Mr. Speaker, the members are heckling me. I know the member for Winnipeg North likes to heckle. It is too bad they do not let anyone else in that caucus talk except for him. He probably holds some kind of record for the most words spoken in the House. He could be down in the Guinness book of world records for that.
This is a pattern. The Prime Minister used Jody Wilson-Raybould. He is using the member for Winnipeg North. He is using all these Liberal members to protect him, but it is as though there is cognitive dissonance at play. They are signing letters for him to leave and then they are coming into the House and protecting him. We cannot make this stuff up.
Then, of course, there was the WE Charity scandal. The Prime Minister wanted to help out his friends at WE Charity by giving them an untendered billion-dollar sweetheart deal after they paid large speaking fees to his family members.
A bit closer to home, in my home city, the Liberal government once again refused to release documents, which sounds familiar, relating to the Winnipeg lab and those who work there. We have spoken a lot about foreign interference in the House of Commons lately, and this is a prime example of it. The Prime Minister knew about the shady dealings that were taking place and still refused to come clean. In fact, the Liberals were so worried about these Winnipeg lab documents that they sued the former Speaker. They actually went to court to try and stop the Speaker from releasing documents, which ultimately ended up getting released.
This whole debate about security clearance is interesting. I have security clearance because I was the sub on the Winnipeg labs subcommittee. I actually read all the documents months before I knew about the Communist Party spies in the Winnipeg lab. I knew about all that, but for six months, I could not say a word. I was muzzled. When the member opposite from Winnipeg North gets up and asks me the question, “Why won't the Leader of the Opposition get a security clearance?”, that is going to be my answer. So, I am going to preempt the question right away. He does not need to ask me, because he knows very well that we can have all this information, but if we cannot talk about it, we cannot hold the government accountable, and that is the reason, not the tinfoil hat conspiracy reasons that member holds for why the Leader of the Opposition does not want to get security clearance. His reason is to protect Canadians, to protect taxpayers, from the malfeasance of this Liberal government.
Back in 2015, soon after Canadians granted the Liberals a majority government, the Prime Minister said that:
The reality is that this system requires a high degree of openness, transparency, and accountability in order to maintain Canadians' confidence in our democracy and system of government.
I can assure Canadians that our party always follows all the rules and that it also supports all the values and principles associated with those rules.
Whatever happened to that? Where is that transparency, those sunny ways that the Prime Minister promised? They are gone, and I really wonder what it would take for Liberal MPs to do the right thing. They have been strung along by this Prime Minister for years, one excuse after another, one con after another. I look across the aisle to the government benches and I see several Liberal members who may have believed in the Prime Minister at one time. I wonder what they believe now. If the WE Charity scandal, the SNC-Lavalin scandal, the Winnipeg lab scandal, the ArriveCAN scandal and all the other scandals, all of which cost Canadians hundreds of millions of dollars, were not enough for them to stand up to the Prime Minister and say, “enough is enough”, what will cause them to finally do the right thing? Canadians have been taken advantage of by this Prime Minister, and those who are sitting in the Liberal backbenches are idly standing by, just allowing it to happen.
So, I ask my colleagues across the aisle, just as I said earlier, just as Polonius said to Laertes, will they be true to themselves? Will they stand up in the House of Commons and refuse to sit idly by while the Prime Minister keeps increasing taxes on Canadians for the benefit of wealthy Liberal friends and insiders? Will they stand up and fight for their communities and their constituents who sent them to this place, or will they once again give this failing Prime Minister a pass?