Mr. Speaker, I have a security clearance as a result of my role as a naval reserve officer. It is a very rigorous process to go through. There are requirements, for anyone who has clearance, when accessing certain information, and they include, to put it simply, muzzling the ability to use it.
The role of the official opposition, as the Liberals know full well, is to hold the government to account, but getting into the trap they are trying to set up for the leader of the official opposition to get a a security clearance would prohibit him from doing his duty of holding the government to account. Let us instead focus on the fact that the Prime Minister does not need a security clearance to name the names. He, as the Prime Minister, has the ability to declassify all of that.
He was able to go to the Hogue inquiry and throw out there that he has, allegedly, seen some Conservative names. That is convenient. I thought we could not reveal anything because we need to protect intelligence and its methods, all of that. That does not seem to matter to the Liberals when it can be of potential partisan advantage to them to magically declassify things. It is just like what they alleged about India, only for the national security and intelligence adviser, last night, to completely walk that back, all at the expense of our country and our relationship with the largest democracy in the world.
Shame on the government.