Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, I have been meeting with many people in Montmorency—Charlevoix recently. I have been having a lot of meetings. People are becoming increasingly interested in politics. I had a really interesting conversation with one woman who came to see me. She said something that really stuck with me. She told me that she was not really sure what we were doing in Ottawa, but she did not think the Liberal government was there for the people. She said that if no one were keeping a close eye on things, she thought everything would go off the rails. The woman in question does not have a background in political science. She has not read the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. She does not know what an oversight committee is. Still, she instinctively understood something that is fundamental to our democracy, something the Liberals seem to forget far too often, specifically that democracy works best when the opposition is able to do its job. It makes everyone better. What we are debating today with Motion No. 9 is not really a matter of parliamentary procedure. It is not really a technical debate about committee composition. I believe it is a much simpler and more fundamental issue for democracy. The real question is this: Who is monitoring the government? I was sent here by the people of Montmorency—Charlevoix. They are workers, families, retirees and entrepreneurs. These are people who get up in the morning. They pay their taxes. They work hard. They expect the government to respect them, not just by saying that it has the right to do something because it is in the fine print. No, the government shows respect by respecting the spirit of the law. Ethics are more challenging than the law itself. Let us talk about rights. Being a member of Parliament is not a right. It is not a title. It is not a career. It is not something that is owed to us. It is a privilege granted to us by citizens. Our mission is to serve Canadians. With that privilege comes a responsibility that I take very seriously. I want to make sure that somebody is watching, that somebody is asking the tough questions and that somebody is holding the Liberals accountable. Our colleagues on the other side of the House do not seem to like that mission very much. I will give a very simple example. Last week, I was at the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. A Liberal was serving as chair. During my colleague’s opening remarks, she interrupted him six times in six minutes just as he was preparing to ask a question. It was because she did not like what he was saying. It was not the version she wanted to hear, so she took it upon herself to interrupt him over and over. I am not even referring to the 17 and a half hours of Liberal monologue that was used to prevent the Minister of Finance and National Revenue from testifying about a recusal he himself had made and failed to follow through on. It was a perfect demonstration of what lies ahead if this motion is passed today. In a parliamentary democracy such as ours, oversight is not optional; it is not a courtesy the government extends to the opposition. It is the foundation upon which everything else rests. Let us look at the facts. They are pretty straightforward. A year ago, Canadians gave the Liberals a minority mandate. It was not a majority. It was a clear minority, sending a message that required no interpretation: The people told us to co-operate and work together in the interest of Canadians. Committees were set up to respect the people’s vote. They were composed of four Liberal members, three Conservative members and one Bloc Québécois member. The chair was either a Liberal or a Conservative, depending on the type of committee. For oversight committees, the chair came from the opposition. Why was that? It was to make sure that the government could be held accountable for its decisions. Eleven months later, after backroom deals and undemocratic negotiations that ignored Canadians’ voting rights, the Liberals scraped together a slim majority. The very next morning, what did they do? They brought forward a motion to take control of the committees. That was the first thing they did with their fragile majority. The very first thing was to try to get the upper hand over the people whose job is to monitor them. Even Radio-Canada, on what I would describe as a very pro-liberal panel, characterized the Prime Minister’s approach as authoritarian and described Motion No. 9 as an abuse of power. That is quite something, coming from CBC/Radio-Canada. Let us also talk about the mechanics of the Liberals’ fragile majority. Let us talk about the floor crossers. Every time a member crossed the floor to join the Liberals, the timing coincided perfectly with a period of political pressure on the Liberal government. Just as the Liberals presented the largest deficit budget in Canadian history and the public was still waiting for results, one member turned his back on his constituents and crossed the floor. Just as he was facing uncomfortable scrutiny over potential conflicts of interest, the Liberals recruited him. Another example was when the government needed to change the narrative. Members will recall that it was because the Leader of the Opposition travelled all over the world, appearing on podcasts to convince the American public that Canada is still needed and that it is a strong ally. The Leader of the Opposition travelled all over the world and was highly respected. The Leader of the Opposition had been pitch perfect. The Liberals needed to change the