SoVote

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

Nov/14/22 12:02:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we request a recorded vote.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Nov/14/22 12:02:18 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-281

Pursuant to an order made on Thursday, June 23, the division stands deferred until Wednesday, November 16, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

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Hon. Mark Holland (Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Nov/14/22 12:02:45 p.m.
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moved: (a) until Friday, June 23, 2023, a minister of the Crown may, with the agreement of the House leader of another recognized party, rise from his or her seat at any time during a sitting, but no later than 6:30 p.m., and request that the ordinary hour of daily adjournment for a subsequent sitting be 12:00 a.m., provided that it be 10:00 p.m. on a day when a debate pursuant to Standing Order 52 or 53.1 is to take place, and that such a request shall be deemed adopted; (b) on a sitting day extended pursuant to paragraph (a), (i) proceedings on any opposition motion pursuant to Standing Order 81(16) shall conclude no later than 5:30 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday, 6:30 p.m. on a Monday or 1:30 p.m. on a Friday, on an allotted day for the business of supply, except pursuant to Standing Order 81(18)(c), (ii) after 6:30 p.m., the Speaker shall not receive any quorum calls or dilatory motions, and shall only accept a request for unanimous consent after receiving a notice from the House leaders or whips of all recognized parties stating that they are in agreement with such a request, (iii) motions to proceed to the orders of the day, and to adjourn the debate or the House may be moved after 6:30 p.m. by a minister of the Crown, including on a point of order, and such motions be deemed adopted, (iv) the time provided for Government Orders shall not be extended pursuant to Standing Orders 33(2), 45(7.1) or 67.1(2); (c) until Friday, June 23, 2023, (i) during consideration of the estimates on the last allotted day of each supply period, pursuant to Standing Orders 81(17) and 81(18), when the Speaker interrupts the proceedings for the purpose of putting forthwith all questions necessary to dispose of the estimates, (A) all remaining motions to concur in the votes for which a notice of opposition was filed shall be deemed to have been moved and seconded, the questions deemed put and recorded divisions deemed requested, (B) the Speaker shall have the power to combine the said motions for voting purposes, provided that, in exercising this power, the Speaker be guided by the same principles and practices used at report stage, (ii) a motion for third reading of a government bill may be made in the same sitting during which the said bill has been concurred in at report stage; (d) on Wednesday, December 14, 2022, Thursday, December 15, 2022, or Friday, December 16, 2022, a minister of the Crown may move, without notice, a motion to adjourn the House until Monday, January 30, 2023, provided that the House shall be adjourned pursuant to Standing Order 28 and that the said motion shall be decided immediately without debate or amendment; (e) on Wednesday, June 21, 2023, Thursday, June 22, 2023, or Friday, June 23, 2023, a minister of the Crown may move, without notice, a motion to adjourn the House until Monday, September 18, 2023, provided that the House shall be adjourned pursuant to Standing Order 28 and that the said motion shall be decided immediately without debate or amendment; and (f) notwithstanding the order adopted on Thursday, June 23, 2022, and Standing Order 45(6), no recorded division requested between 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 15, 2022 and the adjournment on Friday, December 16, 2022, and between 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 22, 2023 and the adjournment on Friday, June 23, 2023, shall be deferred, except for any recorded division requested in regard to a Private Members’ Business item, for which the provisions of the order adopted on Thursday, June 23, 2022, shall continue to apply.

