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May/2/22 12:35:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I send my regards to the members for whom the hon. member worked. It is a critical point that the member raised. This is “as necessary”. It is going to happen when we need it and only when we need it, as necessary. It is not meant to be every night. It is only meant to be there for the amount of debate that is necessary for any particular bill. Again, it is there precisely to eliminate the ability to simply obstruct for no good, substantive reason.

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Mr. Jeremy Patzer (Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC)

May/2/22 12:36:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is really interesting to hear members from both the NDP and the government side talk about how this is all about debate, and that it is all about making sure that we get all the time that we need to discuss these bills so that we can have extended hours. We can work harder and we can work longer, yet they put a provision in there that they do not actually have to show up after 6:30 p.m. They have made sure that they can do whatever they can to be away from here and not be here to participate. Based on the assertions that we are hearing from the justice minister and the member for New Westminster—Burnaby, my question is to make sure that they are going to be true to their word: Will they be here until midnight, in person, every single time they use this measure to have debate until midnight? That way they will not be seen as not being true to their word.

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Hon. David Lametti

May/2/22 12:37:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we are proposing this piece of legislation to facilitate debate, not to give other opportunities for the silly kinds of obstructionist motions that we have seen in spades over the last number of weeks and months. We are here to give members on all sides the ability to say what they feel they need to say in the context of the House. That is precisely why we are here, and that is precisely why we are proposing the motion we are proposing.

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Mr. Mario Beaulieu (La Pointe-de-l'Île, BQ)

May/2/22 12:37:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there is something illogical about my colleague's argument. He is being asked why the Liberals included in this motion the possibility for the minister to adjourn for the summer without agreement from the other parties. He is telling us that this is done routinely at the end of every season and that is why they included this measure in the motion. If this measure is preventing people from being in favour of the motion, why not simply remove it since, in any event, adjournment is usually done with no problem, with the agreement of all parties? Why not proceed as usual?

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Hon. David Lametti

May/2/22 12:38:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we added the possibility of adjourning the House because this is very common and is typically done in cases like this. We are being efficient. In any way, this motion will have to be put to the House for a vote before it will apply, and some safeguards have already been included in the motion. We are all here to advance the debate. This does not prevent opposition members from having their say during their speaking time.

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Mr. Peter Julian (New Westminster—Burnaby, NDP)

May/2/22 12:39:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I find the Conservatives' comments on this unbelievable, because I can remember back in 2014 when the Harper government, during its dismal decade in power, put in place similar measures without any agreement from any other party, and Conservatives systematically, night after night, did not show up when it was their turn to speak. We had a chalkboard in the lobby. There were 200 times when Conservatives did not show up to work. There were 200 times when Conservative MPs were out doing I do not know what, but they were not in the House standing up as members of Parliament for their constituents. It was 200 times, so when a Conservative MP asks if New Democrats are going to show up to work, of course the answer is yes, because we always do. We have the track record to prove it; the Conservatives do not. They have failed their constituents so many times in the past, and now they are objecting to having us work harder, having us work longer and having us move around their systematic blocking of the House of Commons, so that teachers can get their tax credits, farmers can get the supports they need and all Canadians can get the supports that are in Bill C-8. The Conservatives say they support it, but are blocking it now, as the official opposition House leader has admitted, for two months and running. Why are the Conservatives doing this, and why do they not recognize the hypocrisy of trying to condemn the behaviour they participated in so willingly in the past?

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Hon. David Lametti

May/2/22 12:40:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for New Westminster—Burnaby for his long view of these various kinds of questions. I would add that, as he has mentioned, there are 24,000 farmers potentially waiting for a credit on the price on pollution they have had to pay, and there are 45,000 teachers waiting for that improvement of the supply credit they are going to get, as well as other very proactive measures that are contained in Bill C-8 and other pieces of legislation that are meant—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

May/2/22 12:41:37 p.m.
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The member for Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies is rising on a point of order.

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Mr. Bob Zimmer

May/2/22 12:41:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am sorry to interrupt this important debate, but for clarity, are we to be asking our questions to the member from the Liberal Party or the member from the NDP?

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

May/2/22 12:41:50 p.m.
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I think that is a question. The hon. minister.

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Hon. David Lametti

May/2/22 12:41:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that question just demonstrates exactly why we are here. We are here to help Canadians and we are here to work for Canadians, because that is what we are here to do. We are not here just to throw up every single objection and participate in every single blockade anywhere it exists in Canada. We are here to work for Canadians proactively, positively and in good faith. These provisions are here because one party has failed to do that. We are here in order to give all parties an opportunity to do better.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

May/2/22 12:42:35 p.m.
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It is my duty to interrupt the proceedings at this time and put forthwith the question on the motion now before the House. The question is on the motion. If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes to request a recorded division or that the motion be adopted on division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair. The hon. member for Barrie—Innisfil.

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Mr. John Brassard

May/2/22 12:43:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I request a recorded division.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

May/2/22 12:43:11 p.m.
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Call in the members.

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Call

The Deputy Speaker

May/2/22 1:28:50 p.m.
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I declare the motion carried.

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Mr. John Brassard (Barrie—Innisfil, CPC)

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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The Deputy Speaker

May/2/22 1:50:35 p.m.
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The amendment is in order. Questions and comments, the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate), Lib.)

May/2/22 1:52:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to start by thanking the House leader of the opposition for bringing forward this amendment because by doing so he is giving the member for Winnipeg North another opportunity to speak to this. I did not have an opportunity to hear what the member for Winnipeg North said on Thursday, so I am looking forward to hearing his thoughts on this one. He speaks again for the second time to this. My question for the opposition House leader is quite simple. He seems to be quite concerned about staff members right now and the impact that asking them to stay until midnight will have on them. I wonder where his empathy was a couple of years ago, when the Conservatives literally made this house vote for 30 hours straight, or a couple of years after that, when they made this house vote for 22 hours straight. They knew full well it would produce absolutely nothing with respect to a tangible result of improving this country; rather, it was just for the purpose of being destructive. Can the member justify for me the hypocrisy I am hearing from him when he talks about being so overly concerned about staff and the impacts on them? That party will force staff to stay here for 30 hours straight just to appease its own desire to see this place move as slowly as possible.

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Mr. John Brassard

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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Mr. Yves Perron (Berthier—Maskinongé, BQ)

May/2/22 1:55:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I would like to hear his thoughts about how this government is rushing through things and failing to allow for in-depth studies into topics such as medical assistance in dying. There is a lack of seriousness in committee. I do not want to make accusations, but I am asking my Conservative colleague because, in this case, his party seems to be the one that is obstructing. Members can be for or against a given topic. However, I think that those who are against always benefit from studying it properly. Now the government has issued a gag order that, of course, puts off the final report until October. We will not have enough time to study this issue. I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on this.

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