44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 19, 2023 11:00AM
- Jun/19/23 12:49:02 p.m.
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Pursuant to Standing Order 67.1, there will now be a 30-minute question period.
I invite hon. members who wish to ask questions to rise in their places or use the “raise hand” function so that the Chair has some idea of the number of members who wish to participate in this question period.
The hon. member for Calgary Midnapore.
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Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for this opportunity to speak to this closure motion. It is very disappointing, yet nothing new, that we are seeing this from government, since it has consistently used every opportunity it can, in coordination with its coalition partners, to silence not only members of the House but also the Canadians they represent.
We do not have enough time to present our opinions. I want to say that again for both English- and French-speaking Canadians because our debates are held in both official languages. Unfortunately, this process is not new to this House.
It is not surprising, unfortunately. We have seen this with a number of other bills. In addition to limiting speech, and we certainly know that we are going to have an opportunity to talk about the limitation of speech with Bill C-18 also coming forward in the House, we also see the limitation of democracy across the country, not only with foreign interference but also with Bill C-11.
The silencing of members of the House, as well as of Canadians, is nothing new, so I would like to say that it is very disappointing, especially as we go into the summer holidays. We are very limited in the amount of time that we have to have these important conversations for Canadians.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mrs. Stephanie Kusie: Mr. Speaker, I see the deputy House leader is telling me to get to the point. This is another individual trying to silence me in this moment. I do not think I have to say any more. I see that their NDP coalition partner is chiming in as well. The member for Timmins—James Bay is also chiming in about how they need to silence not only people in the House but also Canadians.
With that, I guess my question would be this: When will they allow members of the chamber to have the opportunity to speak their minds freely on behalf of Canadians?
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- Jun/19/23 12:53:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are not trying to silence anybody. We are trying to get the affairs of Parliament through a series of blockages and techniques. We have just heard a point of order with no point of order—
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
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- Jun/19/23 12:53:23 p.m.
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Order. We ask questions, and then we allow the member to answer.
The hon. Minister of Justice has the floor.
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Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said, we just heard a point of order with no point. The point of it was simply to delay time. This happens time and time again. We, as a government, need to do this because the majority of people in the House of Commons would like things to go forward.
We saw last week an important second debate on Bill C-40, which would establish a commission to correct wrongful convictions in Canada. It is something long overdue. We saw that delayed by a number of dilatory motions and procedures on the part of the other side. It is sad and it is tragic.
The Deputy Speaker will know, because he is from Nova Scotia, that Glen Assoun of Nova Scotia died without seeing this bill get to second reading. This is precisely why we need to use these kinds of motions. It is to combat the dilatory tactics being used by the other side.
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- Jun/19/23 12:54:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are debating yet another closure motion, the latest in a long line. I do not really have a question for the minister, but I will make a comment on the mood in the House over the past few months. It is almost shameful to see how everyone in the House is behaving during this very intense period leading up to the summer adjournment.
There is retaliation going on. Maybe the minister will address that in his comments, but I get the impression that the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons is not reaching out to all the opposition parties. He is behaving as though the government has a majority, and he is getting on the nerves of several members in the House. Once again we are dealing with an eleventh-hour time allocation motion because no one is reaching out on either side.
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- Jun/19/23 12:55:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as I just said in English, what we are seeing are tactics being used to slow down the work of the House. We are reaching out to the opposition parties in Parliament. For this bill, I am sure that we have the support of not just the NDP, but also of the Bloc Québécois and several Conservatives, because it is good public policy. That is exactly what we are doing.
I would point out to the hon. member that we also worked with the provinces and with Quebec, which passed a similar bill in late March of this year. We are harmonizing our efforts with those of Quebec. That is a good thing. It will be a good thing for all of Canada because the provinces will be able to work with the federal government to tackle certain practices, such as money laundering.
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Mr. Speaker, having spent my life in opposition, I do know that the one tool the opposition has is time. We have the time to speed things up and the time to slow things down. However, at the end of the day, time is about serving the Canadian people.
