- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Board of Internal Economy
House leader of the official opposition
- Conservative
- Regina—Qu'Appelle
- Saskatchewan
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $172,932.98
- Government Page
- Jun/12/23 7:58:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, her main point is that this is a massive overhaul to the Standing Orders. The House of Commons has been operating pretty much the way it has been, in terms of members being physically present and how we conduct votes, through two world wars, the Great Depression, the turbulent sixties and seventies, and everything else, including a terrorist shooting here on the precinct itself.
Our point is this: When we are making this level of changes and we are going to make them permanent, we have to do it by consensus. We would have agreed. We would have said that we have our reservations for hybrid participation in the House but that we would go along with it if we enacted a sunset clause, where we know that there would be time for the unintended consequences to be determined and that a future Parliament could say it would not renew them or it could amend them. We could have had that consensus. We were willing to set aside some of our reservations for the very points that some other colleagues have raised, as long as there were that safety valve of a sunset clause to make sure that something that has a negative impact on the way parliamentarians fulfill their duties does not get entrenched, making it so difficult to change back.
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- Jun/12/23 7:54:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am not sure exactly what caused so many members to have challenges with the voting app.
I would point out to the hon. member that whatever concerns she may have about people clarifying their vote through a hybrid mechanism would not be required if we did not have hybrid. If members had to be here physically, then obviously that would not happen, so if she was vexed by the amount of time that may have taken, not proceeding with hybrid preservation would probably solve that problem.
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- Jun/12/23 7:50:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I can answer very simply no. I really appreciate my colleague's perspective on this. We have a lot of differences between our two parties and there is a lot we disagree on, but we both recognize that, when a government is going to come in to change the rules of the game, we really do need consensus.
Members can imagine a scenario in a sports league where one team has an advantage and then tries to get the lead commissioner to change the nature of the sport or the action to benefit one team over the rest of the teams. That is analogous to what is being done here. Right from the get-go, this was presented as a fait accompli. The government had already secured what it wanted with the NDP, and it is a take-it-or-leave-it type of proposal. We were told right upfront that, if we were trying to take away any of the things around remote participation in the chamber or other ancillary aspects, it was going to go ahead with it anyway. That is not the way to bring parties together for the betterment of this institution.
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- Jun/12/23 7:47:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, first of all, I should point out that I was expecting a question from the chair of the procedure and House affairs committee because she had a lot to say while I was speaking. Now she did not rise to seek the floor for a question.
However, I believe I covered that. I talked about how any time the Liberals are messing with the Standing Orders, we have to have our guard up because they have used it before. They have tried to take rules away. We absolutely do not trust the Liberals' motives from day one, especially when they are not going to do it with consensus and when they are going to unilaterally impose it because they have a partner in the costly coalition with the NDP.
I talked about committees. How many committees have been cancelled? We are in the middle of investigating Liberal corruption and mismanagement, and suddenly the committee will get cancelled because resources have to be reallocated. Now, when the government wants to have its committee meetings continue, the Liberals always find a way to have resources for their priorities. Committees that are investigating Liberal mismanagement get cancelled. Committee meetings for continuing debate to ram through clause-by-clause consideration or to quickly move legislation out of the committee back to the chamber magically have resources available to them. That is the most important point.
The third point that I made was that using remote options and hybrid really does limit the ability of members of Parliament to interact personally with ministers. That is an important part of being a member of Parliament. Debate is important, and bills are important, but it is important that I am able to sit down with the minister to say that I have been asking their officials for weeks why a constituent was denied access or was rejected from an application and their officials have not been able to get back to me with anything. On a weekly basis, I do that, whether it is immigration, Canada Post or any number of issues. If ministers are constantly using remote options and hybrid, members are going to lose that ability.
An hon member: It is like a speech. He is not cutting him off.
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- Jun/12/23 7:42:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will continue, and I do appreciate the reminder from my colleague. Sometimes when I am reading a lengthy technical document I tend to speed up to get through it quickly, but I can appreciate that this would pose an extra challenge to the interpreters.
As my colleague indicated, the text of this was prepared. The Table did have some changes at the last minute to make sure it was procedurally proper, so that may be why the interpreters might not have a working copy of what I am reading.
I will just slow it right down.
