Christine Moore

[Veterans, March 23rd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, could you call for order, please. I cannot even hear myself speak.

[Veterans, March 23rd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to follow up on the question that I asked about veterans.

[Supplementary Estimates (C), 2017-18, March 23rd, 2018]

Madam Speaker, you said earlier that members were not allowed to take videos or photos with their phones and that any such videos or photos had to be removed from social media. Unfortunately, the member for Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia does to seem to know how to delete tweets. I would like to know whether one of his colleagues could show him how to do it.

[Business of Supply, March 22nd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, personally, what frightens me the most about politics is the thought of ever putting my family in danger.

In this particular situation, Mr. Atwal was photographed with the Prime Minister's wife. If my children were ever anywhere near a terrorist or anyone convicted of terrorist acts, I would be furious and would move heaven and earth to find out why that individual was there. I would not back down until I got an answer.

In this case, we are told that it was a simple mistake, but I would describe it as a colossal mistake. It is entirely appropriate for us to be told how this could have happened. From a security standpoint, the Prime Minister's wife was put in close proximity to a convicted terrorist. This cannot be taken lightly. It makes perfect sense to me that the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security should look into what happened. To that end, the committee members want to speak with the most non-partisan person possible, someone who can give them the answers they are looking for.

What are the member's thoughts on that?

[Business of Supply, March 22nd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal members have repeatedly attacked Conservative and NDP opposition members who want to talk to a public servant.

I would like to know if my colleague thinks there is anything wrong with us wanting to talk to public servants, especially since they are non-partisan and more likely to give us real answers. It seems to me that we should be able to talk to as many public servants as we think we need to hear from. I think it is perfectly fine for the opposition to ask them for input into certain committee studies.

Given that my colleague was once a minister, does he see anything wrong with an opposition member wanting to talk to a public servant?

[Business of Supply, March 22nd, 2018]

Madam Speaker, had I planned the trip to India, I would have given priority to certain ministers over others who went on the trip.

I realize that not all ministers can go. That is why I named five ministers. If my memory serves me well, there are 30 ministers in the cabinet. I do not think I named all cabinet members.

I also did not say that all the ministers should have gone. I said that there was no strategy for choosing them. I do not understand how they decided that these six ministers should participate and not others. I cannot get an answer to my question, but if my colleague wants to give it to me or table it in the House, he is welcome to do so.

I would like to know what criteria the cabinet used to determine which ministers went to India. I will wait impatiently for the parliamentary secretary to provide the list of criteria used to pick the members of the delegation that travelled to India.

[Business of Supply, March 22nd, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I will give another example. If Mr. Trump invited the Prime Minister to a state dinner in the United States, it would be appropriate for him to be accompanied by his wife and children, as our American colleague would likely do the same.

However, if the Prime Minister is travelling abroad with 14 members of Parliament, then it is to do work. A group of 14 people travelling together would fill a bus. I think that is a clear indication that they are there to work. I was surprised to see that the Prime Minister found the time to visit tourist attractions with 14 members of Parliament in tow.

I am not sure how we got here. To me this is an absurd situation. If the Prime Minister had to attend meetings with each MP, that would mean 14 meetings a day, assuming that the MPs in question had only one meeting per day. I do not understand how the Prime Minister found the time to do anything but attend meetings with the 14 MPs who joined him.

[Business of Supply, March 22nd, 2018]

Madam Speaker, today we are discussing a motion to instruct one of our public officers to appear before a committee to try to shed some light on a situation about which we have heard far too many stories.

This situation occurred during the trip to India. I think is important to present some of the key aspects of the trip. First of all, most Canadians have absolutely no idea what the strategy was behind this trip and this is true of various aspects. For example, when it comes to the criteria the Prime Minister used for determining who would join him on the trip, there is no way of getting a guest list or understanding exactly the purpose of the trip. I think that there were a number of ministers who could have made a valuable contribution to the debate in India and that it would have been important to include them, but they were not there.

Why was the Minister of International Trade not there? That is an important question. I would think that in planning a trip to India, the Minister of International Trade would have a stake. What is more, if he had been there, then there would have been at least one person there who can speak French. I think we have every right to ask that question.

One of the people whose name came up the most often was the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. I think that he should have been there, given the trade issues regarding chickpeas and lentils. India has increased import tariffs on chickpeas from 30% to 40%. That has a direct impact on our farmers and yet neither the Minister of International Trade nor the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food were there to talk about it. That alone raises a number of questions, but the list goes on.

Right now, there is an unprecedented labour shortage in our rural regions. Why did the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship not go on that trip to discuss the possibility of establishing partnerships to recruit workers who would be interested in coming to Canada to work? That would have been a very relevant and worthwhile discussion.

