Debates of March 25th, 2021

Opposition Motion—Instructions to the Standing Committee on Ethics and to the Standing Committee on National Defence

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to ask my colleague if he thinks it is petty partisan politics for Parliament to want to know about why there was no investigation into alleged sexual impropriety at the highest levels of our Canadians Armed Forces? Is it petty partisan politics to want to know why the government gave an almost billion-dollar contract to someone who was friends with the Prime Minister? There is clear evidence that perhaps the Prime Minister's Office did help the program.

Let me suggest that the over 20 meetings of filibustering by the Liberals is, indeed, petty partisan politics. What have they got to hide?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are hiding nothing; absolutely nothing. The minister went to the committee when invited and he will go again when invited. What is petty politics is not recognizing the principle of ministerial accountability. It is funny that when the Conservatives were in power, it was so important to them. Mr. Hill gave great speeches. I was there. I quoted him today. Now all of a sudden, the principle of ministerial accountability is not important anymore and does not count. Did we throw it out the window? We invent other ways of making this Parliament work. We can change it every day if we want to. Why not? Ministerial accountability is fundamental; it was then and it is today.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the minister for his commitment to drawing the line between what is appropriate and what is not. The reality, unfortunately, is that in the six years I have been here, I have seen opposition members do some pretty incredible stuff when it comes to staff people, including the folks who work at this table in front of me, yelling and screaming at them as though they are political and partisan people when it comes to this place. We must draw a line, the line between what is acceptable and what is not. Who is responsible and who is a staff person who is working under the direction of a minister?

Can the minister expand on some of what he has witnessed over the last number of years when it comes to partisan attacks? If the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman had invested half the amount of time into actually trying to solve some of the problems as they relate to the military, instead of just going on a witch hunt day after day, he would be so much further ahead.

Can the minister reflect on that?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I really thank my colleague for his thoughts and the question. I think what it raises is extremely important. We are the public face of this Parliament. We put our faces on signs and posts and decided that we would run for the parts that are fun and the parts that are not that fun, and are difficult actually. Our staff did not make that choice. They chose to work for one of us, whatever the party, to change the world, to change and improve our society through their advice, support and help to ministers.

They did not sign up to come here and to go before committee to get insulted and treated badly. They do not deserve to be treated like that. No one, none of us, deserves to be treated like that. Where the line is drawn, to directly answer the question by my colleague, is at the level of ministerial responsibility. That is a fundamental principle of our democracy and system, and we respect that system. I hope my colleagues do too.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I wish to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the member for Shefford.

Hearing the government House leader tell us just now that the ministers are responsible and accountable and that it is not up to their staff to answer for them was music to my ears. I completely agree with him. It would make no sense.

The problem is not that we disagree on the principles, it is that they do not walk the talk. The minister can tell us that he is responsible and that he is taking care of all this, but he and the government are not dealing with the situation.

We spent the better part of last summer on the WE scandal. We were making such good progress that we were starting to shed light on the matter. The only thing the government could come up with was to prorogue Parliament to prevent the committee from continuing its work. We were forced to stop, and when the work resumed, they still kept us waiting for the documents.

Last summer, I asked the Prime Minister and the former finance minister whether due diligence had been done before the government invested in WE Charity. They said that yes, it probably had. When I spoke to Mr. Shugart, the Clerk of the Privy Council, he confirmed that due diligence had been done. I asked him to send us the due diligence report, and he promised to do so. However, we never received it. That is an important document.

When someone invests money, regardless of the amount, they need to know who they are doing business with. If I have $2,000 to put into an RRSP, I am not going to give that money to the first peddler who comes along without knowing who he is and what he is going to do with my money. I make sure to give my money to a bank or trust, a responsible organization that is going to manage my money responsibly and ensure that I am not wasting it.

When the government, which manages my taxes, decides to invest my money, I expect it to be at least as diligent as I am, if not more. Normally, when someone is managing other people's money, they should be even more careful than when they are managing their own.

The WE Charity contract was not a $2,000 deal. It was a contract for $43 million, possibly more because of the potential for subcontracts. Clearly WE Charity was willing to subcontract the work. It gave National a contract and could have given contracts to its other organizations, such as ME to WE, and other shell corporations. We were shown quite an extensive organizational chart, actually. There was at least $43 million involved, plus more for student grants that could have totalled almost $1 billion. It could have been as much as $904 million.

It was the middle of the pandemic, so the government decided it did not have time to manage the program and would not bother with a tendering process, which is due diligence 101. It awarded the contract to the only organization it thought could provide the service: WE Charity.

The Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics and the Standing Committee on Finance heard from experts who said that a tender is essential but that if the situation is truly beyond one's control and a tender is not possible, even greater vigilance is needed. Based on what we know so far, the government, which should have been even more vigilant than usual, awarded the contract having done no due diligence whatsoever. It awarded a $43-million contract without checking into the recipient at all.

Then there was another emergency. We parliamentarians kept digging and realized that WE Charity, the entity the government had entrusted with $43 million of our money, was just a shell corporation. It was a new company. The Kielburger brothers are no fools. Their lawyer informed them that this was a big contract worth up to $1 billion and that they would be paid $43 million. The idea, then, was to put this into a separate company, because if the deal ever fell through, they did not want WE Charity to go belly up too. That was the plan in a nutshell, and I did not make it up. The Kielburger brothers told us the story themselves.

Their lawyers are the ones who recommended that they put $43 million into a new shell corporation, with no financial history, to manage nearly $1 billion, without due diligence or a tendering process.

What did we learn as we kept digging? We learned that the corporation in question was not even capable of providing services in French. Everyone likes to talk about how Canada is this great bilingual country, but that is pure fiction. Yet again, the government is all talk and no action on languages, as on everything else. The organization was not capable of providing services in French, so it was forced to subcontract services in Quebec to National.

What else did we learn as we dug deeper into this scandal? We found out that people from WE Charity had helped the government design this program. The people who wanted to get paid for deciding where our money should go were telling the government what to put in the contract that they would then awarded. On top of that, they were told to put it in a shell corporation so that they would not lose anything if the project were to fail. Unbelievable.

Not only were they the ones designing the program, but what else did we learn? The people who were telling the government how to design the program were not even registered as lobbyists. No one from WE Charity was registered as a lobbyist. However certain individuals were working with public servants every day to design a program that would get them a $43-million contract. That is hardly small potatoes

The icing on the cake is that, by asking questions, we learned that the Prime Minister and the finance minister at the time were in a conflict of interest when they issued that contract. The worst part is that they were aware of it. They knew that they should not get involved, but they did so anyway.

There was an initial cabinet meeting, as the Prime Minister testified last summer. He saw the subject on the agenda and said that he was not sure he could get involved because he was in a conflict of interest. He knew the Kielburgers, and his family, namely his mother, brother and wife, had received contracts worth approximately half a million dollars from them. In order to reassure the Prime Minister, the meeting was postponed for two weeks.

The Prime Minister then had two weeks to think. Nevertheless, he and the then finance minister ended up voting on a contract in which they had a conflict of interest, a contract that was problematic for all the reasons I just outlined.

They do not want to answer our questions. They prorogue Parliament when they think we are asking too many questions. We therefore put our questions to the Kielburger brothers, who confirmed a few things. One of the brothers—I believe it was Marc Kielburger—confirmed that he had sent a message through LinkedIn to several employees in the department, thanking them for working with him to shape the program. The government, meanwhile, tells us that everything is fine, that it prepared the program itself, without any help from WE Charity.

WE says that it was thanking public servants for preparing it. We want to get to the bottom of this. If the ministers do not want to give us an answer, we will ask the employees involved, the ones the Kielburger brothers referred to. We want to ask them what really went on, but we are being told that the ministers have to take responsibility.

I agree with the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons. I would love to see the ministers take responsibility. That is music to my ears. I invite them to testify before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics and to answer for their staff. However, they must actually give an answer. They cannot do what they have been doing over the past few months, such as sending 5,000 pages of redacted documents, including 349 pages that, according to the law clerk, were redacted in a way that did not comply with the committee's instructions.

I hope they will not prorogue Parliament or call an election to prevent us from continuing our work. They must stop beating around the bush. They must take responsibility. Unfortunately, we have lost faith in them. At this point, we are determined to get to the bottom of this matter. It is taxpayers' money, and it is not peanuts. We are talking about $43 million to manage almost $1 billion. We want to hear from those responsible for this program. I want to see the due diligence report that we have been promised since August.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Mr. Speaker, earlier this week, I heard the government House leader, in response to multiple questions, say over and over that committees were “masters of their own work”. That seems to be a standard reply. In other words, committees can decide how to conduct their business. However, today, we have the revelation that he does not really think that anymore. Now he is saying that they are not really masters of their own work, because the Liberals do not like it if they want to call certain witnesses as opposed to other witnesses.

