Madam Speaker, I do apologize. There has been a lot of media lately and I get to use the Prime Minister's name frequently, so it is just a matter of habit these days, but I will refrain and will call him the Prime Minister.
We also have to keep our eye on what is happening in the Standing Committee on National Defence, because after we learned from Elder Marques, a week and a half ago, that Katie Telford was the first point of contact between the Minister of National Defence's office and the Prime Minister's Office, we immediately moved a motion to have her appear. The Liberals on that committee have been filibustering and blocking Katie Telford from appearing at our committee. This again speaks to the reality of this being a cover-up. The Liberals would rather protect Katie Telford than protect the women and men who serve our country in the Canadian Armed Forces.
This has to stop. We need to make sure that those who are in the chain of command, from the chief of the defence staff to the Minister of National Defence to the chief of staff to the Prime Minister and up to the Prime Minister, are all being honest with Canadians and providing us with the facts.
These ongoing filibusters and cancellations of meetings are an affront to democracy, and it really speaks to what bounds the Liberals are prepared to cross to ensure that our Parliament is dysfunctional. We will continue in our committee to ask that Katie Telford appear, but we also believe that it is incumbent upon this House for us to pronounce on whether Katie Telford did or did not know or did and did not tell the Prime Minister of these serious allegations against General Jonathan Vance.
We have to look at all the facts. We have to keep in mind that even though we have been dealing with this now for over three months that this has been in front of Canadians and in front of our House and at the defence committee, we know that Katie Telford was very busy in March 2018 dealing with the false allegations and the charges that were brought against the former vice-chief of the defence staff, Vice-Admiral Mark Norman. He was charged on March 8, 2018 and that was in process. We also know that the Liberals were dealing with sexual misconduct within the Prime Minister's Office itself with Claude-Éric Gagné, so their hands were full and they may have been distracted.
However, it was no excuse for them to give Jonathan Vance a pass, give him a raise, and extend his contract for another three years while he was in charge of Operation Honour. That was demoralizing to all those who serve in the Canadian Armed Forces.