Luc Berthold

“Madam Speaker, I want to expand on the question the member from the Green Party asked, which really gets to the root of accountability and the lack of transparency that is being brought forward. As somebody who has spent decades in the military, I fully understand that we need to massively revamp our defence procurement system. However, the previous Harper government demonstrated that when we need to urgently sole-source something for operational needs, it is able to be done. What does it require? It requires leadership from the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Defence. In this case, the Liberals are trying to bring in a mechanism, and I am trying to understand why they would take away all this transparency, ministerial accountability, ultimately, and parliamentary oversight. I have no problem with Canada and the government’s spending billions of dollars for our military, but it needs to be reported back to the House. Can my hon. colleague explain why he thinks the Liberals are going down this path?”