that corporate leaders are held responsible for their behaviour and that unwitting and innocent employees and pensioners are not. It does so by requiring them to forfeit assets. It requires them to admit their guilt. It requires them to participate in investigations to show responsibility for their actions.
Those are important aspects that have not been underscored in this debate, and need to be, because the rhetoric from the other side is that some corporate leaders are being let off. That is exactly contrary to what the law says in section 715.31 of the code.
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Madam Speaker, the member said that she faced sustained pressure and threats. She said that. What she also said is that Gerry Butts told her that nothing could be done without interference, and Katie Telford then said that she was not interested in legalities.
Therefore, either the former minister lied to the committee or we are confronted with the fact that the two key people around the Prime Minister are not interested in the rule of law. It is one or the other. Either the former minister lied or Katie Telford says she is not interested in legalities and Gerry Butts said interference was necessary.
He is gone. Why is she still in the Prime Minister's Office if she has such a disregard for the rule of law?
Arif Virani Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON
Madam Speaker, the rule of law is sacrosanct, as it must be for all parliamentarians. The rule of law is the foundation of what defines us and separates us from other countries on this planet.
What we have is demonstrable respect for the rule of law in terms of what we have done to empower the committee process: to waive privilege to the fullest extent possible so that the committee can do its work and to participate fully, as the Prime Minister and all relevant parties have indicated they will, with the ethics investigation process. That is as much a part of the rule of law as the committee process, because that is part of the institutions mentioned by the member for Wellington—Halton Hills that make this democracy what it is: a vibrant one, a democratic one and one that respects our institutions.
Alleged Interference in Justice SystemEmergency Debate
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
I hate to interrupt during questions and comments because it takes time away from the other questions and comments that people want to ask. However, before we continue, I again want to remind members that when somebody has the floor, it is that person who has the floor. Therefore, I would ask people to hold back on their comments and questions until such time as the Speaker asks them to stand to be recognized.
Resuming debate, the hon. member for Victoria.
Murray Rankin NDP Victoria, BC
Madam Speaker, I wish I could say I was happy to be here tonight but I am not. I am very disturbed and Canadians should be as well.
What are we talking about? There is a motion on the floor that we invite the Prime Minister to come to justice committee and answer questions under oath about this entire affair.
We just heard the parliamentary secretary in his attempt to defend the indefensible. How did he do that? He first talked about what a great day it was for parliamentary democracy yesterday. If anybody watched the same show I watched, if everybody attended the same hearing I did, I do not know how anyone could ever conclude that.
He did not talk about substance. He was happy to talk about process. Then he did something we have all seen before, it is called the Liberal change the channel. He talked about poverty in his riding and so forth. What he did not talk about was what was on display for all to see, which was an attempt by an obviously credible witness, a person who took copious notes, texts and emails and demonstrated through careful, thoughtful, measured testimony that everyone would know to be credible, that an attempt was made at the highest level of our system of government to interfere with the decision of an independent attorney general.
My friend opposite talks about his interest in constitutional law. He talks about the rule of law. This is not a rhetorical statement rule of law. This is the foundation of our democracy. What we heard, if it is to be believed, and I say for the record with absolutely clarity that I believe her, was that an attempt was made at the highest level after she had made her final decision on a particular matter to try to get her to change her mind.
Let me be clear. There is nothing wrong with the Prime Minister changing his cabinet. That is his role and his prerogative. Therefore, getting rid of her as the attorney general is fully his responsibility. There is also nothing wrong with her as the minister of justice talking among her colleagues about the economic, political and other ramifications, even partisan ramifications, concerning a particular decision.
I have just been reminded, Madam Speaker, that I have the good fortune of sharing my time with the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.
What we heard should shake Canadians' faith in our system. We should be concerned, and that is why we need to get to the bottom of this, and we will.
My friend had two defences when he did talk about substance ever so briefly. The first was that we had a process at justice committee, and I will come back to that. The other one, which we have heard the Prime Minister use in one of his many excuses, was that we had another process, which is the independent Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. He told us not to worry as a complaint was made by my hon. friend.
All of a sudden we are supposed to think that is a great institution, except for one thing. There is not a chance that the institution is going to find there is a problem here because it does not have jurisdiction over the issue at question.
