Debates of April 4th, 2019

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

My hon. colleague from British Columbia asks if Mr. Bouchard was asked that question at the justice committee when he testified there. He did not testify there. Nor did he testify at ethics. Nor did the other nine alleged perpetrators, including the Prime Minister, who the former attorney general says interfered to shelve the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.

Of the people the former attorney general alleges participated in the interference, we have actually only heard from two of them, which is hard to believe this,.

If we are to believe the text messages, journal entries and audio recordings, there were probably 12 different officials: the Prime Minister himself in his September 17 meeting with the attorney general; the Finance Minister in a conversation on the floor of the House of Commons; the Finance Minister's chief of staff Ben Chin, who sent threatening text messages to senior staff of the attorney general; Mathieu Bouchard, senior adviser to the PMO; Elder C. Marques, senior legal adviser to the Prime Minister; Katie Telford, who said “We do not want to debate legalities anymore. We just want a solution”, in other words, a lawless deal to let SNC off. I could go on.

There are at least nine, maybe 10, who are alleged by the former Liberal attorney general to have intervened and who have not yet testified in addition to the two that have already appeared, and those two have been fired. If these others were to testify and their conduct known, they too would probably have to be removed.

Let me go back to Mathieu Bouchard. Why was he so involved in this? Why do we find his fingerprints everywhere on this scandal? It is a good thing we have the lobbyist registry, because all of this starts with the lobbyist registry.

The registry was created by Prime Minister Harper in that very inconvenient Accountability Act. Yes, it is Stephen Harper's fault. We now know most of, perhaps not all of, the lobbying interactions between SNC and senior public officeholders in the present Prime Minister's government. Did they meet with Mathieu Bouchard? The answer is not once, not twice, but close to a dozen times.

Let me recount the number of meetings that this senior PMO adviser had with SNC-Lavalin.

On February 16, 2018, Mathieu Bouchard met with SNC-Lavalin to discuss infrastructure, budget, justice and law enforcement.

On March 16, Mathieu Bouchard met with SNC-Lavalin to discuss international relations, industry, justice and law enforcement.

On May 16, Mathieu Bouchard, senior adviser to the Prime Minister, met with SNC-Lavalin to discuss international relations, justice and law enforcement.

On January 31, Mathieu Bouchard, senior adviser to the Prime Minister, met with SNC-Lavalin to discuss industry, international relations, justice and law enforcement.

On February 28, 2017, Mathieu Bouchard, senior adviser to the Prime Minister, met with SNC-Lavalin to discuss industry.

On April 12, 2017, Mathieu Bouchard, policy adviser to the Prime Minister, met to discuss justice and law enforcement with SNC-Lavalin.

On May 18, 2017, Mathieu Bouchard, senior adviser to the Prime Minister, met with SNC-Lavalin to discuss justice and law enforcement.

On June 21, 2017, Mathieu Bouchard, senior adviser to the Prime Minister, met with SNC-Lavalin to discuss justice and law enforcement.

On July 21, 2017, Mathieu Bouchard met with SNC-Lavalin to discuss justice and law enforcement.

On August 30, 2017, Mathieu Bouchard met with SNC-Lavalin to discuss justice and law enforcement. On September 11, Mathieu Bouchard, senior adviser to the Prime Minister, met with SNC-Lavalin to discuss justice and law enforcement.

They also talked about the budget. Members may remember that in the last Liberal budget, Liberals snuck in an amendment to the Criminal Code, making it possible for SNC-Lavalin to get out of a criminal trial—

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

To escape justice and law enforcement.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

—to escape justice and law enforcement.

On July 5, 2018, Mathieu Bouchard, senior adviser to the Prime Minister, met with SNC-Lavalin to discuss justice and law enforcement. They talked about the budget that day, too. On November 5, 2018, Mathieu Bouchard met with SNC-Lavalin to discuss justice and law enforcement. November 19, 2018, Mathieu Bouchard met with SNC-Lavalin to discuss justice and law enforcement.

Is SNC-Lavalin in the justice or law enforcement business? It is an engineering and construction firm. That is an awful lot of conversations about justice and law enforcement with a company that is, on those subjects, most known for violating justice and trying to evade law enforcement, yet this one PMO staffer, a senior adviser to the Prime Minister, met with this company over and over again.

If we look at the last six meetings, they almost entirely correspond with the time frame during which the former attorney general experienced what she called hounding, veiled threats and inappropriate pressure from the Prime Minister. No wonder the Prime Minister does not want Mathieu Bouchard to testify before the ethics committee.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I have been listening intently to the member for Carleton relaying the number of times senior adviser to the Prime Minister Mathieu Bouchard met with SNC-Lavalin to talk about justice and law enforcement, and I am wondering if he has a document he could table and if there would be unanimous consent—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

That is not a point of order. If the hon. member for Carleton has anything to table, he can ask for unanimous consent. He is quite capable of asking on his own. It is very nice of the hon. member for Chilliwack—Hope to ask on his behalf, but we will leave it to the hon. member for Carleton.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order, in part because I was sharing the same concern that the member for Chilliwack—Hope raised with regard to repetition. I would ask that you look at page 625 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, where it deals with repetition and relevance of debate. It states:

The rules of relevance and repetition are intertwined and mutually reinforcing. The requirement that speeches remain relevant to the question before the House flows from the latter’s right to reach decisions without undue obstruction and to exclude from debate any discussion not conducive to that end. The rule against repetition helps to ensure the expeditious conduct of debate by prohibiting the repetition of arguments already made. To neglect either rule would seriously impair the ability of the House to manage its time efficiently.

Speakers have been exceptionally generous in allowing the member to be off topic at times, like when he was talking about limestones and so forth, but the other part is the repetition—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I have enough information and thank the hon. parliamentary secretary.

The hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent is also rising on a point of order.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, regarding the point of order raised by my colleague from British Columbia, I just want to say that it is essential for Canadians to have access to all the evidence presented here in the House.

I just heard my colleague from Winnipeg North say that the member keeps repeating the same thing over again. First of all, that is not true. Second, everything he is saying is entirely relevant to the topic under discussion. In order to have all the information—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Order. That is not really a point of order. It sounds more like a matter of debate.

The hon. member for Chilliwack—Hope.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Mr. Speaker, obviously without getting into whether the member for Winnipeg North would ever be allowed to speak if repetition was a disqualification, page 632 of Bosc and Gagnon says very clearly that during debates on the Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne and the budget, the Chair relaxes the requirement for the rule of relevance because:

During the days allotted to the debate on this motion, Private Members have the opportunity “to bring forward topics of their own choosing”. Consequently, debate tends to be very wide-ranging and the Speaker usually makes no effort to apply the rule of relevance. This is not the case, however, when the House is debating the Budget.

I would argue, and had the member been here for the beginning of the remarks by the member for Carleton today, he would have clearly heard that this is exactly relevant to this budget, because this entire thing is a cover-up and he is exposing it hour after hour.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I want to remind the hon. member that we are not to refer to whether a member is present in the House or not. Those are the rules.

I will remind the hon. member for Carleton that we are debating the budget, and the budget has a very wide spectrum. I will let the hon. member for Carleton continue on his discourse.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have two things to say to my loquacious friend from Winnipeg. First, I am talking about budget policy according to his government. His government put the deferred prosecution agreements in budget implementation legislation and thereby determined that this entire conversation is budget related. That was the determination of the Liberals.

Does he want to rise now and announce that the deferred prosecution agreement ought never to have been in an omnibus budget bill? If so, we would all agree with unanimous consent to repeal it and remove it from the Criminal Code so it could be reintroduced as criminal legislation and put before the justice committee for consideration rather than snuck into a 550-page budget bill. Therefore, yes, it is relevant to the budget according to the government.

