44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 13, 2023 10:00AM
- Jun/13/23 4:08:12 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I want to follow up on the point made by the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona. We should recognize that, when we talk about refugee protections in this place, we are normally talking about protecting people who need to come to Canada.
There is an option in this legislation, which is good for humanitarian exceptions, if somebody is otherwise inadmissible but has a profound case for why they should come to Canada.
This very significant legislation, which is important, would recognize that certain people, for human rights or criminal reasons, are not welcome in this country, are inadmissible and are under sanction. We need to follow up on making sure that if they are sanctioned, they do not come here.
122 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/13/23 9:11:05 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate what the member said about the disadvantages of not being able to meet in person, but I have been here long enough to have watched friends and colleagues, before the days when hybrid was allowed, drag themselves in here literally from their deathbeds to protect their work because there were no rules to allow virtual participation.
In particular I remember the hon. member for Ottawa—Vanier. Some members here tonight may recall when Mauril Bélanger, whose name I can say because he is passed away, had to protect a piece of private member's legislation. The only way under our rules to do that was to show up here physically. It was painful to watch what it cost him in his dying days to physically be here.
I would say to the hon. member that there are so many advantages to hybrid Parliament. I am not unsympathetic to the idea that it should not be a default option, but I desperately want to make sure we never again see colleagues suffering with cancer, near death, who feel they must physically be here to do their work.
194 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/13/23 9:40:47 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I would love to have had a chance to amend the proposed Standing Orders with one change, and I would like the member's thoughts on it, although I do not think we would get a chance in this place unless the government makes the change.
If we go with the proposed new Standing Order 15.1, the only condition for participating virtually is that the members participating remotely be in Canada. I would love to add “and have submitted to the Speaker of the House the reasons that participation by video conference is preferable”. It is not a tough condition, but there would be greater accountability for constituents if they knew why their members were participating in video form.
124 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/13/23 11:43:32 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, does my hon. friend from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan see no context in which we need to continue to have the availability of hybrid rules? Even with a voting app, without the rules we adopted post-COVID, members of Parliament who were actually dying had to come in here. They had to be physically present at a stage in their private member's bill, and there was no way to do it remotely. Is that what he foresees for the future, which is no options for hybrid participation?
91 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/13/23 11:44:50 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, being able to pick up exactly at this moment with my hon. colleague from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, I do not disagree. I find the notion worrying that, virtually forever, we are going to have a blanket equivalency between participating virtually and participating in person. I do not take it as something that is an automatic modernization or an automatic improvement.
Tonight, we are here debating something called Standing Orders. They are the rules of procedure. I always liked a quote from a British parliamentarian of some note, a member of several cabinets in the Labour government, Jack Straw. He said, “Procedure may be boring to some, but it’s about the distribution and exercise of power. It really matters.”
I wish we had a really good opportunity to debate all the Standing Orders to get through some of the issues that really matter but that are not about hybrid Parliament versus non-hybrid Parliament. Over time, the Standing Orders have increasingly privileged backroom political party approaches as opposed to the individual member of Parliament and our rights and obligations as individuals to represent our constituents.
It was a while ago now, in 2008, that the Centre for the Study of Democracy and Diversity at Queen's University commented that Canada's Parliament was particularly “executive-centred, party-dominated and adversarial”.
Back in 2016, I prepared a very long list of possible changes to our Standing Orders and delivered it to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, PROC. The list included such things as, “What would break down partisanship in this place?” and “What if we were seated alphabetically instead of by party group?” It would be very hard, as we routinely violate the standing order against heckling. Would we really heckle someone who was sitting right next to us, for instance, if I could sit with my friend from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan? We have an ongoing debate about whether heckling is more clever than obnoxious. I land on the obnoxious side; he thinks it is clever. However, we are friends anyway.
The Standing Orders could be really examined for how we could improve democracy in this place, but that, unfortunately, is not the topic for this evening. We have a fairly narrow group of Standing Order changes. They are dramatic, of course, but there is much in our Standing Orders that could be improved.
I will just mention a few of the things right now. Obviously, we already have a rule against heckling, but we are not very good at seeing it enforced.
I speak of this in the generic sense of “Speaker” to my hon. colleague, who is our distinguished Deputy Speaker, but over the years, this is the only Westminster parliamentary democracy anywhere on the planet where the Speaker of the House has ceded his or her unique and totally in-the-Speaker's-hands control of who gets to speak in this place. I think this bears mentioning. No, the party whips hand the list forward. The speakers, the people who will be recognized in question period, are not wondering if they will catch the Speaker's eye; that has become entirely fiction. They have to please the party whip to get the floor of the House of Commons. This is a power imbalance. It would be so much better if they had to be well behaved so that the Speaker might give them the floor, rather than pleasing the party whip. That accentuates the partisanship. It is completely unnecessary, and we do not even have to change the Standing Orders. It has been done voluntarily, and there is no rule to enforce it.
Similarly, there is a rule against reading speeches. Those things also would help us control and manage this place, but those are things we do not even have to change in the Standing Orders. We just have to get enough consensus from all the political parties that the Speaker can use the rules we actually already have.
