SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 285 - Feb/26/24

Feb/26/24 1:09:49 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, my colleague reminded me of something that her House leader said during his speech when he talked about the toxicity in this place. This is from the Liberal Party whose leader violently elbowed a female MP in the chest because he did not get his own way. He threw a temper tantrum. This is the same leader who used the pandemic. Canadians were going through incredible hardship. Loved ones were dying alone because they were not allowed to receive visitors. Businesses were forced to close. People were going bankrupt. While that was going on, what did the Liberal Prime Minister do? He took the time to reward his friends. Let us remember the WE scandal. He chose to use the pandemic as an excuse to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to his friends at an organization that had paid his personal family members massive speaking fees. How about the former Liberal member of Parliament who got a contract? He had never ran a business in the medical field at all, but when the pandemic rolled around, he got a sole-source contract from the current Liberal government. We are in the middle of the arrive scam hearings where we are hearing about more sordid affairs about how a company got paid $20 million for doing IT even though it did not do any IT work. There are too many examples, in the short amount of time I have in this debate, to go over all the list of the ways the current Liberal government has wasted taxpayer money and has tried to cover up its corruption.

269 words

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

Feb/26/24 1:11:20 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, it is very interesting to see Liberals and Conservatives pointing fingers at each other. They are both bad, in our book, and we believe what we really need is a government of New Democrats that actually puts into place the kinds of practices most Canadians want to see. We have certainly proven that in the House by pushing for pharmacare, dental care, anti-scab legislation, grocery rebates and affordable housing, and I could go on and on, while Conservatives are fighting to cut all of those things. My friend was mentioning in his speech, which really did not touch on the motion before us, the fact that he opposes the government's agenda, which is his right, and that is why he is opposing the motion. However, the motion calls for extended hours, which the NDP has always called for. I would remind the member, my colleague, that under the Harper regime, the Harper Conservatives extended the hours in the evening for week after week, unilaterally. This motion would require the consent of at least two parties in the House to do that. However, there is also the issue of the health impacts of voting marathons. His leader, the member for Carleton, did not even show up for the 30-hour marathon. He showed up for one hour out of 30 hours.

224 words

Mr. Philip Lawrence

Feb/26/24 1:12:37 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, the member is an experienced member of the House. He has done it repeatedly, and there should be more than an apology for this because the New Democrats have done it twice in just two hours. He knows that members cannot talk about whether a member is present or not. This is beyond the pale.

62 words

The Deputy Speaker

Feb/26/24 1:12:53 p.m.
Watch

This also does extend to previous sittings of the House, with respect to whether somebody was here or not. Of course, we can see voting records because that is online, but whether someone is here is a whole other issue. The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby has the floor.

51 words

Mr. Peter Julian

Feb/26/24 1:13:12 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, the voting record speaks for itself. I want to come back to my colleague and the idea that we would force employees and all members to be in the House over a 30-hour period with all the health impacts that we know to be true. Does the member actually oppose the idea that we could have a health break so that when we go through those marathon votes, employees are respected and all members are respected, and that we could do the business of the House in a way that does not have a negative health impact? In the end, why is the member opposing a motion that makes good sense, that makes us work harder and that is also smart?

124 words

Hon. Andrew Scheer

Feb/26/24 1:13:58 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, the NDP House leader talks about how the Liberal government is bad. If only there were a political party that could do something about that. If only there were someone in the House who could put an end to bad government. It is the NDP, but of course, it will not because its leader has not quite come to that point. Who knows what their motivation is for propping up the Liberal government? It used to be that they were interested in finding corruption and unearthing Liberal mismanagement and waste, but they have completely parked all that for their own personal and political gains. They have never been so close to the reins of power, and I think that is their motivation. They actually enjoy the personal trappings of getting to sit down with Liberal ministers. Maybe they are impressed by Liberal cabinet ministers, and they are dazzled by things like that. Maybe it is because the NDP leader has not hit his six years yet, and he wants to get his pension vested before he goes back to the Canadian people. I am not going to speculate on why the NDP continues to prop up a corrupt and tired Liberal government, a government that has imposed higher costs, more inflation, higher interest rates and a crime wave on Canadians and that has failed to get enough homes built to meet the demands of Canadians. We will continue to put forward the types of common-sense ideas that will help lower costs for Canadians and bring interest rates down as well. He talked about previous governments extending sittings. Those late-night extensions in June are actually in the Standing Orders. Those are things that all political parties have agreed on over the years and are completely apples to oranges with what the government is doing here today, unilaterally, making major changes to the Standing Orders, over the objections of other opposition parties, because it has a trusted partner to help cover up its costs and its corruption.

