Erin O'Toole

[Business of Supply, March 22nd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to stand in the House of Commons in this debate with my Conservative colleagues. Just seeing the degree of animation, vitriol, and concern from the Liberal deputy House leader kind of reminds me of something an old bomber command veteran told me. He said, “You know you're over your target when you're getting heavy fire from the ground.” The desperate machinations of the Liberal Party on this issue show us that this, I believe, is an attempt by the Prime Minister's Office to obstruct Parliament from getting to the answers on the Atwal affair or to cover up the whole situation with Mr. Jean.

To illustrate that, in the time I have, I will start my remarks with a quote. My friend from Winnipeg, the deputy House leader for the Liberals, knows I love reading what people said when they were in opposition and comparing that to their positions in government. I am going to do that right now.

In opposition, with respect to public safety and security issues for Canada in October 2014, someone said, “being able to ask questions is essential in a democracy, even in difficult situations—especially in difficult situations.” The person who said that, when in opposition, was then the MP for Papineau, now the Prime Minister of Canada. I agree with that sentiment. I wonder what has happened to the Prime Minister. Difficult questions in difficult situations need to be asked when it comes to public safety and security. Remember, he said “especially in difficult situations”.

The difficult situation Canada finds itself in vis-à-vis the India Atwal scandal is perhaps the greatest diplomatic scandal Canada has ever witnessed. I do not say that with hyperbole, because India is a close friend to Canada. It is a Commonwealth partner. It is a country that bilateral trade doubled under the Conservative government of which I was a part. Many of us, and many Canadians, remember fondly. It is a Commonwealth partner with which we have enhanced relationships on security, nuclear technology, and bilateral relationships in trade. That has all been put at risk because of the careless and reckless actions of the Prime Minister. The trip was entirely premised on domestic politics. Virtually everyone who was on the trip, including the deputy House leader of the Liberal Party, my friend from Winnipeg, and virtually every event the trip had in its plan was based on currying favour and winning votes here in Canada, and it all backfired.

The denial by the Prime Minister and the public safety minister to allow parliamentarians to ask questions has led to the Atwal India affair and the cover-up I am concerned about, and has brought us here today.

For Canadians watching at home, let us see if we are being unreasonable here. My friend, the deputy House leader, almost foaming at the mouth, suggests we are not bringing in appropriate debate, that we are overstating the scandal with the Prime Minister's trip to India. Let us see what our request is.

All the opposition is asking for is that Daniel Jean, the national security adviser to the Prime Minister of Canada, provide members of Parliament with the same briefing and the same ability to ask questions that Daniel Jean gave to members of the media. Canadians, through the members of Parliament, deserve the same right to hear from Mr. Jean on this wild India conspiracy theory. Suggestions by the public safety minister that this material is somehow confidential is wrong. Why? Because the Liberals' own conduct shows that. By putting forward the national security adviser to select members of the press gallery, who write stories that thousands or millions of Canadians read, the Liberals were directly saying that anything Mr. Jean was saying was not top secret, was not confidential, because he was briefing people who tell things for a living.

That same basic right belongs with each member of Parliament. I have before you, Mr. Speaker, a privilege motion saying that my privilege and my rights, as both a member of Parliament and as the foreign affairs critic to hold the government to account for the most disastrous foreign trip in the history of our country, are being fettered as a member, or hampered, by the Prime Minister's unwillingness to allow the national security adviser, Mr. Jean, to appear before a committee of parliamentarians to give the same briefing and answer the same questions the Prime Minister's Office allowed him to do for the media.

Why did he allow the national security adviser to speak to the media? It was to save face in the midst of the disastrous India trip, where the Prime Minister was being mocked internationally for having no agenda, for having multiple elaborate costumes at events that made even Indian politicians and members of the arts community feel uncomfortable, for not taking the trade minister and the agriculture minister to India when, at the moment, the most pressing bilateral issue was a potential tariff increase to chickpeas and pulse products.

He did not take people to do work. The member for Winnipeg North may have paid his own way, because this was a domestic, political trip. Everyone who went, the schedule, the photos, the agenda was all premised on preening the Prime Minister before his supporters, his fundraisers, and voters in a few ridings. When it backfired, it backfired on him and on all Canadians.

Our request, to quote Mr. Swift, is a modest proposal. Parliamentarians are entitled to the same information that the Prime Minister's adviser gave to members of the media. That is our basic right as parliamentarians, which is why there is a privilege motion in front of you, Mr. Speaker, but also why we have brought this important debate to the House of Commons today.

