Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for that great intervention. I appreciate him taking the time to do that. If any other member in this House utters half of the same name I did, as that side has uttered the Prime Minister's last name at least two dozen times today, then his argument might stand some ground. In the meantime, it quite frankly does not, but I do really appreciate that. To his point, we should all be doing the best we can to adhere to the rules in the House, and that is why I immediately brought my error to the Speaker's attention.
Going back to what the member for Carleton knew in June, we know this exchange happened, but we had the response from Mr. Chin saying “Let's get our young working!” As well, a PMO official said that Mr. Chin was not involved in the WE decision and that the LinkedIn message was the only interaction on the file. He simply responded two days later out of courtesy. That was all, just for context, within that August 19 CBC article.
It is pretty clear to me this was an interaction out of courtesy. It is clear Mr. Chin had nothing to do with the program. Out of the 5,000 pages disclosed, this was the only interaction with Mr. Chin. When asked what Mr. Chin's role in the program was, the Kielburgers said he had no role. Mr. Kielburger then went on further to clarify when he said, “that was the only correspondence I had in the course of two years with him, a three-line LinkedIn request to join.”
When the Prime Minister's chief of staff appeared at the Standing Committee on Finance last July, Ms. Telford was asked the following:
After March 1, how many times did the PMO communicate with the Kielburgers or any of their intermediaries?
She replied:
...There were a handful of interactions with the Prime Minister's Office and the WE organization around the Canada summer student grant between then and the launch of the program. There was only one prior to the launch of the program. It was in early May, when one of the policy staff did what is very normal in their jobs, which is to speak to stakeholder organizations.
Ms. Telford further said:
It's public information who all the staff in the Prime Minister's Office are, and I am here to represent all of those staff, as the senior-most member of the Prime Minister's Office. If you have questions about any of them, or for any of them, I am happy to take them today.
When the Minister of International Trade was asked at committee on March 1 if she or her staff had ever had any communications about WE with Mr. Chin, she replied, “No, I did not.”
This demonstrates why opposition members are trying, almost one year later, to drag hard-working members of our staff through the mud. There is nothing they are trying to gain except scoring cheap political points. They already know exactly what happened here and they have it because the government disclosed information to them in the form of 5,000 pages of documents. They have it because this has been the topic of countless hearings for nine months and the testimony of several ministers, the Clerk of the Privy Council and the chief of staff of the Prime Minister. Further, many of the public servants who were directly involved in, and responsible for, crafting this program have also testified.
This is clearly a chapter opposition members are unwilling to close, solely for cheap, partisan political games. It is behaviour unbecoming of the House: behaviour that undermines everyone's trust in our parliamentary institutions.
Second, let us briefly visit another matter that has been fully reported on and studied by the Standing Committee on National Defence as well as by the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. We can all agree in the House that harassment and abuse of anyone in Canada is unacceptable, and that the women and men of our armed forces deserve to be able to serve their country without the fear or threat of said harassment.
That is why the Standing Committee on National Defence unanimously adopted a motion to study addressing sexual misconduct issues in the Canadian Armed Forces, and similarly, the Standing Committee on the Status of Women unanimously adopted a motion to study sexual misconduct within the Canadian Armed Forces.
Regarding the former chief of staff to the defence minister, Ms. Zita Astravas, her former minister has now made three committee appearances on the topic, spanning hundreds of hours, in the last month.
Let me read to the House what the minister said when he was asked about his former chief of staff:
...as you know, after the ombudsman spoke to me, I informed my chief of staff so that she could follow up with the appropriate individuals within the Privy Council, as she did. She also informed Elder Marques at the Prime Minister's Office. I'm here today to provide you with my testimony on this, but also on behalf of my staff involved....
Not only has the minister himself testified three times on this matter, numerous documents have been produced in keeping with the request from the Standing Committee on National Defence. Documents have also been published by the media and reported on by Global News.
We know exactly what Ms. Astravas did. She did exactly what she should have done and exactly what the minister instructed her to do, which is the same thing the leader of the official opposition instructed his chief of staff to do upon learning of similar circumstances. We know Ms. Astravas raised this with the appropriate authorities, because it has been studied at committee. The only reason the opposition wants to invite her to this committee is to once again score cheap political points. There is nothing more to be learned here.
I would like to touch on the Prime Minister's director of policy and cabinet affairs, Mr. Rick Theis. As I have already made quite clear to the House, 5,000 pages of documents were turned over to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance and subsequently released in August of last year. In fact, the government—