I wonder if this is a concern for the member as well and whether he thinks this shift in government position away from the autonomy of committees is of concern.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his very important question.

I agree with him. In fact, I did not mention this in my introductory speech, but I was surprised by what the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons said. I have a great deal of respect for him because we can trust him on his word. He is intelligent and honest and a man of integrity. A few minutes ago I heard him say that if the committee ordered officials to appear before the committee, he would advise them not to obey those orders. It is quite unusual for a minister to tell his employees to disobey committee orders.

I would like an explanation on this. I think this is pretty serious. My colleague is absolutely right. It is one thing to say that you take responsibility, but it is another thing to do it. When the committees call on the ministers, it is not to get together for a cup of coffee. It is to honestly answer questions without beating around the bush. If the committee thinks it is important to hear testimony from officials, then it is the minister's job to tell his employees that they must obey the orders. He must certainly not encourage them to revolt against the orders given by the committee. It makes no sense. I have too much respect for the leader—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

We will now move on to other questions.

The hon. member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Rivière-du-Nord for his speech and for the months he has spent working on the whole WE Charity scandal.

He painted quite a captivating picture of all of the Liberals' mistakes. However, I want to mention the students, who have been overlooked in this scandal and who did not end up getting the money or assistance. The Liberals dragged their feet on the Canada emergency student benefit. We had to twist their arms. They broke their promise to pay the interest fees on student loans. They completely mismanaged the program. There were conflicts of interest and oversights, and students ultimately paid the price.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

I think he is absolutely right about students and citizens paying the price. Based on what we were told, WE Charity has reimbursed all the money it was given, so there may be no loss there. We need to look into that, but that is the information we have now.

I think the program was a good idea initially. Getting students who need to earn money into the labour market and, by the same token, helping organizations that need workers is a good idea. I have nothing against good ideas. I do have something against the insidious way they tried to do it. To be blunt, the government was trying to help its friends. WE Charity helped Mr. Trudeau's family, and Mr. Trudeau's family helped WE Charity in return. The really despicable part is that they claimed they wanted to help students and organizations.

I agree that we should help students and organizations. In fact, I do that myself. I help organizations in my riding. For example, I participate in the various events that they organize. I try my best to help them. I think they need help, especially during the pandemic. As for students, there is no question that we should help them. I will reiterate that the program is not the problem. The problem is the way the program was implemented. It was not done properly. Basically, helping students was just a pretext. The real objective was to help WE Charity. That is what was done.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my colleague from Rivière-du-Nord for his hard work and his speech on these two two files that we are talking about today, namely WE Charity and the cases of sexual assault within the Canadian Armed Forces.

These two files provide clear evidence of this Liberal government's lack of transparency with regard to all of the things it is trying to hide from us for various reasons. That is really hurting our democracy and fails to meet our need to know the details of these key files, namely the WE Charity and the cases of sexual assault within the Canadian Armed Forces.

As my party's critic for the status of women, I rise today to speak to the following part of the Conservative motion:

That, with a view to support the authority of committees in their important inquiries of public interest:

...

(b) regarding the study on addressing sexual misconduct issues in the Canadian Armed Forces by the Standing Committee on National Defence, Zita Astravas, formerly the Minister of National Defence's chief of staff and the Prime Minister's Director of Issues Management and currently the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness's chief of staff, be ordered to appear before the committee on Tuesday, April 6, 2021, at 10:00 a.m.;

(c) should the Prime Minister instead appear before the committees mentioned in paragraphs (a) and (b), at any of the dates and times mentioned, for at least three hours, the witness otherwise scheduled to appear, and any other witnesses scheduled to appear before the same committee at a later time, be relieved of their obligation to appear pursuant to this order; and

(d) it be an instruction to the Chairs of the committees mentioned in paragraphs (a) and (b) to convene televised meetings of their respective committee, at the dates and times mentioned, for at least three hours, for the purpose of receiving evidence from the individuals then ordered to appear or the Prime Minister, as the case may be, unless the individual has been relieved from attending under the provisions of paragraph (c), provided that the witnesses be required to appear until discharged by the committee.

Today, therefore, I will be addressing this part of the Conservatives’ motion, the sensitive matter of sexual assault that is currently being considered by both the Standing Committee on National Defence and the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. I will focus on three aspects. I will begin with a brief history of the issue and the reason why the Standing Committee on the Status of Women is studying it. I will then talk about the current debates, before concluding with a few hopes for the future and for the follow-up to the investigation.

