Juno News - Where are the ethics on the ethics committee？

00:00:00.040 The House of Commons Ethics Committee clearly needs a new name. This committee, after all,

00:00:15.000 with its Liberal majority decided to band together to block a motion that would allow

00:00:20.100 Mario Dion, Canada's Ethics Commissioner, to testify. The reason, of course, is that the

00:00:25.520 Liberals didn't want Dion to take the stand because they probably didn't want to hear what

00:00:29.960 he had to say about that 63-page report he tabled last week that found Justin Trudeau

00:00:35.060 violated Canada's federal ethics law when he put and his office put pressure on

00:00:40.960 Jody Wilson-Raybould, at the time the Attorney General in Canada, to interfere

00:00:45.680 in the supposedly independent prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. Now, this report was

00:00:51.060 damning. It had a number of allegations. We know that the government was trying to

00:00:54.620 block several witnesses from being able to testify, which is why Justin Trudeau

00:00:59.960 and the Privy Council Office didn't expand cabinet confidence waivers and the

00:01:04.640 Ethics Commissioner said he was up against a wall in this respect of his

00:01:08.980 investigation. But instead of being able to answer questions, talk about what he

00:01:14.340 found, talk about the process, Dion has not been invited. He was willing, he was able, he

00:01:19.980 was eager to make that date with the Ethics Committee. But no, no, no, the Liberals on

00:01:24.540 the committee, with one exception, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, decided they were not going

00:01:29.060 to allow it to happen. Now, if this all sounds familiar, I'm not recycling an old

00:01:33.260 video here. The Liberals have done this with the Justice Committee when Jody

00:01:36.920 Wilson-Raybould herself wanted to make a second visit to the committee to testify.

00:01:41.300 The MPs, again, Liberals said, ah, we've heard enough. We don't need to have her back.

00:01:45.500 And now with Dion, they're not even giving him a single opportunity to speak. Now, to be

00:01:51.920 fair, he has had the opportunity to put forward his results. He's tabled the report.

00:01:56.620 They can't block that. But you'd think that a report finding the Prime Minister of Canada

00:02:01.520 has violated federal law might be worthy of a few questions. This is not a radical concept.

00:02:07.540 In fact, it's entirely routine for an officer of Parliament, as Dion is, to speak to parliamentarians

00:02:14.220 after tabling a report, especially one as significant as this. But again, ethics have

00:02:20.080 no place on the Ethics Committee. The government is more interested in protecting Justin Trudeau's

00:02:25.320 political ambitions than actually investigating the law-breaking that has now been found by

00:02:32.220 Trudeau. Canadians deserve better than this. The process has been abused to protect the 0.90

00:02:37.640 Prime Minister, which means political interests have trumped the rule of law. And that was the

00:02:42.320 whole point of the SNC interference, is that, again, the rule of law, the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin,

00:02:48.240 was less significant than the liberal ambitions, which were also SNC-Lavalin's ambitions, of

00:02:54.940 protecting jobs, allegedly, a political purpose. Let's be real. But this is why it's so important

00:03:00.660 that Dion had had the opportunity to testify. There are still, even after that report was

00:03:06.240 tabled, unanswered questions. Like, what was he trying to figure out when he saw that he was unable to

00:03:12.060 interview and get documents and evidence from those nine witnesses? What is it that Trudeau said

00:03:17.380 as far as the justification for why he wouldn't allow those nine witnesses to testify? What is it

00:03:23.220 that Jody Wilson-Raybould had to say that, again, might have been protected by Cabinet confidence

00:03:28.240 had that been waived? If this was an exhaustive investigation that picked up every rock, looked

00:03:34.100 in every nook and cranny, then sure, maybe we could say that he has said his piece and we have all the

00:03:39.780 facts. But we don't. And the report itself acknowledges this. It says quite clearly that

00:03:45.140 there was more information that Dion would have liked to have brought to light, but he just couldn't.

00:03:50.440 And again, that should, to any respectful politician, be an indication that, hey, we have more questions

00:03:57.600 that we need to ask. But what the liberals on the committee have done, in some respects, may backfire.

00:04:03.600 Because they've now said they have no questions about the report. They have nothing to challenge,

00:04:08.120 nothing to question, no holes that they can poke in it. Which means that by the liberals saying they

00:04:12.840 don't want to talk to Dion, there is, in some respects, a tacit endorsement or approval of the

00:04:18.700 report. After all, if they disputed it, if they wanted to take issue with it, maybe, just maybe,

00:04:24.260 they would want to have some opportunities to question the person who wrote that report.

00:04:29.800 So if I were the conservatives or anyone trying to oppose the liberals right now,

00:04:33.700 that would be the argument I'd put forward. Well, if the liberals don't want to ask Dion any

00:04:38.160 questions, clearly they take at face value what it is that he has to say about Trudeau,

00:04:43.780 which is that he broke the law and behaved unethically. And the report shows that very

00:04:48.500 clearly. We are still asking the questions at True North, one of the reasons that we're crowdfunding

00:04:54.360 our election coverage. If you can chip in a few dollars and get a tax receipt, please do.

00:04:59.120 There's a link in the description box to support True North's election coverage fund.

00:05:03.640 For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.

Juno News - August 24, 2019

Where are the ethics on the ethics committee？

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript