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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 215

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 16, 2023 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 215 - Jun/16/23
Mr. Gabriel Ste-Marie (Joliette, BQ)
Mr. Speaker, I would just like to share my opinion on the gag orders, because judging by what the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader and the minister are saying, one would have to wonder whether gag orders are not the best thing since sliced bread. I consider gag orders to be a technique used to systematically muzzle the elected members of the House, which is unacceptable. I believe that when the government invokes closure, it is because the government House leader has mismanaged the time spent on House business. All parties support Bill S‑8. We are now at third reading, the committee did a good job, everything is going well, and I do not think that there were many members who wanted to speak at this stage. I will give an example. Last night, until midnight, we discussed Bill C‑9. We have discussed this several times before, even before the last election. Why has the government House leader not been able to say that this is important, that it enjoys a fairly broad consensus and that it will be implemented quickly? Instead, it takes years to be adopted and implemented. I have two other examples. Closure was also invoked for Bill C‑47 , the budget implementation bill. It is hundreds of pages long and all the organizations that wanted to delve into it would have needed time to do so. Imposing closure on such a bill limits the amount of time available to go through it and the ability to correct the flaws in committee. One last and extreme example dates back to the pandemic, when the government was not taking action. At one point, it came up with a bill that was to go through all stages immediately. We asked for a few weeks to study it. We wanted it to be introduced so that people could go through it and improve it. However, the government did not want to do that and said that everything had to be passed as soon as possible, without any study or review. Well, it then had to present other bills to fix the first one. That is an unacceptable and absolutely amateurish way of doing things.
372 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
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