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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 31

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 15, 2022 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 31 - Feb/15/22
Mr. Tom Kmiec
  • Feb/15/22 11:48:36 a.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-12 
Madam Speaker, the government runs the agenda of the House of Commons. They are responsible for the agenda. They could have tabled this bill before. They also could have not called an election in August. They could have had us return to the House to consider legislation right away. It is not as if they did not know this was a problem. This is simple legislation. Why did it take so much time to recall Parliament? Why did it take so much time to consider this bill? Why did they not do evening sittings? Why will they not agree to a parliamentary review? All of these things could have been done. It is not on the opposition to simply acquiesce and accept the fact that the government is on a timetable. It is for them to run the business of the House better and they have not been doing that. This is not the first time. Six years of this I have seen so far. For six years, they have been mishandling business of the House.
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Context: House Hansard - 31 - Feb/15/22
Mr. Mark Gerretsen
  • Feb/15/22 4:59:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member knows just as well as I and every other member in this House about the challenges of the legislative calendar. I am not going to say that this could not have been done sooner; I would have loved to have seen this done sooner as well. What I will say is that this particular minister was clearly seized with this file on day one after being appointed. She moved as quickly on it as she could, in addition to dealing with other obligations that she had to bring up to date in her files, and introduced this piece of legislation. We have been able to fit it into the legislative agenda. The mere fact that we are debating this closure motion all day long makes it obvious that we have a problem with moving legislation through this House. We have dealt with obstacle after obstacle in order to get to this place. I wish we could have done this motion that we are debating all afternoon as a unanimous consent motion, but clearly the Bloc and the Conservatives would rather play games, so we are in this position.
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Context: House Hansard - 31 - Feb/15/22
Mr. Mark Gerretsen
  • Feb/15/22 5:01:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, he clearly understands the problem that we are in, yet he is not willing to be part of the solution. That just proves what I have been saying all along, which is that this weird coalition between the Bloc and the Conservatives to somehow slow down the legislative agenda is impacting legislation. He literally just told us that he understands what the problem is, so he should vote in favour of this. Let us get moving on it. Instead, they have the luxury of being able to be against the government on this motion, but for the bill. It is a luxury that unfortunately the NDP does not have, but to their credit they have seen the importance of this. They are willing to see beyond that partisanship, and are actually helping to move this forward.
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