I see Bill C-42, which has the beneficial ownership registry. It is legislation to deal with Russian oligarchs. We could be debating that. Instead, we have been having to witness Conservatives with their long litany of whining, perceived slights and imagined microaggressions. It is always about them and their feelings. I get a feeling that European soccer teams might hire them over the summer to give them lessons on how to do the theatrics of lying on the grass and holding a knee.
Meanwhile, we have legislation to get done. We are staying until midnight, night after night. Instead of the Conservatives standing up for their constituents and talking about legislation that needs to get passed, they are talking about themselves, how bad they feel and how their feelings have been hurt.
I would ask the hon. member to give us a basic sense of the level of importance of getting this legislation through.
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- Jun/19/23 12:57:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I certainly share the frustration that many Canadians and many parliamentarians on both sides of the aisle share for the horrible delay tactics being used on the other side and the inflation of every single point becoming the end of the world.
This is a critical bill. It would help us in the fight against money laundering. It would help us in the fight against corruption. As the hon. member mentioned, it even helps us in the fight against Russian oligarchs. It would create a register that shows beneficial ownership, which is who is really behind the ownership structure of a company, such that we can then move forward, if necessary, to use that data, whether it is for the fight against money laundering, terrorism or anything else when the corporate structure is being used as a sham.
It would also allow us to protect whistle-blowers, who expose these kinds of measures. The legislation would basically create a best-in-class structure to mimic the best practices in other countries. It aligns with the best practices at the international level and with emerging best practices at the Canadian level, such as that in Quebec I mentioned a moment ago. We would be able to co-operate more easily with the provinces by creating this register, which would give access to law enforcement agencies and other agencies while still protecting the privacy of Canadians.
It is a good thing moving forward. There is widespread agreement and critical acclaim for this bill. We should just be getting it done.
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- Jun/19/23 12:59:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about the tactics Conservatives are using and ask the minister to comment.
A good place to start is that it comes straight from their leader's office. The minister will recall not that long ago, a week or so ago, when the leader of the Conservative Party said, reflecting on the budget debate, that he was going to talk for hours until the Prime Minister changed the budget implementation bill. It took a few hours, but we were ultimately able to get it passed. The Conservatives will move a motion to have another member speak, which then causes the bells to ring. They will bring in concurrence motions. They have even attempted to adjourn debate in the House.
Does the member believe that the Conservative Party is using time wisely in the House?
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his wise leadership in the House.
I agree with the member's comment. It is not just the dilatory tactics and the wasting of time. It is that the Leader of the Opposition is relishing in that in front of the media, being proud of the fact he is trying to grind Parliament down to a stop to prevent good pieces of legislation from moving forward. These are bills such as this one, Bill C-42, and Bill C-40, which I mentioned an hour ago. Over the last month, we have witnessed, time and time again, the misuse of time, the use of delay tactics and the real negativity these bring to the House of Commons.
We want to move forward with this bill because it is a positive bill for Canadians. We want to move forward with this bill because it would help us fight organized crime, money laundering and terrorist financing, and would give us better principles of corporate governance. We rely on the market to do many things in our country and in our economy. For that market to function properly, we need corporate governance structures that are transparent and that allow proper corporate decisions to be made, for the purposes of not only shareholders but also the Canadian public, to the extent that we allow the market to regulate these kinds of issues.
It is an important bill, and we need to pass it.
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Mr. Speaker, to my knowledge, I am the only member in this chamber who participated in the amendment stage of Bill C-42. I will point out that we worked in good faith with all members of this House of Commons to put forward common-sense amendments to the legislation.
The hour before we had clause-by-clause, we had some of the most critical witnesses appear on this bill. They were from Transparency International. One of their key recommendations, in the hour before we had the amendment stage, was to adopt language from Bill 20, the Business Corporations Amendment Act, 2023, of British Columbia, which would have strengthened the provisions in the legislation regarding identity, specifically noting, “The records, information or proof must be provided under subsection (1) in the prescribed form and manner.” It also would have required that the bill strengthen the ability of the director of Corporations Canada to receive information on identity and citizenship so the bill could work clearly.