I move:
That the motion be amended:
(a) by deleting paragraphs (a) and (b) and substituting the following:
“(a) the proposed amendments to the Standing Orders, laid upon the table on June 8, 2023 (Sessional Paper No. 8525-441-30) be adopted on a provisional basis, with the following changes:
(i) that the proposed amendments to Standing Orders 11(1)(b), 16(4), 17, 26(2), 31, 43(2)(b), 52(3), 53(4), 56.1(3), 56.2(2), 57, 62, 74(2)(b); 78(1), 2(a) and 3(a), 83(2), 95(1) and (2), 98(3)(a), and 106(4) be deleted,
(ii) that the proposed new Standing Order 15.1 be amended by deleting the words “the House and its”,
(iii) that the proposed new Standing Order 32(2), be amended:
(A) by adding the words “, in his or her place in the House,” after the word “may”, and
(B) by replacing the words “for members participating remotely, the document is” with the words “documents presented in electronic format shall be”,
(iv) that the proposed new Standing Order 35(1) be amended by adding the words “standing in their places,” after the words “made by members”,
(v) that the proposed new Standing Order 36(6) be amended by adding the words “, in his or her place in the House,” after the words “present a petition”,
(vi) that the proposed amendment to Standing Order 45 be amended,
(A) by replacing the words “That Standing Order 45 be replaced with the following” with the word “that Standing Orders 45(3) to (8) be replaced with the following”,
(B) by deleting the proposed new Standing Orders 45(1) and (2),
(C) by deleting, in the proposed new Standing Order 45(11), the words “whether participating in person or remotely”,
(D) by deleting the proposed new Standing Order 45(12)(d), and
(E) in the proposed new Standing Order 45(12)(e), by deleting all the words after the words “using the electronic voting system”, and substituting the following “the Speaker shall determine whether the member's visual identity sufficiently confirmed”,
(vii) that the proposed new Standing Order 122.1 be amended by adding the words “, provided that members of Parliament and officials of government departments or agencies or the House of Commons Administration appearing as witnesses appear in person”, and
(viii) that the proposed amendment to paragraph 56(2)(c) of the Code of Conduct for Members of the House of Commons: Sexual Harassment Between Members be amended by replacing the words “debate has collapsed” with the words “no member rises to speak”,
and the said standing orders shall come into force on June 24, 2023, or upon the adoption of this order, whichever is later, and shall expire one year after the opening of the 45th Parliament; and
(b) the provisional changes made to Standing Orders 104, 108 and 114, adopted on December 2, 2021, as well as the following amendment to Standing Order 106(4), shall remain in effect for the duration of the 44th Parliament:
“That Standing Order 106(4) be replaced with the following:
“(4) Within five days of the receipt, by the clerk of a standing committee, of a request filed by any four members of the said committee representing at least two recognized political parties, the Chair of the said committee shall convene such a meeting provided that 48 hours' notice is given of the meeting. For the purposes of this section, the reasons for convening such a meeting shall be stated in the request.”; and
(b) by adding the following new paragraph:
“(e) the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs be instructed to report, no later than on Friday, December 8, 2023, on recommendations for (i) a new Standing Order concerning remote participants' audio standards, along the lines it proposed in Recommendation 5 of its 20th report, presented to the House on Monday, January 30, 2023, (ii) amendments to Standing Order 45 concerning members voting remotely who experience technical difficulties with the remote voting application.”.
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- Jun/12/23 7:34:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the point is that there is a lot of important work that gets done in the parliamentary precinct outside of the official proceedings of a committee or the House of Commons. This work is lost when ministers are able to literally phone in, when they are able to stay in their ridings and not be here. It is a lot easier for them to put up gatekeepers of staff and departmental officials to prevent members of Parliament from literally getting right in front of them to say, “Take a look at this. It is an important problem with what you are doing or something you have overlooked.”
That is not nothing. Those are not just small peripheral issues. A great deal of what members of Parliament do is advocate for their constituents outside of debate and outside of giving speeches in the chamber. We need to be able to have access to government ministers, and not just through the phone or through intermediaries like staff. We also propose for committees, while we would have supported hybrid committee meetings, that when ministers come with their officials, they should testify in person for similar reasons.
At this point, I will move on to what our proposed solution is, which is to make a series of amendments to what the government has proposed. These are common sense proposals that would alleviate the concerns that we have while still addressing some of the benefits of having a little bit of flexibility around the parliamentary routine.
