During a CTV Power Play segment on Wednesday, PPC leader Maxime Bernier defended beleaguered Conservative MP Michael Cooper while his own party refused to send a representative to appear on the show.

The segment in question discussed yesterday’s decision by the Justice Committee to wipe the record clean of Cooper’s remarks about the New Zealand shooter’s manifesto. NDP and Liberal members voted unanimously on the motion, while Conservative members abstained.

“I feel like we are in the novel 1984. Something happened yesterday, and today because of political correctness in this country, we are erasing that. They are rewriting history doing that,” said Bernier about the decision.

Since the original incident, Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer announced that Cooper would no longer be sitting on the justice committee and has since apologized for the incident.

“Michael didn’t do anything wrong, he was expressing his point of view and we need people like that in our parliament,” said Bernier.

“It’s too bad that the Conservatives are not here today and they are not defending free speech, they are not defending the fundamental right in our constitution: freedom of speech.”

Several members from the other parties have been since calling to have Cooper removed from the CPC caucus altogether. On June 3rd, Liberal MP and committee member, Randy Boissonnault issued an open letter to Scheer to strip Cooper of his Deputy Justice Critic Role and eject him from the caucus entirely.

Earlier today, I issued this statement calling on Andrew Scheer to strip Michael Cooper of his Deputy Justice Critic role and eject him from the Conservative Caucus. Mr. Cooper’s behavior and comments were discriminatory and unbecoming of a Member of Parliament. #cdnpoli #yeg pic.twitter.com/m8iOGsEH3q — Randy Boissonnault ???? (@R_Boissonnault) June 3, 2019

While on the panel, Liberal MP Steve MacKinnon defended the decision to edit the record.

“Here’s a member on the committee who looked up a manifesto of a mass murderer in preparation for a committee hearing where a representative of the Muslim community was going to testify,” said MacKinnon who also called the fact that no Conservative MP was present on the discussion “shameful”.

NDP MP Nathan Cullen also defended the motion claiming that the government shouldn’t immortalize the words of mass murderers.

“We have freedom of speech in this country, we also have limitations on speech that you can’t do,” said Cullen.

Bernier, who was a former colleague of Cooper before leaving the Conservatives to form the People’s Party of Canada insisted that his actions were not wrong.

The Post Millennial also reached out to Andrew Scheer’s office for comment on the decision to not send a representative to today’s panel but had not hear back by the time this article was published.