Mr. Speaker, I will wrap it up quickly.
Let us recall again that the Attorney General and his parliamentary secretary have called these allegations false. The evidence that I have been presenting begs to differ. These two government spokespersons misled the House or were themselves misled to that end.
Additional evidence came forward when Gerald Butts took his place at the witness table. He said at page 2 of the evidence in the morning of March 6:
So it was, and is, the Attorney General's decision to make. It would, however, be Canadians' decision to live with—specifically, the 9,000-plus people who could lose their jobs.
At page 3, Mr. Butts euphemistically spins this effort to drop corruption charges against a well-connected large corporation with Liberal ties by saying:
It was our obligation to exhaustively consider options the law allows....
Once again, the House was told that the statements by Fife, Chase and Fine were false, but the evidence has shown that to be anything but the case.
We heard testimony from the CEO of SNC-Lavalin that he never said 9,000 jobs would be lost. This again is a falsehood that has been repeated by the Attorney General and his parliamentary secretary.
The next allegation is at the 18th paragraph of the article, which states:
Sources at SNC-Lavalin told The Globe the PMO was furious with the justice minister's intransigence on the remediation agreement and that the company was pleased to see her moved out of the portfolio.
The former attorney general told the justice committee on February 27, at page 5 of the evidence:
On December 18, 2018, my chief of staff was urgently summoned to a meeting with Gerry Butts and Katie Telford to discuss SNC. They want to know where I—me—am at in terms of finding a solution. They told her they felt like the issue was getting worse and I was not doing anything.
This was followed by the quotation of the text message exchange between the member for Vancouver Granville and her former chief of staff, a portion of which is particularly relevant to this and is also in The Globe and Mail.
Let me get to the part of this that is the alternative. It is on page 12.
However we cut it, the House was misled and conflicting versions are now before Parliament. As for whether the Attorney General, his parliamentary secretary or both of them misled the House—or were duped into it through a misleading briefing or in other ways—is not material to determining that the House has competing accounts before it.
I will conclude by saying that whether it was done directly or indirectly, the House has been misled. To be blunt, this is happening on a more frequent basis, so I would urge you, Mr. Speaker, to assess the weighty evidence before the House and consider how it contradicts the bald denials given on February 7 and 8. These denials were meant to be a wet blanket thrown on an explosive scandal. They could not have been offered for any purpose other than to obstruct the House of Commons on its core constitutional capacity to hold the government to account.
Mr. Speaker, I commend the NDP House leader's question of privilege for your favourable consideration.