Where are the ethics on the ethics committee？
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Summary
The Ethics Committee blocked a motion that would have allowed the Ethics Commissioner, Mario Dion, to take the stand to speak about his damning report on the Trudeau administration's handling of the SNC-Lavalin bribery investigation.
Transcript
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The House of Commons Ethics Committee clearly needs a new name. This committee, after all,
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with its Liberal majority decided to band together to block a motion that would allow
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Mario Dion, Canada's Ethics Commissioner, to testify. The reason, of course, is that the
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Liberals didn't want Dion to take the stand because they probably didn't want to hear what
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he had to say about that 63-page report he tabled last week that found Justin Trudeau
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violated Canada's federal ethics law when he put and his office put pressure on
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Jody Wilson-Raybould, at the time the Attorney General in Canada, to interfere
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in the supposedly independent prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. Now, this report was
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damning. It had a number of allegations. We know that the government was trying to
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block several witnesses from being able to testify, which is why Justin Trudeau
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and the Privy Council Office didn't expand cabinet confidence waivers and the
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Ethics Commissioner said he was up against a wall in this respect of his
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investigation. But instead of being able to answer questions, talk about what he
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found, talk about the process, Dion has not been invited. He was willing, he was able, he
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was eager to make that date with the Ethics Committee. But no, no, no, the Liberals on
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the committee, with one exception, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, decided they were not going
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to allow it to happen. Now, if this all sounds familiar, I'm not recycling an old
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video here. The Liberals have done this with the Justice Committee when Jody
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Wilson-Raybould herself wanted to make a second visit to the committee to testify.
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The MPs, again, Liberals said, ah, we've heard enough. We don't need to have her back.
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And now with Dion, they're not even giving him a single opportunity to speak. Now, to be
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fair, he has had the opportunity to put forward his results. He's tabled the report.
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They can't block that. But you'd think that a report finding the Prime Minister of Canada
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has violated federal law might be worthy of a few questions. This is not a radical concept.
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In fact, it's entirely routine for an officer of Parliament, as Dion is, to speak to parliamentarians
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after tabling a report, especially one as significant as this. But again, ethics have
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no place on the Ethics Committee. The government is more interested in protecting Justin Trudeau's
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political ambitions than actually investigating the law-breaking that has now been found by
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Trudeau. Canadians deserve better than this. The process has been abused to protect the
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Prime Minister, which means political interests have trumped the rule of law. And that was the
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whole point of the SNC interference, is that, again, the rule of law, the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin,
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was less significant than the liberal ambitions, which were also SNC-Lavalin's ambitions, of
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protecting jobs, allegedly, a political purpose. Let's be real. But this is why it's so important
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that Dion had had the opportunity to testify. There are still, even after that report was
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tabled, unanswered questions. Like, what was he trying to figure out when he saw that he was unable to
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interview and get documents and evidence from those nine witnesses? What is it that Trudeau said
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as far as the justification for why he wouldn't allow those nine witnesses to testify? What is it
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that Jody Wilson-Raybould had to say that, again, might have been protected by Cabinet confidence
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had that been waived? If this was an exhaustive investigation that picked up every rock, looked
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in every nook and cranny, then sure, maybe we could say that he has said his piece and we have all the
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facts. But we don't. And the report itself acknowledges this. It says quite clearly that
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there was more information that Dion would have liked to have brought to light, but he just couldn't.
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And again, that should, to any respectful politician, be an indication that, hey, we have more questions
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that we need to ask. But what the liberals on the committee have done, in some respects, may backfire.
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Because they've now said they have no questions about the report. They have nothing to challenge,
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nothing to question, no holes that they can poke in it. Which means that by the liberals saying they
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don't want to talk to Dion, there is, in some respects, a tacit endorsement or approval of the
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report. After all, if they disputed it, if they wanted to take issue with it, maybe, just maybe,
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they would want to have some opportunities to question the person who wrote that report.
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So if I were the conservatives or anyone trying to oppose the liberals right now,
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that would be the argument I'd put forward. Well, if the liberals don't want to ask Dion any
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questions, clearly they take at face value what it is that he has to say about Trudeau,
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which is that he broke the law and behaved unethically. And the report shows that very
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clearly. We are still asking the questions at True North, one of the reasons that we're crowdfunding
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