SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 211 - Jun/12/23

Jun/12/23 12:16:57 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-33

Mr. Speaker, I agree. Do not take it from me; it is the leader of the Conservative Party who has publicly been telling Canadians that he is going to filibuster and delay and cause havoc here in the House of Commons, instead of focusing on the country's business and on what Canadians need and deserve. This is an important bill for our supply chain. If hon. colleagues have any objection to some provisions of the bill, that is great; that is what the House of Commons debates are for and that is what committees debates are for. However, this is just to delay for the sake of delaying and just to filibuster for the sake of being unhappy about the fact that members of different parties are working together. What is wrong with that? When we see members from different parties working to advance the interests of Canadians, that is what Canadians expect.

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Context: House Hansard - 211 - Jun/12/23

The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Jun/12/23 10:04:27 p.m.
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I am sorry. There is no quorum call during these debates, and there are quite a few people online at this point. The hon. parliamentary secretary.

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Context: House Hansard - 211 - Jun/12/23

Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Jun/12/23 10:04:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this is now the second time we see that Conservative members do not understand the rules. They stand on a point of order when they know that, after 6:30 p.m., quorum cannot be called. It is very rude for members opposite to interrupt a member's speech in order to ask for a quorum call when they know full well they cannot do so. I would ask the indulgence of the Conservative Party members to understand that they cannot call quorum and to allow members to continue with their remarks uninterrupted. I was trying to emphasize that a clear message was sent in the last election, not only to the Liberal Party but also to opposition parties. This message was that in order to pass anything through the House of Commons in a minority situation, one needs the co-operation of at least one opposition party. Without that, one cannot accomplish anything. The Conservative Party is very much on the record saying they do not support this party being in government. Its members are going out of their way to play a role as a destructive force in every way to prevent legislation and motions from ultimately being passed. A good example of that is when the leader of the Conservative Party, just last week, prior to coming into the House indicated to the media and anyone who wanted to hear that he was going to speak until the Prime Minister withdrew budgetary measures. It lasted four hours; the vote ended up taking place anyway, because of the rules. In my mind, this amplified the Conservative Party of Canada's approach to dealing with issues that come to the floor of the House of Commons. As a member of Parliament now for over a decade, one of the things I have recognized is that it is exceptionally hard, if not impossible, to make substantive changes to the Standing Orders unless one is prepared to take a strong stand. This is because getting that consensus is virtually impossible. I sat in on PROC meetings and listened to all sorts of discussions taking place. I guess I would say that I am a frustrated parliamentarian who recognizes that we need to modernize the rules of the House of Commons. There are changes that are necessary. After every election, we are actually afforded the opportunity, as individual members, as parliamentarians, to share concerns on rule changes we would like to see. I recall standing up not that long ago, I believe it was last year, when we had that debate inside the chamber, and I talked about some of the rules I would like to see changed. I would like to see more debate time, for example, and I set in process a way in which that could be accommodated. Other members talked about different forms of rules and changes, such as dual chambers and so forth. There have been both on-the-record and off-the-record discussions among members of all political parties. I was actually very pleased when, back in March 2020, we had a consensus to look at ways in which we could accommodate the pandemic and allow Parliament to continue. There was a very positive attitude, where opposition parties of all stripes worked with the government and where the government worked with opposition parties. We came up with a system that has clearly demonstrated that even in a worldwide pandemic, the House of Commons can continue and be effective. We are able to deal with the issues that concern Canadians day in, day out. There are many things that took place during the pandemic that I would suggest would be of great benefit in terms of modernizing the House of Commons. Not all Conservatives within the House of Commons would balk at the idea of having the voting application completely in its hybrid form, as the government House leader himself pointed out when he brought forward the legislation. Like him, I too have heard many positive things about the hybrid format. When I posed a question to the member who spoke just before me, asking whether they do or do not support the voting application, the member's response in essence was that if there were a sunset clause, they would support the motion in its entirety. That is what he implied. I actually repeated what he implied as he was there, and he nodded in the affirmative. He said, “Absolutely.” This is mixed messaging. On the one hand, the Conservative Party is prepared to continue doing what we are doing for the next couple of years. We are committed to continue to work with opposition members, particularly the New Democrats, who have expressed an interest in listening to what Canadians said back in 2021 and making this Parliament work, which means we could be going well into 2025. The Conservatives are saying that as the official opposition, if we give them the sunset clause, they will accept it. That tells me that they do support what is here. Their problem seems to be that they want us to say that it would be reaffirmed after the next election. After the next election, the standing order could be withdrawn. I suggest that once this resolution or this motion is passed and adopted by the House, as I anticipate and hope that it will be, we are not going to see even a Conservative majority government withdraw it. It is not because it is to the advantage of one party over another, depending on whether someone is in opposition or in government. I do not believe that for a moment. That is the reason I posed the question. Having been a parliamentarian for