Section 9, which is the basis of the complaint, goes like this, that public officers are prohibited from seeking to influence a decision of another person so as to improperly further another person's private interests. Guess what. The former Commissioner, Mary Dawson, made clear on I do not know how many cases that this only included economic interests, money, not private political interests. This smokescreen surely will not work, but it was a good try.
Let us talk about justice committee on which I am honoured to be vice chair. I want to say at the outset that I have enormous respect for that committee and particularly the Chair. I admire the way in which the hon. member for Mount Royal has conducted our hearings. He has done so in a very fair manner in very difficult circumstances, and that is not a surprise. He is a very intelligent, well-meaning individual who has led us to unanimous reports on just about everything we have done in the years I have been on that committee. Canadians who watch and think we do not always get along and scrap and so forth would not understand that we have done some great work.
However, I have to say this. What I experienced at committee the other day was very disturbing. The hon. parliamentary secretary says that it is great that we have a process whereby we will hear from the former attorney general and then a couple of other witnesses will be dribbled out and maybe if we need them, we will get to the others.
How can a person listen to what the former attorney general said yesterday and not cry out for those 11 people she named to be put on the stand and be cross-examined? How can we not hear them? Maybe we will, and we should not worry. That is not good enough.
The Prime Minister made a great deal of waiving the so-called solicitor-client privilege. The lawyers I have talked to have great doubts whether that even applies. Let us say it does. Certainly, cabinet confidentiality applies.
What the Prime Minister did was quite interesting. He said that he was going to waive it up until that magic moment when she was removed as attorney general. Everything after that, we could not go there. What happened after that? She resigned. Listening to her testimony yesterday, she was very careful to not tell us why.
We saw the principal secretary of the Prime Minister, Mr. Butts, tender a letter of resignation and mysteriously reference the former attorney general. Why? We cannot go there. We are not going to be allowed to know anything about what happened after she was removed from her job as the Attorney General of Canada. Why? Maybe someday the Liberals will waive it. I asked that yesterday at committee. Members may have heard that. The Liberals, to a person, voted me down.
I stood in the House today and asked the government if it would change that and allow us to get to the truth, so Canadians watching, who are concerned about our democracy, would have the opportunity to see it all, to learn it all and to hear the whole story. I am sad to say that was also refused.
Therefore, we have a Conflict of Interest Commissioner who has no ability to get at this at all. We have a justice committee that seems to want to vote against any effort to get at the truth. What are we left with? We are left with the imperative to have a judicial inquiry into this.
The Prime Minister has said that the best disinfectant is sunlight. People may remember, with sadness I hope, what happened when the Gomery inquiry shone a light into what happened in the sponsorship scandal. The government changed as a result because Canadians got to understand corruption at the highest level. We had the Charbonneau Commission. People were riveted to that because we got to understand how that system worked. We have had inquiries in my fair province of British Columbia, which I am not very proud of as well, about corruption over the years.
If we cannot get these institutions to do their jobs, the Conflict of Interest Commissioner or the justice committee, because the government will vote with the majority to swat down our efforts to get to the truth, then we need to have a public inquiry. There is no other way around it. Canadians deserve it.
Again, if Canadians did not watch the testimony of the former attorney general yesterday, they must. They must hear her devastating, chronological, careful, sophisticated account of what she experienced. Among the things she experienced was an attempt to browbeat her to change her mind.
I said earlier and will say again. No one sang, “Please don't remind us that somehow it's not appropriate to talk in cabinet about the economic and political ramifications of a decision.” The Shawcross principle, which we have learned so much about, says that once a decision is made, that is it. The former attorney general said as clearly and as often as she could that she would not interfere with her independent director of public prosecutions. She should have said, “What part of no don't you understand?” when the Clerk of the Privy Council threatened her. There were veiled threats, not just once, twice, but three times in one day she told us.
We have a sad story for which Canadians deserve to get an answer.
Do we live in a democracy, which I have been proud of all my life to be part of, where the rule of law means something, where we do not have politicians telling our law enforcement community what to do, or do we live in a system like in some other fledgling democracies in other parts of the world where politicians call the shots?
A line was crossed here, if one believes even a little of what the former attorney general had to say. We have to hear from the Prime Minister. I support this motion. Canadians deserve to know what happened.
