SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 211 - Jun/12/23

The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Jun/12/23 10:33:22 p.m.
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I do want to remind the hon. member that when someone is online they are actually considered to be in Parliament. The hon. parliamentary secretary.

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Secretary

Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Jun/12/23 10:33:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am not too sure where to go with that particular question. The members of Parliament work whether they are here or they are in their ridings. I can tell the member that I do and my colleagues do. At the end of the day, the member needs to ask himself a question: Why does the Conservative Party support everything that is in this motion on the condition that it be sunset for two years, as opposed to just forgetting about the sunset for a moment? If they support it for the next two years, then what is really wrong with the motion? I suspect that the member does, or many members of the Conservative Party do, support the motion, but the House leadership team is having a difficult time showing any sort of consensus building.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

Jun/12/23 10:34:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am going to share my time with the member for Chatham-Kent—Leamington. Members have heard me say before that I participated in the Standing Orders debates in the past. I think back to 2020, when Parliament resumed in a hybrid format. I think the Conservative caucus was one of the first to resume having full meetings. We were one of the first ones, if not the first, on Zoom. We had tested all the other different software systems and fell on Zoom as being the best one, and we requested our own server from the House administration and cybersecurity people so we could meet using that format. Within three meetings, we got interpretation services going, because it was incredibly important for us to keep having meetings bilingually. I oppose the motion. I oppose the contents of the motion. I have said it from the beginning. I have been as consistent as I can be on this question. I still oppose it. I want to speak to the backbenchers in the Liberal benches about how bad this would be for all of us in the long term, but especially for those who are going to be in the government caucus in the long term. I say this because eventually the parliamentary calendar will mean nothing. Eventually we will meet every single week because constituency weeks and legislative sessional weeks will blend together. There will be no difference between the two. We will be expected to do both our works, and our constituents will expect us to do everything at the same time. There will be no ground given for being away in the nation's capital on the floor of the House of Commons or in a committee debating the issues. There will be no difference made. For all the events we will be invited to, there will be an expectation that we do everything at the same time. If someone is now participating in committee in a hybrid format from home, they are working. They are not watching their sick child. I had four kids; I have three kids now. I had a personal tragedy happen in my life and I was away for six weeks. I did not think about work during that time. What we are going to be asking members to do is to work while sick. We are going to be asking members to work while a loved one is very sick. We are going to be asking them to do everything at the same time in those same weeks and to figure it out and balance it themselves. Members will get incredible pressure from their House leadership team and their leadership, whether that be from the Prime Minister's Office or the leader's office in opposition, whichever one it is. Incredible pressure will be put on the backbenchers. I say that as a former chair of the Conservative caucus, where my job was to speak on behalf of backbenchers in my own recognized caucus. The whole point of caucus chairs is to speak on behalf of the backbenchers. There is not a single legislature in Canada that has moved to a full hybrid format. I do not quite know the territories so I will not speak to them, but none of the 10 legislatures have moved to a full hybrid dual format as far as I know. I have looked at them and they are not doing it. This Parliament here is talking about permanently introducing measures we had agreed to doing and now are not. The member for Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook is disagreeing with me and is not liking it, but we started with consensus and now we are being forced to have one system. One of the offers made by Conservative members on the PROC committee was for us to perhaps have a sunset clause. Let the next Parliament decide. Give the next Parliament a year to see how things are working out with potentially new members who are here and to weigh the pros and the cons again of whether to continue with everything, with some or with nothing in hybrid. I know what my position is. My position is not to continue with any of the hybrid format. There are a lot of interpreters who are injured. I have seen a lot of committee meetings be completely dysfunctional because it does not work very well even after all these years with Zoom. I have seen committees cancelled because there are not enough resources. It is always interesting the government is able, through its whips, to cancel the committee meetings it does not like versus the ones it really wants. There are not enough resources to go around for all the committees. One of the Bloc MPs raised a great point that now we are meeting on Fridays. Fridays used to be a day when some members would return to their constituencies, especially those in marginal seats. I am looking at the members of the government caucus in marginal seats who would probably like to have a Friday where they can press the flesh, as we call it, or go meet constituents in the local coffee shops or community events or spend some time working on case files on Friday. Those of us who are not in marginal seats can spend more time on legislative work if we so choose. What will happen in this chamber, not this year, not next year, but many years down the line, is our whips, our House leaders, will come together and ask why we have constituency weeks and say that all weeks should be legislative weeks. They will say that members could then pick and choose which weeks they would be here and which ones they would not be here. Many other members have spoken about the downside that we will not be able to go up to a minister right after question period on a specific case file or will not be able to get to know other members. I will admit that I have not gotten to know most of those on the Liberal benches because, frankly, I have a hard time recognizing some of them as members when they rise in the House. I do not know what issues they are directly passionate about. I have been on some committees with some members and have gotten to know them a lot better. That builds trust. There is a reason we still have parliamentary associations that send legislators from the House and from the Senate overseas to meet other legislators in person. That is how we build a relationship with them. We do not build it over Zoom in boxes on a screen. That is not how we build relationships of trust. Much of our committee work is based on trust. If we disagree on an issue, we may not get everything we want, but we usually suspend the meeting and are able to negotiate a resolution or a solution to whatever problem is before us. Then we continue doing the work on behalf of our constituents. At the end of the day, that is really what this is all about. I know many people have talked about the voting app. Some people like it and some people dislike it. I will be the first to say that I dislike the voting app. I highly doubt many members are clicking on the little information button and checking exactly what they are voting on every single time. We see it sometimes happen. We have these giant screens in the House now, and we always look for that one member who did not get the memo from their whip's office and votes the wrong way on government legislation. I do not mean private members' bills, because those should be free votes and hopefully are always free votes. We have Standing Order 44.1(1), which allows for the pairing of votes. I have written a letter in the past to the chair of PROC, which was shared among members of PROC, and I stand by what I wrote. Pairing is the way out of this. We should not expect members who are taking care of loved ones, who are going through a serious sickness at home or who have major family obligations to stay connected to their work. They can pair their votes like we do with cabinet ministers. Cabinet ministers can pair their votes. They usually pair them with members of the opposition when they are travelling overseas. Why can we not do more pairing in the House? I have said that before. I said it during the previous Standing Order debate. Pairing is the solution, especially if we empower a member to pair. In fact, I will even say that during this Parliament, I actually paired one of my votes on a handshake with a Liberal member. That is the way it is supposed to be done. I trusted the member. I had gotten to know the member over the last few years, and I trusted him enough to turn around and go to my whip. Likewise, he did the same thing. He was paired so he would not have to take a long flight just to come back to Ottawa to be present to make sure that I would be present here as well, which is ridiculous. I trusted him as a gentleman. He trusted me as well, and we paired. Why can we not do more of that? The app makes it unnecessary. We do not need to get to know anybody on the other side. We do not need to build a relationship of trust. We do not need to get to know anybody. In fact, in the future, we will be able to spend our time in boxes on screens and not get to know anybody. We will not need to talk to another person. We can just send emails, read speeches and read prepared questions and it will all be fine. I do not think that is the way Parliament should function. I do not think it is an improvement. I do not think it will have better transparency. There will not be better accountability. We heard the parliamentary secretary, the member for Winnipeg North, mention Order Paper questions and the format in which they are provided and tabled in the House and how there has always been a member to do that. We have not talked about the quality of the Order Paper answers. The answers have gotten worse. It is something that started a decade ago, but they have gotten really bad now. They borderline on the ridiculous sometimes, where there is not even an attempt to answer the content. It is not always like that but sometimes.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Jun/12/23 10:43:18 p.m.
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I would ask the hon. parliamentary secretary to hold off on his questions and comments. It is not time. The hon. member only has one minute left, and the hon. parliamentary secretary will have an opportunity to ask a question. The hon. member for Calgary Shepard.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

