44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 2, 2022 11:00AM
- May/2/22 12:11:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, obviously I stand with profound disappointment, for two reasons. The first is that we are even in a position where Motion No. 11 is needed by the government. The second is the fact that the Liberals have invoked closure after just two hours of debate. This is an admission by the government. What makes it worse is the fact that I suspect that the NDP is complicit in the government's action. This is a mismanagement of the government's House time on the part of the government House leader and the government.
There has been a decline in democracy in this country, and it is a pattern that has existed with the current government. We saw it with Motion No. 6 in previous Parliaments. In fact, when COVID first hit, there was an introduction of a bill that would have given the government complete taxing power and power over Parliament. This pattern of disdain and contempt for this Parliament is consistent with the current government. Now that the Liberals have the NDP in their hip pocket, while this is outside the scope of the supply and confidence agreement, I suspect that we are going to see this pass.
Given the circumstances and the confidence that Canadians have with respect to their public institutions and with respect to the way this place operates, how can the minister expect that this is going to create any greater confidence in the face of the decline in our democracy, when the Liberals are pulling stunts like this?
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- May/2/22 12:21:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what is baffling is having the justice minister actually stand in this place and talk in the way he is. Bill C-8 was not introduced until December 16, so he is playing around a bit with the facts here. It went to committee February 1 and came back from committee on March 1. After December 16, the House was not sitting for six weeks, so there was no obstruction going on.
Nobody on this side of the House is afraid to work. These are multi-billion dollar bills that the government for some reason expects the official opposition and the third party just to simply rubber-stamp without questioning, without proposing and without amending.
How can the Liberals contribute to the further decline in our democracy? People in this country are looking at this place as its symbol, yet the government continues to contribute to the decline in democracy. I do not understand how the justice minister can stand here and defend this action by his government.
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- May/2/22 12:30:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I want to give the justice minister an opportunity, because I believe he did misspeak. Perhaps he did not understand that there is a constitutional obligation for quorum to be held in this place.
He said that this has happened before, but it only happens in take-note debates. It also happens in emergency debates when no vote on government legislation is held. In fact, this has never been held before. I would give the justice minister an opportunity to correct himself and not mislead the House.
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- May/2/22 12:31:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Minister of Justice just said that this has happened before when in fact it has not happened before, with the exception of emergency debates and take-note debates. That is what I am seeking clarification on.
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- May/2/22 12:43:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I request a recorded division.
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- May/2/22 1:28:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, once again, it gives me pleasure to rise and speak to government Motion No. 11.
However, before I get into the specifics of it, let me just address a couple of issues that came up during the closure debate earlier. It was a very vigorous debate. I want to address one issue. There were several claims, both from the government side and the NDP side, which is the same side, about members of the opposition not wanting or being willing to work. Let me state unequivocally that Conservatives are here to do the business of the nation. We want to work. I have no problem with extending the hours. I really do not.
My profound concern, and I stated this in my interaction on Friday, is about the staff. We have seen, over the course of the last couple of years, that staff have been tested. The measure of the staff has been certainly tested around this place. We have heard about the interpreters, about the health challenges that have gone on. We have seen an increase in occupational injury risk for the interpreters. We are concerned about that work-life balance.
For two parties that espouse and say they are for the working class, they are not showing any empathy or compassion for what families are going to have to deal with, with respect to this motion, specifically the timeline for the extension of those sitting hours. It is causing me, as I said the other day, tremendous concern that with just one minute's notice, the government can come, with the NDP's help, and say they want to extend the hours. What is that going to mean for the staffing around this place? What is that going to mean to committees, when we start transferring resources to deal with some of these late-night sittings?
My staff in the House leader's office just informed me before I got up to speak that two committees already today are going to be cancelled: the Afghanistan committee and the medical assistance in dying committee. The meetings that were scheduled for today are going to be cancelled because they are going to have to allocate or transfer resources from those committees to the extension of the House sitting hours.
The government has said, and I heard the justice minister say, that this happens all the time. This happens, actually, once the agreed schedule is applied. All of the House leaders get together and we discuss. In fact, we are in the process of discussing the schedule for next year. Within the last two weeks, there are asterisks in the schedule. Those asterisks indicate there will be an extension of hours. It is agreed to. It is understood. However, what this does is basically give the government last-minute appeal. It can impose late sittings when it wants to.
We saw some news coverage over the weekend of the government saying that this was not what it was going to do and that it was going to give enough notice. If it is going to give enough notice, why would it put it specifically in this motion that it could do it up until 6:30 p.m. of any given day? I would suggest that this is the intent of what the government is going to do.