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Hon. Mark Holland (Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Nov/14/22 12:03:55 p.m.
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He said: Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise to get an opportunity to speak to this motion. I want to start at the outset by thanking my colleagues, the hon. House leaders, for the areas in which we have been able to find co-operation. There have been a number of different areas in which we have been able to work constructively together. The intention of this motion is to be an expansion and not a reduction of that. I am going to speak very briefly to some of my concerns with respect to the legislative agenda we have and some of the challenges that currently exist with that, and then I am going to speak more broadly to the state of discourse and our engagement with one another in this place politically. It is my hope that this will provoke more dialogue among the parties to make clear what exactly our respective intentions are in terms of the number of speakers and length of time taken with each bill. It has been a source of frustration to not know how many speakers are going to be put up, specifically by the Conservatives, and that is, frankly, obstruction by stealth. I will give specific examples. Bill S-5, which this House voted for unanimously, took six days of House time just to get to committee. This is something that was voted on unanimously. More specifically, let us take a look at Bill C-9, which is a very technical bill on judges. That bill, again, was supported unanimously. However, when there were interpretation issues in the House and we asked for an additional 20 minutes so we did not need to spend an entire additional House day dealing with this bill, which was unanimously supported, that was rejected by the Conservatives. Although most times we have not been told how many speakers there will be, we have been told that the Conservatives want more speakers on this bill. This motion would provide the opportunity to do that. I have heard the hon. House leader for the Conservative Party indicate concern with committees. I share those concerns and want to work with him to make sure committees are in no way impeded and may conduct their business without interruption, so both committees and the House can do their respective work. I have just a couple of comments, though, because this is an inflection point and we have a choice as to the direction we take right now. If there is upset about sitting later hours, there are solutions. Simply give us the number of speakers and have a frank and honest conversation about how long is reasonable for a bill to take. Let us have that conversation understanding no one party here has a majority, which means no one party should be able to dictate to all the other parties that something does not move forward. It is totally fair to oppose something. It is totally fair to vote against it. It is totally fair to disagree with it vociferously. However, if a majority of the House wants to move forward, then the fair question is how many voices need to be heard from those who are not in the majority to allow the House to do its business. Giving no answer is not an acceptable response and is not something that can be worked with. Most reasonable people would see that. This is really a call or a provocation for a conversation. In that conversation, I want to invoke a dear friend, who was the deputy leader of the government in this place. His name was Arnold Chan. I go back to the speech Arnold gave as he was mustering the last of his energy in his last days of life to speak to this chamber about how we need to work with one another. Arnold was one of my best friends in the world, and watching him die was profoundly painful, but his words always echo in my ears. One of Arnold's chief frustrations was that this chamber, this place that was so important to him, was often reduced to just reading talking points with one another: us saying how wonderful we are and the other side saying how terrible we are, and them saying they are wonderful and us saying they are terrible. Of course, in that back-and-forth, the truth of the situation and the difficulty of what we are going through is lost. In difficult times, we lose the opportunity to genuinely hear each other. Let us be straight about where we are. These are the most difficult times the planet has faced since World War II. People across the world are scared. They are watching the price of their basic necessities of life rising, be they groceries, rent or any of a myriad things. They are watching a war in Ukraine. They are watching horrors in Iran. They are seeing climate change ravage their communities, and they are hungry for answers. The truth is that in really hard times, often we do not know all the answers. In fact, if any one of us was to stand in this House and say we know what the world is going to be in six months, we would be lying. We live in incredibly turbulent times, and I am looking forward to hearing the hon. House leader's speech soon. We live in a time where we have to be straight with each other about what those hard things are and what the solutions are. I really love New Orleans. I had the opportunity to go down there, and sometimes it is easier in another country to reflect on the state of their politics than it is on our own, but when I had an opportunity to talk to a young Black lady in a store about the state of being Black in America, how unjust it was and how hopeless she felt, she did not think that anybody was really speaking truthfully about the situation she and her community were facing. That makes me think of the people we represent on both sides of the aisle, who are suffering in so many different ways that we do not always have the answer to, whether it is somebody who walks into our office who is finding they cannot afford to pay rent or somebody who walks into our office who is facing the horror of some unimaginable terror that is happening in another part of the world. When we look at them and try to give them compassion and answers, too often we all, and I will own this, have been prone to exaggeration and to having more solutions than we actually have. However, what we do in that exaggeration, on both sides, is that we allow them to think we do not really see the picture for what it is. I will give a very specific example. On that same trip, when I walked into Studio Be, an art gallery of Black artists who are talking about the experience of being Black and the terrors they face, it was a deeply uncomfortable experience for me. It is not my country, and a lot of the horrors that were being written about are not happening to our citizens, but the injustice that has been visited upon Black people in our own country is very hard to look at and very hard to respond to. That place, though, met all of that injustice with such love, compassion, truth and forgiveness that it calls on all of us to do the same. We can yell at each other. We can deride each other, but there are old lessons that are being forgotten in that. We look at old wisdom from something like The Lord's Prayer, something we have said so many times. It says, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Let us think about that as a covenant, that we cannot move forward unless we can truly understand the suffering of somebody else and understand their position. I think, and I maybe I am Pollyanna to believe it, that we have to have more compassion for one another. I think that compassion, empathy and forgiveness are not weaknesses, but the bedrock foundation of civilization and the only things that have ever held us together. I think that in the darkest hours, and let us not lie to each other, we are in dark hours as our hospitals fill up with children, as we worry about whether key surgeries can move forward, and as we worry about the state of our planet, we need that compassion and empathy for one another, and we need the realness in our dialogue. Why do we need that realness? It is because, when we live in an environment of “gotcha” and playing games, we distort the truth. That same woman I talked to in a shop, who was talking about the horrible conditions that she felt existed for her community, told me the world was run by 12 people. She is a deeply intelligent woman, but she believed in conspiracies because people did not speak what was true and because they attempted to take an opportunity to play games with it. I look at the hon. House leader for the Conservatives, who is laughing right now, and I say to him— Hon. Andrew Scheer: Who is saying this? Hon. Mark Holland: Madam Speaker, exactly. I proclaim that I have been a hypocrite. When I was in opposition, the tone that I used and the way that I asked questions could have been different. I think I often asked the right questions in the wrong way. I do not have a problem acknowledging that the tenor and tone with which I approached issues needed to change. I have tried to address that, and I will continue to. All I am saying is that when we fight over the small things, the big things get hidden. Each of us knows that when we see and hear truth and when we distort it, exaggerate it and continue to play that game, it makes it feel to others that we do not see truth. It is not enough for us to see truth in private rooms. It is not enough for us to see truth in corridors. We have to speak it in a chamber like this. The question that we have to ask now is not what comma will come after our names, because in 100 years' time no one will read that Wikipedia entry. All of us, I dare say, will be forgotten, me included. However, it is up to us to meet the challenge of the time that we are in, and I think we have a lot to learn from each other. I am here today to say that the challenges that our country faces cannot be faced unless we listen to one another. I approach this in the same way. Let me go back to Remembrance Day. A long-time friend shared a story with me that I had never heard before from the Battle of the Somme. He talked about his grandfather. His grandfather saved not one, not two, not three but four Canadian soldiers, and as he was dragging the fourth soldier back, he was shot and killed. We have to ask this question: How many people would he have saved had his life not been taken? I think it is worth asking, for all of us, what was in his heart as he charged into certain danger. What was in his heart as he charged into certain danger was hope for a better world, gratitude for what he had and love for his fellow man. I do not think it is too much to ask of all of us, regardless of our differences, to approach this in the same way. When we approach the issues of our time with grievance and anger, it never works. We could do it, and we could talk about freedom. There is absolutely a freedom to being full of grievance, bitterness, anger and a feeling that we are not getting what we want and what we deserve, and we have a right to do that, but this has led to very dark places. I would submit that true freedom, actual freedom, is the ability to speak truth but also hear truth and be truly as we are. Evil does not hide in self-expression. Evil hides in the denial of truth. We are facing forces that would rip apart our democracies, and that is no exaggeration. If we are serious about saving liberal democracy, then I think it is time we return to the principles of the enlightened. In the enlightenment, the key and most powerful insight was the acknowledgement of what we do not know and the courage to use science and data to find out what is true. In this chamber, if we can come to know the problems of our day, meaning the enormous difficulties we have, while being honest about the challenges that are in front of us and being truthful about what the solutions might be, then we can be worthy of the incredible honour we have of being in this chamber. I would submit that the only way forward in this time is for us to figure that out. If we cannot figure it out in this chamber and build a bridge to one another with our differences here in the chamber, then how can we expect the country to heal? How can we expect our neighbours to find that bridge? I will end on this note. As we think of Remembrance Day and we think of battles fought against the Nazis and other evil regimes, the battle that we fight today is not across a trench or an ocean. It is not through barbed wire. It is in our own hearts. I had a conversation with a wonderful fellow, and it did not have anything to do with politics. I met him out in Kitchener. He runs a grocery store called Dutchie's. His name is Mike and he has courage. He said it used to be that when we saw something as ridiculous as a seven-dollar head of lettuce, a person would create a new business and could make a huge profit selling it at five dollars or four dollars. He said that people are tired and they have gone through so much. They do not want to take a chance or take a risk. They are afraid to hope. Humanity has gone through much darker hours. When we look at what happened in World War I when people were dealing with the Spanish flu, they longed to go back to the Victorian age, to the time of corsets and dinner parties. However, they could not have imagined the prosperity that lay before them in the 1920s. In the 1920s, when they were celebrating, they were rocked by the Great Depression, and then a world war and great darkness. They longed to go back to the 1920s, to a period of flapper girls and prohibition parties. Of course, they could not have imagined the prosperity that was about to greet them in the 1950s and 1960s. It is true, again, that with a period of great inflation and energy shortages at the end of the 1970s and leading into the early 1980s, people wanted to go back to the glory of the 1950s and 1960s. We always talk about going back, but we forget that if we do hard things and we continue to move forward, there lies a prosperity that we cannot imagine. That prosperity, I think, is going to be rooted in very different motivations than what we have seen before. Yes, people will still want to put food on the table. Yes, people will still want a roof over their heads. Yes, people will still want nice things. However, they want purpose. They want to wake up in the morning and believe that they are part of something bigger than just their lives. I think our goal, not just as a government but as a Parliament, is to dream with them, to hear their dreams and to listen to somebody like Mike, who is imagining a different future, trying to change the way the grocery industry works, trying to upend convention and taking chances and risks. For each of us, regardless of our political party, it is about saying he has it right. Taking a bet on our universe, taking a bet on good and taking a bet on the moral arc of history is what we should all be doing. We should not be stoking fear or amplifying grievances, but lifting up every person we see trying in these hard times. What does that have to do with extending hours? It has to do with what kind of debate we have in the chamber. It has to do with what kind of conversation we have with each other about the times we are in. Yes, we can be cynical. Yes, we can call each other names. Yes, we can write each other off. However, if we cannot figure it out, who is supposed to?