Fayçal El-Khoury Liberal Laval—Les Îles, QC
Madam Speaker, as a father figure to all Canadians, it is the duty of any prime minister to find jobs for Canadians and to do everything in his power to protect and maintain those jobs, while obeying the law and protecting the independence of our justice system.
What our friends on the other side are doing is applying the principle exactly. They do not care about the thousands of people losing their jobs. They do not care about the thousands of pensioners who rely on this corporation for their pension in their senior days. This is a worthy company and we are proud to have it in order to do the impossible, which is to keep these people's jobs.
My question to the member on the other side is this. If he has a wife, kids, a house, a mortgage and has to pay school fees for his children, will he stand now and have the courage to say the truth, that he will support the government in doing the right thing to protect the jobs of Canadians?
Alleged Interference in Justice SystemEmergency Debate
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
I have to allow for other questions. I would ask members to keep their questions and comments short enough to allow others to ask questions and give comments.
The hon. member for Victoria.
Murray Rankin NDP Victoria, BC
Madam Speaker, when the government passed the law called the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act, it made it clear that we could not look at the national economic interest of Canada. Why? Because if one is bribing people in another country, in this case $48 million to Libyan dictators, one cannot go home and say that it will shut down our economy if we do something about it. Not surprisingly, that is part of our law, so it is not relevant.
The current government loves to talk about coming to the aid of all the workers and so forth. I did not see that with respect to General Motors in particular. I did not see it with Rona. I did not see it with Davie shipyard. I have not seen it do anything with respect to the pensioners from Sears who have been ripped off. Therefore, I do not want to hear any lessons with respect to that.
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Madam Speaker, I honestly think that our colleague across the way, and I cannot even say “honourable” right now, should be ashamed of himself. This is a company that is not accused of but paid $30,000 for prostitutes for Gadhafi's son and he is okay with that. It is disgraceful.
Our hon. colleague down the way gave a great intervention. I too was saddened by the testimony yesterday. It was a sad day for Canada. As a matter of fact, that date will go down in history. It will be one of those days where the question will be asked, “Where were you when...?”
I want to ask this to our hon. colleague, who represented all of us on the opposite side so extraordinarily. Could he elaborate on what his feelings are regarding the testimony we heard, how stoic our former attorney general was and how wrong our colleague across the way is?
Alleged Interference in Justice SystemEmergency Debate
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
Again, the preamble was quite long. I know there are a lot of people who want to ask questions.
The hon. member for Victoria.
Murray Rankin NDP Victoria, BC
Madam Speaker, I said this at the committee hearing and I will say it again. I taught constitutional and public law for almost a generation of students. I have been a lawyer for 40 years. When he said that people are going to ask, “Where were you when...?”, regarding yesterday's testimony, I will always remember what I heard, because I was shaken to my core.
I cannot understand the spin operation on the other side of the House, acting as if there is nothing here so we should drive on. It is astounding. Why do the Liberals not fess up and understand that Canadians have a right to be concerned, rather than trying to change the channel? I do not understand.
Alleged Interference in Justice SystemEmergency Debate
The Assistant Deputy Speaker Carol Hughes
As I mentioned, members are taking more time than they should to ask their questions and share their comments. We therefore only have time for two questions, when we should have time for three.
The hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Madam Speaker, it is always a great honour to rise in the House and represent the people of Timmins—James Bay and the New Democratic Party on the ethics file. However, I am not proud that we have come to this point, because we are talking about a fundamental crisis that has occurred in our country, because the veil has been pulled back, thanks to the courage of the former attorney general, to show us how corrupt the culture of insiders is in Ottawa.
I want to preface this by saying there are two betrayals we are dealing with. One is the attempt to undermine the rule of law. I refer to a former Liberal attorney general, Michael Bryant, who said, we are dealing with “a constitutional crisis far worse than what I envisioned” and “a bald attempt by the Prime Minister to exercise his cabinet-making power over [the] quasi-judicial authority” of the Attorney General. He went on to say that he has never seen it used in such a “brazen, reckless fashion.”
That is the subject of why we are here tonight. However, for people who are watching there is an equally great betrayal. The Prime Minister gave people hope. He made people believe that politics could be different in Ottawa. We ran against him and we ran against his party, but I have to admit that I came in 2015 thinking that maybe he was serious about open government, maybe he was serious about reconciliation, and just maybe he was serious about the middle class he always spoke about. Many people and I know many of my friends in the Liberal Party share those values, and they are hurting tonight.
