OFFICIAL REPORT (HANSARD)

House of Commons Debates VOLUME 147 NUMBER 014 2nd SESSION 41st PARLIAMENT Tuesday, November 5, 2013 Speaker: The Honourable Andrew Scheer HOUSE OF COMMONS CANADA (Table of Contents appears at back of this issue.) COMMONS DEBATES November 5, 2013 DEBATES Edited Hansard * Table of Contents * Number 014 (Official Version) Official Report * Table of Contents * Number 014 (Official Version) Compte rendu officiel * Table des matières * Numéro 014 (Version officielle) 147 014 05 11 2013 2013/11/05 10:05:00 House of Commons Débats de la Chambre des communes House of Commons Debates 41 2

The House met at 10 a.m. Prayers

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS Routine Proceedings (1005) [ English ] Environment and Sustainable Development The Speaker : I have the honour to lay upon the table, pursuant to subsection 23(5) of the Auditor General Act, the fall 2013 report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development to the House of Commons with an addendum on environmental petitions from January 1 to June 30, 2013. [ Translation ] This report is deemed permanently referred to the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.

Performance Reports, 2012-13 Hon. Tony Clement (President of the Treasury Board, CPC) : Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to table documents in both official languages. [ English ] On behalf of the 92 departments and agencies, I table the performance reports for 2012-13, and I invite hon. members to access the performance reports at tbs-sct.gc.ca. Of course we have them available on members' sticks, so if they do not want the sticks, they can go online as well.

Tackling Contraband Tobacco Act Hon. Kerry-Lynne D. Findlay (for the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada) Bill C-10. Introduction and first reading moved for leave to introduce Bill C-10,

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (trafficking in contraband tobacco) . She said: Mr.

Speaker, pursuant to the special order made previously, I would like to inform the House that this bill is in the same form as Bill S-16 was in the previous session at the time of prorogation. (Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed) The Speaker : The Chair is satisfied that the bill is in the same form as Bill S-16 when it was before the House at the time of prorogation of the first session of the 41st Parliament. [ Translation ] Consequently, pursuant to the order made Monday, October 21, 2013, the bill is deemed read a second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. (Bill read the second time and referred to a committee)

Navigable Waters Protection Act Mr. Claude Gravelle (Nickel Belt, NDP) Bill C-547. Introduction and first reading moved for leave to introduce Bill C-547,

An Act to amend the Navigable Waters Protection Act (Fox Lake and other lakes and rivers) . He said: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for York South—Weston for seconding my bill. [ English ] Today I introduce my bill to amend the Navigable Waters Protection Act to re-protect many lakes and rivers of Nickel Belt. After the government stripped protection from 98% of Canada's lakes and rivers, I received an incredible volume of mail from constituents asking that their lakes and rivers be re-protected.

I have named some 34 waterways in this legislation, including Lake Wanapitei, which is a source of drinking water for the City of Greater Sudbury. We know that navigation is directly related to environmental conditions, ecosystem protection, water levels and the commercial and recreational use of water. We must protect the interests of cottagers, boaters, recreational fishers, municipalities, first nations and more. [ Translation ] This is not just an issue for environmentalists.

If a river or lake is not protected, it means that anyone can build a bridge, set up ferry service, or create an obstruction that will affect navigation on the lake or river. [ English ] It is not right that all of these groups and individuals assume the onus to take a developer to court if the proposed protection affects a lake or river. My New Democrat colleagues have launched a campaign to return protection to the lakes and rivers Canadians hold dear. I am happy to include Nickel Belt lakes and rivers in that campaign. (Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Petitions Cluster Munitions Mr. David Anderson (Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC) : Mr. Speaker, I have a petition on behalf of about two dozen of my constituents expressing their strong support for the Convention on Cluster Munitions and the positive obligations that are contained in it.

Sewer Infrastructure Mr. Mike Sullivan (York South—Weston, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, residents in my community of York South—Weston who endured terrible flooding last July 8, in

part caused by inadequate and antiquated sewers, have signed a petition calling on the Government of Canada to immediately take steps to fund urgent infrastructure projects in order to upgrade our sewer systems and avoid future property damage.

HoneyBees Mr. Bruce Hyer (Thunder Bay—Superior North, Ind.) : Mr. Speaker, today I present a petition on behalf of residents in my riding of Thunder Bay—Superior North who are concerned about the disappearance of honeybees in Canada and around the world. The petitioners are counting upon the federal government to immediately establish a refuge zone for honeybees in northwestern Ontario, where we are free from honeybee diseases. A honeybee refuge zone in northwestern Ontario is vital to the preservation of one of the last healthy populations of honeybees left in the world.

Lyme Disease Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP) : Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present two petitions. The first petition is from residents of Maple Ridge, B.C., as well as Oakville and Toronto, in Ontario. I am very grateful to the petitioners. They have collected petitioners' signatures to support my private member's bill, Bill C-442 , calling for a national Lyme disease strategy. I hear from Canadians every single day who are suffering from this terrible disease. It is a non-partisan issue, and I hope the bill will be passed.

Climate Change Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP) : Mr. Speaker, the second petition is from residents of my riding of Saanich—Gulf Islands , in Saanichton and Sidney, and also from people in Tofino. The petitioners are calling upon this House to put together a full national climate strategy to reduce by 80%, by 2050, our emissions of greenhouse gases.

(1010) Questions on the Order Paper Mr. Tom Lukiwski (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, CPC) : Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand. The Speaker: Is that agreed? Some hon. members: Agreed.

GOVERNMENT ORDERS Business of Supply [ English ] Business of Supply Opposition Motion—Instruction to the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics Hon. Ralph Goodale (Wascana, Lib.) moved: Motion That the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics be instructed to examine the conduct of the Prime Minister’s Office regarding the repayment of Senator Mike Duffy’s expenses; that the Prime Minister be ordered to appear under oath as a witness before the Committee for a period of 3 hours, before December 10, 2013; and that the proceedings be televised. He said: Mr.

Speaker, last Thursday was Hallowe'en, and pumpkins across Canada were carved with the haunting letters “PMO”: hardly a compliment. On Friday, there were jokes making the rounds that only the drug debacle consuming Toronto mayor Rob Ford, the Prime Minister 's friend, could take the current federal government's ethics scandal off the front pages of the newspapers.

The Conservatives had a convention in Calgary over the weekend, and the dominant news was not any matter of government policy; it was all about the intrigue surrounding a mysterious $90,000 payment and other chicanery to buy the silence and complicity of a disgraced senator. On and on it goes. The government's self-inflicted crisis has made it a target for national questioning and even national ridicule.

The motion we have put before the House today is intended to help Canadians get the basic respect they deserve by providing a forum within which they can have their many serious questions asked and answered authoritatively about what went so terribly wrong with Senator Mike Duffy, and how the Prime Minister and his office got so deeply implicated. Interrogations in the daily question period are obviously useful, but they can only go so far.

In the limited time available, question period cannot do much more than identify the basic headline issues, and the government's responses in 35 seconds are bound to be a bit superficial at best. That is compounded by an obvious government strategy to “deny, deny, deny”, as Colin Thatcher once said, stonewalling any reasonable access to information. However, denial, deflection and obfuscation do not diminish the public's thirst for a complete and honest explanation of what transpired in the Conservative ethics scandal, or the public's absolute right to get such an explanation.

The Prime Minister , of course, is the central player. He either appointed or hired every one of the people involved in this scandal. They were carrying out his orders to make the Duffy problem go away. The Prime Minister enabled them, he empowered them and they were accountable to him for what they did and how they did it. He, in turn, is accountable for them to all Canadians.

That point was made emphatically by the Minister of Foreign Affairs , then the government House leader, on August 27, 2010, when a parliamentary committee wanted to interrogate a ministerial staff member about his interference in an access to information proceeding. The minister blocked the employee from answering any questions, relying on the principle of ministerial responsibility.

In The Globe and Mail , on behalf of the government, the current Minister of Foreign Affairs who was then the government House leader said this: The fundamental constitutional principle of responsible government, which is integral to the supremacy of Parliament, provides that ministers are the ones accountable to Parliament, not members of their staff.... Therefore, in the government's own words, it is not appropriate, indeed it is a violation of parliamentary democracy, for the Prime Minister to blame his staff for this scandal or to shift responsibility onto employees or others.

When the Prime Minister brutally trashed Nigel Wright in this House last week, when he suggested that Wright and Wright alone was responsible for all the deceit and corruption, he was flatly wrong. The buck stops at the PM, not the PMO. It is the Prime Minister who must answer fully and completely to Canadians. To fail to do so shows utter contempt for the people of this country, who have the right to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

(1015) Providing for the Prime Minister to have his day under oath in the court of public opinion will give him an unparalleled opportunity to set the record straight; no more unanswered rants from Mike Duffy, no more speculation by the opposition, no more meddling by the media. The Prime Minister would have an unfiltered occasion to speak directly to Canadians, to tell them what they need to know in the most credible way possible, under oath. That is why the motion is being presented today. If Canadians were the ones to be asking the questions, what would they want to know?

They might start with the Prime Minister 's frame of mind. Last week in Calgary, why did he go so far out of his way to set up an “us versus them” conflict scenario, which depicted anyone who was not a sycophantic Conservative ideologue as an opponent to be vilified? “I couldn't care less what those opponents think”, he shouted into the microphone. Add them up. Those opponents constitute a very large majority of Canadians. The Prime Minister owes them all an explanation. What did he mean when he told them he could not care less?

Does he comprehend that all those Canadians for whom he could not care less know full well that there are two distinct sides to this scandal? On one side, there is the bad behaviour of certain senators run amok. It is interesting to note that last May, as this scandal was developing in the public arena, it was the Liberals who prevented the quick sweep-under-the-rug scheme that the government was attempting back in May. We forced a debate in the Senate about the audits. We unwound the government's whitewash.

We called for all of the files to go to the RCMP and we demanded consequences for those who had broken the rules. That was back in May. That is the one side of the scandal and that is where the government would want the public's focus to begin and end. However, on the other side, there is the PMO and the Prime Minister 's senior entourage, all those people who were so intensely involved in covering up the embarrassment to the government caused by its highest profile senators getting into such deep trouble. It is the cover-up that converted Mike Duffy's scandal into the Prime Minister's scandal.

Indeed, the cover-up is likely the larger problem because it raises the question of what sort of operating mentality was dominating the PMO on the Prime Minister's watch that led Nigel Wright and so many others to think that a $90,000 payment to a sitting parliamentarian would somehow be okay. In that regard, here is a sampling of just some of the questions that the Prime Minister needs to answer for Canadians. Before he appointed Mike Duffy to the Senate, what kind of a background check was done? Did he read it? Did the Prime Minister know that Mr.

Duffy was a resident of Ottawa and not a resident of Prince Edward Island? Was he eligible to be appointed as a senator representing P.E.I.? When did the Prime Minister first become aware that Mike Duffy had accumulating problems with his travel and living costs? How long before Nigel Wright summoned Duffy to a meeting in the PMO on February 11? On February 13, when the Prime Minister says he ordered Duffy to repay his expenses, what instructions did he give to Nigel Wright or anyone else to ensure that his orders to Mr. Duffy were in fact carried out properly?

In the next three months, from Prime MinisterFebruary until mid-May, is it conceivable that the was never briefed by his staff about the biggest political problem that was then dogging the government or that he never asked a single question about how his orders on February 13 were being executed?