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Hon. Andrew Scheer (Regina—Qu'Appelle, CPC)

Nov/14/22 12:23:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I just want to assure the hon. member that my sarcastic laughter was not directed at him personally but at the party and government he represents. I appreciate the quotation from the Lord's Prayer. It is something we try to say in our household on a daily basis. As the member talked about forgiving trespasses, I would like to refer him to another part of Christian scriptures: the number of times that people ask for forgiveness in the gospels. Of course, Jesus, being the source of forgiveness and mercy, always forgives, but he always includes a very important phrase after granting forgiveness: “Go and sin no more.” That is the part the government House leader is missing. It is the sinning no more after asking for that forgiveness. We can all forgive him for his hypocrisy. He is a much different colleague today than when we first served together, as am I. I remember my first few years in the House and the hyper-partisanship that many new MPs have when they come to this place. Many do, over time, appreciate their colleagues on a personal level. However, when we are talking about all the things that the House leader talked about, such as disinformation, hatred and divisiveness, the reason I point out the hypocrisy of his Parliament is to tell him to look at his own side of the House. The Prime Minister openly questions whether certain Canadians should be tolerated. There are the lies that were told about the invocation of the Emergencies Act, which are now being proven to be such at the hearing. Then there are all the statements we heard about who was asking for the Emergencies Act. They are all being proven to be false. Do members remember the famous expression we heard when the Prime Minister said the allegations in The Globe and Mail article regarding the SNC-Lavalin scandal were false? All of those were proven to be untrue. That is where the role of the opposition comes in. We use the House's time to draw out those untruths and falsehoods. We use the House's time in a variety of ways to expose to Canadians the misinformation they are being given from their own government. There is a wonderful thing that happens often in this place when the government tables legislation or the public accounts. Every opposition party ruthlessly scrutinizes it. The time in this House is part of that, and by the government—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Nov/14/22 12:25:54 p.m.
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The member will have time to make a speech. I would like to give the House leader an opportunity to comment.

