- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Board of Internal Economy
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- Regina—Qu'Appelle
- Saskatchewan
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
I want to beg your indulgence, because I know there is normally not debate on motions. I just want to make sure something is very clear, because this morning I raised a point of order on the admissibility of the motion, and Conservatives will agree to this motion as long as the Chair views it as the scheduling of debate and as long as it will in no way prejudice your ruling on the admissibility of Motion No. 2.
Because the phrase “notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House” is in this motion, I just want to make sure the Chair views this very clearly as a scheduling motion and not as something that would touch in any way on the point of order I raised earlier today.
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Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a point of order this morning respecting the government's Motion No. 2 concerning the Senate amendments to Bill C-11.
In my view, the notice of motion engages the rule of anticipation and cannot be proposed to the House later today.
Normally such a point of order should be raised when the motion is actually proposed to the House, but given that it is listed on the Projected Order of Business for consideration in an hour's time, the complexity of the issues involved and as a courtesy to you to find some time to prepare a ruling, Mr. Speaker, I wanted to rise as soon as the House opened this morning.
On March 8 and March 9, the House considered a government motion concerning the Senate's amendments, a motion which is now referred to as Motion No. 1 on the Notice Paper, to which my colleague, the hon. member for Lethbridge, has moved an amendment.
Flash forward to Friday evening, when today's Notice Paper was published, we see this new motion, Motion No. 2, from the Liberal government. They are both very long motions, so I will spare the Speaker and the House from hearing them each read out loud.
Suffice it to say, I studied them very closely to see what might be different between them. Lo and behold, the English versions of the motions are absolutely identical. When one refers to the French versions, one spots the difference, which is a single instance of a “1” and a “2”, in Roman numerals, being transposed. That is it.
Let me explain for the House briefly what that means. The Liberal government made a drafting mistake; it got its motion wrong. Now it wants a do-over. If one is a golfer, one might call it a mulligan. All this is on a policy Liberals are mistakenly pursuing on a bill they keep botching and on amendments they keep flubbing, and now a motion they cannot even get right, and those people want to control the Internet.
Setting that aside, I will get back to the procedural concern. The substantive effect of these two motions is identical. Indeed, the text in one official language is identical. The words used in the other official language are all the same. It is just two numbers that are transposed.
Having established these motions are, for all intents and purposes, identical, let me refer to page 568 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, which explains the rule of anticipation. It reads:
According to this rule, which applied to other proceedings as well as to motions, a motion could not anticipate a matter which was standing on the Order Paper for further discussion, whether as a bill or a motion, and which was contained in a more effective form of proceeding (for example, a bill or any other Order of the Day is more effective than a motion, which in turn has priority over an amendment, which in turn is more effective than a written or oral question). If such a motion were allowed, it could indeed forestall or block a decision from being taken on the matter already on the Order Paper.
It goes on to say:
The rule is dependent on the principle which forbids the same question from being decided twice within the same session. It does not apply, however, to similar or identical motions or bills which appear on the Notice Paper prior to debate. The rule of anticipation becomes operative only when one of two similar motions on the Order Paper is actually proceeded with. For example, two bills similar in substance will be allowed to stand on the Order Paper but only one may be moved and disposed of. If the first bill is withdrawn (by unanimous consent, often after debate has started), the second may be proceeded with.... A point of order regarding anticipation may be raised when the second motion is proposed from the Chair, if the first has already been proposed to the House and has become an Order of the Day.
Though the government House leader might argue that questions about this rule do not come up often, there are a series of precedents through the years that are relevant to the issue before the Chair today.
Mr. Speaker Michener, on March 13, 1959, at page 238 of the Journals, held, in relation to the rule of anticipation concerning nearly identical pieces of legislation:
...I first considered whether the motion should be accepted to stand on the Order Paper at the same time. I am satisfied that this was quite in order, but I came to the conclusion that it would be quite improper to permit a second debate on identically the same subject matter as the subject matter of a debate which was already proceeding. In other words, the House is not going to occupy itself on two separate occasions under two separate headings with exactly the same business. That would not be reasonable, and I can find no support or authority for following such a course. Thus I have come to the conclusion that this bill must stand, as well as the other bill in the same terms, or at least in terms for exactly the same purpose, until the bill which was first moved has been disposed of either by being withdrawn, which would open the door for one of these other bills to proceed, or by way of being approved, which would automatically dispose of these bills because the House would not vote twice on the same subject matter any more than it would debate the same subject matter twice.