I move, seconded by the member for King—Vaughan, that the motion be amended by (a) deleting paragraphs (a) and (b) and substituting the following—
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- Jun/12/23 7:31:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in the British Parliament, members of Parliament are able to ask questions and make comments during a speech by asking if the member who has the floor would give way or yield, but we do not have that system here. When I am finished, the hon. member can ask me questions or provide comments and I will be happy to respond to her, but not during my speech itself. Of course, she may have a turn to speak if the government House leader has her on his list of the members from his side who will speak.
I think I was talking about how much the Prime Minister hates committees. It is because that is where the most egregious forms of his waste and mismanagement are exposed to Canadians. That is why our common sense proposal is to say that we should keep participation in the House in person. Let us at least say that when members are in the House, when they want to intervene, when they want something on the official record or when they want to give a speech on behalf of their constituents, they should do that in the chamber.
As for committees, we could allow committees to continue in a hybrid format. We have lots of expert witnesses for whom it might not make sense to fly them all the way to Ottawa, put them up for several days in a hotel and then fly them back if they are really only required to give testimony for an hour or two. Conservatives recognize the reasonableness of that particular proposal, and doing it that way—separating the hybrid chamber from hybrid committees—would completely ease the strain on the translation services. However, that proposal was rejected.
I also want to address something that the House leader referenced.
He was actually making one of the points I was going to make, and then he kind of glossed over it in, I believe, an insincere way. He talked about the parliamentary precinct, life in Parliament and how our day-to-day routines actually help a lot of work get done outside of what I am doing right now, which is speaking to legislation. I just had an example of this. I have an issue in my riding that I have been trying to get a government minister to address. It often takes days and days to get a response back from a minister's staff. Obviously, they are handling a lot of different files, so sometimes when a request is made, it takes sometimes five to seven days to get a response.
When the Speaker was welcoming the Portuguese ambassador, the minister was there. I happened to be in the same room and I could have gotten an answer right away. I could have said, “I have this important issue that I have spoken to the minister about before. I have not heard back yet. Could we get together tomorrow?”, and the answer would have been yes. All those types of meetings and the ability to advance files, the ability to move something along or to have things addressed, whether it is a program or a project in someone's riding, are lost if ministers are not physically here. If the—
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Madam Speaker, I just want to start off by setting a bit of context about how the Liberals treat Parliament in general.
We all remember the 2015 election campaign when the Prime Minister pretended that he cared about things like accountability, transparency and the supremacy of Parliament, and the fact that we come to this place from all corners of this country to hold the government to account. That is not just a phrase that one might hear in a political science class or a high school civics class. Holding it to account is not just some kind of bookkeeping exercise where we make sure the numbers add up. Yes, that is part of it, but it is really about litigating the decisions of the government to ensure that Canadians get only the best. It is through the rigour of parliamentary debate, committee investigations and the daily questioning of the Prime Minister and cabinet that the facts emerge and Canadians are able to make informed decisions when it is time to vote.
I was House leader back in 2015 right after that election, right after the Prime Minister said he would respect the role of Parliament, that he would always defer to the important role that the House of Commons plays in our democracy. Something happened in that first few months after the 2015 election that totally showed what a phony comms exercises all of that rhetoric was. There was a bill before the House back then; I believe was Bill C-10. The Liberals had trouble counting their caucus members one Monday morning. There was a vote that the Liberals were not expecting on that day and they almost lost it because they did not have enough members in town. They still had members back in their ridings perhaps or on international junkets, or on any number of other things. There was a tie-vote in the chamber. A piece of government legislation was almost defeated and the Speaker had to break the tie at that time and, as was the convention of the Speaker, broke the tie in favour of continuing debate and allowed the bill to pass at report stage, so the bill continued on.
They were so rattled by that episode that just a few days later the government House leader came into this chamber and proposed Motion No. 6. Motion No. 6 was a complete defanging of the opposition, a removal of most of the tools that opposition parties use to hold the government to account, to draw out those details, and to litigate the government's course of actions and its legislation. It gave the government unprecedented power to move legislation along quickly and to prevent the opposition from using its very legitimate tools to hold up debate, not just for the sake of filibustering or delay for the sake of delay. It is in that delay that members of Parliament find those details, find the mistakes that the government makes or hear the stories from witnesses about how those unintended consequences might do more harm than good.
The government's reaction at that time to a tie-vote on a piece of legislation was what might be called a parliamentary hissy fit where it just completely lost its temper and tried to take away all of the things that the opposition party could ever hope to use to hold the government to account. Thankfully, the opposition parties understood what was going on.
