House Hansard - 39

44th Parl. 1st Sess.

March 2, 2022 02:00PM

Mar/2/22 5:38:24 p.m.
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Thank you, Madam Speaker. I knew there would be an interruption, and I wanted to confirm that. All of us, not just in the House of Commons but across Canada, are looking forward to hearing about the bill brought forward by my colleague from Courtenay—Alberni. This is a very worthwhile bill that will make a difference for so many Canadians. We look forward to it. I gave the first part of my speech on Monday, and I spoke at length about the situation of Ottawa residents. Today, I will give the second part, and as was just confirmed, I will give the third part after private members' business. Here is the second part of my speech. Members will recall that in the first part of my speech I talked about the profound impacts of the occupation on the residents of Ottawa. During the blockades many thousands of jobs were lost. The people of Ottawa suffered incredibly during this three-week period due to government inaction and due to a lack of action taken to protect them. We saw people with disabilities and seniors denied essential services. We saw cases of vandalism and assault. We certainly saw the highest noise levels, those normally seen in airports, going on 24-7 in downtown Ottawa. We saw toxic pollution from the diesel engines running 24-hour a day, which had profound impacts on children in downtown Ottawa. We also saw the loss of thousands of jobs and the closure of hundreds of businesses. The first part of my speech was to address the profound hardship that the people of Ottawa endured during that period. That is why it is so vitally important now, having thankfully come to a peaceful resolution, and some members of Parliament would say that is despite the Emergencies Act and others would say that it is because of the Emergencies Act, to move immediately to putting in place a parliamentary review. That is what Canadians want to see. They want to see answers to those questions. They believe we need to move with alacrity. We had an opportunity on Monday for the official opposition to join all the other recognized parties in the House of Commons and the parliamentary groups in the Senate to put this motion in place by unanimous consent. We saw this, thankfully, with the ban on conversion therapy. The Conservatives stepped up, and we had a unanimous adoption of that important legislation in the House of Commons. We could have and should have done the same thing on Monday. Now we have the opportunity to have a vote tonight. If we had not taken the step we just took, the Conservatives would have delayed, for another three weeks, the putting into place of this vitally important parliamentary review. It is an absolutely essential parliamentary review. I am speaking in favour of this motion because what it does, and why it has such broad support within the House of Commons and within the Senate, is it accomplishes a number of things in a very important way to set up a structure that would allow for a thorough and impartial review of what transpired, not only with the Emergencies Act, but also in the three weeks prior. We have two chairs in place from the House of Commons, representing both sides of the debate, an NDP co-chair and a Bloc co-chair, the NDP having voted in favour and the Bloc having voted against. We have that impartiality, in the chairs, that is so vitally important. We have a fair representation from all parties and all of the four Senate groups. With the changes in the Senate, the idea that we could only have one Conservative senator and nobody else made no sense at all. Here we have fair representation from the Senate groups and fair representation from the House of Commons. The Conservatives certainly cannot complain. They have three members, and if we include the ex-Conservatives in the Canadian Senate group, four members, which is more than any other party in this parliamentary review committee. The Conservatives have three or four, depending on how we want to count ex-Conservatives. The Liberals have three. The NDP has one. The Bloc has one. The Independent Senate group has one. The Progressive Senate group has one, and the Conservative senators have one. It is a fair division of the membership of a committee that is so essential to moving forward immediately. We have a fair division of the chair roles. We have a fair division in terms of the party membership and the Senate group membership. With that on the table, we should have been able to move forward with this on Monday. The Conservatives should have said, “Yes, this is important. We believe we need to move ahead rapidly.” Instead, they have delayed and continue to want to delay. Next week and the following week are constituency weeks. Obviously, they wanted to delay this for another three weeks. Ottawa cannot wait. Canadians cannot wait. We have to move ahead with this parliamentary review. That is why it is so important that we have the vote tonight. I am thankful, of course, that three of the four recognized parties in this House of Commons will be voting yes on this motion and that the Senate groups have said that they will be voting in support of this motion to put in place a parliamentary review. The NDP thinks it is absolutely essential. It has to happen now. We could get to work tomorrow.

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House Hansard - 39