(1020) During that period, from February 13 until May 15, $90,000 was paid to Senator Duffy. Another $13,560 was paid to Duffy's lawyers to cover unspecified legal costs. The course of a forensic audit being conducted by Deloitte was seriously impeded. A Senate report about Mr. Duffy was edited, watered down and whitewashed to go easy on him. He claims he was threatened and subject to extortion. He also says there was an elaborate communications plan to portray him as an honourable man, showing leadership by taking out a home mortgage to cover the $90,000 himself, which was patently untrue.

He says he was specifically coached by the PMO to lie to Canadians about that mortgage scam. All of this was going on in the PMO right under the Prime Minister 's nose for three full months, from February to May, and the Prime Minister never noticed a thing. Did no one tell him? Did he not ask? Canadians want to know how that is possible. They also want to know who was involved in this conspiracy. The Prime Minister says he found out on May 15 that the cash for Duffy came from Nigel Wright. He has repeatedly claimed that no one else knew anything or did anything. It was Wright and Wright alone.

He was the sole architect of this deception. However, that is clearly not true. Police documents show others were involved. Media reports have disclosed others still. It is a long list: Duffy; Wright; Senator Gerstein, now by his own admission; lawyers Perrin and Hamilton, maybe more; Chris Woodcock, the Prime Minister 's director of issues management who got a detailed email from Duffy outlining the anatomy of the cover-up deal, including possible illegal behaviour in and around the PMO; senior staffers Byrne, Rogers, Novak and van Hemmen; Senators LeBreton, Tkachuk and Stewart Olsen; and on and on it goes.

As the Prime Minister 's entire inner sanctum gets implicated, how is it credible that none of these folks breathed a word to the Prime Minister over a period of three full months? His chief of staff, his lawyer, his chief fundraiser; they had a duty to warn their boss that potentially illegal scheming was going on in his office. More to the point, they had a duty to Canada to stop it. Here is another contradiction. Starting on May 15 when the media disclosed and the Prime Minister had to concede that Nigel Wright had given Duffy the cash to repay his expenses, the Prime Minister described Mr.

Wright as an honourable man trying to protect taxpayers, trying to help out a dear old friend. He said that Mr. Wright continued to have his complete confidence. Then five days later, he was gone, thrown under the bus with Duffy and all the rest. What did the Prime Minister learn in those five days, from the Wednesday to the Sunday, that totally changed his characterization of Mr. Wright? Why has that characterization continued to worsen over the summer and into the fall to the point that the Prime Minister so vilified Mr. Wright last week?

In the search for someone to pay the $90,000, what negotiations took place between Nigel Wright, Senator Gerstein and lawyer Arthur Hamilton? Did the Conservative Party say no as a matter of principle, or did it just say no when the cost rose above $30,000 and up to $90,000? What is the party payment of $13,560 in legal fees really for? Can the Prime Minister or the government produce an itemized invoice from Duffy's lawyers to prove that this party cash had nothing to do with the $90,000 in hush money?

If Duffy's lawyers obtained that $13,000 by false pretences, by saying it was in relation to something that it was not, will legal action be taken to get the money back? What were the conversations between Wright and Duffy and various other senators about interfering with Deloitte's forensic audit and whitewashing a Senate report? Who gave those orders? Who carried them out? Who in the PMO instructed Mike Duffy to lie on national television about getting a mortgage? Furthermore, where is the paper trail?

(1025) In answer to access to information requests and Order Paper questions, the government has said, incredibly but repeatedly, that there is not a single shred of paper, not an email, not a note, not a message written on a napkin, anywhere in the PMO or anywhere in the government that relates to Duffy or the Prime Minister's scandal. However, Duffy has paper. PMO leakers have paper. The police have a lot of paper, and they are looking for more. How is it that all that documentation somehow mysteriously vanished? Is it stored somewhere? Has any of it been destroyed inadvertently?

This raises a serious question for the Clerk of the Privy Council and the Deputy Minister of Justice. What have they done and what do they continue to do to protect the integrity of the Government of Canada through this whole sordid and tragic affair? The central actor, of course, remains the Prime Minister . He has the ultimate authority and accountability. None of that can be delegated to subordinates, not to Nigel Wright or anyone else, to assume full responsibility. Only the Prime Minister can answer. The Prime Minister needs to look Canadians in the eye and tell them fully what happened.

Accordingly, I move: That the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics be instructed to examine the conduct of the Prime Minister’s Office regarding the repayment of Senator Mike Duffy’s expenses; that the Prime Minister be ordered to appear under oath as a witness before the Committee for a period of 3 hours, before December 10, 2013; and that the proceedings be televised. Mr. Paul Calandra (Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and for Intergovernmental Affairs, CPC) : Mr. Speaker, it is rather funny to hear this member talk about things being written on a napkin.

Of course, we remember his leader who sold a golf course by using a napkin at a restaurant and then used government money to do that, but I do not want to digress too far. We have been listening in this chamber for a number of months. We have been having extraordinary debate back and forth. We have seen the Leader of the Opposition ask a lot of very good quality questions. There has been vigorous debate, but the one thing we have all noticed is that the Liberal leader does not seem to want to participate in that debate.

What is becoming quite clear, I think even to members of the Liberal Party, is just how in over his head the Liberal leader is. We have great actors in the House. The member for Jeanne-Le Ber I will say was a spectacular actor in the movie 300 . That is a good actor, a great performance, but what is quite clear is that a drama teacher trying to act like a leader is just not working out for the Liberals. He is not acting great.

What the motion does is that it really is an admission by the Liberals that their leader is of no use to them in the House, so they want one member on the ethics committee to do all of the work that their leader has been so abysmal at in the House. My question to the member is this. Is he that embarrassed by his leader and his inability to perform in the House that he now wants to shift it over to the member for Avalon ? Has he now become the new leader of the Liberal Party when it comes to this topic?

(1030) Hon. Ralph Goodale : Mr. Speaker, no amount of clown acting is going to change the topic. No number of slurs directed against the teaching profession is going to change the topic or change the channel. The fact of the matter is that the Liberal caucus and the Liberal leader have pursued this issue every step of the way as it has unfolded so tragically before Canadians over the course of the last number of months.

I would also note that the reason the exposure to the country has been as ample as it has been is largely because of the work of Senator Cowan and others in the Liberal caucus in the Senate who refused to get snookered by the Conservatives who wanted this whole issue dealt with, without debate, by unanimous consent, back on about May 9. They wanted to sweep it all under the carpet. “Let's just pass a motion absolving everybody of everything, get over it and move on”.

If it had not been for the strength of the Liberal caucus in the Senate, which made sure that there was debate, which made sure that the facts got on the table, which made sure that the cover-up was unwound, in fact there would not be the degree of disclosure that we have today. Ever since then, in both the Senate and in the House, Liberals have prosecuted this aggressively and will continue to do so. Mr. Claude Gravelle (Nickel Belt, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, we, the official opposition, would certainly like to hear from the Prime Minister , under oath, along with Senator Duffy, Senator Wallin, and Senator Brazeau.

However, I want the Liberal member to know that I am not clowning around. I would also like to hear from former Senator Mac Harb, who abruptly resigned to avoid answering questions; former Liberal Senator Raymond Lavigne, who is in jail; and former Liberal Senator Andy Thompson, who is God knows where. I would like to know if the Liberals would bring them to committee, under oath, to tell us about their scheming to defraud Canadian taxpayers. Hon. Ralph Goodale : Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman is entitled to propose whatever motions he likes, and the House will deal with and dispose of them.

This motion puts a precise focus on the major issue before the country right now, and that is the question of how Senator Duffy got so badly into disgrace and how and to what extent and by what means the Prime Minister and his office were involved. That is the question we wish to see put before the ethics committee. If others wish to make other proposals, let them do it. [ Translation ] Hon. Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour, Lib.) : Mr.

Speaker, I congratulate my hon. colleague from Wascana on his speech and on all his efforts throughout this scandal to clarify this situation and get some answers from the government and the Prime Minister . It is unfortunate that the Prime Minister often does not want to answer questions. However, I congratulate my colleague on his excellent work on this issue. My question is rather simple. For the past few days, we have seen some of the questions that have arisen from the statements or affidavits the RCMP has filed in court regarding the involvement of the Prime Minister 's Office—probably Mr.

Woodcock, who is now the chief of staff for the Minister of Natural Resources —in inventing a scenario or scheme to cover up money in the PMO, specifically the money that Mr. Wright gave to Senator Duffy, and inventing stories involving a line of credit for Mr. Duffy's house and claims that he borrowed the money from the Royal Bank. Clearly, the police documents reveal that that was not true, and furthermore, that the Prime Minister 's Office had advised a parliamentarian to lie.

It is really disturbing that senior officials in the office of the Prime Minister of Canada would take the time to send emails instructing a parliamentarian to go on television and lie to the Canadian public about an issue as complex and important as the integrity of the Prime Minister's Office and the Prime Minister himself. I wonder if my colleague has any thoughts he could share on that. (1035) [ English ] Hon. Ralph Goodale : Mr. Speaker, that is a core question that remains unanswered by the government. It is a stunning allegation by Senator Duffy.

According to news reports, it is now the subject of a more focused kind of investigation by the police. On at least two occasions, maybe more, I have asked that very question of the government in the House and have gotten absolutely no answer. What about this suggestion that somebody in the Prime Minister 's Office counselled a sitting parliamentarian to lie to Canadians about a key fact in this whole sordid affair?

What makes it so serious is that the Prime Minister said that he took comfort that everything was being properly handled when he saw Senator Duffy on television saying that he had taken out a mortgage to pay his own expenses. Then we discover that it is alleged that Senator Duffy was lying on the instructions of the Prime Minister 's very own office. That is the kind of damning thing that needs to be answered, and the answer can only come from the Prime Minister looking Canadians in the eye. Hon. Steven Fletcher (Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, CPC) : Mr.

Speaker, I find it ironic that the Liberal Party raises this issue. We all remember the Gomery scandal and the $40 million we are still looking for. The member for Wascana may recall an exchange with Judy Wasylycia-Leis during the previous election, when there were some serious allegations and an RCMP investigation. There are so many issues facing the world today. There is the Syria crisis, the crisis in Egypt, and issues in Southeast Asia and throughout Africa. In Canada, there are issues in health care and aboriginal issues we need to work together as a Parliament to get through.

I wonder if the member could rank issues such as health care, the environment, and the economy in order of importance to him, relative to the Senate. Hon. Ralph Goodale : Mr. Speaker, first, in relation to the two specific cases the hon. gentleman referred to, in one case, there was a royal commission, and in the other case, there was a police investigation, both of which completely vindicated the position I had taken, by 100%.

Second, all the issues he referred to in terms of health, economic development, and the well-being of Canadians are crucially important issues, and they need to have the time and attention of this House. It is also fundamentally important, and more important than anything else, that Canadians are able to trust the integrity of their Prime Minister . That is the issue that has to be dealt with first and foremost. Mr. Paul Calandra (Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and for Intergovernmental Affairs, CPC) : Mr. Speaker, we have obviously been spending a lot of time on this here in the House of Commons.

As I said in my opening question to the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, it seems that we have come to a point where the Liberals themselves are in agreement with the fact that their leader is in way over his head. Last week we were in the House, and the Liberals were accusing the NDP of bringing forward a silly motion that showed how amateur the NDP was and so on and so forth. Now we have the Liberal Party basically admitting to Canadians that the new leader of the Liberal Party will be the member for Avalon . He is the person they trust more than their own leader to get to the bottom of issues.

