Yes, “lifestyles of the rich and famous”, as someone yelled out. It is true. This is a Prime Minister whose lawlessness has centred mostly around money. When he was found guilty of violating the ethics act four different ways by the Ethic Commissioner, which was the first time that any prime minister had ever faced such a conviction, it was about money. Someone came to him and said that they were looking for a $15 million grant, asked him if he would like to have a free $200,000 vacation on his island, and the Prime Minister said it was a deal and off he went. The Prime Minister said that he was getting tired of all this politicking and needed some frolicking, and away he went down to paradise island.
A lot of people have a hard time appreciating the commercial value of a vacation like that. We looked it up, and it costs about a quarter of a million dollars to rent this island, or a similar one, for a couple of weeks. The Prime Minister stayed there for free, so we can infer that the in-kind value of the gift was about a quarter of a million dollars.
I want members to think about this for a second. If a junior procurement officer had taken a free weekend at someone's cottage and then given that someone a contract, he would be out on his ear the same day. He might be charged for taking a bribe. When the head of the government literally meets with someone who is asking for a $15 million grant and accepts a quarter of a million dollar gift from that someone, he gets off with an Ethics Commissioner report and a slap on the wrist.
The Prime Minister thought he was indestructible and could get away with anything. There are clear sections in the Criminal Code that make it an offence for someone to accept a benefit from a person with whom they have government business. The Prime Minister clearly and flagrantly violated those sections. For reasons unknown to us, the RCMP did not investigate that offence.
I think he thought that because he is the son of a former prime minister, has a multi-million dollar trust fund, is rich, vacations at billionaire islands, surfs in Tofino and does whatever he wants, that if he decides a company should not be prosecuted, then that is that. The case should be thrown out, a deal signed and it should be taken out of the way. By the way, if the Attorney General is causing heck, then she should be taken out of the way too. That is how he thinks. We have all witnessed it.
We also witnessed when the Prime Minister was angry that a vote was not happening fast enough. He stormed over and grabbed the arm of the Conservative whip, tugged him and elbowed people along his way. We have seen how he erupts in rage when he does not get his way. This is the conduct of someone who has always had his way. We all know the classic spoiled rich kid who gets everything he wants all the time, when he wants, and no one had better get in his way. After all, do we know who his dad is?
When the Prime Minister decided that his friends at SNC-Lavalin should not face prosecution, he just wanted it done. We know that that was his state of mind, because the clerk of the Privy Council said so in a recorded audiotape. He said the Prime Minister was in a mood, and “he's going to find a way to get it done, one way or another.”
The clerk said to the former attorney general in that famous conversation that he feared she was on a collision with the Prime Minister. He used the term “collision”. Of course, she knew exactly what that meant. She made reference to the “Saturday night massacre”, when Richard Nixon famously fired personnel to cover up Watergate. She said that she was just waiting for “the other shoe to drop.”
A month later, she was out of the position. It was just a coincidence, a total coincidence. What was the story for that sudden firing, removing a highly competent, accomplished and respected attorney general? Well, it was this strange game of musical chairs that resulted from Scott Brison resigning. The Treasury Board president resigned, which meant that the attorney general had to be moved, even though she was not replacing him.
Then, weeks later, we found out that was not the Prime Minister's official line any more. The reason, we learned, was that she was moved, according to media reports by some Liberal supporters in the press, because she wanted to appoint a chief justice who was not Liberal enough. Apparently, according to this report, the Prime Minister thought she had bad judgment because she wanted to elevate a respected chief justice of Manitoba to the head of the Supreme Court of Canada, even though he was not a devoted Liberal, a Liberal ideologue. That is the new explanation for her removal as Attorney General.
Putting aside the fact that leaking discussions about Supreme Court nominations violates the basic apolitical principle and confidentiality of that nomination process, consider how radically the Prime Minister's story has changed from when he was claiming it was only about satisfying the game of musical chairs that Scott Brison's departure caused the government.
The story keeps changing, except for one story, and that story, of course, is the one we have heard from the former attorney general herself, the one now validated by three and a half dozen pages of documented evidence submitted to the justice committee, published for all eyes to see. Even if there were any doubts left at all, those doubts went up in smoke when we heard that famous audio recording, which demonstrated that what happened was exactly what she said had happened.
Liberals have attacked her for recording that conversation. They have said that they think it was very unprofessional. They fail to take into consideration the context wherein she had been the victim of hounding, veiled threats, inappropriate pressure, and a whole other assortment of inappropriate conduct by the Prime Minister and his team in order to get her to shelve the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.
She knew that if she did not have evidence, then the good old boys around the Prime Minister would lie and deny, lie and deny. The problem with lying and denying when dealing with someone like this particular former attorney general is that she is highly scrupulous, and she is punctilious in her maintenance of records.
Unfortunately for the Prime Minister, he and his team have no evidence of their own to contradict what she has said.
Instead, the Liberals have used more bully tactics, gutless unnamed sources spreading rumours, racist and sexist comments by former Liberal cabinet ministers in the press targeting the former attorney general, anything they can do to discredit her the Prime Minister has directed them to do. The bad news for him is that it has not worked. Canadians have seen through all of it. They knew exactly what he was trying to do and they have thoroughly rejected it. They see right through the nasty personal attacks as the act of a desperate man clinging to his job and held up only by his personal ego.
In the long run, the Prime Minister has an opportunity. That opportunity is to finally tell the truth. The truth will set him free. He need not be burdened any longer by falsehoods and secrets. He could release himself from all of that by coming clean and admitting that he inappropriately interfered in a criminal prosecution to help a Liberal-linked firm get released from having a trial, that he bullied his former attorney general and when she would not back down, he moved her out. If he did that, he would suffer some political damage, but it would probably be less damaging than what he is doing right now. It would probably earn him a little empathy from people who would say that at least now he is telling the truth. He has put us all through a nightmare for the last two months, he has attempted to corrupt our legal system with political interference, but at least now he is telling the truth.
With that, he can began to heal and this wound that he has caused our justice system can also begin to heal. However, as long as he holds onto the falsehoods, as long as he tries to cover up the truth, it gets worse and worse. We will daily, through the tools of Parliament, extract from him the truth, like a rotten tooth, one piece at a time. It is coming out. I do not know if the Prime Minister has noticed, but his cover-up has so far not gone very well.