Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Lakeland.
As the member of Parliament for Garrison Petawawa, located in the force-wielding riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, soldiers know I will always have their back.
It is a great disappointment to Canadians that once again the Prime Minister has chosen to waste the public’s valuable time. Our economy is about to burn. The raging pandemic is worsening. All the while, the Prime Minister insists the Conservative government-in-waiting deal with the problem of toxic masculinity.
This motion is to dismiss his hapless employee, Katie Telford. Another woman will be sacrificed, in this case, for her misplaced loyalty. The Prime Minister's toxic masculinity is out of control. It has been for a very long time.
The Prime Minister’s toxic masculinity problem is a Liberal brand problem. It must be degrading to be a female member of the Liberal Party and be forced to continually have to apologize and make excuses for the Prime Minister’s toxic masculinity.
The member for Kanata—Carleton wore the uniform of a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. Does she and her female colleagues, like the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence, the member for Ottawa West—Nepean, not realize that by defending the Prime Minister’s unacceptable misogynist behaviour, they are enabling his toxic masculinity? Do women in the Liberal Party not see the pattern of behaviour? Do these women really think the former female minister of justice, the former female minister of health, the Prime Minister’s own former female parliamentary secretary were all wrong in refusing to put up with the Prime Minister’s toxic masculinity? It all comes down to power.
Another female in the Liberal Party who thought she had power, Katie Telford, is being thrown under the bus by the Prime Minister. He has become the laughingstock of world leaders with his blackface and his Mr. dress-up cultural appropriation antics.
If Katie Telford, as the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, cannot understand she should have resigned months ago, she must be fired by the Prime Minister. It is not as if she does not know the Prime Minister has a serious problem with toxic masculinity. Her job as chief of staff is to say no every time the Prime Minister has an ethical and moral lapse in judgment. Gerald Butts failed to do his job and fell on his sword. Now it is time for Katie Telford to do the same.
Toxic masculinity is a Liberal problem. On International Women’s Day I asked the Minister of National Defence a simple question. Who was the minister trying to protect, himself or the Prime Minister? That same question has now been answered by the Prime Minister’s female chief of staff, now that the story from the Prime Minister is that his chief of staff withheld important information from him.
It was the Prime Minister who shut down the investigation by the Standing Committee on National Defence into the appalling record of the government in defending gender equality for women serving their country in the military. Operation Honour, the Canadian Armed Forces mission to prevent and address sexual misconduct within its ranks, was doomed from the outset.
How could anyone in government take Operation Honour seriously? Soldiers dubbed it “Operation Hop On Her”. Why would anyone take it seriously, when the Prime Minister was not taking the concerns of sexual harassment of female soldiers seriously?
The same can be said about the Prime Minister’s chief of staff. She obviously does not take the concerns of sexual harassment of female soldiers seriously, if we believe the Prime Minister’s claim that his chief of staff could not be bothered to inform him of claims of sexual misconduct.
This is the same Prime Minister who, when confronted with the facts surrounding his groping of a young female reporter, claimed that she must have experienced it differently. That is the classic “blame the victim” trope.
The Prime Minister’s toxic masculinity is a festering sore that has infected the entire Liberal Party. Now the Prime Minister has directed female members of his caucus to look for someone or something else to blame.
According to the female member of parliament for Ottawa West—Nepean, it is the culture of toxic masculinity from the Canadian Armed Forces that is to blame. Blame the soldiers for the breakdown in leadership that stops at the top with the Prime Minister.
Not to be outdone to curry favour from the Prime Minister, the female member from the rural Newfoundland and Labrador riding of Long Range Mountains, even went further in trying to tie toxic masculinity in Canada's military to Canadians recruited from rural Canada. Her Liberal talking points somehow tied Canadians from rural Canada, who joined Canada’s Armed Forces as convenient scapegoats. She is from rural Canada, in this case Atlantic Canada, indicating the member’s experience is with her own constituents. As they say in Atlantic Canada, the fish rots from the head.
Liberal Female MPs, such as the ones for Pickering—Uxbridge and for Newfoundland and Labrador, should be ashamed when the name of the leader of the Liberal Party is used in the same paragraph as Harvey Weinstein's and Jeffrey Epstein's to make the point that Canada is going backward, not forward, when it comes to making progress in combatting sexual misconduct and violence against women in all its ugly faces.
Toxic masculinity is not a military problem; it is a Liberal Party problem.
The greatest disappointment in this entire discussion has been the deafening silence from the female Liberal caucus. Its members have quietly condoned the Prime Minister's behaviour with their silence. Not one female Liberal MP rose to defend the female reporter who was subjected to an unwanted sexual advance by the Prime Minister in her workplace: the Kokanee grope. Not one government MP rose to demand a coherent explanation of what the Prime Minister admitted to doing when he was shamed into providing an apology to the young female reporter who was the subject of his unwanted advance. Enabling bad behaviour guarantees it will continue, like blaming the victim. Silence is tacit approval.
The problem of toxic masculinity starts at the top with the Prime Minister. He has an outrageous record of making bad decisions when it comes to Canada’s military. This policy failure of the Prime Minister and his government, and his failure to deal with sexual harassment in the military, can be traced to his treatment of women. It is no different from the way the Prime Minister treats women in his own party, such as the former justice minister during the SNC-Lavalin scandal.
This is what a former female Ontario Liberal member and member of the Prime Minister’s caucus had to say:
In a feminist government, throwing [female members of Parliament] under the bus, I didn’t appreciate that, especially at a time when we’re saying that we believe in women. You believe in them when it's convenient and you leave them when it's not. So there were just a number of different instances that just didn’t sit right with me and the principles that I hold dear, and I wanted to make sure that I was able to look at myself in the mirror the next day.
How can female Liberal members of Parliament still look at themselves in the mirror every day knowing that, after Operation Honour was blown out of the water? It recorded 581 incidents of sexual assault and 221 cases of sexual harassment between April 1, 2016 and March 9, 2021. The Prime Minister thinks that having female members of his caucus mouth empty platitudes will fool women. He sure does not fool this “proud to be Conservative” female member of Parliament.