Censored： Official audio record of Conservative MP edited
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
157.37648
Summary
On June 4th, a motion was introduced by Liberal MP Randy Boissoneau to have Michael Cooper's comments on a witness removed from the official Hansard transcript of a meeting of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.
Transcript
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If there was ever a case where silence is deafening, it's now.
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I'm talking about the edited audio recording of a meeting of the Justice and Human Rights Committee on Parliament Hill
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just a couple of weeks ago in May, the meeting where Michael Cooper, the Conservative MP,
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famously told a witness, Faisal Khan Suri, he should be ashamed of himself
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for daring to link Conservative commentators with mass shootings and mass shooters.
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And what Michael Cooper did, just to give you the recap here,
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is quote a section of the Christchurch Shooters Manifesto,
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a section that basically says the shooter, Bretton Tarrant, disavowed and rejected Conservatism,
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It was not to glorify it, it was to disprove the defamatory assertion made by the witness.
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another meeting of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.
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Liberal MP Randy Boissoneau introduces a motion to purge Michael Cooper's comments from the record.
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Now, Michael Cooper himself had already been purged from the record
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when Andrew Scheer, the Conservative leader, decided to kick him off of the Justice Committee
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But now Randy Boissoneau wanted to go one step further
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and make it so that the official record, the official Hansard transcript of the meeting
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would have no indication that Michael Cooper ever said what he did.
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What I didn't realize is that Parliament would go even further than that.
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Purging the record doesn't just mean taking it off the transcript,
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but even going back and retroactively removing it from what is supposed to be
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Thank you very much, and we'll now move to questions.
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First of all, Mr. Suri, I take great umbrage with your defamatory comments
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to try to link conservatism with violent and extremist attacks.
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They have no foundation, they're defamatory, and they diminish your credibility as a witness.
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And let me, Mr. Chair, read into the record the statement of
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who is responsible for the Christchurch massacre.
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And I certainly wouldn't attempt to link Bernie Sanders
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to the individual who shot up Republican members of Congress
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Yeah, I know it's kind of awkward to stare there and listen to silence,
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but I wanted you to understand what has happened at the hand of parliamentarians.
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Removing words that were uttered, literally erasing the historic record of a meeting of government.
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This is something that legitimately comes out of Orwell.
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There's a great quote from the book where the character says
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that all the records have been falsified, destroyed.
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which means that you can't prove what happened even when you know what happened.
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And those were very prescient words, written about 1984,
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but now we're in 2019 and the reality is still the same.
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And the one thing that I would say most Canadians need to realize here
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is that when parliament can just remove the words and arguments put forward by MPs
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there's no limit to what else they could give the same treatment to.
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There's no limit to what else they could decide.
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We don't think this should withstand the test of time.
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We don't think these words should exist in history.
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And mainstream media outlets didn't actually write in the full context
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But what has been removed from the hand shirt and removed from the audio
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didn't exist in writing anywhere until I put it up on True North, on tnc.news.
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The reason I did was not because I support the Christchurch shooter
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but because I believe that words that have been uttered in the course of a parliamentary debate
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do not deserve to be relegated to the dustbin of history
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because someone does not like those words' application.
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After I made the decision to publish these things,
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I had transcribed them manually from the audio, which is now gone.
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I was pleased to see other people on Twitter and in another website,
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Because if you are not prepared to have an honest and truthful accounting of history,
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you are not prepared to have an honest or truthful account
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because you believe it should be subjected through this lens
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that his political career has been put in the crosshairs here,
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and that his words that he said have been allowed
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We're trying to do our part for truth and for honesty.
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If you want to support our work and being a voice
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and you can join my Heritage Club for just a few dollars a month
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or make any other contributions as you're able to.