Where are we with respect to the Senate? It is important that we look back and see where we are and what has happened. On February 13, as I have said in the House on a number of occasions, Senator Duffy approached the Prime Minister to try to justify his inappropriate expenses. He approached the Prime Minister , who was very clear: if Senator Duffy had inappropriate expenses or expenses that he did not earn, he had to pay those back. The Prime Minister was very clear. I do not think any of us, at least on this side of the House, would disagree with that statement.

If someone has accepted a payment that he or she is not entitled to, it must be paid back. The Prime Minister made quite clear to all of us, in a caucus meeting with senators and members of Parliament in attendance, the standard he expected from members of Parliament and each of us who is entrusted with taxpayers' money. He told all of us that if members have something inappropriate, they had better make it right. If they do not, they cannot expect their caucus to stand up for them. At the conclusion of that meeting, as I have said, Senator Duffy approached the Prime Minister to try to justify those expenses.

The Prime Minister was very clear that he had to repay those expenses. We then learned, along with all Canadians and all members of the House, that Senator Duffy had taken out a mortgage or a loan from the Royal Bank of Canada on one of his homes, and with that loan, he paid back the expenses. That is what we were told. Obviously, that was not true. There is no disputing the fact that Senator Duffy, at this point, had not paid back a penny of the inappropriate expenses he accepted. We learned subsequently, when it was reported on May 15, that Nigel Wright had, in fact, repaid Senator Duffy's expenses.

Nigel Wright, of course, understands that it was inappropriate. Nigel Wright is prepared to accept the consequences of that decision. Nigel Wright, as far as we understand, is working with the authorities in providing whatever information they ask for. We also subsequently learned that there were other individuals whom Mr. Wright had brought into his confidence with respect to his repayment of Senator Duffy's expenses. That was, of course, addressed by the Prime Minister in the summer.

Let us talk a bit further about what has been happening in the House for a number of months, because that is really at the heart of what this Liberal motion is all about. Since this came out, we have had the audit. Canadians I have spoken to, the ones who are contacting my office, want to learn more about how the Senate operates. They understand that there are two houses of Parliament, but they do not always appreciate the independence the Senate has with respect to the House of Commons.

They understand that we have certain rules we follow over here with respect to how we submit and receive our expenses, but they do not understand how this was able to go on in the Senate for so long, and they want accountability. Canadians also know that one of the ways they can extract accountability from their members of Parliament is by throwing them out of office at the time of the next election. It frustrates them that they do not have that exact same ability with senators. It frustrates them that there is no way to remove a senator from office until that senator reaches the age of 75.

(1040) The member opposite, from the NDP caucus, asked a question in which he talked about former Liberal senator Andy Thompson. Canadians remember this. Here was a Liberal senator, the former leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, who I think was appointed in 1967, I suppose by Pierre Trudeau or by Lester Pearson. I assume it was Pierre Trudeau, because it was late 1967. By 1997 people were wondering who the heck this senator was. People started to look into it. He appeared once or twice a session to collect his paycheque, but then he was gone.

We subsequently found that the senator had actually been living in Mexico. However, for years he still collected a paycheque from the people of Canada as a senator. It never dawned on the Liberal Party that that was somehow inappropriate for the taxpayers of Canada to be paying for a senator to live in Mexico, come up to Canada, show his face in the Senate once or twice a session, collect his paycheque, collect credits toward his pension, and in no way participate in any of the debates that were so important to Canadians at that time.

Debates such as those on the GST and free trade were very important, and so was the repatriation of the constitution. This senator did not participate in any of it, because he was busy tanning in Mexico. No one in the Liberal Party ever thought that was a problem and they had better do something about it until members of the Reform Party at the time brought this out and asked how appropriate it was. Then all of a sudden the Liberals decided he needed to be removed from the Senate, his salary stripped, and so on. Thirty years later, they finally got around to it.

Canadians also remember, sadly, Senator Raymond Lavigne. This was brought up by my NDP colleague, the member for Nickel Belt . Senator Lavigne, if I recall correctly, was having one of his assistants clean his cottage and chop down some trees. He was getting paid to do that. Senator Lavigne was on the public payroll for years while he was going to court, where he was subsequently found guilty. Canadians look at this and say they cannot throw them out through an election.

When they abuse their expenses, unlike the case in the private sector, where they would be fired, in the Senate they are told not to show up for work. They keep all of their privileges, continue to get paid, and receive credits toward their pension. Canadians know that is unacceptable and, rightly, it frustrates them. The same goes for these senators right now, Senators Brazeau, Wallin, and Duffy, and recently retired and disgraced Liberal Senator Mac Harb. Here is another case. Mac Harb is a former Liberal member of Parliament for Ottawa Centre.

He lived in Ottawa, became a senator for Ottawa, but then found a way to manipulate the rules so that he could claim a housing allowance by buying a home 120 kilometres away from Ottawa, just outside the area, and then pretending to live there. He collected an allowance, year after year, as someone living away from Ottawa. We all have the opportunity in this place to decide where our principal residence will be.

There are a lot of members who, for travel reasons or because they are cabinet ministers or for whatever reason, choose to declare that their principal residence will be in Ottawa, even though they have a home elsewhere. My principal residence is in Stouffville. I declare that as my principal residence when I am asked. However, other members who are here more often and perhaps have extraordinary flight challenges getting back and forth may decide to make their residence here. We understand what that means in relation to our expenses.

It is not a confusion to any of us, so it should not be a confusion to the senators either.

(1045) As we have been saying right from the beginning, just because somebody can figure out a way to abuse the system and then try to go back and say, “Well, the rules are the rules, and I was able to figure out a way around them“ does not mean that the person should be protected. As the Prime Minister said, it is not only about following the letter of the law, it is about following the spirit of the law. The vast majority of us in this place, on both sides of the House, have never violated that trust. We understand it. We get it.

We know that there were some members of the Liberal Party who did not quite get it. I think two of its sitting members abused that trust. I hope that they have subsequently paid the money back. I am not sure. I have never seen any copies of cheques showing they have repaid the hundreds of thousands of dollars in residence claims to which they were not entitled. However, I will take them at their word. If they say they have paid it back, I guess they did, although I have not seen any copies of the cheques suggesting that they have. However, that does not make it right.

Just because someone can figure out a way around the rules does not make it right. What are Canadians asking? They are saying they understand there are challenges and they are asking us to make it right, so they want us to look at the Senate and find ways that we can reform it. As a result, we have a package of reforms that we have put forward to the Supreme Court of Canada to find out ways in which we can actually reform the Senate. Canadians have also been clear that they do not want to get into a big, long-drawn-out constitutional battle.

They do not want us fighting with our provincial partners regarding the Senate. One of the things that Canadians have most talked about as well is how well the provinces and the federal government have worked together during the great recession to benefit the Canadian people. They do not want to turn back the pages to a time when the federal government was fighting with the provincial governments on everything. However, they do want change.

We have asked the Supreme Court of Canada to help us, to give us a road map to show us how we can change the Senate so that it better reflects Canadian values of the 21st century in order that Canadians can once again be proud of that institution, but in such a way that Canadians can be consulted so that there are term limits for these senators and so that Canadians' voices with respect to accountability can be heard. We are waiting for the Supreme Court to give us that advice so that we can bring it forward and make some changes.

What we said in our throne speech is that if we cannot change it, then it has to be abolished. I think it is quite clear that Canadians will no longer tolerate a Senate that has zero accountability. In relation to this motion, I get to answer a lot of questions in question period. I know that often my colleagues on the NDP benches are not happy with how I answer the questions, and that is fine. I get it. I understand.

I am not always happy with the way they ask the question and they are not happy with the way I answer the question, but at least they actually ask questions on something that they think is important. Their leader gets up in the House and asks those questions. I might not like it and I might want to talk about other things. I think it is important we talk about other things, such as the economy, and I think it is important we talk about health care, trade, and natural resources, as was already mentioned.

I think these are also very important things we should talk about However, this issue is obviously important to the members of the official opposition. This is a priority for them. They are asking those questions, and we are obliged to answer them. However, they do it from the floor of the House of Commons, unlike the third party, which has clearly been left leaderless. The Liberals have clearly been left embarrassed by their own leader's inability to do anything of any significance or importance within this House of Commons.

The Liberals could start by having their leader's stage handlers pull out a copy of Hansard from May so that he could be brought back up to speed on what we have been talking about since then, as opposed to turning over the reins to the new or presumptive Liberal leader, the member for Avalon , and telling the member for Avalon that it is now his responsibility to do the job because the Liberal leader has so miserably failed in his duties.

(1050) What do they want? This is something that at least one opposition has been seized with. The Liberals have tried in their silly way to gain some traction, but it has been quite clear that when it comes to this issue, the leader of the NDP has taken the spotlight, and it is killing the Liberal leader. It is killing the Liberal leader that somebody has stolen his spotlight. What is more evident is just how irrelevant the Liberals have become on matters of any importance to the Canadian people. They are completely irrelevant.

The Liberal leader was elected in April and was going to bring so much hope to the Liberal Party. Liberals waited and waited and waited. Canadians waited with bated breath. Then, how was his first policy formulated? He was having a dinner party at his house with his friends and maybe his advisers; I do not know. They pulled out a joint and started talking about things, and the idea that maybe they should legalize marijuana came up. Now, there was a good policy. The member for Richmond Hill told me he has a lot of dinner parties at his house.

He said that usually people bring wine and they share a bottle of wine, but nobody has ever pulled out a joint and formulated policy on it. Liberals waited and waited and waited, and is that what he had? Now he is saying he does not have what it takes in the House of Commons, so he is going to cede everything over to the member for Avalon , three hours in front of a committee is enough, and it will be put to bed. I know why the Liberals want to do this. As we are learning today, the Liberal leader is actually instructing his senators to abstain from voting on these motions. He is actually telling them to abstain.

It is being reported in the media, the same media that the Liberals have believed 100% of the time throughout this controversy. They do not care about any of the facts, but if something is reported by a certain person, it has to be true. That same person is now reporting that the Liberal leader has instructed his senators to abstain from voting on this matter. As the member for Trinity—Spadina just said, the Liberals have lots of practice in abstaining. They do. It is very rare that Liberals will ever come forward with any options. We have heard this before.

I remember that when I was a bit younger, the Liberals said in 1993 that they were going to get rid of the GST and get rid of free trade. Well, the GST and free trade are still here, and then they tried to take credit for how the economy grew because of free trade. One of the reasons I got involved in politics was that I remembered the debates between John Turner and Brian Mulroney on the free trade issue. I remember those debates. Former prime minister Turner, who was also the leader of the opposition, was passionate every day in the House about what he believed, and he fought for those beliefs.

Ultimately, was he wrong? Yes, he was wrong, but he had a belief and he fought for it day in and day out. He stood in this place and fought for it. I know all members in the House would agree with me that they cannot even begin to imagine that same level of debate from the current Liberal leader, who thinks it is more important to smile for a camera than to be in this place every single day and debate the issues that are important to Canadians.

No matter where we fall on this issue, we cannot help but see it as a desperate attempt by the Liberals to steal some of the spotlight away from the NDP and to do their best to make sure their leader never has to speak on this issue, because he has nothing to say. Other than protecting the status quo, they are terrified that he might actually speak on any substantive issue, anything of importance, because what he says changes from area to area.

Unless his stage handlers have put something right in front of him, Liberals are terrified, so they have now told the member for Avalon that he is the new presumptive leader of the Liberal Party. He is the person Liberals trust on this issue. He has three hours to get it done and not do anything to upset the status quo in the Senate.