Second, the member says that I am repetitious. I dispute that outrageous allegation. However, if he wants me to stop talking about this matter, I will on one condition. He can rise now and commit that the government will allow the ethics committee to bring before it everyone the former attorney general named as having participated in the interference in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. The second he does that, I will sit down and shut up. I will stop being, as he alleges I am, repetitive. I will stop speaking, period, for the rest of the week if he stands now and commits to a full investigation at the ethics committee.

Liberals like deals. They wanted a deal with SNC-Lavalin. This is a much easier deal to make. The Prime Minister claims he did nothing wrong. He has thus far refused to apologize for his conduct. If he truly believes he did nothing wrong, the Prime Minister will come right in and offer to have that matter investigated before the parliamentary committee so all Canadians can judge for themselves whether he did nothing wrong.

That brings me to the next of the conditions that, according to a CBC article released today, the former attorney general had suggested she was attempting to extract from the government in exchange for ending the controversy around SNC-Lavalin. According to the article:

But [the former attorney general]'s wishes went beyond a limited housecleaning in the PMO. Sources said she also sought assurances that her replacement as attorney general...would not overrule Director of Public Prosecutions Kathleen Roussel and direct her to give SNC-Lavalin a deferred prosecution agreement.

This is very important. The Prime Minister claims that his decision to shuffle out his former attorney general and replace her with a new one had absolutely nothing to do with her resolute determination not to interfere in the SNC-Lavalin criminal prosecution. It was completely unrelated. The first story was that Scott Brison resigned, which caused a musical chairs game that required the former attorney general to move from her position to Veterans Affairs. It was not to replace Scott Brison at the Treasury Board, but for reasons I do not yet understand and no one has clearly explained. For some reason, the Treasury Board president's resignation required that she move over to Veterans Affairs.

As far as I can tell, that is not an accurate description. Later, the Prime Minister's Office changed its story and leaked to Liberal-friendly journalists the theory that the former attorney general had to be moved out because she tried to elevate a Manitoba judge to become chief justice of the Supreme Court, and that Manitoba judge was not Liberal enough for the Prime Minister's liking. Because he was unhappy with her desire to promote a judge who was not ideologically aligned with the Liberal values of the Prime Minister, he questioned her judgment and that caused their relationship to disintegrate. The story over the original cause of the former attorney general's move changed from “Scott Brison is to blame” to “a not-Liberal-enough Manitoba judge is to blame”.

Others have a simpler theory, and that is that she was moved because she refused to grant a special deal to SNC-Lavalin. The Prime Minister denies that, but what he does not deny and what is now on the public record in this regard is that before the shuffle, the former attorney general of Canada took the position with respect to SNC-Lavalin's special deal that the answer was “no”. After the shuffle, the new Attorney General has taken the public position that the answer is “maybe”.

Let me reiterate. By shuffling the cabinet, the Prime Minister has changed the state of play on SNC's request for a deal from “no” to “maybe”. That is not in dispute. We have documentary evidence showing that the former attorney general said “no” special deal, and we have public comments from the new Attorney General saying “maybe” to a special deal. Whether or not the Prime Minister wants to deny that it was his purpose in the shuffle, it was undeniably the result of the shuffle.

Let us examine the merits of the notion that the company should get a special deal. The legislation amending the Criminal Code that allows for such deals was rammed through this place in a 500-plus-page budget, and it allows the prosecutor to extend these deals to corporate criminals in certain circumstances. Was the prosecutor right when she rejected the company's plea for such a settlement?

We can look to subsection 715.32(2) of the Criminal Code, entitled Factors to consider:

the prosecutor must consider the following factors:

(a) the circumstances in which the act or omission that forms the basis of the offence was brought to the attention of investigative authorities;

How did these circumstances come to the attention of the authorities? In other words, did SNC-Lavalin self-report? Did it stand up and admit that members of the company had participated in fraud and bribery of the Libyan people? The answer is no. We found out about it because Swiss authorities arrested an SNC official and convicted him of the offences that we all now know are before the courts in Canada.

When the prosecutor looked at criterion (a) to determine if it favoured a deferred prosecution agreement for the company, she would have correctly concluded that the circumstances that led to the act or omission, in this case fraud and bribery, becoming known to investigative authorities would not be a mitigating factor, that the company did nothing to show its ethics and transparency by self-reporting and that, in fact, the RCMP learned of the crime when Swiss authorities acted against the individuals who committed it.

(b) the nature and gravity of the act or omission and its impact on any victim;

This paragraph of the Criminal Code makes clear that the prosecutor must determine whether the crime was grave and whether it had an impact on any victims.

Who are the victims? It is easy to think, with white-collar crime, because its effects are not immediately visible, that there are no victims. Violent offences lead to broken bones and bloodied flesh, so it is very easy for the visual human mind to ascertain who the victims are in those cases.

White-collar crime is more insidious, but its damage is no less severe. In fact, that damage can be manifested to the naked eye when one goes to countries that are ravaged by parasitical corruption. We can see it in the slums and shanty towns of the world, where people who are no less talented and industrious than Canadians live in squalor. The most striking thing in these places is the relentless work ethic of the people who live in them. They are always bustling, moving, repairing things and carrying heavy objects and heavy loads. They are toiling away to bring about their survival. However, despite their relentless hard work, often for much longer hours than we in much richer countries work, they never seem to advance and always seem on the cusp of starvation.

What is the difference? What is the cause of their misery? We know it is not them. We know it is corruption. Corrupt interests bleed the wealth of those nations.

In this particular case, SNC-Lavalin is accused not just of bribery, as is so often recorded, although it is accused of that, but also of fraud. So often the two go hand in hand. Let us start first with the bribery, and then we will get to the fraud.

The company is accused of bribing the Gadhafi family with prostitutes, yachts and a whole assortment of other benefits designed to win over the favour of the brutal Libyan dictator so that the company could win public contracts in Libya. It is alleged that the company created a phoney shell corporation through which this bribery could be funnelled. Gadhafi's son, Saadi, received prostitutes and other so-called companion services in the amount of tens of thousands of dollars. Gadhafi and his inner circle received yachts from SNC-Lavalin or its shell companies.

Most people sitting by will ask who the victims of this crime are. The answer is the Libyan people, because the second shoe to drop in the charges is fraud. It is alleged that SNC-Lavalin defrauded the Libyan people of $130 million. This is a group of people who do not have $130 million to give. As a result, they are the victims of this scandal.

Some people might ask how we know that they suffered as a result of the fraud. It is obvious that if that $130 million had not been defrauded by SNC-Lavalin, it could have been put to other more productive purposes for the betterment of the poor and suffering people in the war-ravaged nation of Libya.

The Libyan people could have paid for hospitals and food and medicine for their children. They could have paid for schooling for girls and boys so they could grow up and live in better lands. They could have repaired their crumbling infrastructure with that $137 million of defrauded money. They could have done all those things but for the fact that this company allegedly stole the money and made it impossible to do so.

Maybe that money could have stayed in the pockets of the Libyan people so they could have paid for their own household items to better nourish their children or feed their families. However, that is not possible when companies defraud the people. Therefore, it was a not a victimless crime. It is not acceptable to say that this is just how those people do things over there. The reason people such as the Libyan people live in poverty is that there is this kind of corruption. Therefore, there are victims.

An old tactic of wealthy western companies was to commit their crimes then leave the country before they could be prosecuted locally. They would head back to their western headquarters with their looted cash and live high on the hog with impunity. That is why Canada signed on to international treaties. It was so countries that were host to those companies would prosecute them at home. In other words, the message was this: If they were going to defraud people, if they were going to steal from the poor, they would have nowhere to hide. We would give them no comfort. They would be prosecuted, and they would face punishment for their crimes.

The reason the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is now examining the Prime Minister of Canada on this matter is that this organization is worried that his political interference might violate our international treaties against fraud, bribery and corruption. That may very well be true.

