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—