Jun/12/23 10:43:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member is now heckling me from across—

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Jun/12/23 10:43:18 p.m.
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What about the questions?

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

Jun/12/23 10:43:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I invite the member to look at the questions I submit, because I am always looking for data, content and information. That reminds me. With the member's interruption, I do have a Yiddish proverb. I hope that everything I have spoken about tonight are things I have seen. “Let you not say things that you have not seen” is a Yiddish proverb. I hope I have done that. I have stayed consistent with what I have said in past debates on the Standing Orders. The House is built on consensus and trust, and what the government is doing here, because it has a coalition ally, is simply ramming through changes to the Standing Orders. The preference has always been that we do Standing Order changes by consensus. We do not always get everything we all want. We get what we can all agree on, which are small changes. That has been the great thing about Parliament. Our rules protect backbenchers; they do not protect the front bench. These changes will protect the front bench from backbenchers. There are more backbenchers in the House, and this is the House for them and for their constituents, not for cabinet.

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Mr. Stéphane Lauzon (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Rural Economic Development, Lib.)

Jun/12/23 10:44:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague opposite a very specific question, but I would first like to give a small introduction. The pandemic forced us to innovate. It forced us to make greater use of technology. Let us think of our families who are benefiting from it today. During the pandemic, my children were able to learn at home without missing a class, and my wife, who is a teacher, taught from home. We adapted. This week we saw a Conservative member with a baby in his arms. It was beautiful to see that and to think that it is possible to work from home, from time to time, while looking after one's family. Can the member opposite tell us that technology has come a long way and that today it is time to move to a hybrid system?