Recently, we learned that companies are now subcontracting the reading of X-rays to India. Hospitals are sending X-rays and other scans to specialized medical clinics in India to be read. Had the Minister of Health been invited, she could have raised the legitimate concern of the reliability of those readings. She also could have raised the question that many Canadians are asking about this practice, and that is whether their personal medical data is adequately protected when the analysis of X-ray results are subcontracted to India. That would have been a very relevant question, and in my opinion, the Minister of Health could have contributed to that debate. However, she was not there either.

They also chose not to take the Minister of Status of Women even though India is among the countries where women have the most difficult living conditions. Absolutely horrible cases of gang rapes of women of the lowest castes have been reported by the media. I believe that the Minister of Status of Women could have had fruitful discussions with the Indian government about what is happening and assessed how to collaborate and provide India with tools to improve the quality of life of these women. However, she was not there either. What was the strategy and the purpose of this trip? What were they trying to accomplish?

I am going to talk a little about the schedule because MPs, when they are available, are asked to travel abroad to discuss issues. When I travel abroad, I always have an extremely busy schedule. Honestly, between my work day and a working dinner in the evening, I often have barely enough time to change. I change in five minutes and go from one event to the next. I do not understand how the Prime Minister had so much time to go sightseeing everywhere. It seemed much more like a sightseeing tour than a prime minister's state visit.

For such a trip, I expect the Prime Minister to attend a series of meetings on a tight schedule and have very little opportunity to go sightseeing, or at least keep it very brief. When a Prime Minister travels abroad, he is expected to meet with people, visit companies, and do a very serious job with specific objectives.

Unfortunately, there were not very many photos of the Prime Minister having meetings. Instead, we saw a lot of pictures of the Prime Minister visiting tourist attractions with his wife and children. That raises questions, particularly given his headline-making trip to the Aga Khan’s island. The Prime Minister should have shown restraint, and he should request that his trips be strictly professional from now on, so there is no longer any doubt as to what they are for. It is too bad that there were no specific visits or a structured, goal-oriented agenda for his India trip.

The disaster in question is the invitation sent to Mr. Atwal, who attended an event, by the way. It was only after the second event that this invitation was withdrawn, when it was realized that he was there. We heard different versions from a lot of people: from the Prime Minister, from the Minister of International Trade, from Mr. Atwal himself, from the member who decided to take the blame, and even from the Indian government. Nothing in this story holds water. Indeed, one of our public servants, who is non-partisan, is not permitted to appear before a committee. This makes absolutely no sense. If someone is able to provide the most impartial and accurate information, it would be precisely this person. It therefore makes absolutely no sense to refuse to hear from this individual in committee. We need some light shed on this, especially given the situation this has thrown us into.

Our diplomatic relations with India are a disaster, since the Prime Minister accused it of being behind this invitation. This is totally ludicrous. What is more, he did it without providing hard evidence, which makes it even worse. If solid evidence had been provided, I would have found it a little strange, but at least there would have been some proof. Not only did the Prime Minister suggest this, but he did so without providing any evidence to either the House or the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. It is all very disturbing.

This is a member of the Commonwealth, a country that swears allegiance to the same Crown as we do. I have had the chance to meet with several of its members of parliament. It is a country that we have a relationship with, and yet, this has been allowed to happen and nothing is being done to remedy the situation. The incident occurred almost a month ago and they are still sticking to the same story, despite its many holes and the fact that it is undermining our relationship, rather than putting a stop to all of this.

The trip was an unmitigated disaster, but now it is high time to end this farce. We need to know what really happened, and those who provided inaccurate information need to apologize so we can move forward and rebuild our relationship with India. Unfortunately, because both parties are determined to stick to their contradictory versions of events and refusing to shed light on what happened, our relations with India remain strained.

This situation could have consequences for months, if not years to come. This could even have repercussions on the relationships that subsequent governments will have with India. This is particularly worrisome. The least they could do is to allow Daniel Jean to appear before a committee, given the mess that the Prime Minister has put us in.

I look forward to my colleagues’ questions.

[Business of Supply, March 22nd, 2018]

Madam Speaker, given that the various people involved, including the Prime Minister, are giving us contradictory versions of events, it is hypocritical to say that the opposition is not considering the point of view of security officials and public servants.

The motion is calling for that public servant to appear before the committee precisely because the opposition feels that he is the only one who can set the record straight. That is why we want to speak with that individual, and not the Prime Minister or the member in question, because there is a perception that they will not tell the truth.

[Business of Supply, March 22nd, 2018]

Madam Speaker, when the Conservatives were in power, the member for Outremont, who was the leader of the official opposition at the time, was admitted to the Privy Council for a briefing on national security issues and to facilitate communication between party leaders on those issues.

Now that the Conservatives are the official opposition, does my colleague believe the official opposition is getting enough information about national security from the government? Is it regularly getting the information it needs to analyze situations that have an impact on national security?