Bill C-10 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Air Canada Public Participation Act and to provide for certain other measures

This enactment amends the Air Canada Public Participation Act to provide that Air Canada’s articles of continuance contain a requirement that it carry out aircraft maintenance activities in Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba and to provide for certain other measures related to that obligation.

Government Business No. 26—Amendments to the Standing Orders

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Madam Speaker, I just want to start off by setting a bit of context about how the Liberals treat Parliament in general.

We all remember the 2015 election campaign when the Prime Minister pretended that he cared about things like accountability, transparency and the supremacy of Parliament, and the fact that we come to this place from all corners of this country to hold the government to account. That is not just a phrase that one might hear in a political science class or a high school civics class. Holding it to account is not just some kind of bookkeeping exercise where we make sure the numbers add up. Yes, that is part of it, but it is really about litigating the decisions of the government to ensure that Canadians get only the best. It is through the rigour of parliamentary debate, committee investigations and the daily questioning of the Prime Minister and cabinet that the facts emerge and Canadians are able to make informed decisions when it is time to vote.

I was House leader back in 2015 right after that election, right after the Prime Minister said he would respect the role of Parliament, that he would always defer to the important role that the House of Commons plays in our democracy. Something happened in that first few months after the 2015 election that totally showed what a phony comms exercises all of that rhetoric was. There was a bill before the House back then; I believe was Bill C-10. The Liberals had trouble counting their caucus members one Monday morning. There was a vote that the Liberals were not expecting on that day and they almost lost it because they did not have enough members in town. They still had members back in their ridings perhaps or on international junkets, or on any number of other things. There was a tie-vote in the chamber. A piece of government legislation was almost defeated and the Speaker had to break the tie at that time and, as was the convention of the Speaker, broke the tie in favour of continuing debate and allowed the bill to pass at report stage, so the bill continued on.

They were so rattled by that episode that just a few days later the government House leader came into this chamber and proposed Motion No. 6. Motion No. 6 was a complete defanging of the opposition, a removal of most of the tools that opposition parties use to hold the government to account, to draw out those details, and to litigate the government's course of actions and its legislation. It gave the government unprecedented power to move legislation along quickly and to prevent the opposition from using its very legitimate tools to hold up debate, not just for the sake of filibustering or delay for the sake of delay. It is in that delay that members of Parliament find those details, find the mistakes that the government makes or hear the stories from witnesses about how those unintended consequences might do more harm than good.

The government's reaction at that time to a tie-vote on a piece of legislation was what might be called a parliamentary hissy fit where it just completely lost its temper and tried to take away all of the things that the opposition party could ever hope to use to hold the government to account. Thankfully, the opposition parties understood what was going on.

It is always amazing when parties with as wide a variety of views as the Conservative Party, the Bloc Québécois and the NDP can find common ground, but the Liberals are good at doing that. When the Bloc, the Conservatives and the NDP can find something to be such an affront to parliamentary democracy and everything that we are supposed to do here that we join forces together, and put our differences aside to protect this institution, it is actually a terrible indictment on the Liberal Party, and so often we have had to do that. For the sake of our institution, for the sake of future generations of Canadians, for the sake of future Parliaments and future members of Parliament to be able to have those very important tools to do the job on behalf of their constituents, we have had to join forces. I remember being there when the House leaders from all the recognized parties, along with the Bloc Québécois, told the story. We all told the story to Canadians about the motives and the consequences of what the government was doing. We were able to push back on that, whether due to the effective communications of all the opposition parties or due to the fact that in those moments, the Prime Minister lost his temper.

The Prime Minister actually injured an NDP member of Parliament, when he elbowed an NDP member and forcefully grabbed the Conservative whip at the time. He completely lost his temper and physically manhandled a member of Parliament. Maybe that is why he finally backed down, but I like to think that it was at least in part because of the important points we were making as opposition parties to defend our institutions.

We see this time and time again. Every time the Liberals do not get their way, they try to change the rules of the game. It is important to note that the tools that are available to the opposition to delay, to propose amendments and to physically have members of the cabinet and the government in the chamber, are an important part of the process. We have a system whereby the executive branch sits in the chamber, and the opposition parties have to have some tools at their disposal to be able to highlight the shortcomings, failures and mistakes in the government's agenda.

It does not just happen in this House. The other place also plays an important role in that. I should point out that the other place has completely put aside its hybrid Parliament mechanisms. They have been back under normal operating standards for a long time now. For months, they have been able to continue doing their job. It is really just this chamber.

In fact, it is just this chamber in all of Canada that is continuing on with a full host of measures that were originally put in place, as the government House leader acknowledged, when there was consensus about how best to do two things. One of these things was to respect the public health orders that were in place at the time, about people travelling from different parts of the country to come together, and the other was respecting the orders and regulations at the time to have people who were from different households being certain distances apart.

We agreed at that time to respect those two things, because we could not have a period of time when Parliament was not doing its job. Thank goodness, we insisted on that. I remember those days, when the government was trying to arrange for unanimous passage of its legislation in response to the pandemic, without any debate at all. The Liberals wanted to just email the text of the legislation to members of Parliament, have them come in here for just a few moments, pass it all and then go home again.

Thankfully, the official opposition, the Conservative Party, said no to that. It was through that parliamentary scrutiny that we learned many terrible things about the government's response to the COVID pandemic. We found out that the Prime Minister attempted to use the pandemic to try to enrich his friends. We found out because Parliament was sitting, because we had the tools at our disposal, in terms of committees and debates in the chamber. He did this with the massive disruption in people's lives; loss of life; people having to say goodbye to loved ones over Zoom; people having to miss birthday parties, anniversaries and funerals; businesses going bankrupt; and children missing out on activities and important parts of their childhood.

The Prime Minister tried to give his friends at the WE Foundation, an organization that had paid members of his family hundreds of thousands of dollars, an untendered sole source contract worth half a billion dollars. However, he got caught, because we did not give up those tools in our tool kit to hold the government to account.

We found out through parliamentary scrutiny that the government used the pandemic, as well, to reward Liberal insiders and defeated Liberal MPs, such as Frank Baylis. He got a sole source contract for providing medical supplies that he had no history of ever providing. The arrive scam app is another example of waste and mismanagement. Thank goodness we still had those parliamentary tools at our disposal.

I want to address a few points that the government House leader brought up in his speech. He talked about unanimity consensus. My colleague in the Bloc Québécois just made a very important point. As a former speaker, I have learned a little about the history, about the importance of the Standing Orders and their evolution over time, as well as why things are the way they are.

The McGrath committee was one of those great examples where Parliament had not been updated for a long period of time; society had implemented a whole bunch of innovations, and parliamentary life had changed. In response to those changing times in the 1980s, the government of the day decided that it would have a fulsome analysis of the Standing Orders, the parliamentary cycle and the daily routine of business. It was essential that all the opposition parties were brought in and a true effort was made to find consensus and common ground; where there was no consensus, the government did not proceed.

It was out of that committee that we had major changes, for example, in the election of the Speaker. For generations before the 1980s, the Prime Minister chose the Speaker. It was a motion that the Prime Minister moved, and it was basically a fait accompli; whomever the Prime Minister wanted to become Speaker became Speaker. In the 1980s, the House decided, in its wisdom, that it would be better to preserve the impartiality of the Chair if the Speaker did not have to worry about pleasing or displeasing the Prime Minister. Therefore, the House instituted the secret ballot election, and former speaker John Fraser was the first to be elected by secret ballot. Ever since then, speakers have been chosen that way. That was a very important development in our parliamentary democratic underpinnings. It was a great development. It was a fantastic idea; it has served the House well, and it has served the Speaker as well.

The point that I am making to my hon. colleague from the Liberal Party is that it was achieved through consensus, because if all parties from all different corners of the country and from different political perspectives cannot be convinced that it is a good idea that will serve the institution as an institution, and not one party over another, then maybe it is not such a good idea. Maybe we should at least go back and try to build that consensus. However, that is not what they are doing here. They would be creating a precedent, whereby future governments and future Parliaments would look and say that it has been done before where a government, perhaps backed by a junior coalition partner in a minority context, could say that at the end of the day, it is just going to ram it through anyway.

We offered a good-faith effort to preserve the idea of consensus, to prevent what is about to happen when the government ultimately rams this motion through. We said that, in order to preserve the importance of overhauling the Standing Orders only after a government has achieved that consensus, we would agree to things on a time-limited basis that we might not normally agree to. We were willing to allow aspects of this hybrid package to continue, with the one caveat that the package of changes would sunset after the next election. This is a very simple and, I believe, common-sense proposal.

What would that do, and why is it important? After every election, it is part of our normal routine of business that the Standing Orders are studied by the procedure and House affairs committee. There is supposed to be a debate in the House about the Standing Orders and whether anything needs to be changed or how the Standing Orders are serving the House at the time. It has never really resulted in anything substantially major, because the government of the day always wants to use government time to implement business. That is reasonable; the members get elected on a platform, and every day that they spend debating the Standing Orders, as they are today, is a day that they do not have to debate the legislation they would like to put out.

Our proposal would have required a government of the day to, proactively and in a positive way, actually take some action to extend these changes. I submit that we are still only about a year or so out of the complete lifting of COVID restrictions. In some parts of Canada, it has literally just been 12 to 14 months since those restrictions have been fully lifted, so it is hard to say for sure what the long-term consequences of these changes will be on our parliamentary life. It is not just life in terms of our personal lives or how we conduct our business but also in terms of the institution itself.

My hon. colleague, the House leader, has lots of examples of how it is tough to be here. Yes, it is difficult, but I do not think that members of Parliament should ask for considerations that hard-working Canadians from across the country in other industries do not have. Yes, it is difficult to be here. I have five children, and there are lots of things I wish I could have stayed home for. There are lots of important milestones I missed. I knew that when I ran for office.

