Candice Bergen

[Interim Estimates, March 21st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate what you are asking. It is important, considering what the Minister of National Defence just stated. He said he felt he was in here because he came in while points of order were going on. However, what you need to clarify, Mr. Speaker, is that the question had begun, which is the time when we would expect that the minister should have been in the chamber.

You need to clarify, Mr. Speaker, that your reading of the question began just moments prior to the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader rising and saying he could not hear you. That is the time period, those seconds.

That is the beginning of the question. If members were not in the House at that point, they need to rise. It is not whether they were present while points of order were going on. It is important that you clarify that, and then you can continue as you did.

[Interim Estimates, March 21st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to my hon. colleague's point of order. He indeed does have the right to hear the question. If he was in his seat, as I believe he was, when you began reading the question and he could not hear it, he could have asked you to repeat it.

However, what the Liberals do not have a right to do is that while you are repeating the question, to scurry in and think that they can become part of the votes. Once you begin the question, Mr. Speaker, at that precise moment only members of Parliament who are in their seats are eligible to vote. You could certainly repeat it 45 times until the hon. member has heard it. However, what we cannot have in this place, on a vote of confidence, are members who were not in their seats when you began the question, which you have already acknowledged you did, being allowed to participate in this vote of confidence.

We ask you, Mr. Speaker, to suspend the House until we can ascertain, with full confidence, who was in their seats on both sides when you began the question.

[Interim Estimates, March 21st, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, this goes to the heart of what we do in this place. These are confidence votes. We have been here now for just about 24 hours, probably every 30 minutes offering the Liberal government an option to get out of here and to finish up these confidence votes.

It is not our problem that the Liberals are out there sleeping on the cots, having naps and hanging out at camp cover-up, when we are coming here, possibly having more members than they have and getting ready to defeat them on a vote. When members are coming in while you are reading, as has been identified by my colleagues and colleagues from the NDP, it is very serious. It has happened a number of times over the last 24 hours.

I would ask that we do not continue with the vote until we identify precisely who walked in. We will get the tape if we have to of who walked in while you were reading the vote so that those individuals will not be allowed to vote. Liberals are not above the rules in this place.

[Interim Estimates, March 21st, 2019]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order. In relation to what you just articulated, it really is true. The Liberals have been forcing these votes, one vote after the other after the other, because they refuse to allow the former attorney general, and now we are hearing from the former treasury board president.

What I would suggest—and I think that if you seek unanimous consent, you will find it—is that had these votes not been occurring, we would be getting very close to the time that would normally be Oral Questions. There are a lot of questions that Canadians have and that we would like to ask the government.

I think if you seek it, Madam Speaker, you may find unanimous consent that we suspend voting for one hour for the normal time of Oral Questions, and then after that question period is complete, we could then resume voting.

I think if you seek it, you will find consent for that motion.

[Justice, March 20th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, we know that the Prime Minister likes to just say that women have experienced interactions with him differently. Boy, where have we heard that one before? However, we know what the Liberal member for Whitby said. She had an experience where the Prime Minister phoned her and screamed at her so loudly her husband could hear it through the phone.

Why is it that the Prime Minister cannot see that when he silences women, yells and screams at them and says that their experiences are just different perspectives, he is demeaning all women and showing what a fake feminist he is?

[Justice, March 20th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is really good at yelling and screaming at women, as the member for Whitby knows. He is also a very good actor. However, he is a fake feminist. We know that after the principled resignation of the former president of the Treasury Board, another good old boy, the Minister of Finance, said she just quit because she was good friends with the former attorney general and that is just what girls do.

Why is the Prime Minister and his friends thinking it is so much easier to silence women and—

[Justice, March 20th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, what has become abundantly clear with this cover-up is that the Prime Minister is nothing but a fake feminist. This all started when the good old boys at SNC-Lavalin were caught bribing and spending money on prostitutes and then the Prime Minister and his good old boys said to them, “Don't worry, we'll take care of it.” However, then a woman, the former attorney general, said no to the good old boys and she was promptly fired and silenced.

Why is the Prime Minister silencing women of principle while covering up for the actions of his corrupt friends?

[Justice, March 18th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, it is clear to everyone watching that the justice committee is controlled by the Prime Minister's Office through the Liberal members on that committee.

Today, we just heard that the Prime Minister is going to be asking his Liberal friend Anne McLellan to apparently investigate. I guess his Liberal friends Gerry Butts, Kathleen Wynne and Sheila Copps were busy.