Mr. Speaker Lamoureux, on July 7, 1969, said, in a ruling found at page 1317 of the Journals, concerning a government motion to amend the Standing Orders, anticipating a motion to concur in a report of the former standing committee on procedure and organization:
I might say, having taken into account the arguments advanced by members of the opposition, that if the honourable Member for Grenville-Carleton had moved his [concurrence] motion I would have recognized that the rule of anticipation would have given his motion precedence...to the motion that is now before the House in the name of the President of the Privy Council. I would have so ruled...
A much more recent predecessor of yours, Mr. Speaker, considered the matter of two committee instruction motions that varied by a difference of just five words. The Chair ruled, on June 11, 2014, at page 6649 of the Debates:
Upon examination of the section of O'Brien and Bosc, upon which both House leaders have relied extensively for their arguments, it seems to the Chair that the key concept is the question of whether or not the motions are substantially the same.
Upon examination of both motions on the notice paper, it does seem that the motions are substantially the same and that the principles cited by the government House leader as to the practice of the House are persuasive to the Chair. Accordingly, we will not be proceeding with the motion at this time.
The rule of anticipation is a concept which is not unheard of in the current Parliament, or to you, Mr. Speaker, for that matter.
On May 11, 2022, the Deputy Speaker, at page 5123 of the Debates, ruled that Bill C-250, the private member's bill proposed by my colleague, the hon. member for Saskatoon—Grasswood, could not be debated and would be rendered pending, following the second reading of Bill C-19, a budget implementation bill that contained clauses similar to my friend's bill, because:
The House should not face a situation where the same question can be cited twice within the same session, unless the House's intention is to rescind or revoke the decision.
After Bill C-19 had received royal assent, you made a further ruling, Mr. Speaker, on September 20, 2022, at page 7341 of the Debates, to discharge Bill C-250. In doing so, you said:
...there is a long-standing principle to keep or avoid having the same question from being decided twice within the same session
A similar case can be found in your June 6, 2021 ruling, at page 6142 of the Debates, whereby Bill C-243, sponsored by the hon. member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River, could not be proceeded with following the second reading of a Senate public bill, Bill S-211. Bill C-243 has been listed on the Order Paper every sitting day since, under the heading “Pending Business”.
To recap the current case, the government's Motion No. 1 concerning the Senate amendments to Bill C-11 was moved, as I mentioned, on March 8, and then became an Order of the Day. Therefore, Motion No. 2 may only be proceeded with if Motion No.1 has been withdrawn, as the various authorities would observe. Otherwise, proceeding with Motion No. 2 would offend the rule of anticipation and cannot be proposed to the House, as forecasted, at noon today.
Mr. Speaker Casgrain's ruling on February 24, 1936, at pages 67 and 68 of the Journals, explains a possible way forward for the government concerning its Motion No. 1:
The adjournment of the debate, last Thursday on the second reading of Bill No. 2...meant that the question shall again be considered at a future sitting when the order for Public Bills will be reached. This is what is called, in parliamentary procedure, appointing a matter for consideration by the House. [Erskine] May...gives many precedents showing that the discussion of an appointed matter cannot be anticipated by a motion...There is sufficient similarity in the Bill and the Motion to confine them to one debate...The difference in details between the two propositions may be dealt with by moving amendments... but it is not sufficient to justify a duplication of the debate. It is a well known principle that the same question cannot be raised twice in the same session.
The difference between the government's Motion No.1 and Motion No. 2 could be addressed by an amendment to Motion No. 1. It is that simple, really.