I knew when I put my name on the ballot that it would be a trade-off in my life. Yes, I would get the incredible reward of fighting for the things I believe in and serving my community and my constituents, but the counterpoint to that is that I would be away from home an awful lot. I made the decision to do it anyway, because I so value the important work that my party does and that my team does.

I believe that the things I believe in are important enough that I am willing to sacrifice those special moments at home to help make Canada a better place. I want to help undo the damage that big government intervention has caused in our lives, with the liberty and individual freedoms that we have lost over the past few years under the Liberal government.

It is worth it. I might miss one of my children's birthdays, but hopefully, I will help to roll back some of the misery that big government intervention in their lives causes for them. They will be better off for it throughout their life. That is one of my motivating factors when I have to miss those important moments.

For Canadians in lots of different industries, they might have an important milestone in their family that they would like to get back for. Maybe they have to go to a trades conference, or maybe they are in the legal profession and have an important court date. They cannot just phone it in because they have something going on at home. I do not think members of Parliament should grant to ourselves a privilege and a comfort that so many Canadians across the country do not have in their lives. I do not believe that this is sufficient in and of itself to justify the changes that the government is making today.

In terms of the important precedent that it is creating here today, it will likely not be singing from the same song sheet in future Parliaments if a future government does something it does not like with the Standing Orders. However, I would submit to the government that it is not too late. In a few moments, I will be proposing an amendment that will more closely resemble the consensus that we are trying to achieve in negotiating these packages of Standing Order changes.

We have long held that major, enduring procedural reforms must be implemented with the support of a consensus of the recognized parties in the House. Making permanent such a sweeping change to parliamentary life is absolutely the sort of thing that should first be embraced by all sides of the aisle.

In the interest of consensus, the official opposition would have agreed to renew the current hybrid procedures with some important limitations, subject to that sunset a year into the next Parliament, when a further renewal could have been considered with proper deliberations. It is the flip side of what the government House leader is saying. He was saying that a future Parliament could undo it. We are asking why we do not do it the opposite way. The onus is on the government to justify and to answer for all the potential and unforeseen consequences of its changes. It would have been far better for the House and for future Parliaments if it had been done in reverse, and if the onus were on the government for continuing them.

I want to focus on hybrid participation in the chamber. There really is something to the physicality of the place. Holding ministers to account in person really adds a dynamic that we lose when we have hybrid Parliament. It is not just me saying that. There are parliamentary experts from all around the world in Commonwealth parliaments and even former Liberal MPs who have said the very same thing. Being in the chamber, with that thrust and that back and forth, is as much a part of the debate as the words themselves are.

When the House sits in a hybrid fashion, it takes a tremendous amount of resources, particularly with translation services. Members of Parliament and Canadians have the right to read and watch the debates in either official language, in French or English. It is difficult for the House administration. I sit on the Board of Internal Economy; for Canadians who might not be familiar with the term, this is the management committee that oversees the House of Commons and its administration. It is generally non-partisan. It is literally designed to help make sure that the precinct is secure and that members of Parliament have the services they need to do their jobs.

The strain placed on our translation services by hybrid sittings has been brought up multiple times at that committee. The translators have a very difficult job. They have to listen at a very specific sound level. They have to be able to hear what is being said and speak out the translation in real time. It is not as if translators get copies of speeches and can transcribe them into the other language and then just read them out. They have to simultaneously listen and speak at the same time.

Our interpreters have had a surprising number of workplace injuries. Members of Parliament get up to speak, but maybe they are too close to the microphone, maybe they start off too loudly or maybe their headset is not calibrated properly. Our translators then get that initial blast of sound, and over time we have had an unfortunate number of interpreters who have had to go on leave or have been put on medical leave because of those injuries. As a result, our pool of available translators has shrunk, and it is now incredibly difficult for the House to find adequate levels of human resources for a hybrid Parliament while at the same time providing the same for committees.

The reason I bring this up is that because of the nature of the importance of the deliberations in the chamber, the House of Commons itself is always given the first right of refusal on human resources. That means that we will always have translation services available to the House. Where does the House get those services when human resources are stretched thin? It gets them from committees.

I know we have lots of colleagues in the chamber right now who sit on committees. How many of them have had a committee cancelled at the last moment over the last few months because of a lack of resources? I am sure every single member has experienced that. Often when the government extends the hours of the House by six or seven hours in the evening, suddenly the House administration has to scramble and reallocate those translators. As a result, committees get cancelled.

Why would the Liberals want committees to be cancelled?

The Prime Minister hates parliamentary committees, and it is not hard to understand why. It is at committees that we have exposed the most egregious examples of waste, corruption and mismanagement. We are able to really pore through the spending, the contracts and the hypocrisies in government programs in terms of economic mismanagement.

We have had incredible breaking news and bombshell reports that have come out at committee. We catch one minister saying something that has been denied by another minister or we get a look at those contracts that have been awarded to Liberal insiders or we hear expert testimony that—

Industry and Technology

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the real shameful stuff is going to come up, I can assure the member, in regard to the Conservative Party, but the Bloc is sitting a little too close. I was just wondering if the member wants to shoo over a little bit more. I agree. I would do that too.

They are starting to have a negative influence on the Bloc. Today, we were supposed to be debating Bill C-27, and we know how important it is to our constituencies that we provide security in the privacy of information on the Internet. We all recognize how important that issue is. The Bloc do not want to discuss that today, even though we have attempted to have it passed through the House. I understand it supports the legislation, which is a good thing. However, it wants to talk about the aerospace industry by bringing through concurrence of a report to use up government time. This is not the first time. We are used to the Conservative Party doing it.

Having said that, I am happy to talk about the aerospace industry. When I think of the aerospace industry, I think of John Diefenbaker. Do members remember John Diefenbaker? John Diefenbaker was a prime minister of Canada.

Canada, at the time, was leading the world, virtually, in the development of a first-class interceptor, a plane that was incredibly fast. We have to remember that this was after the world war, when there was a need for development and an enrichment of our aerospace industry. The prime minister at the time, John Diefenbaker, destroyed Canada's aerospace industry by cancelling the Avro Arrow.

That was a high-altitude plane. It was ahead of its time. I want members to imagine that plane program not having been cancelled. Avro employed hundreds of people at the time, possibly over 1,000, but I will say hundreds for now. They all worked in the province of Ontario.

I think of the technology and the research that was done. They actually rolled one of the Avro planes out. It was recognized around the world as likely the leading candidate for the development of a plane that was like a rocket, going to altitudes of 40,000 and above.

John Diefenbaker cancelled the program. Back in the late fifties, he cancelled the program. It is the truth. As a result, Avro actually went broke and closed its doors. All of the equipment and, more important, all of the brains and skills were dispersed. Many of the individuals who developed the Avro ended up leaving Canada so they could get into and expand that particular industry. Canada lost out big time, and it is something which even today, 70 years later, we reflect on. What would our industry look like today?

Well, earlier today, I was asking questions of members of the Bloc. I am happy to say that it is the province of Quebec that leads our aerospace industry. I pointed out, in the question I posed earlier, that in the province of Quebec, one can build a plane from the very beginning, from the bolts to the polishing of the aircraft, the final product. That is fairly rare.

When we think of the aerospace industry in Canada, one is talking about tens of thousands of jobs, well over 100,000 jobs. Do members know the average salary of someone working in the aerospace industry in Manitoba? It is estimated, I believe, to be over $60,000 a year. These are good middle-class types of jobs with incredible skill sets. In Canada today, it is Quebec that leads.

With respect to jobs, I suspect that the province of Ontario lost the opportunity to play that leadership role as a direct result of a federal government's decision not to invest in the aerospace industry.

Let us fast forward a few decades. Today, we have a national government that does support our aerospace industry in a clear and tangible way, and we have done this from day one. We talked about Bill C-10 and how important it was that we ensure future contracts. We talked about how we could support the industry even though, at times, it meant there would be some give and take. That give and take is important to recognize. The world has changed.

I had a tour of Magellan in my home city of Winnipeg. I felt a sense of pride when I walked around the floor and saw an F-35 wing being manufactured. We have an absolutely incredible aerospace industry in Winnipeg, which contributes to the industry not only in Canada, but worldwide.

Those workers show their love and passion for the construction of very important components of the F-35. Imagine being a worker at Magellan who sees an F-35 on a news broadcast. He or she might reflect on whether that wing was manufactured in Winnipeg. Even in crating the wing, someone would need an engineering background to build the crate that houses the wing prior to its shipping.

The member before me talked about the importance of schools. Magellan has a classroom in which Red River College contributes to the education. It is very important to recognize that it is not only Ottawa that has the responsibility of supporting these industries, even though it feels we are alone in doing that at times. Many stakeholders have a role in ensuring that Canada continues to lead an industry that is so vitally important to the world. The best way to do that is to work with our partners and stakeholders.

When I was an MLA a number of years ago, and I hope the Manitoba legislature Hansard would show this, I spoke about the aerospace industry in the province of Manitoba. I said that the province needed to step up and support the industry. If the local entities and provincial governments are not at the table, it hurts the industry. It also hurts it if the industry itself is not at the table.

As much as I would love to talk about the province of Quebec, I think the similarities are striking between Manitoba and Quebec. We have aerospace industry umbrella organizations and those organizations are there for the health and the well-being of that industry.

This comes from Winnipeg's aerospace industry's umbrella agency. I will quote from its website so people can get a sense of what I am referring to when I talk about Manitoba's aerospace industry. It states:

Canada is a global leader in aerospace and Manitoba is home to Canada’s third largest aerospace industry. Our highly competitive aerospace sector produces world-class products for customers on six continents.