When the prosecutor examined paragraph 2(b) in section 715.32 of the Criminal Code to determine “the nature and gravity of the act or omission and its impact on any victim”, she correctly concluded that this criterion favoured a rejection of a deferred prosecution agreement for this alleged corporate criminal, SNC-Lavalin.

What about paragraph (c) “the degree of involvement of senior officers of the organization in the act or omission”? In this case, we know that the corruption went right up to the highest levels of the company. In fact, the former CEO not only had to resign but has pleaded guilty to bribery himself. The players in this particular scandal were all tied right into upper management. In other words, this was not some junior intern operating on his or her own accord as a rogue player; it was a corruption scandal that went right to the top and straight to the heart of SNC-Lavalin as an enterprise itself.

Subsection 715.32(2) of the Criminal Code states that the prosecutor must consider this factor:

(e) whether the organization has made reparations or taken other measures to remedy the harm caused by the act or omission and to prevent the commission of similar acts or omissions;

Let us break that into two parts and first look at “whether the organization has made reparations or taken...measures to remedy the harm caused”. Actually, it has not. The company has not paid the Libyan people back the $130 million. If it really believed that what it was doing was wrong, it would have made those reparations.

If, as the act requires, the company was taking responsibility for its wrongdoing, it would have reimbursed all the stolen cash. Imagine all the good that company could have done if it had returned the cash to the people who are suffering in Libya, one of the poorest countries in the world. For reasons unknown to us, that has not happened and thus the prosecutor was unable to use that criterion as a justification for extending a deferred prosecution to SNC-Lavalin.

What other measures has the company taken to remedy the harm it caused the poor and suffering Libyan people? I am not aware of any, and I suspect, nor is the prosecutor. Once again, the director of public prosecutions was correct in evaluating that this criterion found in paragraph 715.32(2)(e) was not met and, therefore, the company does not qualify for a deferred prosecution agreement.

As for any actions the company has taken to prevent the commission of similar acts or omissions, we have had public assurances from the new CEO that the company has changed its corporate culture and has brought in a bunch of new rules requiring that its new members behave in a manner that is more ethical. However, I have no evidence to prove that. The only way to know for sure is if the company goes on for a prolonged period without any repeat of the copious examples of corruption in which it has engaged systematically over the last two decades.

In paragraph 715.32(2)(f), did the organization, SNC-Lavalin, identify or express “a willingness to identify any person involved in wrongdoing related to the act or omission”? The answer is no, it did not. In fact, the wrongdoers, as I pointed out earlier, had to be caught by Swiss authorities and only after that occurred did they get a conviction and did those individuals pay a price. It was not some act of virtue by SNC-Lavalin that led to the prosecution of the wrongdoers in this case, not even close. Once again, the prosecutor was absolutely right when she said the company did not meet the criterion in paragraph 715.32(2)(f) of the Criminal Code, which asked whether the organization had identified or expressed “willingness to identify any person involved in wrongdoing related to the act or omission” in question.

The next criterion that the prosecutor is asked to evaluate is:

(g) whether the organization—or any of its representatives—was convicted of an offence or sanctioned by a regulatory body, or whether it entered into a previous remediation agreement or other settlement, in Canada or elsewhere, for similar acts or omissions;

In other words, is this an isolated incident? Did SNC-Lavalin simply make a small mistake once and, for God's sake, can we not all make a mistake from time to time? Even in the six hours that I have left, I do not have time to chronicle all of the proven corruption in which this company has engaged over the years. We would have to go too far back in history and travel too many years to the present in order for all of its crimes to be listed on the floor of this House of Commons. This company has officials who have been convicted or have pleaded guilty to bribery in relation to the Jacques Cartier Bridge and, once again, bribery in relation to the McGill University Health Centre.

Did the Prime Minister, by the way, when he was working so hard to get the company off these charges, insist that in exchange for the settlement the company repay Canadian taxpayers for any wrongdoing in respect of the Jacques Cartier Bridge? Did he ask SNC-Lavalin to repay Quebec taxpayers for the bribery in respect of the McGill University Health Centre? I suspect not.

Those are just two examples. We have SNC officials who are accused of crimes in Mexico and Panama, who have been charged in Switzerland and, of course, in Libya. There are other examples I could list but, again, due to a lack of time I will not at this moment.

All of this is to say this organization and its representatives have a track record of criminality that would be hard to match anywhere in Canada, and competes with companies around the world for its prodigious criminal track record.

It says here that the prosecutor must also consider whether the organization or any of its representatives is alleged to have committed any other offences, including those not listed in this part. Once again, of course, its representatives are accused, convicted and have pleaded guilty to countless other serious crimes. I will not reiterate what I just said.

Finally, the prosecutor is obliged to consider any other factor that he or she considers relevant. I suspect the prosecutor did that very carefully. She properly concluded, having looked at this criteria even more systematically than I have just now done, that the company did not qualify for a deferred prosecution agreement. That is probably why the former attorney general took one look at the act in the Criminal Code and one look at the track record of the company accused, and said the director of public prosecutions was absolutely right not to grant this company an exemption from charges by signing a deferred prosecution agreement.

I wonder if anyone in the Prime Minister's Office even bothered to read their own legislation when they made this relentless drive to convince or strong-arm the former attorney general to overrule her prosecutor.

I note that the argument the government used was one that it is not even allowed to make. In subsection 3 of this chapter of the Criminal Code it says:

if the organization is alleged to have committed an offence under section 3 or 4 of the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act, the prosecutor must not consider the national economic interest, the potential effect on relations with a state other than Canada or the identity of the organization or individual involved.

The government has claimed, falsely, that it was doing all this to protect jobs. I have, in previous interventions, proven that was a complete falsehood. I call it the “jobs lie”. The government was not protecting a single, solitary job, except for, perhaps, those of the powerful executives at the company. Otherwise, the claim that this was a job protection plan by the Prime Minister is completely false.

However, even if it were not, the act in question is clear that the prosecutor cannot take into account national economic interest. In other words, such arguments ought never have been made in the first place, true or otherwise.

Given the act, as it is written, it is impossible to imagine how the prosecutor, or later the former attorney general, would have concluded that this company was entitled to a deferred prosecution agreement. However, I am curious if there is any record anywhere that the Prime Minister's Office tried to dispute the legality of the director's or the former attorney general's position on this.

In all the documents released, including some from our friend Gerald Butts, we see nothing about the criteria in the act that would have justified giving the company a deferred prosecution agreement. I ask members to browse through the documents that Gerry Butts provided. They are supposed to exonerate him and the Prime Minister somehow.

Did any of those documents show that the company was entitled to a deferred prosecution agreement because of the circumstances of the act or omission that forms the basis of the offence? Did those documents show the company was entitled to a deal because the nature and gravity of the act or omission was small, or that the impact on the victim was mild? No. Did Gerald Butts table any document or any information, and did Michael Wernick do the same, showing the degree of the involvement of the senior officers of the organization was so remote that the company was entitled to a deferred prosecution agreement? If they did, I sure as hell did not see it.

Did the government, any of its members, since this scandal erupted publicly in the last two months, show that the company qualified for a deferred prosecution agreement because they had made reparations to the Libyan people, who are the victims of this fraud? Is there any evidence that the government can provide that the Libyan people have been made whole in the aftermath of this $130-million theft?

Did the government, at any time, present to the House or the justice committee or the former attorney general, in any of the evidence that we see, that the company identified the wrongdoers and reported them to authorities before they got caught? Was there any evidence that the Prime Minister's Office provided in order to argue that the company qualified for a deferred prosecution agreement because it self-reported the crime? Of course there was no such evidence.

Did the Prime Minister or the clerk or anyone else provide evidence to the former attorney general that the company should qualify for a special deal because, under the criteria in paragraph (g), neither the organization nor its representatives have ever been convicted or sanctioned by a regulatory body on similar charges. Did they ever provide evidence that the company should be entitled to a special deal because the individuals in the organization listed in the offences had already reported themselves for their offences?