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

Jun/12/23 10:45:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for his question, but that is not the issue we are examining in the House right now. The question before us is whether we should have a hybrid Parliament that operates in the way set out by the government in Motion No. 26. During the pandemic, two of my three children, the two oldest, were attending school online. I was also the caucus chair. As such, I had a screen in front of me and I also had my two children sitting in front of me doing their online classes. I had to make sure they were paying attention to their classes. Then, there was the youngest who was watching television on mute because he wanted something to do. That is not what being a parent is all about. It is not about being obligated to work for four and a half hours every Wednesday and spending two days getting ready to do that, while taking care of the kids who are also in virtual mode and who have things to learn and classes to take online. That is not what raising kids should be. After the pandemic, I do not think that is what parents want to see, even in the House.

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Mr. Yves Perron (Berthier—Maskinongé, BQ)

Jun/12/23 10:46:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Calgary Shepard for his remarks. As usual, they were clear and intelligent. He addressed a very important issue, in other words, human contact and what I would call informal discussions. That is where we get to know one another and understand each other. It is through these contacts that we can develop a rapport and negotiate better agreements, better bills for the public every day. Everyone will say that we will be in hybrid mode on an exceptional basis. However, since there is no framework to the proposal, it will be used increasingly more often and people will no longer come in person. That is what worries me. I would like my colleague to address that and tell us what he thinks.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

Jun/12/23 10:47:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Berthier—Maskinongé is right. The amendments to the rules proposed in government Motion No. 26 will do away with the need for members to get along with one another. It is easy for cabinet members to meet and talk to one another. They often meet during the week. These meetings are usually held in person, since they sometimes have to talk about confidential matters. However, for backbenchers, the only way to advance a file, to create a bill and amendments, is to talk face to face to build mutual trust.

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Ms. Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona, NDP)

Jun/12/23 10:48:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this is the first time I have been able to stand up and speak since one of the member's colleagues brought up time allocation. Therefore, I want to make the point that, when the Conservatives were in power, they used time allocation 115 times. In fact, they made a cake to celebrate the 100th time. I just wanted to make that clear. However, the member talked about a lot of hypothetical situations that I do not think any of us can address. He also talked about the fact that there is no difference between constituency and parliamentary weeks, saying that our constituents would expect us to be around all the time. I think that is the case for many of us. What I do not understand, though, is how taking Zoom away from Parliament would take Zoom away from parliamentarians. It would not. Our constituents would still be able to reach us through Zoom, and they would still expect that to happen. Therefore, that argument does not actually make a lot of sense. Could the member comment on that?

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

Jun/12/23 10:49:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I just want to clarify, because I do not think the member quite understood what I was getting at. What I am saying is that, in the future, what will happen is that constituency weeks will simply disappear. This may be two, three, four, five or six years from now. There will be an expectation that we do sessional weeks half of the year or more, and members will pick which weeks they will be in their constituencies. However, there will be this constant tension from our constituents and local organizations that a member must appear at all local events while doing all their work. I can even imagine a situation where members have committee business that they will have to conduct from their car while going to, say, a Legion hall for events related to veterans.

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Mr. Dave Epp (Chatham-Kent—Leamington, CPC)