From modest roots in small bush plane repair in the 1930′s, the Manitoba aerospace industry has grown to include sophisticated design, manufacturing, servicing, testing, certification and research and development capabilities. We are home to Canada’s largest aerospace composite manufacturing centre, as well as the world’s largest independent gas turbine engine repair and overhaul company. Also located in Manitoba are the internationally acclaimed Composites Innovation Centre and two of the world’s most advanced aircraft engine testing and certification centres developed by Rolls Royce, Pratt & Whitney and GE Aviation. Along with these global aerospace leaders, Manitoba has a network of SMBs that compete and supply into the global marketplace. This growing cluster is strengthened through the Competitive Edge Supplier Development initiative, an internationally recognized learner to world class supplier and supply chain development program.

This gives us a sense of the impact the aerospace industry in Manitoba has on the world. We could come up with even a stronger statement, in a different perspective coming from the province of Quebec.

I remember another occasion when I was in the Phillippines. I talked to some military representatives, who talked about the Bell helicopter. They thought that the province of Quebec had a wonderful product in the Bell helicopter, that Quebec was a place they could look at. I asked a representative why he was looking at the province of Quebec in particular and what he thought about the manufactured helicopter. I did not expect, and the member commented on this, him to say that it was the fact that politicians in Quebec were so impressed with the makeup of the workforce in the construction of the helicopter, referring to the fact that people of Filipino heritage were in that industry.

With respect to our aerospace industry, one of the nice things is the diversity we see when we tour these plants, whether they are in Quebec, Manitoba, Ontario or British Columbia, “the big four”, as I would like to say. Hopefully Manitoba will even become higher and more prominent, but that is a personal bias. It is that diversification of the workforce and the skills they have.

That is why it is so critically important that Ottawa not only continues to support the aerospace industry, as it has prepandemic, during the pandemic and today, but that we also ensure, as much as possible, that those stakeholders are at the table as well. We want Red River College and the University of Manitoba at the table. We want those post-secondary facilities, whether they are in Manitoba, Quebec, Ontario, B.C., or any other jurisdiction, to be at the table to ensure we continue to invest in research and technology.

When we think of manufacturing in Canada, many would argue, especially many of my Ontario colleagues, that we lead in the automobile industry. After all, we can take a look at the hybrids, at the plants that are being announced, the thousands of jobs, the clean energy, and all these things. In a good part, it is coming out of Ontario, but when we take a look at the overall picture of the manufacturing industry, Canada's aerospace industry is recognized, within our bigger picture of the manufacturing industry, as one of the best, if not the best, in investing in research, technology and advancement. We are seeing that in the types of demands that are there for Canada.

Ottawa should continue to support the industry. As the Minister of Industry indicated in a question about something he recently announced in the province of Quebec, I can make reference to things that recently have been announced in Manitoba. Whether it is through procurements and how the federal government supports the industry, or direct investments in the industry, or indirect things that are done through things such as trades and skills, my appeal would be that we look at what other stakeholders and jurisdictions can do that would complement the types of initiatives that the federal government is taking to advance a very important industry.

This industry employs thousands of people, with well-paying jobs. It contributes billions of dollars every year to our GDP, thereby enhancing our lifestyle. We can all take a sense of pride in how our aerospace industry has been able to do relatively well even during the pandemic. As we get through the pandemic and look at the potential to increase its demand in the years ahead, it is critically important we continue to look at ways to support our aerospace industry.

As much as I enjoy talking about the aerospace industry, I hope the Bloc and Conservatives will come onside and support Bill C-27 when it comes up for debate later today. It would be wonderful to see that legislation pass, which would make this debate that much better.

Procedure for Votes in Chamber

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege, of which I have given notice to the table, regarding the vote that happened on the Speech from the Throne earlier this week. I understand the member for Vimy has indicated she does not want her vote to be counted. You said that would be done. Obviously, we accept that.

However, this is much more serious than that. This raises many more questions, which I will get into here and which I believe you need to give us some direction on, Mr. Speaker. This affects the privileges of every member of the House.

The privileges of all members are affected when there is a question about the conduct of one member. In this case we are in a minority Parliament where every single vote that is a confidence vote will matter.

In this case, while there was a significant spread between the yeas and the nays, one can easily imagine a scenario in which the vote of one member could determine whether the government maintained the confidence of the House. We have a situation where a member was given not one, not two, but three opportunities to talk about what happened.

I say with respect, and I do not wish to overstate this, that it is so important that the voting rights of members are protected here. Maybe when the Standing Orders were written it was simply enough, without cameras in this place, to trust the word of a member.

Mr. Speaker, if you review the tape, which we all have access to, and which is the official recorded record of what happens in the House, you will see that the member in question was not in her seat for five minutes after the vote commenced.

Every time the camera pans past her seat, it is empty. This is not a matter of seconds and a member saying, “I heard it and I rushed in and sat down.” I am sorry. I want to take all members at their word in this place, but the video evidence is crystal clear.

For the hon. member to say today, “I now know that I needed to be in the chamber in order to vote”, you told us that on Monday night. You told the House, “To be clear, you must be in the chamber in order to vote”, and she stood and said, “I was here. I heard the question.” That is absolutely false.

Now what do we do? What do we do when there is a situation where it could absolutely have been the difference between the government surviving and the government falling? Do we have a situation where a member can stand in this place and mislead the House and there are no consequences for it? The government survives, the legislation passes, the motion passes and the next day, or two or three days later, they say, “Oh, sorry, what could we do? I made a mistake.”

Mr. Speaker, we need you to protect the rights of all members of Parliament. If some members of Parliament are given the right to vote when they are not in this place, that takes away the rights of every member of Parliament.

Mr. Speaker, a misleading statement by a member is listed as an offence against the House. That is on page 82 of Bosc and Gagnon. It is an offence against the House. It is not an offence against a particular party. I would say it is offensive to you, Mr. Speaker, as the guardian and custodian of our privileges, but this is something that could have made all the difference.

In the last Parliament, on Bill C-10, the transport bill, it was a tied vote that the previous Speaker had to break the tie on. We had three members in the lobby. We had three members who knew better than to come in and take their place and vote because to do so would have been dishonourable. It would have broken the rules of the House. What if we had just sent them in? The legislation would have been defeated at second reading. What would the remedy then have been?

Mr. Speaker, we are in this situation now where it is more imperative than ever that you protect the rights of all members and not just the governing party, and I know you would never do that. You are here. You were elected by all of us. You protect the rights of all of us.

I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, but I think you need to review the tape to see if you find the same as we have, time after time. I wanted that member to get up and unequivocally apologize. Instead what she did was to say, “I was here”, three times. The tape does not lie. The tape shows exactly what happened.

I believe that we need this to be found a prime facie question of privilege and that the matter be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, because we need to know what the path forward is.

What if this is just an instruction that is given to any side of the House where they say, “You know what, things happen. Just run in and say you heard it. There is nothing the Speaker can do, and the House has no powers. Just be close to the House, come in, and if it comes up before your empty seat is called, just stand up and say that you were here. We'll sort it out in the wash”. That is unacceptable.

Again, I implore you to watch the tape, Mr. Speaker. This is not a matter of that single vote. That single vote has been withdrawn, but when the camera pans across the first row, second row, third row and fourth row before the member is in her seat, I am sorry, but she did not hear the question. She knows she did not hear the question.

I would ask, Mr. Speaker, that you rule in favour of moving this to the procedure and House affairs committee so that we can settle this once and for all.

Opposition Motion—Government Policies

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, after listening to the member for Winnipeg North's speech, I would just like to remind my colleagues that this is only day one of the remaining seven weeks, so we should all pace ourselves.

As always, in these dying days of the 42nd Parliament, it is a great honour to stand in this place. It is a real privilege to be the voice of the amazing constituents of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. I appreciated, as I am sure all members did, the previous two weeks, when I got to go to my riding on beautiful Vancouver Island, where spring actually arrived when it was supposed to. I enjoyed the sunshine, speaking with constituents and going to many community events.

I was really excited when I saw the notice of the motion we had picked to debate today. I think it goes to the heart of the kind of message that we, as a party, want to put out there to differentiate ourselves from the other parties in this place.

Before I got into politics as an elected member, I used to work for a former member of Parliament, Jean Crowder. I can remember going to an event at someone's house and seeing an old poster by the CCF. The tag of the poster was “People Before Profits”. That is one of the principles that has always guided me personally, that the people of our great country are key.

We can look at the staggering amount of wealth that corporations have. Some people may see a corporation's wealth by how big its bank account is, how well its executives are paid and how well its shareholders do with dividends. However, in this corner of the House, we prefer to see the wealth of a company in the workers, the services they provide and the things they build. It is ultimately the workers of the company who are on the front line, providing those services to people and giving the company its reputation. In all of our efforts, by all parties, it would serve us well to remember that.

The main thrust of this motion today is that given the experiences over the last three and a half years of this Parliament, we feel there have been some demonstrations quite clearly that corporate executives and their lobbyists have had far too much access to and influence on the Government of Canada.

The most recent example of this, which I think many Canadians still quite clearly remember, is the SNC-Lavalin affair. When that news story broke in the The Globe and Mail on February 7, it very much altered the political landscape. I remember the Liberals first reaction to that story was to deny it, to say that it was not true, that there was no pressure. However, their narrative kept on changing as more facts kept coming out. Ultimately, what it resulted in was the loss of two of their most capable ministers, the member for Vancouver Granville and the member for Markham—Stouffville, the loss of the Prime Minister's principal secretary and the loss of the former clerk of the Privy Council.

Why is that whole affair relevant to the motion today? Last year, unbeknown to parliamentarians and even the Canadian public, a small section was hidden in one of the budget omnibus bills, which even the Liberal backbenchers found out about, with surprise, when they were studying the bill at the standing committee on finance. Of course that was the provision in the budget bill to bring in an amendment to the Criminal Code that would allow for deferred prosecution agreements. I am not against deferred prosecution agreements per se. They can in some cases be a very legitimate tool. The important thing, though, is that it is not up to me to decide that. It is not up to anyone in this chamber to decide that. That role falls squarely on the shoulders of the director of the Public Prosecution Service of Canada.