With respect to the question at hand today, we have a number of changes to the Standing Orders. This question is unlike the proposed legislation that we usually debate in this place. When we debate proposed legislation, it is proposed. We know we can make a change. We can amend it. We can go to committee. That is not going to happen here. It is going to be an up or down vote. Either we are going to accept the changes to the Standing Orders that are proposed today, or we are going to reject them. That is a shame, because there are one or two changes that I would desperately like to make, but I am certainly not going to vote against continuing the access to a hybrid Parliament and the ability to participate virtually.
I am mostly not going to do that for the reasons I have mentioned. It may be the extreme case, but the extreme case in the absence of hybrid possibilities was actually Mauril Bélanger, the member of Parliament for Ottawa—Vanier. He was in hospital, dying of ALS, and he literally had to struggle in here so that his private member's bill did not end up in the trash heap just as he was dying. It was appalling.
We have also seen it with our distinguished colleague Arnold Chan and from the comments that are in the report from the procedure and House affairs committee from the hon. member for Scarborough—Agincourt, his widow, who now occupies his seat in this place. She reflected on what it took from him while fighting cancer to have to exert the energy to come back and forth from his riding to participate as the member of Parliament in this place. He was one of the finest members of Parliament I ever saw, but we did not have that option at the time. I would not want to go back to those days where we do not have an option.
For some of the other arguments for why we should maintain a hybrid format, in terms of getting more women into politics, I just want to be clear. If we want more women in politics, if we want more diversity, the most effective thing to do is not to tinker with the Standing Orders. It is to get rid of first past the post.
Every democracy that uses fair voting, consensus-based voting or any form of proportional representation increases the number of elected women in legislatures. Moreover, it increases the number of equity-seeking groups, and it improves representation by minorities. Fair voting will do far more than hybrid Parliament in improving the ability of women to be elected and of equity-seeking groups to be here.
The literature on this is voluminous. I will just quickly reference it. If anyone wants to check it out, look at Patterns of Democracy, the definitive text by a California political scientist who hails from the Netherlands, Arend Lijphart. It is clear from looking at 40 different democracies over a period of decades.
There is no doubt that, without access to hybrid, there is no such thing as a work-life balance as a parliamentarian. It has made a huge difference, and not just for women with small children. I remember during COVID, when we first started being able to use virtual participation, I was speaking to men in this place, fathers, who said they never knew how much they missed being with their children.
That has been the foregone conclusion for decades, a century, of parliamentarians in this place, particularly when they were mostly men. They did not look after their children. They hardly knew their children. Other members in this place have talked about the old days. I think it was the member for Timmins—James Bay earlier tonight who said we saw a lot of divorces and alcoholism.
If we want to make better decisions, we should try to keep ourselves healthy, although I am a very bad example tonight as we approach midnight and have a late show as well. I have been working the last three weeks, three nights out of every week, until after midnight. It has been 19-hour day after 19-hour day. I am a very poor example of taking good care of our health in this place, but we really ought to try to make it possible for people to see their spouses, care for their children and actually be fully formed human beings.
That said, let me dive into one or two quick points about what I would like to see fixed here. I am absolutely baffled by one change in the Standing Orders. I cannot find any reference to it in the PROC report that led to these changes. Yes, there was work done. Yes, it was done in PROC. No, not every member of Parliament got to participate in those discussions.
There is no reference there to removing the reference to the Sergeant-at-Arms in Standing Order 11(1)(b). This is for the moment when the Speaker decides that somebody is violating the Standing Orders, and they are so obnoxious and loud that they should be removed. At the moment, the Standing Orders read as follows: “the Speaker shall order the Sergeant-at-Arms to remove the member.” The new rules would just say that the Speaker shall order the removal of the member.
I am a bit troubled by the idea that we do not know who is going to do the removal. I am figuring out that it must be that they want to make sure that there is some way to remove a member virtually, and the Sergeant-at-Arms' sword is not really intended to deal with the IT department. I do not think the sword is intended to deal with us either, but it is impressive. I would like to know why we are making that change, and I cannot find out.
The other thing I would really like to see change is the one qualification on our right and ability to participate by video conference. It is not based on having a problem and therefore needing to go to video conference. The way the Standing Orders will be interpreted and will be read, because that is the plain language here in the Standing Order changes, is that the only limitation on members' participating virtually is that they must be in Canada. That is a perfect place to insert one other concept: that they, participating remotely, must be in Canada, and I would have liked to have seen it say, “and have submitted to the Speaker the reasons that require their participation by video conference.” I would love that improvement.
It would not, in my view, be appropriate for the Speaker to decide that an excuse is good or that an excuse is bad, but the excuses would be available to the public, so that the constituents of a particular riding would, as in some of the examples we have heard tonight, be able to say, “Well, if the hon. member had to, at that moment, show up for chemotherapy, then it is a damn good reason, and the fact that the member wanted to continue to work through that experience and participate remotely is a good reason.” I think that would improve our Standing Orders.
