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Member of the Board of Internal Economy House leader of the official opposition

Hon. Andrew Scheer

  • 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
Context: House Hansard - 290 - Mar/18/24
Hon. Andrew Scheer
  • Mar/18/24 8:25:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, given what you have just said, and after having some discussion among members of various parties, I am sure there will be agreement to allow members to do their due diligence. If we are going to take this seriously, if we are going to show Canadians and the world that foreign policy is not done on the back of a napkin with two negotiators and without any kind of consultation, I ask for unanimous consent to defer the vote until tomorrow. Some hon. members: No.
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Context: House Hansard - 120 - Oct/28/22
Hon. Andrew Scheer (Regina—Qu'Appelle, CPC)
  • Oct/28/22 12:28:08 p.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-9 
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise again in this place on behalf of my constituents in Regina—Qu'Appelle to speak to this very important piece of legislation. Again, I find myself following a comment made by the hon. member for Winnipeg North, and I just cannot help myself, so I will have to address some of the erroneous statements he made to my colleague from Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, which is the idea that somehow it is the opposition's fault that government legislation is not moving through the House. I have been here for several parliaments now, and I have never dealt with a government House team before that has had this idea that the opposition is somehow jointly responsible for moving government legislation through the House. The member is surprised that members of Parliament from the Conservative Party want to speak to government bills. Well, we all come from diverse backgrounds. We all come from different parts of the country. We all may have constituents in our ridings who have had different experiences with the criminal justice system, so many of us may want to bring that wisdom, that expertise, that experience that we have to the floor of the House to make sure that all points of view are heard when we are dealing with something as important as the judicial branch of our government. Therefore, I do not buy the parliamentary secretary's argument at all that there is justification for bringing in time allocation on the bill. There are 338 members of Parliament, and we do not expect every single MP to speak to every single bill, but it should not surprise the government when it brings forward legislation that members of the opposition party might want to speak to it and might want to highlight areas of the bill that cause concern or pause, or flag things that we would invite our colleagues at committee to address. This is part of the normal process. The Liberals do not bring us into the consultation process before they draft the bill. They do not give us a heads-up, send over a working document or have a shared Google document that our shadow minister could see to make suggestions and edits to. They bring forward a bill, and they drop it on the table of the House of Commons. Then we have to go through it and study it. All that takes time, especially when we have our hands full dealing with the waste and corruption this government continues to push through the government system in many different ways. We are constantly poring through Public Accounts to find wasteful spending and, lo and behold, we find them all the time. Just a few weeks ago, we discovered that the government spent $54 million of taxpayers' money on an app that could have been designed in a weekend, and most experts say that it could have been designed for a fraction of the cost that the government ended up billing taxpayers for. It is a good thing we did go through those accounts in great detail because we discovered that one of the companies listed as receiving a payment claims that it did not work at all on the app. The parliamentary secretary might be frustrated that members of Parliament on this side take some time to review, with great scrutiny and detail, the Liberal legislation, even when there is broad consensus on the need or broad consensus on the objective of the bill. The parliamentary secretary will understand why we take out our microscopes, put our glasses on and really do a deep dive into these types of things, because every single time we do, we find more examples of Liberal waste, corruption and mismanagement. The bill, which is a straightforward bill in many respects, is not terribly big, but I find it awfully heavy. It is laden down with irony because the bill would establish a process for judicial office holders who engage in misconduct that does not rise to the level of losing their position but some type of disciplinary process. Does it seem ironic to anybody in the House right now that we have a Prime Minister who is bringing in a mechanism to deal with misconduct and inappropriate behaviour? Boy, would I like to see the principle of the bill expanded. Maybe we could expand it so that it does not just apply to the judicial branch but the executive branch of government as well, because I would love to see what a review council might do with a prime minister who committed awfully racists acts. Imagine our Prime Minister, a public office holder, dressing up in racist costumes and putting on blackface so many times that he lost track of how often he did it. Imagine what a complaints council or a review tribunal would do with that allegation. How about interfering in a criminal prosecution case? How about leaning on a public prosecutor to try to get a special deal for a very well-connected and very powerful corporation in the Prime Minister's own backyard? What would a complaints process do with that kind of improper allegation? How about the accusations we have heard about bullying and harassment in the Prime Minister's own caucus, which drove a female person of colour out of the House, forcing her out of politics altogether? She no longer wished to cope with the type of treatment she was subjected to by the Prime Minister. This is a Liberal member of Parliament I am talking about, who experienced that type of offensive behaviour from her own leader. I would love to see what a complaints council or review tribunal would do with that. I sure hope that our friends on the committee can build some consensus with other political parties and find a way to expand the scope of this bill. I would signal to my colleagues in other parties that if the idea brought to committee is to expand the scope of this bill to include public officer holders in the executive branch, the cabinet and the Prime Minister, the Conservatives will be there to support those types of amendments at committee. We might even move those amendments. I wonder if the hon. member for Winnipeg North would establish the same principle that he is looking to establish around the judicial branch. Would he support efforts to hold all members of cabinet accountable, including the Prime Minister? Maybe he will have an opportunity during questions and comments to inform the House as to whether or not he would be in favour of that. Will he show some consistency when it comes to holding public office holders to the highest level of behaviour and conduct? If the Liberals do not, it will be rather telling, but we will know why. We will know that the member is afraid of how that would affect his own political leader. The bill is also significant for what is not in it. The bill addresses the judicial system in Canada, and any time a government looks at our Criminal Code and our criminal justice system, the Conservatives eagerly await measures that will strengthen our justice system to protect innocent Canadians and victims of crime. That is something we are always hopeful will be contained in legislation. Unfortunately, the Liberals decided to leave that out of this bill. They would have had lots of opportunities to look at the types of policies they have enacted in the last few years, which have made the situation worse. For example, the government has lowered penalties for some of the most violent types of offenders. They have lowered penalties for people who use firearms in the commission of certain crimes. As a result of the government's policies over the last seven years, there is a crime wave going on in many of our large cities and even in rural communities. I represent the riding of Regina—Qu'Appelle, which is about 50% urban and 50% rural, and I hear different concerns about the judicial system. However, they can both relate to the rising crime waves. In the city of Regina, which is obviously a more urban area, there are all kinds of property crimes, thefts and personal assaults, and people are very concerned about the rising rates of them. In rural areas, people are concerned about response times and the fact that when they call 911 when they are victims of a crime or when a crime is in progress, it can take 15, 20 or sometimes 40 minutes for a police officer to respond to the call. The government, without any consultation with those municipalities, retroactively made changes to the pay system and has left the bill with them, something I am hearing a lot about from people who live in the rural part of Regina—Qu'Appelle. The Conservatives are eager to discuss this at committee. We are very disappointed that the government, because of its lack of planning and its mismanagement of the House calendar, has now had to bring in time allocation. We wish there was more in this bill to apply the same types of standards for behaviour to the Prime Minister. We understand why the Liberals will not do that, as they have to protect their political leader, but it does show the hypocrisy that the government has when it comes to rules for everyone else but not for its own leadership.
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