(1055) I think Canadians understand that. When it comes to fighting the status quo in the Senate, there are some people they can trust, and it is certainly not the Liberal Party of Canada. Mr. Jamie Nicholls (Vaudreuil—Soulanges, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, Canadians do not trust the Conservative Party with the Senate either. The member for Oak Ridges—Markham on October 25, stood in the House and said, “we have been very clear since we were elected in this place that we do not want to appoint senators”.

That would be news to most Canadians in the fact that Mike Duffy, Patrick Brazeau, Pam Wallin, Fabian Manning, Larry Smith, Josée Verner were all appointed by the Prime Minister . The member mentioned the debate that happened in the eighties between Brian Mulroney and the Liberal leader, and I remember it well too. Basically the Conservative leader at the time said, “You had an option, sir, about patronage appointments”. Now we are three decades later and we still have the same patronage appointments going on. The Prime Minister for years said that he wanted to reform the Senate.

The Prime Minister had the minimum option in terms of reform of not making patronage appointments to the Senate, but instead he chose to do like Liberal and Conservative governments of the past. Does the member agree that the 50 people who his Prime Minister appointed should be there, or does he stand by his statement that he made October 25, saying that the Conservatives should not appoint senators?

(1100) Mr. Paul Calandra : Mr. Speaker, of course I do not think we should be appointing senators. When I was asked that question, I made it quite clear that we would rather elect senators. We do not want to appoint senators. In fact, it is the Prime Minister who has actually appointed elected senators and they are sitting there right now. Alberta has a model where it approached the people who identified the people they wanted to be senators and the Prime Minister then appointed those people to the Senate. That is what we want to do. We want to have an elected Senate. We want to put term limits in place.

I stand by those comments because it is important. Canadians have said this. The ones I am speaking to said that they wanted accountability in the Senate and one of the first steps should be, once we were beyond this, was to ensure that we had a voice in who represented us in the Senate. I disagree with one thing the NDP says on this. I do support a Senate that works better, of which Canadians can be proud. I want them to be elected. I want there to be term limits, but if we cannot get to that point, then it should be abolished. Mr. Sean Casey (Charlottetown, Lib.) : Mr.

Speaker, I listened to the parliamentary secretary's address. I am a member of Parliament whose principal residence is in Prince Edward Island. The people of Prince Edward Island were inflamed over the appointment of someone from Kanata to a Prince Edward Island Senate seat. Subsequently they are embarrassed and with the cover-up, they are ashamed that Prince Edward Island s repeatedly in the news and that there is this big cover-up in the Prime Minister 's Office. It struck me in the course of listening to the speech, a great scholar in the House said one day said, “when you throw mud, you lose ground”.

Our leader has repeatedly said that while they focus on him, he will focus on Canadians. What Canadians want to know is the truth. Much of the speech was spent attacking Liberals. I wonder if someone around the parliamentary secretary would be so kind as to pass him a copy of the motion we are debating today. I would ask him to answer this question. Just exactly what is the problem with having the Prime Minister come before committee and testify under oath? Canadians want the truth. Why should they be denied it? Mr. Paul Calandra : Mr.

Speaker, I referenced Liberals in my remarks because it is a Liberal motion that we are talking about. Last week when we were talking about an NDP motion, I referenced the NDP and I pointed out some contradictions that it had and why I disagreed with that motion. Now the Liberals do not want to be talked about with their own motion before the chamber. They do not want us talking about them. They are so embarrassed by their performance that they want to fight for the status quo and that they do not even want us to mention Liberals anymore. Is this what it has come to for the Liberal Party?

The Liberals are so embarrassed of their leadership and their inability to actually have a voice on anything that matters to Canadians. They are so embarrassed by the fact that their only policy is to legalize marijuana. Now they do not want us to talk about them in the context of a motion they brought in front of the House. If the Liberals believe in the motion, do not be surprised when we talk about it, the Liberal Party and the Liberal inconsistencies.

If they did not want that, they could have brought a motion about the economy, about health care, but they are fighting the status quo and now their leader is telling senators to abstain, do not take a position at all on anything because that would be dangerous. I think Canadians understand where accountability will come from and it is from this side.

(1105) Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP) : Mr. Speaker, I hate to disagree with the hon. parliamentary secretary, but the Liberal leader has taken many solid positions since he became leader. Most of them are absolutely terrible. He supports the Keystone pipeline. He supported the sale to Nexen. He supports more deals with China. The only policy he has taken, with which I agree, is the one people keep vilifying him for. I want to put this motion in context. This is about behaviour in the Prime Minister 's Office. It is not about the generalized problem of the Senate.

I put this for my friend, the hon. parliamentary secretary. In today's Globe and Mail , one of his former colleagues, Inky Mark, describes the Prime Minister 's modus operandi. He said: [The Prime Minister's] biggest weakness is that he doesn’t listen to anyone. He thought he knew more than all of us put together. He didn’t trust anyone. He operated through his bullies. I ask the hon. parliamentary secretary this.

How do we jive the Prime Minister 's reputation for being in total control of all aspects of his operations at all times with what must have only been wilful blindness to what was going on all around him in the cover-up? Mr. Paul Calandra : Mr. Speaker, I hate to disagree with the Green Party member, but the Liberal leader supports Keystone when he is in front of oil people, but he does not necessarily support it when he is in B.C. or Ontario. We have seen this with the Liberals before.

We remember the former Liberal leader who supported the auto sector when he was in Oshawa, but when he was in British Columbia, he was not so supportive of the auto sector. The Liberal leader supports the oil sands, but not taking it out of the ground. Anybody can support it, but if they do not support the pipelines that get it to market, what is the point to that? I am not sure the Liberal leader has figured out that the pipes we are talking about are not the ones used for smoking. They are the ones that actually deliver oil to the market. With respect to the Prime Minister , he has been very clear.

Had he known that this scheme was being hatched, he would have in no way endorsed such a scheme. Nigel Wright has accepted full and sole responsibility. What we are asking for now is that the senators do the same. They are not, so there is a motion in front of the Senate which would give Canadians the accountability that they cannot extract from a ballot box when it comes to the senators. We are learning now that the Liberals are going to sit on their hands and abstain from voting. When it comes to accountability, Canadians can always count on the Conservative Party to provide that accountability. Mr.

Stephen Woodworth (Kitchener Centre, CPC) : Mr. Speaker, in my riding people are concerned about jobs and economic growth. They are concerned about providing for their families. They are concerned about safety in their communities. Just yesterday the opposition focused on one issue for 23 questions straight. It turns out the Leader of the Opposition has a confirmed history for libel, so perhaps it should not be a surprise that we are talking about innuendo and out-of-context statements and half-truths. I would like to ask the parliamentary secretary a question.

Why does the opposition not want to talk about Canada's economic performance? Why does it not want to talk about the Speech from the Throne? Why does it not want to talk about the Canadian-European trade agreement? Why does the opposition avoid all of the issues that concern my constituents? Mr. Paul Calandra : Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is quite right. There are so many very important issues facing Canadians. We understand that the economy grew by a little over 2% annually. That is really good news.

We have a new trade deal with the European Union that the Prime Minister was able to negotiate, opening up a market of 500 million people, which will be an incredible benefit to the people of Kitchener, I might add. Canadians want to talk about other things. The Minister of Justice has said that we will come forward with more protections for victims of crime. We have infrastructure issues. We have issues with respect to the environment and natural resources that we have to get at. That is not to say that this issue with respect to bringing accountability in the Senate is not important because it is.

It is important and we are going to move forward with accountability and reforming the Senate, but there are a lot of other issues that we need to deal with. The member for Kitchener Centre is completely right in identifying all of those other very important issues. Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, as always it is an incredible honour to rise in the House as the elected member for the great region of Timmins—James Bay. It is November 5 and I was thinking of the children's poem that is said all over England today, “Remember, remember, the fifth of November”.

That is the Guy Fawkes plot where a group of rebels attempted to blow up the House of Commons. Coming from a Scottish Catholic background, our family never had much reason to celebrate the Guy Fawkes plot with all of the burnings. However, I thought of it because people will look back at this period as a time when the so-called august chamber of sober second thought was blown up under its own hubris and corruption. What poems will the children speak in future? Will they remember Guy Fawkes or will they remember Nigel Wright, Pamela Wallin, Patrick Brazeau, Mac Harb or the current Prime Minister ?

I want to speak to the motion and the issues we see. Right now there is a legitimization crisis in the country toward Parliament and the Senate because of this corruption scandal. Canadians need answers. At the outset, the New Democrats would support any effort to get answers regarding this scandal. However, I have a number of questions about the Liberal motion to bring the Prime Minister to committee for a three hour period to speak. I do not think that is very well thought out because there are many people we need to hear from.

If we were to set up a proper inquiry, there are a number of people we would bring to committee, such as Chris Woodcock, Benjamin Perrin, Mr. van Hemmen, Irving Gerstein and Nigel Wright. I do not agree with the idea of the Prime Minister coming to committee for three hours. Last week he was in the House for at least three hours during question period. That is the moment when we are to confront the Prime Minister. This is the tradition of the Westminster system. There is an honour system. Much of our tradition has been undermined by the present Prime Minister.

However, when the leader of a party stands up to speak, it is the honour and tradition that the Prime Minister responds to the leader of that party. Therefore, the leaders of the parties have enormous opportunities in the House. Last week, the Liberal leader fronted the idea of the Prime Minister speaking under oath somewhere. It seemed to take the Liberals a few days to figure out where this oath-taking would take place. However, I would remind the people back home that when ministers speak in the House, it is expected that they tell the truth.

They may prevaricate, deny or skirt around the issue but there is a legal obligation. If someone knowingly misrepresents the facts, that is a breach of privilege for the members of the House. The Prime Minister has been walking a tightrope because he and his staff are facing many serious allegations. Therefore, this is the forum in which it should be done. It is the leader of the Liberal Party who should be calling out the Prime Minister if he is being called out individually and not with all of his support staff or anyone else. It is the leader of a party who should be doing that.

However, I have not seen the involvement of the Liberal leader anywhere with respect to this issue. Last week the Liberal leader had 45 opportunities to ask questions on this issue. That is the power of the leader of the third party. He asked three questions. Therefore, it is surprising that it has suddenly become a serious issue for him. He skipped town. He was in Calgary glad-handing with the oil executives, while the nation was facing one of the biggest political scandals. The week before that he skipped town to go to Washington to promote Keystone XL. These were his choices and it is his choice to make.

However, he then cannot turn around and say that the Prime Minister is not willing to answer questions when the Prime Minister does stand up. We will continue to take that stand. My hon. Liberal members might say that the NDP had more opportunity to ask questions. However, our leader has made it a policy that the House of Commons is where leaders challenge each other to find out where the breakdowns are in the story.

(1110) There are two fundamental crises happening. One is in the Senate, and one is in the House of Commons. There probably is a reason senators have not allowed cameras in the Senate. I say to the folks back home that I have been in the Senate watching. It is a dismal exercise. It is like watching the made men and women of the Liberal and Conservative parties hitting each other with feather dusters and then going off for drinks afterwards. We are told by my colleagues in the Liberal Party that it is the Liberal senators who are standing up for fairness.

The key senators who should be questioned are not being questioned in the Senate, because senators protect their own. The Liberal senators have been standing up day after day saying how unfair it is that people who are facing issues of breach of trust and fraud are actually getting the boot. I do not know what universe the Liberals live in, but if the people in my riding get an overpayment on their pension or disability cheques, the government comes back at them. There is no due process or anything else. The government comes down on them.

