- Member of Parliament
- Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- Conservative
- Red Deer—Lacombe
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $146,499.79
- Government Page
- May/2/22 6:47:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague across the way, as much as I try to have respect for what he has to say, is actually completely wrong. He is not only misleading Canadians who are watching this, but this has never been done. This type of motion, the removal of quorum and the autopilot on government legislation has never happened in the 16 years I have been an MP.
As I said in my speech, these kinds of things happen on motions before this House that do not have a question being put, like an emergency debate, a take-note debate or autopilot on other procedures where there is no vote, no money being spent and no bills being passed.
The difference now is that the government is so afraid of not only dealing with and debating with the Conservatives, but obviously it is afraid of its own backbench if it is not even sure it can muster quorum and keep 20 people here to listen to what Canadians have to say.
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- May/2/22 6:36:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, may Gord rest in peace. We miss him here.
I will be splitting my time with my colleague for Battle River—Crowfoot.
I rise to oppose government Motion No. 11. It is not because we do not want to have more debate here; it is just that my colleague, who just spoke across the way, does not understand what the contents of his own motion are. He could not even answer a simple question from the Green Party MP about why there was an extension for the medical assistance in dying committee. He does not understand his own motion here, either.
Conservatives are ready to debate, but the issue before us is the wording of the motion in several places. One of the most egregious things that is in the motion is the ability for the government, a minister or the Prime Minister, at any point in time after Motion No. 11 is passed, if it is passed unamended, to simply adjourn the House. That is something that is reserved for the Speaker only, as we saw on that one day when the Speaker adjourned the House during the convoy when the police had moved in. There was supposed to be a debate on the Emergencies Act that day, but the House was adjourned so we had a reason why the Speaker took that particular prerogative.
Normally, when a prime minister wants to adjourn the House, he or she has to go through the process of prorogation to reset the political agenda. That would be the only reason. We have already agreed, as political parties here, what days we are going to sit. We have the parliamentary sitting calendar, so it is simply not true that Conservatives do not want to have a debate. We already have the parliamentary calendar set up. What is actually true is that the government, which is blaming Conservatives for being obstructionist when we are simply doing our job debating legislation, has already been able to pass eight of the 18 bills that it has introduced in this particular Parliament. Yes, Bill C-8 is taking some time, but it is billions of dollars in spending. Here is what the Liberals are not saying about Bill C-8.
First of all, the Prime Minister called an unnecessary election in August of last year, which used all of the sitting days that would have been available in September and October all the way up to November 22, which by my calculation is at least seven sitting weeks. That is 35 days of Parliament that we otherwise would have sat and we could have debated and discussed this legislation. Even more cynically, the Liberals tabled Bill C-8 on the very last day of the fall sitting, which was December 16, which means that they basically had not one day. They tabled the bill one day before the House adjourned in the fall. That means that the fall economic statement had zero days of debate in the fall.
If we fast forward, after weeks of Parliament being adjourned over the Christmas break, the Liberals' mismanagement, and the name-calling of Canadian citizens that resulted in a protest that sidetracked this place, here we find ourselves. Lo and behold, the Conservatives have only been speaking to Bill C-8 for a handful of days, and the bill has gone through committee and passed at second reading. It is now at report stage and is moving its way through third reading. All the Liberals had to do was simply ask their coalition dance partners in the NDP if they wanted to move this along.
We have legitimate concerns about the legislation. There are some things we may agree with on this side of the House, but there are also some things in there that we disagree with. It is our job to bring those matters to debate before the House of Commons. As I said, they have a supply and confidence motion, otherwise known as a coalition with the NDP. They simply had to ask their dance partners for approval to do this. For whatever reason they did not get it, so I do not know how much confidence the Liberals could have in what the NDP is supplying them, but I will leave that for the dance partners to talk about.
My point is that the mismanagement of the time of the House by the Liberals is what is actually the problem. They have been able to get bills passed, but we have a right and a constitutional responsibility to oppose legislation that we do not agree with. Even if we agree with bits and pieces of it, our job is to challenge the legislation that is before the House. The whole notion of how a democracy is supposed to work is through the cut and thrust of debate, the to and fro of debate. It is to have the best ideas from all sides of the House and all sides of the chamber, and all the people who voted in the last election have their ideas come together and bubble to the top.