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Hon. Mark Holland

Nov/14/22 12:26:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I completely agree that I have made mistakes; I am not without sin. I try to talk directly about those things. However, I would disagree with something very important the member opposite said. I have yet to meet a man or woman who stops making errors in sin. Is he that person in front of me? I do not think that is what he is saying, but I do think the fundamental lesson is whether we learn from that. It is not whether we make a mistake. It is whether we atone for that mistake, whether we are truthful about that mistake and whether we move forward. Nothing exists other than the moment we are in right now and the conversation that I am having. I do not believe that I am coming across with grievance. If the member wants me to be more specific, let me talk to Bill C-281. The member for Northumberland—Peterborough South, who was just speaking, talked about his son, the type of world he wanted to have and why he was supporting the bill. I do not deny that those are his motivations. I do not deny that is what he is trying to do. The member opposite can vociferously disagree with my approach, but surely he cannot disagree that, like him, I am a person of character trying to make a difference in the world and in this country. I know how hard it is to get elected. I know how difficult it is to be an MP. When we do not talk with compassion to one another, then people do not treat us with compassion. If they do not think we are hon. members, they will not listen to what we have to say.

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Mrs. Claude DeBellefeuille (Salaberry—Suroît, BQ)

Nov/14/22 12:27:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am somewhat surprised by the turn today's debate has taken. I note that the government House leader gave a spiritual and somewhat philosophical speech about how he sees things. I see signs of his personal growth. I heard him quote the Bible. I realize that it may be pleasant to hear ourselves talk and share ideas, but we must not forget what today's debate is about. We are debating a motion that essentially muzzles the opposition. I want to speak about truth, but who holds the truth? I do not claim to know the truth or to believe that my colleagues' notion of the truth is better or worse than mine. I am seeking a guarantee for the exercise of democracy, and democracy is exercised in debates between a government and a very strong opposition, which makes it possible for the government to excel and be even better. I missed the first two minutes of my colleague's speech, but I would like to hear him explain why we need today's Motion No. 22, under Government Business, to extend sitting hours. I want to talk about the facts. The facts are that 36 bills have been introduced, 19 bills, or 52%, have passed all stages of the House; three are at the Senate, 16 have received royal assent, seven are in committee and 10 are at second reading. Personally, I think that it pretty good. I do not understand this obsession with extending sitting hours and saying that we need this because Parliament is paralyzed, when in fact the opposite is true. I would like the government to explain to me, with supporting evidence, why we are debating this motion today.

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Hon. Mark Holland

Nov/14/22 12:30:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. My hon. colleague opposite is a very reasonable person. She is her party's whip, and when I was the Liberal Party whip, it was a great privilege to work with her because I found her to be extremely reasonable. Today, I am taking the same approach and doing things in the same spirit. Unfortunately, with the Conservative Party, it is often absolutely impossible to obtain basic information, such as the number of speakers who will rise when debating a bill or the time that the party needs to pass a bill. When that sort of information is not available, it is completely impossible for me to manage our legislative agenda. We then need to get a majority vote on a motion to extend sitting hours. If not for that and if we could have a reasonable conversation, then I would have no need at all to extend the sitting hours. I understand that this raises concerns about committees and the use of our administration. I understand all that very well, and I want to work with all of the parties on that issue.

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Mr. Peter Julian (New Westminster—Burnaby, NDP)

Nov/14/22 12:31:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is true that Canadians are living through exceptionally difficult times. They are having difficulty putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their heads. They have the challenges of climate change. We have war in Europe. These are troubling times and, as members of Parliament, we have a responsibility to step up for our constituents and for Canadians. As members are well aware, the member for Burnaby South and the NDP caucus have pushed for doubling of the GST credit. We have pushed for rental supports for those who are struggling to keep a roof over their head and for a national dental care plan for those families that want to ensure their children have access to dental care. These have been our contributions in the House of Commons to ensure Canadians are being supported during these very difficult times. However, the reality is that we have to work longer and we have to work harder because the job is not done. Canadians need those supports. This Parliament has to step up and that means we have to work longer and harder. That is the reality. I am a bit troubled by some of the comments from my Conservative and Bloc colleagues that seem to indicate they are not in support of working longer hours and working harder at a time when Canadians are working longer and harder. Why would any member of Parliament object to working longer hours and working harder on behalf of constituents at this difficult time?

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Hon. Mark Holland

Nov/14/22 12:33:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an excellent question and we do have to be sensitive to the additional strain that we are asking members to take on, but it is the times we are in. This is one of the reasons why the virtual provisions are so important. However, as a call to members, I have an instinct about how people make decisions, and it is not about who tears somebody down the most effectively, but who has the best ideas and is coming forward with the greatest spirit of trying to make transformation and change.

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Hon. Andrew Scheer (Regina—Qu'Appelle, CPC)

