Steven MacKinnon

“Mr. Speaker, I fear that my counterpart on the government bench has missed his calling to be a speech writer in the politburo, because so many of the things he said there directly contradicted what he had been saying. For example, he said that this is all being done in a spirit of collaboration. However, with the motion, the Liberals would literally be taking away the need to collaborate, by giving themselves a majority. Another falsehood the member stated was that there are not two tiers in committees, yet he referenced the fact that the three oversight committees are in fact chaired by the opposition. That is a different tier of committee. Those committees have always been treated differently by the Standing Orders and by the usual practices of the House, precisely because they are a different sort of committee. They are not committees that legislation proceeds through. They are committees that provide oversight. It is through those committees that the opposition has uncovered Liberal corruption, scandals and the inappropriate use of taxpayers’ dollars, and in which the government voted against each one of those investigations. Why not at least preserve the oversight role of the opposition on those three committees: public accounts, government operations and ethics?”