I am dealing with a man with a disabled son who almost lost his house because of an overpayment. He was not doing anything wrong, yet day after day, the Liberal senators have been stalling in the House, in the Senate, not on the issue of getting to the bottom of the scandal but on the fundamental issue that it is simply not fair that one of their made men or women are being booted out the door. That is what the debate has been about.

If the Liberal senators were serious about dealing with this, they could use their role in the Senate for a whole manner of things, because we are not, in our lower chamber, supposed to even be able to question these august senators. As Liberal Senator Baker said, they are “above all rules”. They make their own rules. In their world, if they ask for money, ask and it shall be given. Knock and the door shall be opened. They seem to live in some kind of biblical antechamber.

They believe that if they ask for the money, they should receive it and that what is unfair is that senators are being booted out for having done that. Let us talk about who should be brought forward if we were to ask questions. Let us talk about the fraud charges against Raymond Lavigne. This is not bringing up the deep, dark past. This is recent history. The RCMP raised the issues about fraud and the fact that there were no checks and balances in the Senate. They were raised then, in the trial, when he went to jail, and nothing was done in the Senate. The senators just went on with business as usual.

Let us talk about Senator Tkachuk. There is an allegation that Senator Tkachuk gave Mike Duffy the heads-up about him ordering all the chicken wings and beer when he was two weeks in Florida, in the middle of an audit. He was on the committee, and he gave Mike Duffy the heads-up. There is nobody on the Liberal side of the Senate asking what was going on that undermined an audit. Now they are saying that it is gross negligence. If we have allegations that senators were giving other senators a tipoff, that undermines the public trust.

One would think the senators would be asking questions of Carolyn Stewart Olsen, who is having her own problems now with the mispaying of money. She sat on that committee. We are told that under the Nigel Wright deal, Nigel Wright would arrange the money and the senators would whitewash the audit. I would like to hear them asking in the Senate right now what senators were involved in the whitewashing of that audit, but we are not hearing anything. The Liberal senators are standing on the principle that one of their own, a senator, even if from the other party, should never be kicked out.

Senators should keep their benefits no matter what has happened. It is a disgraced institution, and Canadians are rightly fed up with these shenanigans. They would expect someone over in that so-called upper chamber to act decently and recognize that they are living off the largesse of the Canadian people. However, we are not hearing a word of that from any of the Liberal senators at this point. They are stalling for time. They are saying that it is unfair what is happening to Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin, and Patrick Brazeau.

They are talking about their right to due process, which no other Canadian would get, because these are the people who make the rules. This scandal is a very serious issue for Canadians, because what starts with Mike Duffy and his ineligible expenses goes into the Prime Minister 's Office, where Nigel Wright apparently, according to Mike Duffy, who has the paper trail, told him that his expenses were okay, because if they went after him, there were at least four other senators in that spot. Who are those other senators? I think Canadians need to know.

(1115) What has come forward from the evidence that came out at the beginning of February, and that nobody has contradicted, is that they would write a $90,000 cheque. Initially, according to the RCMP affidavits, which the Conservatives are always telling us to study, Senator Irving Gerstein was involved in the discussions. He was willing to use $30,000 from the donor base of the Conservative Party to pay, but when he found out that it was $90,000, he refused. What was the role of Senator Irving Gerstein, or what knowledge did he have of a deal that was potentially illegal?

I am not a lawyer, but to make a secret payment to a sitting politician in a matter before the Senate is certainly something that breaches the Criminal Code. Irving Gerstein would have been aware of that. The deal was what Nigel Wright referred to as a cash repayment scheme.They would pay for Mike Duffy's audit problems, the $90,000, and then the Senate would agree to go easy on Duffy. That is what happened. We saw an initial whitewashed audit. We saw the Prime Minister thanking Mike Duffy for showing leadership. All the things were in place until the paper trail began to come out.

On March 25, Nigel Wright transferred $90,172.24 to Mike Duffy's lawyer. We are not sure exactly how the transfer occurred and whether it went through Conservative Party lawyers, but it was transferred. Mike Duffy said that Nigel Wright said do not worry. He would write the cheque and would let lawyers handle the details. Duffy should just follow the plan, and they would keep Carolyn Stewart Olsen and David Tkachuk at bay. Who were those lawyers? There has to be a paper trail.

Less than two weeks after this transfer of money, which may have been highly illegal, Arthur Hamilton, the senior lawyer for the Conservative Party, sent a cheque for $13,560 to Mike Duffy's lawyer, Elizabeth Payne. The House of Commons, through all the questions, was not told about this by the Prime Minister . Who authorized the senior Conservative Party lawyer to write this cheque if it was not Senator Irving Gerstein or someone up higher? On May 15, this potentially illegal hush-money payoff became public. On May 16, the Prime Minister said that Nigel Wright had his full confidence.

The Prime Minister knew on May 16. If the Prime Minister had no idea before, it seems rather bizarre that everyone around the Prime Minister knew. If, on May 16, the Prime Minister knew that a potentially illegal cheque had been written by his staff in a cover-up to whitewash an audit that may have been looking at issues of breach of trust or fraud, the Prime Minister's response was certainly odd when he said that he had full confidence. On May 17, the Prime Minister 's Office said that Wright was staying on.

On May 19, the extent of the political damage was becoming very clear, and the Prime Minister said, “It is with great regret that I have accepted the resignation of Nigel Wright as my Chief of Staff.” Up to that point, we remember the questions in the House of Commons about whether the RCMP investigators were to be involved. They were saying to leave it to the ethics officer. It was actually the New Democrats that wrote a letter asking the RCMP to investigate, because we were looking at a potential crime.

The Prime Minister said in May and June that if there were any documents relating to this issue, they would be more than willing to co-operate, but he did not say that he would release any. In fact, we were told by the present Minister of Foreign Affairs that no documents existed. We know that this is simply not true. What is surprising from the evidence that has been brought forward by Nigel Wright is that he has in his possession a very large binder of evidence regarding Mike Duffy's claims: his calendar, his travel, and all manner of issues.

This was not given over to the audit, and it was not given over to the RCMP until months after the RCMP investigation began.

(1120) I mention this because if, on May 19, Nigel Wright walked out of his office, why would the Prime Minister 's staff allow him to walk out with such a trove of evidence about a potential crime? It just beggars belief that Nigel Wright was allowed to walk with all this evidence, yet he was. When we asked the Prime Minister a really simple and straightforward question—who knew in the Prime Minister's Office?—he said again and again that Nigel Wright was the sole actor. We asked about Benjamin Perrin's role. We were not given straightforward answers.

We now know that Chris Woodcock, in the Prime Minister's Office, Benjamin Perrin, and David van Hemmen were involved. We need to know to what degree. I refer the House to the latest

article on the RCMP statements. They are now looking for the paper trail regarding new allegations that have emerged that this RBC mortgage loan was a front set up by the Prime Minister's Office and that they told Mike Duffy to go along. The allegation Mike Duffy made, and we have not seen the Prime Minister stand up in the House and say that Mike Duffy is a liar, is that the Prime Minister's staff coached him to lie to the Canadian people about this deal and the fake RBC loan. The Prime Minister continues to repeat that line in the House. His Parliamentary Secretary continues to repeat that line.

At no point have we heard the Prime Minister say that he was told by his staff that Mike Duffy had an RBC loan. What the heck was going on? The Prime Minister seems to have real disinterest in finding out within his office if people were playing a game. In fact, we now know that there was a senator who phoned Mike Duffy and threatened him, saying that he had better go along and do what the Prime Minister said. Who was that person? We have not heard the Prime Minister answer that. I would like to focus on the RBC loan, because it is a very important issue.

What we are seeing now from Sergeant Biage Carrese of the RCMP National Division, in a November 1 letter, is that: Emails from the PMO specifically relating to a script for Senator Duffy to follow in advance of obtaining funds from a RBC loan to repay the Receiver General may be material to the RCMP's investigation. Duffy has said: On Feb. 21, after all of the threats and intimidation, I reluctantly agreed to go along with this dirty scheme. I certainly do not think that too many Canadians believe that Mike Duffy is the most trustworthy person.

However, the difference between Mike Duffy and the Prime Minister at this point is that Mike Duffy is providing us with a paper trail. We are getting nothing from the Prime Minister. It is quite a shocking set of circumstances when someone who has abused the public trust as much as Mike Duffy is being given more credit than the Prime Minister.

We are talking about the RCMP actually investigating not just the issue of whether a potentially illegal payout was made, which was meant to cover up the breach of trust and potential fraud against the taxpayers, but that it was the Prime Minister's Office that set up the fake story about the RBC and coached Mike Duffy. If he did not go along, they would go public with the fact that he was not even legitimately allowed to sit in the Senate. What kind of contempt for the Canadian people is that?

Even in a system as dodgy as the Senate, they were all willing to cover up the fact that Mike Duffy was not even eligible to sit in the Senate. He had to go along. It was being orchestrated. Who was it? Was it Ray Novak? Was it Chris Woodcock? Was it Benjamin Perrin? Who was the one in the Prime Minister's Office coaching Mike Duffy through this scheme?

(1125) Mr. Paul Calandra (Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and for Intergovernmental Affairs, CPC) : Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his comments. I think it comes as no surprise that I would disagree with a number of things he said. Of course, that is why we are here. It is to express our opinions and ask those questions. We have actually been spending a lot more time together than I think the hon. member ever hoped he would be spending with me, but so be it.

I wonder if he would agree on one thing, though, which is that what we have before us with this motion from the Liberals is really an embarrassingly shallow attempt by the Liberals to deflect the fact that they are fighting so hard to maintain the status quo in the Senate. Regardless of anything, at least most of us would agree, on this side and on the official opposition side, that there has to be accountability in the Senate. I wonder if he would agree that this is just an embarrassingly shallow attempt by the Liberals to deflect from the fact that they are fighting so hard to maintain the status quo.

What are his thoughts on recent reports we have heard that the Liberal leader is actually instructing his senators to abstain from voting on the three motions we have before us?

(1130) Mr. Charlie Angus : Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question, and yes, we are going to be spending a lot of time together. We do not seem to agree on very much, but we are maintaining a professional relationship because we are all here to represent the Canadian people. We have a serious issue before us in the House of Commons, so I will continue to push him and his government very hard. In terms of the motion, I certainly do not think it has been thought through very well. Again, any effort to shed light on this we are willing to support, but this is the avenue.

In terms of what is going on in the Senate, I find it absolutely appalling that we have seen day after day Liberal senators not interested in getting to the bottom of the roles that senators have been playing in this issue. They have been completely walking around the fact that many senators are being named in police documents as being involved in a potentially illegal act. If the Liberal senators were serious about this, they would be using the upper chamber to do that, but they are not. They are protecting the made men and women who sit in the Senate for their perks; that is what it is.

At the end of the day, I think it would be an abomination to the Canadian people for all those senators who waxed on and on about the importance of the upper chamber and why it is so important to Canadians to sit on their hands. They better stand up and vote. Certainly, if television cameras were in there, I bet the Canadian people would be down there tomorrow giving them all the heave ho. Mr. Sean Casey (Charlottetown, Lib.) : Mr. Speaker, the member for Timmins—James Bay was quite vocal in his criticism that the motion does not go far enough.

