SoVote

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 - 211 - Jun/12/23

Jun/12/23 7:34:43 p.m.
Watch

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—

282 words

Context: House Hansard - 126 - Nov/14/22

Hon. Andrew Scheer

Nov/14/22 1:13:07 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague raised a very good point. It will certainly have a terrible impact on committees. I will read again from the Hill Times article: “A total of 13 parliamentary committee meetings were cancelled last week, with MPs citing limited support resources as the main cause.” That is from May 25, 2022. That is after two years of the House investing in IT and translation services with hybrid Parliament. After two years of that, just a few extended sittings back in May and June in one week cancelled 13 parliamentary committees. That is an incredible workload. I can only imagine the work that was delayed because of all those committees being cancelled. As my hon. colleague knows, committees often hear from witnesses who are not denizens of Parliament Hill. They have to travel long distances, spend a lot of time and go to a lot of trouble to come here and tell MPs about the pros and cons of a given bill. When a committee meeting is cancelled, witnesses often lose the opportunity to do that, and the impact on committees is very negative indeed.

190 words

Context: House Hansard - 126 - Nov/14/22

Hon. Andrew Scheer

Nov/14/22 1:10:09 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, it is clear that the hon. member had no clue as to what the actual point was behind more time to debate legislation, because time does not just occur in this chamber. Yes, we could run speeches every day until midnight and we could say there is lots of time for debate. What we are talking about is days on the calendar to allow the time for people who are affected by the legislation that the government is bringing in, affected by the runaway inflation that the government has caused and affected by the curtailment of their speech, to organize and to prepare their briefing materials and to book their meetings with MPs. If we had every member of Parliament speak until midnight for a few days and get the bill through in two or three calendar days, that is not enough time in the world outside of this place. That is the point we are making. If the hon. member stops working at six o'clock, when the House adjourns, then maybe he should let his constituents know that. We do not. When the House adjourns, we go back to our offices, we answer correspondence, we answer phone calls and we do the research on the bills that we are debating. That is when all of that occurs. Therefore, the days off the calendar are just as important as the number of hours that we spend in this place debating legislation.

244 words

SoVote

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

Hon. Andrew Scheer