It is always amazing when parties with as wide a variety of views as the Conservative Party, the Bloc Québécois and the NDP can find common ground, but the Liberals are good at doing that. When the Bloc, the Conservatives and the NDP can find something to be such an affront to parliamentary democracy and everything that we are supposed to do here that we join forces together, and put our differences aside to protect this institution, it is actually a terrible indictment on the Liberal Party, and so often we have had to do that. For the sake of our institution, for the sake of future generations of Canadians, for the sake of future Parliaments and future members of Parliament to be able to have those very important tools to do the job on behalf of their constituents, we have had to join forces. I remember being there when the House leaders from all the recognized parties, along with the Bloc Québécois, told the story. We all told the story to Canadians about the motives and the consequences of what the government was doing. We were able to push back on that, whether due to the effective communications of all the opposition parties or due to the fact that in those moments, the Prime Minister lost his temper.
The Prime Minister actually injured an NDP member of Parliament, when he elbowed an NDP member and forcefully grabbed the Conservative whip at the time. He completely lost his temper and physically manhandled a member of Parliament. Maybe that is why he finally backed down, but I like to think that it was at least in part because of the important points we were making as opposition parties to defend our institutions.
We see this time and time again. Every time the Liberals do not get their way, they try to change the rules of the game. It is important to note that the tools that are available to the opposition to delay, to propose amendments and to physically have members of the cabinet and the government in the chamber, are an important part of the process. We have a system whereby the executive branch sits in the chamber, and the opposition parties have to have some tools at their disposal to be able to highlight the shortcomings, failures and mistakes in the government's agenda.
It does not just happen in this House. The other place also plays an important role in that. I should point out that the other place has completely put aside its hybrid Parliament mechanisms. They have been back under normal operating standards for a long time now. For months, they have been able to continue doing their job. It is really just this chamber.
In fact, it is just this chamber in all of Canada that is continuing on with a full host of measures that were originally put in place, as the government House leader acknowledged, when there was consensus about how best to do two things. One of these things was to respect the public health orders that were in place at the time, about people travelling from different parts of the country to come together, and the other was respecting the orders and regulations at the time to have people who were from different households being certain distances apart.
We agreed at that time to respect those two things, because we could not have a period of time when Parliament was not doing its job. Thank goodness, we insisted on that. I remember those days, when the government was trying to arrange for unanimous passage of its legislation in response to the pandemic, without any debate at all. The Liberals wanted to just email the text of the legislation to members of Parliament, have them come in here for just a few moments, pass it all and then go home again.
Thankfully, the official opposition, the Conservative Party, said no to that. It was through that parliamentary scrutiny that we learned many terrible things about the government's response to the COVID pandemic. We found out that the Prime Minister attempted to use the pandemic to try to enrich his friends. We found out because Parliament was sitting, because we had the tools at our disposal, in terms of committees and debates in the chamber. He did this with the massive disruption in people's lives; loss of life; people having to say goodbye to loved ones over Zoom; people having to miss birthday parties, anniversaries and funerals; businesses going bankrupt; and children missing out on activities and important parts of their childhood.
The Prime Minister tried to give his friends at the WE Foundation, an organization that had paid members of his family hundreds of thousands of dollars, an untendered sole source contract worth half a billion dollars. However, he got caught, because we did not give up those tools in our tool kit to hold the government to account.
We found out through parliamentary scrutiny that the government used the pandemic, as well, to reward Liberal insiders and defeated Liberal MPs, such as Frank Baylis. He got a sole source contract for providing medical supplies that he had no history of ever providing. The arrive scam app is another example of waste and mismanagement. Thank goodness we still had those parliamentary tools at our disposal.
I want to address a few points that the government House leader brought up in his speech. He talked about unanimity consensus. My colleague in the Bloc Québécois just made a very important point. As a former speaker, I have learned a little about the history, about the importance of the Standing Orders and their evolution over time, as well as why things are the way they are.
The McGrath committee was one of those great examples where Parliament had not been updated for a long period of time; society had implemented a whole bunch of innovations, and parliamentary life had changed. In response to those changing times in the 1980s, the government of the day decided that it would have a fulsome analysis of the Standing Orders, the parliamentary cycle and the daily routine of business. It was essential that all the opposition parties were brought in and a true effort was made to find consensus and common ground; where there was no consensus, the government did not proceed.
