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Hon. Kevin Lamoureux

Liberal 5:50 p.m.

“I appreciate my friend's point. He said it's about how many MPs a party has. History shows that if you have the most MPs, you should get the most seats on committees. That's how we've always done it. Why would we change that now? Don't you agree?”

Hon. Judy A. Sgro

Liberal 5:50 p.m.

“I want the rules to stay the same as before. The party with the most MPs should get to make the rules. That's how we've always done it.”

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.”

Hon. Judy A. Sgro

Liberal 5:50 p.m.

“I'm filling time with kind words and saying nothing anyone could pin down later.”

Ryan Turnbull

Liberal 5:50 p.m.

“I'm filling time with kind words and saying nothing anyone could pin down later. I want Canadians to think I work well with others.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague from Humber River—Black Creek for her 26 years of serving in the House and for her mentorship and friendship. The speech she made today was great. She is a testament to parliamentary tradition and also to a very progressive agenda for her community that I know she has pursued all throughout her career. I am very proud to call her a friend. After six and a half years of serving in the House, it is an honour to rise today to speak to government Motion No. 9. I say six and a half years because, since 2019, I only ever served in a minority Parliament. It is a great honour to be standing here today with our government's having earned a majority, whether through floor crossings or by-election results. Nonetheless, as my previous colleague mentioned, this does not change the fact that our government now has 174 seats in the House, which is clearly a majority of the seats. Before turning to the motion we are debating, I want to spend a little bit of time speaking to the important role that committees serve in our parliamentary system. Canadians obviously have the opportunity to watch us here daily in the House of Commons. They watch us fiercely debate important pieces of legislation. They can see the work that we put into both making sure that bills pass and making sure the laws get the scrutiny they deserve, by asking questions and engaging in robust back-and-forth of ideas and perspectives. I know how challenging that process can be at times, but I think we are all better off for it. However, there is one place in the system of Parliament of making laws and passing bills where Canadians can sit directly across from us, and where we benefit from hearing from people with vast amounts of expertise and experience across many different fields. That is at committees. I have served on the industry committee, the finance committee, the procedure and House affairs committee, the agriculture and agri-food standing committee, the science and research committee, and the human resources, skills and social development and the status of persons with disabilities committee, which is a great committee. I have visited OGGO, ETHI and many of the other committees to sub in for colleagues from time to time and to participate in debates. All of them have been a privilege. What I particularly appreciate about committees is that we do not just look for answers from each other as members of Parliament but we also get to hear from the Canadians who, ultimately, elect us. Their voices get to be heard, and I think that is really powerful. The studies we undertake at committee, although sometimes a little laborious, I admit, at other times can really contribute both to parliamentary debate and also to government initiatives and responses, and they can better inform the whole process of democracy. Our best work at committee is often done when we are working together. That goes without question. I have been part of many committee studies in which we did not start out agreeing, that is for sure, but eventually came to reach consensus. Committees give us the opportunity to come together in smaller groups on a regular basis. We get to know each other across party lines. We often find that we have more in common than we think or assume, even if we come from places that may be thousands of kilometres apart or from communities that have real regional differences that we all come to appreciate. Our shared understanding of and ultimate respect for our work on committees can bring out what is truly best in all of us. There are many examples where members of the House, on our own and with members from the other place, have worked together with amazing results. I will point to the MP for Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, who worked on pension protection years ago in the House. She is now a member of our party on this side of the House, which is great. We welcome her on this side of the House, but previously she served in the Conservative Party. She brought forward, I would say, an imperfect bill on pension protection, an issue that my constituents and I care deeply about, which also crossed all party lines. We worked both with the member and across all parties to find a solution to that private member's bill, to eventually pass it in the House. I am very proud of that work. I am proud to have supported that member and her initiative. Even though I was not the one leading it, and I may not have gotten the credit for it, that does not matter to me. This place works better because we work together, in this case, to protect pensioners by making sure that when a company goes through insolvency, pensioners are protected, that they get paid out not last on the list of creditors. That initiative proved to me years ago that this place can really work and that the function of committees is truly powerful. Another example that is more recent is that of the MP for Simcoe North, who is a colleague I served with on the finance committee, with Bill C-230, an initiative he brought forward to increase transparency on debts owed to the Government of Canada. I found the member of the Conservative Party to be extremely reasonable and thoughtful, to participate in debates in good faith and to consider the amendments the government put forward and willing to accept some of them. In some cases, we negotiated back and forth to find a middle ground. That is what makes this place work. That is democracy in action, and it is the stuff that makes me proud to have served in the House for the last six and a half years. That sentiment is what we want to achieve with the restructuring of committees. We want to work collaboratively across party lines. We want democracy to work for Canadians. That is what this government stands for and what I stand for as a member of Parliament. I know my colleagues on this side of the House, all 174 of us now, believe in that vision, which is to work on behalf of Canadians to make this place function, to pass better laws, to do better studies and, yes, to hold the government to account. That is exactly what we can achieve when we work together. I know there are many ways to interpret this motion, but I think it is important that we all take those committee responsibilities seriously and work as a group, hearing each other's perspectives with a common goal in mind, as with previous joint efforts on those committees. For example, Bill C-225, sponsored by the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, would, if adopted, make changes to the Criminal Code to create new offences related to intimate partner violence and coercive control. That is a very important issue to many of us, and I think we can stand together and work together on that. I know there is a general desire on behalf of all of us to do right by Canadians. There are many other examples. I will point to just two more. I served with the member for Kingston and the Islands, the member for Brampton North—Caledon and the member for Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, who was here a moment ago. She is not in the chamber at the moment, but I will say that—