The problem with the motion is the tone of the motion. This is what the Liberal and NDP members are trying to do. If a citizen is at home watching this and wondering what is actually going on, let me spell it out for them.
In a normal sitting of the House, there is this thing called “quorum”. The House must have at least 20 MPs here. Normally, the governing party, the party that is responsible for the legislation that is being discussed, has to be present to carry the debate. That would require, in addition to the Speaker, at least 19 Liberal members of Parliament, or Liberal-NDP members of Parliament if they are working in cahoots together, to be present for the debate.
In Motion No. 11, there is a clause that says the government will remove any ability to call quorum or to move a dilatory motion. People at home might wonder what a dilatory motion is. That is a motion to adjourn the House and end the debate. It ends what we are talking about or stops what we are doing at a particular point in time. It adjourns a meeting of the House of Commons.
It is the quorum part that matters. As Conservatives, we are willing to be here and debate. That is not a problem. On behalf of the millions of people who voted for us, we would expect that at least 20 Liberals would be in the House to listen. With the motion worded the way it is, the government is basically saying, to Conservatives and Bloc Québécois MPs, “Talk to the hand.” The government is going to pass an autopilot motion in the House of Commons that is normally reserved for debates, such as take-note debates or emergency debates, where there is no question, no vote, at the end of those debates.
At the end of Bill C-8, and at the end of Motion No. 11, there is going to be a vote. That is different. To put the House in that type of scenario is completely unacceptable. For those who are watching at home, this is the part that the Liberals and the NDP are not telling people. They are not telling Canadians that they are getting rid of the actual processes and procedures in the House of Commons: the Standing Orders that we normally operate by. They are getting rid of those things because they do not necessarily want to be here.
I am pretty sure the member for Kingston and the Islands will be here and my friend for Winnipeg North, who is always here in the House, will probably be here. There will be one if not two of them. I might see some of the other MPs from the Liberal Party, but I do not expect to hear from them because, frankly, I never do.
Notwithstanding any of that, for people who are watching at home, it is not just Conservatives who are opposed to this: it is members of the Bloc as well. I am pretty sure there are some members in the NDP who are very uncomfortable with what is happening: people who used to stand up for the working-class Canadians in this country, and people who used to actually stand up for transparency and accountability in this country, are looking at this and wondering what is going on as well.
To Canadians who are watching at home and listening to the talking points from the Liberal MPs who are speaking, this is the part that is egregious. They would simply take away the ability for the Prime Minister or the government of the day to just adjourn the House, so that when things get a little hot around here, if the Prime Minister was under another investigation, they would just shut down the House but they would not have to go through the embarrassment of calling a prorogation to do it. That is the first thing.
The second is quorum. “Talk to the hand,” is basically what they are saying to Conservative members of Parliament and the Bloc Québécois. The government just wants us to talk. We could just have a joint caucus meeting with the Bloc, according to the motion. We do not actually need to be here. There is no point in us sitting here debating if the government is not interested in listening.
If the government is not interested in listening, why not? Does the government not care about the millions of Canadians who did not vote for its members in the last election? Are there no good ideas from the official opposition? Is there no role for the official opposition? Is there no role for the people who voted for the Bloc Québécois to bring up the issues that are important to them?
Where are we in this democracy? This is the problem. To Canadians who are watching, this is the problem. This is why Conservatives are so adamant that Motion No. 11 is fundamentally flawed. We are okay to come to work. We want to come to work. I have been here for 16 years, and the last two weeks in June is the time when extended sitting hours are automatically in the calendar. If MPs in the governing caucus want to have extended hours, they do it. I have done it. As a matter of fact, I was a member of the Harper caucus when Harper was the prime minister. We had motions like this, but we would never dream of putting in an autopilot motion on government legislation.
It is egregious. It is an abuse of the powers of the House. What is shocking to me is that the NDP is going along with this. Where is the party of Tommy Douglas and Jack Layton?