That brings me to the next step in this whole sordid affair. We found out that it was SNC-Lavalin that lobbied hard to get such an amendment into the Criminal Code and it succeeded with that. Then it started this coordinated orchestrated campaign with the Prime Minister's Office to get the former attorney general, the member for Vancouver Granville, to basically overrule the director of public prosecutions.

When I sat on the justice committee, I was at Ms. Kathleen Roussel's confirmation hearing. She is a very accomplished lady who has immense qualifications for the job. However, when she was looking at the request for a deferred prosecution agreement, she had all the relevant facts of the case before her, she knew what the provisions of the law were and in her capacity, she made the decision that the company was not eligible for a DPA. Of course, she referenced this to the former attorney general of Canada who agreed with that assessment.

The lobbying of the Prime Minister's Office to get the independence of that decision overturned is very worrying. Yes, no laws were broken, but the irony is that no laws were broken because of the efforts of the former attorney general of Canada, who very much stood on her principles and decided she would stand against that pressure and not overrule the director of public prosecutions. Ultimately, she was shuffled out of her cabinet post and then had to resign, followed by her colleague, the member for Markham—Stouffville. The two of them could no longer in good conscience sit in the cabinet and defend the government day to day when they knew the truth of what had really happened behind the scene.

That is item number one of the most clear and recent examples of the awesome power of corporate lobbying and what it was able to achieve with the current government.

I will take members back to 2016 to another example. The government introduced Bill C-10, an amendment to the Air Canada Public Participation Act. This was in spite of the fact that many Liberal MPs represented ridings where aircraft maintenance workers lived and worked and in spite of the fact that in the 2015 election campaign, the Prime Minister was right there with Avios workers, saying that he was there in solidarity with them and that he supported them. However, what did that government bill do? It basically amended the act so that Air Canada, which had done extensive lobbying of the government, would now be free to move its aircraft maintenance work offshore. It would no longer be constrained by the provisions in the act where it had to have maintenance facilities in places like Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. Again, this goes to the heart of where corporate lobbying led to a change in the law, which ultimately will and has hurt workers.

Of course, we have the Minister of Finance who brought in Bill C-27, which I am very happy to see remains in purgatory, stuck at first reading. The government has been far too timid to bring it forward for debate, because it knows the uproar that would happen. The Minister of Finance own company, Morneau Shepell, used to specialize in this kind of work of changing pension plans. The Liberals finally became aware of the uproar that would happen, and that bill has not proceeded any further, which I am glad to see. However, it did not stop the Minister of Finance who, in a clear conflict of interest, introduced that bill in the first place, showing what the Liberals' intent was all along.

Then, of course, I move to pharmacare. I was listening to the member for Winnipeg North as his volume got steadily higher and higher. We have short memories in this place. It was back in 1997, 22 years ago, when the old Liberal empire of the 1990s was at the height of its power. Members will remember that the Liberals won a majority in 1993, again in 1997 and again in 2000. This was a clear promise they made in 1997. They did not follow through with it then, they did not follow through with it in the 2000 government and here we are, three and a half years into the term of the current majority government, and what do we have? We have a paragraph in the budget, which is an intention to do more consultation. However, we can look at the lobbying records and the coordinated campaign that was brought about by the pharmaceutical industry. On average, pharmaceutical companies and their associations lobbied the government approximately 49 times, which is about the average over 11 years. However, in 2018 alone, it was 104 times.

The report by the Standing Committee on Health recommended a universal pharmacare plan, one that all Canadians can get behind, one that would save Canadian families $4.5 billion. On average, Canadian families would save about $550 and some families would save far more.

The proof is in the pudding, because instead of us being at a point where we could implement a national universal pharmacare plan, the lobbying has had its desired effect. What we are probably going to get from the Liberals, these masters of the long promise, the ones who like to tell people to re-elect them and they might get what they want, is that the lion's share of the national housing strategy is going to come after 2019, and the pharmacare plan is probably going to be some kind of a patchwork system. In other words, the pharmaceutical industry was able, through its lobbying efforts, to get what it wanted all along. It wanted to have a patchwork system where it still had that key role to play.

Finally, there is the Loblaws example. My friend from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke had it perfectly in his intervention earlier when he asked why a company as wealthy as Loblaws is able to access $12 million, when it commands so much wealth and would have been able to do that itself, headed by a man who is worth more than $13 billion. For Mr. Weston, $12 million is pocket change. That is something he could lose in the blink of an eye, a rounding error for a billionaire.

The question is legitimate. Why is this money not being made available to the corner stores, to small businesses, which would use that $12 million to make significant upgrades to their bottom line to be energy-efficient. No one is arguing the fact that we need to take these steps. What we are trying to underline is the power of big corporations, the lobbying efforts they can employ with the government to get those kinds of corporate handouts, when small businesses, the ones that really need them, are being left behind far too often.

I appreciate this time to speak on behalf of the constituents of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, whether it is the legislation that was put in the 2018 budget bill that helped out SNC-Lavalin or whether it is Bill C-27 that the Minister of Finance introduced but did not advance any further, we see concrete examples of legislation being changed to suit corporate interests.

One bill that passed three years ago now was Bill C-10, direct lobbying from Air Canada, to amend the Air Canada Public Participation Act so it had the freedom to move its maintenance facilities offshore. Lo and behold, Liberal MPs from ridings where those maintenance workers lived supported that legislation.

I would like my colleague to comment on that bill. Memories are short in this place and it would serve us all well to remind Canadians of that particularly egregious example back in 2016 and what the Liberal government was prepared to do for its corporate friends in Air Canada to the detriment of the maintenance workers.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, I think the purpose of today's motion is to zero in on some specific examples, so let us go through the legislative history of the 42nd Parliament.

This is a government that has serviced Air Canada by bringing in Bill C-10, which basically allowed Air Canada the freedom to ship maintenance jobs overseas. The government amended the Air Canada Public Participation Act to allow Air Canada that freedom. Part of Air Canada's privatization deal was that they would keep jobs in Canada.

The government has not done anything legislatively for pensioners. My colleague from Hamilton Mountain has brought in legislation that would amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. Again, there was nothing on this from the government.

With respect to the national pharmacare plan, the lobbying that the pharmaceutical industry associations have done with the government has gone up to almost double the average. They are telling Canadians that if the government proceeds with a publicly funded national pharmacare plan, certain prescriptions will not be covered and costs will go up. This is total misinformation when compared to the evidence.

Given these specific examples, does my colleague not think that corporations and industry insiders have in fact had improper influence on the government's policies?

Postal Services Resumption and Continuation Act

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I said that the union is going to be taking this legislation to court, and I suspect that it may well find that the government does not respect people's right to bargain collectively, because it should be at the table.

If we heard it from the Conservatives it would be one thing. We are hearing it from a government that swears up and down that it believes in the collective bargaining process.

I talked about all the things the government has done in terms of failing to act on the injury rate and other things. This crisis did not just come because the workers, as a last resort, decided to go out on rotating strikes. These are not new issues. They did not come out of nowhere. Instead of trying to put this on Canada Post workers, who are using their tool of last resort to get action, the government needs to own up and say that it should have been doing something about this a long time ago. It needs to recognize the fact that a number of actions the government took in this process over the last four weeks or five weeks poisoned the well. That is not what good-faith collective bargaining looks like, and it is certainly not what a government that supports collective bargaining looks like.

As long as governments that profess to be supportive of collective bargaining are the ones to undercut it and effectively take it away, then, legal point notwithstanding, we are not going to find ourselves in a position in Canada where workers are able to exercise their rights meaningfully. Companies are going to know that when they come asking, as long as they are big enough, as long as they are an eBay, a Netflix, a Facebook or an Air Canada, and I am thinking about what the Liberals did to aircraft maintenance workers with Bill C-10, which allowed Air Canada to offshore a bunch of maintenance work, contrary to what the government was saying before the election, the government is going to see to it that they get their way. Workers are not going to have meaningful rights in Canada, whatever their legal status is.

Transportation Modernization Act

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, before I begin, I wish to notify you that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Windsor West.

When I look at this bill and examine some of the debate surrounding it, I think about some of the Liberals' key messaging over the last two years, specifically how they like to talk a lot about helping the middle class and those working hard to join it. However, when we look at some of the measures contained within Bill C-49, I believe that some of them are indeed designed to help the corporate class and not the middle class.

I want to concentrate my speech, because to give a 10-minute speech on such an expansive bill makes is nearly impossible to do in the detail it deserves, but there are a few key areas I wish to touch on that I believe have incredible significance for the constituents I represent and, indeed, many Canadians across this great country.

We have opposed some of the principal amendments proposed in this bill. I have to give great credit to my colleague from Trois-Rivières for his incredible work on the transport committee, and the way he has informed our caucus of the work he is doing. He did a lot of great work on this bill. He attempted to shift it, to amend it, to change it, and to make it more amenable. We can see that those efforts came to naught when the Liberal-dominated committee chose to reject them.

The first measure in the bill that we oppose is with respect to the arrangements between airlines. This bill amends the Transportation Act to give the Minister of Transport the power to approve joint venture arrangements between airlines even if the Commissioner of Competition finds an arrangement to be anti-competitive and one that could increase the price of airline tickets. Again, this measure is not really designed to help middle-class Canadians, who will have to suffer through this if prices are increased.

Next, the Transportation Act is amended to increase the limit on foreign ownership of Canadian airlines from 25% to 49%. I believe there was even a study cited on Transport Canada's website showing that this would have absolutely zero effect on increasing the competitiveness of Canadian airlines. Therefore, we have to wonder why that measure is in here.

