Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I, too, would like to talk about the report, and I will keep it short. The title of the report alone gives me the chills: the “Trudeau II Report”. The number II means it’s the second report in the same session about the fact that the Prime Minister broke the law. In the case at hand, he violated section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act. Here is what that section stipulates:

No public office holder shall use his or her position as a public office holder to seek to influence a decision of another person so as to further the public office holder’s private interests or those of the public office holder’s relatives or friends or to improperly [I repeat, improperly] further another person’s private interests.

In paragraph 282 of this very detailed report, Commissioner Mario Dion specifies that “the authority of the Prime Minister and his office was used to circumvent, undermine and ultimately attempt to discredit the decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions as well as the authority of Ms. Wilson-Raybould as the Crown’s chief law officer.”

That is a scandal in itself. One has to wonder, with an election around the corner, whether Canadians deserve a prime minister who breaks the laws of his own country. This is scathing.

I hope that in the next few minutes, my colleagues across the way will have the moral conscience to permit us to invite the commissioner to come testify. He’s willing to do it. We have other questions to ask, and there is more to come on this story. We’d like to shed some light on that and learn the whole truth. Canadians deserve to know the truth before the election on October 21.

In the democracy in which we live, it’s very troubling for all Canadians to see that an individual in a high-level position like the Prime Minister’s doesn’t seem to understand the separation of executive, legislative and judiciary powers.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Jacques Gourde

$541,375.00