I am reminded of the saying that “perfection is the enemy of the good”. I have only been in this chamber a short time, but it is my understanding that only the House of Commons can order a member to appear before the committee, and only the House can order the Prime Minister to appear. There is absolutely nothing in the motion that would prevent the committee from inviting and ordering others to appear, as the hon. member has suggested. The point of our motion is to ensure that one of the people who appears before the committee is the Prime Minister , and only the House can do that.

Could I have the member's response to that please? Mr. Charlie Angus : Mr. Speaker, I want my hon. colleague to understand that we are certainly interested in getting to the bottom of what has happened and we will support efforts. However, the problem I guess is a question of perception. When one calls out a prime minister, the person who calls out the prime minister is the leader of a party. It is not my position as the critic to call out the prime minister. I will call out my colleague who is the parliamentary secretary. The leader of the Liberal Party has the opportunity to show leadership at this moment.

He has not been here. He has not been asking the questions. We have been in the House for the last number of weeks and he simply has not shown up. If one is only going to ask three questions out of a possible 45 on this, it is hard to convince Canadians that one takes it all that seriously. Yes, we are more than willing to study this at the ethics committee, but we think that the main issue is for the Prime Minister to answer the questions from the two leaders in the House. Our work in committee I think is with all the other players.

That is who we should be bringing to committee, but we are certainly more than willing to work with our colleagues on trying to find an appropriate solution. Mr. Yvon Godin (Acadie—Bathurst, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, there is a question that bothers me that we did not get an answer to. The Prime Minister is the person who put Mike Duffy there. He knew Mike Duffy stayed in Ottawa for many years and had his little chalet in P.E.I. However, the Prime Minister said that he wanted the province to tell him who it wanted in the Senate. Did he ever get that from P.E.I.?

If he believes so much that the Senate should work well, how did the Prime Minister not know that Mike Duffy's primary task was not to be in the Senate to carry out sober second thought, to look after the region of P.E.I. or to look after the minority, but to do fundraising for the Conservative Party? Here again, the Prime Minister did not know about that. For all those years, Mike Duffy and Wallin were going around because they were the stars at CTV and in Toronto and on television. They were used by the Prime Minister for fundraising for the Conservative Party. Does the member agree with me?

(1135) Mr. Charlie Angus : Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for returning us to the fundamental problem, which is the cynicism of a Prime Minister who chose people who were not even eligible to sit in the Senate. I was reading an

article about Pamela Wallin. She said she no longer lives in Saskatchewan but she has her Christmas there. Well, when I go visit my relatives at Christmas it does not make me their legal representative. They knew they were not eligible to sit in the Senate. They breached the Constitution. No one in the Senate even bothered to say anything because how many of them actually live where they are supposed to represent? How many times do these people stand up and speak for their regions? Some of them never speak for them.

In the case of Duffy and Wallin, they were out there doing the heavy fundraising, just as many of the Liberal senators do. They were doing the organizing of the party. That is an abuse of public trust. We need to clip the wings of those senators and stop that rip-off of the taxpayers. Mr. Nathan Cullen (Skeena—Bulkley Valley, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on this because a lot of Canadians do not realize just what the role of many of our senators is. We see Mac Harb, one of the chief fundraisers for the Liberal Party, now under investigation by the RCMP.

We saw Senator Gerstein, who was the last speaker at the Conservative convention in Calgary, say at the beginning of his speech that he is a self-admitted bagman and proud to say he is a bagman. He did not mention the part where he is also paid by the Canadian taxpayer to run around as a bagman for the Conservative Party; on and on it goes. I do not know how many of my Conservative colleagues across the way had fundraisers with Mr. Duffy or Madam Wallin, or whether the money they spent on their campaigns was garnered that way. That is what the Senate has been for so long.

The curious thing for me is, and I will put this question to my colleague, we are dealing with the Liberal motion here today, asking the Prime Minister to testify under oath. Of course, testifying under oath would be a relief from the general comments we get from the Prime Minister day after day. However, just last week, the Liberals voted against the New Democrat motion to have no more partisan activity for senators. They should stop using the taxpayer to fly them around the country to fundraise for the Conservative and Liberal parties of Canada. If they want to go fundraise, they should do it the way we do it.

We pay our own way. I do not understand why Conservative senators feel that the Canadian taxpayers should be buying the flights and the limos that truck them around the country to raise money for partisan activities. If the Liberals were serious about cleaning up the mess in the Senate at all and really meant what they were saying here, why would they vote against a motion that says no more partisan activities will be accepted as legal expenses for senators, Conservative and Liberal alike? Mr. Charlie Angus : Mr. Speaker, the Liberals built the corrupt system that is the Senate. It is their machine.

It is where they put their party men and their bagmen for years. They are not even asking right now to go after the Senate and clean it up. They are only asking to protect perks. That is the fundamental problem. If we do not abolish the Senate, if we stripped it of its partisan rule, then Canadians might have some faith in it. However, when they see people who flip pancakes and do fundraisers for the party getting appointed as made men and women for life, no wonder Canadians are cynical and fed up.

They look to them to show some leadership and they just see people looking after their own and protecting their time at the trough. Mr. Scott Andrews (Avalon, Lib.) : Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to participate in the debate and discussion around this issue today. What we are looking for are some answers. We are trying to get the Prime Minister to come before our committee so we can get some answers as to what went wrong and when he knew this was ongoing, so we can get to the bottom of it.

One thing I have learned in politics is that the thing that we hold most dear is trust, and once it is lost it is gone forever. We work very hard to gain the trust of our constituents. We work very hard to gain the trust of Canadians. However, the moment we have lost that trust, it is gone and it is hard to get it back. We are trying to get to the bottom of this because Canadians have lost their trust in the current Prime Minister and he should feel compelled to want to regain that trust.

Everywhere I have gone over the last few weeks and over this past summer, every barbecue, every function I attended, people would come up to me and talk about this. Canadians are engaged. They want to know what went on. They want to get to the bottom of it. It is important that we in this chamber find out what happened and put this behind us, so that we can move on to some of the more important issues. I am sure the government has a lot of important issues that it would like to put forward. However, this needs to be put to bed first. That is why the motion is on the table.

The problem is that there have been a lot of contradictory statements made in here, in the media, in the Senate, and by the RCMP, as well. There is a lot to get to the bottom of. First, let us review the timeline on this particular case. I will focus on one small aspect of the timeline. This started last November. November 22 is when the Senate internal economy committee had the task of reviewing these senators' expenses. This was first brought out a year ago. Then, through December, it was reported that Senator Duffy had made claims on his living expenses.

Then it continued into January 2013, when the auditing firm of Deloitte was hired. Then it carried into February, when the Senate said anyone should repay the money and the Prime Minister reported to his caucus that if anyone had received any of this money, it was time to repay it. Therefore, it had been burning for almost three or four months. Then it continued throughout February with the different claims on residency of senators and the amount owing by Mr. Duffy got to the $90,000 mark in March of 2013.

Then it carried on through April, as well, when there was the whitewashing of reports and the audits were completed. Then it all came to a head in May. This is the time frame I would like to discuss today. What exactly happened during those five days in May when the Prime Minister was thrust into this discussion? That is the most important time frame in all of this discussion, trying to get to the bottom of how the Prime Minister handled this during those five days in May.

Despite this having gone on for almost six to eight months, let us give the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt, that prior to May 14, he knew nothing about the scheme of how Senator Duffy repaid his expenses. Let us give him the benefit of the doubt for the purposes of this discussion today and let us focus on those five days in May when the Prime Minister lost a lot of credibility and a lot of trust. It started on May 14, at 10:01 p.m., when the report was filed that Senator Mike Duffy and Nigel Wright had an arrangement to repay the $90,000.

(1140) I have been a political staffer. We all know that there are teams of communications officials in the Prime Minister 's Office who watch every single news cast, read every single paper and monitor this stuff 24/7. This is when this story really started, on May 14. At 10:01 p.m., this report broke. I can say that right then the communications teams in the Prime Minister's Office went into high gear. Everybody was alerted that this story had come out and had been put solely on the chief of staff of the Prime Minister on May 14.

I will give the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt that he was home on Sussex Drive in bed, not paying attention to this, spending time with his family, and this was not brought to his attention on that evening. Hon. John Baird: Would you want to call him at 11 o'clock at night? Mr. Scott Andrews: I wouldn't want to call him at 11 o'clock at night. As a staffer, I would not have made that phone call at 11 o'clock at night, and that is fair. However, the real story begins the next morning on how this was handled when the Prime Minister woke up and found out what Nigel Wright had done.

This is where this story gets interesting. Obviously, on the morning of May 15 all hands were on deck in the Prime Minister 's Office, all the suspects who were involved with this: Nigel Wright, Ray Novak, Benjamin Perrin, Chris Woodcock, and David van Hemmen. I believe the Prime Minister, too, was involved with this important discussion, because on May 28 in a question in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister stated: On Wednesday, May 15, I was told about it. At that very moment, I demanded that my office ensure that the public was informed, and it was informed appropriately.

He demanded his office inform the public on May 15. I think he also demanded in that office that morning, of all his staffers, who else knew about this: “Who in this office knew about this transaction? I need to get to the bottom of this.” Obviously, Nigel Wright spoke up and, instead of firing Nigel right there on the spot for betraying the Prime Minister 's confidence, he kept him around for another five days. I will come back to that part of the story.

At that critical moment, when the Prime Minister asked who else in the office knew about it, I am sure that these three individuals either said something then to the Prime Minister that they knew something about it or they did not. Either way, they are were part of the cover-up on this whole issue and they all should have been shown the door immediately. Not one of these individuals, one being the Prime Minister's own lawyer in his office, raised his hand and said, “We have a little problem here. I don't think Nigel should have done this.” He did not say anything.

Chris Woodcock, director of issues management for the PMO, was in high gear on May 15, because when this all broke in the morning of May 15, there were emails in which these guys went into full damage control. There is an email dated May 15 in which the secret deal to help Mike Duffy was reported. Woodcock asked Duffy, “Can you confirm whether you advised the Senate ethics officer of any loans/gifts involved in the March 25th repayment?” Woodcock continued to say, “Trying to cover off all the angles”. That is very important. He is trying to cover all the angles.

Obviously, on May 15, Woodcock was part of this and they were trying to cover all the angles. They were trying to cover all the damage control on this particular file. He knew what had gone on. He asked whether Mike Duffy had notified the Senate ethics officer about this $90,000 gift. It was high gear. The Prime Minister , at that particular time, should have shown them all the door. He should have taken charge of the issue and said he knew nothing about this and what they did was wrong. No, that did not happen.

(1145) Then we move to May 16, the next day. This had been brewing for a day now, and the Prime Minister 's Office was trying to figure out how to get to the bottom of this and how to control this situation. Then the Prime Minister 's communications director, Mr. Andrew MacDougall, who had no knowledge of what had gone on, whose name is not mentioned in any court documents, was doing his job. He came out and made this statement on May 16, the next day—May 14, 15 and now 16: The Prime Minister has full confidence in Mr. Wright and Mr. Wright is staying on. The Prime Minister did not get to the bottom of it.

He did not ask if it had actually happened. Mr. Wright had the full confidence of the Prime Minister the very next day. What the Prime Minister 's Office and Conservatives were trying to do was to see if they could ride out the storm. They wanted to see if they could get through the storm. They did not want to fire anybody or throw anybody under the bus. Then the story continued to percolate through May 17 and 18. Duffy is kicked out of caucus. Wallin is moved to the side. Then a number of Conservatives came out to defend Nigel Wright, and they continue to do it to this day.

