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Cheryl Gallant

Conservative 5:20 p.m.

“The government already has too much power. They stripped out amendments that the committee agreed on unanimously. What else will the government control about committees now? Will they stop us from scrutinizing bills too?”

Andrew Lawton

Conservative 5:20 p.m.

“The government wants to avoid accountability. Liberals are filibustering the finance minister to protect him from testifying about his conflicts of interest. Committees should have the power to hold ministers accountable, not just in short question period slots. Ministers need real scrutiny.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, it is not just about amendments, as the member indicates; it is also about the agendas for committees. There are a number of committees that engage in studies that want to invite ministers to appear. As we have seen in the case of the ethics committee, the Liberals have staged a massive filibuster to block the finance minister from having to testify about his clear conflicts of interest on the $90‑billion Alto boondoggle. It is not just about amendments; it is about avoiding ministerial accountability at the committee level, where members get the chance, not just in a 35‑second question period slot but in a real substantive way, to question ministers who right now desperately need the accountability and scrutiny.

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Chris Warkentin

Conservative 5:20 p.m.

“The Liberals made big promises but delivered nothing. Now they want to rig committees to avoid accountability. They already have more seats than they won by votes, and now they want even more control in committees to hide their failures. The government is all talk and no action, and now they don't even want to let us talk in committees to expose their scandals. I'm calling out the Liberals for dodging accountability.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I was mesmerized by the speech my colleague just gave. It is remarkable the lengths to which the Liberals will go to get their hands on power. That has been the Liberal story through all of history. I will give the Liberals credit for one thing: their ability to seize power and take credit for doing absolutely nothing. They are truly masters of illusion. Never has a government been given so much credit for doing so little. As a matter of fact, I would suggest that doing little might be an improvement over what the government has done, in some cases causing Canadians to fall backwards. The current Prime Minister ran the last election on grand promises. I think we can all recall the grand promises to reverse the Trudeau era and bring back prosperity and hope to Canadians. He went to great lengths to explain how he would reverse the policies of his predecessor, saying that the Liberal Party of the past was no more and that he would be coming in with a new vision for Canada. He said that he would reverse the anti-development Trudeau era and that he would build new infrastructure in this country to get more product to new markets, specifically saying that he would approve and build pipelines and infrastructure in our ports to ensure that we could get our products to places that had never seen Canadian product. He said, “We will need to do things previously thought impossible at speeds we haven't seen in generations.” He went on to promise that he was going to make life affordable and bring down the price of groceries and homes. He asked to be judged by the prices on grocery-store shelves, that he would get a deal done with Trump and that he would negotiate a win on trade by July 21. I will point out that the year that he made that promise was for July 21, 2025, nearly a year ago. He said that he would get new trade agreements done and would diversify our trading relationships. Now, a year later, absolutely nothing has been done. There are no new pipelines, no new infrastructure that has even been proposed and every one of Trudeau's anti-development laws are still in place. Unfortunately, he has made it worse. He has layered on additional red tape and more bureaucratic hurdles. When we look at where we are today compared to where we were even a year ago, we have to compare ourselves to our international partners. When we look at the G7, we rank the worst in household debt, food inflation and housing costs. Canada currently has the only shrinking economy and the second worst unemployment rate in the G7. With this motion the Prime Minister currently has before the House, the Liberals are taking the unprecedented move to rig the government in their favour and ensure that all of this accountability that Canadians deserve would be wiped away. They know they have failed to fulfill the promises that they made to Canadians, and they know that by rigging committees and ensuring that they have the majority on committees, all these uncomfortable questions would disappear. It is a clear effort by the Liberals to stack the deck. I want to explain the egregious nature of this stacking of the deck. I think it is important for Canadians to understand the real assault on the democratic rights of Canadians that is currently being undertaken. In the last election, the Liberals won the election by 43.76%, and that translated into 49.27% of the seats in the House of Commons, which was already overrepresented vis-à-vis what the Canadian people had voted for, but that is how our system works. After the floor crossings, the Liberals now have 51.4% of the seats. Again, let us remember that this is the first time in Canadian history where a Prime Minister gave favours to individuals to cross the floor, moving them from a minority government to a majority government. The Liberals now have 51.4% of the seats in the House of Commons, but Motion No. 9 would give them 58% of the seats on committees. Canadians have been told that committees are where the real work of the House of Commons happens. They are where we dig deep, get to the nuts and bolts, and pull back the curtain to discover what is actually happening. Obviously, in this chamber, it is oftentimes dramatic speeches and a fair bit of cut and thrust, but at committees, that is where there is the opportunity for parliamentarians, on behalf of our constituents, to drill down to find out what is happening. However, through the unprecedented measure the Liberals are now undertaking, the Liberals would go from having won just under 44% of the popular vote to getting 58% of the seats on committees, where the real work of Parliament happens. To give a little context, due to five members of the House of Commons crossing the floor, the Liberals now believe they are entitled to 52 new positions for Liberals on the House of Commons Standing Committees. The media has taken notice. I will read into the record what Andrew Coyne had to say about the Prime Minister. He said, “This is a government and a Prime Minister with an autocratic streak a mile wide.” Althia Raj, who was also quoted on CBC, said, “This Prime Minister definitely has an authoritarian streak.” Even the media on CBC is responding in complete disgust and disbelief that the Prime Minister would undertake this. At a time when Canadians desperately need more accountability in the House of Commons, the Liberals would remove that accountability through this motion. When we look back at previous scandals of Justin Trudeau, we saw the WE Charity scandal entirely exposed because of the work of the committees. The SNC-Lavalin affair was a scandal that demonstrated just how much the then prime minister Justin Trudeau was trying to manipulate a court process, which was completely exposed because of the work of a standing committee. The green slush fund scandal was completely exposed because of the work of a standing committee. The arrive scam scandal was exposed because of the work that was done at committee. This is what the Liberals currently want to stop, because before our committees right now, we have Liberals who will not let witnesses stay at committee when it comes to witnesses such as Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, who has been the whistle-blower on the working conditions for the Chinese manufacturers of the Chinese EVs that the government wants to import to Canada. The ethics committee is currently being filibustered by the Liberals to make sure that issues before that committee will never see the light of day. We are currently also seeing the Liberals filibustering at the fisheries and oceans committee to ensure that those scandals never see the light of day. We are also currently witnessing a filibuster at the health committee, where Liberals will not allow the PrescribeIT scandal to come to the light of day. At transport, the Liberals are filibustering a Bloc motion, supported by the Conservatives, to force the Liberals to produce documentation. The human resources committee is currently being filibustered by the Liberals. The Liberals are doing all of this, including this motion, to ensure that these scandals never see the light of day. We will continue to oppose and fight this.