For those following this debate, they have followed this saga for over a month. I have never seen such negative international headlines about a Canadian prime ministerial visit. One foreign columnist said that it was a moving train wreck. Is that what those members mean by “Canada is back”? Canada has a world-class, stellar reputation around the world, and it has been put at risk because of the Prime Minister and because of the India scandal with Jaspal Atwal.

Let us get to the bottom of the scandal and the two competing stories from the Liberal government.

One story was that the member for Surrey Centre invited Mr. Atwal, admitting afterwards that he should not have, but took sole responsibility and resigned for it. He fell on his sword, saying, “My bad, it was all me.” Then, a few days later, when the Prime Minister allowed his national security adviser to meet with the media, the government floated this sinister and, we would submit, preposterous theory that Mr. Atwal was invited by the India government to embarrass the Prime Minister. Both of those things cannot be true.

When the Prime Minister and the public safety minister deny parliamentarians their right to ask questions about which story is true, they are impeding Parliament and are covering up which story is true from Canadians.

I will show, directly in quotes by all the key figures, what I mean. Jaspal Atwal, himself, in a rather comical at times press conference he held a few weeks said this, “When I asked to consider attending the reception, I had assumed there would be no problem. No one at any point indicated there would be any issue”. He is confirming that he asked the MP for Surrey Centre to go. He did not expect there would be an issue, because the Prime Minister calls him “Jas”. They are friends. We have seen pictures going back several years. Mr. Atwal said that the Prime Minister and him had a nice chat years ago in his Hummer on a visit to British Columbia.

At the press conference, Mr. Atwal also confirmed he had been to India several times. This was not a magical trip where he was first granted entry; he had been there several times.

This is what Mr. Atwal's lawyer said at the same press briefing. He stated, “He basically went to this occasion, put his name in, he assumes he was vetted appropriately, he has not hid who he was, he has not changed his name.” The lawyer for Mr. Atwal confirmed that Mr. Atwal asked an MP to go, and assumed his name would be vetted by both the MP for Surrey Centre and by the Prime Minister's Office. Therefore, we have Atwal to the MP for Surrey Centre. This is the chain of evidence.

What did the MP for Surrey Centre say? He said:

As you know, an individual planning on attending tonight’s reception had his invitation rescinded. Let me be clear--this person should never have been invited in the first place. I alone facilitated his request to attend this important event. I should have exercised better judgment, and I take full responsibility for my actions.

I thank the MP for Surrey Centre for admitting that he alone was responsible for the invitation.

Later, the MP for Surrey Centre said this to the Surrey Now-Leader, a paper in his riding:

“Look, I took full responsibility as soon as I found out that this had happened and I, you know, the name came from my office, I should have vetted them before I forwarded them, I should have looked a bit more diligently at it, I am a new, young Member of Parliament, a rookie you can say so obviously I am learning from my mistakes.”

He said, “my mistakes” and “I alone”, yet the Prime Minister of Canada had his national security adviser go to the media and suggest something else. Therefore, we have two conflicting statements from members of Parliament from the Liberal Party. One is from the member of Parliament for Papineau, which he still is, and also the Prime Minister, which means I hold him to a higher standard than I hold the MP for Surrey Centre, because the national security adviser advises him. When he asks the national security adviser to go and say something that is contrary to what his own MP is saying, that is scandalous. All we are asking for is the right to ask Mr. Jean questions like the media did.

Let us go further. Let us go to the Prime Minister's cabinet, and the responsible minister, someone I respect a great deal, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. What did she say on CTV when asked about her meeting with her bilateral partner, the Indian foreign affairs minister? The minister said, “I started off the meeting by saying to her that it had been an honest mistake and that the invitation had been withdrawn.”

We have the lead cabinet minister supporting the story from the MP for Surrey Centre, which is also supported by Mr. Atwal himself, the person at the core of the scandal. However, the Prime Minister has risen in the House repeated times and has hidden behind a conspiracy theory from his national security adviser who he is now blocking parliamentarians from asking questions. That is scandalous. It is a breach of my privilege and the privilege of the whole House.

Therefore, I hope some of the MPs on that side, particularly the ones in areas near me, like Northumberland and Peterborough South, and I will be spending a lot of time there. People in Peterborough and Whitby are concerned about this. A lot of people will be very worried about this scandal. No one believes the Prime Minister's story.

What does the Indian government say? Its spokesman said this:

Let me categorically state that the Government of India, including the security agencies, had nothing to do with the presence of Jaspal Atwal at the event hosted by the Canadian High Commissioner in Mumbai or the invitation issued to him for the Canadian High Commissioner's reception in New Delhi. Any suggestion to the contrary is baseless and unacceptable.

