Mr. Speaker, I move:
That the Speaker's ongoing and repetitive partisan conduct outside of the Chamber is a betrayal of the traditions and expectations of his office and a breach of the trust required to discharge his duties and responsibilities, all of which this House judges to be a serious contempt and, therefore, declares that the office of Speaker shall be vacated effective immediately before the hour of meeting on the next Monday the House sits following the day this resolution is adopted and directs that the election of a Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 2(2), shall be the first order of business at that Monday's sitting of the House.
I regret to stand yet again to declare that the Speaker is a partisan Liberal. I do not say that as a critique or a criticism. While I might do that in a different setting, today I bring that up to say that those are the facts.
The fact is that the Speaker has a very long history of partisan Liberal political activity. As a young person, the Speaker was the president of the Young Liberals of Canada. He took an activist role in that position, building Liberal organizations and connecting with Liberals from coast to coast. I was involved in young Conservative politics, so I know a bit about what is involved there. I can tell members that nobody gets involved in youth politics because they are non-partisan. It is a very partisan environment.
He went on to be a staff member for several Liberal cabinet ministers. As a matter of fact, he was so well known within Liberal politics that Stéphane Dion appointed him to be the national director of the Liberal Party. After being elected, he took on what is probably one of the most partisan positions in the House of Commons, which is becoming the pit bull to defend the Prime Minister as the Prime Minister's parliamentary secretary.
I say all of that simply to give context to why many in the House were concerned or had reservations about electing the member for Hull—Aylmer to become the Speaker of the House of Commons. It was evident that the member who is now the Speaker had a very partisan history, and he did it very well. As a matter of fact, oftentimes he would disrupt committees and agitate processes and procedures to try to defend the Prime Minister, especially when the Prime Minister was coming under scrutiny for the litany of scandals that he has now found himself in.
The Speaker has a very important role in the House of Commons. Yes, it is always going to be or, for the most part, throughout our entire history, it has been a person who is elected from among us. Moreover, we all get here because of partisan activities. We went and campaigned against other parties or other individuals within our local communities. We eventually got elected to this place. People who are looking to become the Speaker are not here through a different mechanism than the rest of us; however, the Speaker usually has a history of working well with other parties and with other members of the House. That is not the case for the member for Hull—Aylmer. As a matter of fact, he has aggressively defended the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's Office over the procedures and the rights and privileges of members in the House.
To give some level of context and contrast, I would like to draw to members' attention a bit of recent history. When the House of Commons, through its committees, had requested, in many ways, in different ways, information about the documents that had not been forthcoming regarding the firing of lab scientists from the Winnipeg lab, the predecessor to the current Speaker went so far as to sue the government, the Liberal government, to defend the decision of members of the House of Commons. He was elected as a Liberal member of Parliament. He did this because the Speaker serves as the servant of the decisions of the House of Commons. They are there to execute the will and the decisions of the collective House of Commons. I am sure that the former Speaker was uncomfortable with launching a lawsuit against his own party's government, but he did it, because that was the role of the Speaker.
To contrast that and to, I guess, draw the members' attention to comments made by the current Speaker, on November 16, 2020, I was serving as the chair of the ethics committee. The committee was reviewing the unbelievable revelations that had started to flow out, the allegations of huge amounts of money being given to the Prime Minister's friends during the COVID payouts, specifically with regard to up to a billion dollars that had been committed to the WE organization.
The ethics committee began a process of looking into that organization; in due course, it discovered that, previous to getting the commitment of nearly a billion dollars, this organization had given significant amounts of money to the Prime Minister's family. It was in these discoveries that the committee was looking for more information from the government, but the government was not forthcoming with that documentation. The members of the committee, including members of the Conservative Party, the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, came together and constructed a motion that was being debated at the committee. The Liberals, through a filibuster, were refusing to allow that motion to ever get to a vote on requiring the government to produce documentation. This documentation would either prove or disprove information about money given to the Prime Minister's family members from the WE organization, which later got a commitment of nearly a billion dollars.
In a lengthy intervention at that committee, the member for Hull—Aylmer, who is now the Speaker, was leading the charge on behalf of the Liberals. At the committee meeting, he said, “If this motion ends up passing, as the opposition holds majority at the committee, its validity will be immediately questioned and there will be serious questions about the ability to enforce it.” He did not slip up: He went on to say, “Mr. Chair, this is very important. Let me repeat. If this motion ends up passing, as the opposition holds the majority at this committee, its validity will be immediately questioned and there will be serious questions about its ability to be enforced.”
It is not wrong for a member of Parliament to get elected and defend their government with all their ability. I hope to have the privilege to do that. What is inappropriate is for somebody who serves as the Speaker to continue that conduct. That is the part that seems confusing to the current Speaker. As a matter of fact, when he ran to be the Speaker, he acknowledged that he had had many partisan positions and played partisan games; he said that he wanted to be judged by his conduct going forward. He asked for us to trust him. He said that, effectively, the proof would be in the pudding. We have some facts that we should go through.