Nov/14/22 12:34:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will use the first few moments of my remarks to continue with the point I was making, because it really is astounding to hear that member. On a personal level, as House leaders, we all get to know each other a little. We have extra meetings throughout the week to talk about the business of the House, things like the Board of Internal Economy and other aspects about the place. I have always found that my counterpart on the government bench has been decent to work with, and I want to say that off the bat. We all come from different political perspectives, we are all human beings here, and I do appreciate that about him. However, to listen to a representative from the government talk about misinformation, divisiveness and the battle for the heart and soul of Canadians, this is a government that has been caught telling blatant falsehoods time and time again. I want to share with the hon. member that when I referenced the scriptural part about “Go and sin no more” would I ever presume to hold myself up to that standard. I can assure him that I make no pretensions whatsoever. However, I will let the member in on a little secret. In a couple of hours we will have question period, and we will hear misinformation and falsehoods coming from the government side. We will hear the Prime Minister deny that he has a role in inflation. We have a Prime Minister who has directly caused the worst inflation Canadians have had in 40 years, and on a daily basis he gets up and he denies that. He gets up and tries to say that it is all these external factors, that it is kind of like the weather, that inflation is just happening to us, so we better bundle up, add another layer and shove some twenties in our pockets as those prices will get us if we are not looking carefully. It is just nonsense. We know that his money printing and deficits caused the Bank of Canada to bankroll his out-of-control spending, a good chunk of which had nothing to do with COVID. That is why we have inflation, but we do not hear that. Instead, we hear misinformation and falsehoods, with the government trying to blame everybody else for the inflation we see. There is an expression many people are probably very aware of, which goes something along the lines of “Your poor planning does not constitute an emergency on my part.” The government House leader referenced a couple of examples of legislation that his own government is responsible for the delay. He talked about Bill C-9, which sat on the Order Paper for six months before the government called it. When it did call it, the Liberals were surprised that members wanted to speak to it, that they wanted to point out some of its deficiencies. They do not like that. The member also talked about Bill S-5 needing six days of debate, as if six days is a long time. Bill S-5 is comprehensive legislation that would amend several acts, has a whole bunch of new regulations as it relates to the chemical industry and all kinds of interrelated aspects. Members of Parliament need to draw out, in their time in the House, some of the flaws in that bill to raise awareness. Many stakeholders and industry groups will be affected by that legislation. When we come to this place, we do that due diligence and we take our time to highlight that. We allow time for people who are affected by the legislation to react, to educate their members or their colleagues or to educate us. Sometimes we start debating legislation and all of a sudden our agenda gets booked by people wanting to meet with us to tell us what the impact would be if the legislation is or is not passed, and all that takes time. The government does not give every single Canadian a heads up as to what it is doing. There is no daily Canada Gazette email to Canadians that says that in four or five months this is what the government will be doing so let it know what they think. There is a small notice period where the government tells the House what it is going to do and then tables it at first reading, and often we are on to the second reading debate the very next day. Many Canadians are getting that information for the very first time, and it takes time for people to inform their members of Parliament as to how they will be affected. Acting as if six days in the House before a bill gets to committee is an inordinately long period of time is ridiculous, especially when we consider that two of those days were one-hour debates. The government called the debate for second reading on short days. In fact, if I am not mistaken, the NDP critic for the legislation on Bill S-5 had to wait until the third day to conclude remarks because of that. If the government is saying that it does not want to listen to the NDP members give speeches, I have some affinity for that and some sympathy, but I do not think it is proper to ram through a motion like this and, as a result, not allow for enough time for NDP members to have their say. I certainly believe in hearing all points of view and all voices before the House takes a decision, so this is just a completely false and bogus argument altogether. There is nothing to it; there is no justification for it. What is it akin to? The government House leader spoke a lot about the need for the House to get things done. I think a lot of Canadians would agree with that. They see us in this chamber. We know the issues that are affecting them on a daily a basis and they want some action. They want their elected representatives to tackle those issues. However, they also do not want the government to have a completely unfettered hand. Every democracy tries to put in place not only mechanisms for decisions to be made, but mechanisms for those who oppose those decisions to, at the very least, have an impact and to limit the unfettered power that the executive branch may have. In Canada, we have some checks and balances. Other countries have more. Other countries make the inability to get things done a feature of their system. Many people might look to the United States and see a very complicated process that takes a lot of time and requires a political party to have control in all three branches of the government with respect to both houses, congress and the senate, and the presidency to really make ambitious changes. They might look at that and say it is a flaw, which it may very well be at times. The system may have been designed to make it difficult to get things done. The Canadian system was designed to make it easier for the government to implement its agenda, but it is not without checks and balances in and of itself. We have a second chamber in our Parliament, the Senate, that provides many of the same rights and privileges that many members of Parliament have. It goes through the same process. Once a bill leaves the House and goes to the Senate, it has its three readings. It has committee study. There have been occasions in Canadian history where the Senate has held up government legislation when acting as that kind of check. The calendar and the daily program is also a check on the government's power. The Prime Minister cannot come in and start moving legislation, have it rubber-stamped and sail it through. The government has to prioritize. It has to look at the calendar and the number of sitting days and prioritize its legislation. If it brings something in that the opposition has no intention of supporting, because it is poorly drafted or will have terrible consequences, then it has to understand that the House will take longer to pass that kind of legislation, which will have an impact on other bills it wants to pass. Therefore, by the government giving itself the power to extend these sittings, it really does take away a very important check on the unfettered power of the Prime Minister. It is going to weaken the ability for the House of Commons to put the brakes on some of these terrible ideas we see coming from the government side. The Conservatives will make no apology for fighting the government's inflation-causing agenda. Yes, we absolutely will go through pieces of legislation to ruthlessly scrutinize whether they will add to the cost of government, because we know the cost of government is driving up the cost of living. There is a direct correlation between the massive deficit spending that the Prime Minister has put Canadians through over the past years and the record-high prices Canadians are paying at the grocery store and the fuel pump. Therefore, every time the government brings in legislation, that is our first and foremost lens. The Conservatives get out the sharp pencils and the extra scraps of paper and we start to ruthlessly scrutinize it to see if it will add to the cost of government, if it will grow the obligation the state has to pay out of taxpayer funds or if it will add extra compliance costs to industries that are already suffering under some of the biggest regulatory and tax burdens among our major trading partners. It takes time to do that. It takes time to not just do that research, but meet with those stakeholders. I have been a shadow minister responsible for infrastructure. Among my colleagues today, I see many shadow ministers from a wide variety of portfolios. I know that I speak for all of us when I say that, when we get legislation, our speech in the House of Commons, the 10 or 20 minutes of analysis we provide, is just a small fraction of the work we do. We instantly start meeting with the people who will be affected by the legislation, to hear directly from them. The government talked about Bill S-5. I have never been in the plastics industry, but I sure as heck know a lot of people who are, and they know exactly how this legislation would affect them. I know people who work in various aspects of manufacturing, distributing and retail who would all be affected by some of the regulatory burdens in Bill S-5. We have to meet with them, take what one groups says and weigh it off against what another group says, and use our intelligence and wisdom to sift through all of that information before we make a determination as to whether or not we are going to vote yes or no. Debate in the House of Commons acts as a check on the government, preventing it from being able to ram through its agenda, and that is really important in today's context because the Canadian people have refused to give the Liberal Party a majority government in two elections. We all know that is very disappointing to the Prime Minister. He was hoping that an election might have cleansed his reputation after the corruption his government was involved in came to light with the SNC-Lavalin scandal and his own personal acts of racism, when he committed racist acts by putting on blackface so many times he has lost count. We know the Prime Minister was hoping to get a majority government to have a palate cleanse of those things and to redeem his reputation, but Canadians did not give him that. Canadians do not want this party to ram through its agenda. They want those checks and balances to make sure there is a lot of oversight and a lot of scrutiny on what the government is doing. Extending the hours on a selective basis is going to allow the government to ram through more of its agenda. It is trying to avoid that accountability by stealth. It is also very hypocritical. I am not using unparliamentary language when I quote the government House leader who called himself a hypocrite. I have to say that he has some justification for that when it comes to the government's excuse for this measure. He is talking about the fact that there is not enough time to get through the legislation when it was the party that prorogued just to get out of a corruption investigation scandal. For anybody watching who might not be up to speed on all the fancy words we use in this place, proroguing is kind of like a big reset button. It is like cancelling the rest of the House's sittings for a period of time, and it resets everything. It is like a big eraser on a whiteboard of all the bills. The government is saying it has to now sit late to enact all of the bills that had been completely cancelled and had to start from scratch. We did not do that. The opposition party cannot prorogue Parliament. There is only one person who can, and that is the Prime Minister. That is what he did. There is only one person who can call elections in this country, and that is the Prime Minister. The previous Parliament had a very similar makeup to what it does now. We had an election last year just because the Prime Minister decided that he wanted one, just like when he prorogued Parliament during the WE group of companies investigation. Do members remember that? In the early days of the pandemic, when Canadians were still suffering through some of the harshest lockdowns around the world and being told they could not visit their loved ones in hospitals, when children were being told that they could not go to school, and when young and healthy athletes were being told they were not allowed to play sports or finish their year, what did the Prime Minister do? The Prime Minister never misses an opportunity to take advantage and reward his friends. While Canadians were focused on their health and trying to save their businesses after these punitive restrictions prevented them from earning a living, while Canadians were all focused on the very horrifying impact on their lives in so many ways, what did the Prime Minister do? He took the time to take out the chequebook that is written on the taxpayers' bank account and reward his friends at the WE group of companies by giving them an untendered half a billion dollars of Canadian taxpayers' money. When he got caught, he pressed the big reset button. While that investigation was going on, he took out the big whiteboard eraser and— An hon. member: Oh, oh!