Another point is with respect to the amendments to the Railway Safety Act that would will force railway companies to use video and voice recorders.

Of course, there is also the attempt to create some sort of passengers' bill of rights, wherein the Canadian Transportation Agency is ordered to propose and make regulations to establish a new passengers' rights regime. Indeed, this last issue is one that is very near and dear to our caucus. In previous parliaments, several members have fought long and hard to codify a passengers' bill of rights through private members' bills. Therefore, although we are glad to at least see the attempt made here, we are certainly unhappy with the end result.

This bill primarily protects the interests of foreign investors and violates the right to privacy and workers' rights. That is specifically with respect to railway workers.

We are certainly in favour of improving the rights of air travellers and protections for grain shippers, but we want to call upon the government, and indeed we have called upon the government, to separate those specific measures out of this omnibus bill so they could be studied as separate pieces of legislation and passed into law. I think the government side would have found a lot of co-operation from the Conservatives and NDP if those measures had been left to standalone bills so they could be examined in the detail they deserved.

We opposed Bill C-49 at second reading, and certainly made attempts to amend the bill at committee. Many amendments were put forward by both the Conservatives and the NDP, but ultimately many of them did not make it. We moved amendments specifically to establish far more concrete air passenger protection and compensation measures, to make the interswitching routes more accessible to grain farmers, and to protect the labour rights of train conductors, which were all rejected by Liberal members of Parliament.

Now I would like to talk about the joint venture agreements between airlines. Currently, the Commissioner of Competition has the power to determine whether these joint venture arrangements are anti-competitive and whether to apply to the Competition Tribunal. It gives me great pause to now know that the minister is in fact going to have final power over these measures.

The bureaucracy is supposed to be non-partisan and not influenced by outside events. However, cabinet is lobbied extensively by many different companies and private interest groups. In the current government and in previous governments, once corporations try to bend the ear of government, legislation sometimes is changed in their favour. To give the minister this kind of power, a person who can be lobbied by industry, and who perhaps gets a greater voice than the average Canadian citizen does, gives me cause for concern.

If Air Canada proposed an arrangement to merge its operations with those of an American company, even if the commissioner were to find that agreement would lessen competition among airlines and would increase ticket prices for passengers, the minister could still approve that arrangement. We are quite concerned with this.

With the amendments to the Railway Safety Act, Bill C-49 would force railway companies to fit their locomotives with video and voice recorders. The government wants us to believe this measure will improve rail safety, but we are worried that Canadian National and Canadian Pacific could use the information to discipline their employees and measure their productivity.

We believe the bill is far too vague and does not specify how the private information of train conductors would be accessed, collected, and used by the minister and the railway companies. Therefore, we proposed amendments to limit the use of these video and voice recorders to the Transportation Safety Board. Of course, that was rejected by the Liberals. We have concerns this may violate those workers' charter protections, specifically under section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The vice president of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference stated:

We think the bill in its present form is contrary to our rights as Canadians. To exempt 16,000 railroaders from PIPEDA, we believe is not appropriate, and this legislation would call for a specific exemption for the purpose of our employers, the people who have been found to foster a culture of fear, to watch. We have a problem with that.

I would like to move on to the part that has the most significance for people all across Canada, the venture to try to establish some sort of rights regime for passengers.

In the previous Parliament, the NDP introduced Bill C-459, which would have codified many of these measures and put them explicitly into an act. It was a far stronger effort than what we see in Bill C-49. The measures in Bill C-49 give the minister the power to make regulations.

Regulations can be well and good for certain measures. For certain legislation, we want the minister to have that leeway to change rights and so on. However, we again have to raise our concerns that if airline companies start lobbying the minister really hard on these, how are the regulations eventually going to turn out? Are the regulations going to start benefiting airline companies, or are they honestly going to be on the side of passengers? That is why we feel codifying these in the actual bill rather than leaving them to regulations would have been a far stronger measure.

My concerns are not unjustified with respect to Air Canada. I would like to remind members of when we were busy debating Bill C-10, which was the government's attempt to legislate outsourcing for Air Canada. It was an amendment to the Air Canada Public Participation Act. Air Canada definitely had the ear of the government during that time. It brought forward a bill that specifically benefited that company and left many workers out in the cold. It gave Air Canada the ability to outsource jobs if it so wished.

Half measures are not what we were expecting after this length of time. Two years have passed. We would have liked to have seen some greater efforts in many of these areas. We are disappointed that this bill is the final result.

Yukon Environmental and Socio-Economic Assessment Act

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleagues. I can confirm that I will be splitting my time with my extraordinary colleague, the hon. member for Hamilton Centre.

I stand today as a New Democrat to speak in favour of Bill C-10, even if there is much to criticize about what the government has done in terms of governance, business management, indigenous relations and environmental management.

I would like to take this opportunity to have a bit of fun. As the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, I decided to crunch some numbers in an effort to compare my situation in Montreal to that of my hon. colleague from Yukon. The territory in question has a population of around 38,000 spread over 483,443 square kilometres, for a population density of 0.08 persons per square kilometre. My riding has a population of 110,000 in an area 11 square kilometres, for a population density of 10,000 persons per square kilometre. That is far more people than in the territory my colleague has the honour of representing.

I had the honour of visiting Yukon during the tour of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform. I had the opportunity to see Whitehorse for the first time in my life and to visit the surrounding area. My colleague represents a magnificent territory that must be protected by the proper environmental assessments, but I will get back to that.

I will digress for a moment. Since I was there with the Special Committee on Electoral Reform, I cannot help but think that we are in a system where one government does things and the next government undoes them. From our perspective, if we had a more consensual system of policy development, this defect in our system would be less apparent. We would stop wasting so much time, money effort, and energy. There ends my digression about electoral systems.

There are three things I would like to address concerning Bill C-17. First, I would like to point out why it is important for men and women to become involved in politics. The values and principles of the party I belong to lead me to believe that the main reasons to do so revolve around fairness, social justice and human dignity. That is why, as a progressive party, we will fight inequality and insist on a fairer distribution of wealth and greater equality of opportunity.

Secondly, why are we in politics? I think that all political parties can agree on that. We do it to ensure the safety and protection of the public. That is the fundamental role of all governments, a role we believe must involve setting up sound environmental and socioeconomic assessment processes. Indeed, such processes not only help preserve our environment and ecosystems, but also ensure public health and protect the public from abuse by certain companies or from actions that would create pollution, illness and, indirectly, problems for Canadians living near certain industrial activities.

That might have been a roundabout way of putting things, but it just goes to show why we need to pass legislation that ensures that the public and public health are protected. We are taking a step in the right direction today.

This bill is also important and useful in terms of respect for first nations. The Liberal government likes to talk about its nation-to-nation approach with regard to the relationship between the federal government and every first nation on the ground.

What is really unfortunate, however, and I noted it in my question to my Conservative colleague, is the frontal attack that was launched at the time by the Harper government against the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act in relation to mining projects, without having first consulted first nations.

I think that the bill before us corrects things in that regard. It also respects a desire that clearly appears to be shared by all major stakeholders regarding this issue in the Yukon. It is a sign of respect toward first nations and that shows openness and dialogue. That has been hailed by people who were critical of the somewhat cavalier attitude of the previous Conservative government. In that way, it is a good thing.

Regarding our ability to maintain respectful and equal relations with first nations, I would be remiss if I did not add that, although Bill C-17 is a step in the right direction, or rather a return to a better direction, the Liberal government's actions do not always reflect their words, sadly. I will give two quick examples, starting with the Liberal government’s refusal to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which says a lot about the government’s posturing. It is unwilling to apply changes that would benefit all first nations communities across the country.

Therefore, I want to remind everyone listening to the debate in the House that we have a Liberal government that is refusing to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The minister told us that all of a sudden it could not be implemented even though several countries have done so. That is unfortunate. I am asking the government to revisit its position on the matter.

I am also asking the government to revisit its position on all court challenges involving indigenous rights and treaty adherence, and especially involving health care for children. My colleague from Timmins—James Bay reminded us today that the government has already spent $6 million of taxpayers' money to challenge indigenous rights in court, especially the right to children's health care. It is disappointing to hear the same old rhetoric from the Prime Minister and the entire Liberal cabinet while the government uses taxpayers' money to challenge the legitimate claims of indigenous peoples.

What else is missing from Bill C-17? Earlier, the minister seemed open to changes, and I hope that is the case. Some of the environmental assessment issues have been resolved, but many first nations chiefs and representatives also said that, when the previous government did this, it unilaterally imposed a new fiscal approach on them. The new fiscal approach is extremely restrictive and, in their opinion, it contradicts the treaties the federal government signed with first nations. Once again, many people are telling the government that there is still work to do, there are still things that need changing. That is very important.

I would like to quote Eric Fairclough, chief of the Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation. In February 2016, he appeared before the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development and had this to say about the new fiscal approach, which Bill C-17 does not change:

The fiscal approach contradicts and violates our final agreements. In several fundamental ways Canada cannot implement its fiscal approach and meet the modern treaty agreement commitments under self-governing Yukon first nations.

It's a step backwards for self-governing Yukon first nations. Its implementation will violate the commitments of the Yukon first nations final agreements rather than promote reconciliation. It's not what the Prime Minister said, and it's not what the INAC minister said either, according to their own words.

Although we are pleased that the measures Yukoners called for are back, the job is not done. There is still a lot of work to do to change this new fiscal approach.

I would like to quote one more witness. Ruth Massie was the grand chief of the Council of Yukon First Nations. Speaking before that same committee in February 2016, she said:

This fiscal policy is being imposed. We have not accepted it because of the language in our agreement. How is it going to affect us if it goes forward? We will have no choice but to defend our agreements. That means going back to court, because that's not what the provisions in our agreements say.

