44th Parl. 1st Sess.

September 20, 2022 10:00AM

Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Sep/20/22 7:14:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I disagree entirely with the member's comments. With respect to that destructive force, he underestimates the part his own political party has played. When he talks about institutions, one of the greatest institutions we have is Elections Canada, for example, and the way in which, in an apolitical fashion, it has attempted to engage Canadians in the democratic process. The Conservative Party undermined some of the issues dealing with Elections Canada in the sense of a fair election. When the member talks about the institution of Parliament, he claims that the NDP and Liberals working together undermines a sense of accountability. The party inside the House where I see the most resistance to modernizing the House of Commons is the Conservative Party of Canada. There are many things we can do by changing our Standing Orders to enable additional accountability. However, the Conservative Party consistently does nothing to see the modernization of parliamentary rules. During the pandemic, the member was critical because we had an extended period of time. What he does not make reference to is the opportunity we had to sit for the first time in a long time during the summer, in the month of July. During the time we sat, we had the opportunity for additional accountability, where members of the opposition were able to hold ministers to account, not just in one question and answer and then on to the next MP, but in a series of questions based on time, where we could see 10 second or one and a half minute questions. There have been opportunities for us to ensure there is a higher sense of accountability inside the House of Commons, but the real challenge has been to get the Conservative Party to recognize that, to support our institutions and to look at ways in which we can reform the House of Commons and the chamber, whether here or at our standing committees, as opposed to being a destructive force. If they are genuinely concerned about the democratic decline, first and foremost they have to accept some of the responsibility for that. As I was yesterday, I continue to be very much open to ways in which we can make this chamber more functional because, as I have argued in the past and will continue to argue, we should never take our democracy for granted here in Canada. There are things that we collectively, political partisanship aside, can do to ensure a higher sense of accountability. The member has concerns with respect to the media, which is a fundamental pillar of democracy. He takes objection to some of the manner in which subsidies are handed out and has said that we should not subsidize. We are very much concerned about fake news and indirectly, not with a political arm, are ensuring that some of our community and rural newspapers, and even those in urban centres, are able to maintain and support a media, which is so—

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