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Nov/14/22 12:48:55 p.m.
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If I may interrupt the honourable member, I would ask that we please have order.

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Noise/conversations/heckling, interrupting Member speaking

Mr. Mark Gerretsen

Nov/14/22 12:49:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on a point of order, I am really hoping that you will encourage the member to stay on the subject of the motion. He seems to be widely off the subject right now.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Nov/14/22 12:49:19 p.m.
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The hon. member knows there is quite a lot of latitude in how these speeches go. The hon. opposition House leader has the floor.

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Hon. Andrew Scheer

Nov/14/22 12:49:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, for my hon. colleague, I am establishing the motive behind this motion today. It may take some time, because the government does not like to talk about its motives, especially when it has been involved in so much corruption. As I was saying, that is when the government took out the big whiteboard eraser and prorogued Parliament. It did so to avoid the kind of scrutiny that was coming out of the investigation into the WE scandal. Last summer, Parliament was exercising its authority to get information and documents for Canadians and trying to get to the bottom of the Winnipeg lab scandal. Do members remember when there were two researchers at a lab in Winnipeg who were closely tied to the Communist Party in Beijing? They were very quickly escorted out of the country and sent back, and we wanted to know why. What was going on at that lab? Why were these two researchers, who were so closely connected to the Communist Party in Beijing, involved in this type of research here, and what led to their sudden dismissal and deportation? We were trying to get to the bottom of that. Not only did the government refuse to abide by legitimate and procedurally proper motions passed by the committee and by the House of Commons, but it also took the unprecedented step of taking the Speaker to court. It sued the Speaker of the House of Commons. That is a role I once held. I cannot imagine any—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Nov/14/22 12:51:03 p.m.
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Does the hon. member for Salaberry—Suroît wish to rise on a point of order?

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Mrs. Claude DeBellefeuille

Nov/14/22 12:51:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thought it was time for questions and comments.

