Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Wellington—Halton Hills.
For the past six weeks, we have seen a government that is in total chaos, unable to govern and riddled with resignations to cover up corruption at the highest levels of government, corruption that goes right to the top, right to the Prime Minister himself.
It is very clear, based upon the chronological, detailed and compelling testimony of the former attorney general, the hon. member for Vancouver Granville, when she appeared before the justice committee that there was a concerted and coordinated campaign directed by the Prime Minister to put pressure on the former attorney general to interfere in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.
It is very clear that the conduct of the Prime Minister and his top officials is completely in appropriate, but it might be worse: It might indeed have crossed the line of criminality.
Section 139 of the Criminal Code makes it an offence to, in any way, seek to alter the course of justice. That appears to be precisely what the Prime Minister sought to do—namely, to alter the course of justice with respect to the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin to get a special deal for the Prime Minister's friends.
Do members know what to call that? We can call it obstruction of justice, because that is exactly the conduct that the Prime Minister engaged in, the type of conduct that he directed from top officials within the PMO.
We have seen a Prime Minister who has repeatedly failed to be straight with Canadians as these allegations came to light, a Prime Minister who has repeatedly changed his story, a Prime Minister who, by way of an admission of guilt, has pathetically resorted to trying to change the channel by saying it was all about jobs, all about saving jobs.
What a joke. What a farce to say that it was all about saving jobs. We know that is simply not true, and the Prime Minister knows it is not true.
Why? It is because SNC-Lavalin was required to stay in Montreal for seven years, pursuant to a $1.5-billion loan agreement with the Caisse de dépôt. It could not move anywhere. It had negotiated a 20-year lease for its headquarters and had just finished multi-million-dollar renovations.
It gets worse, because two days before the Prime Minister directed the Clerk of the Privy Council to threaten the former attorney general in that fateful December 19 meeting not once, not twice, but on three occasions, the CEO of SNC-Lavalin was quoted in the very secret newspaper called the Toronto Star as saying that SNC-Lavalin was here to stay. For the Prime Minister to put forward that argument is simply just not the truth. Frankly, it raises new questions about whether the Prime Minister was trying to mislead the former attorney general as a way to put pressure on her. It provides evidence that there may not only have been obstruction of justice but that obstruction of justice by the Prime Minister had been taken to a whole new level.
In addition to being simply not the facts, it is also further evidence that the Prime Minister acted unlawfully and that his top officials acted unlawfully, because the legislation expressly precludes the consideration of jobs as a factor in whether to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement. What is more is that it may not only have contravened the Criminal Code in terms of the Criminal Code provisions that expressly preclude that consideration, but may also have contravened Canada's obligations pursuant to the OECD anti-bribery convention.
That is why officials from the OECD have said that they have sounded the alarm in terms of what the Prime Minister has done and what his officials have done, and are monitoring the situation quite closely. Therefore, not only did the Prime Minister potentially contravene the Criminal Code, but he may very well have contravened Canada's international obligations as well, and he has certainly done much to undermine Canada's reputation when we are talking about widespread evidence of political interference from the very top, from the Prime Minister, in a bribery corruption case.
The Prime Minister has said the former attorney general has had an opportunity to have her say. She came before the justice committee. The Prime Minister says that this is enough. However, the fact is that the former attorney general does not seem to believe that it is enough, because she has been able to speak about some of the events but is not able to speak about others because the Prime Minister is silencing her.
The Prime Minister is silencing her because he has refused to waive solicitor-client privilege and cabinet confidentiality for the period after she was fired as the Attorney General and was serving in cabinet as Minister of Veterans Affairs. In that regard, in a letter that the former attorney general wrote to the chair of the justice committee just before she testified, she stated:
I also draw to the Committee's attention that while Order in Council number 2019-0105, which I saw for the first time last evening, is a step in the right direction, it falls short of what is required.
When she was asked at the justice committee by the member for Milton whether or not she could tell why she resigned as attorney general and from cabinet, she said that she could not.
It is time for the Prime Minister to stop the cover-up. It is time for the Prime Minister to do the right thing and let the former attorney general speak, not just about things that the Prime Minister wants her to speak about but to speak to the full truth, the full version of events. It is time to end the cover-up. It is time to let her speak.