Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss the cover-up budget, as it is now being called by Canadians.
The government introduced a budget with $41 billion of brand new cash spending designed to paper over the SNC-Lavalin corruption scandal, a scandal that has engulfed the current government ever since the former attorney general revealed that the Prime Minister and a group around him carried out an intense campaign of political interference, hounding, bullying and inappropriate pressure in order to convince her to set aside criminal charges on SNC-Lavalin, a company facing over $100 million worth of fraud and bribery charges.
When I began my speech, I started by pointing to numerous inconsistencies in the Prime Minister's story on this matter. I want to read a particular quote that is central to his defence.
When the scandal came to light, and after the former attorney general had resigned from cabinet over it, the Prime Minister said, “If anyone, including the former attorney general, had issues with anything they might have experienced in this government or didn't feel that we were living up to the high standards we set for ourselves, it was her responsibility to come forward. It was their responsibility to come forward, and no one did.”
Gerald Butts then went before a parliamentary committee. In an attempt to discredit the former attorney general, he said that if she had such concerns about the way they were acting on the SNC-Lavalin prosecution, then why weren't they talking about this in September, in October, in November, in December?
The essence of the rhetorical question that the Prime Minister and his top staff have asked is this: If she had a problem with our political interference, why did she not say something? We now know that she did, and the Prime Minister's suggestion to the contrary is false.
We have audio recordings in which the former attorney general said this about the Prime Minister's personal interference to the Clerk of the Privy Council: “So we are treading on dangerous ground here.”
She said, “This is a constitutional principle of prosecutorial independence. It is entirely inappropriate and it is political interference” and “decisions that are made by the independent prosecutor are their decisions.”
She also said, “ I can't even imagine [the former chief of the supreme court] feeling in any way, shape or form comfortable with interfering with the [independence of prosecutors.]” and “this is about the integrity of the prime minister and interference.”
She stated, “There is no way that anybody would interpret this other than interference... this is going to look like nothing but political interference by the prime minister, by you, by everybody else that has been involved in this politically pressuring me to do this.”
She also stated, “this is about interfering with one of our fundamental institutions. This is like breaching a constitutional principle of prosecutorial independence” and “it will be deemed political interference from day one”.
She said, “But I am trying to protect the prime minister from political interference—perceived [political interference] or otherwise. ...what I am confident of is that I have given the prime minister my best advice to protect him and to protect the constitutional principle of prosecutorial independence.”
Again, she said, “this goes far beyond saving jobs, this is about the integrity of the prime minister and interference. There is no way that anybody would interpret this other than interference if I was to step in.”
That is a list of eight, maybe more, warnings that the former attorney general gave to the Prime Minister's top public servant on December 19. However, two months later, the Prime Minister had the audacity to go before 35 million Canadians and say that she never once raised a single solitary complaint. He said that she never let him know at all that he was doing anything wrong. This conversation, had it not been recorded, would probably be denied right now. I think a lot of Liberals are attacking the former attorney general for recording that conversation. I think she did so knowing that the Prime Minister and his team would lie and deny if she did not have proof that the conversation occurred.
The Prime Minister said that he was never warned. However, not only is there this extensive audiotape that shows the former attorney general did warn the Prime Minister's clerk, the clerk made clear during that conversation that he would be talking to the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister was not going to be happy with all of her refusals to interfere with the criminal prosecution. He said that he was in a mood. He was going to get it done one way or the other.
In other words, the expectation that all of us get from listening to the audio of that conversation is that the outgoing Clerk of the Privy Council would immediately be bringing the results of the conversation to the Prime Minister. Since, he has denied knowing anything about this conversation. This is laughable. Not only was this issue of helping SNC avoid trial top of mind for the Prime Minister according to the clerk, he was calling the former attorney general about the issue on behalf of the Prime Minister. In other words, the Prime Minister would have been anxious to hear the results of that conversation.
In the last few days, the clerk has said that he would have told the Prime Minister about the conversation but everyone went on vacation right after it was done. Well, it only took a few minutes for the media to check the publicly available records to find out that the Prime Minister was not on vacation the next day or even the day after that.
Furthermore, we only have to go back to the Clerk of the Privy Council's own testimony before the justice committee wherein he said that anyone in the government can get a hold of the Prime Minister 24-7 just by calling his switchboard. Anybody who has ever used that switchboard will know that it is a magnificently powerful tool. It can find people anywhere that they might be hiding, including on vacation.
However, we are left to believe that two months went by from the time that the clerk had this menacing conversation with the former attorney general, to February 15, when the Prime Minister would step out in front of 37 million Canadians and deny knowledge of any objections from the former attorney general. All that time would have gone by and not once would the Clerk of the Privy Council have gone to his boss to say that, by the way, he did speak to the attorney general as he asked, and she gave him more than a half a dozen very clear warnings that what we were doing was wrong. I find it hard to believe that conversation did not take place.
Now, the Prime Minister claims that it is all just a breakdown in communications, an erosion of trust. Well, this is an area where I will agree with the Prime Minister. When one looks 35 million to 37 million Canadians in the eyes and tells them something that is not true, an erosion of trust is an understatement.
Let me point to another one of these contradictions that we have witnessed with the Prime Minister and his top staff and their interventions.