In 2015, former justice Marie Deschamps published a devastating report on sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces, which led to an article by Noémi Mercier in L’actualité. That same year, shortly after the Deschamps report was released, the Conservative Party appointed General Jonathan Vance chief of the defence staff. As Ray Novak, former chief of staff to Stephen Harper, confirmed, allegations of sexual misconduct were already circulating when Mr. Vance appeared before the national defence committee in 2015. The Conservatives called for an investigation, which found that nothing inappropriate had taken place. Mr. Vance’s appointment was then confirmed. Immediately after he was appointed chief of the defence staff, General Vance launched Operation Honour, aimed at eliminating sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces.

In 2018, former Canadian Forces ombudsman Gary Walbourne received a complaint against Mr. Vance supported by evidence deemed credible. The victim, however, did not want to go any further, which prevented the ombudsman from pursuing the investigation. His hands tied, on March 1, 2018, Mr. Walbourne tried to warn the Liberal Minister of National Defence and show him the evidence of General Vance’s inappropriate behaviour. The minister apparently refused to look at the incriminating documents or discuss the matter with the ombudsman. This is clear evidence of the government’s lack of transparency, which it tried to hide.

Mr. Walbourne described the meeting as hostile. The minister apparently refused to speak with him seven times, until Mr. Walbourne retired. It seems the Minister of Defence simply had his chief of staff at the time, Zita Astravas, notify the Privy Council of the allegations, without following up in any way or calling for an investigation. An email from Mrs. Astravas dated March 5, 2018, confirmed that the Minister of Defence heard the allegations against Mr. Vance and that she herself forwarded the information to the Privy Council.

In 2019, the Standing Committee on the Status of Women looked into the matter just before the end of the session when the general election was called. The study was put on hold. When we tried to refer the study back to the committee, the Liberals first tried to say that the matter should not be considered in two committees, and that the Standing Committee on National Defence could do the job. At first, the government even tried to hide from the Standing Committee on the Status of Women that members wanted to address this feminist angle from the start.

Now we are finally discussing it. The study started last Tuesday, but we had to work hard to be able to discuss this aspect, the treatment of women in the Canadian Armed Forces. The Standing Committee on the Status of Women can now examine the issue from that angle.

Let us go over the timeline of events. General Vance announced his retirement on July 23, 2020. On February 2, Global News reported that allegations of sexual misconduct had been made against General Vance. The Standing Committee on National Defence looked into the matter, paying particular attention to the actions of the Minister of National Defence, who had known for three years that General Vance was the subject of serious allegations.

When the Minister of National Defence first appeared before the committee, he systematically refused to answer questions on the pretext that the case was before the courts.

The testimony of Gary Walbourne, who confirmed that he had informed the Minister of National Defence and that the minister had not even wanted to look at the file, was a real black eye for the government.

Other witnesses at committee confirmed that the minister should have taken action and that he had several tools at his disposal to order an inquiry. None of the witnesses could understand why the minister failed to act.

The Minister of National Defence appeared before the committee again in March. This time, he agreed to speak in order to defend his handling of the case. He admitted that he had refused to look at Walbourne's file, claiming that he did not want to do the investigating himself, though no one was asking him to do that.

One of the missing links for finding out exactly what happened and what the Liberal government did, or rather did not do, is the Minister of National Defence's former chief of staff, Zita Astravas, who is currently serving as chief of staff for the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. She was the one handling the case.

The committee tried to contact her several times to invite her to testify, but she never even responded. The committee tried to force her to appear, but the Liberals wanted to invite her again rather than force her. The Conservative motion was defeated by the Bloc and the Liberals. The Bloc Québécois wanted to give her one last chance before forcing her to appear because, let us be frank, that is an extreme measure.

I remind members that the Trudeau government had no problem dragging Mark Norman, second in command, through the mud. The Prime Minister even said twice that the case would be going to court, while Mr. Norman wanted to sound the alarm about Scott Brison's plot to withdraw the Asterix contract from the Davie shipyard to help his buddies at Irving. There is a double standard here.

The Crown finally dropped the charges and Scott Brison resigned. Meanwhile, as the Trudeau government was doing everything it could to take down Mr. Norman, the Liberals did absolutely nothing with Mr. Vance. General Vance's successor as chief of defence staff, Admiral McDonald, even pulled out after some allegations of sexual misconduct against him—

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have been reluctant to raise it, but the speaker prior to the current member and now the member have, on two occasions, referred to the Prime Minister by his last name instead of using his title or his constituency. Members know full know that we are not supposed to be making reference to members by name.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I thank the hon. parliamentary secretary for his comments. He is quite right.

