Luc Berthold

“Canadians are paying more than ever for housing, food, and travel because of the government's high spending and debt interest. Will the Prime Minister add even more spending and debt next week, driving costs up further?”

“Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Prime Minister claims that affordability is the best it has been in 10 years. However, with $90 billion in new spending and $55 billion in annual interest payments, Canadians are paying more than ever for housing, food and transportation. Even the C.D. Howe Institute says we are living in a “fiscal fantasy”. Next week, will the Liberal Prime Minister condemn Canadians to even more spending, more deficits and a rising cost of living for families?”

In response to a question from Alexis Deschênes

“The government changed the number of members on committees without working with the opposition parties. All parties should decide this together. The government is also threatening to cut off debate because it only listens to its own ideas.”

“Mr. Speaker, my colleague raised an extremely important point. Committee composition is usually a collaborative decision involving the opposition parties. When a new government is elected, the parties meet and decide on the composition of committees. Now we have been told that it will no longer work that way because the government decided to add two members without consulting us to see if we were adding one, two or three or taking some away. We might have preferred to take some away rather than have the government add two. There was no collaboration. They even floated the possibility of closure. I know my colleague is fairly new here, but I remember, back when we had a Liberal government, it was one gag order after another. He should get used to this. If things go on like this, obviously the government will impose closure every time opposition members oppose its ideas. The Liberals do not like anyone’s ideas but their own.”

In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“We worked with the government to help big projects get built faster, but the Liberals rejected our help. After a year under this Prime Minister, Canada's economy is shrinking and our food prices are rising faster than any other G7 country. This is a bad government and we cannot trust it.”

“Mr. Speaker, we did. The first thing we did as an opposition was to collaborate with the government on the bill to more quickly make each and every big project. We collaborated, but unfortunately the Liberals thought it was not enough. They thought they could do better, but after a year, things are not better in Canada with the new Prime Minister, another Liberal prime minister. They are worse. We have the only shrinking economy in the G7, and food inflation is the worst in the G7. I could go on and on. It is a bad government, and we cannot put all our confidence in it.”

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  “We have the only shrinking economy in the G7.”

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In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“The Prime Minister acts like he is the boss of Parliament, but all members are equal. The Liberals gained a majority through backroom deals to get members to switch parties, not through an election. Now they want to add more Liberals to committees to block investigations into government scandals. We will only support their rule changes if they leave the oversight committees alone.”