over 30 years now, I know that most of my years were actually in the opposition benches. I understand the importance of opposition tools that are utilized in order to hold a government accountable. That is why I said to give me a tangible example of something within this motion that will take one of those tools away, and explain what it is. Some members say it is ministerial accountability. I can appreciate the concern about ministerial accountability, but it has a lot more to do with the personality of the minister than anything else. When I was in opposition and I approached a minister, I was often told to check with their staff or call their office. Some ministers would actually sit down and chat, I suspect, or pick up the phone, depending on the situation. I do not believe ministerial accessibility is lost. Every member of this House is afforded the opportunity to file four questions. Once those questions are asked, I think it is 45 days before they are answered. I know; I table a lot of these. I think I am well into the thousands of questions, and they will get a response from the ministers. They talk about ministerial accountability. Well, thousands of questions have been answered now. When was the last time we heard a minister or a parliamentary secretary answer a question virtually? We see that the answers are being provided from the floor of the House. People may say, “What about the future?” I remember that when I was sitting in opposition, we would be counting the number of question periods in which one of the ministers in the Harper government was not showing up to answer any questions, and it went for days and days, going into weeks, going past months. Ministerial accessibility is not really an issue. I would suggest that it is not a tool that is going to make members more ineffective. At the very least, it would not prevent opposition, because opposition members will use the absence of a minister who does not show up inside the chamber as a reason for questioning that particular minister, and that has happened for years. I do not think ministerial accessibility has anything to do with it. We hear about some of the benefits that are being proposed in the hybrid system. I am a big fan of the voting application. I believe that the voting application is probably the single greatest change that we have seen in generations. An hon. member: In 152 years. Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: Madam Speaker, I do not know if we had the technology back then, but I can tell members that when Canada was formed, Hansard did not exist. Hansard did exist in other parliaments, but not here in Canada. It took a few years before we actually got Hansard. I would suggest that a change of that nature was very important. It provided a lot more accountability, because when a member said something in the House, it was actually recorded. Prior to that, it was more of a secret club of sorts, and I suspect that when Hansard was brought in back then, we might have seen some members not necessarily supporting it, but it enhanced our democracy and accountability. We could go to a few decades after that, when we saw televised debates. Television changed the way in which politicians responded to questions and to debates themselves. I like to think that it contributed in a very positive way. As a parliamentarian in the Manitoba legislature, I remember having these types of discussions on the impact of television when it was brought in. Believe it or not, there were still some members when I was first elected who argued that television was a bad thing to be brought in to the Manitoba legislature. However, I would suggest that it raised the bar. It ensured additional accountability. I believe there is a great benefit to the voting application. It is not a tool that is going to diminish opportunities for opposition members. If they believe that to be the case, then they should explain why that is the case and then explain why they are prepared to allow it to continue for the next couple of years, because that is what they are prepared to do. I think that in their heart of hearts, they actually recognize the value of the voting application, and it is valuable. Imagine that wherever a member is in the country, they would actually be able to participate in a vote. Imagine what that would mean for a member representing British Columbia if there were going to be a vote on Monday. They do not even have to be from a far coast. Let us take my colleague representing the community of Brandon. It involves taking a taxi to the airport and waiting at the airport. Then there is the plane ride to Winnipeg, hopefully not having to go through Toronto, and then getting into a vehicle once there and driving two hours to get out to Brandon. That has to be reversed in order to be able to come for a Monday vote, possibly on a procedural call. What is the real difference? I would suggest that by enabling that member to vote virtually, we are doing their constituents the favour. The member benefits, but the real individuals who benefit from the electronic voting are the people of Canada, our constituents. When we have committees happening or meetings taking place throughout the parliamentary precinct, very important meetings, very important standing committees, and a member is meeting with x, whoever x might be, sometimes the bells start to ring, which means that meeting is interrupted. It could have been a meeting on something of an urgent nature, a foreign affairs matter or a very important discussion one was having via Zoom. There are all kinds of reasons why someone might not necessarily be able to attend a particular meeting. Now, that person has the option to be able to vote using the application. I see that as a positive. I have not heard an argument that has convinced me otherwise. Being able to participate and be fully engaged here on the floor of the House of Commons, whether virtually or in person, is important to all of us. I think when members look at the rules being proposed, and hopefully adopted, it is not too late for the Conservatives to support it. If they truly believe what they say about supporting it if we would put in a sunset clause, the government House leader provided them with the rationale that three or four years from now, any future government, through a Standing Order, could reverse the changes. We can look at the 2020 discussions that took place, where there was a consensus developed, to what we are seeing today and what the member has said, which is that they in essence support everything as long as there is a sunset clause. I would suggest that the desire to see the changes that are being proposed is in fact there, but there is a lot of political posturing taking place. At the end of the day, Canadians will be better served if this motion is passed. I would ask and suggest that all members look seriously at supporting the motion.