Was there any evidence on any of these criteria that SNC-Lavalin was entitled to a deferred prosecution agreement? There was none, yet the Prime Minister and his team pushed and pushed in what Gerald Butts admitted was 20 meetings, phone calls and text messages, a number that is probably an underestimation. At least 20 times the Prime Minister and his team would go back to the former attorney general again and again. Not once, in any of those 20 occasions, do we find evidence that they argued that the company was even entitled, under the criteria in the law that the government wrote, to receive a settlement. In other words, they were clearly doing something for which they had no legal grounding.

We have text messages proving that instead of acting in accordance with the law, Gerald Butts had cooked up a scheme whereby the government would get a pre-cooked legal opinion to try to justify letting this Liberal-linked corporation off the hook. If that does not defeat, pervert or obstruct the course of justice, I do not know what does.

That brings us from the past to the present and the future.

We now know that in the past, from December through to the attorney general's removal in January, the Prime Minister orchestrated this massive campaign. It is all documented. It has all been proven.

But what about the future? Everyone is forgetting about the future. The Liberal member across the way yelled, “It's over.” I wish it were, but the door is open. The current Attorney General has said he may still grant a deferred prosecution to SNC-Lavalin. He is open to directing the top prosecutor to negotiate such a settlement.

Furthermore, we have looked at the sections of the Director of Public Prosecutions Act, and while it is clear that direction from the Attorney General to the prosecutor must be published in the Canada Gazette, such publication can be delayed if the Attorney General believes it is necessary.

In other words, it now remains a possibility that the Prime Minister will attempt to force through such a negotiation without Canadians immediately finding out. It is possible that the Prime Minister is now hatching a scheme that he will quietly plan right now to grant this settlement to SNC-Lavalin in a way that will only become public after the next election.

Imagine that. After all we have been through, after the brazen interference in the legal system that we have already witnessed, the Prime Minister still will not rule out the possibility that this company will get a settlement instead of going to trial.

Some might say that this is just an opposition allegation. They might question how we can prove that. We cannot prove what someone is going to do in the future, but if he were not going to do it, there is a pretty easy way for him to prove it. The Prime Minister could stand in the House today and say the top prosecutor has made her decision, that being that the company does not deserve a settlement but deserves a trial. He could say he respects the prosecutor's decision, that it is final, and that our government, including our Attorney General, will do absolutely nothing to overturn it.

So far, the Prime Minister has not stood in the House of Commons and said that. Rather, he has allowed his Attorney General to take a public position contrary to his predecessor's and say that an agreement is still a possibility. In other words, we could be sitting here if, God forbid, the Prime Minister is re-elected, and before Christmas we could learn that the Prime Minister has granted a special deal to SNC-Lavalin to allow it to avoid trial in the case of fraud and bribery.

This is very much an open question. Canadians who have followed this scandal breathlessly for two months obviously are interested in the answer to that question, and they should have that answer before the next election.

I can state with certainty that the leader of the Conservative Party, as Prime Minister of Canada, will not direct or in any way influence his future attorney general to hand SNC-Lavalin a deal. He has said, and so I can restate, that he will not interfere with the work of an attorney general or of a top prosecutor. Even if we believe that a deferred prosecution agreement should exist in the Criminal Code—which is something we never really had a chance to debate, because it was buried in a massive omnibus budget bill—we ought to at least believe that granting one is the exclusive decision of the director of public prosecutions, who is an independent and separate agent of the legal system and has the authority to act with an independent frame of mind to make the right decision. Any future Conservative government, much like previous Conservative governments, will always respect the sacrosanctity of prosecutorial independence.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

It is funny. Most Liberals members have been hanging their heads in shame for most of my speech as I roll out one devastating fact after another. Now, all of a sudden, when I restate that a Conservative will not grant a special deal to SNC-Lavalin, they start screaming and hollering. They come unglued. It is as though they are more outraged by the possibility that SNC-Lavalin will go to trial for its alleged fraud and bribery than they are about the conduct of their own Prime Minister. I wish they had been screaming and hollering a few minutes ago, when I was laying out all of the evidence of how the Prime Minister's top advisers interfered with a criminal prosecution, but they were dead silent and just sat there in disgrace. The second they find out that a future Conservative government will let the legal course of action run independently and that SNC-Lavalin will be made to answer for itself before trial, that is too far; it is too much, and they cannot handle it and they erupt in screams and hollers.

I think members will agree that this says an awful lot about the things that matter to this Liberal government.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a point of order.

Canadians have been hearing my colleague from Carleton's brilliant explanation for the past few days. It is disappointing that when we are laying out specific facts, we have to listen to the people across the aisle hurling insults about the facts. Facts are the very foundation of the political argument and debate that we should be respectfully having in the House of Commons.

Mr. Speaker, I urge you to use your authority to remind all parliamentarians that when a member has the floor and is giving the facts, giving the evidence, and is ready to table documents, other people may object, but it is crucial that all this happens in a respectful, cordial atmosphere. If they have something to say, they will get an opportunity to say it at the appropriate time. Ultimately, Canadians will have the final word on October 24.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I thank the hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent for his remarks.

I generally preside over the House with care to ensure that decorum is maintained. As the hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent indicated, decorum is essential during debates in the House. I will continue to enforce decorum and will intervene if things start to get too loud.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on another point of order to correct what I said.

It was brought to my attention that I inadvertently said that the election will take place on October 24. I am sorry if that is indeed the case. I misled the House. Canadians will have the opportunity to exercise their right to vote and tell the government what they think of it on October 21.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Since that is not really a point of order, we will resume debate.

The hon. member for Carleton.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this brings me to the next part of my presentation.

According to the CBC article just published in the last 24 hours about the conditions the former attorney general allegedly brought to the Prime Minister in order to put an end to the public controversy that has been raging, the final one was that the Prime Minister admit:

—publicly, or to caucus alone—that his office acted inappropriately in its attempts to convince her to consider granting SNC-Lavalin a [deferred prosecution agreement].

The Prime Minister apparently considered this a demand he was not prepared to fulfill. He thought that she was in no position to tell him he was wrong. He was the boss around there and did not take responsibility for anything.

That has been the story of his life. He inherited what he calls a “family fortune” from his grandfather. That family fortune had been in a testamentary trust fund for over a decade, the income from which is sheltered from personal income taxes, and he was therefore able to avoid paying the same rate of taxation that another Canadian would pay on earned income for the growth in that trust fund. This was called the testamentary trust fund loophole, and it existed up until the beginning of 2015, when the loophole was closed.

I will note that it was the former Harper government that closed that loophole, and the then Liberal leader opposed Harper's decision to do that. I believe he stood in the House of Commons and actually voted against closing the loophole that he profited from.

We have to do some thinking about whether we need to change the ethics laws to prevent members from using their vote in this House of Commons to profit themselves, or at least to take positions that clearly place them in a real conflict of interest, even if these positions are not captured in law.

Nevertheless, because he has inherited this great family fortune, he has never had to live with the consequences of his own decisions, and he was not prepared to do so in this case either.

The former attorney general had asked him to stand up and say it was wrong to badger, hound, threaten, pressure and interfere in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. According to this story, if he had done that and had met the other conditions, she might have stayed in caucus and continued to work with the Liberal government. Although the Prime Minister apparently considered apologizing and although it was widely reported that he would apologize, he showed up at a press conference and put on another high school drama production, which is an extension of his earlier profession, and avoided taking any personal blame or responsibility for his actions. It was at that press conference, I note in passing, that he stated the blatant falsehood that the former attorney general had never once raised any concerns with him about his interference in the file, but I digress.

He did not take responsibility. That says something about him and about the kind of leader he is, versus what he promised he would be. He promised he was going to be the great Prime Minister of reconciliation. He was going to do things completely differently. He would usher in a new era of idealism, and Canadians could take him at his word. That would involve taking responsibility for one's own failures.

