Madam Speaker, I find myself often rising to ask questions of the government with respect to its handling of ethical matters, and no more appropriate a time have we found to address the government on these questions than in light of the scandal that currently has engulfed the Prime Minister's Office.
For a third time, the Prime Minister is under investigation by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, twice having been found to have broken the law. On the front lines of this latest scandal with the WE Charity, the Prime Minister is in the company of another minister who has been found to have broken ethics laws in this country: the Minister of Finance with his forgotten French villa.
We hear from the finance minister and the Prime Minister, time and time again, that they are sorry. They are sorry they were caught, because right out of the gate with any of these issues the immediate response is that there is nothing to see here.
We remember with the SNC-Lavalin scandal the very first reaction by the Prime Minister was that the story in The Globe and Mail was false. Since then, the Ethics Commissioner investigated and found in the Trudeau II Report that the Prime Minister did contravene the Conflict of Interest Act. The story in The Globe and Mail was true.
We know that when it was before cabinet, and members of cabinet spoke out against the lack of ethical integrity at the table, the member for Vancouver Granville, the former minister of justice and attorney general, was fired. Canada's first female, indigenous attorney general was fired.
We know that when another member of cabinet with integrity, the former president of the Treasury Board, Dr. Jane Philpott, raised the issue as well, she was kicked out of caucus with the member for Vancouver Granville.
We know from those two reports, the Trudeau Report and Trudeau II Report, that the Prime Minister likes to reward his friends. We know from the ejection of the member for Vancouver Granville and the former president of the Treasury Board, the Hon. Dr. Jane Philpott, that the Prime Minister punishes his enemies.
Accountability is not found today in the office of the Prime Minister, so we look to the government benches and ask Liberal members if they have the courage of their convictions and the intestinal fortitude to demand better of their Prime Minister.