The other thing he said was that the Speaker should be a referee and not a participant in the game. I can tell members that he has had more headlines for his misconduct since he has been in the position of Speaker than have the vast majority of members of Parliament in the House.
We had other reservations about the fact that he had been found guilty by the Ethics Commissioner of a breach of rules with regard to ethical behaviour. However, those were secondary to what we believe needs to be a non-partisan behaviour of any Speaker of the House of Commons.
Unfortunately, the revelation of partisan activity has really been historic. This is a type of history nobody should ever want to make. I do not think there has ever been a Canadian Speaker who has been a legend and been found guilty of so many partisan involvements while in the Speaker's Chair. I will just go through a few. The list has now grown to such a length that it would take me much longer than my speech would allow to go through them all.
It was discovered that, last October, he called up a former member of Parliament, who is now an opinion writer, and asked that person to write an op-ed slamming the official opposition for its effort to hold the government to account.
Next, in November, it was discovered that he attended and spoke at an event for his provincial Liberal association in Pontiac, for his provincial counterparts in Quebec. They were soliciting support from the community for the upcoming election. Obviously, they were looking for financial support.
In December, and this is when it all broke loose and became national news, the Speaker undertook to videotape a partisan video tribute that was broadcast at the Ontario Liberal Party's leadership convention. The tribute was for the outgoing interim leader of the Liberal Party. However, it was wrong on so many levels: It was at a Liberal Party convention where they were obviously soliciting support for the next general election. Yes, the tribute was specific to an individual who was leaving an interim position, but he would also be seeking re-election, so it is not as though it was just some tribute.
However, far worse than just paying tribute to a Liberal candidate as a non-partisan Speaker is that the Speaker recorded it in his full Speaker's robe and in his Speaker's office. One would think somebody somewhere would have raised alarm bells. However, it gets worse: When it was all made public, his defence was that he did not think anybody was going to find out. He said that he did not know it was going to be put on the big screen; he thought he could get away without anybody knowing.
Then the Liberal Party, again coming to his defence, said that, in fact, it was not clear to him that it was going to be exposed to the public. All of them in agreement believe that it would have been all right if it just had not become public. That in and of itself raises a massive question of conduct and of character.
In the days that followed the fallout of that scandalous video, the Speaker jetted off in the midst of a sitting week. It happens rarely, if ever, that a Speaker does so, but the current Speaker did. He went down to Washington. We would have imagined he was going there for some very important, high-level meeting that obviously would have required him to leave Parliament; however, we then found out he actually went there to pay tribute to a good Liberal he came to know while he was the president of the Young Liberals. He made another tribute to a Liberal while he was travelling on the Speaker's budget.
Now we have the revelations of this summertime evening with the Honourable Speaker of the House. The details of the event have been circulated, and they are interesting. They are very partisan. They attack the official opposition and the leader of the official opposition. I had the opportunity to actually go through other invites that were posted to the same website, the Liberal Party of Canada's website about events in local communities. By far the most partisan descriptor of any event posted on that entire website is attributed to the Speaker of the House of Commons.
Then, of course, we have the cover-up. It is all fine because now the Liberal Party of Canada, obviously a disinterested and independent body, has come racing to the Speaker's defence. It says that he did not know it was going to be posted there. Therefore, it is okay, and the Liberal Party of Canada will take full responsibility. It says that was the party's doing and that this is a template it uses for all kinds of events on the website.
I went through all the events. There is only one other event that has the same text, and it was posted in the midst of this scandal. It is not as though it was there for a long period of time. It was just recently posted, and it is the only other event with the same descriptor. This is not a boilerplate template. This is another effort by the Liberal Party to cover things up.
However, the interesting part is this: If one looks at the fine print at the bottom of the website, it reads, “Team [Prime Minister] events are posted by local volunteer teams.” There is also a “learn more” link, as well as a link to “submit a ticketed event.” My party does not know when I hold a local event unless I tell them.
My local association is very effective at doing the good work of raising money and political support in my community. The Conservative Party of Canada does not organize these things; they are local events by local volunteers and other folks.
The interesting part is that the former PMO staff member and former president of the Hull–Aylmer Federal Liberal Association now serves as the Speaker's chief of staff. It does not seem to me that the individual would have been appointed because he was really well versed in parliamentary procedure. It is clear what his credentials were.
I say all of this to say that he knows how the system works. Nothing gets fed to the party without somebody at the local level sending it there. The event was clearly a decision of the local folks. Any member of Parliament in this place, when they are expected to show up at an event, does not have the event planned without their knowledge. Therefore the Speaker knew about the event, and there is a chief of staff who is very politically astute and has been engaged at the local association level who is now serving as the chief of staff to the Speaker. Nothing checks out about these revelations and the now new explanation that the Speaker has given.
The Speaker has demonstrated countless times that he is unfit to be a non-partisan Speaker. He is a very effective partisan Liberal. We have lost trust in his ability to govern this place.