The Indian government is insulted by this, and it should be. It knows where the invitation came from, because the Prime Minister's own MP has admitted to the invitation. Jaspal Atwal, who asked for the invitation, has admitted it was the Liberal government. The foreign affairs minister has admitted it was the Liberal MP, the Liberal government is causing this scandal.

Now let us look at this smokescreen story that came out of the Prime Minister's Office through a civil servant I respect. Mr. Jean has had a great career for Canada and I am upset that officials in the Prime Minister's Office have sullied his reputation by forcing him to go to the media to concoct a story. Here is what CBC wrote after attending this briefing by the national security adviser.

After speaking to Daniel Jean, it wrote, “A senior government official with knowledge of the prime minister's security protocols suggested...rogue political elements in India may have orchestrated [the] embarrassing invitation” of a would-be political assassin to a formal dinner with the Prime Minister “in an attempt to make the Canadian government appear sympathetic to Sikh extremism.”

That CBC story was what the Prime Minister's Office was hoping to get by sending Mr. Jean out to speak. Let someone who advises on top national security issues go out and create an alternate story to the one the MP for Surrey Centre was already accepting responsibility for. I would suggest that is contemptuous of Parliament. That is knowingly sending a senior official to brief the media to create a parallel story to explain the Atwal invitation at a time when their own MP was taking responsibility for it.

Now we have a situation where Mr. Atwal, who asked for the invitation, the MP for Surrey Centre, the foreign affairs minister, and the Indian government are all suggesting the Prime Minister's story of the Indian conspiracy theory is a sham. That should trouble all Canadians because it has not only eroded our relationship with a close friend; it has embarrassed Canadians throughout our country.

As parliamentarians, our role here is to hold the government to account. When we are impeded in doing that, our privileges are fettered, they are obstructed, and Canadians by extension are being kept in the dark. The public safety minister in his famous elevator press conference suggested that it was okay for the national security adviser to brief members of the media and take questions on this conspiracy theory, but that it was also okay for the government not to allow MPs to have that information.

I do not agree. That is a breach of my privileges. It is unethical. It is a cover-up. We deserve to ask Mr. Jean the same questions because we have two stories. They both cannot be true and most people globally believe it was the MP for Surrey Centre. Most Liberal caucus members believe that too. The Prime Minister's preposterous story and the smokescreen, and the human shield he is using his national security adviser as, need to be pierced and we do that here with a vote in the House of Commons.

All we are asking for is the same basic right to receive information and to ask questions of Mr. Jean that the Prime Minister granted media members. Is that unreasonable when there are two versions of a scandal that we have to ask questions about? As shadow minister, I have to ask questions. Our proposal is a modest one. If the Liberal government whips and votes against this motion, I think we will be spending a lot more time with you, Mr. Speaker. The good thing is that I like you a lot, because we will be here a lot.

However, it is a sign that the Liberals hold Canadians and Parliament in contempt and that this is a cover-up. The Prime Minister has the chance of showing it is not a cover-up. Make his official available to the public safety committee. We have Canadians appear all the time. If they are willing to send that person out to the media to deflect attention away from an embarrassing trip, they had better be prepared to give the opposition the same opportunity to ask Mr. Jean those questions.

The government was elected and still uses the phrase “open and accountable”. Today, the Conservatives are going to make the Liberals accountable.

[The Budget, March 21st, 2018]

Madam Speaker, my friend from Beaches—East York knows I think a great deal of his riding, as I do the member.

The member is a policy person. Therefore, on the climate change file, would he agree with me that rather than imposing the price of carbon through tax on seniors with fixed incomes or on families he has been advocating for that are already struggling, would it not be better to incentivize large emitters and say that the Government of Canada will take less in tax from them if they do something that is a social good? Rather than a stick of a carbon tax hitting the most vulnerable, could we not solve the same problem by providing a carrot to the emitters? The one group that would have to sacrifice would be the government by taking in more tax revenue. Would that not be a pragmatic solution to climate change?

[Public Safety, March 21st, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, on February 27, the Prime Minister told this House that the Atwal invitation was part of an Indian government conspiracy to undermine his trip. The same day, a Liberal MP publicly apologized for the Atwal invite. Weeks later, the foreign affairs minister called the invite “an honest mistake”, directly contradicting the Prime Minister.

That is a lot of invitations to Mr. Atwal. The opposition members have one invite they would like the Prime Minister to make: invite the national security adviser to the public safety committee so we can get answers.

[Privilege, March 20th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, the question of parliamentary privilege that the deputy House leader from the Liberal Party raised was mine. I do not believe I used the term “cover-up” in my suggestion. I quoted the Milliken decision with respect to the ability of parliamentarians to see all information.