All the Liberal government needs to do is allow the debate to continue on the amendment moved by the hon. member for Lethbridge. Once that debate has eventually concluded and the vote taken, the government could, in the event that my colleague's thoughtful amendment is not adopted by the House, of course, once debate resumes on the main motion, move its own amendment to achieve the change Motion No. 2 contains, which would be up to the House to discuss and decide.
If you were to find my point of order to be well taken, Mr. Speaker, it would not be the first major procedural error the government has made in pursuing its flawed policy to control the Internet. On June 15, 2021, you ruled out of order many committee amendments made to Bill C-11's predecessor in the previous Parliament because the Liberals on the Canadian heritage committee had run roughshod over the rules and broke several of them in trying to rush the bill through Parliament before the opportunistic and unnecessary early election the Prime Minister called that August.
Now it seems that the Liberals are equally hasty in ramming their Internet control bill through the House once again. It is almost as if the government is in a rush to clear the decks for something to come.
I hope you will find in favour of my point of order, Mr. Speaker, and I look forward to your response.
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- Nov/14/22 12:51:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would be happy to answer questions at the end of my speech.
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: When will that be?
Hon. Andrew Scheer: Madam Speaker, we will get there.
We wanted to get to the bottom of that. I held the role of Speaker. I cannot imagine something like that happening by any other prime minister I have ever served with or come to know over the years, except for this one. He did not like it when the democratically elected representatives of the people demanded to get to the bottom of a scandal that impacted every single Canadian. If it is related to public health, it impacts us. Our national security impacts every single Canadian. We have the right to come to this place and demand those types of answers.
Every political party agreed, and it takes a lot to unite opposition parties in this chamber. We are fundamentally different than the Bloc Québécois.
We believe in a united Canada, in our history and our future. There are a lot of areas of concern on which no common ground has been found with the Bloc Québécois.
The New Democrats and the Conservatives disagree on a whole lot of things. We believe in free markets and individual liberty. The NDP believes in central planning and government control. Therefore, when we have something that units the Conservatives, the Bloc and the New Democrats, and we all come together to we demand accountability and transparency, it means something. That is significant.
Providing Canadians with openness and transparency is the disinfectant that the Prime Minister used to like to talk about. We do not hear him say that a lot. He used to like saying that sunshine is the best disinfectant, and many Canadians took him at his word, but we do not hear him say that too often now. He has drawn the blinds, closed the drapes and gone into the darkest corners of the house to avoid that openness and transparency.
Therefore, rather than having that long-drawn-out court fight, as he started to feel the political pain from suing the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Prime Minister called an election. Do members know what happens to government legislation when they call an election? It kills it all. Here we are today, halfway through November, and now the government has suddenly realized that it has a time issue on its hands. It wants to get more and more of its agenda rammed through, so that is the motivation behind this move.
There is one other piece when it comes to motivation that we must make sure that Canadians are aware of and that is the real reason behind this move. Something has been going on since September that the government really does not enjoy and that is what is happening at committees.
At committees, the opposition parties have developed a working relationship where we can expose Liberal corruption and mismanagement. That is very unpleasant for the government because at committee we have been getting to the bottom of these kinds of scandals. At committee, we have found out that the government spent $54 million on an app that experts say could have been done for $250,000 over the course of a weekend.
When we found out who got paid, the companies the government had on that itemized list, we did what many people would do. We called the companies to ask if they had been paid for the work. Some of those companies are saying they never did the work and they never got paid, yet the government put their name on a list to try to justify the spending. We are finding that out at committee and the Liberals do not like it.
We are finding at committee some of the information as it relates to some of these scandals that I have already mentioned, with Winnipeg labs being one of them. The point is that at committee, members of Parliament are drawing out and exposing Liberal corruption and that scandal.
How does work at committees relate to this motion today? As members know, the House of Commons gets first dibs on parliamentary resources. Therefore, when the House of Commons sits late, translators and IT workers have to serve the House of Commons. This is the primary chamber of Canada's parliamentary democracy, and when they extend hours they take resources away from committees. That is what this is actually all about: killing accountability by stealth and using this bogus excuse of time management as a rationale for diverting resources away from committee.
