Mr. Speaker, I will note with interest that the Liberals now claim that the matter of deferred prosecution agreements has nothing to do with budget policy. That is ironic indeed, because those deferred prosecution agreements were created in the budget bill that the Liberals introduced here in the House of Commons. If they thought at the time that it was not a budget measure, why did they put it in the budget? If they thought it was completely irrelevant to the budget, why was it in the budget bill?
The answer, of course, is that it should never have been in the budget, but now that it has been put there, it is perfectly fair game during this budget debate to discuss it.
We learn every day of another form of deceit, another contradiction, just like this one. Less than a year ago, Liberals were claiming that this tool to allow corporations to avoid trial was a budget measure. They forced it through the finance committee, through the House of Commons, and then through the Senate finance committee, again and again claiming “This is a budget matter.”
Now we have a member who stands up and says that this has nothing to do with the budget and it is completely irrelevant. Is that not the whole story of this scandal? It is one flip-flop after another, one change after another in the versions of events and the stories that Liberals tell. They will say anything at any time in order to justify their inappropriate conduct. The intervention by the colleague across the way is just the latest example.
I can point to other contradictions. On February 15, the Prime Minister came out and said to 37 million Canadians that if anyone, including the former attorney general, had issues with anything they might have experienced in the government or did not feel that we were living up to the high standards that the government set for itself, it was her responsibility to come forward and their responsibility to come forward, and no one did.
Of course, that is absolutely false. She did come forward, again and again. She went to the Prime Minister personally on September 18, and then to his clerk of the Privy Council, when she said in a recorded conversation, about which top Liberals cannot lie and which they cannot deny, because it is all caught on tape, “We are treading on dangerous ground here—and I am going to issue my stern warning—because I cannot act in a manner and the prosecution cannot act in a manner that is not objective, that isn’t independent.... I can’t act in a partisan way and it can’t be politically motivated. All of this screams of that.”
If that is not a warning, I do not know what is.
Now the latest story from the Prime Minister is that he never heard about that conversation. After an attorney general had an explosive conversation of this nature with the top public servant about a priority file for the Prime Minister, in the two months that followed, the Prime Minister did not hear a word about it.
The story from the government was that he did not hear about it because he immediately left for vacation. It turns out that the public record shows that is false. He did not leave for vacation. He does take a lot of vacations, but unfortunately for his story, this was not one of the occasions when he did take such a vacation.
Even if he had, this is what the clerk himself said on the availability of the Prime Minister. He said:
There were multiple, multiple, multiple occasions where the minister could have expressed concern to the Prime Minister, and every single day could have picked up the phone and called.
He said as well:
The Prime Minister is available through the switchboard seven days a week, 24 hours a day, and is working seven days a week. The Prime Minister is interrupted all the time for calls with foreign leaders, security matters, heads-up.
Further, he said:
All ministers have the option of reaching the Prime Minister. Give or take a little bit of scheduling and where he might be in private time, and so on, every minister of the cabinet can reach the Prime Minister.
I presume that if that is true, then the Clerk of the Privy Council could have found time in the two months that followed this extraordinary conversation with the former attorney general to relay its contents to the Prime Minister, yet Liberals expect us to believe he never did and that as a result the Prime Minister did not know anything.
His chief of staff was involved in the interference, but the Prime Minister did not know. His principal secretary and best friend was involved, but the Prime Minister did not know. His senior adviser, Mathieu Bouchard, was involved, but the Prime Minister did not know. The Prime Minister's top adviser, Elder Marques, was involved in the interference, but the Prime Minister did not know. The finance minister was involved in the interference, but the Prime Minister did not know. The finance minister's chief of staff, Ben Chin, was involved in the interference, but the Prime Minister did not know.
Everyone was involved in this, as we now know because of documented text message conversations, journal entries and even audio recordings, right up to the Clerk of the Privy Council, but we are expected to believe that the Prime Minister did not know a thing.
According to the Clerk of the Privy Council, he works 24-7 and is available at any time to be reached easily and brought up to date on all these matters, but somehow this one just slipped right by him.
Why is it that Canadians find that so hard to believe? The answer is that it is because it is not true.
That brings me to the matter of the ethics committee, which will convene on Tuesday, a week from today, to decide whether to carry out a full-scale investigation and hear from all of the key witnesses who are alleged to have interfered in the SNC-Lavalin scandal.
Conservatives will be calling on all members of the Liberal Party to vote in favour of this study, particularly the two members who said they were open to such an investigation but that it had been premature at the time it was brought before the committee the last time it met.
The Prime Minister needs to understand something that has become very difficult for him to appreciate. It is this. The House of Commons does not work for him. It is the other way around. He holds that office only as long as the majority of MPs in this place say that he holds that office. It is not an entitlement. It is not a family heirloom to be handed down from father to son. It is the property of the Canadian people, and through their delegation to us, it is our job to decide whether he is able to hold that office.
In the meantime, this chamber and its committees are one gigantic accountability machine, an accountability machine that demands answers for the government's conduct and, particularly, the Prime Minister's conduct. This is not the Prime Minister's personal self-esteem factory. We do not exist here to try to elevate his sense of ego and self-importance. It is not the job of parliamentarians to gush and heap praise on him and treat him with the adoration and respect he expects and demands. That is not what Parliament does.
Parliament is supposed to ask the difficult questions until such time as we get accurate and believable answers. So far, they have not been forthcoming. Thus, we march on and I continue speaking on behalf of my constituents. I think in this sense that I am carrying out the role that all MPs are supposed to do, which is to stand up, speak up and fight back when they see something wrong.
It is not only opposition MPs who do that. There are courageous members on the government side who have been willing to take a principled position, for example, the former attorney general. She was prepared to put her principles ahead of her career ambitions. Then we have the former Treasury Board president who, likewise, said that she was not prepared to be part of the cover-up and that there is much more to this story that needs to be told. Therefore, let us tell it.
I am ready to end my speech now. All I need is for a member of the government to stand up and commit that the majority Liberal-controlled ethics committee will open a full-scale investigation into the SNC-Lavalin corruption scandal. As soon as one member of the other side rises and purports to speak on behalf of the Prime Minister, I will terminate my remarks and allow the debate to go on otherwise.
Until that happens or until you stop me, Mr. Speaker, I will continue to speak up for accountability in the SNC-Lavalin corruption scandal. I thank the members who are here with me, providing moral support for me to stand here on behalf of the Conservative caucus but also on behalf of my constituents.