I would remind the member that information is not just provided through the production of documents. Witness testimony and the ability to question witnesses is part of the obligation of parliamentarians to fulfill their duties unfettered. That was supported by the Milliken decision, which supersedes both the Bosley and Parent decisions. It should be unfettered. National security interests can be addressed if there are some, but those were waived in this case when the Prime Minister's Office asked the national security advisor to brief members of the press gallery, who do not have the same privileges as members of Parliament.

The key element of the Milliken decision, which my friend, the deputy House leader for the Liberals, glossed over rather craftily, is that a parliamentarian's privilege shall be unfettered to fulfill their obligations to hold the government to account. My privilege, as both a member of this place and as the shadow cabinet minister doing my parliamentary duties to critique the minister and the government on foreign affairs matters is curtailed by the fact that the government has provided information to the media through the national security advisor, the most senior civil servant advising cabinet and the Government of Canada. It is not allowing parliamentarians, including me, to have that same degree of information and access. A request by parliamentarians to have that same degree of information at the public safety committee is the same as a request by this House to have documents related to Afghan detainees, which is the subject matter of the Milliken decision.

My friend is trying to be somewhat cute in the fact that suggesting there is not an order for the production of documents is somehow different and can be distinguished from requests from parliamentarians to have evidentiary testimony from the most senior civil servant responsible for security when that very information was provided to non-parliamentarians. It is a preposterous position for the member to take.

I would ask the Chair to look at both my presentation from two weeks ago and also my rebuttal here today, and the Eggleton decision, which recognizes that the government cannot have two positions on one issue.

The Prime Minister's Office compelled the national security advisor to provide briefings to the media. The public safety minister, in his press conference before the House rose, suggested that the national security advisor could provide that information to the media but could choose not to provide that information to parliamentarians. That is fettering the privilege of parliamentarians to fulfill their obligations in this place. That is supported clearly by the Milliken decision, which did not just in spirit relate to production of documents. It is information and evidence that parliamentarians need to fulfill their duties.

I would also suggest that the member's response to my question of privilege highlights the fact that the Eggleton decision would apply to this circumstance where the Government of Canada has provided two possible responses to a diplomatic incident. One response was that the member for Surrey Centre was responsible for the invitation of Jaspal Atwal, which the Prime Minister has acknowledged and the member himself has acknowledged, and for which the member was disciplined or resigned from a role. The Prime Minister has also suggested that the Indian government is somehow complicit in the Atwal invitation, or the scandal related to Atwal's attendance at the Prime Minister's events.

That is in a very similar fashion to a previous ruling, the Eggleton decision, where two positions of the federal government cannot possibly be correct. This is something that the House has been trying to probe at. The information that the national security advisor provided to members of the media is required for parliamentarians to discern which alternative is true. They cannot both be true. Even Mr. Atwal himself, a week ago, refuted the Prime Minister's suggestion that the Indian government was responsible.

I would ask for an expeditious review of this point of privilege. Parliamentarians are clearly having our ability to perform our function fettered by the government's unwillingness to provide parliamentarians with the same briefing and the same degree of access to the national security advisor that the Prime Minister provided to members of the media in order to explain away problems with his trip to India.

Those are my submissions in right of reply to my friend from the Liberal Party with respect to this matter of privilege.

[The Budget, March 19th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my friend and neighbour, the MP for Oshawa, whom I have learned a lot from as a member of Parliament, for his strong defence of families, the role of faith communities, and balanced budgets.

There is a precedent for this type of thought police and this type of values screening. The precedent is found in the book 1984, by George Orwell, in which one does not just oppose one's opponents, one tries to exclude them or defeat them entirely.

Gerald Butts and the Prime Minister's Office do not like people to hold faith convictions. They moved away from private sponsors of the Syrian refugee program to “government knows best”, even though it is condemning a lot of those families to poorer outcomes, which their own department has realized.

Faith organizations, of all faiths, including Christian, Jewish, and Muslim, have a tremendous track record. There are those people who might have faith organizations but do their work as Rotarians or as members of the Lions club. These organizations are the foundation of communities. We should be encouraging that, not excluding them.

The precedent being set here not only contravenes the Charter of Rights and Freedoms but runs contrary to what parliamentarians should be doing, which is supporting Canadians to help grow their communities and support the less fortunate before “Ottawa knows best” gets into the act.

[The Budget, March 19th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I saw my friend, Joe Oliver, over the break from Parliament, and he commented that as Conservative finance minister, he would be the only G7 minister to have a balanced budget in this decade. That is unbelievable. That party's own projections suggest that with the way the Liberals are spending, there will not be a balanced budget in Canada again until the 2030s.