Cynically, I can think of only one reason this would happen: to keep the opposition parties, both the Conservatives and the Bloc, on their toes. This means that every day and every night, we are going to have to carry debate. We are prepared to do that. This is not a rubber stamp factory where multiple billions of dollars and pieces of legislation are debated and proposed, and where amendments are proposed at committee. We are already seeing the committee work being affected, but this is not a rubber stamp factory. There is a constitutional obligation on the part of the opposition to hold the government to account. That is our constitutional obligation.
With this motion, the Liberal Party and its Prime Minister are getting exactly what they have always wanted, with the help of the NDP. I will talk about the NDP in a second. With the help of the NDP, the government and the Prime Minister are going to get an audience, not an opposition. That is what he has been hoping for over the past six and a half years, and now with the NDP in the government's hip pocket, they have it.
Going back to the debate before, I just cannot believe the hypocrisy of the House leader of the NDP. For six and a half years, I have sat in this place and we have all sat in this place, those members who were elected in 2015, and how many times did the opposition House leader of the NDP talk about the fact that the Prime Minister was worse than Stephen Harper when it came to time allocation? He said it many times, and yet, the hypocrisy is that he stands here today and blames Conservatives for obstructing. Nothing could be further from the truth.
They talk about Bill C-8 as their benchmark piece of legislation that they look at. Bill C-8 was introduced on December 16. The House rose shortly thereafter. We sat in our constituencies and worked there for six weeks. We did not come back until January 29. It received second reading on March 1, went to committee and came back on April 1. There was a time allocation motion that was put in on April 4, and the NDP refused to support the government on time allocation. For them to sit here and blame Conservatives for obstructing that bill is disingenuous and, I would suggest, misleading the House, because maybe someone should hold the NDP House leader to account as to why he did not agree to that.
Here is the problem. When we look at the motion and we look at all the things that are in the motion, as I said earlier, it gives the Prime Minister exactly what he wants: an audience, not an opposition.
I appreciate the ruling of the Speaker this morning, but the reality is that, in previous circumstances, the issue of quorum was let go for non-votable matters. It was agreed to by the House leaders. Anything to do with take-note debates or emergency debates, we would allow quorum not to be called as part of an agreement. What the government is doing with this is basically imposing a sledgehammer to say that the Liberals are not even required to show up. The NDP is not even required to show up. In theory, what we could have is opposition-side members debating themselves on pieces of legislation that the government is proposing, asking ourselves questions and comments when the Liberals are not even required to be here.
As I said the other day in question period, they can effectively be sitting at home in their PJs and their fuzzy slippers watching reruns of This Is Us and those socialist documentaries that they covet so much. That is what they could effectively be doing without the constitutional obligation of having a quorum call in the House.
Who does not want to show up to work? Why are they putting that in this motion? Conservatives will be here; I can guarantee that. With this motion and no quorum call, it means that the government and the NDP do not even have to show up to debate their own legislation. How ridiculous is that?
I talked about the “without notice...to adjourn the House”. This is egregious, in the sense that what the government is proposing with this particular part of this motion is that it can prorogue Parliament without proroguing.
I will take us back, as I said earlier, to the WE Charity scandal. When the heat got really hot on the Prime Minister, he did the very thing he said he was not going to do in 2015, and that was to prorogue Parliament.
Let us picture this scenario. There is a situation where we have a scandal brewing. We have the RCMP potentially deciding to investigate the Prime Minister on whether he granted himself permission for that vacation to that luxurious island that cost over $200,000. What if, with regard to the Winnipeg lab document scandal, we were able, through committee or some other means, to have those documents produced and they show that the government did something? What if we had another SNC-Lavalin scandal or any other scandal that gets too hot for the Prime Minister to handle? One minister of the Crown, just one, can decide to shut this place down. Can members imagine that?
It is stunts like these that cause further erosion in Canadians' respect for our democratic institutions and the faith they have in our democratic institutions.
When a government of the day, with a fourth party in its hip pocket, can decide that it is going to seize control of this place and do whatever it wants, how can Canadians not be cynical of the institution? How can they not be cynical of our Parliament? How can they not be cynical when they are witnessing right in front of them, as we all are, a decline in our democracy? There are measurements used that determine that decline. We have seen that over the course of the last six and a half years, and we are further seeing an erosion in the decline of our democracy as a result of stunts like this by the government. It can shut it down with one minister of the Crown proposing it. Yes, it will come to a vote. Surprise, surprise: I wonder what that vote will be when it has the NDP in its hip pocket. There is a lot to be concerned about in this.
What we are seeing, and perhaps Motion No. 11 is further evidence of this, is the shady, backroom deals that are going on here. The government House leader does not even give me the courtesy, nor does he give the Bloc Québécois House leader the courtesy, of saying what is going on. What do the Liberals do now? They do not go to the official opposition or the third party in this place. They do an end-around to the fourth party, say what they are going to do and ask if it will support them. There are shady, backroom deals: exactly the thing that further diminishes the confidence that Canadians have in our democracy.
