Charlie Angus

[Privilege, October 22nd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the issue of foreign interference is very serious, yet when we ask questions, we are being called dogs in the House. They were calling people cockroaches before.

Mr. Speaker, you need to establish a standard of behaviour. The Conservatives cannot just denigrate politicians who are serious about issues of foreign interference by calling them—

[Privilege, October 22nd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We are at a time where we have seen them use chatbot and AI. Would she tell us who wrote that? Was it someone from the party or is that—

[Privilege, October 22nd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I am very interested in the issue of what parties are hiding. It should be fundamental that we put the nation above the interests of the party, but we see that the Conservative leader refuses to get security clearance.

I want to ask the member about CSIS's October 2022 intelligence assessment that Sam Cooper, a journalist, reported on. He said, “Government of India agents appear to have interfered in the Conservatives' 2022 leadership race by purchasing memberships for one candidate while undermining another, and also boasted of funding ‘a number of politicians at all levels of government’.” We know who was the recipient of that largesse: the man who is living in Stornoway. I would like to ask whether the member is willing to stand up and name the politicians who have been paid off by the Government of India?

[Privilege, October 10th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, what was that? The leader, who lives in Stornoway, does not have security clearance. Does the member think that is something I would not say outside? He does not have security clearance. Is that the question? What is the question here?

The Conservatives and their sock puppets on the back bench are shutting down Parliament. Would I not say that outside? Of course I would say that. I do not know what the member is so concerned about. The man is unfit for public office. He is unfit if he is talking about—

[Privilege, October 10th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, we are dealing with horrific levels of violence against innocent people, and the Conservatives have done nothing to speak up for the innocent people who are dying in Lebanon right now when so many Lebanese Canadians are crying out for help. The Conservative leader is cheering on the bombing of a facility that he did not know existed. If he had had security clearance, he might have had an understanding of whether there was a nuclear facility. However, he does not have that knowledge and does not have the maturity, because this man is fundamentally unfit for office.

A man who calls for the bombing of a foreign country and says that killing innocent people is a gift to humanity is fundamentally unfit to lead anything in this country.

[Privilege, October 10th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I hope my hon. colleague will not mind that I go back to my friend from the Conservatives. It is very concerning that the Conservatives think that if they win an election, they do not need to know what is going on in the world. They think that all they need is to win enough votes and they do not need to know what is happening in Iran. They think they can make any kind of bogus statement they want. That is frightening.

I also want to mention Stephen Harper turning things over to the RCMP. There was nowhere left to go when it came out. I was there. I was the one who took down Mike Duffy and Nigel Wright. I was there when Stephen Harper, day after day, stonewalled, but the corruption was in his office. It was his chief of staff writing a cheque. This was not about friends and cronies. This was about the prime minister of this country, the guy who shut down the Afghan detainees and did not care about basic facts. When the RCMP was on him, he had to throw poor Mike Duffy under the bus.

[Privilege, October 10th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, where to start? Why is the member talking about the guy who lives in Stornoway in a 19-room mansion with his own private chef, when he should be talking about why the Conservatives are refusing to respect the Speaker's order so we can investigate this scandal? I would love to talk about what the guy gets at Stornoway all day, but that is not the issue here.

The fact that the member thinks a prime minister of a G7 country does not need a security clearance is kind of worrisome. It is no wonder I have such concerns about the Conservatives on the backbench. In what world do they get elected and think that to be a leader of a G7 country someone does not need to know what is going—

[Privilege, October 10th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you for your excellent work, and if I have ever crossed any lines, I am so glad that you always keep me on the straight and narrow. I hope that does not come out of my time, though.

The fundamental issue is that when we are elected to serve in Parliament, beyond our parties and beyond our local issues, our fundamental obligation is the betterment of Canada. That is our obligation, all of us, so when there is a leader who does not care about national security and does not want to know or cannot know, that is a serious black mark question.

The leader of the Conservative Party needs to explain why he is so uninterested in that, particularly if he is shooting his mouth off about the violence happening in the Middle East, which has caused so much suffering. He does not even know what the facts are, and either he is refusing to get briefed so he can understand or he cannot. If he cannot get security clearance, that is a serious question.

[Privilege, October 10th, 2024]

Thank you so much, Mr. Speaker. I am not surprised at the Conservatives. Again, it is the crocodile in the room. They are saying, “Don't look at our past. Don't look at what we did when we allowed torture and suppressed documents.”

Let us get to the documents that Stephen Harper refused to turn over. His refusal to turn over the documents resulted in him being found in contempt of Parliament. That is the kind of man who represented the Conservative Party. Speaker Milliken said the refusal to turn over the documents struck at the “very foundations” of the parliamentary system, not that Stephen Harper, a good friend of Orbán in Hungary, cared that he was striking at the very heart of the parliamentary system, that all of the Conservatives went along with attacking the very fundamentals of our parliamentary system, or that it violated the Constitution. Stephen Harper did not care about that.

Errol Mendes was speaking at one of the parliamentary hearings looking into the Afghan detainees when he said:

The executive is really placing itself above Parliament. For the first time that I know in Canadian history, the executive is saying we are superior to Parliament...This is nothing more than an open defiance of Parliament. Nothing more, nothing less.

