Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, it is often that I find myself here wondering if this place has turned into something not quite like a sports arena, in the style of the Trump White House, with its caged sport for the celebration of 250 years of independence, which is a topic that is not necessarily connected to this at all, but, for sporting spectacles, this place sometimes resembles nothing more than target practice for teams that live in glass houses. It is difficult to watch. I know that I must have a glass house somewhere, but with the Green Party never having been in power, we have less of a record to attack. I do vividly recall when the Harper administration started using, as a matter of course, very long omnibus budget bills, which the Liberals of the day decried as burying too much in one bill, not properly reflecting or advancing the initial version of the budget and being done routinely. We then had, of course, the Harper administration bringing in repetitive motions for time allocation. I remember the first time I had started noticing that it had become quite routine. I went back, looked it up and found out that, over a period of 40 years, which is not that far back in our history, it had happened about 10 times. I started adding them up and keeping track, and it became hundreds of times. Of course, when in opposition, the Liberals pledged that they would never bring in omnibus budget bills containing many different measures in one piece of legislation and that they certainly would not use time allocation to shorten the time we have available to do those things. Again, both of the large parties live in, I must say, very large and well-equipped glass homes, but they are still throwing rocks at the same glass houses in which they live. They have both moved to omnibus budget bills once in power. The Liberals have done it, first under former prime minister Trudeau and now under the current Prime Minister. They also have continued to use time allocation. My own plea comes from my own little perch on parliamentary procedure. I know that it is against the rules of this place to have a member stand to deliver a written speech. If we followed that rule, I believe House leaders would be able to come to an agreement more quickly about how many speakers it would take to get a bill through the House. Listening to debate on the motion so far, I am reminded that, as the parliamentary secretary says to us all, we have to use time allocation or we cannot get this passed. To which I say, again, this is a glass house. It is like a child who has killed both of their parents pleading for mercy because they are an orphan. Why are we under time pressure? It is because the government of the day decided that we could shorten the amount of time we are sitting in June. Let us eliminate two days and create more pressure, meaning that it has to be passed now. Why is there no discussion about sitting longer? Why is there no discussion about what happened between when Bill C‑30 was first tabled on April 29 and when we next got back to it? After three hours of debate, the government moved time allocation on Bill C‑30. It is not a massive omnibus budget bill, but it is omnibus enough that I certainly had no indication that I was going to come across division 8, which has the most regressive pieces of the deregulation of pesticide legislation that I have seen. Believe it or not, as I know I look like a mere slip of a girl, someone who has just barely left law school, I have been working on pesticide issues for 51 years. This is the worst piece of deregulation I have ever seen, and it is inside an omnibus budget bill. I would be happy to support many of the provisions in the spring economic statement. There are some I would not. That is the nature of an omnibus bill. There are many things affecting many different bills, done all in one vote and all in one go. This time it is with the added factor that we do not have a lot of time. Who controls the timing? The government controls the timing. Who controls what bills come forward for debate, for Government Orders, for orders of the day? The government side does that. My hon. friends on the finance committee, I must say, performed the most extraordinary filibuster I have ever seen, in terms of creativity. I sat through all of it because I kept hoping against hope that we would maybe get to clause-by-clause and that my amendments could be discussed and debated. However, again, the pattern of the House of Commons since forever has been that the parties in opposition will use whatever tools they have at their disposal. It was decades ago that the Conservatives left the bells ringing for days. It takes a while, but the government regroups and finds a new way to get around that particular effort to put a spanner in the works. This is not uncommon, but what is uncommon is the use of programming motions, and I say this to my hon. colleagues on the Liberal benches. The first extremely offensive programming motion, in my experience as a member of Parliament since 2011, was what happened in June last year with the programming motion on Bill C-5, which saw us take the most extraordinary seizure of power and expansion to the power of the executive cabinet in a bill, Bill C-5, which included provisions I never thought I would see in Canada, and say that, if in passing this law we break other laws we have already passed, that is okay. This is based on a historical and never-used-in-Canada archival bit of trivia. It was Henry VIII who came up with that. If in passing this law, we break other laws we have passed before, that is okay. This extraordinary abuse of power was in Bill C-5, building Canada strong and reducing interprovincial trade barriers in part 1, which went through this place. I will never forget it because I still feel like I was caught under a bulldozer going right over me. It was Monday, June 16, when the programming motion took effect, and second reading took place with limited debate to pass it to committee. By the way, on the Monday, June 16, we did not even have a committee in place yet to deal with the bill. On Tuesday, June 17 at 3:30 p.m., the committee was put in place, one committee for all these provisions. Then the committee could start hearing witnesses in the afternoon. By Wednesday at noon, all amendments were due and so on until we got through report stage and third reading, both on Friday, June 20. Then we were adjourned for the summer, and we were told it was a monstrous hurry that we have a Major Projects Office. It was very important to able to see projects come through this process, which is why we could not, as I pleaded at the time, stay longer through the summer, discuss this bill, debate this bill, to see whether this extreme sweeping accumulation of powers by the executive was in any way justified. They said we were in a hurry, except it has been a whole year now, and the bill has not been used once to name a project through Bill C-5. Again, here we are on Motion No. 12 on Bill C-30. I am thankful for the way the unanimous consent motion was structured. I will have a chance to speak at third reading on Bill C-30 on the specifics of the part I most decry. I still hope against hope that the finance committee tomorrow will see fit to accept the amendments I have put forward and deemed to be moved. I have been, as I said, patiently waiting while admiring the artistry of the Conservative filibuster. I must say I have had more fun watching paint dry. It is always more interesting. On the other hand, it was artful. Although I do not agree with why the Conservatives were filibustering, I do sometimes, as a person who is observing glass houses more than living in them, enjoy the karma of the whole thing. I will vote against Motion No. 12 because it is offensive to democracy to have programming motions that say we must move fast, that we must not debate, that we must not consider. I find over and over again that there has been nothing like the current government for moving fast, and there has been nothing like the current government for treating Parliament with a kind of casual contempt. As a Canadian and someone who deeply believes in Westminster parliamentary democracy, I personally find it offensive. I may be the only one, but I think Canadians want to see this place respected and want to know that every bill has been properly studied. For one, I would be prepared to say that if properly studying bills means we cut into the summer and we are in Ottawa longer to do it, that is the right thing to do.
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