When he did not do so, he proved that he had failed to live up to the expectations he deliberately and meticulously set in the last election. Furthermore, by trying to blame the first female indigenous attorney general for his own behaviour, he proved what many have long suspected: that his talk about reconciliation has been nothing more than drama and theatre.

Yes, he has given sobbing speeches and has acted with great symbolism. We know he can put on a show for the cameras. That is what he did as a drama teacher; he acted. However, there is a difference between acting and action, and actions speak louder than words.

Let me examine the approach the Prime Minister has taken in using first nations people for his own political objectives.

In a Rolling Stone magazine article, a reporter asked a question about the Prime Minister's boxing match with Patrick Brazeau, who is now a Senator in the upper chamber. We should note the descriptive language that the Rolling Stone article reports after the Prime Minister was asked that question. The article noted:

[The Prime Minister] mischievously smiles when I ask how much of the boxing match had been planned out. “It wasn’t random,” [he] says. “I wanted someone who would be a good foil, and we stumbled upon the scrappy tough-guy senator from an indigenous community. He fit the bill, and it was a very nice counterpoint.” [The Prime Minister] says this with the calculation of a CFO in a company-budget markup session. “I saw it as the right kind of narrative, the right story to tell.”

This is exactly what I said earlier. He is a drama teacher putting on a production, telling a story about his grandeur at the expense of a so-called scrappy tough guy from an indigenous community.

What is much more disgusting is what he was since caught on video as saying. Wanting to shame Mr. Brazeau, the scrappy tough guy from the indigenous community, the Prime Minister wanted Brazeau to cut his hair, which was part of the bet to fulfill after the outcome of the boxing match. “We're both known for our hair on the Hill. Let's say the loser gets a haircut”, the Prime Minister said of the bet, adding that Brazeau “resisted back a little bit, you know, pointing out that hair has a cultural significance for first nations people, and I said, ‘I know. That's why I proposed it.’ When a warrior cuts his hair, it's a sign of shame, so it's very apropos.”

Let us digest that. The Prime Minister did not just want to win the boxing match; he wanted to do it against an indigenous person. Then he wanted Brazeau to cut his hair because it was a cultural symbol of shame, of him dominating over that person, of him humiliating that person.

Putting aside whether or not Mr. Brazeau agreed to participate in the fight, he did, it was the pleasure with which the Prime Minister embraced this opportunity to shame someone on the basis of cultural traditions. That is the Prime Minister. That is the heart of the so-called reconciliation Prime Minister. This is not lost on first nations leaders.

Let me quote from an interview by Mercedes Stephenson. She said, “Joining me now to discuss this”, and this was referring to the SNC-Lavalin affair, “is Grand Chief Stewart Phillip. Grand Chief, you had a chance to see that video.” She was talking about a video in relation to the scandal. “What did you make of it?”

Grand Chief Phillip said:

Well it was deeply disappointing to know and understand at this late date in the game that the vision and the promises of [the Prime Minister] that were announced in October 2015 have not come to pass. All of the promises and the commitments that he made have simply been set aside and now that he’s under tremendous pressure from the [former attorney general] SNC-Lavalin issue, [the Prime Minister] is really revealing himself to be who he really is, which is a very self-centred, conceited, arrogant individual and I think that was demonstrated with his very smug, mean-spirited response to the Grassy Narrows demonstrator. That situation is incredibly tragic. Many, many people have died. Many people—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I reminder the hon. member for Carleton that when we use citations to make references to other members in the House, be they ministers or other members, the usual practice is to not do something through a citation that a member would not be permitted to do in the usual spirit of decorum and civil discourse in the House. I would encourage him to perhaps, if there is language in the citation that might sort of fit in that category, he may wish to either rephrase it or perhaps skip over that part of the citation.

I thank the hon. member for Carleton.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Yes I will, Mr. Speaker.

I will restart the quote and I will properly ascribe pronouns and titles in place of personal names. Grand Chief Stewart Phillip is the grand chief of, I believe, the union of first nations in British Columbia. He said of the Prime Minister:

Well it was deeply disappointing to know and understand at this late date in the game that the vision and the promises [of the Prime Minister] that [he] announced in October 2015 have not come to pass. All of the promises and the commitments that he made have simply been set aside and now that he’s under tremendous pressure from the [former attorney general in the] SNC-Lavalin issue, [the Prime Minister] is really revealing himself to be who he really is, which is a very self-centred, conceited, arrogant individual and I think that was demonstrated with his very smug, mean-spirited response to the Grassy Narrows demonstrator. That situation is tragic. Many, many people have died. Many people are handicapped and living with the legacy of mercury poisoning and, you know, he’s such an arrogant individual. It’s very disturbing and very disappointing.

That respected chief was referring to the Prime Minister's disgusting comment at a recent $1,500 a ticket fundraiser where he was speaking to a bunch of well-connected Liberal lobbyists and wealthy donors. A courageous whistle-blower stood up and warned him about an issue of mercury poisoning in an aboriginal community. He had the audacity to laugh about the incident and say, “Thank you for your donation.” Then he said again, “Thank you for your donation to the Liberal Party of Canada.” He actually said it twice.

Of course, the millionaire Liberals in the room burst into uproarious laughter, thinking it was just hilarious, as she was being dragged out by security. He made a joke at the expense of the people suffering from mercury poisoning on a first nations reserve, saying, “Thank you for your donation”.

Is it not nice that he and his wealthy friends can gather together and luxuriate at a beautiful reception. with fine wine and other delicious liqueurs they can enjoy in the comfort and safety of a place where the water is not poisoned by mercury? However, God forbid, someone should stand up and confront him when he thinks no one is looking, when he did not know he was on camera. The real Prime Minister reveals himself, when he is not the drama teacher we all see on television.

The interview continued. Mercedes Stephenson then said, “The prime minister did apologize for his tone and what he said in that video. I take it that that apology doesn’t mean much to you.”:

The response from the grand chief was, “No. You know, I think at this late stage in the game, again, we’re used to [the Prime Minister's] apologies and alligator tears. It’s not about apologies. It’s about getting it right.”

The grand chief made a very good point there, when he talked about the Prime Minister's alligator tears. The Prime Minister has substituted his ability to generate these phony tears on demand for real action on behalf of the first nations people. They were not looking for more water to pour out of his eyeballs. They were looking for fresh water and clean water that they could drink on reserve, and he did not provide any of that. Instead, he provided a disgusting display of mockery against those same people.

Mercedes Stephenson then asks, “How would you describe the relationship between the government and Indigenous communities under the [Prime Minister] compared to previous governments?”

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip replies:

Well, I think started off with a great sense of hope and anticipation that the [Prime Minister and his] government was going to...embrace a UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples and the TRC calls to action were going to be fully implemented, that there was going to be a seismic change with respect to our jurisdictional issues and the other issues around energy in this country. And as time has moved forward, all of those promises have been simply swept aside and have not come to pass. And here we are, six months out from the next...election and we’re faced with the [Prime Minister's] government totally unravelling, coming apart at the seams and without question, the sun is setting on [this Prime Minister].

Mercedes Stephenson continued the interview:

Do you think it’s that the government isn’t committed to reconciliation or that it’s simply much more difficult than they were anticipating and it’s taking more time and more effort to solve what are some very complex problems?

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip replied:

Well, quite honestly, I think that the clip that we witnessed, the most disturbing part of that clip, aside from the smugness and the mean-spirited remark on the part of the prime minister, was the spontaneous applause from the Liberal Party members who were attending, which to me is a reflection on the heart and soul of the Liberal Party, which for many, many decades has had this arrogant sense of entitlement, that they are a national party that is so accustomed to forming government and I think that’s the central issue here. [The] Prime Minister...paid a lot of lip service, you know, to this historic change but I don’t think the party itself was, you know, that much in support of those visionary statements made by [the] Prime Minister...in the early days of his tenure.