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Chris Warkentin

Conservative 5:35 p.m.

“The other guy did something small and bad once. Now we do much bigger bad things. They can't lecture us.”

Chris Warkentin

Conservative 5:35 p.m.

“The Liberals won a minority but they want a majority. Now they want 58% of committee seats. They are filibustering many committees. The committees can't vote as long as the Liberals keep talking. They want to force a motion to get their majority on all committees. The Liberals want to control the committees and stop any transparency they don't like.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, it is clear what is happening. The Liberals, having won a minority, want the power of a majority. There have been floor crossings that bring them over the technical definition of a majority, but now they are demanding 58%, nearly 60%, of the seats on standing committees. Currently, most committees are seized by Liberal filibuster. Effectively, that means that, if the Liberal members keep talking, the chair cannot move to a vote for the issues that are before those committees. That means that nothing will happen until such time as the Liberals can force this motion through the House of Commons, giving them the effective majority on every single committee. Obviously, the purpose of this entire process is to ensure that nothing happens at those committees that the Liberals do not agree to, specifically transparency.

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Amarjeet Gill

Conservative 5:35 p.m.

“I think my friend made good points. I don't want to make it easier for the government to avoid questions. The Liberals are talking a lot at the ethics committee to avoid questions today. Can you explain how these changes will affect Parliament? I want to make sure Parliament works for people, not just for the current government.”

Chris Warkentin

Conservative 5:35 p.m.

“I think the Liberals are trying to change the rules to help their own party, not to help Canadians.”

Kerry Diotte

Conservative 5:45 p.m.

“You're just trying to stack the committees with your people so your party's scandals don't get investigated.”

Harb Gill

Conservative 5:50 p.m.

“You didn't answer my question about the bridge. I want you to take this seriously. I'm asking you again.”

Connie Cody

Conservative 6:00 p.m.

“I want voters to cheer for me when I promise transparency. I'm worried the other party will put more people on committees. I think adding people to committees will hurt transparency.”

Aaron Gunn

Conservative 6:05 p.m.

“I'm angry that the government cheated to get more power. I want to stop them.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Dufferin—Caledon. Why do we get involved in politics? Why do those in this chamber put their names forward to stand for an election and all that it entails? The answer, of course, varies and is undoubtedly different for different people. Some run for office to seek change in their local community. Others are motivated by matters of principle or feel compelled to act on behalf of deeply held ideas or beliefs. As we have seen recently, others get into politics for the sole reason of furthering their personal interests, cozying up to power and, maybe worst of all, accumulating power for the sake of power itself, even if it means selling out their constituents and betraying those they were elected to represent. For the first time in more than 150 years of Canadian history, a Prime Minister has sought the almost unlimited power of a majority government in Canada not through a mandate from voters but through deception and deceit, quietly courting a handful of self-interested, duplicitous MPs through backroom deals and who knows what else, effectively overturning the results of an election and concentrating power that he may covet but has not democratically earned. The result is millions of Canadian voters who are angry and thousands who feel as if their vote was stolen, and I can see why. When someone is elected under a party banner, it is not just a personal victory. It is a commitment to the people who supported them and that platform, those principles and that vision for the country. In the last election, none of these elected MPs communicated to voters that they would consider crossing the floor just months after the vote. That matters, as does the context within which their decisions were made. It has been less than a year since the last election. The major party leaders are exactly the same. The party platforms are essentially the same. The primary issues facing this country, unfortunately, such as the cost of living, increasing crime, a faltering economy and the ongoing trade dispute with the United States, are also the same now as they were one year ago. If these MPs wanted to represent the Liberal Party of Canada and defend the Liberal platform in this Parliament, they should have made that decision before the last election. Then again if they had, most, and probably all, would have lost their seats. Therein lies the problem. The Prime Minister is accumulating political power he was specifically and unequivocally denied the last time Canadians went to the polls. We are not just talking, of