Let us go back to the crocodile metaphor. Of all the crocodiles that Canada has had, Stephen Harper was the ultimate crocodile. Here was a man who was in open defiance, who said he was superior to Parliament, and all the Conservatives went along. We have never heard a single Conservative mention we have a direct case of a prime minister not turning over documents. It is because if they were in that situation, they would never turn over documents. Stephen Harper would not turn over the documents. What did Stephen Harper do? Well, he always hated the democratic process anyway, so he just shut Parliament down. Do members remember that? Our Conservatives do not have much memory, but I will remind them. Stephen Harper shut down our democracy rather than work out a process for obtaining these documents.

Here we are now, in 2024, and what are the Conservatives doing? They are shutting down our democracy. They are making it impossible for us to do our work. They are running these endless questions of privilege when it has been ruled by the Speaker to send the issue to committee to be studied, so we can get a ruling. Who knows? Maybe we will find the present Prime Minister in contempt of Parliament. However, the real contempt of Parliament is the Leader of the Opposition, who believes in a policy of chaos and vicious attacks, and who will do anything to obstruct the work of Parliament. That is the real issue here.

We have a Liberal scandal that needs to be addressed. The Conservatives do not care. They work on chaos theory. They talk to us about transparency, accountability and corruption; oh my God, from the Conservative Party? How far back do we need to go?

Again, I am always amazed. Brian Mulroney was caught accepting money in a brown paper bag in a hotel room. I mean, that is normally what bikers and drug dealers do, but do former prime ministers of this country accept brown paper bags of money in a hotel room? Well, he was a Conservative leader, and that was not transparency and accountability. He stuffed it in his pocket and was doing favours.

Tony Clement was on the Conservative front bench. Now, I like Tony. He is a nice guy, but he took $50 million from the border infrastructure fund. Border security is meant to keep us safe, but he passed it out in this bogus little slush fund he set up in Muskoka. How many gazebos were built in Muskoka with money that should have kept the border safe?

We asked for the documents with straightforward questions: “Tony, what did you do with our $50 million? Did you really buy a sunken boat? Did you really buy a fake lake?” What did the Harper Conservatives say? They kept it under cabinet confidence and suppressed this totally bogus slush fund. That is a lack of transparency and accountability.

It is the crocodile principle. We trusted them to come into our home because we thought they were going to look after us. Guess what. Just look at the history. They say “the most corrupt government in history”, and there is a lot: the WE scandal and SNC-Lavalin, I mean, with the Liberals, it is part of their DNA. But my God, Mike Duffy; are they kidding me?

Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau were the three most unfit people ever chosen to sit in the Canadian Senate. They were so unfit that even Caligula's horse would have been a better choice for the Senate. At least Caligula's horse met the standard of being from the place he was supposed to be from, unlike Mike Duffy. Do members remember Mac Harb, another famous scam artist? He bought a cottage 101 kilometres from Ottawa that did not have lights or running water, and then he hit up taxpayers for his travel, even though he never went there because he had a condo in downtown Ottawa.

I mention Mike Duffy because he was a bagman for Stephen Harper. He got appointed to the Senate until he was 75. He was the member for "come from away" in Prince Edward Island. The two most famous fake, fictional people in Prince Edward Island are Anne of Green Gables and Mike Duffy. What happened? He got upset. He had his own hairdresser being paid for by the taxpayers. Nigel Wright had to write a secret $90,000 cheque. Do members remember that? This was Stephen Harper's right-hand man. Nigel Wright was proper, upstanding, a good Christian man, and he had to write a $90,000 cheque. Only in Canada can it be a crime to offer a bribe, but not to accept a bribe, or is it the other way around? Stephen Harper's inner office staff were writing secret cheques. Again, talk about the crocodiles being invited into the house; this is not transparency and accountability.

Now let us get to the man who is the present leader of the Conservative Party. A June 2024 report of the National Security and Intelligence Committee, a redacted document, said foreign interference in the leadership allowed him to take out Erin O'Toole. I would like to see Conservatives come clean with the Canadian people and release the documents. They are not going to release those documents. This is about foreign interference that allowed the guy now living in Stornoway to be leader. Members do not need to take my word for it. Erin O'Toole testified alongside federal lawyers that he believed Chinese interference took him out. I know some members of the Conservative backbench were definitely involved. Maybe they talked to the foreign Chinese government. I do not know. Those documents should be coming forward.

Why is that important? I am not sure the current leader has ever actually had a job. I do not want to say that is not a problem. I personally find it kind of odd that he sort of claims he worked at a Dairy Queen. However, he does not have security clearance. He is the only leader in national history who either cannot or will not get a national security clearance. What the heck is with that? I mention it because the other day, when we were watching the horrific violence in the Middle East, the destabilizing of the situation, the people being bombed and killed, he was out there bragging that he thought it would be such a great thing for Netanyahu to bomb another country. The man is fundamentally unfit, and he is unfit because he does not even have security clearance. He does not even know what he is talking about.

We are trying to de-escalate a global nightmare in the Middle East where thousands of innocent people have been killed: Iranian people, Syrian people, Lebanese people, Israeli people and Palestinian people. At the same time, we have a guy living in a 19-room mansion, Stornoway, with his own personal chef, who cannot get security clearance, and he is talking about bombing another country. I want to know why Conservatives will not release the documents on his leadership. How did that guy get to the position he is in? How is it that he does not have security clearance?

That is a simple question. We should get that answer and we have not got that answer.

[Privilege, October 10th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, for verification, I am speaking about the Afghan documents that were not turned over by Stephen Harper. That is a precedent. Would you not agree that I am on topic by saying we are talking about a precedent of a prime minister turning over documents?