Madam Speaker, this is about a Prime Minister who wanted to do a favour for friends. He wanted to do a favour in the form of allowing them off the hook.
In order to do this favour for his friends, he first needed to strong-arm the former attorney general into doing the dirty work for him. She stood in his way, between the action of justice and the action of injustice, the action of maintaining integrity and the action of polluting our justice system.
The former attorney general faithfully stood in that passageway and she resisted the strong-arming movements of the Prime Minister, his attempt to manipulate her to facilitate his desire rather than uphold justice.
We are talking about the Prime Minister of Canada. This is a leader on the world stage. This is an individual in whom Canadians have placed a great deal of trust. This is an individual in whom we have placed the responsibility of guiding our country. Instead of stewarding this place of trust and responsibility, he has actually abused his position of power.
Why should Canadians care? They should care because the Prime Minister, when he ran for election, made a series of promises, and they were the right promises. He said that we needed to be open and honest. He promised his government would do that.
The Prime Minister promised he would let the light shine in, that he would be more open, more transparent. He said, “It is important that we acknowledge mistakes when we make them.”
At another time, in the former attorney general's mandate letter as the justice minister, he said, “ I expect you to ensure that our initiatives respect the Constitution of Canada, court decisions, and are in keeping with our proudest legal traditions.” He went on to say:
We have committed to an open, honest government that is accountable to Canadians, lives up to the highest ethical standards, and applies the utmost care and prudence in the handling of public funds. I expect you to embody these values in your work and observe the highest ethical standards in everything you do.
The Prime Minister asked his former attorney general to abide by these principles. She did; he did not. Now she is the one being silenced.
The Prime Minister, during his election run, also said this, “Sunny ways my friends, sunny ways. This is what positive politics can do.”
Those of us on the side of opposition are asking the Prime Minister to abide by his words “sunny ways”. Why are we not allowing the sun to shine in? Why are we not allowing the details to come forward? Why are we not giving the former attorney general of Canada the opportunity to share her story?
This matters to Canadians. In the same way they have the opportunity, I daresay the privilege, to elect their officials, they also have the responsibility to hold them accountable. Now, of course, those of us on the side of opposition share that responsibility with Canadians. We, too, will hold the government to account. We, too, will in fact insist that the truth be told, which to date, it has not been.
Let us look more closely at what happened, and to do so, let us look at a number of voices that have been shared. Starting with the former attorney general herself. She said:
For a period of approximately four months, between September and December of 2018, I 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 of Canada in an inappropriate effort to secure a deferred prosecution agreement with SNC-Lavalin.
She went on to talk about multiple phone calls, multiple emails, multiple text messages, multiple meetings that were held to try to pressure her. She goes on to talk about veiled threats that were issued toward her. This all came out during her initial testimony to the committee.
She also said that the Prime Minister stressed that there was an election taking place in Quebec and that therefore she needed to do this. She needed to do the Prime Minister's dirty work. That is interesting.
What we have here is a case of sustained and inappropriate pressure. We have an issue of the Prime Minister actually bullying the former attorney general, trying to get her to do his dirty work. As a result, we know that the former attorney general was fired from her post as the attorney general and was moved into a different cabinet post, and then she eventually resigned from there.
The Prime Minister would try to convince Canadians that there were two different experiences and that her interpretation is simply wrong. However, why will we not legitimize her voice? Has the Prime Minister not advocated for all this time that we would listen to the women among us? In particular, I would hope that we would listen to the former attorney general of Canada, who, I might add, is the very first indigenous female attorney general that this country has seen. Why would we not listen to her voice? Why would we not give it weight?
When that did not work, the Prime Minister decided that he would try another excuse. He said that it had to do with protecting 9,000 jobs that exist within SNC-Lavalin, but we know now that is not true either. The CEO of the company has come forward and said that this is not the case at all and that he actually never said that to the Prime Minister.
Well, that is one voice, the former attorney general, and of course the Prime Minister has tried to squash her voice.
However, out came another voice, and that was the voice of Gerald Butts, the chief adviser to the Prime Minister. His voice said, “I quit”, and he walked out. That is interesting.
Then came another voice, the voice of the former president of the Treasury Board, and she too said, “I resign”, but she wrote a letter with her resignation. In her letter she said:
The solemn principles at stake are the independence and integrity of our justice system. It is a fundamental doctrine of the rule of law that our Attorney General should not be subjected to political pressure or interference regarding the exercise of her prosecutorial discretion in criminal cases. Sadly, I have lost confidence in how the government has dealt with this matter and in how it has responded to the issues raised.
She finished her letter by saying that “There can be a cost to acting on one’s principles, but there is a bigger cost to abandoning them.” She could not be more correct.
Now we have three voices in the mix, but then there was a fourth. The Clerk of the Privy Council also tendered his resignation.
Then just today the member for Whitby also resigned. She resigned and shared her story of also being bullied by the Prime Minister. She shared a story of the Prime Minister calling her up and yelling at her over the phone so loudly that her husband could overhear the entire conversation.
This does not speak of a Prime Minister who deeply cares about wanting to serve his country. This does not speak well of a Prime Minister claiming to be a feminist.
Let us look at this. He has three female members who have all resigned from their posts, who have left, who have shed light on the fact that the Prime Minister has mistreated them.
Let us look at another set of voices, shall we? Let us look at the media.
The media have said that “It's fair to say that it's a constitutional crisis.” A former judge said that in an article.
The former Ontario attorney general said that “It opens the door to prosecuting enemies of the government and giving immunity to its friends, which is despotic.”
The Toronto Star said that “It is going to be impossible to look at Justin Trudeau's government the same way again.”
The National Post said that “...it sounded and felt like a death knell for the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau.”
There is plenty of commentary out there—