course, about a handful of individual seats without any broader consequences. We are talking about fundamentally changing the balance of power here in Ottawa, radically remaking the minority government that voters delivered last April, when the Liberal Party and the current Prime Minister were restrained by the need to compromise and consult with opposition parties and were held accountable at committees with production orders, witness testimony and investigative motions. It was a minority government that has now been transformed through backroom deals and floor crossings to a majority that never should have been. It is unethical, it is fundamentally undemocratic, and it has had the effect of essentially disenfranchising thousands of Canadian voters. If a party wants a majority government in this country, it should have to earn it at the ballot box, just like every other government since 1867 in our country. Here we are. What is done is done, as they say. The next question is, what comes next? It only took a matter of days for the Liberals to tip their hand, moving a motion that we are debating here today to stack committees with not one but two additional Liberal MPs, trampling the oversight powers of Parliament, limiting transparency and laying the groundwork to ram through their agenda. This is from a party that loves to engage in lofty rhetoric about compromise, the defence of institutions and bringing people together. However, at the end of the day, I think what all this exposes is that the only real principle the Liberal Party knows is power, power at all costs, power even as an end onto itself. The Liberals are not about to let something as inconvenient as an election result get in the way. What will they do with all this newly acquired power and the ability to pass essentially whatever they want? We have seen, over the past 12 months, that what the Liberals say they want during an election and what they actually end up doing can be two very different things. For one, they promised to get Canada's fiscal situation under control and to rein in the excesses of Justin Trudeau, who doubled Canada's debt in just 10 years. Instead, under the Prime Minister, the deficit has actually increased. They also promised to prioritize Canadians' public safety after the increases we saw over the past decade in violent crime of 50%. Instead, the first bill they submitted to the justice committee did not target repeat violent offenders at all but rather the free speech of law-abiding Canadians. As for their signature promise, to negotiate a trade deal with the United States by July 2025, well, it has now been a year since the last election. There is still no deal, and the tariffs remain in place. In fact, the tariffs are higher now than they were back then. Meanwhile, some other legislation that the Liberals actually campaigned on, such as speeding up the construction of projects deemed in the national interest and introduced as Bill C-5, has been supported by the Conservatives and indeed improved through negotiations and the committee process. It all raises the question: For what purpose do the Liberals seek their near-unlimited power today? For what purpose do they seek to upset a 159-year-old Canadian political convention? Is it that they seek to restrict the opposition from conducting inquiries into their many conflicts of interest? Is it to shield the sunlight of transparency by blocking requests and blocking production orders for government documents and reports? Is it that they tend to introduce radical legislation they did not campaign on and know that none of the opposition parties would be able to support? Maybe it is a combination of all three. One year ago, I was elected in my riding of North Island—Powell River as the Conservative Party candidate. I ran on a clear platform, a clear set of commitments and a clear vision for this country: to stand up for Canada's resource sector, with forestry, mining, oil and natural gas; to target the real criminals in our country, the repeat violent offenders, not those exercising free speech and not law-abiding firearm owners who have never committed a crime in their life; to stop the reckless spending and endless deficits; to get the cost of living under control; and, finally, to get our men and women in uniform the equipment and support they desperately need and deserve, while always standing up for our country. I intend to honour the promises I made and the guarantees to those who entrusted me with their support and their vote. Today, with the Liberal motion, this patently naked grasp for political power, there is no denying one very simple fact: My job and the job of my opposition colleagues is certainly about to get a lot more difficult. However, that just means we will have to redouble our efforts and work harder than ever before to hold the government to account, to be the voice of our constituents and to be the voice, as always, of Conservative common sense. We can then ensure that the very real concerns and interests of hard-working, tax-paying and law-abiding Canadians are not ignored and that their priorities, through our efforts and our pressure, become the priorities of the government, however reluctant it is.

