Ralph Goodale

[Grey Cup, November 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, Saskatchewan is the province that is the easiest to draw but the hardest to spell. We have the longest bridge over the shortest span of water in the world. Twice each year we fight the scourge of daylight savings time. Saskatchewan invented everything from Girl Guide cookies to medicare, and we have had our football team since 1910, years before there was even a CFL or a Grey Cup. We bleed green. Our most sainted symbol is a gopher.

On Sunday the greatest fans in the world will trek to Regina. They will come from North Portal in the south and from Southend in the north, from Eastend in the west and from West Bend in the east. We will welcome back to Saskatchewan Austin, Fantuz, and Burris and all their friends from Hamilton. Then there are Durant, Sheets, Dressler, Getzlaf, Bagg, and Simon, and I wish I could name them all, will finish what they set out to do in the spring: they will make the Saskatchewan Roughriders the 101st Grey Cup champions.

Go Riders!

[Ethics, November 21st, 2013]

That is why they will vote Liberal, Mr. Speaker.

Police records show that Senator Gerstein tried to hamper the Deloitte audit. That is obstruction of justice. They show that LeBreton, Tkachuk, and Stewart Olsen whitewashed a Senate report on Duffy. That is corruption of a parliamentary process, all ordered by the fraud squad in the PMO and all part of the crimes police believe were committed by the Prime Minister's most inner circle. Most of those people still work for the Prime Minister.

How could the CEO of such an operation be so negligent and so incompetent to engender such behaviour?

[Ethics, November 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, they have just contradicted the police over there.

It does not matter whether the amount was $32,000 or $90,000. It does not matter whether it was paid by the Conservative Party or by Nigel Wright. Either way, it is bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. The RCMP says it has reasonable cause to believe those crimes were committed by that fraud squad in the PMO, and now that same gang is out in Brandon running the Conservative by-election.

Why has the Prime Minister not fired the fraud squad instead of empowering it to do more damage to Brandon and to Canada?

[Ethics, November 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the RCMP says it has reasonable cause to believe that the Prime Minister's senior entourage was engaged in a scheme of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. It is Wright, and it is Duffy, and it is at least a dozen more—the fraud squad in the PMO. They first plotted to have the Conservative Party pay Duffy, and for that, the police say, they did consult the Prime Minister and got a “good to go”, but such a payment would have been just as wrong as the payment by Nigel Wright.

Why did the Prime Minister say “good to go” for a payment from the Conservative Party?

[Ethics, November 20th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister told us that after he ordered Duffy, on February 13, to repay his expenses, he, the Prime Minister, heard nothing further until May 15, but from the RCMP documents today, that cannot be true. There was at least one later briefing by Wright, and maybe others. At least in broad terms, the Prime Minister knew Wright had some personal role. This was the Prime Minister's Office: his staff, his lawyers, his most trusted inner circle.

Would any CEO in the private sector keep his job if so much got screwed up on his watch?

[Ethics, November 20th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the RCMP believe there was a broad-based conspiracy within and beyond the Prime Minister's Office to cover up Mike Duffy's situation. The police believe that conspiracy involved the commission of criminal offences. The players were all the Prime Minister's senior entourage: Wright and Duffy, Perrin and Woodcock, Rogers, Novak, van Hemmen, Hamilton and Byrne, Gerstein, LeBreton, Tkachuk, Stewart-Olsen. Now we know the PCO was involved too. Despite their denials, a paper trail is on their computers.

Who told the Privy Council Office to lie to this House?

[Ethics, November 19th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, access to information requests to get the government's paper trail were submitted on June 7. On June 28, it claimed there was none. However, Duffy says that the email chains are massive. He tabled some of them. The police say that they got hundreds of pages of emails from Nigel Wright.

In the news conference last May from Peru, the Prime Minister said that Wright was acting in his official capacity as chief of staff, so that paperwork belongs to the Government of Canada.

How did it get stolen? What other evidence has been removed or destroyed?

[Ethics, November 19th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, documents tabled in Parliament show the paper trail between the Prime Minister's Office and Mike Duffy stretches back to last December. In February, the PMO had a detailed email that laid out an elaborate cover-up scheme, including payment of hush money. Lawyers negotiated agreements. Tens of thousands of dollars changed hands. Audit work was disrupted. A communications plan scripted Mike Duffy to lie.

Does the Prime Minister still claim there has never been a shred of paper anywhere in his government about this mess?

[Ethics, November 18th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the cover-up involved the payment of $90,000 in hush money and another $13,000 in legal fees, the sabotage of Deloitte's forensic audit, the whitewashing of a Senate report, and there was someone in the PMO counselling Mike Duffy to lie to Canadians about his mortgage.

The Prime Minister claims that the lie in fact misled even him. Surely he wants to know who counselled Mike Duffy to lie. Was it Chris Woodcock, or Patrick Rogers? Why is that person still employed by the government?

[Ethics, November 18th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's ethics scandal involved all of his senior advisers: Wright, Gerstein, Perrin, Hamilton, Woodcock, Byrne, Rogers, Novak, van Hemmen, LeBreton, Tkachuk, Stewart Olsen, and the list goes on, but it is not these underlings who are responsible; it is the boss.

To get to the bottom of the conspiracy in his office, did the Prime Minister ask these people what they knew and what they did? As the CEO with ultimate accountability for any corruption on his watch, from February until today, did he ever ask?