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- Apr/28/22 10:12:07 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order in regard to government Motion No. 11, and in particular paragraph (b)(ii) of the motion, which states:
after 6:30 p.m. the Speaker shall not receive any quorum calls or dilatory motions, and shall only accept a request for unanimous consent after receiving a notice from the House leaders or whips of all recognized parties stating that they are in agreement with such a request.
My point of order will challenge the admissibility of the motion, since the quorum in this House is a requirement of the Constitution Act, section 48.
Some may point out that certain proceedings in this chamber have proceeded under the unanimous agreement of the House that quorum calls not be heard, but I would like to point out that in those instances, such as late shows, emergency debates and take-note debates, these debates do not result in decisions of this House. The current motion is an unprecedented departure from this usual practice, in that it seeks to remove the quorum requirement for the debate of government legislation on items that could become law should the House vote to support them.
The requirement for quorum has never been challenged before, and the quorum requirement of the House is a fundamental component of our rules entrenched in the Constitution. In fact, page 598 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, says clearly, “Nothing done by unanimous consent constitutes a precedent.”
I also recognize that the quorum necessity of 20 members is not altered directly. The inability to bring to the attention of the Chair the lack of quorum in this House indirectly waives the constitutional and procedural requirement of quorum. Since a quorum call is the only means by which quorum is enforced during the sitting, the inability to call a quorum is, in essence, the same as waiving the quorum requirement. Mr. Speaker, as you and your predecessors have reminded this House numerous and countless times, we cannot do indirectly what we cannot do directly.
If the House were to adopt Motion No. 11, it would adopt procedures that go beyond the powers conferred upon it by the Constitution. There are similar precedents regarding committees that ought to be considered. On June 20, 1994 and November 7, 1996, the Speaker ruled that:
While it is a tradition of this House that committees are masters of their own proceedings, they cannot establish procedures which go beyond the powers conferred upon them by the House.
If we are to be consistent, I would point out that while the House is a master of its own proceedings, it cannot establish procedures that go beyond the powers conferred upon it by the Constitution.
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 1985 that the requirements of section 133 of the Constitution Act, 1867 and of section 23 of the Manitoba Act, 1870, respecting the use of both the English and French languages in the records and journals of the Houses of the Parliament of Canada, are mandatory and must be obeyed. Accordingly, the House can no longer depart from its own code of procedure when considering procedure entrenched in the Constitution.
On page 295 of the second edition of Joseph Maingot's Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, in reference to the 1985 case, he lists those constitutional requirements regarding parliamentary procedure that must be obeyed and includes in that list section 48, which deals with the quorum of the House of Commons.
While these requirements are amendable by the Parliament of Canada, they cannot be amended only by one House of Parliament. This House cannot unilaterally change or suspend the quorum requirement by a majority decision. While it is said that the Speaker does not normally rule on constitutional matters, the constitutional matter of quorum is also stated in our Standing Orders, as are the financial privileges of this House. It is our responsibility to ensure that procedural requirements are observed before a bill leaves this place to become law, since the courts have the legal power to inquire into the procedural history of a bill that has been assented to. On page 186 of Joseph Maingot's second edition of Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, there is the claim that “the courts might be effective in ensuring the observance of procedural requirements imposed by the constitution with respect to the enactment of legislation.”
The official opposition rejects this procedure being forced upon the minority by the majority in this House. If the House were to adopt this motion without the unanimous consent of the members, and I have my doubts whether we should have been circumventing this rule in the past by unanimous consent, we could be casting doubt upon the legitimacy of our proceedings and placing the entire institution under a cloud.
Among the first principles of our democracy is that legislation should be tested through rigorous debate. Allowing for significant portions of debate on government legislation that could become law without requiring a single government or coalition member to be present to contest and debate the legislation is a fundamental abdication of duty on behalf of the government.
As many Speakers have stated numerous times in this place, the Speaker is the servant of this chamber and the guardian of the members' rights and privileges. I implore you to find out of order the provision that would remove the ability of the Speaker to ensure quorum present in this chamber.
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