However, there is another Liberal Party, the old Liberal Party of corruption, insiders and cronies, and the Prime Minister had not even set up shop when the lobbyists began moving into town. What we have seen here is the power of the rich to call into the Prime Minister's Office and get things moved.
For example, KPMG established an illegal offshore tax fraud system for billionaires. When it was found out, suddenly, miraculously, there were no criminal penalties. We all wondered how that could happen, but the fog on the Liberal side was that they did not know. An agreement was made. Then the Prime Minister appointed a KPMG executive as the treasurer for the Liberal Party, because that way of doing business is something he is comfortable with.
We never got to see the raw exercise of power until yesterday, when the former attorney general spoke truth to power. She said that she experienced “a consistent and sustained effort by many people within the government to seek to politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in my role as the Attorney General”. What she experienced were the powerful men and women around the Prime Minister's Office trying to intimidate her and to threaten her.
That was an amazing moment when she talked about the Clerk of the Privy Council, who has completely betrayed his obligation to the Canadian people to be the non-partisan voice of principle. He was the one used to be the thug. I asked her, “Did he threaten you?” She said he not only threatened her once but three times in that meeting. During that meeting she was concerned that the “other shoe” was going to drop. We will get to that other shoe in a moment.
I want to talk about the very first meeting, when she met with the Prime Minister about this, when the director of public prosecutions had made the determination that SNC-Lavalin was not eligible for this deferred prosecution agreement, a deferred prosecution law that was written specifically for SNC. SNC-Lavalin was so bad it could not even meet the criteria of a law that had been handwritten for it and stuffed into an omnibus bill.
What did the Prime Minister say? He was with the clerk and the clerk said there was going to be a board meeting on Thursday. How were they making those connections? They were talking about the shareholders they were meeting and they had to have that decision. The Prime Minister jumped in and said he was an MP from Quebec, the member for Papineau. The Prime Minister established that his main priority was saving his own political rear end. That is why this began.
Then we see the interference by the finance minister and his staff. She told him that it was unacceptable, and they continued.
I want to get to Gerry Butts and Katie Telford, who then met with her. Gerry Butts said he did not like the law. He called it a Harper law.
I do not like very many things Stephen Harper ever did. In fact, I do not know if I can count one or two. However, the rule of law is the rule of law. Liberals do not get to say, “Oh, that was a Conservative law so we are going to ignore it.” She told him, “It is the law of the land.” It was a good law to hold political corruption accountable internationally. That is what Gerry Butts did not like.
Then he said that there was going to be no solution that did not involve interference. For any member on that side to stand up and claim that this was just the normal activities, it may be the normal activities of the corrupt old Liberal Party, but this is not the normal activities of how the judicial system works, that it cannot be done without interference.
Then Katie Telford said that she was not interested in legalities. This woman still has her job. If there is a person in the Prime Minister's Office who does not give a tinker's darn about the rule of law, they have no business being there. What did Katie say? Katie said, “Hey, if you have any problems with it, we'll just get some prominent, important Liberal people to write some op-eds to cover it off.” That is the corrupt old Liberal way of doing business.
However, they were standing up against an attorney general who said no, and who said that she was “waiting for that other shoe to drop”, which I spoke of before. She knew it was coming, and it did come. They told her she was being replaced.
The most damning testimony of all was that the Clerk of the Privy Council told her staff that the first order of business of the new Attorney General would be to put that SNC-Lavalin deal through. That is unconscionable.
I want to say personally that I have never made a secret of some of the major battles I have had with the former attorney general. The role of the justice department lawyers in suppressing evidence in the case of the St. Anne's Indian Residential School has shaken me in my political life. I have never felt confidence in the judicial system for indigenous people because of the role of the justice department in suppressing that evidence.
I went to the Minister of Indigenous Affairs who landed the campaign against the St. Anne's survivors, and I begged him to stop. I begged him to stop this attack on people who had suffered so much. I approached the Attorney General, but she was the solicitor of the client, Indian Affairs. I make no apologies for my anger about her failings then.
