Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Mississauga—Erin Mills for allowing me to share my time with her. I very much enjoyed listening to what she had to say. Unfortunately, her time ran out at the end. She was about to say something that never actually resurfaced in response to questions.

I would like to finish what the member was about to say, that the leader of the opposition voted against Motion No. 103, which dealt with Islamophobia in Canada. In fact, only two Conservatives, two brave Conservatives, voted in favour of that motion. I hate to put you on the spot, Mr. Speaker, but I believe you were one of them as was the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. Every other Conservative voted against that motion. We find ourselves in the situation we are in today even though members like the member for Mississauga—Erin Mills tried to sound the alarm a few years ago, and the Conservatives chose to ignore it.

In any event, we are certainly not here to talk about that today. We are here to talk about the motion tabled by the official opposition, a motion that, in my opinion, is politically motivated, a motion whose only purpose is to try to defame a decorated veteran, a member of our cabinet, an individual who has served our country, who has done great things for our country and then has gone on to serve in the House.

This is not a surprise. This type of personal attack has been the ongoing theme of the Conservatives over the last six years. We have seen this day in and day out. Rather than talk about policy or how the Minister of Finance can do something different or the Prime Minister should work on a different policy, it has always been “the Minister of Finance is this; the Prime Minister is that”. It has been personal attacks day in and day out. Unfortunately, what we are seeing here is nothing more than that. It is the same thing, once again, trying to attack the credibility of an individual, somebody who has served his country and continues to do so in another capacity now.

Why? In my opinion, this is all for political partisan gain, thinking that this might skew the current polling numbers. Rather than talk about the issues and encourage Canadians to vote for them because of their ideas, the ideas they can bring forward on behalf of Canadians, the Conservatives spend all their time focusing on how to make other people look bad, so they become the default choice, ruining careers in the process.

Looking at the heart of this motion and in listening to members from other sides of the House today speak to it, a number of different issues come up. The main and most important issue is the culture that exists in our military. I really wish the motion would have focused on that. It is clear there is a ton of work to do with respect to that culture within the military.

I do not know if this is the natural way that hierarchical organizations in the military are structured, coupled with the natural desire to keep things hush hush within the organization that has produced this culture, but from what we have seen, it is extremely toxic. Change needs to happen, so the people in the military, women and men, who are harassed are properly cared for, but, more important, that they feel comfortable to come forward to talk about it so they can get the care and protection they need.

I could not agree more with a lot of the comments I heard earlier today about the vice chief of the defence staff playing golf with General Vance. The fact that happened is a huge issue.

The suggestion is that this issue lies at the feet of the Minister of National Defence. The Minister of National Defence does not approve the personal activities of individuals. Within organizations, it is expected that individuals can make good, sound judgments and decisions based on what is right and what is wrong, and this individual made a wrong decision. What happened? That individual is no longer in that position. It is entirely appropriate for us to accept the fact that the person is no longer in his position and it sends a clear message down the line that anymore behaviour like that will have the same result.

There has been a lot of discussion today about General Vance specifically, how he came to be in this role and how the current government had been propping him up, encouraging him, giving him raises and on and on. I am not going to go through the details again about how the complaint came forward, how it was handled, what was specifically said, what information was not obtained and why the investigation did not move forward. We have heard all about that on a number of occasions.

What about the fact that the Leader of the Opposition, who was the minister of veterans affairs previously, was made aware of allegations against General Vance? He did the right thing, exactly the same thing the national defence minister did. He brought those allegations forward. They were brought to the PMO. Stephen Harper knew about the allegations. He was made aware of them through his chief of staff. Stephen Harper even met with General Vance. He sat down with him and asked if any of the rumours were true, to which the reply was no, that none of them were true. Then Stephen Harper still appointed him even when he knew about this.

I find it extremely rich when the Conservatives stand in the House time and time again and point to the manner in which the current Minister of National Defence handled this. We can compare this to what Stephen Harper did. Harper sat down with him, like two boys having a beer, and asked Vance if he had done anything. Hearing no, he appointed him. Why did Harper not start a process to find out more about it? Why did he not dig into it? Why did he not insist on some form of an investigation? Why did he not do that? All he did was meet with the person who was accused, that person said he did not do it, he took his word for it and appointed him. The hypocrisy of this is that they literally went through almost the exact process and then appointed the individual.

The motion today, similar to yesterday's motion, is extremely unfortunate. We voted on the motion today to bring a public servant before the bar of the House. The New Democrats voted in favour of that. The champions of the public service, who will have a front-row seat when it happens on Monday, voted in favour of it. They can explain to the public service why they thought it was the right thing to do, why it was the right course of action.

It is shameful that we are having this discussion today, as was the discussion on the motion yesterday. I certainly will not be supporting this motion. It is just another attempt at a political grab in the last hours of this Parliament, for the Conservatives to somehow grab onto some form of relevancy.

Mark Gerretsen

$508,543.00