Replying to Xavier Barsalou-Duval (Bloc Québécois)
“Mr. Speaker, the Liberals are filibustering on a number of committees right now to prevent opposition members who have the majority from holding the government to account, from obtaining information, from calling witnesses and from receiving documents, essentially, to prevent them from doing their job, which is to determine what is going on and to ensure accountability for the government’s administration and decisions. The committee I sit on is facing this situation. When I see that several weeks have passed since the Liberals decided to block committees where the discussion and debates are not to their liking, and when a motion to take control of the committees appears at the same time, a question comes to mind. Are the Liberals filibustering in committee to buy time? Was their plan to play this game until they secured a majority to avoid parliamentary accountability?”
Statement grade
A
The average of Signal, Relevance, Respect and Clarity.
Average 92 / 100
A score under 50 is red. Choose a measurement to see where it lost points and why; choose it again to clear.
Thanks 8%Claims 71%Positioning 15%Reasoning 6%
This view breaks the statement into its steps and names what each one does.
Mr. Speaker, Thanks · 15 wordsI certainly appreciate the sentiments from my colleague, wanting to hold the government to account.ThanksClaims · 23 wordsAs an opposition MP in the House, he is well aware that is his job.It is the same with the Conservative Party.Positioning · 28 wordsHow did we hold Stephen Harper to account when he had a majority in the House?How did the opposition hold our government accountable from 2015 to 2019?PositioningClaims · 67 wordsThere are tools that are designed right into our parliamentary system to ensure that opposition parties, even when the government has a majority of seats in the House, can hold the government to account.That is how this place has functioned since Confederation.Conservatives, in the middle of the pandemic, filibustered for many, many weeks trying to prevent the Government of Canada from functioning to help Canadians, 1Reasoning · 11 wordsso they had a tool to hold us to account then.Claims · 45 wordsIt is not as if filibusters were just invented yesterday.Extended debate happens in many committees.It is a tool that the Conservatives and the Bloc have used.It is a tool that will continue to be used, I am sure, in our parliamentary system.