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Aaron Gunn

Conservative 6:15 p.m.

“I don't like that. I want to cheer against the other side's politicians joining my party. That's bad. I think its very bad.”

Aaron Gunn

Conservative 6:20 p.m.

“I don't have any details about secret Liberal deals. But I want to make people suspicious of closed-door promises.”

Amarjeet Gill

Conservative 6:20 p.m.

“I say we should all be nice. Then I talk about a different subject. I want more debate and fewer ways for the government to shut it down.”

Aaron Gunn

Conservative 6:20 p.m.

“The government got fewer votes. Now they cut a backroom deal to get more power. They don't want to help people, just stack committees with their friends. We want to watch the government and make them show their work.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, Parliament and the workings of the House should reflect the democratic mandate given during the last election. The Liberal Party and the Prime Minister sought, and did not receive, a majority government from Canadians. What they have now done, through backroom deals and who knows what else, is manufacture a majority government. Their first order of business is not to try to do something to help Canadians, but it is to radically stack committees with Liberal members of Parliament. We believe in more transparency, more oversight and more accountability for the government, and that is exactly what we are going to continue to push for in opposition, even if the government is about to make our job much more difficult.

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Kyle Seeback

Conservative 6:20 p.m.

“I want people to see the government as authoritarian. They limit debate to protect a minister's partner from conflict of interest scrutiny. They will shut down all accountability.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, there is an old saying that is very appropriate for what we are about to go through in the House of Commons and something I want all Canadians to think about. It is that when they show us who they are, we should believe them. One hour into the debate to give the Liberals a majority on all committees, a majority which was not obtained through the results of the last election, they brought forward a closure motion. A closure motion is used to close down debate. Why am I talking about closing down debate? It is because the Liberal government has a strong authoritarian streak. It has been found guilty of invoking the Emergencies Act. It has used parliamentary overreach at every single opportunity it has. In fact, earlier in the week, we were conducting a debate on Bill C-22 about lawful access, a very serious piece of legislation that sets the parameters for which police and other authorities can access Canadians' digital footprint. Every time a Conservative member got up in this chamber to debate the issue and make points about the problems with the legislation, the Liberal deputy House leader got up and accused them of filibustering and obstruction. If that is not bad enough, right after he would accuse Conservatives of engaging in filibuster and obstruction, a Liberal member would get up and speak. We can see the authoritarian streak in the Liberal Party every single day when we engage in debate in the House of Commons. If a Conservative member or an opposition member from the Bloc or the NDP gets up to speak, that is obstruction and filibustering. However, if a Liberal member gets up, it is somehow a wonderful thing that is happening in this place. This is how Liberals engage. This is the respect they have for the democratically elected opposition parties. While they were in a minority status, we were able to keep that in check, and we did that in many ways. For example, Bill C-22 came from a piece of legislation, Bill C-2, which contained all kinds of Liberal authoritarian overreach. Through opposition to that, the bill was split. Now that they are going to reorganize committees, the opportunity to do that would get significantly smaller. It would almost not exist because they could do such things as what they have just done. This is a motion to radically change the composition of committees. It would not just be adding one extra Liberal member, as would be appropriate; they would be adding two. They would not just be adding two extra members to the committees that they say are the ones to get things done, such as finance or others; they would be taking control of the oversight committees. Why is that important? Why would I say this is something that Canadians should be very concerned about? I will give a couple of examples. Right now, at the ethics committee, which is one of the oversight committees, the Liberals have been filibustering for I do not know how many days. What are they filibustering over? Is it something important, a critical piece of legislation, a bill they think the opposition parties are going to use to destroy Canada? No. What they are filibustering and preventing from happening is the