Then Ms. Stephenson asked the grand chief about the former attorney general, as follows:

Are you upset because of what happened there or is it also about the government not meeting the promises that you feel they put out there?

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip replied:

It’s both. But believe me, British Columbians, the Indigenous community in British Columbia, were so proud when [the former attorney general] was appointed as justice minister. We have had the privilege and the honour of working with her and we know her to be deeply committed, very conscientious and an absolute work horse. And she’s very meticulous in terms of preparation and keeping records of meetings and so on and so forth. And we knew immediately that the efforts to smear [the former attorney general] were politically motivated and needless to say, we were deeply angered by how terribly she was treated as an Indigenous woman, when the prime minister said there was nothing more dear to him than relationships with Indigenous peoples and in a very misleading way has always held himself out as a feminist.

Then Ms. Stephenson finished up the interview. I encourage everyone to watch the interview and listen to the grand chief's words, which they will find very revealing indeed about the Prime Minister's true motivations and his true character in respect of the issue of reconciliation.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Prime Minister's decision to trample all over the will of first nations peoples in the approval or rejection of pipelines. First nations people supported the northern gateway pipeline. It was a wonderful opportunity for northern British Columbian first nations communities to generate billions of dollars for schools and hospitals and thousands of jobs for young people bursting with potential but lacking opportunity to fulfill it.

The aboriginal population in the country is the youngest of any demographic. We have this spectacular opportunity for Canada to address its aging population and retiring workforce by expanding opportunity to young first nations people to take on excellent jobs of the future. Many of those good, high-paying jobs, will be in natural resource sectors: building pipelines, pipefitting, welding, operating heavy machinery to install those pipelines and, of course, rightfully collecting royalties from the resulting economic wealth these projects generate.

One thing a lot of people who oppose natural resource projects do not realize is their potential to pay royalties to the rightful owners of the land, in many cases first nations communities. That is why energy companies regularly sign agreements, not only to pay directly to first nations governments revenues that can be used to build schools, hospitals and clinics and provide other services, but also to employ a youthful workforce in those communities.

Let me start with the northern gateway pipeline, which the Prime Minister vetoed, even though it had already been approved and the majority of first nations communities on the pathway of the pipeline had supported it. Many of them had signed benefit agreements with the company Enbridge to share in the prosperity that would come from that project. It is a constitutional obligation to consult with first nations people when their interests are directly affected by a natural resources project in or around their lands. That happened in the case of northern gateway. The project was approved.

However, in the last election, the Prime Minister ran on killing the project, because he wanted to take advantage of a hard-core anti-development agenda that was popular with the far-left base of his party in certain parts of the country. He also wanted to take advantage of the copious foreign dollars that were pouring into Canada to influence the outcome of the last election against resource development.

We now know these foreign interests do not want Canadian resources to get to market, because they are profiting from keeping Canada landlocked in its oil and gas sector. Why? Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Venezuela and numerous other foreign producers of oil do not want to have to compete with Canada. One easy way to prevent that competition is to block the construction of pipelines to tidewater. As a result of the fact we cannot expand our pipeline network to the east and west coasts, we ultimately have to sell 99% of our oil exports to the United States of America, which is the other foreign interest.

The refineries south of the border profit from buying Canada's oil at 40% and 50% price discounts and selling it to the world market at full price. They buy from Canada at 20 bucks, sell to the world at 50 bucks and pocket the difference. No wonder these foreign interests do not want Canada to have pipelines. It has been documented that millions of dollars poured into Canada through various forms of Internet advertising to dissuade people from supporting pro-development politicians, ultimately resulting in the election of an anti-development government. However, the victims of that political agenda, which the Prime Minister deliberately played into, have been first nations people.

Let me read from an article in the Financial Post entitled, “‘We are very disappointed’: Loss of Northern Gateway devastating for many First Nations, chiefs say”.

The article from the April 10, 2017, edition states:

Most aboriginal communities in northern British Columbia impacted by the Northern Gateway pipeline supported the $7.9 billion project and are angry [the Prime Minister] rejected it, say representatives of three of the bands.

Elmer Ghostkeeper of the Buffalo Lake Metis Settlement, Chief Elmer Derrick of the Gitxsan Nation, and Dale Swampy of the Samson Cree Nation said on the sidelines of a private meeting in Calgary on Friday with oilpatch leaders they are disappointed in the “political decision,” which they say was made without their input.

Let us stop there for a second.

The Prime Minister claims to support the constitutional obligation to consult with first nations people on resource projects, but does that consultation only go ahead with those who oppose development? What about consulting the communities, of which the majority support the development? Do they not have the constitutional right to be consulted by their government?

In that case, I would challenge the Prime Minister to tell me: How many first nations communities that had benefit agreements in the northern gateway pipeline did he meet with and consult personally before he vetoed the project?

The article continues:

They are now looking for ways to generate new energy development.

Ghostkeeper said more than 30 of the 42 bands on the Alberta-to-West Coast pipeline's right-of-way were looking forward to sharing in the construction and long-term benefits.

“Their expectations were really raised with the promise of $2 billion set aside in business and employment opportunities,” Ghostkeeper said before addressing the Canadian Energy Executive Association at the Calgary Petroleum Club. “Equity was offered to aboriginal communities, and with the change in government that was all taken away. We are very disappointed in this young government.”

Ghostkeeper said he'd like to see an oil pipeline revived, but led by aboriginals. “We have to partner with the oil and gas industry and be treated as equals, not as token, because any natural resource project that is going to take place on traditional lands has to be given free, informed, prior consent now. The old ways of doing business doesn't cut it.”

I continue to quote from the story:

Derrick said his band was supportive from the outset, but the Prime Minister didn't want to hear from supportive communities. “The fact that the Prime Minister chose not to consult with people in northwestern B.C. disappointed us very much,” he said.

Swampy said some of the bands are discussing legal action against the federal government for rejecting the project without proper consultation.

“They understand that it was a political decision, and not a decision acting in the best interests of Canadians,” Swampy said. “They weren't asked about the financial effect, the lost employment. They are trying to get themselves out of poverty, the welfare system that they are stuck to, and every time they try to do something like that, it's destroyed.”

Let me repeat that for the self-righteous anti-development types such as the Prime Minister, who consistently block these resource projects. Let me quote again from this first nations leader. He says of the local indigenous communities that wanted this project:

They weren't asked about the financial effect, the lost employment. They are trying to get themselves out of poverty, the welfare system that they are stuck to, and every time they try to do something like that, it's destroyed.

That was the effect of the Prime Minister's personal decision to veto the northern gateway pipeline. I quote the article:

Saying “the Great Bear Rainforest is no place for a pipeline and the Douglas Channel is no place for oil tanker traffic,” [the Prime Minister] killed Northern Gateway last November. The Enbridge Inc. project had received regulatory approval, as well as approval from the previous Conservative government, after a decade of planning and more than half a billion in spending.

Think about that. First nations, entrepreneurs and the previous Harper government consulted, studied and examined the ecological and economic impacts for a decade. The company spend half a billion dollars on that process, yet after the independent Energy Board concluded it was in the public interest and it was environmentally safe, the Prime Minister politically interfered and overturned the decision without consulting with the communities on first nations that had supported it and counted on it as their best hope to escape poverty.

The article goes on:

[The Prime Minister] also imposed a ban on tanker traffic on the northern B.C. Coast, while approving Kinder Morgan’s TransMountain pipeline expansion and the upgrading of Enbridge’s Line 3.

I will stop quoting right here.

In the case of Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain, the Prime Minister claims he has approved that. Not a single shovel is in the ground, all these years later. Not a single inch of steel has been added in pipeline to the Kinder Morgan project. It has been entangled in political obfuscation now for years, even though it must be the least controversial project in the history of pipelines. They are not even seeking a new right-of-way. The pipeline is already there, and they are simply looking to twin it so that its capacity can go from the existing 300,000 barrels to 900,000.