339 words

Mr. Jeremy Patzer (Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC)

Feb/26/24 1:15:58 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, he was talking about the point of axing the tax. The Province of Saskatchewan, starting in January, told the Crown corporations to no longer collect the tax. The inflation in Saskatchewan has actually dropped almost a full point in the month of January. I am just wondering what his thoughts on that are.

55 words

Hon. Andrew Scheer

Feb/26/24 1:16:22 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, my colleague makes another great point, again, about how the carbon tax adds to inflation. We heard the Bank of Canada governor come to committee and explain that the carbon tax was responsible for about a third of the extra inflation that Canadians are suffering under. In Saskatchewan, we saw our premier, Scott Moe, have some compassion for the people of Saskatchewan. He saw the unfairness about how this Liberal government gave a carve-out to one particular region in Canada and ignored the concerns of people in the Prairies, in British Columbia and in Ontario. Our premier decided that he is not going to do the Prime Minister's dirty work. He is not going to collect the carbon tax. As a result, when the Government of Saskatchewan stopped collecting the carbon tax on behalf of the Liberal Prime Minister, guess what happened? Inflation went down in Saskatchewan. Not only the Bank of Canada admitted that it helps cause inflation in the first place, but also we now know, with empirical evidence, that when one removes the carbon tax, one lowers inflation.

185 words

Ms. Leah Taylor Roy

Feb/26/24 1:17:28 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, was the reference the member opposite made about the Prime Minister appropriate in the House?

22 words

The Deputy Speaker

Feb/26/24 1:17:41 p.m.
Watch

I do not know what reference the hon. member is referring to. Questions and comments, the hon. parliamentary leader to the government House leader.

24 words

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

Feb/26/24 1:17:51 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, it is amazing to watch the former speaker, the former leader of the opposition, talk about how the Conservative Party tries to play a positive role inside the chamber when, in fact, we have witnessed a destructive force coming from the Conservative Party on the institution of the House of Commons. I do not quite understand why the Conservative Party does not want to work late into the evenings. Millions of Canadians across every region of the country recognize that, at times, one needs to work a little past 6:30 p.m.. The Conservative Party does not want to work late into the evenings. The Conservative Party wants to be able to continue to filibuster. Will the member commit to not bringing forward, let us say, silly motions, like “the House now adjourn for the day” or “so and so now be heard to speak”, even though another Conservative was trying to speak, so that there is a competition between Conservatives, or like concurrence report after concurrence report to prevent government legislation from passing? Will he commit to getting serious and to starting to debate issues here in the House of Commons?

199 words

Hon. Andrew Scheer

Feb/26/24 1:19:06 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, this is what Liberals do. They attack others for the very things that they are guilty of themselves. If this member wants to talk about respecting this institution, we can talk about how the access to information commissioner has said that it has never been harder to get information from a government than it has under the current Prime Minister. How about the fact that the government decided not to fund the Auditor General appropriately to do her important work of uncovering Liberal waste and mismanagement? How about all the times the government has shut down debate before many members have even had a chance to speak on behalf of their constituents? The Liberals then come in and blame the opposition for all that. They are the ones who have the power to be more forthcoming with information. They fight and they redact. They try to keep documents hidden. They have to be dragged kicking and screaming, at committees and here in the House, just to provide factual information and copies of correspondence. They do everything they can to block that, then they try to have some debate about when the House should adjourn, whether it should be 6:30 p.m. or midnight. They say that this is how they are protecting a democratic institution. That is baloney. The real way we can protect our institutions is to be open and accountable. Independent officers of Parliament have denounced the Liberal Prime Minister for the assault that he has launched against information accountability and transparency.

257 words

Mr. Alain Therrien (La Prairie, BQ)