Now, the brake on that, of course, and the only thing about this that makes me feel a little less troubled by passing this holus-bolus as written, is that in the recommendations from PROC, which did the study, there is a recommendation to all of us. We do not get to approve it, because it is not in anything we are going to vote on, but the PROC committee report that recommends these changes to the Standing Orders does say that the committee itself must review the changes after a year and tell us if we are seeing abuse. It does not say the last part; it just says it will review the changes. One assumes that the committee wants to see whether the full-on access to hybrid, post-COVID, is actually working or whether there are signs of it being abused.
I absolutely agree with the member for Whitby in his earlier speech; members want to be here. We work better when we are here, when we can look into each other's eyes, when we can find agreement, when we can enjoy a joke, and when we can talk to each other in the corridors and try to persuade people that there are real things going on that we ought to be paying attention to, like “We are in a climate emergency” and “The country is on fire.” There are things we should be talking about, and I am able to reach people more easily here in person than on Zoom.
In the hopes that maybe someone might like to fit in a short question, I am honoured to have had a chance to put in some thoughts about the Standing Orders. I hope that, before too long, we can review more of them, and review them in a way that involves all members of this place, hopefully in a way that achieves consensus where all parties in this place agree with the changes.
2263 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/13/23 11:59:54 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, there is another aspect that is really important. As I have been a climate activist since 1986, it bears mentioning that my biggest carbon footprint is getting to work. I do appreciate a chance not to have to fly. It definitely takes a toll. Jet lag definitely takes a toll and flying is physically exhausting, but I love being here. As far as I am concerned, I am on the freedom 85 plan, folks, and I am not going anywhere.
82 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/14/23 12:16:31 a.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I cannot imagine there will be a voice opposing the creation of this recognition of the significant contribution of Lebanese Canadians to the life of Canadians. I found it very touching that our hon. colleague was asked to send a video from Nova Scotia home to children in Lebanon. I think the more we improve our ties with that country and welcome the Lebanese diaspora to Canada, the better off we all will be.
76 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/14/23 12:56:28 a.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I am rising tonight in Adjournment Proceedings, at a later time than usual, with it being just about one o'clock in the morning, to follow up on a question I asked in question period on April 27. Just before Earth Day, the Government of Canada approved a massive nature-destroying project, a controversial one that has been fought by British Columbians since 2013 when it was first put forward. It is called the Roberts Bank terminal expansion.
I asked the hon. Minister of Transport how it could be justified, with the opposition and the clarity the environmental impact assessment, itself, found, and it is very rare to get such strong language from an environmental assessment review, that there would be significant and irreversible adverse effects that threaten the survival of a number of species. Still, as the Minister of Transport explained, the project was approved because it had 370 binding conditions, and somehow this devastating project was going to be magically purified through those conditions.
I also included in my question my favourite of the conditions, number 14.7.1, which requires that they paint the cranes to be used at this massive port expansion in a colour that is compatible with the surrounding landscapes. The minister responded that there were other conditions as well. I have gone through all those conditions, and there is no doubt that this project threatens the survival of numerous endangered species. The Fraser River estuary is rich in biodiversity, and the environmental assessment points to numerous endangered species with 102 species at risk.
The findings of the environmental impact assessment were so strong that many people did not think the Government of Canada would approve the project. The Minister of Transport responded to my question that day, April 27. I do not think the Minister of Transport knew what an obscene and grotesque thing he was saying because I do not think that those at the ministerial level actually read the environmental assessment report to know how bad this thing is. It is a $3.5-billion project, and it is going to add $3 billion in added GDP, so what are a few species when we really come down to it? This is an absolute violation of everything the government says it stands for.
The Minister of Transport, in the aforementioned obscene thing, said, “the economy and the environment go hand in hand.” No, the economy goes to the bank. The species at risk go to their graves. This will cause species at risk to go extinct.
Besides the very endangered southern resident killer whales, besides the endangered salmon and so many species, I want to mention one in particular because it is so clear that it cannot be moved somewhere else. One of the conditions says that the people are going to find places in mud flats to create more food for this particular species, the western sandpiper. It has a very interesting, almost hairy tongue that manages to get into something called “biofilm” and gets all its nutrients from that. Over 3.5 million western sandpipers, which makes it look like it could not be endangered, but that is the whole global population, stop at some point every single year on Roberts Bank. The biofilm is specific to that area. People cannot move it around. Experts say they cannot move this bird around, so “endangered” mean nothing to the government when its eyes are flashing with dollar signs.
586 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/14/23 1:04:38 a.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, it is hard to know what to say in the face of the list of what jobs are going to be created. Let me just perhaps talk about the people in British Columbia worried about jobs. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union says that this approval of Roberts Bank threatens jobs because the way the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority wants to operate it is automated. The union thinks it is going to wipe out jobs.
By the way, let us look at the other alternatives. There was another proposal from Global Container Terminals for half as much footprint and less environmental damage. It was not great, but they decided to go with the Roberts Bank, the biggest and most damaging project.
It just puts such a lie to all the fakery, God damn it, the fakery of saying, “We care about whales and we cares about species.” They approve this? They are causing extinction, and they cannot reverse it.
163 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