As far as the standing order changes, I am really appreciative of the ruling that the Speaker made earlier in having a separate vote for that. What the government was doing, with the help of its NDP partner, again led to this cynicism and further erosion. The Liberals were putting a poison pill in the motion to force the opposition to vote against it. I stood here the other day and said very clearly that Conservatives unequivocally supported call to action 80 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to make sure that we had a stand-alone day for truth and reconciliation. I was very glad for the Speaker's wisdom in that decision. The Speaker saw right through what the government was trying to do: putting in this poison pill, probably under the suggestion of its partner in the NDP, to force the Conservative Party to vote against it as an omnibus procedural motion. I am glad the Speaker did that, because we will be supporting that particular part of the motion when it is carved out of this omnibus motion and will vote in favour of national day for truth and reconciliation.
Of course we all know the history of the Prime Minister on this one. Last year, what did he do? He did not get involved. He went surfing in Tofino. The schedule for the Prime Minister even said he was having private meetings. It did not give a true indication of what was happening. What was happening was that, on the most important day in this nation, he went surfing in Tofino. How dare the Liberals use this poison pill for political purposes to further wedge, further stigmatize and further divide Canadians, especially those who supported the Conservative Party in the last election and who understand the importance of truth and reconciliation, because it was Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper who started that commission from which those recommendations came.
I am obviously profoundly disappointed. I am really concerned about where this place goes from here. I really am. The government was elected with a minority. The NDP was the fourth party in the last election and now, between the two of them, they are going to be able to control every aspect of this place. What about those voices who elected a minority government? What about those people who said they wanted the government to be held in check? They wanted the government to be held to account, they wanted transparency from the government, they wanted to make sure that multi-billion dollar bills that the government proposes, these big-money appropriation bills, deserve the level of scrutiny that they should. What about those voices? That is not going to happen anymore because of this alliance, this coalition, between the NDP and the Liberals.
I said earlier the impact this was going to have on committees. What about the finance committee? What about the ethics committee?
What about other committees, such as important committees on Afghanistan and the invocation of the Emergency Measures Act? How are they going to be impacted? The resources of the House will now go towards evening sessions, further putting in jeopardy the ability not just of those committees but of parliamentarians on the opposition side and Canadians in general to get to the bottom of what they are looking for. When I go back to the invocation of the Emergencies Act, we have already seen that the government is not going to allow cabinet confidentiality. What other documents are not going to be available to the committee because the committee is not going to be able to sit?
This is a government that ran in 2015 on the principle of being accountable and transparent by default. How times have fallen. The hypocrisy of those words is being shown by the government. This is a government that is anything but transparent and accountable. This is a government that has undermined the very role of this institution of Parliament: the constitutional obligation of the opposition parties to hold the government to account, not to basically ram legislation through when it sees fit.
This is not a rubber stamp factory. This is a place for vigorous debate. It is a place where the government is held to account. It is not a place where, as much as the Prime Minister wants it to be, he gets an audience. This is a place where he gets an opposition. Conservatives will work as long and as tirelessly as we need to in order to hold the government to account. We are going to expose this coalition unholy alliance, and these backroom shady deals that are being made by the NDP-Liberal government.
We are going to work as hard as we can to make sure it is held to account, that there is transparency and there is accountability on behalf of every single Canadian who did not vote for them, but voted for a minority government in this Parliament.
With the little time I have left, the opposition party is proposing what we consider to be reasonable amendments. Again, I thank you, Mr. Speaker for your judicious, intelligent ruling this morning to carve out those pieces that are poison pills meant to obstruct the opposition and in fact make the opposition vote against something that none of us would ever consider voting for. I do appreciate that. I am going to move the following amendments.
I move:
That the motion be amended
(a) in paragraph (a),
(i) by replacing the words “a minister of the Crown may, with the agreement of the House leader of another recognized party” with the words “a House leader of a recognized party may, with the agreement of the House leaders of two other recognized parties”,
(ii) by replacing the words “but no later than 6:30 p.m., and request that the ordinary hour of daily adjournment for the current sitting or” with the words “request, with at least two sitting days' notice, that the ordinary hour of daily adjournment for”,
(iii) by adding, after the words “a subsequent sitting”, the words “, other than a Friday,”, and
(iv) by adding, after the words “a day when a debate pursuant to Standing Order 52 or 53.1 is to take place”, the words “or a day appointed for the consideration of business under Standing Order 81(4)(a)”;
(b) in paragraph (b),
(i) by deleting subparagraph (i),
(ii) by deleting, in subparagraph (ii), the words “quorum calls or”, and
(iii) by deleting, in subparagraph (iii), all the words after the word “Crown”; and
(c) in paragraph (c),
(i) by replacing, in subparagraph (ii), the word “35th” with the word “15th”, and
(ii) by deleting subparagraph (iv).
