Ken Hardie

[Privilege, October 29th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I want to draw on the hon. member's experience in legal matters. It troubles me that by fulfilling the motion as the Conservatives want, we would be giving the RCMP material that may badly compromise what it is trying to do in its investigation. If I was a sharp lawyer, I would say that the RCMP got this information improperly and should not have it, and therefore the case is going to get thrown out. Is that not a concern for the hon. member?

[Privilege, October 29th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I wonder if the hon member is listening to the question. I will ask Liberal members to quit bugging him while I am trying to ask him a question.

[Privilege, October 29th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member and I come from the same stomping grounds in Kamloops, and I would like to draw on his experience as a prosecutor. If the hon. member were to be delivered—

[Committees of the House, October 29th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, the move by the current president of the CBC to accept bonuses and raises for the executive while cutting positions in the corporation was totally unconscionable, and I trust that her successor has learned something from her experience.

That said, as a former programmer of small market stations that were CBC affiliates, on the radio side, we very much valued the news coverage the CBC offered back in the day, as well as programs like As It Happens and Cross Country Checkup. However, when it came to television, back in the day when I was at those small market stations, the CBC was the only game in town. There was no cablevision. There was certainly no satellite.

Could the hon. member comment on what the mandate of CBC Television should be? I think she will find very broad support for restoring as many radio services as possible, especially given that commercial broadcasters are very much letting us down on the radio side.

[Privilege, October 25th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I am looking for Bill Murray over there somewhere, because we have Groundhog Day, as performed by the Conservative Party of Canada.

What we actually have is the threat that the Conservatives are following a route that ended in utter disaster for them when Mr. Harper was prime minister. They brought forward around 11 tough-on-crime pieces of legislation, and by my count, eight of the 11 were tossed out by the Supreme Court of Canada, because they offended the charter. Both the Auditor General and the RCMP have cited this as a really big risk that could happen again if the motion, as amended by the Conservatives, is actually allowed to go forward.

What can the hon. member say about avoiding that problem that has repeated itself here?

[Petitions, October 25th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, it is a tremendous honour to present a petition in two parts from activists for seniors in the North Okanagan, particularly around the city of Vernon. They are calling on the Government of Canada to provide a universal livable income, indexed to the cost of living, for Canadian citizens 65 and over. We think this is probably a way forward to deal with difficulties that our seniors are facing and we trust there will be a good, comprehensive and positive response from the government.

[Privilege, October 25th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I want to read something from the RCMP. This is from the commissioner. He says:

It is therefore highly unlikely that any information obtained by the RCMP under the Motion where privacy interests exist could be used to support a criminal prosecution or further a criminal investigation.

What we have is an issue of what and how. On what, I agree entirely with the member. Let us find out what happened. Let us exonerate or convict. However, how they are proposing to go about doing it could even compromise, beyond redemption, a proper RCMP investigation into this incident.

Why do the Conservatives not trust the RCMP to know how to do its job, rather than trying to impose something on it that could actually ruin the outcome that the member looking for?

[Privilege, October 24th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I would ask this of my hon. colleague and his hon. colleague sitting behind him to his broadcast left: Why do they not trust the RCMP? If it saw evidence that crimes had been committed, it has more than enough power, authority and opportunity to go after the material it needs to perform an investigation. The RCMP does not need the House of Commons to do its work.

Why do you not trust them?

[Privilege, October 24th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I just need to see if history has been revised a little bit by my hon. colleague. My understanding is that the original motion called for the documents to be provided to a standing committee. In fact, the Speaker had questioned the wisdom of providing documents to the RCMP, which said it probably could not use them. The RCMP had the documents it needed, and it was able to go after more documents if it saw fit.

I would ask the hon. member just to go back in history and recount the original motion and where those documents were really supposed to go.

[Privilege, October 24th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I am wondering if my hon. colleague would say yes if the government were to say, “Here are all of the documents that have been asked for. Let us send them to PROC and let PROC dive into the details” because I understand that was the original motion from the Conservative Party.

Would that be acceptable to the Conservatives, given that it was their original motion?