Madam Speaker, my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford is situated very close to CFB Esquimalt, Canada's Pacific naval base. I know that a lot of my residents work there directly. We also have a lot of retired veterans.
I would like to thank my colleague for her advocacy, because the navy has some very deep structural needs. I am glad that she mentioned that in her speech.
I also want to thank her for putting this motion within the context of what has happened with SNC-Lavalin and the former attorney general. The Liberals say that nothing went wrong and that the system held. However, they are completely oblivious to the irony that the system held precisely because the member for Vancouver Granville, in her former role as attorney general, actually resisted the inappropriate pressure. That is why the system held.
A lot of people are starting to become really interested in this principle of prosecutorial independence, what it means, and how fundamentally important it is to our system and our democracy that prosecutors, when discharging their role, must be completely free of all political considerations and of any consideration of the national economic interest. They must be able to look at the facts before them and use their constitutional responsibility to make the appropriate decisions on how to proceed. It might involve a deferred prosecution agreement, or it might involve going to a criminal trial. However, the prosecutor alone must make that case.
My question to my hon. colleague is this. If SNC-Lavalin had been successful in lobbying for a DPA, how dangerous a precedent would that have established for this country? If the awesome corporate lobbying power displayed by SNC-Lavalin had been able to achieve a DPA, what might that have provided as a slippery slope, going forward, in our country?