This past weekend the MP for Edmonton—Leduc came out and defended Nigel Wright as an honourable fellow. The Minister of Employment and Social Development tweeted on May 19: Very sorry about Nigel Wright's resignation. Brilliant, decent man who made huge sacrifices to go into public service. We need more like him. This was upon hearing about the resignation of Nigel Wright. It was later that we learned he was dismissed or resigned, a story that keeps changing. The Minister of Industry came out and said: Nigel Wright is a great Canadian.

Canada is stronger because of his service as Chief of Staff to our Prime Minister. Then the Minister of State (Democratic Reform) came out and said: Saddened to hear of Nigel Wright's departure. He is an honourable man, and great Canadian. Then another MP came out, the member for Calgary Centre , saying that she really felt for Nigel Wright; it was right thing to do. No, it was not the right thing to do. The right thing would have been, when they first heard about it, to have fired his arse out the door.

That would have been the right thing to do, but the Conservatives tried to get through this scandal in five days, trying to see if it would go away. That is the essence of why we need to get the Prime Minister to come and testify before the ethics committee. It is because of this story. That was May 19. Then on May 24, the Prime Minister admitted that perhaps he should have accepted the resignation sooner. Well, he should have fired him immediately. If he had no knowledge of what had gone on, and he had not gone along with it, the Prime Minister should have fired him immediately.

If he did not fire him, it would lead people to believe that he knew more than he is letting on. That is where we are coming down to trust. There is a saying out there, “....what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive”. It is so true. It can happen in all aspects of politics, when the story starts changing, if one is telling one story to some people and another story to other people, that is the problem. It is the tangled web this Prime Minister weaved for himself. He needs to get out from underneath it. He needs to come clean. He needs to fess up.

One thing that is very honourable in this place is that we sometimes say “I am sorry. I did something wrong”. People should not be punished for saying those things. That is why this motion is here. I would welcome it before the ethics committee. It is a place for us to get to the bottom of this and make sure trust is regained in our government, trust is regained in parliamentarians.

(1150) Hon. Greg Rickford (Minister of State (Science and Technology, and Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario), CPC) : Mr. Speaker, the member's intervention today would have more meaning if he had more support. I do not know if CPAC is available in prison or not; maybe the senator there is having an opportunity to watch it. However, the question is quite simple. Does the member, his caucus and their colleagues in the other place support the kinds of Senate reform that we have been championing now for the past seven years?

(1155) Mr. Scott Andrews : Mr. Speaker, that party used to be the champion of Senate reform a long time ago, and it obviously did nothing with it because the Prime Minister appointed these senators, 59 of them, the most senators ever appointed by a prime minister. That is not the issue here today. The issue is how the Prime Minister has handled this fiasco and what happened during his leadership as Prime Minister during this fiasco. That is the motion here today. If the member wants to talk about Senate reform, we will talk about that when the Supreme Court brings down the ruling on how to move forward.

Do not confuse the two issues here today. This is about the Prime Minister's handling of this debacle. [ Translation ] Ms. Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet (Hochelaga, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, since the Liberals moved this motion, does that mean that they regret their decision to vote against the motion moved by the NDP last week to restrict the partisan activities and travel of senators? [ English ] Mr. Scott Andrews : Mr. Speaker, I do not see how the two motions are relative. This motion is about the Prime Minister 's Office, so the two are not related. Hon. Stéphane Dion (Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, Lib.) : Mr.

Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague if he would agree that the key issues here are the ability of the Prime Minister to say exactly the truth about what happened and why he is dodging all questions about this issue. Mr. Scott Andrews : Mr. Speaker, this is an opportunity for the Prime Minister to come clean and get the facts of the story on the record in a manner that does not cause confusion. When the Prime Minister answers a lot of questions, he says one thing, says something else, causes confusion. That is manipulating the situation. This is an opportunity for the Prime Minister to come clean.

I come back to what I said about regaining the trust of Canadians. Once a politician has lost trust, he or she is done. The Prime Minister needs to come clean. We need to get to the bottom of this and we need to know all the facts. The Prime Minister is the only person who can clear the air and put this to bed. Mr. Nathan Cullen (Skeena—Bulkley Valley, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, I agree with my friend across the way on a couple of points. This is an opportunity for the Prime Minister .

I was at the Calgary convention observing on behalf of New Democrats, and I thought there was an opportunity for the Prime Minister to come clean in the safest room he is going to have between now and the next election, I would offer, and he chose not to. He just said the same things he says here week after week, but in an angrier, louder tone. That was his choice. My friend talked about trust. It must be concerning to my Conservative friends, particularly the Prime Minister .

They have had many failed strategies on this, but the strategy was to say that no one is going to believe Mike Duffy, so let us put up the Prime Minister's reputation against Mike Duffy's on this story and clearly Canadians will fall on the Prime Minister's side. It must be so unnerving for Conservatives to see polling and reaction of Canadians saying they trust neither of them very much. They seem to trust Mike Duffy a little bit more. That hurts. That has to sting when a Prime Minister has built his whole persona around credibility and trust. To my Liberal friend across the way, I am confused.

We have asked questions about trying to make the Senate less partisan and not allow it to use taxpayer money to raise funds for the parties. That is the issue, and we have talked about getting rid of the Senate in the first place. The Prime Minister 's shortcuts around democracy, breaking his promise 59 times to Canadians that he would not appoint senators, is part of this issue. This is the root of it. We cannot simply clip at the branches and say we have fixed the Senate because we got rid of Mike Duffy, Pam Wallin and Patrick Brazeau. That is not the case. We have to go for the root and branch.

We have to absolutely take out the heart of this thing. The only answer the Liberals have for Canadians right now, unfortunately, the only problem they see with the Senate is that they have to appoint more Liberal senators; that will fix things. That is not true. In looking at the news today, I see Mac Harb, one of the Liberals' favourites, who did what with the privileges he had as a senator?

Clearly, the position that the Liberal leader has taken consistently is that somehow tweaking around the edges and not having to actually reform or abolish the Senate—we believe in abolishment—is going to be enough and that this nightmare will not just return again once the spotlight turns down a bit. It is not tenable. It is not a tenable argument. It is not logical. It does not make any sense.

If Liberals believe in this motion that the Prime Minister has to come clean on all these things and that there are serious fundamental flaws in the Senate, then why not agree when we propose motions to get at those same fundamental flaws in the Senate? Why have it one way and then try to have it another?

(1200) Mr. Scott Andrews : Mr. Speaker, the opposition House leader likes to smear everybody. He would like to bring the Liberals and the Conservatives in rather than focus on the issue at hand. It is about the characters who are involved on that side of the House in this scandal and about that Prime Minister knowing about it. It is about Gerstein, Tkachuk, Stewart-Olsen, Novak, Perrin, Woodcock, Hemmen, Rogers, Jenni Byrne, and Senator Finley. What do all those individuals have in common? They are members of the Conservative Party.

That is where this problem resolves, and the problem sits at the feet of the Prime Minister. Mr. Nathan Cullen : Mr. Speaker, let us clarify this. My friend read out a list of all these senators who have done really bad things. Some of them have stolen things and are being investigated by the RCMP. However, his list stops short by party affiliation. As soon as he runs out of Conservative senators who have stolen from taxpayers, he cannot go to those Liberal senators who have done the exact same thing.

Does he not understand how that contradiction, that hypocrisy, might rub Canadians slightly the wrong way—that it is okay to do something as a Liberal that is not okay to do as a Conservative? That does not make any sense. That is why for decades New Democrats have stood in this place and argued that the system itself is the problem. The privileges that are given to senators, writ large, to enjoy as they please on the so-called honour system will feed the very scandal that is now at the feet of the Prime Minister , with the RCMP knocking on the Prime Minister's Office seemingly every week.

To simply suggest that this is just a one-off scandal, that Mac Harb did nothing wrong, and that Lavigne, who is another Liberal senator and is in jail, did nothing wrong because they are Liberals reminds me of the Gomery inquiry, when if it was being done in a cause that was aligned with the Liberals, then it was okay because it was a Canadian cause. Theft is theft. Breaking the public trust is breaking the public trust. Why not simply address it in the motion before the House? Why not simply agree that reform, and perhaps abolishment, is the right cause? Mr. Scott Andrews : Mr.

Speaker, if those Liberal senators and those Conservative senators have done something wrong and have been charged by the RCMP, yes, the full extent of the law should come down on them absolutely. No one said it should not, and no one is saying they should get away with this just because they had a Liberal brand or a Conservative brand. The full extent of the law should come down on these senators. However, the motion before the House today is about the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's Office, and his involvement in this.

There are lots of angles to this story, but today we are talking about the Prime Minister, what the people at the Prime Minister's Office knew, when they knew it, and their responsibility. We are not dragging down the whole Parliament on Guy Fawkes Night, coming in here and burning the whole place down and burning down the Senate. That is not what we are talking about on this Tuesday on Guy Fawkes Night. We are talking about the Prime Minister's Office, who was involved, and the characters who are still there, such as the Ray Novaks of the world. He is still the chief of staff.

He was in on this scheme, knew about it, and was promoted to chief of staff. That is the issue. [ Translation ] Hon. Stéphane Dion (Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, Lib.) : Mr.

Speaker, the Liberal opposition motion, as moved by the hon. member for Wascana , states: [ English ] That the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics be instructed to examine the conduct of the Prime Minister’s Office regarding the repayment of Senator Mike Duffy’s expenses; that the Prime Minister be ordered to appear under oath as a witness before the Committee for a period of 3 hours, before December 10, 2013; and that the proceedings be televised. (1205) [ Translation ] There are two reasons for this motion.

The first pertains to Canadians' right to know the truth about what we can call the cheque scandal. It is impossible to get the truth from the government and the Prime Minister either inside or outside the House. The government is ducking the issue, refusing to answer, only giving little bits of information at a time and constantly contradicting itself. That is why the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics must look into this matter and call all of those involved, including the Prime Minister , and have them testify under oath as witnesses.

The second reason for this motion is that the situation calls into question the Prime Minister 's integrity, openness and ability to tell Canadians the truth. The very role of Prime Minister is affected. I do not know whether the Prime Minister is aware of this, but more and more Canadians do not believe him and see him as secretive. In our political system, the person who holds the office of Prime Minister has so much power and so many ways that he can profoundly affect the lives of Canadians and how the country operates that we cannot have the slightest doubt about his honesty and openness.

We may disagree with his values, decisions or style, but we must never doubt his honesty and openness. In the cheque scandal, the Prime Minister is either telling the truth—and he must demonstrate that such is the case in order to dispel the doubts—or the Prime Minister is hiding things that must be brought to light and that could call into question whether he is worthy of his office. Canadians have the right to know which it is. They have the right to know the truth. Let us forget for a moment about the role of Prime Minister and think about an ordinary citizen.

What does any honest and unfairly suspected person do when his integrity is called into question? He hastens to show that the allegations are unfounded and that he is an honest person. He puts everything on the table to clear his name. However, if this person does not have a clear conscience and has something to hide, what does he do? He dodges the issue, obfuscates and does everything he can to throw up a smokescreen and blame his accomplices. Is that not exactly what the government and the Prime Minister are doing—ducking, obfuscating, throwing up a smokescreen and blaming their accomplices? This has to stop.

The government must come clean, the Prime Minister must come clean and they all must appear before a parliamentary committee, under oath, as there is no other way to get at the truth. Let us go back to the sequence of events as we know it. [ English ] On December 3, 2012, questions were raised about Senator Duffy's housing claims. Among other issues, Senator Duffy was claiming his longtime Ottawa residence as a secondary residence and his cottage in P.E.I. as his primary residence. On December 4, 2012, the Prime Minister 's then chief of staff, Mr. Nigel Wright, emailed Senator Duffy.