We do not need any Liberals investigating Liberals. What we need to have is the former attorney general being allowed to speak and to give her whole story. Will the Prime Minister let her speak?

[Justice, March 18th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, on at least four separate occasions at the justice committee, the former attorney general said that she could not talk about something because of privilege restrictions. She could not talk about why she left cabinet, even though the Prime Minister, Gerry Butts and the Clerk of the Privy Council all did. To add insult to injury, the Liberals on the justice committee are clearly nothing more than PMO puppets who are part of this cover-up.

The justice committee meets tomorrow morning. Will the Prime Minister finally remove all the restrictions and let the former attorney general speak at the justice committee?

[Privilege, March 18th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to add a few of my own comments to my colleague's request that you look at this as a point of privilege.

I want to begin by congratulating the member for New Westminster—Burnaby on his new position as House Leader for the NDP.

There are a couple of things that I think are important to note around this issue.

First, this issue is so important that the House will recall that two weeks ago, when I requested an emergency debate in the House on the issue of the SNC-Lavalin cover-up, the emergency debate was granted. The Speaker saw how important it was that we get to the bottom of this issue, that we, as parliamentarians certainly, and Canadians, understand and know the truth around the circumstances whereby the former Attorney General was pressured to interfere in a criminal prosecution. That pressure was brought to bear by the Prime Minister and his office.

The House will also recall that when this broke, the story from the Prime Minister changed continually. It first was denial. He said that nothing happened, that there was no pressure. He then blamed Scott Brison. He then said that her experiences were different from his. Overall, the story has changed continuously.

What has added not only to the confusion but what appears to be a massive cover-up are the different stories being presented by the current Attorney General, and the information, and as my colleague pointed out, the answers, given to the House by the current Attorney General, which we now know are not true.

We have had to have an emergency debate about it. The justice committee has been complicit in the cover-up, working with the Prime Minister's Office to help cover this up. We have seen the current Attorney General, the individual who is tasked with keeping the laws of this land, mislead the House, saying that he believes whatever the Prime Minister said and whose own story has been changing.

This is a crisis of moral authority in this country. This is not just a political discussion that happens in the chamber sometimes. This is not just a “he said, she said”, or “he said, he said”. This goes to the very fabric of our country and the moral authority to govern this country.

I appreciate that there have already been examples brought to the Speaker on previous times that the House was misled and a prima facia question of privilege was found. The one that was talked about was in 2002, when Art Eggleton, the then minister of national defence, was accused of deliberately making misleading statements.

In 2011, Bev Oda, the then minister of international cooperation, was accused of deliberately making misleading statements. That point was about the confusion created by the minister's contradictory statements. Speaker Milliken ruled that a prima facie question of privilege did exist, and the House agreed to refer the matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

In 2014, former colleague Brad Butt from Mississauga—Streetsville was accused of making misleading statements to the House, and again the Speaker found that it warranted a prima facie question of privilege.

Those were both instances that, although important in terms of not making misleading statements to the House, did not go to the very fibre and fabric of our system of democracy and the independence of the judiciary.

I make those points because this is a gravely important issue, and I want to add one more comment.

Another angle to this could be that the Attorney General himself has been misled by the Prime Minister. He could have not been told the truth by the Prime Minister. There is also a precedent for that. Page 116 of Bosc and Gagnon explains the following:

Misleading a Minister or a Member has also been considered a form of obstruction and, thus, a prima facie breach of privilege. For example, on December 6, 1978, in finding that a prima facie contempt of the House existed, Speaker Jerome ruled that a government official, by deliberately misleading a Minister, had impeded the Member in the performance of his duties and consequently obstructed the House itself.

We do not know. Would it have been Michael Wernick, the Clerk of the Privy Council, who possibly mislead our current Attorney General? That is another question.

Either the Attorney General was misled by the Prime Minister and the Clerk of the Privy Council or their officials, or the Attorney General deliberately misled the House on an issue of grave importance, so grave that we had an emergency debate on it, so grave that we have been consumed with this.

The government, today by the way, just had its third cabinet shuffle in less than six or seven weeks. The government is not consumed with issues that are affecting the country, such as pipelines, canola exports to China, massive deficits and job losses. The Liberals are consumed with saving their own skins and moving cabinet around as they are constantly trying to fill holes that are being created by their own scandal and their own cover-up.

I fully support my colleague's request that a prima facie case be found, and I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to speak to this. I would ask that if more information becomes available, we could be afforded the opportunity to address this again.