Feb/26/24 1:20:35 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, in the last election, Canadians clearly indicated that they wanted a minority government like the one they had between 2019 and 2021. They wanted to keep an eye on the government. That is the message they sent. That was the will of the Canadian and Quebec electorate. Unfortunately, that is not what happened. The government thumbed its nose at the will of Quebeckers and Canadians and chose to disregard its minority status and form a majority with another party. The result was the marriage of the Liberal Party with the New Democratic Party. This marriage comes at a huge cost, both financially and democratically. Usually, when people get married, they pay for their own wedding. Sometimes their parents pay. It depends on the culture. In any case, we expect the happy couple to pay for the wedding. However, that is not what is happening here: Canadians and Quebeckers are paying for the huge cost of the wedding. That is what we are seeing now. We are paying for the two lovebirds. At some point the government needs to explain itself, and the Liberals claim that they need the NDP with them, that it is important. Earlier, the government leader said that there was obstruction, that this was chaos. It does not take much to throw him off if he thinks this is chaos. I have been the opposition House leader for over four years. I can say that I have seen many things, but I have never seen chaos. I am concerned for the government leader. It does not take much to throw him off. I do not know if he watched The Walking Dead but, if he did, it must have given him a heart attack. On top of that, he says it is chaos because the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois ask too many questions. Of course, the NDP does not do that. The Conservatives and the Bloc take too much time debating issues in the House. If we were spending 50 days debating a bill, I might agree, but representatives of the government would sometimes come to me to say they were imposing a gag order because they were tired and we had been debating a bill for too long. I answered that we had been debating the bill for five hours. They said they could not take it any more. Oh, brother. The bills we were debating were not small bills. They were big bills, some of them economic updates, and the government quickly put a stop to the debate because they knew very well that there was no chance of my agreeing with them. Yet they knew that the New Democrats eat at the same trough. They knew that the NDP would be there for them. So it often happens that, after three, four or five hours of debate, the discussion is closed. Is that good for democracy? Is that good for members of Parliament? The only weapon we have to defend our constituents, our fellow citizens, is time. It is the time we take to explain our position, propose changes, solutions, amendments, discuss better ways of improving life in our communities. That is what the government is always stopping us from doing here in the House. Since 2021 alone, the NDP has supported 14 closure motions and eight super closure motions. They have also supported 23 time allocation motions. Never in the history of Canada have members of the opposition been subjected to so many gag orders. It is as if we had nothing important to say and they decided to gag us. That is what it looks like. Today we are discussing motion No. 35 aimed at extending sitting hours. We usually work by consensus. When we change parliamentary rules, we seek consensus. All four parties have to agree and give their reasoning. That is not, however, what is happening here. With a majority, the government is constantly changing parliamentary rules. Earlier, the government leader even boasted about it. He said that the Liberals had done so three times in two years, and boasted about it. I want to circle back to something terrible. The two parties did something terrible when they decided on the hybrid Parliament rules. That was unprecedented. They changed the parliamentary rules, knowing full well that some parties did not agree. It is not because we were freaks. The Bloc Québécois never said that it was a ludicrous idea, but we were not even consulted. Those parties just came along and said that, from now on, this is how the hybrid Parliament works. The leader of the official opposition correctly said earlier that, if that is how they change the rules, that means that any majority government will be able to change the rules of Parliament. I do not know if my colleagues have seen the polls, but I have. There is a small chance that a Conservative government will be elected, and there is a small chance that it will be a majority government. Let us say Canadians elect a majority Conservative government. That means that the Conservatives will be able to say, “These are the rules from now on”. When that happens, the NDP will get up and say that that is not right, yet they did it themselves in 2022. The Liberals will also get up and say that that is not right, yet they and the NDP did it themselves. The only party that will be able to stand up in the House and credibly tell the Conservatives that what they are doing is not right is our party, the Bloc Québécois. There is now a problem with the way we operate, because the government has created a fake majority. That is what we are faced with again: procedural changes that reduce the opposition parties' speaking time and steamroll discussions, because they are going to limit the opposition's ability to stand up and defend their position. That is unacceptable. They want to change the rules, but I think we have a perfect example here of a government that is incapable of respecting Parliament. It seems unwilling to discuss its own bills. The bills are not always good, of course, but discussion is the way to improve them. That has always been the Bloc Québécois's goal. Our goal is to be a constructive opposition and to tell the House that we are always thinking of Quebec and only Quebec. Oftentimes, Canada feels the same way Quebec does, so everyone is happy. Other times, we may disagree on a bill for whatever reason, so then we work to amend it in good faith. The only two tools we have for convincing the government are time and the parliamentary process. If our only tools are damaged, it diminishes the power of democracy in Parliament. It is a little strange that Parliament is working to reduce the power of democracy within its own walls. I always feel a bit uneasy when it comes to the NDP. When members of the NDP rise in the House after question period, they wag their fingers and talk about how appalling ArriveCAN is. They rant and rave. It is not a pretty sight. They also say that this government is focused on oil production and that it is the worst government in history when it comes to Canadian oil production. They claim to be environmentalists and so on. When there are Liberal scandals and when the Prime Minister is caught red-handed, they rise to express their outrage. However, when the lights go out, what we see is that the NDP always supports the Liberal Party. In all honesty, I would feel really uncomfortable with that, if I were a member of the NDP. The Bloc Québécois will therefore vote against the motion. We are simply going to do what it takes to defend the interests of Quebeckers, even though our right to speak is being undermined.