I am calling on the Liberal government to finish the job. I understand that a discussion is currently taking place, but if we want to be consistent, we need to be able to change this fiscal approach, which was imposed on the indigenous peoples of Yukon.

Motions in amendment

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am speaking to Bill C-49 today. I am opposed to this bill because of a number of issues with it, but in particular I want to speak to section 14 of the bill.

Section 14 concerns the review of arrangements involving two or more transportation undertakings providing air services. In other words, section 14 involves joint ventures between two airlines, joint ventures that allow airlines to co-operate in terms of sharing routes, frequent flier programs, and revenue-sharing and cost-sharing.

This is not an insignificant section of the bill. This is a major change to competition law. Section 14 of Bill C-49 makes major changes to the Competition Act.

I want to take a step back and explain why I think this is so concerning. The Competition Bureau is a very important organization. It ensures fair competition in Canada. It ensures that Canadian consumers and Canadian companies operate in a marketplace where they can prosper, a marketplace where there is sufficient competition, and a marketplace that delivers lower prices and more choices for consumers and companies.

Canada has long had a strong legal tradition and strong framework legislation in the area of competition law. We introduced competition law before the United States did in the 19th century, and throughout the last 150 years we have continually strengthened that competition law in order to ensure that we do not see anti-competitive behaviours in the marketplace.

I remember in 2004 when the then-minority government of prime minister Paul Martin was in place. It introduced a bill that would modernize competition law with the introduction of administrative monetary penalties that would work in place of, and alongside of, Criminal Code penalties that have a much higher threshold of proof.

While that legislation did not pass, the subsequent Harper government introduced similar legislation that was eventually adopted, and administrative monetary penalties are now part of our competition law. Canada has long had a strong tradition of ensuring competitive marketplaces. We are also seen around the world as leaders in competition law enforcement and ensuring that companies cannot abuse their marketplace position.

It is with great concern that I read section 14 of this bill that is in front of us, because it would weaken the bureau. The bureau is an independent law enforcement agency. This bill would actually take power away from the Competition Bureau and the commissioner of competition, and give it to the Minister of Transport. Not only that, it would allow the Minister of Transport to ignore competition concerns and to approve airline joint ventures.

The reason why this is so very concerning is that we know that more competition and a more competitive marketplace leads to lower prices and more choice for Canadian consumers. If we look at the history of airline policy in this country, we have come a long way over the last 30 years.

Privatization and increased competition have given Canadians more choice and lower prices in the airline industry. We started with deregulation in the 1980s, we privatized Air Canada in 1988, we spun out of Transport Canada the airports across this country in 1992, we established independent airport authorities in the 1990s, and because of that, there have been literally tens of billions of dollars of investment in airports and in airlines in this country.

For example, in the early 1990s, some $50 million a year was being spent on airport improvements. Since airports were spun out of the Department of Transport in 1992, over $14 billion has been invested in Canadian airports. The same is true of Air Canada. It is a much better airline today than it was in the 1980s when it was heavily regulated and not subject to competition, and owned by the Government of Canada. Today it is a much better airline, and it is a better airline because it has been subject to competition.

However, the job is not yet done. It is clear through numerous studies that the Canadian travelling public is still paying far too high a price to get from A to B in this country. That is why section 14 of the bill is so very concerning. It is going to lead to less competition, increased prices, and less choice for the travelling public, which runs counter to the effort that we made over the last number of decades to increase competition and lower prices for Canadians.

I want to give an example to illustrate this point. In 2011, Air Canada wanted to enter into a joint venture with United Continental that would allow them to share many transborder routes between Canada and the United States, and Canada and other destinations. That joint venture was fully reviewed by the Competition Bureau and the bureau demanded that certain conditions be put on that joint venture. The bureau in its review concluded that 10 cross-border routes between Canada and the United States would be less competitive for Canadian consumers because Air Canada and United Continental would be subject a monopoly and nine other routes would be subject to less competition than currently is the case.

The bureau refused to approve the joint venture unless certain routes were exempted, so the consent agreement that was entered into between the parties and the Competition Bureau exempted 14 cross-border routes from this joint venture, ensuring that on those 14 cross-border routes there was sufficient competition for Canadian consumers. The bill in front of us today would allow the minister to override the bureau and to approve these joint ventures without any conditions to ensure sufficient competition.

If we take a step back from this and we ask ourselves why the government is doing this, it seems to me that one of the reasons is that it has become a bit of a political “scratch my back and I will scratch yours” game. The government pressured Air Canada to buy 75 C Series jets from Bombardier in order to help the government politically with the problem it had with Bombardier. Fearing that the company was entering a dangerous period of insolvency, the government put a lot of pressure on a private sector company to purchase these 75 C Series jets.

I suspect that in return two bills were introduced in Parliament. I think the government needs to come clean on whether or not there was a quid pro quo in this arrangement. Air Canada buys these jets and in return the government introduces two bills, Bill C-10, which lifted the requirement for Air Canada to have maintenance facilities in certain cities in this country, and Bill C-49, which has section 14 that would allow the Minister of Transport to approve joint ventures without any conditions to ensure sufficient competition.

This would be a real step back for competition law. It would weaken competition particularly when it comes to future joint ventures that airlines in this country may enter into. It would lead to higher prices for Canadian consumers and less choice. It is for that reason that I strongly believe that this section of the bill should be deleted and why I am opposed to the bill. I look forward to members' questions and comments.

Resuming debate

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the debate concerning motion No. 14 is not about having a problem with working until midnight each evening—except, obviously, on topics raised by the opposition. I agree with what the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons said in the House yesterday, that most of us are already working every day on a similar schedule.

In my previous career, I was already used to long hours. When I ran a global business, my European colleagues began calling me at 4 a.m., and my days would often stretch until midnight. This was necessary so I could meet with my employees and people in the plants and businesses in the Pacific region I was responsible for.

As the head of a North American refining and petrochemical company, I realized that maintaining customer relations and meeting deadlines to submit applications made for very long days.

The Liberal government said it wanted to make Parliament more family friendly in order to encourage women to get into politics. I support encouraging more women to get into politics, but I do not believe that many women would choose to work until midnight each evening, away from their kids.

Now, why did this government introduce such a motion, when theoretically it should oppose it?

As I have said, I am not opposed to working long hours. I said earlier today, and will say it again, Einstein was quoted as saying that the definition of insanity was repeating the same action hoping for a different result. The government has not accomplished a lot in the way of legislation. If we think about the 19 bills that have passed versus 52 in the same time frame when the Conservatives were in power, really not much has been accomplished. There is no prioritization of what is coming forward.

I want to take a moment to talk about what has already passed because it shows something important.

So far in Parliament the transparency for first nations has been removed with Bill C-1. Bill C-2 gave back to the middle class $932 a year in taxes and then Bill C-26 increased their CPP payments by $1,100 a year, with no benefit. Bill C-10 gave Air Canada a deal to get maintenance jobs out of Canada and escape a lawsuit. Bill C-14, medically assisted dying, was passed without protecting the rights of conscience. Bill C-17 addressed environmental items for Yukon. Bill C-18 was environmental change for Rouge Park in Toronto. Bill C-30 was a CETA deal that now has to be renegotiated with Brexit happening. Bill C-31 was the trade deal with Ukraine. The rest were all maintenance budget items that needed to be done. That is all we have accomplished in 18 months of the Liberal government's agenda. Everything else is lost in process, being amended in the Senate, and not coming forward.

What is the government going to achieve by making us sit every night until midnight, which, as I said, I am fully willing to do? I really do not think it is getting anywhere. Why is it not getting anywhere? Because it does not listen to the opposition's points of view.

The job of the opposition is to bring reasoned and intelligent arguments on why a government proposal is not good for Canada and to make helpful suggestions about what would make it better.

When bills are sent to committee, the committee's job is to make helpful suggestions and amendments that would make them something all Canadians could embrace. That is really what is happening. The government is not accepting amendments, not listening when the opposition talks, and again and again, when things go to the Senate, the Senate comes up with the same amendments and spends more time studying them, doing exactly the same thing that committees of the House are supposed to do. That is one problem.

Another problem is that there has to be trust when parties work together.

I am going to compare the antics that I see happening here with what I see in the business world. In the business world, people work together. People have to be able to trust one another when they make deals. They have to be able to follow up on things as they said they would.

From what I have seen, the opposition House leaders are trying to work with the government House leader but she is not keeping up her end of what she has agreed to. Every day I watch her stand in the House and misrepresent to Canadians that she just has a discussion paper, when really a motion has been rammed through PROC. I have seen her avoid answering questions that she is accountable to answer.

I would suggest that there has been a huge erosion of trust in the government House leader and sometimes that cannot be fixed in order to restore the ability to work together. The government should really consider changing up that position and coming back to a place where we can work together and trust that agreements that are made, amendments that are suggested, and motions that are brought forward are as agreed. That is really important.

There is another point that I would like to make that has not been discussed much here. I have listened to the debate on Motion No. 14 and I have heard a lot about the blame game. I hear from the Liberals that when Stephen Harper's government was in place, it did this bad thing or that bad thing, or whatever. Honestly, two-thirds of the Parliament are new. Some of us were not here in the previous Parliament. We have an opportunity to do things differently now. If we think something was previously done wrong, we have the opportunity to do it differently in the future.

When items come up in the business climate, not everything needs the same amount of time to be talked about. I have sat in the House and heard Liberal members stand up and say they support such and such a bill and I have heard Conservative members and NDP members stand up and say they do too, and then we talk about it for days.