finance minister's going to committee to testify on his clear conflict of interest with respect to the Alto project. It is a clear conflict of interest. He has voted on issues that deal with Alto. Alto was in the budget, and the finance minister's partner is an executive at Alto. This is a clear ethical violation. The minister should be held to account and go to committee, but the Liberals have been filibustering for days to prevent that from happening. Now what are they doing? They are giving themselves a majority on that committee so they do not have to filibuster away accountability anymore. No, they do not have to bother with that because now they have the votes. They just say the minister clearly violated the conflict of interest laws and too bad, he is not going to committee to testify because they have the votes. Right now, on my committee, the HUMA committee, they have been filibustering, for two days, a document production order. Why do we want documents? We want documents to look into the cost overruns of another Liberal technology project. Everybody remembers ArriveCAN, the tiny project that went massively over budget. This is another IT project that has gone wildly bad under the Liberal government. All we have asked for is for the Liberals to produce some documents. They have spent the last two meetings filibustering that document request. Guess what. If the motion passes, they do not have to filibuster any more. They will have the votes to deny accountability, to deny transparency and to do whatever they want. That is the real reason why we are having changes to committees. They do not like the scrutiny that committees provide. We have had all kinds of Liberal members wax poetic about the wonders of committee and the work that committees do. Guess what. They do amazing work when there is a minority government and the government can be held to account. We can get the documents that we need. We can have the ministers who have engaged in unethical conduct come before committee and answer for that unethical conduct. We can look at pieces of legislation that have terrible government overreach and we can say that they will not pass without amendment. All of that will now be gone. As if that is not bad enough, I will go back to what we did earlier today. It was one hour into the debate, a debate about these Liberals taking control of all of the committees so they can ram through their legislative agenda any way they want, with little or no scrutiny. I say that because they can do very simple things. They can bring a programming motion when they put a piece of legislation in the House of Commons, and they can program the amount of time it will spend at committee and have it brought back. They can vote down every single amendment the opposition might want to do. This is a very important debate. This should be debated. They should have extended hours in the House to have this debate. Instead, what did they do? They moved closure. After one hour, they said they have had enough of the debate. It goes back to what I said when I first opened this speech. When someone says who they are, believe them. They do not believe in an opposition that can hold them to account. They do not, or they would not be resetting the numbers on the accountability committees. If they wanted to, they could say that they are taking control of committees to get their legislative agenda passed. I could maybe understand that, especially if it were six members instead of seven. The committees would then be where they should be and the chair would have to break the tie. It is a Liberal chair. The Liberal chair would break the tie in their favour. They are going to seven, which reduces the opportunity for opposition members to speak at committee. They are also doing this for the accountability committees: public accounts, access to information, ethics and government operations. We wonder why they are doing it? We do not have to wonder. They are doing it to avoid scrutiny. They are doing it to avoid accountability. They are not Liberals who believe in any of those things. I am saying this very clearly right now and I am talking directly to Canadians: Watch what happens over the next year with the Liberals and watch what happens at committee. There will be constant motions to shut down investigations at committee. There will be constant motions in the chamber to shut down debate. There will be programming motions so that things barely go to committee at all. They will not be held to account for ethical violations. We know that where there is a Liberal government, there are ethical violations. We all remember the ad scam, the green slush fund, arrive scam, name it. When there is money involved, the Liberals get their hands involved and all of that will be silenced by the Liberals. I think it is an outrage that they would use a closure motion on a motion to take control of committees. It tells us exactly what they are going to do and exactly the kind of government they will be, and it is not what Canadians wanted.

