Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my colleague from Shefford for her excellent speech and for agreeing to split her time with me.
Today, we are discussing a motion moved by the Conservative Party, which reads as follows:
That, given that the Minister of National Defence has clearly lost the respect of members of the Canadian Armed Forces, including those at the highest ranks, for, amongst other things,
(i) misleading Canadians on the withdrawal of fighter jets in the fight against ISIS,
(ii) misleading Canadians about his service record,
(iii) presiding over the wrongful accusation and dismissal of Vice-Admiral Norman,
(iv) engaging in a cover-up of sexual misconduct allegations in the Canadian Armed Forces,
the House formally censure the Minister of National Defence to express the disappointment of the House of Commons in his conduct.
I do not think anyone in the House will be surprised to learn that we will vote in favour of this motion, in light of its troubling elements. The facts have accumulated over time, which has led to a loss of confidence. That is why the Bloc Québécois is calling for the resignation of the Minister of National Defence.
We look at all these things that have happened, but the last straw was the whole issue of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces. The situation has completely deteriorated and the minister has mismanaged it from the start.
As we know, General Vance was forced to retire and it was not until after he retired that we finally learned about the allegations of sexual misconduct that were made against him, which triggered an investigation by the Standing Committee on National Defence, as well as a study by the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. When two committees look into an issue at the same time, it is obviously a big deal.
Shortly thereafter we also learned that General Vance's replacement, Admiral McDonald, also had to step down, also because of allegations of sexual misconduct.
This has been going on at the upper echelons of the military for some time and it is troubling since the current Minister of National Defence was notified of the problem by Gary Walbourne, who was national defence and armed forces ombudsman at the time, but has since retired. He went to the minister to advise him of a major complaint against the chief of the defence staff, General Vance. It was serious.
The minister told him he did not want to know about it, that he did not want anyone to talk to him about it, that he did not want to see the evidence and that the ombudsman should instead go talk to the appropriate authorities. In fact, the minister refused to look at what the ombudsman wanted to show him and then refused to meet with him again thereafter. The minister adopted this culture of wilful ignorance, choosing to turn a blind eye and act like nothing happened.
Unfortunately, even though some people on his staff appear to have passed the information along, it is hard to know who was aware of what and when. There are different, contradictory versions of events. When asked, the minister initially said that he was not aware. That is completely untrue, however, because we have now learned that he was aware. He met with the ombudsman, who wanted to talk to him about the situation.
Then, the minister started saying that he was not aware of the nature of the complaint in question. However, once again, Mr. Walbourne said that he very clearly told the minister about the nature of the complaint. Furthermore, media reports revealed that the public servants had emailed each other, proving that the minister was aware of the nature of the complaint, in spite of what he had been claiming. Worse yet, the minister then claimed that the nature of the complaint was not ultimately an important factor.
That is how he chose to handle it. Rather than apologizing and telling us that he did not give us the right information and that he tried to hide the fact that he did not take the action he should have, he decided to minimize the situation and tried to convince us that, ultimately, it was not that important.
It is especially disappointing to see a minister behave like that, particularly because of the message that it sends to the Canadian Armed Forces. The message is that this is not serious, not important. The government is going to close its eyes to complaints. The government is going to say that it does not want anything to do with this sort of thing and that it does not want to get involved because politicians should not interfere with investigations. That is the minister's position.
Nevertheless, we asked the former ombudsman if it would have constituted interference to meet with him to look at the evidence. At that time, there was not even an investigation under way. He said that it would not. The ombudsman that replaced him and who is in office today told us that it would not be interfering at all and that is exactly what he would have done.
We asked the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service or CFNIS if it would have constituted interference for the minister to do his job by simply looking at the evidence and agreeing to meet with the ombudsman. He said no, not at all. We also asked the CFNIS whether it would have constituted interference for the minister to request an investigation. Once again, the CFNIS said no and added that that would only be the case if the minister sought to undermine the investigation. However, it must be said that the minister did basically undermine the investigation by not asking the CFNIS to investigate and by refusing to obtain the information. However, there was no investigation. It was easier that way.
We then learned that the information did make the rounds. The Privy Council Office was informed of the situation. One of the Prime Minister's advisers, Elder Marques, was apparently informed of the situation and was asked to investigate, at least to some extent. The Prime Minister's chief of staff was also informed of the situation. However, one after the other, they all claimed at the beginning, when speaking with the Prime Minister, that they did not know and his staff did not know. We were getting different versions all the time, and information was coming out in dribs and drabs. Unfortunately, we are up against a government and a party that are trying to undermine the work of the Standing Committee on National Defence.
I have been a member of that committee for months, and our work has been stalled for months now. Every time a witness is called or a witness expresses a desire to appear, the government and Liberal members filibuster. As a result, nothing is moving forward and nothing is getting done. The filibustering is only getting worse. It has been about three or four weeks since we have been able to have a single meeting where we have intelligent discussions and actually do any work. We are just wasting time. This is especially frustrating because this government prides itself on being a democratic government when, really, it is just undermining the committee's work.
Why did he decide to hinder the work of the committee? That is the question. Why does he absolutely not want us to know what happened? Since the witnesses kept contradicting each other, after we heard the last one, we decided to invite more. We asked for the Minister of National Defence's chief of staff so that he could give us his version of the facts, but that was blocked. We cannot speak to him. On one occasion, the minister even showed up in place of his chief of staff to tell us what he would have said. That is something. He knew what the other guy was going to say. Why are the Liberals so scared of what he might tell us?
For now, what we have observed is that the Minister of National Defence was not up to the task. He did not do his job, and, because of that, to protect itself and to prevent things from going smoothly, the Liberal Party has been systematically obstructing the investigation. The Liberal members of the committee are preventing us from doing our job. If I were a citizen and I saw that, I would be really angry and frustrated. In addition, what message does this send to people who work in the Canadian Armed Forces?
What message does this send to women? The message is that, when things like this happen, when a minister is not up to the task and when there are unacceptable situations in the Canadian Armed Forces, the Standing Committee on National Defence will be prevented from doing its job because the government wants to protect its friends, and because it wants to protect those who did not do what they should have done. That is what is really going on.
We have a minister who is not up to the task. Rather than do his job, when he could have implemented the recommendations of the 2015 Deschamps report, the minister decided to go back to square one instead. I do not even know if he read the Deschamps report, which contained good recommendations and indicated that the situation in the armed forces was hard to believe. He decided to go back to square one and commission another report that they also may not look at in order to stall.
For example, he allowed Mr. Vance to take charge of Operation Honour, when, in the end, he was setting the wolf loose on the sheep. He gave him a raise. Worse than that, we found out that, in the meantime, the second in command of the armed forces, Lieutenant-General Mike Rouleau, who is also vice chief of the defence staff and head of the military police, went to play golf with the retired General Vance.
All this shows just how much the minister's inaction created a climate of impunity in the armed forces, and that is totally unacceptable.
