Madam Speaker, I want to rise on this point because I think this debate on an ethics concurrence motion is, of course, an effort at time-wasting, but some of the issues are substantive.
I never really had an opportunity to comment on what I made of the WE Charity scandal. Having attended meetings at finance committee, and having watched the Prime Minister's testimony and the testimony of his chief of staff, I came to the conclusion, for what it is worth, that the Prime Minister's Office did not politically interfere in this at all. It was Rachel Wernick, as a chief public civil servant, discovering that the Prime Minister's favourite pet project to deliver the program for youth was not yet up and running, and civil servants who I think were embarrassed to tell the Prime Minister that the youth service corps was not up and running, who scrambled to find something to cover for an announcement that had already been made. It was the civil servants who came up with the WE Charity as a possible way to deliver the program. That was my conclusion from watching the evidence.
However, I still think we should have been able to get to the bottom of it so all Canadians would have some assurance that we knew what this was. Also, the fact that it got called the “We Charity scandal” points to some other issues that I think are important, and one of them is that we really do need to amend, reform and modernized Canada's charity laws.
This is a roundabout way of saying that I had some thoughts on the matter, but I have never had a chance to get them on the record, and for that I thank the Conservatives for raising this concurrence debate. However, my thanks are rather overwhelmed by my frustrations that we are not debating Bill C-18.