It was out of that committee that we had major changes, for example, in the election of the Speaker. For generations before the 1980s, the Prime Minister chose the Speaker. It was a motion that the Prime Minister moved, and it was basically a fait accompli; whomever the Prime Minister wanted to become Speaker became Speaker. In the 1980s, the House decided, in its wisdom, that it would be better to preserve the impartiality of the Chair if the Speaker did not have to worry about pleasing or displeasing the Prime Minister. Therefore, the House instituted the secret ballot election, and former speaker John Fraser was the first to be elected by secret ballot. Ever since then, speakers have been chosen that way. That was a very important development in our parliamentary democratic underpinnings. It was a great development. It was a fantastic idea; it has served the House well, and it has served the Speaker as well.
The point that I am making to my hon. colleague from the Liberal Party is that it was achieved through consensus, because if all parties from all different corners of the country and from different political perspectives cannot be convinced that it is a good idea that will serve the institution as an institution, and not one party over another, then maybe it is not such a good idea. Maybe we should at least go back and try to build that consensus. However, that is not what they are doing here. They would be creating a precedent, whereby future governments and future Parliaments would look and say that it has been done before where a government, perhaps backed by a junior coalition partner in a minority context, could say that at the end of the day, it is just going to ram it through anyway.
We offered a good-faith effort to preserve the idea of consensus, to prevent what is about to happen when the government ultimately rams this motion through. We said that, in order to preserve the importance of overhauling the Standing Orders only after a government has achieved that consensus, we would agree to things on a time-limited basis that we might not normally agree to. We were willing to allow aspects of this hybrid package to continue, with the one caveat that the package of changes would sunset after the next election. This is a very simple and, I believe, common-sense proposal.
What would that do, and why is it important? After every election, it is part of our normal routine of business that the Standing Orders are studied by the procedure and House affairs committee. There is supposed to be a debate in the House about the Standing Orders and whether anything needs to be changed or how the Standing Orders are serving the House at the time. It has never really resulted in anything substantially major, because the government of the day always wants to use government time to implement business. That is reasonable; the members get elected on a platform, and every day that they spend debating the Standing Orders, as they are today, is a day that they do not have to debate the legislation they would like to put out.
Our proposal would have required a government of the day to, proactively and in a positive way, actually take some action to extend these changes. I submit that we are still only about a year or so out of the complete lifting of COVID restrictions. In some parts of Canada, it has literally just been 12 to 14 months since those restrictions have been fully lifted, so it is hard to say for sure what the long-term consequences of these changes will be on our parliamentary life. It is not just life in terms of our personal lives or how we conduct our business but also in terms of the institution itself.
My hon. colleague, the House leader, has lots of examples of how it is tough to be here. Yes, it is difficult, but I do not think that members of Parliament should ask for considerations that hard-working Canadians from across the country in other industries do not have. Yes, it is difficult to be here. I have five children, and there are lots of things I wish I could have stayed home for. There are lots of important milestones I missed. I knew that when I ran for office.
I knew when I put my name on the ballot that it would be a trade-off in my life. Yes, I would get the incredible reward of fighting for the things I believe in and serving my community and my constituents, but the counterpoint to that is that I would be away from home an awful lot. I made the decision to do it anyway, because I so value the important work that my party does and that my team does.
I believe that the things I believe in are important enough that I am willing to sacrifice those special moments at home to help make Canada a better place. I want to help undo the damage that big government intervention has caused in our lives, with the liberty and individual freedoms that we have lost over the past few years under the Liberal government.
It is worth it. I might miss one of my children's birthdays, but hopefully, I will help to roll back some of the misery that big government intervention in their lives causes for them. They will be better off for it throughout their life. That is one of my motivating factors when I have to miss those important moments.
For Canadians in lots of different industries, they might have an important milestone in their family that they would like to get back for. Maybe they have to go to a trades conference, or maybe they are in the legal profession and have an important court date. They cannot just phone it in because they have something going on at home. I do not think members of Parliament should grant to ourselves a privilege and a comfort that so many Canadians across the country do not have in their lives. I do not believe that this is sufficient in and of itself to justify the changes that the government is making today.
In terms of the important precedent that it is creating here today, it will likely not be singing from the same song sheet in future Parliaments if a future government does something it does not like with the Standing Orders. However, I would submit to the government that it is not too late. In a few moments, I will be proposing an amendment that will more closely resemble the consensus that we are trying to achieve in negotiating these packages of Standing Order changes.