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Context: House Hansard - 211 - Jun/12/23

Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

Jun/12/23 10:34:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am going to share my time with the member for Chatham-Kent—Leamington. Members have heard me say before that I participated in the Standing Orders debates in the past. I think back to 2020, when Parliament resumed in a hybrid format. I think the Conservative caucus was one of the first to resume having full meetings. We were one of the first ones, if not the first, on Zoom. We had tested all the other different software systems and fell on Zoom as being the best one, and we requested our own server from the House administration and cybersecurity people so we could meet using that format. Within three meetings, we got interpretation services going, because it was incredibly important for us to keep having meetings bilingually. I oppose the motion. I oppose the contents of the motion. I have said it from the beginning. I have been as consistent as I can be on this question. I still oppose it. I want to speak to the backbenchers in the Liberal benches about how bad this would be for all of us in the long term, but especially for those who are going to be in the government caucus in the long term. I say this because eventually the parliamentary calendar will mean nothing. Eventually we will meet every single week because constituency weeks and legislative sessional weeks will blend together. There will be no difference between the two. We will be expected to do both our works, and our constituents will expect us to do everything at the same time. There will be no ground given for being away in the nation's capital on the floor of the House of Commons or in a committee debating the issues. There will be no difference made. For all the events we will be invited to, there will be an expectation that we do everything at the same time. If someone is now participating in committee in a hybrid format from home, they are working. They are not watching their sick child. I had four kids; I have three kids now. I had a personal tragedy happen in my life and I was away for six weeks. I did not think about work during that time. What we are going to be asking members to do is to work while sick. We are going to be asking members to work while a loved one is very sick. We are going to be asking them to do everything at the same time in those same weeks and to figure it out and balance it themselves. Members will get incredible pressure from their House leadership team and their leadership, whether that be from the Prime Minister's Office or the leader's office in opposition, whichever one it is. Incredible pressure will be put on the backbenchers. I say that as a former chair of the Conservative caucus, where my job was to speak on behalf of backbenchers in my own recognized caucus. The whole point of caucus chairs is to speak on behalf of the backbenchers. There is not a single legislature in Canada that has moved to a full hybrid format. I do not quite know the territories so I will not speak to them, but none of the 10 legislatures have moved to a full hybrid dual format as far as I know. I have looked at them and they are not doing it. This Parliament here is talking about permanently introducing measures we had agreed to doing and now are not. The member for Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook is disagreeing with me and is not liking it, but we started with consensus and now we are being forced to have one system. One of the offers made by Conservative members on the PROC committee was for us to perhaps have a sunset clause. Let the next Parliament decide. Give the next Parliament a year to see how things are working out with potentially new members who are here and to weigh the pros and the cons again of whether to continue with everything, with some or with nothing in hybrid. I know what my position is. My position is not to continue with any of the hybrid format. There are a lot of interpreters who are injured. I have seen a lot of committee meetings be completely dysfunctional because it does not work very well even after all these years with Zoom. I have seen committees cancelled because there are not enough resources. It is always interesting the government is able, through its whips, to cancel the committee meetings it does not like versus the ones it really wants. There are not enough resources to go around for all the committees. One of the Bloc MPs raised a great point that now we are meeting on Fridays. Fridays used to be a day when some members would return to their constituencies, especially those in marginal seats. I am looking at the members of the government caucus in marginal seats who would probably like to have a Friday where they can press the flesh, as we call it, or go meet constituents in the local coffee shops or community