So far, the Prime Minister has bought the old pipeline but done nothing to build the new pipeline. The courts have found that once again he failed to properly consult first nations communities along the route of the Kinder Morgan project and as a result had to go back to the drawing board and start all over. In the process, he has moved as slowly as possible. Do nothing in a mile that could be done in a yard. Do nothing in a yard that can be done in a foot. Do nothing in a foot that can be done in an inch.

The process inches along, with the Prime Minister giving vague reassurances that some day, one day, steel will be in the ground and we will begin building this project, a project on which he has already spent $4.5 billion in exchange for nothing we did not already have.

We know his real agenda, though. He is going to get through the next election by trying to convince Canadians, who polls show support pipelines, that he does too. If he gets back in, there will be no pipeline built, just as there has not been for the last three and a half years, because he is ideologically opposed to energy development.

He said so. He said he wants to phase out the oil sands. Those were his words, and he is succeeding. By blocking the three pipelines that were ready to go when he took office—Trans Mountain, northern gateway and energy east—he has landlocked the industry, put 100,000 people out of work and, as I was just saying, has attacked the interests and the autonomy of the indigenous community.

I was earlier quoting from the Financial Post in April of 2017. Now similar groups are coming forward to demand an end to the Prime Minister's tanker ban. The Prime Minister claims he supports pipelines. How will he get the oil from the coast to Asia if tankers are banned? Does he have some magical petroleum-carrying unicorn that is capable of lifting up the oil and taking it to foreign markets? If there is a tanker ban, how could it possibly get where it is needs to go?

Now I am quoting right out of the National Post:

First Nations coalition calls for rejection of [Liberal] tanker ban; one group plans to file UN complaint

Now we have first nations that are considering going to the UN to fight against the Prime Minister's anti-development policies that keep them in poverty.

The National Post continues:

The coalition has sketched out plans to build a roughly $18-billion oil pipeline from northern Alberta to around Prince Rupert, B.C.

A coalition of First Nations groups is imploring Ottawa to rein in an oil tanker ban on the northern B.C. coast, with one organization planning to level a United Nations complaint against the government to protest the legislation.

The plea is a last-ditch effort to reverse Bill C-48 as it nears passage through the Senate. The coalition, composed of the National Coalition of Chiefs, the Indian Resource Council and the Eagle Spirit Chiefs Council met with a number of senators Tuesday morning in Ottawa to oppose the moratorium.

Calvin Helin, who led the talks with senators, is CEO of Eagle Spirit Energy Holding, which has sketched out plans to build a roughly $18-billion oil pipeline from northern Alberta to around Prince Rupert, B.C.

Helin, a Lax Kw’alaams Band member, has long pitched the idea as Canada’s sole First Nations-led oil pipeline. Helin said C-48 is a matter of “enormous concern” for the roughly 200 First Nations communities represented by the coalition, and said [the Prime Minister's] tanker ban explicitly targets the project, effectively stripping Indigenous people of their economic self-determination.

“Is this what reconciliation is supposed to represent in Canada?” he said.

Is this what reconciliation looks like? When a group of ambitious, smart and industrious first nations people come forward with an $18-billion project that could lift whole communities out of the long-term poverty in which they have been trapped and give them full independence and control over their own destiny and the Prime Minister comes forward with a bill banning them from doing so, is that what he meant by reconciliation?

That is the question that this band member asks as he speaks out against the tanker ban, because the tanker ban is not just about blocking big oil companies from moving their product: It is about blocking these communities from their one chance to escape poverty. If the Prime Minister believed half as much in reconciliation as he does in his great dramatic and theatrical productions on the subject, then he would consult with and listen to these first nations people.

To members of the government, what did he say to Mr. Helin when he put forward Bill C-48, the tanker ban? Did he look him in the eye and tell him that generations of first nations people in western Canada will have to be held back because the government is blocking them from achieving economic independence through resource development, or did he even meet with him at all? My suspicion is that he could not be bothered. If there was no camera nearby and no photo opportunity to carry out, then he simply could not be bothered to show up for reconciliation.

The article continues:

His comments come amid intense angst in Alberta, which has failed for many years to build the necessary pipelines to carry away steadily increasing oilsands production.

The Eagle Spirit Chiefs Council said Tuesday it would file a complaint in “coming days” under the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) against the federal government.

I will pause on this point. There is much legitimate debate about whether the declaration is the best way to achieve reconciliation with first nations people, but the Prime Minister gave plenty of lip service to that declaration before the last election. Now he appears to have violated it with his tanker ban, which prevents first nations from achieving the economic independence that they have worked so hard to achieve.

The National Post article goes on:

The chiefs said the ban unfairly restricts oil exports by the First Nations group, while allowing multinational corporations to ship their products from the southern portion of the B.C. coast.

So here we go again. Large multinational corporations will continue to ship their product, so this is not even about stopping the shipment of oil and gas; it is just about stopping Canadians from shipping their product.

The Prime Minister would never contemplate banning oil tankers from arriving at the east coast. All of those east coast tankers come right across the Atlantic, one tanker after another, to the eastern coast of our country, shipping foreign oil to Canadian markets. As that oil comes in, our money goes out, and we get poorer and poorer. No wonder our trade deficit is approaching record highs.

Let me quote further from that National Post article:

“All we're trying to do is take advantage of the resources available to us,” said former chief Wallace Fox, chairman of the Indian Resource Council, a part of the coalition.

The Eagle Spirit pipeline appears to present a conundrum on Indigenous rights. A handful of first nations communities—including the Yinka Dene Alliance, which opposed the other pipeline projects in B.C.—have opposed the project in the past due to environmental worries. Meanwhile, a host of Indigenous communities along the pipeline route support Eagle Spirit, saying it will give them more financial independence.

Helin said he is close to a consensus among First Nations on Eagle Spirit. He said much of the First Nations opposition to the pipeline comes from Indigenous people, backed by activist organizations, who claim to speak for whole communities but do not.

I continued to quote from the National Post there.

The story goes on and on. The Prime Minister—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Order. Is the hon. member for Durham rising on a point of order?

Solicitor-Client Privilege in the Context of Parliamentary Privilege

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I hate interrupting my colleague from Carleton, but in accordance with Standing Order 48(2), I filed appropriate notice with respect to a question of parliamentary privilege that I wish to bring at this time.

I have spent considerable time researching this important point for the chamber, for yourself, Mr. Speaker, and for Canadians who may be watching. There are two aspects to parliamentary privilege that I feel are both touched upon with respect to the subject of my question of privilege and my recommendation.

First, there is the individual privilege of every single member of this chamber, including opposition, to fulfill our challenge function, our parliamentary role of holding the government to account, but as well there is the collective privilege of the chamber, which represents all of Canada. All members should be able to deliberate, legislate and fulfill our parliamentary functions, whether on the front bench of the government side or in the shadow ministers' bench or in the far corners where some former Liberals now sit.

Parliamentary privilege has both an individual and a collective aspect. Our collective privilege and my individual privilege has been impeded by the Prime Minister's partial waiver of privilege with respect to the former attorney general, the current member for Vancouver Granville.

My question of privilege will outline a recommendation to you, Mr. Speaker, on my behalf and on behalf of this chamber. I remind my colleagues that parliamentary privilege is absolute and has been, as a defining feature going back to the 1600s, to allow parliamentarians to fulfill those functions I outlined at the beginning.

As Canada was created in 1867, the Constitution Act incorporated parliamentary privilege and its supremacy as part of our both written and unwritten Constitution. This was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada in the New Brunswick Broadcasting Co. decision decades ago.