Gerald Butts testified about the meeting that he and Katie Telford had with the chief of staff to the attorney general. This conversation was important, because it is recorded in the former attorney general's notes that top PMO staff were using very aggressive language to try to get the attorney general at the time to shelve those criminal charges on SNC-Lavalin. Gerald Butts speaks of that meeting defensively. He said, “The second and final meeting I had on the file was with Jessica Prince, the minister's chief of staff, and Katie Telford. There was no urgency to attend the meeting.”
I remember that meeting very differently from the account given last week. I will repeat that. He said, “There was no urgency to attend the meeting.” Well, that is funny, because a PMO staffer emailed Ms. Prince, and the subject line in the email is “Urgent: chat w/ Katie and Gerry”.
One might, on the surface of it, say it is not terribly important whether a meeting is urgent or not urgent. However, when lies are thrown around like snowflakes and statements are expected to melt away and then evaporate into thin air, one comes to the conclusion very quickly that we cannot believe anything the Prime Minister and the people around him claim.
He specifically chose the sentence, saying that there was no urgency to attend that meeting, and then in the subject line to the meeting's invitation said, “Urgent: chat w/ Katie and Gerry”. It further states, “Katie and Gerry would like to speak to you asap - before 5 pm today..”. The email was sent at 4:16 p.m. That is not urgent at all: “I need to see you before 5 p.m., but that's okay, it's only 4:16 p.m.” In other words, drop everything, and did we mention that it was urgent?
One wonders, with all of the things that Mr. Butts could have said before committee, why he would specifically say something that is demonstrably false and easily disprovable in the documentary evidence. It is as though he thought he could sit in that committee and state falsehood after falsehood because no one would be able to know what was true or untrue, that it was just a he said, she said.
The problem for Gerald Butts and the Prime Minister is that they were dealing with someone who is punctilious in keeping records, and when people have records, it is hard to lie about what happened. We are seeing that in this example and many others.
I will go back to the claim that the Prime Minister knew nothing of the former attorney general's concerns about his political interference. On September 18, the former attorney general met with the Prime Minister and said of that meeting, “...while looking him in the eye. I asked, 'Are you politically interfering with my role...as the Attorney General? I would strongly advise against it.'”
That was in September, and yet in February, the Prime Minister stood and said he did not know anything about her concerns, that she had never mentioned it to him, that it was funny how they walked past each other in the hallway every day and she did not think to mention it. We see one piece of documentary evidence after another showing that the Prime Minister stated blatant falsehoods.
I will move on to the next falsehood, one that numerous members of the government repeatedly stated in their efforts to secure a deferred prosecution agreement for SNC-Lavalin, and that is the claim that the headquarters of the company would imminently announce its departure from Montreal if the former attorney general did not immediately indicate her willingness to negotiate a deferred prosecution agreement. The Prime Minister, the clerk of the privy council and the former attorney general met in late September. At that meeting, the attorney general reported that they told her before the Quebec election even happened, the company would announce it was moving its headquarters, unless she were to initiate a deal to shelve the prosecution. The Quebec election was only two weeks away. In other words, if she were to have believed what they said, she would have been under the mistaken impression that she had to make this decision immediately in order to avoid losing a major corporate headquarters.
It turned out that threat was totally false, as borne out by the fact that it has not moved its headquarters. Furthermore, the company has signed an agreement with the Quebec pension plan that in exchange for a $1.5 billion loan, the headquarters will remain in Montreal until at least the year 2024. By the way, it has signed a 20-year lease and announced a multi-million dollar renovation to accommodate its thousands of employees there. That does not sound like the actions of a company that is about to move its headquarters. Therefore, that statement they made to her about the immediate need for her to act to save the headquarters was utterly false.
Lying to a prosecutor or a top law officer in order to shelve criminal charges may well violate section 139 of the Criminal Code, which makes it an offence to attempt to obstruct, pervert or defeat the course of justice.
Telling a law officer a lie to get charges shelved sounds like someone is obstructing, perverting or defeating the course of justice, yet that is exactly what happened.
I came to the House of Commons to ask the Prime Minister about this falsehood, and he denied ever having stated it. I was not in the room for that September meeting, so I could not say what was said there, but we have scrupulous notes from the former attorney general, and we have the fact that the Prime Minister went into the press theatre and repeated exactly the same falsehood several months later. He publicly went on the record and said that the headquarters might leave if the company did not avoid prosecution. What the former attorney general claims the Prime Minister said in that meeting was the same as what he then said publicly. In other words, he has been peddling this falsehood in both private and in public.
I am not surprised that the Prime Minister did not remember that he had said it, because it is much harder to remember what we say if we are not telling the truth. When we tell the truth, we just have to hearken back to what actually happened. When we tell falsehoods, our memory has to keep track of a whole multiplicity of different versions of events, and that is why the Prime Minister is having such a difficult time keeping his story straight.
I will note that I am prepared to cede the floor right now if the members across the way will rise and commit that the justice committee will resume its investigation into the SNC-Lavalin scandal. The Prime Minister has shut down the justice committee investigation and has shut down the ethics committee. It is a justice committee with no justice and an ethics committee with no ethics, but we can fix all of that here and now if the Prime Minister will rise and give his word that—