Craig Scott

[Ethics, May 30th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, why should the kinds of documents being provided to authorities be at arm's length from Canadians?

Let us move on. Yesterday, when asked about when he started talking with the PMO about the Senate expenses scandal, the Prime Minister answered, “Obviously, we all spoke of this as soon as the story was in the news”.

Could the government confirm that the conversations between the Prime Minister and folks in the PMO took place sometime late last year?

[Justice, May 30th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the question was not whether he wrote it, but who was the recipient.

Let me turn to another matter. Given that these activities may have been a breach of both parliamentary ethics rules and the criminal law, specifically what documentation has been handed over to independent authorities, the Senate Ethics Officer, the House Ethics Commissioner and the RCMP?

[41st General Election, May 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, last week, as the Prime Minister will know, the Federal Court found that widespread electoral fraud was committed during the 2011 election involving phone calls telling voters that their voting location had changed. The court found that the voter database at Conservative headquarters was very “likely” the source of the data for those calls.

The Conservative Party announced very quickly that they were “pleased” with these findings, so the question is this: Is the Prime Minister pleased that his party's resources were used to commit widespread voter fraud?

[41st General Election, May 27th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is the judge said that the applicants and the Council of Canadians acted in the public interest. He said the Conservatives made transparent attempts to derail the case.

If the government was serious about all this, it would by now have given Elections Canada tools to catch the criminals. Instead, Conservatives have refused all along to strengthen the investigative capacity of Elections Canada. When will it stop the delay and the shielding tactics and introduce a bill for Elections Canada to be able to find who used that Conservative database to commit fraud?

[Kempton Howard, May 27th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, Kempton Howard was an inspiring young leader dedicated to helping other youth in the community of Toronto—Danforth. He was a role model to countless teens through his volunteer work at the Eastview Neighbourhood Community Centre and the Eastview Boys and Girls Club, where he was a moderator of a junior leadership program, an after-school children's program leader, a summer day camp counsellor, a youth basketball coach and a recipient of the youth Ontario services award.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of his murder by gunfire in 2003. We must understand that the victims of crime, especially crimes of violence and crimes involving guns, include the loved ones of the direct victims, the family and friends who suffer from their loss. That is why I believe we must implement a country-wide system of adequate support for victims of crime and their families; ensure reliable, long-term funding for programs that help divert youth away from gangs and crimes; and introduce a long overdue comprehensive anti-smuggling strategy for guns.

I encourage everyone to sign Kempton's legacy petition in support of victims of crime.

[41st General Election, May 24th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives acted shamefully before the court to avoid talking about their role in voter fraud. Justice Mosley said Conservatives tried to “block these proceedings by any means”, made “transparent attempts to derail the case” and “engaged in trench warfare” before the court.

It also has been over a year since the government promised amendments to the Canada Elections Act. Are all these delay tactics part of its larger campaign to put fraud and partisanship ahead of fair elections?

[41st General Election, May 24th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, a Federal Court judge confirmed that widespread voter fraud occurred in 2011 and linked the fraudulent calls all over Canada to the Conservative Party.

Justice Mosley said, “I find that electoral fraud occurred during the 41st general election”. Then he went on to say, “[t]he most likely source of the information used to make the misleading calls was the CIMS database controlled by the [Conservative Party]”.

Why are the members of the Conservative government actually celebrating a court judgment that implicates them in widespread voter fraud?

[Justice, May 23rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the only wrong thing was not telling the Prime Minister or the public. That is what that quote says directly.

Let us go back to Lima. The Prime Minister emphasized that Mr. Wright paid out Senator Duffy with Mr. Wright's own money, as if that somehow absolves Mr. Wright of possible criminal responsibility involving up to a year in jail under the Parliament of Canada Act and 14 years under the Criminal Code.

Does the government front bench agree with the Prime Minister that Mr. Wright was trying to do the right thing when he used his own money so that Mr. Duffy could pretend to be paying back the $90,000 as his own money?

[Justice, May 23rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, deigning to speak to us from Peru, the Prime Minister said that Nigel Wright wrote a cheque for Senator Duffy for what he called “the right motive”, but the Prime Minister is ignoring that making a payment to a senator in relation to a controversy before the Senate or for the purpose of influencing a senator is an indictable offence under the Parliament of Canada Act.

Can today's stand-in prime minister tell us why the Prime Minister continues to soft-pedal potentially criminal activity?

[Justice, May 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, they can tell that to Helena Guergis.

At the very least it is clear a crime may have been committed, so why the silence from the Minister of Justice? No one is buying the Conservatives' hear-no-evil approach to this issue.

The Parliament of Canada Act, in section 16, states that

No member of the Senate shall receive...any compensation...in relation to any...matter before...a committee...

yet according to reports, this is exactly what Mike Duffy and Nigel Wright did.

Why will the Minister of Justice not concede that a crime may have been committed and call in the RCMP?