narrative about their failures, so, lo and behold, someone crossed the floor. We were told that it was a matter of conscience and personal convictions. That was not a coincidence; it was a pattern. It is clearly a strategy. I am going to explain what Motion No. 9 does in a language that everyone will understand, especially at this time of year. Let us imagine that we are in game seven of the playoffs. The series is tied at three wins apiece. The arena is packed to the rafters. Millions of people across Quebec are watching the game. The blues are on one side, the reds are on the other. The third period starts. The referees hit the ice. What do they do? They head over to Jon Cooper, high-five the players, have fun with them. They take a little sip from the team’s cup. They chat with Jon, who points at certain players. They take notes. Fans start wondering what is going on. What is worse, the commentators are already announcing the final score. Those same reporters are saying that the Habs took a beating before the third period even began. What would people say? Would they accept that outcome? Would that inspire confidence in us all? Does that sound like an honest game? No, it does not, because everyone understands a basic truth: A person cannot judge their own case. That is exactly what Motion No. 9 does, in the end. It turns the Liberals into very biased referees. We are not talking about abstract committees. We are not talking about committees that produced no results. We are talking about committees that, among other things, probed the ArriveCAN scandal, in which $59 million of taxpayers’ money was spent on an app that should have cost a few million dollars, with contracts awarded without a call for tenders to a four-person firm working out of the basement of a house not far from Parliament. It took nine different investigations to start scratching the surface of that scandal, and it all started with an oversight committee. An oversight committee launched the investigation into the Liberal green fund. An oversight committee first addressed the issue of foreign election interference before the inquiry into foreign election interference was launched. It was also oversight committees that shed light on the Prime Minister’s potential conflicts of interest with Brookfield. If, in the near future, Canadians stop hearing about scandals, it is not because there are no more scandals. It is simply because the government paid off the referees. I am going to say something that may surprise my colleagues on the other side of the House. I understand the theory behind what they want to do. Traditionally, a majority government holds a majority in committees. It is true that this is a parliamentary convention. If the Liberals had received a clear mandate from Canadians a year ago to ensure that their election platform was fulfilled and if everyone had gone to the polls to vote for a majority government, I would not be here debating today. However, that is not what happened. A minority government was elected, but it engineered an artificial majority through timely defections, dubious funding, promised perks, trips, and potential or actual investments in certain constituencies. The first thing this government is doing with that majority is locking down the oversight mechanisms. Men who built our democracy long before my time have explained it better than I can. John Diefenbaker, Canada’s 13th prime minister, said that “freedom always dies when criticism ends”. Lester B. Pearson, our 14th prime minister, who was a Liberal, said that the health of Parliament relies on the opposition’s right to oppose, attack and criticize. Mr. Pearson understood that the health of democracy depends on an opposition that can do its job. This is not a Conservative idea, but a democratic one. It is quite simple to understand. What the opposition is asking for today is simple and reasonable. It costs nothing, unless a government has something to hide. Let the Liberals have their majority on legislative committees. That is their right. However, for committees that have an exclusive mandate to monitor the government—the public accounts committee, the government operations committee, the ethics committee—we need the current composition to stand. That is the balance that Canadians have asked for, the balance that allowed a light to be shone on the Prime Minister’s conflicts of interest, apparent conflicts, violations of his conflict of interest screen and phony recusals that undermine Canadians’ trust in our institutions. That is the amendment we are proposing, and I urge every member here to ask themselves one question: If, in the future, a government is elected that we do not trust, would we want to have tools to monitor it? The woman I met was right when she said that if no one keeps a a close eye on things, everything will go off the rails. When the priority of a government with a new majority is to gain control over the people who monitor it, I can say that this woman was right. If Motion No. 9 is adopted as is, the next time that this woman is proven right, no one will be able to tell her so. In closing, the opposition exists for several fundamental reasons. We are here to analyze, to ask questions on behalf of those who sent us here. We are here for the workers of Montmorency—Charlevoix who pay taxes and want to know how their money is being spent. We are here to hold the government to account. I will say one last thing. We are here because Canadians from Victoria to Gaspé deserve a government that is not afraid to answer questions. We must reject Motion No. 9.