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am hopeful for these reasonable amendments I am proposing, which take into account not just how this place functions and how properly it should function but also take into account, as I said at the onset, the concern that we have for the lives of the people who work here, and how they are going to be impacted.
I am not specifically referring to members of Parliament, but to the work-life balance of the staff who make this place operate, whether it is the clerks, the administration, the bus drivers, the security officers, the food services branch or any others, and not least the translators, who have seen tremendous injury and impact. I do not understand why the government would want to expose them to that.
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- May/2/22 1:53:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is an important question. Those were appropriation bills. If members recall, at one point we were very close to seeing the government fall. It was 4:30 in the morning and it was very close to actually falling.
These are legislative bills and a failure on the part of the government to propose its legislative agenda. It is actually a massive failure on the Liberals' part. We have only had 19 pieces of legislation, and within that time only eight have passed. The government's inability or failure to push through its legislative agenda is not our fault, nor is it the fault of the people who work here. There is no need to expand beyond the normal course of business. That is already addressed in the Standing Orders for the last two weeks of June. It was agreed to by all parties.
Most importantly, what this motion does is it creates a trap: It gives the government the ability to basically shut down this place if there is a scandal or if and when it decides to do that. We are here to work on behalf of Canadians and will continue to work despite the assertions from the other side.
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- May/2/22 1:55:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague. The four House leaders jointly proposed extending the committee until June 23.
We actually did that. As I hope the hon. member understands, this is another example of a failure of the legislative agenda. That committee was supposed to legislatively report back in May. It was not until the end of March that we actually started talking about it. We agreed with the May deadline, but we proposed to extend it until June 23, which we did. Now the government is going to put that off until October 17, and I understand there are very important issues around that.
We just heard, in advance of my taking the floor today, that the medical assistance in dying committee is going to be cancelled today because of the government's plans to prolong or extend hours of debate. The Liberals cannot manage anything, and that is why we are in this situation we are in. We now have to deal with the government's failure to push forward a legislative agenda to manage the time of the House, and it is Canadians and all of us who are going to be paying the price for the mismanagement of their legislative agenda.
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- May/2/22 1:58:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, time and time again, as we have heard, the problem specifically with regard to the interpreters, which I suspect affects other parts of the operation of the House of Commons, is the issue of hybrid Parliament. Let us stop this. Let us stop hybrid Parliament and let us get back to normal. Let us do what other legislatures around the country are doing and return to being here in person. The interpreters have paid a dear price for this hybrid Parliament, and anybody who has read the reports understands that. We cannot just manufacture interpreters. There is a shortage, and a pool of resources is unavailable to us.
My suggestion is that we get rid of hybrid Parliament, come back, deal with this and make it easier on the interpreters. We can make it easy on all the staff who work so hard to support this place. Let us do what other legislatures are doing. Let us get back to normal and not hide behind masks like the other parties are doing.
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- May/2/22 2:00:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we can respectfully disagree on that.
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- May/2/22 5:04:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have said this numerous times. The government has failed miserably in dealing with its legislative agenda. It is going to make everybody around this place pay a price. Conservatives are prepared to work 24 hours a day if we have to, and we will.
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- May/2/22 5:05:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have already agreed to a schedule, which all of the parties agreed to last year. The last two weeks of June were proposed for extended sittings. The hon. member is quite right. This has never happened before.
What Canadians need to ask themselves, and certainly what the NDP members need to ask themselves, is why. Why are we doing this at the beginning of May? It is because the government has failed in its legislative agenda? The second reason is that it has the NDP in its hip pocket, so it can do whatever it wants now.
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- May/2/22 5:49:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I know there has been a lot of discussion on Bill C-8 and the accusations of obstruction and obfuscation of the bill.
On April 4, the government put a notice of time allocation on Bill C-8. When I asked the government House leader why he did not move that notice of time allocation, he said it was because the NDP House leader said no and that they were waiting to see what was in the budget. The budget, of course, happened April 7, and then we all went home two weeks later.
Can the NDP House leader explain to Canadians why he decided not to use time allocation, or agree with the government at the time when they wanted to use it, when they could have moved this bill much further and much faster down the line? Maybe he can explain to Canadians why he said no to the government House leader in a telephone conversation, and maybe he can explain to teachers and farmers why they delayed this bill.
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- May/2/22 8:59:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is such a wonderful amendment that we need a recorded vote.
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- May/2/22 9:26:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we would like a recorded vote.
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