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Member of Parliament

Martin Champoux

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • Bloc Québécois
  • Drummond
  • Quebec
  • Voting Attendance: 68%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $108,134.67

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 294 - Mar/22/24
Mr. Martin Champoux (Drummond, BQ)
  • Mar/22/24 1:32:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we agree that there is something downright scandalous about this whole thing. First of all, this is a company that greedily gobbles up all it can without a shred of restraint and, clearly, without a shred of remorse at this stage. When invited to explain himself before a House of Commons committee, Mr. Firth displayed incredible arrogance. The amount of disdain was unbelievable. We know that committees have certain tools they can use to convince or even force uncooperative witnesses to testify, but there are a few who resist, such as the one we are talking about today, Mr. Firth. I would like to ask my colleague if he believes that committees have enough tools to inspire the authority required to stop this kind of uncooperative witness behaviour. We have seen similar behaviour at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, and we saw it this week at the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, when a witness had no interest whatsoever in answering questions about the SNC-Lavalin affair. Do the committees have enough power? Should we not give them better tools so that we do not have to have a 2024 version of a pillory to make witnesses understand that they have to answer the committee's questions?
214 words
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Context: House Hansard - 193 - May/9/23
Mr. Martin Champoux (Drummond, BQ)
  • May/9/23 9:23:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I was looking forward to my turn to speak. I want to congratulate the member for Abbotsford on his speech. The current chair of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation appeared today before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. Here is another example of someone willing to testify about this foundation who either has no conscience or has done very little self-reflection. Perhaps it would help him to have a conscience if he took a look, hard look in the mirror. That said, Mr. Johnson appeared before the committee and said that everything was fine. There was never a threat of interference. CSIS had never sounded the alarm or warned of any risk of Chinese interference through the foundation. He found a way to throw former CEO Pascale Fournier under the bus. He denied just about everything she said. He also lambasted the media. Edward Johnson was a member of Pierre Elliott Trudeau's team in the early 1980s. He was also a senior executive at Power Corporation. Obviously, he is not the kind of person who likes to pull strings and stay close to the circles of power. I found it interesting that he was lambasting the media for their work on this. I would like to ask my Conservative colleague if the Conservative Party sees that as a good opportunity to ensure that Canada's news media is well protected by robust laws so that we have quality journalism and support journalists in this investigative work.
255 words
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