Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in the House and speak for the people of Timmins—James Bay.
We are here with yet another day of Parliament being blocked from doing its work. The people of Canada sent us here to get things done. We have serious issues before us, but we are watching the Conservative puppet show, in this black-and-white world in which they live, interfering and stopping the work of Parliament.
That is not to give any kind of free pass to what the issue is at hand; the issue is very serious. It is the refusal of the Prime Minister to respect the will of Parliament. What that comes down to is a scandal: A liberal scandal, imagine that. If we look at the long history of the country, all the way back to the rum-bottle days on the Rideau, probably not one or two years has gone by without a scandal of Liberals looking after their pals. This has been the story of Canada since the beginning.
As the opposition, we have an obligation to hold the government to account. The fact that the Prime Minister is refusing to turn over these documents is a serious issue. It is also a serious issue because it was my colleagues in the New Democratic Party who began to break open this green slush fund scandal.
These are important issues that have to be addressed, but what we have is a ruling from the Speaker, which is very clear. This issue has to be sent to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs so that parliamentarians can investigate and come back to the House with a decision. This is how Parliament works; this is the process. If that process comes back with a finding of contempt for the Prime Minister, then that is how we operate. What the Conservatives are doing is blocking the call of the Speaker and blocking the work of parliamentarians to get to the bottom of this scandal. It is a very straightforward thing.
The bigger scandal is the absolute failure of the Liberal government to follow through on key promises. For example, people trusted them on housing. We heard about housing again and again, and we asked where that housing was. It is a government that made so many promises and failed. The purpose of opposition is to hold it to account and ask the question why it has failed.
The green fund scandal is a particularly powerful metaphor. I remember when the Prime Minister went to COP26, with his Haida tattoo, and said, “Canada's back”. He made legally binding commitments on the global stage to move Canada to become a leader in the fight against climate change. What have we seen since then? This green slush fund is the perfect example of money that was not sent out the door to do what was promised. Money was sent again and again to oil and gas. In fact, we see that three times as much money goes out under the government to help the oil and gas sector than on clean energy, as our planet burns.
Under the Prime Minister, oil production in Canada, particularly out of the tar sands, has jumped 25% over the Harper government. That is not climate leadership; this is serious negligence on the part of the Prime Minister. Not only is it 25% higher, but thanks to the $34 billion gift to the TMX pipeline, it is going up much higher.
We hear the environment minister talk about emissions going down, but he is not telling the truth. All sectors of the economy have done their part, but emissions continue to rise in oil and gas. We are the only G7 country whose emissions are rising despite the legal commitments made by the Prime Minister. That is the scandal, not of taxpayer money or insider buddies and cronies who hang out with the Prime Minister's pals. It is a scandal about our children's future, because we are now in the heart of the climate crisis. People voted for the Prime Minister to do his job on that. He has failed, and the green slush fund is the perfect example of that.
When I hear my colleagues in the Conservative Party talk about transparency and accountability, and how this is the most corrupt government in history, I have a bit of history in this place and I have seen a lot of corruption over the years. The Liberals are not very good, but they are rank amateurs compared to the Harper days. They tell us to trust them on transparency and accountability.
I listen to the demands of Conservatives to defend the vision of Parliament and the right to obtain documents. It is like people who move into a new neighbourhood and a crocodile knocks on their door. The crocodile says it is their new neighbour and if ever they need it, it will babysit their children. If the people do not know the history of the crocodile, they would think that is so wonderful and they would be more than happy to trust the crocodile to look after their children. However, if they know the history, they would know what a dumb idea that is.
Let us talk a bit about the history. All the language about documents right now brings me back to 2009 when Stephen Harper defied Parliament over the Afghan detainees documents. That was not just a minor scandal. That was a scandal that cut to the very heart of the Canadian nation. It happened in a November 2009 appearance at a parliamentary committee when Richard Colvin testified about evidence of torture of Afghan detainees.
The information that was brought forward was horrific, “pulling out fingernails and toenails, burning with hot oil, beatings, sexual humiliation, and sodomy.” That was raised by our ambassador on what was happening under the watch of the Canadian Army in Afghanistan. We sent our best young and most idealistic people to Afghanistan because they believed they were going to build a new Afghanistan after the Taliban. Instead, we learned that they were being drawn into the corruption of the warlords.
Ambassador Colvin said:
As I learned more about our detainee practices, I came to the conclusion that they were contrary to Canada's values, contrary to Canada's interests, contrary to Canada's official policies, and also contrary to international law....they were un-Canadian, counterproductive, and probably illegal.
That is a scandal.
Parliamentarians asked to examine this, because it was vital for us to reassure the Canadian people that when we sent our soldiers overseas, they maintained the highest standard and to ensure that our role in Afghanistan was to build a better society and not be a front for corruption, torture and abuse. Stephen Harper had no interest in that. He did not mind that our name was being sullied on the international stage, so he refused to turn over the documents to Parliament.
Who was being targeted? The leader of the Conservative Party slurs victims of horrific bombings in Lebanon and the people in Gaza and brags about his hope that people will be bombed in Iran. That is a man who does not have a security clearance or cannot get it making these horrific remarks given the torture and killings are happening. This was happening in Afghanistan and Stephen Harper was covering it up.
Ambassador Colvin, in his testimony, said that the people who were being tortured and sodomized were not the terrorists that the Conservatives denounced. He said that they had no connection to the insurgency and many were local people, farmers, truck drivers, tailors, peasants, random human beings in the wrong place at the wrong time, and, from an intelligence point of view, they had little or no value. We would have thought that if Stephen Harper believed in Canada standing strong on the international stage, he would have been worried about the torture of innocent people who were picked up by the military and the warlords and subjected to brutal torture.
Colvin went on to say, “Instead of winning hearts and minds, we caused Kandaharis to fear the foreigners. Canada's detainee practices, in my view, alienated us from the population and strengthened the insurgency.” The brutal Taliban is back, and it is back because countries like Canada went along with the torture and suppressed the evidence.
Parliament had an obligation. It tried to get access to the documents, but Stephen Harper was not going to let that happen. He would rather allow the torture and abuse of innocent people in Afghanistan under our flag than have Parliament do its job. Harper ignored our commitments under the Geneva Convention. He undermined Canada's efforts to bring trust to Afghanistan—