Jun/12/23 10:50:10 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-280

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to bring the voices of Chatham-Kent—Leamington, and tonight I bring them in person to the debate on Motion No. 26. I want to begin by asking a question: What is the role of Parliament? It is a rhetorical question for sure, but it has a clear answer: It is to serve Canadians, and that concern is at the heart of the matter being debated tonight. The Liberal-NDP coalition has unilaterally pressed for making hybrid Parliament, a temporary model of Parliament, into a permanent model. Such a dramatic change to a long-held procedure cannot and should not be implemented without clear consensus from all recognized parties within this chamber. On May 5, the World Health Organization formally declared the COVID-19 pandemic emergency to be over. The governing coalition cannot hide behind a past crisis to avoid accountability and transparency, because ultimately that is a by-product. I hope that is not the intention, but that is a by-product behind this procedural change. Instead of helping Canadians who are struggling to pay their bills and put food on the table, the government is actively working to avoid facing the Canadian people. Both accountability and engagement suffer in a hybrid Parliament. We have seen the core constitutional principle of responsible government, which is accountability to Parliament, weaken under the current hybrid system. I do not think anyone is challenging that. In this session of Parliament alone, House administration decided to cancel dozens of committee meetings due to a lack of resources for virtual participation. That fact alone should give my colleagues across the aisle pause. The importance of committee work cannot be overstated. It is at committee where drafted legislation is reviewed, and at times it is there, after all, that corruption and mismanagement are uncovered. Here are some examples. It is at the finance committee that the extent of the implications of another deficit budget are examined and highlighted. It is where amendments are tabled, debated and hopefully passed to improve the lives of Canadians, though unfortunately not this year. At the fisheries and oceans committee, which I attended this morning, the bungling of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' handling of the bilateral Great Lakes Fishery Commission file has united both houses of the U.S. Congress and all four accredited parties of this chamber in calling for a change in how the commission is managed. This failure has caused our American partners to walk away from the board table and risk the $8-billion fishery industry through the return of an invasive species, the sea lamprey, which devastated the Great Lakes in the 1950s and actually led to the original creation of the Convention on Great Lakes Fisheries. Earlier this evening, I attended an agriculture and agrifood industry committee where the four parties representative of this chamber reviewed Bill C-280 for my colleague from York—Simcoe, a bill to bring about some protections for fresh vegetable and fruit growers in case of bankruptcy of their buyers. Committee work is important, then, for advancing legislation and for government accountability, yet through the mechanics of a hybrid Parliament, the Prime Minister and his cabinet have been able to duck and weave their way around facing questions from His Majesty's loyal opposition. This defies a founding tenet of our Westminster parliamentary system, in which the role of the opposition is to hold the government to account. There are technical glitches. The ministers avoid standing in their place in this chamber or at committee, choosing instead to surround themselves with screens in their offices right here on the Hill to avoid accountability when a poor grasp of a file is on full display. Is this acceptable? As parliamentarians, is it not our duty to serve our constituents to the best of our abilities? How can we do that if the government enshrines opportunities to avoid accountability? I do not deny that by almost every quantifiable metric, productivity and accountability are higher when we are working in person, but to quote General Patton, “Always do everything you ask of those you command.” This is not what the Minister of Procurement demonstrated as the minister was directing our federal workers back to work in the office. How is it just to deny a provision to federal workers while granting the same privilege to politicians? This is a textbook example of “Do what I say, not what I do.” Beyond televised acts of accountability, there are innumerable interactions that help our constituents, advance public policy and generally contribute to the building of constructive relationships among colleagues, both within our caucuses and across party lines. Stifling these small but consequential interactions through a hybrid system is simply flawed. I am sure I do not need to explain the many ways that constituents' problems can be solved with a quick word to a minister while the bells ring for a vote, or the important information that stakeholders draw to our attention when they visit us personally in our offices, or how a casual word with a colleague bumped into in the hallway helps to build the trust needed later to be confident that a future agreement struck at committee will be honoured. This has been mentioned several times this evening. These are just some of the examples of inter-personal dynamics that a hybrid Parliament prevents and discourages. Again, it must be asked how Canadians are best served by their parliamentarians. Is it through increasing the personal convenience of members of the House or is it instead through encouraging maximum transparency and accountability, part of which is through ensuring that both official languages in Canada are given equal weight? Conservatives have a long and proud history in building and supporting a bilingual Parliament. I do not speak French, but I am learning French with Duolingo. That is as far as I can get right now, which is why it is all the more alarming to hear from the International Association of Conference Interpreters, Canada region, and its president, Linda Ballantyne, who said that a hybrid Parliament has meant that “English has predominated and French has been snuffed out.” In part, this is due to a skyrocketing injury rate among staff interpreters. We have gone from a single disabling injury before the pandemic to 90 incidents. With a dwindling pool of interpreters, we cannot tolerate the harm done to these crucial women and men in the functioning of our democracy. It is for these reasons that Conservatives put forward a common-sense recommendation to have the House of Commons proceedings return entirely to in-person while maintaining the voting application. Considering that 97% of chamber interventions are now made in person, this recommendation would have led to little change to the nature of House debates, yet such a change would free up a badly needed translation service while also reducing some workplace risks that interpreters have faced. To reiterate an earlier point, far too many committee meetings have been cut short or outright cancelled due to a lack of resources, particularly the presence of interpreters to ensure our meetings are conducted bilingually. By cancelling the important work done at committees, Canadians are deprived of one avenue of making their voices heard, especially when it comes to holding this government or any government to account. Regrettably, truncated committee work has formed just one portion of a broader pattern of hybrid proceedings eroding government accountability to Parliament. Finding an effective way of combatting the pandemic and ensuring that parliaments continued to function the world over was a global concern, yet perpetuating the solutions found during the pandemic to the post-pandemic era seems to be a problem unique to the Canadian federal government. According to Andy Williamson, an Inter-Parliamentary Union researcher, some of the digital and remote working practices at foreign legislatures “will have been temporary as they are no longer felt necessary”. Indeed, he advised that just 46% of legislatures will retain remote functionality while “in some cases this might only be for use in exceptional circumstances.” To answer a question heckled across earlier, even within Canada, no provincial or territorial legislature currently has a full-fledged hybrid system. Succinctly, no other comparable legislature has rushed headlong into a permanent embrace of full-fledged hybrid proceedings or, if it is being entertained, it is with eyes wide open to the potential downsides. Despite the advances of technology and the rise of the Internet, some problems are best solved the old-fashioned way. Sometimes precedent and procedure are in place because they work. It is with a reckless disregard for the health and functioning of Parliament that the governing coalition has pressed for the permanent status of a hybrid system. I must ask again. What is the role of Parliament? Is it to serve the interests of Canadians or the convenience of its members?