Members do not need to take my word for it. The best indication of future behaviour is past behaviour, and there were outcomes of a motion similar to that we are debating here today. For a bit of context, the government did this back in May of last year. It brought forward a very similar motion.
I will read a headline from the Hill Times. It said, “Stretched thin: Resources to support committees strained amid virtual format, late-night sittings”. The article continued, “A total of 13 parliamentary committee meetings were cancelled last week, with MPs citing limited support resources as the main cause.”
The last time they moved this same motion it had a direct and devastating impact on the ability of committees to get to the bottom of Liberal corruption and Liberal scandals. That is what this is actually about, using this type of excuse to draw resources away from where the Liberals do not control the agenda to where they do.
In the House the government gets to set the agenda and it gets to call government business. Other than on opposition days, the government gets to tell members of Parliament, every day, what we debate. If we would like to debate something else, we have to wait until one of our precious few days to do it. We cannot propose government legislation. We are not the government.
The government controls all of that here, but it does not control it at committees. Committees are masters of their own domain. Even though the government would like the ethics committee and the public accounts committee to just rubber stamp all its decisions, hard-working Conservative MPs are using those valuable resources and those opportunities to expose the Liberal corruption and the mismanagement. That is why the Liberals are bringing forward this motion today.
Again, rigging the rules of the parliamentary calendar would be like in a sports contest. If one team was worried that they might not get to score enough points, then they unilaterally decide that when they had the ball the clock would not run. The Grey Cup is coming up in Regina, and I hope the Speaker is able to make it out. It is going to be a fantastic—
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: Go, Bombers.
Hon. Andrew Scheer: Madam Speaker, I could put up with all the other heckling, Mr. Speaker, but when the member for Winnipeg North says, “Go, Bombers”, I have to react to that and ask if that is parliamentary. I am pretty sure that should get him ejected from the chamber.
In a football context, imagine if the Bombers got the ball and they tried to unilaterally tell the referees they were not going to run the clock while they had the ball. It would not be fair. It is not part of the game. It is not part of how the dynamic works.
To have a situation mid-session where, all of a sudden, the Liberals were going to rig the clock, rig the calendar, to help them ram through more of their legislation, hoping to exhaust Conservative MPs from using our time in the House to make these points. It is not just about time, when the government counts the number of hours or days when the debate is actually going on. That is just part of the picture. We can think of many examples where, thanks to the debate taking some time, flaws in the bills were exposed. I can think of the medical assistance in dying bill that the chamber has debated in several Parliaments now.
I can appreciate the goodwill from members on all sides to try to get aspects of that right, and to put in proper protections for vulnerable Canadians. It was because it took time to go through that many people expressed their concerns and identified flaws in the legislation, saying that vulnerable Canadians, people with mental health issues, young Canadians and our veterans would be more susceptible. They may fall through the cracks and may have this type of medical action taken, maybe without their full consent or by catching them at a vulnerable time.
Conservatives used that time to help expose it and inform Canadians. As a result, we saw many disability groups and other types of groups become more engaged and ultimately try to make the bill better when it did get to committee.
There are lots of examples I could run through. Thanks to the fact that we had more time in the House, not just time in terms of hours of the day or number of speeches given, but literally days off the calendar, it gave those industry groups, stakeholder groups and people affected by the legislation more time to run through the bill and inform their members of Parliament. Therefore, before the bill even came to committee there was already a plan in place to try to fix the deficiencies.
Right now we have Bill C-11 in the Senate. It is a massive expansion of the government's power to regulate the Internet and control what Canadians could see and say online. If the government had had its way, it would have sailed through all stages and it would have been law by now. However, it was because we took extra time to debate it that more Canadians realized that this would have a massive negative impact on Canadians' abilities to express themselves freely. We were able to hear from content creators, who are very famous people with their own YouTube followings and social media presences. They talked to individual MPs and said that, as Canadian content creators, Bill C-11 would have a negative impact on them. They did that because we gave them that time to do so.
Rather than seeing the number of days as a problem, the government should see it as an opportunity and welcome it. What the government does has an impact on every single Canadian and I, for one, hope that it would want to get that right. That goal is actually good government not just Liberal priorities being passed.
