James Bezan

[Justice, May 17th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, despite the House seeing it fit to apologize to Vice-Admiral Norman, the Liberals on the defence committee refused to invite him to tell his story. Today The Globe and Mail is reporting that the Prime Minister is the one who angrily launched the RCMP investigation that identified Mark Norman.

The charge against Vice-Admiral Norman has been stayed. A judge said that he is a free man, but the Liberals will not let him talk.

Why are the Liberals doing the Prime Minister's dirty work? What are they trying to cover up?

[Justice, May 16th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, last night I asked the Minister of National Defence if he would finally apologize on behalf of the Liberal government to Vice-Admiral Mark Norman for the miscarriage of justice he suffered at the government's hands. The answer was nothing.

The documents the Prime Minister fought to keep secret were the very documents that vindicated Vice-Admiral Norman. It could have happened months ago, yet the Liberals still refuse to turn them over to the court.

If the minister truly regrets what happened to Vice-Admiral Norman, will he let the sun shine in, release the documents and end this Liberal cover-up?

[Standing Committee on National Defence, May 16th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, as vice-chair of the national defence committee, I am disappointed that the Liberal chair of the committee from Kelowna—Lake Country is stubbornly refusing to accommodate requests from media to televise today's meeting. There is intense national interest regarding the unjust prosecution of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, but the Liberals want to keep it in the dark.

So much for Liberal transparency. It is starting to smell a lot like a cover-up.

[Business of Supply, May 15th, 2019]

Mr. Chair, I really encourage the minister to read the correspondence coming from the Pentagon and the joint project office for the Joint Strike Fighter, talk to representatives from Boeing and Lockheed Martin and talk to Ellen Lord, who is the Under Secretary of Defense in the U.S. administration.

If we want to start looking at something, we need to look at what the RFP is. One of the things is that we need to have a two-eyed capability, which is Canada and the United States. Right now, we have a dismal relationship because of the Liberals' mismanagement on the fighter jet file.

How can the minister guarantee two-eyed capability in Canada's next fighter jet when he has ruined our relationship with the Americans as a result of Liberal partisan policies?

[Business of Supply, May 15th, 2019]

Mr. Chair, buying used Australian fighter jets is not a sound way of making our air force stronger. The minister often talks about how we need pilots to fly them, but under his watch, over 20% of our pilots have left the air force because of the mismanagement of the Liberal government.

We have Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Both U.S. companies are not happy about the new RFP. Letters have been sent by United States departmental officials such as Ellen Lord, and they were published in the Macdonald-Laurier report. Officials are incredibly upset with how the Liberal government has handled our relationship with the United States under the NORAD construct.

Has anyone in the minister's office or his department met with Pentagon or White House officials in the last couple of weeks to talk about the new request for proposals for our fighter jet competition?

[Business of Supply, May 15th, 2019]

Mr. Chair, the condemnation in the Macdonald-Laurier Institute's report on fighter jets goes into great detail on how everything the government has done in trying to procure new aircraft has been done to fit its political narrative. The government is covering a silly, asinine promise made in a campaign by the Prime Minister by applying partisan political interests as a way to buy fighter jets.

Liberals bought F-18 jets from Australia that are as old as our F-18 jets. That is not fixing the capability gap, especially when we do not have pilots to fly them.

The question was asked, and I want an answer this time from the minister. Is that contract with the Government of Australia not a cancellation clause to get rid of the Aussie jets, which the Auditor General said are a waste of money?

[Business of Supply, May 15th, 2019]

Mr. Chair, will the minister at least admit that the whole reason they came up with this so-called interim capability gap was that they fabricated it because the Prime Minister made a campaign promise in 2015 that he would not buy the F-35, and that the government has done everything in its power since that day to make sure the F-35 was not going to be competitive in what they call an open competition? It may be open, but my question is why it is not being fair.

[Business of Supply, May 15th, 2019]

Mr. Chair, I want to change gears a little. I want to get back to a previous question about the Auditor General's report 3, from the fall of 2018, and the Macdonald-Laurier Institute report on Canada's future fighter replacement, “The Catastrophe: Assessing the Damage from Canada's Fighter Replacement Fiasco”. I recommend that the minister actually read this report. It is a condemnation of the government's management of the Department of National Defence and procurement in general.

In that report it clearly stated that the Auditor General, in a draft report, recommended in paragraph 59 that “National Defence should not purchase interim aircraft until it implements a plan to recruit and train pilots and technicians.”

Who in the department would intimidate the independent office of the Auditor General to remove that recommendation?

[Business of Supply, May 15th, 2019]

Mr. Chair, the minister is not answering the questions. He said on TV this weekend that the criteria have changed. Who changed the criteria that made it possible for Vice-Admiral Norman to finally have his legal fees paid after the government almost bankrupted him?

[Business of Supply, May 15th, 2019]

Mr. Chair, who made the decision to withhold legal assistance? When everybody else in the PMO and within departmental staff were allowed to lawyer up on this case, including members of Parliament, were allowed to get their legal fees covered by the Government of Canada, who in the minister's office or in the Department of National Defence made the decision that Vice-Admiral Norman was not worthy to have legal assistance?