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Ryan Turnbull

Liberal 6:00 p.m.

“I broke a rule. I'm very proud of myself. I want you to agree with me. I want more power in committees. I want to control committees.”

Official Hansard

You are right, Mr. Speaker. I contravened the rules unintentionally there. My apologies to you and all the members. With that said, those members and I served on the procedure and House affairs committee. We looked at Centre Block revitalization. We talked about foreign interference, which we studied for nine months in committee. We studied the hybrid provisions during the pandemic to change standing orders so government could function during the middle of a global pandemic to pass legislation, put programs in place and save lives. I am really proud of that work. I know that committee functioned well, even though there was lots of rigorous debate. This is exactly what we can achieve when we work together. Committees will continue to function that way with them reflecting the majority in the House. As the member previously mentioned, committees have an important function of oversight and accountability, but what is clear is that they need to mirror the proportionality of seats in the House. That is exactly what Motion No. 9 proposes to do.

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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.”

Ryan Turnbull

Liberal 6:00 p.m.

“I don't want the opposition to have more power on committees. I want my party to keep more seats there. It's been done before so I think we should keep it that way.”

Xavier Barsalou-Duval

Bloc Québécois 6:05 p.m.

“The Liberals are stalling in committees to block the opposition from investigating and checking the government's decisions. They're doing this on purpose. They want to waste time and keep control so the government never has to answer to anyone. They're not trying to help the opposition do its job. They want to make sure the opposition can't do its job at all.”

Official Hansard

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?

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Ryan Turnbull

Liberal 6:05 p.m.

“I'm talking a lot but I'm not really saying anything. The other parties have ways to hold us accountable but I don't want to acknowledge that we're blocking them on purpose. I'm going to pretend this is normal instead of answering the real issue.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate the sentiments from my colleague, wanting to hold the government to account. As an opposition MP in the House, he is well aware that is his job. It is the same with the Conservative Party. How 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? There 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, so they had a tool to hold us to account then. It 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.

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Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault

Liberal 6:05 p.m.

“I'm just trying to run down the clock with nice-sounding words about tradition and principles instead of answering the real issue. I don't want to admit any problem with our government blocking accountability.”

Ryan Turnbull

Liberal 6:05 p.m.

“I'm filling time with kind words about tradition and accountability. I don't want to admit our government blocked those things. I want to make the other party look bad instead.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, certainly I believe in tradition. I believe in the Standing Orders, although I understand that they evolve over time. This is what I was trying to point to with the fact that the Conservatives, during the middle of a pandemic, filibustered in committee and made arguments that we should never change the traditions of the House. I see that there are moments within an emergency situation where we need to adapt and be able to do the work and function as a government. At the same time, I understand that in moments like these, the traditions of the House allow opposition parties to hold the government to account. It is so fundamental in terms of representing and mirroring the proportionality in the House in committee. That has to be preserved at all costs. I do not think the members opposite are saying we should change that tradition, but they only want to abide by—

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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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Hon. Mark Gerretsen

Liberal 6:15 p.m.

“I want to make you argue with an old quote from your own side. When politicians switch parties it helps my party more.”

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.”

Xavier Barsalou-Duval

Bloc Québécois 6:15 p.m.

“Did the Liberals offer gifts to switch sides?”

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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What they said. What they meant.

Recent debates

Government Business No. 9—Changes to the Standing Orders

Hon. Kevin Lamoureux

Hon. Judy A. Sgro

Harb Gill

Hon. Judy A. Sgro

Ryan Turnbull

Ryan Turnbull

Connie Cody

Ryan Turnbull

Xavier Barsalou-Duval

Ryan Turnbull

Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault

Ryan Turnbull

Aaron Gunn

Hon. Mark Gerretsen

Aaron Gunn

Xavier Barsalou-Duval

Aaron Gunn

Amarjeet Gill

Aaron Gunn

Kyle Seeback