1351 words

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

Feb/26/24 1:29:33 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, the member started his speech by talking about the minority situation. Canadians elected a minority government. In a minority government, the government has the responsibility to consider what the opposition has to say; however, the opposition also has a responsibility. We have witnessed that the official opposition's primary objective is to be a destructive force. It is destructive of this institution, preventing legislation and other measures from ultimately being able to pass or, at the very least, slowing them down. It does not take much to make that occur. If the government is unable to work with an opposition party, then it would not be able to get anything done. At times there is a need to work with the NDP or even an opportunity to work with the Bloc. Would the member not agree that, if there is one opposition party, such as the Conservatives today, then the government has no choice but to work with other opposition parties in order to get things done for Canadians?

171 words

Mr. Alain Therrien

Feb/26/24 1:30:36 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I made a mistake. I wanted to table an amendment, but I forgot to do so. Do I have the unanimous consent of the House to table it?

30 words

The Deputy Speaker

Feb/26/24 1:30:44 p.m.
Watch

Does the hon. member have the unanimous consent of the House? Some hon. members: No. The Deputy Speaker: The hon. member does not have unanimous consent. However, he can respond to the parliamentary secretary's question.

36 words

Mr. Alain Therrien

Feb/26/24 1:30:50 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I cannot thank my colleague for supporting my initiative because he did not, but I thank him for at least asking a question that is very easy to answer. He spoke of the official opposition, which we are not. He refers to our neighbours in the official opposition, who engage in filibustering. I would say that, most of the time, gag orders are imposed after very few hours of debate. Based on my limited experience, there was nothing here to justify that. I do not have my colleague's experience. I have been here for four and a half years. I have rarely seen a situation where the opposition party caused the Liberal government to lose control of its legislative agenda. I have not seen that happen very often. Most of the time, it is because the Liberals poorly manage their legislative agenda. They should look in the mirror.

151 words

Mrs. Tracy Gray (Kelowna—Lake Country, CPC)

Feb/26/24 1:31:50 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I was listening to the Liberal government House leader on how the Liberals believe that they are so righteous, yet they continue to vote against common-sense bills and common-sense motions. One example was the private member's bill, the end the revolving door act, which is aimed at getting mental health supports, and addiction treatment and recovery. It was actually something the Bloc voted for, yet most of the Liberals and NDP voted against. When the Liberals talk about being so righteous and wanting to vote for good legislation, there are so many examples where, in fact, they do not. The member spoke about how the NDP members continually rise in this place and outside of this place, speaking against the government, yet the NDP members continue to support it. Can the member comment on how what the government is saying is the opposite of what it is doing? It is being supported by the NDP members, who continue to support it regardless of what it does.

171 words

Mr. Alain Therrien

Feb/26/24 1:33:04 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I honestly do not think that this government will go down in history for how well it manages the House. Consider the strategy it used to create an artificial majority government and how it manages its legislative agenda. I honestly do not think it deserves a medal. It should focus more on how to effectively manage its legislative agenda than on ways of muzzling Parliament. That would be better for everyone.

73 words

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

Feb/26/24 1:33:45 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, as always, I enjoyed the speech by my friend and colleague from La Prairie. My colleague wondered what he would say to his constituents if he were a member of the NDP. I think that what he should be wondering is what he would say to his constituents if he were an NDP MP. Of course, he would tell his constituents in La Prairie that it was the NDP that proposed the pharmacare plan. It is a better plan than the one currently in force in Quebec, since there are holes in Quebec's plan. It was also the NDP that proposed a dental care plan, and it is thanks to the NDP that the extremely important anti-scab bill was introduced. There are also the legislative measures to crack down on grocery chains' price gouging. My colleague would be proud to tell his constituents about all of these measures. The fact is that the NDP is an effective opposition party and has made far more gains than any other opposition party in the House of Commons since our country was founded. My colleague also mentioned the issue of time allocation motions. The member for La Prairie was not here during the Harper regime, so I would simply like to remind him that the Conservatives imposed more than 100 gag orders in Parliament from 2011 to 2015. They did it more than a hundred times. The Liberal government has done it eight times. Compare that to the Conservative number and it is clear that Parliament can work when an opposition party is willing to do its job in Parliament. I would now like to ask my friend a very simple question. There are two aspects to this motion. On the one hand, we are going to work in the evening, a principle that the NDP has always supported, but on the other hand, this motion aims to put an end to the possibility of working all night, like the time we voted for 30 hours. We experienced that in December. The Leader of the Opposition was not actually here, but we voted for 30 hours straight. Interpreters and House employees are then forced to work for 30 consecutive hours. I would just like to know why the Bloc is not standing up for interpreters, House employees and all those people who are subject to the disrespect shown by the Conservatives when they impose votes for 30 hours to make cuts to all government programs.

416 words