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House Hansard - 234

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 18, 2023 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 234 - Oct/18/23
Mr. Mark Gerretsen (deputy House leader of the government, Lib.)
  • Oct/18/23 6:16:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, let us just be frank about what is going on here. Today, the Speaker of the House of Commons basically told the House, including Conservatives, that we have to behave ourselves. Conservatives are upset about that. They tried to prevent him, on a number of occasions, from giving that statement today. Now, they are using this tactic in order to slow down the House, because they are frustrated and upset. It is actually behaviour for which I would scold my five-year-old and my seven-year-old, but that is actually what is going on in the House of Commons right now, demonstrated by the Conservative Party of Canada. In the next eight or nine minutes, I will demonstrate why I believe this to be the case. For starters, the Conservatives could not have picked a worse concurrence motion to bring forward. I have had the opportunity, since we started debating this, to have a look at the motion. There are six recommendations in it. The government agrees with five recommendations, and accepts and acknowledges the sixth one. The Conservatives could not have picked a worse concurrence motion. At least they could have picked something that is slightly more controversial. This is a concurrence motion on a report about which the government has already put in writing that it agrees with over 80% of it. This is about trade relations. It is important for the public who might be tuned in right now and watching this to fully understand what is going on here. The government had put on the Order Paper that we would be talking about Bill C-50, sustainable jobs, today. That is what we were supposed to talk about. There is a whole other issue that I do not have time to dive into, about why Conservatives are not interested in sustainable jobs, but let us just park that for a moment and focus on their objective today. The government said that this is what we were going to talk about. The House commenced at 2:00 p.m. today. The Speaker, a brand new Speaker, tried to rise to give a statement about how he plans to conduct the House, in terms of decorum. He cited numerous references of other Speakers, including, at great length, what the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle said when he was the Speaker, and he just established a benchmark for what the Speaker expects from the House. Conservatives heckled, made points of order and did everything they could to prevent the Speaker from even giving that statement, which I think was incredibly petty. Then we got to the point where we were supposed to go to Government Orders and start the listed item for today. There is an opportunity in Routine Proceedings to put forward a concurrence motion. This basically sucks up anywhere up to three hours of House time. Conservatives looked at the clock, and they knew that if we started this concurrence motion, the three hours would expire before the House needed to adjourn, and the government would not get to dealing with its business today. That is the Conservatives' objective. That is what they did. However, the motion they did it on I find to be so perplexing. It is a set of recommendations in a committee report about our borders, particularly postpandemic. I did not really read it or even know it existed before the concurrence motion was put on the floor. There are many committees submitting many reports, and I was not aware of this one. However, I did take the opportunity to have a good look at it since then, in the last 40 minutes or so since we started debating this. Here is recommendation 1: “That the Government of Canada ensure the safety and security of Canadians by continuing with its ongoing efforts designed to modernize Canada’s borders.” It goes on to list how to do that. The important thing is that the government agrees with the recommendation and accepts the recommendation from the committee. Recommendation 2 reads as follows: “That the Government of Canada enhance its efforts designed to increase domestic and international awareness that Canada has removed COVID-19–related public health measures.” There is nothing the Conservatives would want more than to do that. Again, the government agrees and says it is a good recommendation, that we need to make sure that the world knows Canada is open and ready for business and tourism, that this is a great recommendation and that we should move forward with this one. The government agrees with that recommendation. Recommendation 3 is “[t]hat the Government of Canada ensure that international bridge authorities and commissions, as well as duty-free stores in Canada, are eligible for federal financial support if the Government decides to close—for any length of time— the borders that Canada shares with the United States.” This is the one thing the government responded to and said it acknowledges but that it might not be as simple as how it is being portrayed. For example, the government did assist with the tourism sector quite a bit. The government also assisted with businesses, as we know. The government assisted in many different ways, including trying to reopen borders that Conservative supporters were trying to close. The government did a lot to ensure that we supported businesses throughout the pandemic. Although the government acknowledges the recommendation, it said that it is a bit more complex, as there are various sectors involved, and that this needs to be looked at more closely. It certainly did not outright reject the recommendation. Then there is recommendation 4, which says, “That the Government of Canada enhance safety and security, reduce delays and backlogs, and improve processing times at Canadian ports of entry”. Once again, the Government of Canada agreed with that recommendation. Also, I am sorry. There were not six recommendations; there were five. We have the fifth recommendation, which the government agrees with. My point is that there were five recommendations, and the government agreed with all but one but did acknowledge that it was important and tried to explain what the government was doing about it. What the public needs to know is that 99.9% of the time that somebody in this House moves concurrence on a report from a committee, they agree with it. They are basically saying that this report is so important that it is not enough to table it for the government, even though the government already responded to it: They need to force Parliament to vote on it so they can solidify the support of this House and not just the committee. That is what they are saying. Why do I point that out? I point that out because the Conservatives put this forward as if they support it, because one only puts forward a motion of concurrence if one supports it, and then turned around moments later and put forward an amendment to basically wipe the entire report clean as if it did not exist, sending it back to committee. I could not put together a scenario in which the Conservatives would look more petty than we have right here, right now on the floor of the House of Commons. I am sorry the Speaker told the Conservatives today that they have to behave themselves, that it is time to play nice, that they cannot be heckling and making up fake names for ministers, shooting them out like this is some kind of wild frat party. The reality of the situation is that maybe a little decorum is required in this House from the Conservatives, as day after day we hear personal attacks and name-calling. The Speaker did the right thing by pointing that out. Then what do they do? They act worse than I expect of my children with the games they play and with what they are doing right now to delay talking about a very important piece of legislation on how we create, manage and ensure that sustainable jobs are here for the future of Canadians. How many times have we heard Conservatives talk about jobs and needing to make sure that we put the right groundwork in place for jobs? Just two days ago, a minister of the Crown went to my neighbouring riding of Hastings—Lennox and Addington to make the announcement of 600 sustainable jobs. These are sustainable jobs. This is the bill we are talking about. This bill is about how we ensure there are more of those jobs throughout our entire country. How do we continue to attract clean-tech jobs from Germany or Belgium, as we see with Umicore, and bring them right here to Canada? I think this is very petty. It is very unfortunate, but for eight years I have been watching it occur time after time.
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