events or spend some time working on case files on Friday. Those of us who are not in marginal seats can spend more time on legislative work if we so choose. What will happen in this chamber, not this year, not next year, but many years down the line, is our whips, our House leaders, will come together and ask why we have constituency weeks and say that all weeks should be legislative weeks. They will say that members could then pick and choose which weeks they would be here and which ones they would not be here. Many other members have spoken about the downside that we will not be able to go up to a minister right after question period on a specific case file or will not be able to get to know other members. I will admit that I have not gotten to know most of those on the Liberal benches because, frankly, I have a hard time recognizing some of them as members when they rise in the House. I do not know what issues they are directly passionate about. I have been on some committees with some members and have gotten to know them a lot better. That builds trust. There is a reason we still have parliamentary associations that send legislators from the House and from the Senate overseas to meet other legislators in person. That is how we build a relationship with them. We do not build it over Zoom in boxes on a screen. That is not how we build relationships of trust. Much of our committee work is based on trust. If we disagree on an issue, we may not get everything we want, but we usually suspend the meeting and are able to negotiate a resolution or a solution to whatever problem is before us. Then we continue doing the work on behalf of our constituents. At the end of the day, that is really what this is all about. I know many people have talked about the voting app. Some people like it and some people dislike it. I will be the first to say that I dislike the voting app. I highly doubt many members are clicking on the little information button and checking exactly what they are voting on every single time. We see it sometimes happen. We have these giant screens in the House now, and we always look for that one member who did not get the memo from their whip's office and votes the wrong way on government legislation. I do not mean private members' bills, because those should be free votes and hopefully are always free votes. We have Standing Order 44.1(1), which allows for the pairing of votes. I have written a letter in the past to the chair of PROC, which was shared among members of PROC, and I stand by what I wrote. Pairing is the way out of this. We should not expect members who are taking care of loved ones, who are going through a serious sickness at home or who have major family obligations to stay connected to their work. They can pair their votes like we do with cabinet ministers. Cabinet ministers can pair their votes. They usually pair them with members of the opposition when they are travelling overseas. Why can we not do more pairing in the House? I have said that before. I said it during the previous Standing Order debate. Pairing is the solution, especially if we empower a member to pair. In fact, I will even say that during this Parliament, I actually paired one of my votes on a handshake with a Liberal member. That is the way it is supposed to be done. I trusted the member. I had gotten to know the member over the last few years, and I trusted him enough to turn around and go to my whip. Likewise, he did the same thing. He was paired so he would not have to take a long flight just to come back to Ottawa to be present to make sure that I would be present here as well, which is ridiculous. I trusted him as a gentleman. He trusted me as well, and we paired. Why can we not do more of that? The app makes it unnecessary. We do not need to get to know anybody on the other side. We do not need to build a relationship of trust. We do not need to get to know anybody. In fact, in the future, we will be able to spend our time in boxes on screens and not get to know anybody. We will not need to talk to another person. We can just send emails, read speeches and read prepared questions and it will all be fine. I do not think that is the way Parliament should function. I do not think it is an improvement. I do not think it will have better transparency. There will not be better accountability. We heard the parliamentary secretary, the member for Winnipeg North, mention Order Paper questions and the format in which they are provided and tabled in the House and how there has always been a member to do that. We have not talked about the quality of the Order Paper answers. The answers have gotten worse. It is something that started a decade ago, but they have gotten really bad now. They borderline on the ridiculous sometimes, where there is not even an attempt to answer the content. It is not always like that but sometimes.

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