This is not the way we should be spending our time. If the government had not squandered all of the time in that way, we would have more time and we would not have to sit late. In the same way, there are things that need to be discussed longer that cannot be rammed through, things such as the budget bill that has been combined with the infrastructure bank. When comments come forward, the government needs to lead. It needs to separate those things out so that the things that can be quickly passed get passed on. When I say passed on, I am saying that if we all agree on a bill at first reading and we do not need to change anything, then the legislation should be sent right away to the Senate. Why are we spending time doing second and third reading and committee and everything else? We need to be able to update some of the processes here.

I am not about just criticizing without providing recommendations for how I think we could make this better. Here are my recommendations, which I think the government could use to change some of the things that it is doing and which would result in getting legislation passed through in a better way.

When it comes to the rules of the House, I see an opportunity to modernize those rules but a change would need to honour the tradition of Parliament and have all-party consensus or at least the consensus of a majority of members to change things, because those things influence our democracy and they are important. Doing some of those things would, as the suggestions I have made about passing things we all agree on and everything else, clear the legislative agenda in a way that would move things forward more positively.

I also would reiterate that you have to have someone working with the opposition leaders who can be trusted, and I think that trust is broken.

The other point I would make is about amendments that are brought forward and are agreed to by the opposition members. It is not often that the NDP and the Conservatives play on the same team and sing from the same song sheet. That does not usually happen but lately it has happened a lot. When that happens, it should be a signal to government that this is an amendment that Canadians want to see.

The government needs to say what it is going to do and then it needs to own up to it. Some of the credibility loss that has happened has happened because the government said it was going to do something and then it did not. The government maintained it was going to be open and transparent and then facts have been hidden or things have not been well represented. The government said it was going to be accountable but then every day when we stand up and ask questions we get the shell game. It does not answer our questions, and this would not be acceptable in the business world.

These are some of the things that would help to get the legislative agenda flowing through. As a member of the opposition, I want to see the right things happen for Canada and I am willing to work with the government to see that happen.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

moved:

That the question of privilege regarding the free movement of Members of Parliament within the Parliamentary Precinct raised on Wednesday, March 22, 2017, be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

Mr. Speaker, let me begin by saying that your ruling today is truly a testament to your position as Speaker, and to the Speakers who have gone before you. Truly, the role of the Speaker is one of the utmost principles in our parliamentary democracy, and I think today, in the long line of Speakers who have gone before, you have found the appropriate ruling.

After all, often the role of the Speaker is determined to be one of a referee, and we often hear that referred to in tour groups and among university lecturers. However, the role of the Speaker is so much more than that. The Speaker is truly the defender of the rights and privileges of this place.

I am reminded from time to time of the words of a great English Speaker, William Lenthall, who said with great conviction to the King in his place in his time, when met with King Charles I, the executive of the day:

...I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this house is pleased to direct me whose servant I am....

Today the Speaker made such a ruling and stood up to the face of opposition from the government ministers.

Let me begin my remarks by saying that I will be splitting my time today with the hon. member for Battle River—Crowfoot.

It is in a way unfortunate that we have to have a redo of this debate. This debate was properly started last week when the Speaker did rightly find a prima facie case of privilege, and it is troubling in two manners: first, the nature of the incident itself, that two members of Parliament were prevented from undertaking their duties of voting in this House; and second, by the unfortunate actions that were undertaken by the government in preventing this matter from coming to a vote.

As the Speaker rightly found in his ruling, this is unprecedented. Never before in the history of this place has a matter of privilege been dealt with in such a way. Never before in this place has the government shut down and prevented all 338 members of this House from voting on a matter of the privileges of us as parliamentarians. Every other case of privilege has been dealt with one way or another through a vote, either in the affirmative or in the negative, but not in this case.

This is most unfortunate. It is unfortunate for so many reasons. If, as members in this House noted before, the government is allowed to proceed in this manner on this case, how many times going forward will votes on questions of privilege be prevented from coming to a vote in this House by the duly elected members of this House?

I want to state the great respect I have for this institution and for those who serve this institution. I want to state as well the respect I have, specifically, for the parliamentary protective service, in whom I have the utmost of confidence for defending us and keeping us safe as parliamentarians.

In my short time as a parliamentarian—I have only been elected for about a year and a half—I have always felt safe in the exercising of my duties here in this place, and indeed, another speaker in last week's debate, quoted from the back of our ID badges, and I think it is worthwhile to reread that into the record:

Under the law of parliamentary privilege, the bearer has free and open access at all times, without obstruction or interference to the precincts of the House of Parliament of which the bearer is a member.

In fact, the law of parliamentary privilege is enshrined constitutionally in section 18 of the Constitution Act, 1867, also more commonly known to us in its original title, the British North America Act, 1867.

Let us remember exactly what took place on budget day. Two members of Parliament, at least, were affected. We know of at least two. There could have been others as well. There was indication from the Speaker's original ruling that there were others potentially on the buses who were also denied access. However, at least two members, the members from Milton and Beauce, were unable to attend a vote in this House, in this place.

The outcome of that particular vote is not relevant. The fact is that they were prevented from doing their duty, the duty that they as elected members of this place are entrusted to do on behalf of their constituents. All of us have that duty to the constituents we are honoured and privileged to represent.

Let us imagine for just a moment how this could have played out differently. Imagine there had been a vote of confidence and members were prevented by one way or another from attending this place to vote. Certainly in this case there is a majority government and one or two members not exercising their vote may not seem like a significant matter. Let us think back into the not-so-distant past to May 2005. There was a budget vote, a confidence vote in this very House. The Paul Martin Liberals were on the ropes. It looked as if they could be defeated. A couple of lucky floor crossings and the support of an independent member of Parliament meant that it ended up in a tie vote. Mr. Speaker Milliken at the time was forced into the position of breaking that tie vote in the affirmative. One vote would have made the difference, in that case, of an election, the dissolution of Parliament, or the continuation of that government. It would have been one vote.

In fact, in this Parliament not too long ago on Bill C-10, on a Monday morning, or afternoon by the time we voted, we had a tie vote in this House on a piece of government legislation. One vote would have made the difference between that piece of legislation moving on to third reading and that piece of legislation being defeated in this place. The Speaker at the time was forced to once again break a tie. Interestingly, in a majority government, that does not happen very often, but it happened in that case. I would point out that it is somewhat ironic that the government is currently proposing changes, and one of the changes it has mentioned is perhaps sitting earlier in the morning, but if we use the example of Bill C-10, that vote was in the early afternoon, so I would be surprised how many members might be in this House at that time.

We are faced with the question now of where we go from here, where we move forward in the appropriate manner. As my motion clearly states, it is appropriate at this point that the matter be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, as it is the appropriate location. I know there have been flimsy procedural efforts for the committee to self-direct to undertake its own study of privilege, but as we know, the Standing Orders clearly state that matters of privilege do not fall under the mandate of the procedure and House affairs committee, and it falls on the House to direct the appropriate committee to undertake a study of the privilege. After all, the rights and privileges of this House are a matter for this House to undertake.

I do feel a bit like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day; we are redoing the same battle again and again, the same debate that has been undertaken. I have been told I am better looking than Bill Murray. I am not so sure about that, but I will say this. On a matter as important as the privileges of this House, a procedurally flimsy effort by the government to shut down the debate is truly unfortunate. Two members were denied the right to vote and now, by the Liberals' efforts, the attempt was to deny 338 members the right to vote. That is truly unfortunate.

It is unfortunate that it is being done at the same time that the procedure and House affairs committee is undertaking a Standing Order change, a change that would be done unilaterally without the support of opposition parties. The government states that it wants to have a discussion on the matter. A discussion can only happen if both sides are listening and discussing. The privileges of this House are of the utmost importance to each and every member of this House. It is not a matter for the government to decide. Rather, it is a matter for this House to decide by way of a vote.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise and speak to an issue that concerns one of the most important rights of members of the House of Commons, which is to have unfettered access to this place at any time, and particularly when there are votes happening.

A question of privilege has been raised. Members have said they were not able to make it to a vote because they were obstructed. The Speaker has said he does think there is a prima facie case. The appropriate thing to do, and what is typically done, is that it goes to the procedures and House affairs committee. My understanding is that, typically, the committee takes that matter up forthwith and makes a determination.

My colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley is quite right to say that it is at committee that this matter should be properly studied, because the committee has the ability to call witnesses and to delve deeper into the details of the issue.

There is some contention as to whether or not it was the media bus that was responsible for the shuttle buses being delayed and therefore members not being able to make it to the House on time for a vote, or whether it was the Prime Minister's motorcade. The Speaker's ruling does not say one way or the other which one it was. That is why it would be good to find out.

The way to find out is to call on the people who were involved, in order to get an accurate representation of what happened. That way we would know. If it is something to do with the Prime Minister's motorcade, then maybe the procedures around what happens with respect to the Prime Minister's motorcade, and other vehicles on the Hill when the motorcade is present, could be modified to ensure it does not fetter members' access to the House of Commons. That is fully possible.

I have been on a bus that was sitting behind the Prime Minister's motorcade by Centre Block. I was only going back to my office at the Confederation building, but I was told by the driver that the rules are they are not allowed to pass the Prime Minister's motorcade. Maybe some bus drivers decide to do that anyway because they are trying to please members of the House, and we appreciate all their good work, but in that particular instance, I was told by that driver that he would not pass the Prime Minister's motorcade because he was under instructions not to do so.

Therefore, in my experience, there is an issue about how the Prime Minister's motorcade interacts with other vehicles on the Hill. If protocols around that are not handled correctly, there is the potential to fetter or obstruct the access of members to the Hill. I am sure all members, including government members, do not want that to be the case, so what we need to do is a detailed examination to make sure that the protocols around that are appropriate and do not get in the way of members getting to the House. The motion before us simply refers this to PROC to get that more detailed answer.