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Hon. Andrew Scheer

Nov/14/22 12:51:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would be happy to answer questions at the end of my speech. Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: When will that be? Hon. Andrew Scheer: Madam Speaker, we will get there. We wanted to get to the bottom of that. I held the role of Speaker. I cannot imagine something like that happening by any other prime minister I have ever served with or come to know over the years, except for this one. He did not like it when the democratically elected representatives of the people demanded to get to the bottom of a scandal that impacted every single Canadian. If it is related to public health, it impacts us. Our national security impacts every single Canadian. We have the right to come to this place and demand those types of answers. Every political party agreed, and it takes a lot to unite opposition parties in this chamber. We are fundamentally different than the Bloc Québécois. We believe in a united Canada, in our history and our future. There are a lot of areas of concern on which no common ground has been found with the Bloc Québécois. The New Democrats and the Conservatives disagree on a whole lot of things. We believe in free markets and individual liberty. The NDP believes in central planning and government control. Therefore, when we have something that units the Conservatives, the Bloc and the New Democrats, and we all come together to we demand accountability and transparency, it means something. That is significant. Providing Canadians with openness and transparency is the disinfectant that the Prime Minister used to like to talk about. We do not hear him say that a lot. He used to like saying that sunshine is the best disinfectant, and many Canadians took him at his word, but we do not hear him say that too often now. He has drawn the blinds, closed the drapes and gone into the darkest corners of the house to avoid that openness and transparency. Therefore, rather than having that long-drawn-out court fight, as he started to feel the political pain from suing the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Prime Minister called an election. Do members know what happens to government legislation when they call an election? It kills it all. Here we are today, halfway through November, and now the government has suddenly realized that it has a time issue on its hands. It wants to get more and more of its agenda rammed through, so that is the motivation behind this move. There is one other piece when it comes to motivation that we must make sure that Canadians are aware of and that is the real reason behind this move. Something has been going on since September that the government really does not enjoy and that is what is happening at committees. At committees, the opposition parties have developed a working relationship where we can expose Liberal corruption and mismanagement. That is very unpleasant for the government because at committee we have been getting to the bottom of these kinds of scandals. At committee, we have found out that the government spent $54 million on an app that experts say could have been done for $250,000 over the course of a weekend. When we found out who got paid, the companies the government had on that itemized list, we did what many people would do. We called the companies to ask if they had been paid for the work. Some of those companies are saying they never did the work and they never got paid, yet the government put their name on a list to try to justify the spending. We are finding that out at committee and the Liberals do not like it. We are finding at committee some of the information as it relates to some of these scandals that I have already mentioned, with Winnipeg labs being one of them. The point is that at committee, members of Parliament are drawing out and exposing Liberal corruption and that scandal. How does work at committees relate to this motion today? As members know, the House of Commons gets first dibs on parliamentary resources. Therefore, when the House of Commons sits late, translators and IT workers have to serve the House of Commons. This is the primary chamber of Canada's parliamentary democracy, and when they extend hours they take resources away from committees. That is what this is actually all about: killing accountability by stealth and using this bogus excuse of time management as a rationale for diverting resources away from committee. Members do not need to take my word for it. The best indication of future behaviour is past behaviour, and there were outcomes of a motion similar to that we are debating here today. For a bit of context, the government did this back in May of last year. It brought forward a very similar motion. I will read a headline from the Hill Times. It said, “Stretched thin: Resources to support committees strained amid virtual format, late-night sittings”. The article continued, “A total of 13 parliamentary committee meetings were cancelled last week, with MPs citing limited support resources as the main cause.” The last time they moved this same motion it had a direct and devastating impact on the ability of committees to get to the bottom of Liberal corruption and Liberal scandals. That is what this is actually about, using this type of excuse to draw resources away from where the Liberals do not control the agenda to where they do. In the House the government gets to set the agenda and it gets to call government business. Other than on opposition days, the government gets to tell members of Parliament, every day, what we debate. If we would like to debate something else, we have to wait until one of our precious few days to do it. We cannot propose government legislation. We are not the government. The government controls all of that here, but it does not control it at committees. Committees are masters of their own domain. Even though the government would like the ethics committee and the public accounts committee to just rubber stamp all its decisions, hard-working Conservative MPs are using those valuable resources and those opportunities to expose the Liberal corruption and the mismanagement. That is why the Liberals are bringing forward this motion today. Again, rigging the rules of the parliamentary calendar would be like in a sports contest. If one team was worried that they might not get to score enough points, then they unilaterally decide that when they had the ball the clock would not run. The Grey Cup is coming up in Regina, and I hope the Speaker is able to make it out. It is going to be a fantastic— Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: Go, Bombers. Hon. Andrew Scheer: Madam Speaker, I could put up with all the other heckling, Mr. Speaker, but when the member for Winnipeg North says, “Go, Bombers”, I have to react to that and ask if that is parliamentary. I am pretty sure that should get him ejected from the chamber. In a football context, imagine if the Bombers got the ball and they tried to unilaterally tell the referees they were not going to run the clock while they had the ball. It would not be fair. It is not part of the game. It is not part of how the dynamic works. To have a situation mid-session where, all of a sudden, the Liberals were going to rig the clock, rig the calendar, to help them ram through more of their legislation, hoping to exhaust Conservative MPs from using our time in the House to make these points. It is not just about time, when the government counts the number of hours or days when the debate is actually going on. That is just part of the picture. We can think of many examples where, thanks to the debate taking some time, flaws in the bills were exposed. I can think of the medical assistance in dying bill that the chamber has debated in several Parliaments now. I can appreciate the goodwill from members on all sides to try to get aspects of that right, and to put in proper protections for vulnerable Canadians. It was because it