Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill.
I rise in strong support of our Conservative opposition motion to call on the Prime Minister to appear before the justice committee, under oath, so he can answer questions about his involvement in the interference of the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.
As each day passes, it is becoming clearer and clearer that the Prime Minister is up to his eyeballs in this sordid affair. With each day, it seems there is a new version of events from the Prime Minister.
When The Globe and Mail article was first published, the Prime Minister hoped he could wash his hands clean of the entire matter by issuing a blanket denial. When that was not going to cut it, the Prime Minister gave a carefully crafted legal response, which stated that the decision was the former attorney general's and the former attorney general's alone. Then he said that the fact the former attorney general was still in cabinet spoke for itself. Well, the former attorney general immediately resigned from cabinet following that statement. So much for that explanation.
The Prime Minister then stated that there was no pressure exerted on the former attorney general, until last Thursday, when the Clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Wernick, appeared before our committee and admitted that, in fact, there was pressure. Wernick said that we should not worry, because there was no inappropriate pressure, as if there is a distinction between appropriate pressure and inappropriate pressure. The fact is that any pressure exerted on the former attorney general is entirely inappropriate.
In that regard, I would like to make reference to the late Justice Rosenberg and his dissertation on the independence of the office of Attorney General, wherein he summarizes the Shawcross doctrine. Justice Rosenberg stated, “responsibility for the decision is that of the Attorney General alone; the government is not to put pressure on him or her.” Period, no pressure.
What we are also learning, as a result of the testimony of Mr. Wernick, is that the Prime Minister's version of events, his explanation about what happened, is simply untrue. The Prime Minister said that it was the attorney general's decision alone and that there was no pressure.
In fact, it turns out that the former attorney general did make a decision, and she unambiguously communicated that decision to the Prime Minister on September 17. Her decision was that she would not overturn the decision of the direction of public prosecutions not to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement with SNC-Lavalin.
One would expect that upon this decision being conveyed to the Prime Minister, that Prime Minister, out of respect for the former attorney general, out of respect for the independence of the office of Attorney General and the sanctity of that independence, would have left it at that and accepted the decision. However, that is not what happened.
What happened following September 17, when the former attorney general announced to the Prime Minister her decision, was a concerted campaign, orchestrated and coordinated by the Prime Minister, through his surrogates, to change the former attorney general's mind. In that regard, it is important we go through some of the important timelines.
We know that on December 5, the former attorney general met with Gerald Butts, the Prime Minister's principal secretary and top political adviser, to discuss—guess what? It was SNC-Lavalin. On September 17, the decision had been made. Nearly three months later, the Prime Minister's top political adviser is talking to the former attorney general about that decision. When the former attorney general did not appear to bow to Mr. Butts, we learn that Mr. Butts and Katie Telford, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, hauled the former attorney general's chief of staff before them to discuss yet again the SNC-Lavalin matter and the matter of a deferred prosecution agreement.
Then to make it ever so clear that they were not satisfied with the decision of the former attorney general not to intervene, the Clerk of the Privy Council, Mr. Wernick, on December 19, met with the Prime Minister. Following that meeting, he saw fit to pick up the phone and, as he put it, “check in on the SNC-Lavalin file” with the former attorney general. He further stated, “I conveyed to her that a lot of her colleagues and the Prime Minister were quite anxious about what they were hearing and reading”.
He said “quite anxious”. I thought a decision had already been made. The Prime Minister says it is her decision and her decision alone, that there was no pressure, yet what we learned is that following that decision, there were meetings involving the Prime Minister, his chief of staff, his principal secretary and the Clerk of the Privy Council. The Prime Minister can say with a straight face that the decision was hers and hers alone to make and that there was no pressure; it is an insult to Canadians that the Prime Minister would have the audacity to say that in the face of that chronology.
However, it gets worse from the public interest standpoint. As soon as the Clerk of the Privy Council expressed the anxiousness of the Prime Minister, the former attorney general went on vacation. It was Christmastime and the new year. I think she was in Bali, and before she could make it back to Ottawa, she had a call from the Prime Minister to come back to Ottawa. When she came back, she found out that she was going to be fired as the Attorney General, and she was. At the first opportunity, the Prime Minister fired her.
He said it was her decision and her decision alone to make. What we are learning is that there was only one decision that the Prime Minister would accept, which was to overrule the director of public prosecutions. The only decision the Prime Minister was prepared to accept was to interfere in an independent criminal prosecution, and until that decision was made, the Prime Minister did not care to what lengths he would go or the lengths that he would instruct his officials to go in interfering with the independence of the office of the Attorney General, and that is a very, very serious matter. That is highly problematic.
Quite frankly, it is time for the Prime Minister to come clean. It is time for the Prime Minister to be transparent. It is time for the Prime Minister to provide the answers that Canadians deserve. That is precisely what our motion seeks to do. If the Prime Minister has nothing to hide, then he should come before a committee, be put under oath—with the consequence, by the way, of perjury—and let the sunshine come in.
That is what we need: sunshine. We know that this is a Prime Minister who talks about sunshine as the best disinfectant. Let him answer.