44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 27, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I have a couple of concerns with this. One is that with the exception of a few of our Liberal colleagues who are here, this member of Parliament, our hon. colleague, has gotten up three times on this topic: triple, triple, triple.
I sit on the health committee and the concern I have is that we literally were given two hours to study a bill worth $10 billion. There were two hours for parliamentarians to study a bill worth $10 billion. I do not discount that Canadians are in need of some help because of the costly government. However, the other side likes to talk about working collaboratively. Those members have not worked collaboratively with the opposition. They have actually rammed this through. If anything, all 338 members of Parliament have been sent here to be the voices of Canadians.
Why does my hon. colleague feel it is important to ram a bill through that is worth $10 billion and will be on the backs of Canadians?
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Mr. Speaker, folks who are watching this debate are seeing political theatrics at its best. We just heard from the member for Vancouver East and the member for Vancouver Kingsway. The member for Vancouver East has been in office for 29 years, and the member for Vancouver Kingsway since 2008, and prior to that he worked for a union, so they both have had dental care.
The member for Vancouver Kingsway brought up a good point that, at the health committee, members from the opposition did bring amendments through. Our hon. colleague from the Bloc brought some great amendments through. He is the member for Mirabel. We then saw the costly coalition gang up and deny these amendments, just like they do all the other times.
As a matter fact, they were ruled out of order, yet the NDP amendments were ruled in order. This did not take place until the next day, but the Speaker of the House actually had to rule those amendments out of order, yet we still see the political theatrics of this group. It really is shameful.
Let me begin by saying there is not one member in His Majesty's official opposition who does not believe Canadian families need more help. There is not one person in my party who does not want to see Canadians' lives get easier and more affordable. There is not one member of our party who does not want to see life made easier for kids and parents. No one on this side believes kids should not have access to dental care.
We have heard all kinds of accusations from the Liberal-NDP coalition today on this, and it is absolute hogwash. I would use stronger language, because them speaking kind of gets me—
An hon. member: It triggers you.
Mr. Todd Doherty: Mr. Speaker, “triggers” is a good word.
An hon. member: No one is triggered but you.
Mr. Todd Doherty: Mr. Speaker, they trigger it, but that is what they want. That is exactly what they want—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate that, because while the Liberals will go on and on saying that people are heckling them, you will notice that I did not even acknowledge them. They can say anything they want to say. It does not bother me at all, because what they are saying is total hogwash. They are triggering. What Bill C-31 is called in the political sphere is a wedge issue, because Liberals are using it to score political points.
The new Conservative leader went out of his way to tell Canadians that we care for them. We want to let everyday, regular people know that we actually have a plan and we care. We want people to have more money in their pockets. What we have seen from the Liberal government and the NDP, which has propped the Liberals up all the way, is that they are going to triple the price for food, triple the price for fuel and triple the price for heating. Yes, members heard that correctly, and I will repeat it for the Liberal-NDP coalition. Its members are going to triple, triple, triple prices. I know they hate that, so I said it again.
Conservatives want life to be more affordable. What is shameful is that we know our friends in Atlantic Canada are struggling after having just gone through a horrendous natural disaster, a weather event. They are struggling. Liberal premiers in Atlantic Canada are begging the government to please cancel raising the carbon tax, because they are struggling.
We also know from a report that was just released today that 1.5 million Canadians accessed food banks last month. That is an increase of 35% year over year. That is happening under the Liberal government's watch. When we tell Liberals that, they blame everybody else but themselves.
I will agree that inflation can be caused by a number of things, including foreign issues, but it starts at home. The government has the keys to the bank. As our friend from Regina—Qu'Appelle said in his great speech, it starts here at home. Over $176 billion of spending that Liberals say was for COVID had nothing to do with COVID, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report states that today.
We do not want to see people evicted, and we do not want to see kids suffering in pain because they cannot afford a dentist. We have focused the majority of our questions in question period, since electing our new leader, on affordability. While the Liberals and NDP want to spend, spend, spend, we have been talking about making an actual difference in people's lives.
