Guelph MP Lloyd Longfield says his words were definitely taken out of context when Conservative leader Erin O’Toole accused him of equating WE documents to religious texts.
“The point I was making during the meeting was that documents need to be respected and that as members of parliament, we need to respect the documents that we receive and the people that prepare the documents for us need respect,” said Longfield in an interview with GuelphToday.
Last week O’Toole tweeted a video of Longfield stating ‘Liberals equate WE docs to sacred Muslim, Jewish and Sikh Texts’ with a video from a virtual parliament meeting this week where Longfield criticized Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre for throwing redacted WE documents in a press conference this summer.
During what are becoming routine antics for the Liberal Party at the Finance Committee, Guelph MP Longfield compared government documents to sacred religious texts.
— Erin O'Toole (@erinotoole) October 30, 2020
The Liberals need to stop making absolutely ridiculous claims and give Canadians the answers they deserve. pic.twitter.com/HWZauemaC6
In the video, Longfield is heard saying “the decisions on redactions are made by our independent public service which provided thousands of pages for us to review and to see them thrown on the floor was a disservice to the public service and it was also a disservice to documents in general, that are sacred.” Longfield then compares Poilievre’s gesture to being equivalent to him throwing pages of the Bible onto the floor.
Poilievre is then heard responding to the comparison to religious texts as offensive as offensive.
This has gone beyond ridiculous and insulting to Canadians MP Longfield should be ashamed of himself. Why is this being allowed? Please someone in the HOC explain this to me
— Sadie (@Sadie02294052) October 30, 2020
I think you need to stop with the Conservative antics and lay off stuff that is irrelevant during a pandemic. Focus on real priorities, if you know how to do that.
— Cailleach the Crone (@professorsan) October 30, 2020
Longfield said he was referring to the incident on Aug. 19 where Poilievre threw redacted WE scandal documents in a news conference as he claimed they were a coverup and the reason Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was proroguing Parliament till Sept. 23.
“He was being very disrespectful to the documents in front of him as well as the people who prepared the documents.”
“This week’s meeting we were able to have the Liberal house leader release some of the documents taking out the redactions to show what was behind the redactions,” said Longfield stating that the redactions were typically of personal information such as cell phone numbers and names.
“And so I was going over the comparisons of redacted versus unredacted and I was saying how as a member of parliament, we rely on the documents and we respect the documents because we write laws, the laws are written on documents. We do agreements, the agreements are written on documents.”
In the case of the meeting this week, Longfield said the party was trying to get the law clerk at the privy council to say why he was redacting the documents but the Conservatives were not allowing the law clerk to come as a witness.
“So I said our only witness is the documents which is why I said it's so important,” said Longfield.
“So I said in other context — this is where it went sideways on me — I said in other context, the written word for different religions is actually revered and so to throw these documents would be like me in front of mass as a lector (which I am) throwing pieces of the Bible on the floor or it would be like the Sikh religion with its sacred text or theTorah or the Quran. Those are also respected and revered documents.”