However, I learn now, thanks to the former attorney general, that what was going on behind the scenes was that she had come to Ottawa to deal with reconciliation, but what was she getting stuck with? She was getting stuck with looking after the rich friends of the Liberal Party.
We were very frustrated that the former attorney general was not moving on the indigenous framework. Then we find out, through this testimony, that she was not given the indigenous framework. The Liberal government was not interested in her doing the indigenous framework. It wanted her to cut a deal for their rich insider friends.
Last night, when I sat at that committee, I watched integrity. I watched someone who put her political career on the line, and maybe has finished her political career, but she was not going to be intimidated and she was not going to be silenced.
I urge my friends in the Liberal Party who are as sickened in their core as I am, and I know many of them are, do not go into the smear campaign, do not continue this attack on her, do not say it was her father pulling her strings, do not say that she could not take the stress, and do not, and I am calling on my colleagues over there, do not do the next step that the Liberal government is going to do, which is starting the attack on her credibility.
It is one woman who stood up to this Prime Minister, one woman who said what he was doing was unconscionable. This Prime Minister needs to be accountable. He needs to come to committee. He needs to stop hiding. He needs to show Canadians that he can explain why the people around him were involved in such a corrupt interference and obstruction of the work of the Attorney General on a matter of corruption. Until he does that, he has lost his fundamental moral compass and the Liberal Party is adrift.
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Madam Speaker, I have listened to the member for Timmins—James Bay give a passionate speech. I know he likes to play music. I know he likes to act like a rock star.
The member is blaming the Liberal Party for attacking the former attorney general. The Liberal Party or any member of the House has never attacked the former attorney general. It was that particular member who attacked the former attorney general.
Let me quote, “The failure of [the former attorney general] to show any leadership or direction on Indigenous justice has been one of the deepest disappointments of the Trudeau government.”
This is what he asked for for Christmas. He said, “For Christmas, I want [the Prime Minister] to fire [the former attorney general].”
The member is acting in sheer hypocrisy. He should be ashamed of himself. He should come clean with Canadians on the real reason he is politicizing this issue.
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Madam Speaker, it is true that I play music, and what I want for Christmas is indigenous justice. We did not get it this Christmas, and we did not get it the previous Christmas or the Christmas before that. We got a Prime Minister who stood in the House and made a promise that he would move that indigenous framework, but he did not give it to the former attorney general because he wanted her to deal with the corruption and the insider friends.
I would like to point out that yesterday the Prime Minister was asked about SNC-Lavalin engaging in the sexual trafficking of women in Libya. The feminist Prime Minister stood and said that the Liberals do not make any apologies for defending jobs.
Is he willing to sell the bodies of women in Libya so that his friends at SNC-Lavalin can get a job? He could not even answer that question without showing complete disregard. This man has embarrassed our nation.
Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC
Madam Speaker, I appreciate the interventions tonight by the member for Timmins—James Bay. There is one thing I would hope most of us agree on, and I hope my colleague and I can definitely agree on. If any one of us, particularly a prime minister, takes issue with a particular law, there should be a debate in the open. That person should have the people's representative come and say what is good and what is not good in a particular law.
However, that is not what the Prime Minister tried to do. He tried to use his position, the people in his office and those in the Minister of Finance's office. He even put to work someone who was supposed to be a non-partisan public servant, Michael Wernick, to get his friends in this company a get out of jail free card.
I would like the member to speak more about the use of power and how this kind of corruption can harm a system like Canada's. I would like to ask him specifically to speak on that note.
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Madam Speaker, the exercise of power that was most shocking was that the Liberals sent the Clerk of the Privy Council to threaten the former attorney general. He said the Prime Minister was going to “find a way to get it done, one way or another”. He went on, “He is in that kind of mood, and I wanted you to be aware of it.”
What kind of mood does the Prime Minister get in? Then Mr. Wernick said she would not want to be on a collision course with the Prime Minister. I saw in the House one night when a woman was in a collision course with the Prime Minister, so no, she did not want to do that, but she stood up.
I then asked her if she was threatened by Mr. Wernick. She said she wasn't threatened once; she was threatened three times. Let us imagine that. The first indigenous woman justice minister, and they are telling her the Prime Minister is “in that kind of mood”.
I think he is in that kind of mood tonight, but I would like to see him here and at least be accountable and have the guts to show up and be honest to Canadians.