What is problematic in this case is that we wanted to bring forward good amendments. The NDP even brought good amendments forward, but the government voted against them simply because it had witnesses appear the hour preceding clause-by-clause. If we are going to have good legislation, we cannot have a parliamentary practice where witnesses appear the hour before. We limited ourselves from making the bill as good as it could have been simply because of that tactic by the government.
No, we have not stalled on the bill. We have worked in good faith to get the best legislation possible for Canadians, even to achieve the government's objectives of better interoperability, better standards and better threshold requirements. However, unfortunately, the government voted against all that and is now bringing in closure at the last minute instead of getting the bill right.
Whatever has been said by the minister and the parliamentary secretary so far has been false. We have been there to move the legislation along, and the government has used tactics to delay work to get the best clauses possible and to improve it in good faith for all Canadians.
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- Jun/19/23 1:04:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon for his passion on this bill.
I know the committee worked very hard on this bill. I know there was a lot of back-and-forth on this bill. I know there were a lot of amendments on this bill, including amendments, as he mentioned, on which the Conservatives and the NDP agreed. A number of those amendments were accepted and a number of them were not after robust debate. It was a healthy process. I thank the hon. member for having participated in it.
What we have as a result is a balanced bill. It is the first bill that balances the need to get certain things on the record and on the register, like identity, citizenship and other elements, against privacy, working with other jurisdictions and with other mechanisms of inquiry within the Canadian government, which will have access to that information. Then there is the public facing part of the register for anyone to have access to some of the information on that register.
It is a series of balances, and I am sorry the hon. member does not agree with all of the balances that were finally agreed to before we reached this stage. However, I thank him for the work he has done, and I thank all members of this House for the work they have done, because the bill was amended in order to get here and was amended through the hard work of hon. members at committee.
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- Jun/19/23 1:05:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my party's whip made what I felt was a mature comment. In my opinion, her comment did not receive a fitting response. I will therefore pick up where she left off.
We said that the Bloc Québécois supported the bill. The answer is yes, of course. That is not the issue. The issue is the repeated gag orders and backroom deals, as I will call them. It is high time that the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons started talking with the opposition House leaders. We need to have a constructive discussion, gather all these fine people together in an office and talk about ways to manage the House in the lead-up to the summer break, so that the game-playing stops.
I have denounced the Conservative filibustering many times, but it comes from somewhere. It comes from the repeated use of closure motions, the lack of communication, even the choice of dates for opposition days. I think we can and should work like adults. I urge the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons to meet with the other House leaders to talk things out so that we can get some constructive work done and rise for the summer on a high note, because this is hurting everyone. It is hurting our constituents most of all, because bills are not getting passed.
Does the minister think this is a good idea, and will he talk to his House leader?
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- Jun/19/23 1:07:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question.
The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and the House leaders of the other parties meet at least once a week, if not every day, to discuss House procedure and practice. I can assure my colleague that we are not the ones blocking the business of the House. It is the Conservatives.
The Conservatives change their minds at every turn. They are moving dilatory motions every day, as we saw again today. We cannot have agreements that keep getting broken by an opposition party. We have no choice but to invoke closure so that we can serve the Canadian public by enacting legislation, which is our job.
We are not afraid of debate. We want debate, and we want the other parties to be able to propose amendments. What we do not want, however, are pointless tactics whose sole purpose is to slow down or block legislation. This is unacceptable.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to take a moment to share some things that happened in my riding this weekend and why it is so important that in this chamber, we understand how our decisions impact people on the ground.
On Friday, a caller from outside of my riding, from Victoria, phoned in and said they considered taking their life on Wednesday of last week. It was only because the House passed Bill C-22 that they felt hope. That kept them going.
On Sunday, I was at a community event and a similar situation happened. A woman approached me and said that if it was not for the support of her family and her parents around her as she managed the system of income supports for the disability she is dealing with right now, she would have taken her life by now.
