Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that I take pleasure in being here today, but the honest truth is that I take no pleasure in being here today.
I rode down in an elevator with one of our colleagues this morning at our apartment building, and he started off our conversation by saying, “Yesterday was a great day for the Conservatives.”
Yesterday was a sad day for Canada. I take no pleasure in being here. This is not about partisan politics.
I am not a lawyer. In Cariboo—Prince George, we speak from the heart, and Canadians from coast to coast to coast are tuning in today. Colleagues from the government side and from the Bloc side want to turn this into being about the jobs in Quebec that could be lost. No one wants to see anyone lose their job, but the blame falls squarely on the executives who broke the rules for those jobs.
I do not want to turn this into Quebec versus Alberta versus B.C. This is Canada, and yesterday was a sad day. February 27, 2019, will be a date referenced by Canadians for generations. It is going to go down in history as one of those “where were you when” days.
I have said this before and I will say it again throughout this speech: It was a sad day. Regardless of partisan politics, we must always respect the office of the Prime Minister, but what we have witnessed over the last four weeks has shaken the confidence of Canadians. We have seen corruption that has permeated our highest office. This is not a story about jobs; this is a story of a strong, measured first nations woman who spoke truth to power.
I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Perth—Wellington.
Yesterday, for three hours and 40 minutes, the former attorney general took questions from all sides. Her former colleagues tried their very best to soil her character. She was stoic. She was straightforward. In the face of all that, we saw incredible strength.
Her opening line was, “I experienced a consistent and sustained effort by many people within the government to seek to politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion”. Time and time again, over the course of the weeks and months after she said no and had made her decision, there was pressure put on her to change her mind. As a matter of fact, at one point the Clerk of the Privy Council said that the Prime Minister was going to “find a way to get it done one way or another.”
She told the agents of the Prime Minister's Office no multiple times. She told the Minister of Finance no multiple times. However, “no” does not mean no when it comes to the Prime Minister and his cabinet.
What happened? She paid for it. She was shuffled, demoted. There was a smear campaign.
I will tell another point that was absolutely shameful.
We all know how the Prime Minister's story has changed from day one when he first claimed it did not happen: Deny, deny, deny. Then he said he had a conversation with the former attorney general but he reminded her it was her responsibility. Then, standing before a bus, he said if she did not like it, she should have said so. This is unbelievable. Now we know she did.
It was just mere days into this session when a minister of the government was caught using a limo within her riding. Then there was the famous elbowgate incident just a few feet down from where I am standing. Then for the first time in the history of our country the Prime Minister was found guilty of an ethics violation. That was the Aga Khan trip. The finance minister seemingly forgot about a French villa. This is a finance minister who regulates the sector, putting forth legislation that would benefit one of his family's companies. Then just this past summer, allegations came forward about our Prime Minister being involved in inappropriate groping. Then the former fisheries minister was involved in a “clam scam”.
Every time the Prime Minister stands here, hand on heart, saying nothing to see here, claiming it is the same old Conservatives just playing divisive politics.
Now we have the SNC-Lavalin matter, where people tried to pressure the former attorney general to change the course of a legal action to benefit friends and family of the Prime Minister. When is enough enough? Seriously.
Liberal colleagues across the way are laughing. For those at home who are listening to this, Liberal colleagues think this is a joke. This is not a joke. We have a morally corrupt Prime Minister. This is criminal—