Defence Minister Peter MacKay is an embarrassment to Canada and should be fired, says Nycole Turmel, interim leader of the NDP.

She called for the Conservative MP to be booted from cabinet during question period in the House of Commons Tuesday. Some NDP MPs had called for MacKay's resignation last week, but Turmel had yet to make the demand, nor had the request been made inside the House before Tuesday.

Turmel said it's time for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to show leadership and fire MacKay, who has been facing allegations that he misled Parliament when explaining his use of a military helicopter to transport him from a fishing lodge, where he was vacationing, to the Gander airport in the summer of 2010. He then flew from Gander to London, Ont., for a government announcement.

Emails from the Department of National Defence staff surfaced last week that show MacKay's staff requested the helicopter flight to get him to the airport in Gander faster than the two hours it would have taken to travel by boat and car.

MacKay said in September that three days into his vacation he participated in a search and rescue demonstration and that he cut his stay at the resort short in order to be part of it.

The emails show that MacKay himself was the subject of the demonstration when the helicopter crew hoisted him off the ground because a small landing area made it too dangerous to land the chopper at the fishing resort. One of the emails said the flight would be "under the guise" of search and rescue training.

"I've already answered the question. The minister said that his use of government aircraft was for government business and that clearly was the case," Harper responded.

Turmel tried again, saying MacKay is an embarrassment to the Conservative government, to the prime minister and "to the entire country."

"What do you do with an embarrassment? You say good riddance," said Turmel. Harper maintained his support for the minister.

David Christopherson, the NDP's defence critic, asked MacKay to apologize for misleading Canadians.

"As I have said many times, I was on personal time on a trip I paid for myself. I was scheduled to be away for four days, I came back after the third day to go back to work, that's what happened," MacKay responded.

Christopherson said mounting evidence shows he is not fit to be defence minister.

The Liberals also called for an apology, saying it's clear MacKay was not participating in a rescue demonstration, that the flight was only arranged to take him from one place to another.

"Was the minister or was he not on a search and rescue operation on his trip in Newfoundland? Yes or no?" interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae said. "What kind of a trip was he on?"

"I left time off to go back to work," MacKay responded.