If it should come to light that there is a flaw in a bill or unintended consequences, it should welcome that the same way that a small business owner does who hears from one of their staff that the way they operate is making them lose money or annoying customers. A good small business owner wants to hear that. Any business owner wants to hear that. I want to hear from my own family if there are certain things we do that have a negative impact on one of my kids or my spouse. We want to hear that. We want to have a good family environment, and business owners want to have successful operations with happy employees and happy customers. We should welcome that.
When Conservatives say they want another day of debate or we want to talk about this a little bit longer, the government should say that is great and it wants to hear what we have to say and the constructive feedback. The government House leader spoke at great length about this type of thing, encouraging conversations, encouraging feedback and critiques and admitting that the government does not get it right all the time. That is why it is so hypocritical to hear a House leader talk about all this context while he is putting through a motion that is going to assist the government to ram through its agenda at an even greater pace. That is why Conservatives are opposed to this piece of legislation.
We are in favour of good government, we are in favour of good legislation and we will do our part. The government continuously ignores the feedback from Canadians. When Canadians are saying they do not want record-high inflation and to stop the printing presses, stop the deficit spending and stop borrowing money to throw it into an economy that drives up prices, it is not listening. We have to be that voice. It is our constitutional role to do that. We actually have a moral obligation as the official opposition to do that. We are not going to be cowardly or apologetic just because the government is frustrated with its timelines.
To close, it is so difficult to hear a Liberal member of Parliament, the government House leader, talk about cultivating a climate of respect and talk about cordial and constructive conversations when his leader, the Liberal Prime Minister, speaks with such contempt for anybody who disagrees with him, pitting Canadian against Canadian and dividing us.
Remember the government's reaction during the pandemic when many Canadians wanted to make their own health care choices and make their own determination for themselves as to what medicines they put in their body? The reaction from the government was that it forced people to choose between keeping their jobs and taking a medical treatment that they may not have been comfortable with. That does not sound very constructive or respectful to me.
Then the Prime Minister openly asked if they should even tolerate these people. That is the type of language we hear horrible dictators use against segments of their population that they would rather do without. We saw the contempt that he had for those who came to Ottawa to fight for their freedoms. He invoked an Emergencies Act that had never been used in Canadian history. By the way, now it is coming out how flimsy the excuse was for doing that, as police entity after police entity, from the Ottawa police to the Ontario Provincial Police are all saying that they did not ask for it and that existing laws were sufficient to do the work that they were asked to do. We have a Prime Minister who insults, demonizes and bullies.
The government House leader talked about the impact that type of toxic environment has had on its own family, yet he sits in a caucus where many members on this side witnessed the Prime Minister get up out of his seat, walk over and bully a former Black female member of Parliament who was forced to leave politics. She said that one of the reasons she was leaving politics when she did was the personal treatment that the Prime Minister inflicted upon her.
The Prime Minister fired the first female indigenous justice minister. What did he fire her for? She would not go along with his corruption. She had the audacity to stand in her place and say no. As the former minister of justice and the attorney general, she had a higher obligation to the law than to her political master. He fired her.
The government House leader has no problem sitting beside the Prime Minister and supporting the Prime Minister in all he does. It is a bit rich. The reason the opposition party does not put a lot of stock in his words is that he is clearly quite comfortable with the toxic behaviour that his own Liberal leader has put his own colleagues through.
Since it is a massive undermining of a very important check on the government's ability to ram through its agenda, because of the hypocrisy of a government that has so mismanaged its own timetable and its own calendar and because of the direct impact that this motion would have on committees, Conservatives cannot support this motion.
Since we are hopeful that some of what the government House leader said may have been sincere, we are hoping that they may support an amendment to specifically protect the very important work that committees are doing.
I move:
That the motion be amended, in paragraph (a), by replacing the words “and that such a request shall be deemed adopted” with the words “and, provided that if the Clerk of the House personally guarantees that there would be no consequential cancellation or reduction of the regularly scheduled committee meeting resources for that day, the request shall be deemed adopted”.
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