Bill C-31 is not about providing access to dental care or making rent more affordable. It is about maintaining power. Let us be very clear that it is about the Prime Minister's tenuous, at best, hold on his party. There are wolves at the door. They are lining up, getting their soldiers and their organization together to take over power and be the next leaders of the Liberal Party, because the Prime Minister is struggling to hold on to his power.
It is about an NDP leader who is also struggling with his own internal party politics. If members of the NDP-Liberal coalition were concerned about dental care or rent, they would have wanted a fulsome debate at committee. They would have wanted a fulsome debate here in this chamber. They would have wanted to ensure the best legislation possible.
Let me throw this out. This is not a plan or a program. Programs have checks and balances in place, and this has none. Legislation that would create a program to help kids who are in pain and that would help single moms pay their rent or go to a dentist is a program. This is not the case.
I have been a member of Parliament for seven years and have sat in on countless bill reviews. I have sat in on countless committee meetings, and what I witnessed Monday night was unbelievable. My colleague from Mirabel will attest to this.
What we saw was that the government gave committee members literally two hours to study a piece of legislation, two hours that will commit the Canadian government to $10 billion of spending. In fact, just talking right now about this actually triggers me even more. It makes me more angry.
The government voted down my hon. colleague from Mirabel's amendments for a certain clause for the reason that committees cannot attach further financial obligations to the government. The amendments were voted down, yet when the NDP brought amendments to this piece of legislation to committee with attached financial obligations, the chair ruled those in order. As a matter of fact, the Liberals and the NDP rammed them through.
As parliamentarians we have a job to do. We were sent here by the people from our ridings to represent them. We were sent here to get the best legislation possible. We were sent here to work together. I have stood in the House so much over this time to talk about mental health and to talk about health. I think all colleagues will agree I take a very non-partisan approach to this. If we can work together to get things done that is the best for Canadians.
What we have seen with the government and its friends, the NDP, the costly Liberal-NDP coalition, is that they do not care what the rest of us and the rest of Canadians think. They will stand in the House and put on a great show for video clips and social media, yet they are misleading Canadians every step of the way.
I understand that partisan politics can get in the way. I know that when we are in this chamber sometimes the level of debate get pretty low. That said, I have always believed in the committee process. I have always believed that committees are where we as parliamentarians do our best work. At least, that is what I had hoped.
I remember a time at the fisheries committee a few years ago when there were a number of amendments that we thought would make the bill better. At that time I was getting up daily in question period to hammer the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans on the clam scam. Does everybody remember the clam scam? It was when the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans gave a lucrative contract to a former member of Parliament, a former Liberal member of Parliament, and possibly even some family members of the fisheries minister.
That meant that jobs were lost in the community at Grand Bank. I fought tirelessly for them and not one member from the Atlantic Canada caucus stood up to do that. Why? It was because they were silenced. They were muzzled by the front bench.
When the bill came to committee with some amendments, I reached out to the hon. members from across the way and told them some of our concerns. We were at it every day in question period, but when it came to getting that bill right, we actually got the work done. We got those amendments passed. That is an example of a committee working in the best interests of Canadians.
At committee, the members were listened to. We heard from over 20 witnesses. We heard from the minister. We heard from officials. When it came to doing the clause-by-clause, the members of the committee agreed with some of our amendments and we managed to pass a number of them. We worked together to have a better piece of legislation and Canadians were better for it. Did we get everything we wanted? No, we did not, but we got a few. We had an opportunity to actually study the bill, not like what we saw on Monday night.
We were told we had to have the amendments in before we actually got a chance to hear from the witnesses. On Monday we were supposed to analyze a bill that was going to spend, as I said, $10 billion. Do members know how many days we were allowed to study that bill? It was one day for two hours. Do members know how many witnesses we had? We had five, with two ministers who could not answer a question if their lives depended on it. They could not answer these questions. When we offered thoughtful questions to the officials, they were stymied. It was two hours and then we had to immediately move into clause-by-clause. Was that really offering parliamentarians of all stripes an opportunity to do their best work for Canadians? I would offer that it was not. It was very discouraging.
