Discussion · Government Orders
Jean-Denis Garon Bloc Québécois
“The government is cutting short debate on this budget bill. It is fair to limit debate when the opposition stalls on purpose, but that is not what happened here. The government delayed the bill itself and gave us no briefing. Now it is rushing the bill through, so we cannot fix it.”
“Mr. Speaker, if we had had more time to debate this bill, we could have discussed the parts that should have been removed. That would have made the member for Acadie—Bathurst happy. We could have discussed the parts that could have been voted on separately. Since the member for Acadie—Bathurst is going to vote in favour of time allocation, we will not be able to do so. However, all joking aside, time allocation does serve a purpose. The government usually begins by letting things take their course. We have debates, and legislation moves forward, but all of a sudden, a roadblock springs up. Opposition parties sometimes act in bad faith. At some point, since the government has budgetary responsibilities, it will have no choice but to impose time allocation to move the process forward in the face of the opposition parties’ bad faith. That is what it is for. That is why this standing order exists. In this case, however, the government introduced a bill, denied the opposition parties a technical briefing, did not put the bill on the agenda for debate, and then suddenly on a Friday morning, it announced that it was going to limit debate because nothing had been done for three weeks and time was now of the essence. That is not how time allocation should be used.”
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Mr. Speaker, if we had had more time to debate this bill, we could have discussed the parts that should have been removed. That would have made the member for Acadie—Bathurst happy. We could have discussed the parts that could have been voted on separately. Since the member for Acadie—Bathurst is going to vote in favour of time allocation, we will not be able to do so. However, all joking aside, time allocation does serve a purpose. The government usually begins by letting things take their course. We have debates, and legislation moves forward, but all of a sudden, a roadblock springs up. Opposition parties sometimes act in bad faith. At some point, since the government has budgetary responsibilities, it will have no choice but to impose time allocation to move the process forward in the face of the opposition parties’ bad faith. That is what it is for. That is why this standing order exists. In this case, however, the government introduced a bill, denied the opposition parties a technical briefing, did not put the bill on the agenda for debate, and then suddenly on a Friday morning, it announced that it was going to limit debate because nothing had been done for three weeks and time was now of the essence. That is not how time allocation should be used.