I am sure the member is aware of the rules. I would ask her to respect them as she continues her speech.

The hon. member for Shefford has two minutes remaining.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am on target for time.

Since Tuesday, the Standing Committee on the Status of Women has resumed its study of the issue of sexual misconduct. The Standing Committee on National Defence is also examining it. Our first witness was the Minister of National Defence, who basically repeated that he found these allegations concerning and disturbing, yet he did nothing about them for over three years.

The Department of National Defence, meanwhile, continues to say that sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces is unacceptable. While Operation Honour was supposed to reduce the number of sexual assaults, we now know that senior officers have committed assaults with impunity.

Because generals outrank military judges and cannot be disciplined by anyone in the Canadian Armed Forces, we are now seeing many cases of sexual misconduct at the highest levels.

General Vance, the former chief of the defence staff who launched Operation Honour, had already been accused of sexual misconduct back in 2018. According to former ombudsman Gary Walbourne, the defence minister refused to even look at the incriminating evidence.

That the defence minister did nothing for nearly three years is quite troubling. By failing to take action against the highest-ranking officers, the government chose to protect the generals instead of the victims who were in the worst work environments possible. Members of the military are subject to the Code of Service Discipline, which means that the senior officers are in a position of power over the members. It is therefore easy for the officers to abuse their power and their subordinates, a point that was mentioned on Tuesday in the Standing Committee on Status of Women.

The Bloc Québécois believes it is important to learn from the General Vance case, to prevent such things from happening again. The Bloc Québécois is in favour of the motion to have the defence and status of women committees study this issue.

In conclusion, some solutions could be implemented, but it will take political will to make the Canadian Armed Forces safe again for women and to break the culture of silence. You cannot call yourself a feminist and continue to tolerate sexual violence in the Canadian army. For all these reasons, I believe it is high time we took action.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will try to speak French. I thank the member for emphasizing the importance of dealing with allegations of sexual misconduct within the Canadian Armed Forces.

In the member's opinion, what is the next step that should be taken to get answers—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I am going to interrupt the member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound. We are not getting his video. Could he check to ensure it is on? We had video initially and then it disappeared.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately I am getting a whole bunch of errors and I cannot start my video. I do not know why it kicked off. I will reboot the system and try to get back in.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I thank the hon. member. We have heard enough of the question to get started, and I compliment the hon. member for using his second language. The hon. member for Shefford can respond to the part of the question that we did hear.

The hon. member for Shefford.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question.

The reason I read out the motion is that witnesses who have not yet appeared are named in it. We had this same debate at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. There were attempts to not summon certain people who were key witnesses.

I think the key to getting to the bottom of this whole thing is letting both committees do their investigations.

Today, during the second hour of the status of women committee meeting, from noon to 1 p.m., we will be joined by retired Justice Marie Deschamps. As I said, in 2015, she wrote a report and recommendations, not all of which were implemented. The least we can do is revisit those recommendations to find out why they were not implemented and what can be done as soon as possible. Let us give the defence committee and the status of women committee a chance to study the issues simultaneously.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am a bit concerned. It appears the Bloc, whether willingly or unwillingly, seems to be falling into what I would suggest is the Conservative trap of playing a very destructive role.

Whether it is in committees or on the floor of the House of Commons, the government House leader referred to the whole idea of tyranny of the majority walking over the rights of the minority. The government's focus is on the coronavirus, and that is where our focus needs to be. Committees can do the work.

Why does the Bloc now want the House of Commons to override what is taking place in our committees today?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am shocked to hear my colleague say that we are undermining the work of the committees.

I would remind my colleague that with respect to the other part of today's motion regarding the WE Charity, we had a report before us and it was the government that slammed the brakes on the work of the committees by proroguing Parliament last summer.

I can give other examples. A major report on the effects of COVID-19 was being examined at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. The same goes for the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, which was studying an important topic. The Liberals were the ones who ended the work of the committees with prorogation.

The same was true for the work on the WE Charity. The Bloc and the Conservative Party are not the only opposition parties that want to shed light on these affairs. The NDP wants to as well. At the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, among others, we want to shed light on the allegations of sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces.

The opposition parties are not responsible for tearing down the government. It is the government that is tearing itself down and preventing the work of the committees.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech and for all of the work that she has done over the years to support women's rights.