Weathering the largest financial global crisis since the recession better than all our G7 allies and competitors, having a balanced budget, and running a deficit when there was a global recession with a plan to get out of it, is far different from running massive deficits with no plan at a time when the global economy is rocking. This is a failure of the highest order.

With his attacks on job creators and deficit financing, my friends in the Toronto business community wonder if the finance minister is the same person who used to work in the private sector. He seems to have forgotten how to read a balance sheet.

On the summer jobs, the member knows that church organizations and immigration support groups in his riding have involved people from faith communities. That was consistent, from the Trudeau government through Chrétien, Harper, and Mulroney. Why is there a values test now? It is to exclude Canadians of faith.

[The Budget, March 19th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I was in full flight, responding to some of the heckles from my friends in the Liberal Party on my comparison of this budget to the Liberal double-double. I said that it is the Liberal double-double, deficit and debt, and there is no roll up the rim to win for Canadian families. Studies have shown that 80% to 90% of middle-class families, the families they claim to be helping, are paying more under the Liberal government.

High deficits and high debt are connected with taxes. Taxes are already going up, and in many ways large deficits are deferring taxes to the future. The Liberal government seems to forget that it is going to continue to make our economy less and less competitive. The budget contained five mentions of NAFTA, with no funding attached to any of the industries that could be at risk. That includes those industries that the Prime Minister did his speedy little steel town tour to because they almost blew the market access for steel and aluminum for Canadian workers.

I am going to spend my final few minutes on the Canada summer jobs, which dovetails nicely to the thousands of Canadians who have written condemning the Liberal government's approach to politicizing a summer jobs programs. It is in the budget at page 56, and states, “A summer job helps students pay for their education, and gives them the work experience they need to find and keep a full-time job after they graduate.”

All members of Parliament know how impactful these programs are. They do great service-related events for communities and help students defer costs of their university or college education at the same time. It is a win. Service clubs are involved, as are seniors homes and faith organizations. All sides of this House have seen the great work that is done with this program. Never in the decades of operation of this program has there been a thought-police approach, where they are putting in a values screen. The Liberals did that because they wanted to exclude faith organizations from playing roles in their communities, even though the Prime Minister's sunshine photo ops with the Syrian refugees who first came to Canada were all coming through private sponsorship roots from faith organizations.

Excluding people in this way violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and violates the spirit of what the Canada summer jobs program is supposed to be about. We have heard from thousands of people who have written petitions. We have a vote tonight. For the Liberals who are listening, I would like them to use their conscience. Do they have freedom of thought in the Liberal government? It is time for them to stand up for all charter rights, and that includes freedom of conscience and religion, and recognizing that faith communities play important roles across Canada.

[Chemical Attack in Salisbury, March 19th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, in the spirit of co-operation, following the brutal chemical attack on British soil, there have been some basic discussions among the parties with respect to a motion involving the death of a Canadian citizen. If you seek it, I believe you will find unanimous consent for the following motion: that the House (a) condemn the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its Revolutionary Guard for the brutal oppression of its own citizens, which included the imprisonment and killing of a Canadian citizen, Kavous Seyed Emami, who was killed in Iranian custody; (b) call upon the government to immediately cease any and all negotiations or discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran until they accept responsibility for the death of Mr. Seyed Emami; and (c) stand with the people of Iran and recognize that they, like all people, have a fundamental right to freedom of conscience and religion, freedom of thought, belief, opinion, and expression, including freedom of the press, and other forms of communication, freedom of peaceful assembly, and freedom of association.

[Canada-India Relations, March 19th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the person at the centre of the Atwal scandal does not believe the Prime Minister's wild conspiracy claims. The Liberal MP for Surrey Centre does not believe the Prime Minister's claims, because he apologized and accepted responsibility. Even the foreign affairs minister does not believe the Prime Minister, because she admitted to apologizing to the Indian government, calling the Atwal invitation “an honest mistake”. It appears there are only two people who still believe in the Prime Minister's wild conspiracy theories: the Prime Minister and his national security adviser.

When will the Prime Minister allow the national security adviser to brief the House in the same way they briefed the press gallery?

[Canada-India Relations, March 19th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the plot surrounding the Atwal scandal continued to thicken even while the House was away, courtesy of Jaspal Atwal himself. He held a press conference where he directly refuted the Liberal government's claims about an Indian conspiracy. Mr. Atwal confirmed that he asked the MP for Surrey Centre for an invitation to the Prime Minister's event. Mr. Atwal confirmed that the Liberal government got him that invite and that he has never spoken to the Indian government.

When will the Prime Minister rise in this House and apologize to India for this diplomatic incident?