“Mr. Speaker, I listened to the speeches by my colleagues, including my colleague from Winnipeg North. I listened to the speeches of several members. I certainly do not want to miss the speech by my colleague from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, with whom I will be sharing my time. His speech will surely be very interesting because he is a very capable man, particularly in matters of parliamentary procedure. I think he is a reference here, after the Speaker, of course. There is something wrong with the Liberals’ logic right now. It is something I have noticed since the beginning of the speeches today and since I read the first version of Motion No. 9. Something just is not right, and I think it is coming from the top. It is coming from the Liberal Prime Minister himself. For years he was a CEO, a chief executive officer. He came here and decided that, from now on, he would get his bills and rules passed, that he would decide everything that was going to happen and that he was going to dig Canada into the hole. He may not have used those words, but that is what we are seeing right now. That is what is happening. He forgot just one minor detail: Parliament is not a business. The Prime Minister is not Parliament’s boss. All members of Parliament are equal, and every member of Parliament has the right to vote. The votes of all members of Parliament are what enable us to move bills and motions forward by working together. Something else bothered me earlier. It seems that, as far as the Prime Minister is concerned, Parliament is supposed to work to ensure that the government gets its bills passed. That is nonsense. That is completely false. It is up to the government to convince Parliament to pass its bills. I have to say that, since Canadians elected the minority government, things had been going relatively well. We offered to co-operate with the government on important bills, to boost the economy and to improve our relationship with the United States, because the Prime Minister said two very important things. He said that he was the only one who could resolve the tariff crisis with Trump. He also said that Canadians should judge him by grocery prices. Now a year has passed. Opposition parties co-operated, but what happened to tariffs? People are paying more. What happened to food prices? For the fourth month in row, food inflation in Canada is the highest in the G7. We are co-operating. We have supported the government. The Prime Minister and the government decided things should get even worse. They decided to make trouble on their own. That is what we need to keep in mind because the Liberals had the reins of power. Our role was to co-operate and help them do things well, but, unfortunately, they felt that things did not go well. It is true that things did not go well, but that is not the opposition parties’ fault. It is because they do not know how to run things. Earlier, the government House leader said that the Prime Minister was clear: He expects a Parliament that produces results for Canadians. However, he was mistaken: the Prime Minister expects the government to produce results. We need to agree on the words “results for Canadians” because the Prime Minister has thus far failed to produce any results whatsoever. How did they do that? We have heard a number of times that there were by-elections, that they have a majority and that the House and the committees must reflect the majority obtained in the by-elections. That is another falsehood. The outgoing members before the by-elections were Liberal. The people who were elected in the by-elections are Liberal. The by-elections did not change the makeup of the government at all. What changed that makeup, then? The government was determined and this CEO turned Prime Minister was obsessed with the idea of recreating in Parliament the structure of a company where he can pull all the strings, so much so that he decided to set up a whole operation to attract floor crossers. Through secret backroom deals we are not privy to, he wanted to attract people who set aside their values and principles, those for which they were elected and for which they were given a mandate from their voters, in order join the government’s side. They said so themselves. They said that they were going over to the government side, the Liberal side at that. That is how the government managed to cobble together a majority. It made secret deals behind closed doors so that the Prime Minister can continue to do what he has always done. He is going to make all of the decisions himself and run things into the ground, just like he did everywhere he went and with all of the organizations that he ran. We obviously do not want to let that happen. We do not want to leave all that power in the hands of a Prime Minister who has not yet delivered any results and who has not kept any of the promises that he made to Canadians. We were talking about history. The members opposite keep repeating that, never before in the history of Parliament has a majority government not been reflected in the committees and that the committees must absolutely reflect the composition of Parliament. However, there is one small thing they are forgetting to mention. Never before in the history of Parliament has a government gained a majority by making secret deals with members. That has never happened. The membership of committees has never been changed during a parliamentary session and during a Parliament. This is the 45th Parliament. How was the government formed in the previous 44 Parliaments? A majority or minority government was formed based on the votes of Canadians. In the last election, Canadians did not trust the government to give it a majority. They elected a minority government with a very strong opposition because they had doubts. Not everyone believed in the Prime Minister’s message and pretty words. Canadians decided to give him power, but with a strong opposition to ensure he could not do whatever he wanted. Unhappy with the election results, the government worked very hard to send messages to almost every member of the other parties to try and see if it could draw people in and change the composition of the government. That is how we ended up with a majority government today: through secret negotiations and secret deals. Now that they have their majority, what do the Liberals want? They want to change the composition of committees even though, once again, that has never happened before in history. Not only is the government going to change the committees’ composition, they do not intend to do it by half measures. Instead of reflecting the composition of Parliament, where the Liberals have roughly 50% of seats, Liberal representation on committees is going to climb to about 57%. In other words two Liberals will be added to each committee to form a supermajority. What will happen to all the great inquiries we conducted on ArriveCan, all the inquiries we were able to do on the Liberal green fund, or all the corruption scandals we managed to uncover because we demanded that documents be produced and because, as a Parliament, we were able to obtain papers that the government refused to hand over to members? What sad fate will befall committees? The Liberals are going to consistently vote down these motions, adjourn debates and use every available means to avoid being held accountable to Canadians. That is what the government wants. This government does not want to be held accountable to anyone. There is a reason that we seldom see the Prime Minister rise here in the House to answer questions during question period. He does not want to be held accountable to members of Parliament. He does not want to do his job as Prime Minister. He prefers his job as CEO. When people say that we have nothing to offer, that is not true. We have put forward a motion. Today, we proposed an amendment. We are prepared to vote in favour of this government proposal if the Liberals agree to let the oversight committees, namely the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts and the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, do their work and not change their composition. No one can claim that we have not made an attempt at a compromise, but they have not made any at all. It is all about power at any cost. They have given themselves the privilege of doing whatever they want, and too bad for Canadians and what they thought during the last election.”

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• Echo ×3

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  Said 3 times by 2 members since April 23.

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“The Liberals keep making backroom deals to act like a majority government. Now they want to take control of House committees too. They are playing games with democracy, and I want to hear my colleague's thoughts on it.”

“Mr. Speaker, this is not the first time the Liberals have played games to secure themselves a majority in the House. There have indeed been backroom deals in the past with certain individuals who chose to cross the floor. In fact, the by-elections had nothing to do with this outcome. Those seats were Liberal before and remain Liberal now. The Liberals bought themselves a majority and now they seem to want to buy themselves a majority on the committees. The Liberals even had an agreement in the past with the NDP that allowed them to manipulate the proceedings of the House to secure precisely that majority. It was not an official majority, and we sometimes managed to get the NDP to vote with us. However, this is the second time in two terms that the Liberals have played games with democracy. I would like to hear my colleague’s thoughts on that.”

“The Prime Minister is spending too much money. Canada now pays $55.6 billion a year just in interest on the debt, which costs every family $3,300. That money should go to health care and families instead. I want to know if the Prime Minister will cut spending next week.”

“Mr. Speaker, the Liberals have already cribbed many of our ideas. The Liberal Prime Minister has completely lost control of public finances. He has added $90 billion in new spending. We are paying $55.6 billion a year just in interest on the debt. That is more than what the GST brings in. It is more than health care transfers. What this means for the public is that money is not going to patients or families. Every family is already paying $3,300 a year just in interest. Next week, during the fiscal update, will the Prime Minister change course, or will he doom Canadians to pay even more for his Liberal spending?”