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Kyle Seeback

Conservative 6:30 p.m.

“The Liberals will be very authoritarian. I want to warn everyone about it.”

Kyle Seeback

Conservative 6:35 p.m.

“The other party is very bad. I don't like how they make laws. They stop us from talking. They won't take our ideas. They will make everything worse.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I think we are going to see the Liberal tendency to use massive, omnibus pieces of legislation, stifle debate and close down investigations at committees or prevent them from starting. This is something we have seen repeatedly over the last number of months. It is something we are going to see increasingly; it is going to accelerate. The Liberals will not accept amendments from the opposition. They will use things like time allocation motions to shut down debate in the House of Commons. They will use closure motions like they are using on this motion. They will use programming motions that not only shut down debate but also program the amount of time spent in committee so that the legislation avoids scrutiny. This is going to be a catastrophe.

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Arnold Viersen

Conservative 6:35 p.m.

“The other party is very bad. They won't let us talk or ask questions. They will shut us down soon because they can. What do you think about that?”

Kyle Seeback

Conservative 6:35 p.m.

“The other party is very bad and unfair. They block things and shut down debate at lots of committees. They might go secret to hide from voters. This hurts democracy.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely true. The Liberals are filibustering at the HUMA committee, like I described, to block the production of documents. They are filibustering at the ethics committee to avoid accountability for the finance minister, who is in a conflict of interest. I think we are going to see that increasingly. One thing that I suspect will also start happening now is that the Liberals will bring motions to go in camera at committee. They are going to say, “Mr. Chair, we would like to move the meeting in camera.” For Canadians, this means that for whatever happens in that meeting, we cannot speak about it publicly. The Liberals will do that to avoid further accountability by holding the clause-by-clause review of legislation in camera, so they are not seen voting down opposition amendments. I think that this is going to be an incredible stifling of democracy. It is deeply troubling how they are doing this at the accountability committees. If they actually cared about accountability, they would do this at the justice committee or they would do things at the finance committee to get their legislation through. However, they are doing it at the accountability committees, the ones that hold them accountable, without a democratic mandate. These are dark days for democracy in Canada.

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What they said. What they meant.

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