The email said that he had been told that Duffy complied with all applicable rules on expenses and noted that “...there would be several Senators with similar arrangements”. It concluded, “This sure seems to be a smear.” On February 13, 2013, the Prime Minister told Senator Duffy to repay, according to Senator Duffy because the optics were not good with the party base. Nigel Wright was present at the meeting. Then Nigel Wright offered a $90,000 cheque to Duffy. Funds were wired to Duffy's lawyer on March 25.

On March 4, 2013, Duffy's lawyer sent Conservative Party lawyer Arthur Hamlton an invoice for $13,560 for his legal fees related to the Senate expense repayment deal. On April 4, 2013, Arthur Hamilton sent a cheque to Duffy's lawyer for $13,560. On May 15, 2013, the payment by Nigel Wright was eventually made public. On May 19, 2013, Nigel Wright is no longer the Prime Minister 's chief of staff. On June 5, 2013, in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister said that Nigel Wright made the decision to give Mike Duffy a $90,000 cheque, that it was Mr.

Wright's decision, and that it was not communicated to the Prime Minister or members of his office. On October 24, 2013, the Prime Minister said in the House that Mr. Wright had admitted that what he did was wrong, that he had taken responsibility for his actions, and that he informed very few people. Therefore in June the Prime Minister said that only Wright knew of the money, and in October he said that a few people knew. RCMP affidavits filed in court show that numerous Prime Minister 's senior staff knew about the $90,000 and that they were involved in the cover-up.

The Prime Minister has stated that on February 13 he ordered Mike Duffy to repay his expenses, but from that date until May 16—three full months—we are told the Prime Minister was never briefed on his hand-picked star senator, nor did he ask any questions. During that time, $90,000 was paid to Senator Duffy, Duffy's $13,000 legal bills for the cover-up were paid by Conservative donors, a Deloitte audit was subverted, a Senate report was corrupted, and a false story was concocted by the PMO about a bank mortgage.

The Prime Minister needs to come clean with Canadians and tell them when he first heard that his staff, for which he is accountable, had counselled Mike Duffy to lie. This weekend Senator Irving Gerstein, chairman of the Conservative Fund of Canada, stated that he refused a request by Wright to repay Duffy's bogus expenses. This statement directly contradicts statements made by Nigel Wright's lawyers in an RCMP affidavit, which stated that the party was prepared to pay $32,000 but declined to pay when the bill reached $90,000. Who is lying, Nigel Wright or Senator Gerstein?

In his role as chairman of the fund, Senator Gerstein reports directly to the Prime Minister . Are Canadians supposed to believe that Gerstein failed to mention this PMO conspiracy that he was involved in to the Prime Minister during their many meetings over many months? Now let us consider the number of senior officials who knew about the Wright-Duffy deal.

Wright told the RCMP that he informed the following people of the $90,000 cheque: Conservative Senator Irving Gerstein, chairman of the Conservative Fund of Canada; Benjamin Perrin, the Prime Minister 's personal lawyer in the PMO; David van Hemmen, formerly Nigel Wright's assistant, now policy adviser to the Minister of State for Finance; and Chris Woodcock, director of issues management in the PMO at the time, and now chief of staff of the Minister of Natural Resources .

Duffy alleges that Woodcock wrote the line that he used on national television, which was that Duffy took out a bank loan to repay his housing expenses. It was a line that Senator Duffy has said was designed “...to deceive Canadians as to the real source of the $90,000”.

(1210) He also said that Woodcock even followed up with Duffy the day after the bank to ensure that he was sticking to the line. It has also been reported that Patrick Rogers, then legislative assistant to the Prime Minister and now director of policy for the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages , knew of the $90,000 cheque.

Additionally, it has been reported that Jenni Byrne, former director or political operations for the Conservative Party and current deputy chief of staff to the Prime Minister , knew of the Conservative Party's plan to repay Duffy's expenses when they were thought to be $32,000. Senator Duffy has also provided documentation to show that Conservative Party lawyer Arthur Hamilton was involved in the paying of Senator Duffy's legal fees. (1215) [ Translation ] Who else knew about it? The Prime Minister himself must answer, rather than trying to pin the whole affair on Nigel Wright alone.

It is disturbing that the Prime Minister dramatically changed his version of the facts with regard to Nigel Wright's departure. Let us return to the sequence of events. [ English ] On May 16, the PMO issued the following statement, “Mr. Wright will not be resigning...Mr. Wright has the full support of the Prime Minister”. On May 19, the PMO issued a statement from the Prime Minister , which said: It is with great regret that I have accepted the resignation of Nigel Wright as my Chief of Staff. I accept that Nigel believed he was acting in the public interest, but I understand the decision he has taken to resign.

I want to thank Nigel for his tremendous contribution to our Government over the past two and a half years. On June 5, the Prime Minister stated the following in the House of Commons: —it was Mr. Wright who made the decision to take his personal funds and give those to Mr. Duffy so that Mr. Duffy could reimburse the taxpayers. Those were his decisions. They were not communicated to me or to members of my office. On October 25, in a radio interview, the Prime Minister stated, “As you know I had a chief of staff who made an inappropriate payment to Mr. Duffy. He was dismissed”.

On October 29, the Prime Minister stated in the House of Commons, “on our side there is one person responsible for this deception, and that person is Mr. Wright, by his own admission”. [ Translation ] First, the Prime Minister defended Nigel Wright for five days, from May 15 to 19, then he let him go “with great regret” on May 19. Lately he has said that he fired him for lying. Fewer and fewer Canadians believe the Prime Minister because he keeps changing his story. [ English ] Like all other aspects of this sordid affair, the Prime Minister has not provided Canadians with the truth.

In conclusion, what is at stake? First, paying a sitting legislator money to do something has the potential to be illegal. It has been reported that Duffy had to agree to stop talking and to stop co-operating with an audit as a condition of payment. Second, there is a cover-up. That cover-up starts with the source of the funds. Duffy alleges the PMO wrote lines designed to deceive Canadians as to the source of the money, mainly that he took out a bank loan. [ Translation ] Who is involved in this cover-up? All the key players I mentioned must testify under oath before the committee.

The Prime Minister must also testify under oath before the committee because Canadians have the right to know the truth. Mr. Denis Blanchette (Louis-Hébert, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. The Senate has never been a chamber of sober second thought or particularly representative of the regions, which it should have been, according to the Fathers of Confederation. It has always been a haven for the cronies of the party in power, no matter which party that is. Blue or red, things have always been the same.

The Liberals, through this motion, are saying they want to preserve the status quo, although they will be removing a few bad apples from the Senate. The problem is that there is an increasing number of bad apples. I feel that the whole orchard is contaminated. It is becoming hard to find any apples that are not rotten. I am sure there are some. I do not mean to say that everyone is crooked, far from it, just that there are too many problems. I wonder why the Liberals seem to be defending the status quo regarding the operation of the Senate.

Given that there are so many problems and that this institution is decaying and falling apart, would it not be in the public interest to simply abolish it?

(1220) Hon. Stéphane Dion : Mr. Speaker, we have colleagues in the House, especially on the Conservative side, who have huge problems and have not always followed the rules or the laws. Does that mean the House of Commons should be abolished? I am afraid the NDP has not realized that it is helping the Prime Minister by throwing him a lifeline.

Instead of making the Prime Minister the central issue, instead of trying to find out whether he is telling the truth or not or whether the person holding the highest political office in the land is honest and straightforward, the NDP is giving him the chance to say that the problem lies with the Senate and that the government will be reopening the Constitution because of Mike Duffy's improper spending, which is completely irresponsible. My colleague should realize that it is also possible to reverse the situation. We could be putting his leader in the hot seat, with what happened in Laval in the 1990s.

Maybe this should happen one day. However, at this time, this is a diversion the Prime Minister is trying to create at the expense of my hon. colleague's leader. The only thing that truly matters at the moment is whether our country is being led by an honest man.

Mr. Jamie Nicholls (Vaudreuil—Soulanges, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, the member clearly thinks that the problem is only between Mike Duffy and the Prime Minister . However, the New Democrats know that it goes beyond that. The Senate structure is fundamentally flawed. Just look at the years of partisan Senate appointments for party cronies and failed candidates. We have to wonder about someone like Percy Downe—who was former prime minister Chrétien's director of appointments—and his role within the Senate Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration, on which he currently sits.

This appointment continued in the tradition of Liberal patronage. Mr. Downe charged a $5,000 expense to his hospitality budget for pens and playing cards. That is reminiscent of the sponsorship scandal. Could the member explain how Liberal senators giving speeches at partisan activities falls under the Liberals'

definitions of accountability? Hon. Stéphane Dion : Mr. Speaker, if the member's question was about who is doing the most to make Parliament as a whole more transparent, the answer is clearly the Liberal leader. He has made suggestions to make Parliament more transparent, and these are being implemented in the Senate by the Liberal Senate caucus. We could say that Liberal senators are showing more transparency than NDP members, but that is not the issue at hand. The issue at hand is whether our Prime Minister is telling the truth.

Did he know about the $90,000 cheque that was given to a parliamentarian to buy his silence, something that is very serious and potentially illegal? The Prime Minister first said that only his former chief of staff, Mr. Wright, knew about the cheque. Now he admits that other people were aware, but he refuses to say who, because he is starting to get caught in a spider's web. That is what is going on and that is why the Prime Minister must come testify in committee under oath. Mr. Nathan Cullen (Skeena—Bulkley Valley, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my Liberal friend.

We agree with him and his party about the scandal involving the PMO, but we need to address the root cause of the problem. The Liberal Party feels that the system works well and that the status quo should be maintained. We feel that if the current system remains in place, there will be more cases like Mr. Duffy's. There might be a Liberal Mr. Duffy involved. That is the problem. My friend, whom I consider to be a true democrat, does not believe that there is something fundamentally wrong. It is ludicrous to think that the Senate is good.

It is impossible to be a democrat and also think that the Senate is a good system for a modern, advanced, free country such as ours. Yes, this is a good motion, but the Prime Minister and his party are remaining silent and will vote against it. That is the problem at the heart of this scandal, and this motion alone will not fix it—

(1225) The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin) : The hon. member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville . Hon. Stéphane Dion : Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his support for the motion. However, I would ask him to ensure that the Prime Minister does not wriggle out of this. I would be pleased to talk to my colleague about whether Canada's Senate should be elected, appointed or abolished, particularly once the Supreme Court renders its opinion.

In the meantime, I hope that we can clarify the fundamental issue here, namely who knew about the hush money that was given to a parliamentarian, who in the Prime Minister's entourage knew about it and whether he knew about it. We need those answers sooner than later. That is why we have moved this motion. [ English ] Ms. Yvonne Jones (Labrador, Lib.) : Mr. Speaker, I certainly want to ask my colleague a question with regard to his comments and contribution to the debate today.

As we know, there have been a lot of contradictory responses in the House of Commons around what has been happening in the Senate, who was responsible, who should be responsible, the actions they took and the time frames in which those actions were taken. We heard the Prime Minister say over the weekend that he could not care less. I would like to ask my colleague today if that is the same approach he sees from the Prime Minister when it comes to his commitments around the Senate that go back almost seven years. Hon. Stéphane Dion : Mr. Speaker, I will answer the same as I did for my NDP colleagues.

The issue is not abou