Mr. Speaker, in just a few minutes, I will have an opportunity to talk about the importance of the legislation, legislation that we will support at second reading. However, I want to go to a bigger picture, and that is how the minister started his speech with respect to this important relationship. That is simply a veneer.
Everyone was so proud that the former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada was an indigenous woman. We congratulated her on her amazing success. We are now learning that the government threw her under the bus
On October 30, she said that she had not always received the respect she deserved from cabinet. In her own experience, serving as an indigenous person as Canada's Minister of Justice and Attorney General, it had been reinforced that when addressing indigenous issues, it did not matter what table one sat around or what position or title one had. She talked about marginalization.
Today, it was reported by The Globe and Mail that the Prime Minister's Office, in backing SNC-Lavalin, its friend, had thrown the minister under the bus.
Therefore, I would like to suggest it is simply a veneer. I would like the minister to justify how the Liberals can be so disrespectful to someone and create such a veneer that is not the reality of what they believe and do.