I get that the Liberal-NDP coalition members do not care about inflation. They do not care about budgets. They do not care about robbing Peter to pay Paul. They do not really care about families. They think the government has this magic pot of gold or magic pot of money that all this money comes from, or perhaps it is a tree. It is probably not a tree, but seriously, this is such an utter sham. It really, truly is, and it is more of what we see with this Liberal-NDP coalition.
The worst part of all this is that the Liberal and NDP members of the committee attempted to usurp the government's power and increase the spending. I mentioned that. Members heard me correctly. After a negative ruling by the chair on two Bloc amendments, if I remember correctly, that would have increased spending, the coalition members introduced an NDP amendment to spend even more than $10 billion. There was no consultation, no cabinet approval and no authorization. They just agreed to add more money. When the chair ruled them out of order, they challenged the chair and they rammed it through. We voted them down and they amended the bill anyway. Of course, we objected. We pointed out that this would require a royal recommendation, but they did not want to hear that.
They did not want to debate dental care for kids. They did not want to debate money for rent. The Liberal members of the committee supported the NDP amendment because they did not want to lose power. They did not want to jeopardize their agreement with the third party. The fix was in before the bill even came to committee. The fix was in to get this passed without scrutiny, without accountability and without care for kids and families.
When the member for Vancouver East moved her amendment to increase the rental eligibility, the chair correctly ruled the motion inadmissible. The House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, states this on page 772. I know I do not have to tell you this, Mr. Speaker, but I am going to read it into the record anyway. It states:
Since an amendment may not infringe upon the financial initiative of the Crown, it is inadmissible if it imposes a charge on the public treasury, or if it extends the objects or purposes or relaxes the conditions and qualifications specified in the royal recommendation.
Despite this clear and concise ruling, the Liberals and NDP voted down the chair and proceeded, regardless. It was not until the bill was reported back to the House on Tuesday that the mistake was fixed.
I am going to finish with this. The Canadian Dental Association said this:
The single best way to quickly improve oral health and increase access to dental care is to invest in, and enhance, existing provincial and territorial dental programs. These programs are significantly underfunded and are almost exclusively financed by provincial and territorial governments.
We are surprised by today’s announcement that the federal government is considering a new, large-scale, federal dental program. It will be important to ensure that any new initiatives do not disrupt access to dental care for the large majority of Canadians who already have dental coverage through employer-provided health benefits.
The Liberal member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River summed it up best on Monday night with his second question. He admitted that this bill was nothing really about dental care. He said this:
There are a lot of costs in life. Dental is certainly one of them, but you have to buy your kid shoes, you have to buy them food and you have to pay for their minor league hockey. These are all costs for families.
I do not disagree with the member. Families could always use more money, and we could use a program that has checks and balances in place so that this money would actually get to kids and families who need it the most, and so that it would be consistent and not a one-time top-up that the government is going to claw back anyway. We also heard through our study that first nations children are not eligible for this program.
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Mr. Speaker, I do not disagree with my colleague. I said in my intervention that Canadians need a leg up, that single parents and families that are living dollar to dollar and are having a hard time making ends meet need a leg up. They need a plan. They get this top-up, but then what? How do they live for the rest of the year?
In my intervention, I said that a plan needs to be in place. While this money may make things better at the moment, there is not a long-term plan in place that can truly make a difference. That is something we have been struggling to get the government to do.
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Mr. Speaker, I have taken part in a lot of committees. As our colleague can attest to, I absolutely lost my mind the night that this was taking place and that what we were witnessing was taking place. It was so unparliamentary.
Clearly, as I stated in my speech, the deal was done, and anybody who brought forward any type of amendment, who was not part of the NDP-Liberal coalition, was going to get shut out. We offered to bring more witnesses to the table. We asked for more time to study the bill. We asked to do our job. We offered to sit through the weekend to study this bill and bring witnesses, but we were shut down every step of the way.
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