We have long held that major, enduring procedural reforms must be implemented with the support of a consensus of the recognized parties in the House. Making permanent such a sweeping change to parliamentary life is absolutely the sort of thing that should first be embraced by all sides of the aisle.
In the interest of consensus, the official opposition would have agreed to renew the current hybrid procedures with some important limitations, subject to that sunset a year into the next Parliament, when a further renewal could have been considered with proper deliberations. It is the flip side of what the government House leader is saying. He was saying that a future Parliament could undo it. We are asking why we do not do it the opposite way. The onus is on the government to justify and to answer for all the potential and unforeseen consequences of its changes. It would have been far better for the House and for future Parliaments if it had been done in reverse, and if the onus were on the government for continuing them.
I want to focus on hybrid participation in the chamber. There really is something to the physicality of the place. Holding ministers to account in person really adds a dynamic that we lose when we have hybrid Parliament. It is not just me saying that. There are parliamentary experts from all around the world in Commonwealth parliaments and even former Liberal MPs who have said the very same thing. Being in the chamber, with that thrust and that back and forth, is as much a part of the debate as the words themselves are.
When the House sits in a hybrid fashion, it takes a tremendous amount of resources, particularly with translation services. Members of Parliament and Canadians have the right to read and watch the debates in either official language, in French or English. It is difficult for the House administration. I sit on the Board of Internal Economy; for Canadians who might not be familiar with the term, this is the management committee that oversees the House of Commons and its administration. It is generally non-partisan. It is literally designed to help make sure that the precinct is secure and that members of Parliament have the services they need to do their jobs.
The strain placed on our translation services by hybrid sittings has been brought up multiple times at that committee. The translators have a very difficult job. They have to listen at a very specific sound level. They have to be able to hear what is being said and speak out the translation in real time. It is not as if translators get copies of speeches and can transcribe them into the other language and then just read them out. They have to simultaneously listen and speak at the same time.
Our interpreters have had a surprising number of workplace injuries. Members of Parliament get up to speak, but maybe they are too close to the microphone, maybe they start off too loudly or maybe their headset is not calibrated properly. Our translators then get that initial blast of sound, and over time we have had an unfortunate number of interpreters who have had to go on leave or have been put on medical leave because of those injuries. As a result, our pool of available translators has shrunk, and it is now incredibly difficult for the House to find adequate levels of human resources for a hybrid Parliament while at the same time providing the same for committees.
The reason I bring this up is that because of the nature of the importance of the deliberations in the chamber, the House of Commons itself is always given the first right of refusal on human resources. That means that we will always have translation services available to the House. Where does the House get those services when human resources are stretched thin? It gets them from committees.
I know we have lots of colleagues in the chamber right now who sit on committees. How many of them have had a committee cancelled at the last moment over the last few months because of a lack of resources? I am sure every single member has experienced that. Often when the government extends the hours of the House by six or seven hours in the evening, suddenly the House administration has to scramble and reallocate those translators. As a result, committees get cancelled.
Why would the Liberals want committees to be cancelled?
The Prime Minister hates parliamentary committees, and it is not hard to understand why. It is at committees that we have exposed the most egregious examples of waste, corruption and mismanagement. We are able to really pore through the spending, the contracts and the hypocrisies in government programs in terms of economic mismanagement.
We have had incredible breaking news and bombshell reports that have come out at committee. We catch one minister saying something that has been denied by another minister or we get a look at those contracts that have been awarded to Liberal insiders or we hear expert testimony that—
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- Jun/12/23 6:57:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I just want to draw out a point the government House leader made and challenge him on it. He used a few times in his speech language about unanimity and consensus when it came to drastically overhauling and changing the Standing Orders of this House. It is a very important point, because historically and traditionally, major changes to the Standing Orders have come through consensus and often unanimity.
What the government has done today, though, is break with that tradition, because there are many things within this package of Standing Order reforms that the official opposition objects to. In the spirit of finding consensus, we would have agreed with some of the points we might not have preferred to have in there if there had been a sunset clause in this package.
We are entering into a new world. Even though we have been operating under many of these provisions for some time now, it still remains to be seen what the long-term impacts of these major changes will be. Our proposal was to agree to this package but have a sunset clause so that after the next election, within about a year, we would require a positive action for the House to continue with this.
I wonder why the government House leader chose to ignore the very reasonable request to have this package expire and to force a future House to make a positive decision about whether to continue with these changes.
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