We have heard from members on the government side; well, one member actually. We always know when members of the government are not really comfortable with their own position because it is only the member for Winnipeg North who gets up on his feet. No one else is willing to speak to those issues. We kind of know when the government feels that perhaps it is not on the right side of the issue, because the only one with the gall to get up and speak to it is the member for Winnipeg North. That has been in evidence today.

He said a few things, and I just want to zero in on some of them, because I find them troubling in a couple of different ways. One thing he said was that the amendment to this motion, which simply says that PROC will treat this issue with priority, is not a very good amendment because PROC does that anyway. That is what he said in his speech. I find that passing strange because the Liberals' contention at PROC on another issue right now is that they want certain changes, including a prime minister's question period. They have said these are good reforms and we need to get them through so we can do these things. The funny thing is that we do not need to change the Standing Orders to do that. In fact, we saw that yesterday when the Prime Minister undertook to answer almost every question in question period, although not every question. There were no changes to the Standing Orders required in order to do that, and yet they say they want to change the Standing Orders. If changes to motions and rules are redundant simply because one can do it anyway, then they should not be asking for a change to the Standing Orders in order to do prime minister's questions.

I fear that the member, perhaps unintentionally, and I am being generous because we are in the House of Commons, is being inconsistent, and I would not deign to say disingenuous, when he makes that particular argument.

He also said that he had reservations about sending it to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs because of the quality of the debate so far in the House and he was concerned the debate in the PROC committee would be a waste of time. It is completely wrong for members in this place to prejudge the deliberations and decisions at committees.

If he wants to be an advocate in this place, as he sometimes says he is, for the independence of committees, then he has some nerve to suggest that we might consider not referring a matter that is totally appropriate to refer to a particular committee because he already has some prejudicial notions about what members at the committee might say or do during those deliberations, or what the committee might decide. That line of argument shows a serious disrespect for committees and it is important to not let that go unanswered.

I wanted to take some time in my remarks to address those comments made by the member for Winnipeg North. He often makes reference to his long parliamentary career, over 25 years, but if he had spent more time listening over those 25 years as opposed to talking, he would not have made the arguments he made earlier in this place. I really do think it is just wrong to make decisions about whether to refer something to committee based on speculation about what some members may or may not say at committee. When we spell it out like that, it is obvious that it is ridiculous and disrespectful to make decisions based on that kind of speculation.

That is what we want to do. We want to do what is the usual thing to do with a serious matter of privilege. I do not think one has to be a long-time parliamentarian to appreciate the problem with the idea of interfering with members' access to the chamber, particularly when there are votes. I am not saying that has been abused in this case. It was likely not intentional. One of the reasons for sending it to committee for a detailed analysis is for the committee to be able to speak to those involved and clear the air so that there are no worries or concerns that the blocking of members' access to the House was intentional.

That is what we want to do. We want to take this matter to committee, because if it does start that blocking members' access to the House of Commons is allowed, it is clear to see how a government that may not have the best of intentions—and I am not saying that is the case with the current government or governments of the past, but some hypothetical future government.

We cannot allow it to be acceptable that potentially, and we don't know, protocols around the Prime Minister's motorcade are allowed to interfere with members' access to the House, or whether it is protocols around the media bus, or whatever it is that got in the way of these particular members reporting on time for the vote, because let us face it. We have seen procedural shenanigans around here. If we allow shenanigans to interfere with members' right of access to the House of Commons, an unscrupulous government may start to see it as a legitimate procedural tactic as to where to put media buses or a prime minister's motorcade, because it is a close vote.

I will remind members on the other side of the House, as they may not know or have forgotten, that not all parliaments are majority parliaments. It is also not in all cases, even in majority governments, that the government wins the vote. In fact, I recall a vote held last spring on Bill C-10 that was a tie vote and the Speaker had to break the tie. It is only because the vote was on the report stage of that bill that it proceeded. That is how the Speaker is traditionally required to vote in order to continue debate. Had the vote been on third reading stage, that bill would have been defeated.

Imagine if we were debating this question of privilege with respect to that vote and not what we are discussing. We can imagine that tensions would be a lot higher. It is no less an offence to block members from one vote, even though it may be known that a majority is likely going to win the vote, than it is on a tie vote, but it is harder to have the conversation around a close vote, because tensions are that much higher.

Therefore, it is important that we have the discussion now and we not wait for it to be a monumental vote, because at that point the issues of substance and procedure will become so entangled that we will not be able to make an appropriate decision.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Just quickly, I did take note, Mr. Histon, of the comment you made about how work is done versus how work should be done. That's a great point. The only way we can move forward with recommendations is to work with folks like you and those who are in the business getting their hands dirty and greasy, who have wrenches in their hands, and so on.

I'm thinking out loud here a bit to try to get some input from you folks. Protocols need to be established. Obviously it's one thing to have regulations and things on paper but it's more important to have those protocols in place that we can apply to our daily jobs. Strategic measures followed by ongoing performance measures are critical. Again, it's the folks on the floor, working on the planes with their hands, who can best establish that.

It's somewhat déjà vu because we discussed this during the Bill C-10 deliberations as well with respect to creating performance areas, clusters, centres of excellence to ensure that this work gets done in a proper manner vis-à-vis protocols being put in place.

What are your thoughts on that process? I'm trying to be pragmatic. As I said earlier, our intent is to come forward with recommendations and implement those recommendations or ask the minister to implement those recommendations, so what are your thoughts on the comments made?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I just want to say, in response to Mr. Waugh, that I think his story about Saskatchewan and the filibuster that occurred when the government undertook to sell PotashCorp, jointly with the story about MTS in Manitoba, just shows the extent to which filibusters are brought on by issues where the stakes are high. Selling off a major crown corporation like that, whether you're for it or against it—I'm sure we wouldn't find consensus around this table on whether to be for or against those decisions—nevertheless is a significant decision in terms of the future of the economy. Whether those assets are held publicly or privately can make a substantial difference for people in the province. I won't get into substantive debate on the virtue of publicly held assets or privately held assets, but I do think it illustrates that it's when the stakes are high that issues tend to trigger those kinds of filibusters. That's why we're here today, because the stakes are high.

Whatever you think about some of the substantive proposals in the government discussion paper, what's at stake and where the stakes are high is the setting of a precedent, where a majority government uses that majority to rewrite the rules of Parliament. That, for me, is really at the bottom of what we're here for. It's why we're happy to talk at length and provide such a detailed analysis of the issue for the benefit of ourselves and other members, and ultimately for the government, because it's a bad precedent. You can have a government made up of the most friendly, well-meaning people. If they go ahead and establish precedents that future governments can use, governments that may be less scrupulous, then they will have done an incredible disservice to the country, whether they intended to or not. It's just a good reminder of how it is....

I think some people look at the kind of detailed conversation we've been having and ask what we are doing and why we are doing that. It's important to know that it gets done when you're on the cusp of making a really significant decision, and one that can potentially have very negative consequences. When that happens, it is perfectly appropriate for legislators to respond by trying to put that decision off, in the hopes that, while doing that, first of all, they'll be able to perhaps persuade the government that they're on the wrong track.

There's a lot of room here, given the strength of the tradition of all-party agreement, for government to change its mind and simply say that it's come to see the value of reaching out to colleagues, if nothing else, because it wants to get something done; and as much as it may think it can go ahead on its own, it realizes it's not going to get it done if it doesn't reach out to other parties.

That's not the government members saying they were wrong. That would be nice to hear from the other side, but I don't think they even have to go there. I think they can say their priority is to get it done, and they had an idea about how they would get it done. Whether they think it's right or not, that strategy's not working. They're pragmatic, and they're going to adopt a strategy that actually gets results. That strategy is going to be one that's more collaborative with the opposition parties. So there's that, convincing government. We're hearing persuasive arguments tonight.

The second point is to give time. This is one thing. I'll try to not conflate that point about procedure, and majority governments unilaterally making changes, with substantive issues. I think one role of Parliament, and one virtuous aspect of some of the dilatory strategies that opposition parties adopt from time to time, is to give civil society the time it needs to digest what government is proposing and to mobilize, either in favour or against.

Maybe civil society has time to digest that, Canadians come to appreciate what it is the government is doing and say, hey, actually, we really like it. They mobilize against the opposition because they think the opposition is making an error. Or they come to know better what the government is doing, and they say, hey, we really don't like this. They're thankful for that time to impress upon government members that they need to change tack.

Part of the problem with making legislative processes so quote-unquote efficient is that legislation passes before Canadians have time to even really know what's going on here. It is a bit of a bubble in Ottawa, and it takes time for things to seep out. The media have to be covering it. MPs need time to put a householder together or line up their ten percenters and get them out to the riding. They need time to get some of that feedback, to see what's going on. Groups in civil society need time to organize meetings, to organize rallies, and to organize letter-writing campaigns. This all takes time.

One of the virtues of the legislators here taking time and stretching out the decision-making process on an important issue is that it's actually the way in for civil society. If we didn't do that here, if within the course of two or three days we just went ahead and made some of those major decisions, we would be shutting Canadians out of the decision-making process.

When a government says that it wants to consult, have discussions, and stuff like that, part of that is not rushing your legislation through. I think Bill C-10 was a very good example, with changes to the Air Canada Public Participation Act. That bill, through time allocation, passed through Parliament very quickly. When I was out talking to people about the consequences of that bill and what it meant, people were shocked, frankly, that the government they thought they had elected was doing that in the first place. As they learned about it, they really didn't like it.

Partly, they just assumed that this government would never do that. It wasn't part of the election platform. It wasn't part of what they had talked about. People didn't feel that allowing good aerospace maintenance jobs to leave the country was part of sticking up for the Canadian middle class, so they were surprised to hear that. Had we been able to extend that process further, Canadians who came to know of that may have been able to change the government's tack and make the government feel that they were in the wrong.

I think that's an important element of legislative processes and an important part of why we're here tonight.