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Jun/12/23 10:59:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would argue that the interests of Canadians is best served by having a hybrid Parliament, as has been suggested in a motion that the Conservative Party has indicated it would support if there was a sunset clause where it would have to be reaffirmed three years from now. Does the member not see anything within that statement that is rather odd with respect to the Conservatives saying that they will accept the changes if we put in that sunset clause, which, in essence, is saying for the rest of this Parliament and at least a year going into the next Parliament that these rules would be accepted? Does he not see any inconsistencies?

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Mr. Dave Epp

Jun/12/23 11:00:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what I see in the Conservative offer is respect from the Conservative Party for the long-standing tradition of compromise to get a consensus for the standing rules of the chamber. That is what I see from the members of the Conservative Party. In that very vein, I was listening when the member for Winnipeg North was speaking. At 10:04 he was referring to something and saying that something was virtually impossible. He went on to explain that he was also willing to consider other changes in the Standing Orders if they were mutually agreed upon. Would the member entertain, at some further point, that after 10 p.m., no puns would be allowed in this chamber? I do believe that saying something is virtually impossible when we are talking about virtual Parliament is a pun.

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Mrs. Claude DeBellefeuille (Salaberry—Suroît, BQ)

Jun/12/23 11:01:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I really appreciated my colleague's speech. I have been here since the beginning of the debate, and I can say that few speeches have mentioned the whole issue of the interpreters and their health and safety while working in a hybrid Parliament. I want therefore to congratulate my colleague, because I share his concerns. I will speak more about that in my speech. I am surprised by the arrogance of the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and by the way he chose to move this motion in Parliament. He could have done it in a different manner. I would like my colleague to address two things. First, what other approach could the government leader have taken to gain support and consensus on certain aspects of a hybrid Parliament? Second, could the member tell me who are the people most affected by the hybrid Parliament?

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Mr. Dave Epp

Jun/12/23 11:02:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, to the member's first question, why would the House leader act as if he had a majority government and not have to work toward a consensus? Quite frankly, in this minority Parliament, I believe that at times the government is acting like it is has a majority. A prime example of that is what we are debating tonight being pushed through. Do they not feel the need to work toward a consensus? I would direct that to our NDP colleagues across the aisle as they are supporting the government on many measures that seem to not be in the best interests of Canadians. To the second point by the hon. member as to who is being hurt the most, I referenced in my speech that it is Canadians in general due to the accountability Parliament has to them. I also focused on our interpreter friends who we need for accountability, bilingualism and the future of this country.

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Ms. Lindsay Mathyssen (London—Fanshawe, NDP)

Jun/12/23 11:03:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is very clear that the majority of the House wants hybrid Parliament. The member talked a lot about consensus and building that consensus. Could he provide the House, right now, with an absolute? We have seen many times Conservatives filibuster their way. He was talking about resources in the House being taken up, and I would argue that a lot of that has been through a lot of the filibusters by the Conservative Party. However, can he commit right now to not filibuster? We could move forward in a consensus-based way by saying that a hybrid model is what the majority wants. Would the Conservatives not filibuster that decision so we can move forward in a very productive way to build a hybrid Parliament together?

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Mr. Dave Epp

Jun/12/23 11:04:29 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-21

Madam Speaker, the Conservative Party has respected the long-standing traditions of the House. We have even seen in this session of Parliament the government filibustered its own legislation at committee on Bill C-21. I am not in a position to respond to that. Our track record as a party demonstrates the fact that we respect the traditions of the House and work at compromise. We have worked with the 100 and some-odd years of our Westminster parliamentary tradition, which has served us so well. I advocate using that going forward.

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