Lisa Raitt

[News Media Industry, May 29th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, despite the protests of the Prime Minister, the issue here is one of bias.

The question is whether or not an entity that has sworn that it likes to elect Liberals, and in fact make sure the Conservatives do not form government, an entity that gave $400,000, and boasted about it, to ensure the Conservative defeat in 2015 and as well says it is doing it again, and in fact has started again, is an appropriate appointment to a panel that is making decisions on who gets journalistic money.

Will the Prime Minister remove Unifor from this panel?

[News Media Industry, May 28th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, for the Prime Minister to stand there and tell someone who grew up in Cape Breton and is a product of a coal-mining family that she hates labour is absolutely disgusting. I am not afraid to have dirt under my finger nails.

I am going to quote one journalist who seeks to have independence, “Now the government that benefited from Unifor’s partisan largesse has asked it for help deciding who’s a proper journalist and what’s a proper news outlet.”

You could have done better, Prime Minister. Why did you not?

[News Media Industry, May 28th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, this is a very serious issue. The government has indicated that it is setting up a panel that will have on it an entity that is clearly biased in the government's favour. The entity will be in charge of determining criteria for a half-billion-dollar media bailout package.

The Prime Minister can tell us the former positions of the opposition, but the reality is that his position right now is this. He is undermining the independence of journalists, who are very concerned.

Will the Prime Minister remove Unifor from this panel?

[News Media Industry, May 28th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's decision to appoint Unifor to his panel to determine eligibility for a half-billion-dollar media package has destroyed the government's credibility.

Unifor is a highly partisan group and it has very aggressive and partisan goals. It has made clear that its objective is to elect Liberals and defeat Conservatives, and yet the Prime Minister has chosen to appoint it to this very important panel.

Why does the Prime Minister not openly admit he is stacking the deck for himself?

[Justice, May 15th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, the people who decided to withhold the documents from the defence of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman were this government, plain and simple.

It was only because of an abuse of process motion brought forward by the Vice-Admiral that we started to get a look at the documents that clearly showed that there was political interference in this matter, but we only got to see it after six months of fighting in court. Yes, the court had to order the release of these documents because the government said that it would not release them.

Will the government apologize to Vice-Admiral Mark Norman?

[Justice, May 15th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, this House of Commons agreed unanimously and stood and thanked Vice-Admiral Mark Norman for his years of service to this country, as well as apologized for his treatment over the past three and a half years.

It was reported by some media this morning that unfortunately the Prime Minister was not present in the House for that apology, and I am wondering if he would like to take the opportunity now to apologize himself for the treatment of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman.

[May 14th, 2019]

I do not know what is worse, Mr. Chair. A minister stands in the House without a grasp on his file and indicates something so wrong and says that a judge made a decision in a case. A judge clearly did not make a decision. I would submit that the minister should go back and take a look at the hearings between April 16 and 17. At the end, they indicated that there were no decisions made, and indeed, they were coming back for an update on May 8, 2019.

Would the minister like to clarify whether the judge made a decision on the redacted documents, as I asked?

[May 14th, 2019]

Mr. Chair, I am very concerned that the minister and the government are not taking this matter seriously.

Let us fast forward to more hearings that happened on March 28 of this year. This time it was a battle over redactions to memos. I would like to know from the minister if we could receive copies of the October 19, 2018, 64-page memo from Paul Shuttle to the former clerk of the privy council, Michael Wernick; the October 24, 2018, 60-page memo from the former clerk to the Prime Minister; and the December 22, 2017, memo from Paul Shuttle to the former clerk of the privy council, Michael Wernick.

[May 14th, 2019]

Mr. Chair, that was not the question. My question specifically at the very beginning was whether the minister would order an independent inquiry through his powers under the Inquiries Act. His response was that he already received a report. That is not a report.

Would the minister like to exactly clarify for us, so we can get to the nuts and bolts of it, what kind of report has been issued? Was it verbal? Is it real? If it is real, can we have a copy of it so we can understand and the Canadian public can finally understand what happened in this case?

[May 14th, 2019]

Mr. Chair, it is interesting that the minister indicated that he received a briefing. I used to receive those briefings too. There was always a report attached to them.

Especially given the fact that there were 8,000 documents released, I do not assume that department officials went through each document verbally, so I am wondering once again if the minister would provide the document upon which the verbal briefing was provided to him.