took time to go through that many people expressed their concerns and identified flaws in the legislation, saying that vulnerable Canadians, people with mental health issues, young Canadians and our veterans would be more susceptible. They may fall through the cracks and may have this type of medical action taken, maybe without their full consent or by catching them at a vulnerable time. Conservatives used that time to help expose it and inform Canadians. As a result, we saw many disability groups and other types of groups become more engaged and ultimately try to make the bill better when it did get to committee. There are lots of examples I could run through. Thanks to the fact that we had more time in the House, not just time in terms of hours of the day or number of speeches given, but literally days off the calendar, it gave those industry groups, stakeholder groups and people affected by the legislation more time to run through the bill and inform their members of Parliament. Therefore, before the bill even came to committee there was already a plan in place to try to fix the deficiencies. Right now we have Bill C-11 in the Senate. It is a massive expansion of the government's power to regulate the Internet and control what Canadians could see and say online. If the government had had its way, it would have sailed through all stages and it would have been law by now. However, it was because we took extra time to debate it that more Canadians realized that this would have a massive negative impact on Canadians' abilities to express themselves freely. We were able to hear from content creators, who are very famous people with their own YouTube followings and social media presences. They talked to individual MPs and said that, as Canadian content creators, Bill C-11 would have a negative impact on them. They did that because we gave them that time to do so. Rather than seeing the number of days as a problem, the government should see it as an opportunity and welcome it. What the government does has an impact on every single Canadian and I, for one, hope that it would want to get that right. That goal is actually good government not just Liberal priorities being passed. If it should come to light that there is a flaw in a bill or unintended consequences, it should welcome that the same way that a small business owner does who hears from one of their staff that the way they operate is making them lose money or annoying customers. A good small business owner wants to hear that. Any business owner wants to hear that. I want to hear from my own family if there are certain things we do that have a negative impact on one of my kids or my spouse. We want to hear that. We want to have a good family environment, and business owners want to have successful operations with happy employees and happy customers. We should welcome that. When Conservatives say they want another day of debate or we want to talk about this a little bit longer, the government should say that is great and it wants to hear what we have to say and the constructive feedback. The government House leader spoke at great length about this type of thing, encouraging conversations, encouraging feedback and critiques and admitting that the government does not get it right all the time. That is why it is so hypocritical to hear a House leader talk about all this context while he is putting through a motion that is going to assist the government to ram through its agenda at an even greater pace. That is why Conservatives are opposed to this piece of legislation. We are in favour of good government, we are in favour of good legislation and we will do our part. The government continuously ignores the feedback from Canadians. When Canadians are saying they do not want record-high inflation and to stop the printing presses, stop the deficit spending and stop borrowing money to throw it into an economy that drives up prices, it is not listening. We have to be that voice. It is our constitutional role to do that. We actually have a moral obligation as the official opposition to do that. We are not going to be cowardly or apologetic just because the government is frustrated with its timelines. To close, it is so difficult to hear a Liberal member of Parliament, the government House leader, talk about cultivating a climate of respect and talk about cordial and constructive conversations when his leader, the Liberal Prime Minister, speaks with such contempt for anybody who disagrees with him, pitting Canadian against Canadian and dividing us. Remember the government's reaction during the pandemic when many Canadians wanted to make their own health care choices and make their own determination for themselves as to what medicines they put in their body? The reaction from the government was that it forced people to choose between keeping their jobs and taking a medical treatment that they may not have been comfortable with. That does not sound very constructive or respectful to me. Then the Prime Minister openly asked if they should even tolerate these people. That is the type of language we hear horrible dictators use against segments of their population that they would rather do without. We saw the contempt that he had for those who came to Ottawa to fight for their freedoms. He invoked an Emergencies Act that had never been used in Canadian history. By the way, now it is coming out how flimsy the excuse was for doing that, as police entity after police entity, from the Ottawa police to the Ontario Provincial Police are all saying that they did not ask for it and that existing laws were sufficient to do the work that they were asked to do. We have a Prime Minister who insults, demonizes and bullies. The government House leader talked about the impact that type of toxic environment has had on its own family, yet he sits in a caucus where many members on this side witnessed the Prime Minister get up out of his seat, walk over and bully a former Black female member of Parliament who was forced to leave politics. She said that one of the reasons she was leaving politics when she did was the personal treatment that the Prime Minister inflicted upon her. The Prime Minister fired the first female indigenous justice minister. What did he fire her for? She would not go along with his corruption. She had the audacity to stand in her place and say no. As the former minister of justice and the attorney general, she had a higher obligation to the law than to her political master. He fired her. The government House leader has no problem sitting beside the Prime Minister and supporting the Prime Minister in all he does. It is a bit rich. The reason the opposition party does not put a lot of stock in his words is that he is clearly quite comfortable with the toxic behaviour that his own Liberal leader has put his own colleagues through. Since it is a massive undermining of a very important check on the government's ability to ram through its agenda, because of the hypocrisy of a government that has so mismanaged its own timetable and its own calendar and because of the direct impact that this motion would have on committees, Conservatives cannot support this motion. Since we are hopeful that some of what the government House leader said may have been sincere, we are hoping that they may support an amendment to specifically protect the very important work that committees are doing. I move: That the motion be amended, in paragraph (a), by replacing the words “and that such a request shall be deemed adopted” with the words “and, provided that if the Clerk of the House personally guarantees that there would be no consequential cancellation or reduction of the regularly scheduled committee meeting resources for that day, the request shall be deemed adopted”.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Nov/14/22 12:51:22 p.m.
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No, there is no time limit on this speech. The hon. opposition House leader.

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