I want to come back to the scandal involving sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces and the Liberal government's many versions of what happened there.

The Minister of National Defence told us in committee that he had never heard of this scandal. We then learned that the ombudsman had informed him of it three years ago. The Prime Minister said that he learned about it from the media, but he too was actually informed of it by the Privy Council a few years ago.

Does my colleague from Shefford think the Liberals tried to cover up this scandal rather than standing up for women?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

When listening to the testimony at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, I felt like I was watching a ping-pong match, with the ball flying back and forth between the ombudsman, the minister and the Prime Minister's Office. I assume my colleague is seeing the same thing at the Standing Committee on National Defence.

In the end, who are the big losers in all of this? They are the victims of sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces. They are the ones who no longer know where to go to report cases of assault because of this process, which was completely lacking in transparency.

We need independent authorities to look into these complaints. We need to find solutions.

In order to do that, the committees need to continue their work. The government needs to stop saying that we want to do away with committees. We want the committees to work and find solutions for the well-being of women in the Canadian Armed Forces.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is wonderful to join the debate today, albeit not from within the House itself but from within my constituency of Edmonton Strathcona. I will be splitting my time today with the member for Timmins—James Bay.

This is a long motion, so I am going to speak about a number of different portions of it. I am going to start by talking about the committee work and the important, vital role committees play in our parliamentary democracy.

We heard from the government that it is the opposition that is causing problems and preventing committees from doing their work. I have to flag that I just do not see this as accurate. We know committees must be empowered and we know they must be independent, but they are not able to do their work right now because of obstruction from Liberal members of these committees. A perfect example is the committee on which I sit, the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. Sitting on this committee for the last few weeks, I have been listening to members of the Liberal Party talking about their cats, about cutting their lawns and about a number of different things in order to not have to discuss the very important issue of global vaccine equity.

At the committee I would like to talk about vaccines, about how they are being dispersed around the world and how we are making sure dangerous variants appearing around the world are not endangering Canadians. I want to talk about why we do not have national capacity to develop vaccines in Canada. I want to talk about why we are the only G7 country taking vaccines from poorer countries through the COVAX program, despite having negotiated 10 times what we need through bilateral agreements. However, we cannot talk about that because the Liberals have been filibustering.

What is even more disturbing is that while I would love to talk about what I think is one of the most important issues of the moment, which is the equality of vaccine distribution, the committee also needs to be talking about all the things happening around the world. The committee needs to be talking about arms sales to Saudi Arabia. It needs to be talking about what is happening with China, Hong Kong and Myanmar, and what is happening with Yemen, which is named as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. We cannot do that work either, because of the obstruction by the government.

When we hear the government say it is in fact the opposition that is preventing it, it is very clear to me that this is in fact not the case. It is the filibustering, the withholding of documents, the redacting of documents and the obstructing of work. Our democracy is in a very sad state when we are not being enabled to do the work we need to do. Because the NDP strongly supports anything that adds to the transparency and accountability of the government, I will certainly be supporting this legislation.

The next thing I want to talk about is the WE scandal and some of the things that have happened around the WE scandal. As an NDP member, I have been very pleased over the pandemic to see the support we have been able to get the government to agree to for Canadians. The CERB was always just going to be a tweak on EI, but the NDP was able to convince the government to make it $2,000 and extend it into the CRB. We knew the wage subsidy was going to be 10%; we convinced the government to get it to 75%.

The rent program was a deeply flawed program because it was landlord-driven, but we were able to convince the government to fix it. Of course, we were not able to get it applied back retroactively to April, so many constituencies and many businesses in Edmonton Strathcona really suffered, but we were able to get a program for people. We were able to get support for seniors and for people living with disabilities, and we are really proud of that.

We were also able to get some support for students. There was the CESB and there was a moratorium on student loan repayments, but we lost the thread there. In June, there was a huge announcement that there was going to be all this money for students. It was going to be great and help students. We knew they were suffering. We knew that not every student came from a wealthy family and that not every student was getting the support they needed, and they were not able to work over the summer, something they needed to do, so we were delighted to hear about the supports.

However, I was very concerned when I heard the organization being used to develop this program was the WE Charity. As someone who has worked for over 25 years in international development, I was very disappointed when I heard Mr. Trudeau defend the partnership, saying that WE was the only group with a countrywide network capable of operating—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Order. I see now that the hon. member recognizes that little error. That has happened a couple of times today, and I give a nudge and a reminder in that direction for members to avoid that mistake.

We will go ahead with the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona.