Ralph Goodale

[Ethics, October 23rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, to be clear, the answer to my question is yes.

Until just a few days ago the Prime Minister's website proudly displayed a photograph of the Prime Minister at his desk in the Langevin building on February 11, just a few feet from where Mr. Duffy would have been.

Was there any conversation between the two of them? If not, was the Prime Minister—

[Ethics, October 23rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister acknowledges a February 13 meeting in which he ordered the Duffy payback scheme, but according to PMO security logs there was another encounter two days earlier. Mr. Duffy attended a meeting in the Prime Minister's private boardroom on the second floor of the Langevin building on Monday, February 11, 2013. Was the Prime Minister in his office in the Langevin building on that day?

[Ethics, October 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians just do not believe the cover-up. Mr. Wright might try to assume responsibility, but it is fiction. He clearly did not act alone.

We also asked about the paper trail. The Prime Minister said there was none, not a single email, but that too is false. There is a paper trail. It goes on for hundreds of pages, and the key document was in the personal possession of the Prime Minister's director of issues management.

Is it credible that a document proposing possible illegal behaviour by the PMO was not reported to the Prime Minister?

[Ethics, October 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's story about the PMO deal with Mike Duffy has been contradicted by the police and by Nigel Wright himself. Mr. Wright was no solo freelancer. The Prime Minister's lawyer, his director of issues management and others were also intimately involved. The cover-up went on for months, with threats, hush money, spin lines and a Senate report doctored by Conservatives. It was in the Prime Minister's Office, on the Prime Minister's watch.

It is his responsibility, not Nigel Wright's. Why does he not get that basic fact?

[Ethics, October 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the behaviour that landed Mike Duffy and the Prime Minister in their ethical scandal was originally discussed by Duffy with the Prime Minister's leading senators—LeBreton, Tkachuk, Stewart Olsen—and then Nigel Wright and others, and they all said okay, but when it all blew up in the government's face, an elaborate cover-up was then orchestrated by the PMO.

How is it credible for the Prime Minister to deny all knowledge, when every important person in his entourage was involved? Does he think people will believe that in Brandon and Provencher?

[Ethics, October 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians would appreciate a focus on ethics. The Prime Minister says there are no PMO emails or other written materials in his office or anywhere in his government that relate in any way to the wrongful $90,000 Wright-Duffy deal, but again, the Prime Minister has been contradicted by the police. They have hundreds of pages of emails and a binder full of documentation, including that infamous February 20 email, which we learned today was indeed in the PMO's possession, specifically Mr. Woodcock's.

Does the government still have confidence in Mr. Woodcock, and does the government approve of his actions?

[Ethics, October 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, in the ethical scandal engulfing the Prime Minister the crucial issue is that secret $90,000 deal between Mike Duffy and Nigel Wright.

On June 5, the Prime Minister told the House that Mr. Wright acted entirely alone saying,“Those were his decisions. They were not communicated to me or to members of my office”. However, the RCMP says that is false. It says that at least three PMO staffers were informed: van Hemmen, Woodcock and Perrin, plus certain Conservative senators.

Now that he has been contradicted by the police, does the Prime Minister wish to amend his evidence?

[Ethics, June 17th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister hand-picked both Mike Duffy and Nigel Wright. They are now under police investigation for a $90,000 deal that corrupted a sitting legislator. Another former chief of staff, Bruce Carson, is on trial for influence pedaling. Arthur Porter, the man the Prime Minister put in charge of national security, is in jail in Panama. Then there are Zajdel, Penashue and Brazeau and the list goes on.

Were security checks not done on any of these people before the Prime Minister personally endorsed them, or did he just ignore the risk that his bad judgment would cause for Canada?

[Protecting Canada's Public Transportation Workers Act, June 12th, 2013]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-533, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (protecting public transportation workers).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to present this private member's bill, providing an alternative approach to the one that was tabled earlier by the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River. I look forward to all members of the House having an opportunity to collaborate as these pieces of legislation move forward.

More than 2,000 Canadian bus drivers are assaulted annually in the course of their duties. They may be spat upon or punched or attacked with a knife or even sexually assaulted as they perform their jobs of providing open, inclusive service to the general public in all places and at all hours of the day and night.

While courts sometimes make a point of taking the public service and the vulnerability of bus drivers into account when sentencing those who are convicted of offences against transit operators, this is not a comprehensive legal requirement.

The bill that I am proposing would change that. Section 718.2 of the Criminal Code sets out the overarching rules that deal with sentencing; this bill would insert the specific requirement that courts shall, when imposing a sentence for any offence, take into consideration as an aggravating circumstance the fact that the victim was a public transportation employee on duty.

This would provide a higher degree of protection for bus drivers, especially when coupled with a vigorous public communications campaign to warn potential offenders that attacking a transit employee will expose them to more severe criminal penalties.

I am glad to have the support of the Canadian Council of the Amalgamated Transit Union in my hometown of Regina and across the country. I hope that all hon. members will see the merit in this particular approach.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Ethics, June 10th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, as the Prime Minister explicitly said, acting in his capacity as chief of staff, Nigel Wright is out $90,000. An audit in the Senate has been manipulated. That is Duffy's audit. The Senate has been reimbursed from an illegal source, and Mike Duffy is keeping $90,000 from taxpayers that he should not have claimed in the first place.

Will the government start some basic transparency by producing Mr. Wright's cancelled cheque showing the exact amount, the date and to whom it was paid?