Today, the newspaper in British Columbia talked about 100,000 renting families being at risk of losing their home in our community. Some of that is due to corporate ownership of housing.
I wonder if the member opposite would share some of the impacts of being able to get work done in this House. That matters to people on the ground. As we talk about our privilege, we are not at risk of losing our housing and we are not at risk of not having coverage when we get a disability. People in Canada are. It actually turns my stomach and makes me feel a little ill to think that we would sit here while people consider taking their life because we do not want to advance legislation.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for sharing the stories and narratives from people in her riding. It is very important that we remind ourselves exactly what the impact of obstructionism does in this place.
I have a constituent who constantly texts me about the progress of Bill C-22. It is a bill that I have supported from the beginning. She is living with a disability. She too is waiting for us to get the job done. I have supported the minister proposing that bill in every way I possibly can, formally and informally. It would wipe out a swath of poverty. I am hoping the letter that goes to the Senate will be accepted by the other place so we can put that in place.
I mentioned the example of Glen Assoun a moment ago and Bill C-40, another important bill that I have put forward to correct miscarriages of justice in the Canadian system. They exist; mistakes happen. However, this is a way to correct them more efficiently, more effectively and with greater access. I am sad that Glen Assoun, who worked for this result, did not live to see this bill get through Parliament.
I am hoping that we can eliminate all of these various delays so we can debate, as the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon wants us to do, the substance without all the other tactics that just grind this place to a halt.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to start by recognizing that there are plenty of partisan games being played in our Parliament right now and that the governing party has every right to advance its legislative agenda.
When it comes to limiting debate on Bill C-42, though, we just began it last sitting day. I believe there have been four speeches so far. That is fewer than the number of parties represented in this House. If we take a further step back, this is the eighth time that debate will be limited since May 1. In fact, I could only find four instances where we have not had debate limited.
Is it not a concern to the minister and others in the governing party that by moving forward in this way and by mismanaging the agenda to this extent, it is enshrining an approach that allows others to do the exact same thing when are be power?
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- Jun/19/23 1:13:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I share that frustration, but this bill has been in gestation for a number years with respect to the background work, the research work and the consultation work that have been done on it. There has been a robust committee study of the bill, and there is a widespread degree of support, in substantive terms, for the major provisions in this bill. They cut across party lines. They also cut across governments and levels of government across Canada. Everyone is moving in sync in the same direction.
We need to pass this bill. It will help us in the fight against money laundering, which Canada is sadly becoming a host to. They call it “snow washing”. The bill would help us in that area and in many other areas. As I mentioned before, it would also give us better corporate governance. It is worth the effort to get it through right now.
To be honest, the other side will put up speaker after speaker with the same speaking notes saying the same thing over and over again. That is not debate. Debate is about cut and thrust and actually responding to things that have been said. Repeating the same speech over and over again does not amount to that.
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- Jun/19/23 1:14:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, a few things come to mind as the government once again drops the hammer on closure. There are three things in particular.
We are starting to see a decline in our democracy and the relevance of its institutions, and I take offence to what the Minister of Justice said with respect to debate. It is from debate, from the diverse ideas that come from right across the country, that we are able to produce good legislation. The challenge that we have now is that the government wants an audience, not an opposition.
I will remind the minister that in September 2021, the Liberal government was voted in with a minority, and if not for the coalition agreement the Liberals have with the NDP, this legislation would be further debated. However, instead, the government House leader does not speak to the leader of the official opposition and does not speak to the Bloc. It just does an end-around to the NDP House leader and says, “Look, I want to invoke closure and this is what we are going to do.” They are ramming this legislation through.
This is Parliament, which is from parler, or to talk. We debate diverse ideas from right across the country, and anything but that is happening in this place.
Canadians are taking notice. I get a lot of eastern Europeans come to me in my office and say that they saw the same thing happen in their countries, this decline in democracy, this rise of authoritarianism, the government wanting an audience, not an opposition. Canadians are taking notice. Those people who come into my office say this: “Don't let what happened in my country happen to Canada, because it is.”
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