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House Hansard - 68

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 10, 2022 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 68 - May/10/22
Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)
  • May/10/22 10:13:54 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition I am tabling is with respect to the political neutrality of charitable status. Petitioners are concerned that the Liberal platform actually talked, in the last election, about politicizing charitable status and applying a values test in association with charitable status, whereby the government would deny charitable status to organizations with which they have particular disagreements. This is a concern not just to those organizations that might be affected but to the whole charitable sector, to see what the impact would be if the government started to go down this road of politicizing charitable status. Petitioners want to see the House of Commons protect and preserve the application of charitable status rules on a politically and ideologically neutral basis, without discrimination on the basis of those values and to affirm the right of all Canadians to free expression.
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Context: House Hansard - 68 - May/10/22
Mr. Mark Gerretsen
  • May/10/22 1:55:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I can really get the passions of the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman going from time to time. I think that is where this comes from. There are issues that come up on a daily basis in the House during question period that Bloc members are extremely passionate about, and I do not understand why they would not use one of their two opposition days to bring forward one of those issues. I actually want to apologize to the Conservatives, because I usually stand here and criticize Conservatives for bringing forward motions that are not of substance. I quite often reference the NDP and the Bloc as parties that do bring forward motions of substance. I stand corrected, because the motion we are seeing from the Bloc today is by far one of the most outlandish attempts at politicizing an issue that I have seen. I do not understand the angle of it. I do not understand what exactly the Bloc is hoping to accomplish here. If this is so important to the Bloc, which I believe it is because it has used one of its days for it, the proper place to bring this would be to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. I sit on that committee, and have sat on that committee for the past three years. A Bloc member has been sitting on that committee since 2019, and never once has a member of the Bloc Québécois brought this issue up at PROC. Never once has a Bloc member said, “We need to study this issue about the prayer that we have at the beginning of the day and make a recommendation to the House.” For it never to come forward, and then for the Bloc to suddenly introduce it in one of its two precious opposition day motions, I find to be very perplexing. I do not understand where it is coming from on this. The member for La Prairie earlier made reference to the fact that Quebec used to have a prayer and then got rid of it. I thought that was a very interesting comment. I wish he would have provided the text of that prayer so we could compare it with the one that is said in this House at the beginning of the day. I wonder if there was a much more denominational undertone to it, toward a specific religion, or whether it was much more generic, like the one we have. It would have been great had he said that. My understanding is that although the Quebec National Assembly got rid of the prayer, the cross still exists in the National Assembly. If I understand correctly, and I could be wrong so I hope members in the Bloc would correct me, the cross used to be in the chamber. People would not move it outside of the building: they just moved it outside of the chamber, so the cross still exists. Even within the National Assembly, Quebec continues to have religious symbols. At the end of the day, in addition to the opportunity to bring this up at the proper committee, the Bloc could also have raised this during the standard procedural debate we are going to have. There is a requirement after every new Parliament is formed that, within a certain number of days, we have a debate on the standing procedures in the House. If my memory serves me correctly, not that I was here, but I heard that it was former prime minister Paul Martin who made sure that happened. It has not happened yet, and it has to happen before we recess in June. Therefore, there will be a whole day when Bloc members can bring up this particular point about the Standing Orders and how they are concerned about this particular part of the Standing Orders, in which case I would encourage them to do that. They are blowing an entire day today: an entire opportunity to bring forward the very important issues of Quebeckers that the Bloc Québécois, particularly, is passionate about. All they are really giving me is an opportunity to not pick on my Conservative friends across the way for one day. I see a number of them are clapping. In conclusion, I just cannot see the level of importance. I cannot understand why it was decided that this had to be debated and waste an entire day on it, rather than move forward on some of the very important issues that I know the Bloc Québécois cares about. I hope that later on during this debate, I will get an answer to that question.
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