The point I am raising here is that on several occasions, the most senior officials presiding over this House, helping us fulfill our duties as members, individually and collectively, have confirmed that privilege outranks or supersedes solicitor-client privilege. That is going to be the critical element of my suggestion to you, Mr. Speaker, in response to my question of privilege.

In fact, the first quote I would refer to you and our table officers is a quote from the parliamentary law clerk and parliamentary counsellor, Rob Walsh on November 4, 2009, when he said this about balancing solicitor-client privilege considerations alongside the privilege of parliamentarians:

...I feel I must respond to what Brigadier-General Watkin was just saying about solicitor-client privilege. What he's saying relative to the obligation on lawyers as lawyers, in the usual context in which lawyers operate, is true.

Solicitor-client privilege, in my view, is an important privilege. It is one the committee obviously should respect but not necessarily be governed by. It is a principle that relates to the legal rights of people who are in that solicitor-client relationship. It's all designed for the benefit of the client, not the lawyer. It is to protect the client's rights from being prejudiced by the wrongful disclosure of information exchanged with a lawyer.

But that's in the context of legal rights, legal proceedings. There are no legal rights at issue here—

That is with respect to parliamentary privilege and the rights of parliamentarians. I will continue:

These are not legal proceedings. These are parliamentary proceedings. It is, in my view, open to the committee to seek answers from a lawyer appearing as a witness, notwithstanding this principle....

That is from the former law clerk of this chamber, looking at the ability for the executive branch of government to preclude Parliament from fulfilling its function on the grounds of solicitor-client privilege.

This determination by the former law clerk of Parliament was considered by Speaker Milliken, in your chair many years ago, in his April 27, 2010, decision with respect to the Afghan detainees. He said:

It is the view of the Chair that accepting an unconditional authority of the executive to censor the information provided to Parliament would in fact jeopardize the very separation of powers that is purported to lie at the heart of our parliamentary system and the independence of its constituent parts.

This matter has been considered in recent memory by the Speaker, on advice of Mr. Walsh, as law clerk, confirming that solicitor-client privilege consideration is an important privilege and, I say this as a lawyer, does not outstrip the primacy of Parliament and the primary function of Parliament to fulfill the individual and collective roles we have as parliamentarians. Therefore, solicitor-client privilege cannot bar the release of information. This has been confirmed in other Parliaments in Westminster where parliamentary privilege outranks court injunctions. Orders of the court rank below the importance of parliamentarians to have their privileges recognized and respected.

This has been reiterated when we look at the underlying principles of solicitor-client privilege. This is important. Whether it is the Daughters of the Vote yesterday or Canadians, I do not think we have ever had a more fulsome discussion of solicitor-client privilege in the history of our country. Let us look at its underpinnings. It is not absolute as parliamentary privilege is.

If we look at the Descôteaux decision of the Supreme Court of Canada written by Justice Lamer before he was chief justice, solicitor-client privilege can be nailed down into three elements. The first is that solicitor-client privilege can be raised when communications are likely to be disclosed to prevent that disclosure. The second is that, unless otherwise provided, that prevention of disclosure and the extent of limiting disclosure should be decided leaning in favour of the privilege, but that is not absolute. The third is that, when the law provides, “the decision to do so”, meaning disclosure, “and the choice of means of exercising that authority should be determined with a view to not interfering with it except to the extent absolutely necessary in order to achieve the ends sought by the enabling legislation.”

In our case, the enabling legislation is our Constitution. It is the supremacy of Parliament going back before 1867—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I recognize the hon. member for Durham had given notice of his question of privilege at an earlier time and was interrupted several sitting days ago when the House moved on to another part of the daily program, so I am quite willing to hear his intervention in this regard.

He is aware that chair occupants are obliged to be mindful of the time that questions of privilege or points of order take in these matters. As he rightfully pointed out at the outset, normally these kinds of things come at typical times during the daily program, for example, after question period and the like. In this case, we are in the middle of debate, so I take what the hon. member has to say. I would ask him to give some indication as to the time he may take in bridging from the subject at hand to where he believes this breach of privilege has occurred. That would be good to hear.

The hon. member for Durham.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, certainly I was going to give more of an underpinning of the supremacy of parliamentary privilege with respect to the attempts by the executive to use solicitor-client privilege to fetter that absolute right. I will condense down to where I am going in a few minutes of remaining time to show you and my friend, the deputy House leader from the Liberals, what the request to respect the individual and collective rights of parliamentarians should be. In particular, my parliamentary privilege to fulfill my individual and collective function has been impeded by the Prime Minister's inappropriate use of solicitor-client privilege to bar full consideration of the facts underlying the SNC affair, the Shawcross doctrine and the crisis that has really gripped the government over the last two months. I will narrow in now to be quick.

Yesterday in this chamber, the Prime Minister said he has provided this waiver. He said, “We issued an unprecedented order in council waiving solicitor-client privilege and cabinet confidence, allowing her to speak fully on the matter.”

That does not jibe with the order in council he refers to. I am happy to table this order in council afterward. It is 2019-0105. In two parts it is limited to “while she held that office”. That is in two different sections with respect to that waiver. It then goes on to say, “waiver does not extend to any information or communications between the former Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions”.

There has been no full waiver here. It is clear that the full waiver would include any conversations that might be bound by solicitor-client privilege after a cabinet shuffle. The former attorney general became the Minister of Veterans Affairs, a position I hold in very high regard as a former occupant of that position, on January 14. Between January 14 and February 12, when she resigned her role in cabinet, a number of conversations were likely held. We know for a fact that on February 11, when the Prime Minister was in Vancouver, there was a discussion where he said the fact that the former attorney general was still in cabinet showed “full confidence” in and by the former attorney general. In response, she resigned the next day, so certainly there was not full confidence both ways.

Parliament, to fulfill our function individually and collectively, needs a full waiver. The Prime Minister has told Canadians there has been a full waiver when there has been a partial waiver. The member for Vancouver Granville needs to be able to inform the House about all discussions, free of privilege considerations, until the present day.

I will put one more thing on the record, because I think it is important to know. Although her own colleagues are suggesting she can come in here at any moment and rise on a point of order, the member for Vancouver Granville has professional obligations as a lawyer. The Law Society of British Columbia's rules of practice, section 3.3-2, states, “A lawyer must not use or disclose a client’s or former client’s confidential information to the disadvantage of the client”. Therefore, that member, who has been seeking advice from a former Supreme Court justice, is taking her Privy Council, cabinet and professional obligations seriously at a time when the Prime Minister suggests that he has provided a full waiver. He used the word “fully” yesterday. There is a month where clearly that waiver has not been provided.

Therefore, for the Prime Minister to live up to the claim that he has provided the former attorney general with a full waiver, he needs to do exactly that, including conversations in Vancouver on February 11, because lawyers have obligations to their clients long after the client relationship ends. The member for Vancouver Granville should not be forced to walk away from her professional obligations when the simplest answer, whenever there are solicitor-client considerations, is a waiver of those protections by the client, which is the Government of Canada, in this case represented by the Prime Minister.

What I am asking you to do is a bit extraordinary, because I am not asking you to find a prima facie finding and to refer this to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. My privilege has also been violated by the executive's use of committees, both justice and ethics, to circumvent or stall the full explanation and exploration of, and deliberation on, these events.

Therefore, I take the extraordinary step to ask you, on behalf of all parliamentarians in our collective function, to invite the member for Vancouver Granville to speak fully on the record in this chamber, not burdened by any solicitor-client privileges, going all the way to the present day, which would include any conversations and continued pressure that happened after her shuffle to Veterans Affairs. If you give a declaratory judgment or statement telling the member that parliamentary privilege supersedes any legal obligation she has to the Law Society of British Columbia, to her former client, the Prime Minister, or to her status as a privy councillor to show and reaffirm that parliamentary privilege is absolute, I would ask the Chair to take that extraordinary step of inviting the member for Vancouver Granville to speak, unfettered, in this chamber. It is within your power. Parliament can let her speak.