Evidence of meeting #34 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was supply.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
I've already answered that. I don't mind answering Yasmin's question.
I said that I can't give an answer today on whether or not we would want to have a vote on Tuesday. I certainly don't see the need for another filibuster, but that's why I'm saying we should go back and do a consult.
I've engaged in a filibuster a number of times. Those of you who may have served with me on committees know that, but each time I've engaged in such an action, as I've done today, I've told the committee right at the outset what my plans were. I'm not trying to be too cute by half. I've seen many filibusters in which the member who was engaging in the filibuster tried to convince his or her opposition colleagues that it really wasn't a filibuster and that they were doing this in all earnestness and sincerity. Come on.
I told you at the outset that I was going to talk this out, and I am. All I'm asking for is some consideration to allow our party, the government, to go back and determine how we want to proceed next with this.
I will give you one guarantee. Whatever our decision is at the next meeting, I will share that with you. If the decision is that we choose to filibuster this until the end of the year, I'll tell you that. I don't sense that happening, but I'll be up front with you. That's the best guarantee I can give you. How can you ask me to give you an answer before we've had an opportunity to consult? It's unreasonable to even suggest that.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
As I said, if nothing else, I'm keeping my word that I will be continuing to talk until one o'clock.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
At that time I also gave you the opportunity, if you were having brain cramps listening to me for the last 30 minutes, to adjourn the meeting, but since you didn't want to, you've got--luckily for you--perhaps only six minutes left, and then we can adjourn.
Let's go back to the supply day issue itself. Once again we've seen a motion come forward that on the surface, Mr. Chair, appears to be reasonable. It's somewhat ironic, however, that the party forwarding this motion is the same party that abused the system of supply days so egregiously in parliaments past. In fact, I think that if you went back in parliamentary history, you would find that the previous Liberal government abused the privilege of supply days more often than has occurred in any other parliament since Parliament first began over 100 years ago.
We've seen many techniques that governments use, Mr. Chair, in an attempt to avoid non-confidence votes. We've seen many techniques that governments use to try to avoid being defeated in a non-confidence vote, but I cannot recall an attempt to manipulate supply days to try to avoid opposition days. I've seen everything from prorogation to direct appeals from prime ministers to the Canadian voters, but what we saw in the last Liberal government was the first and only time that I have seen a government of the day try to manipulate the supply days in such an undemocratic and shameless manner simply to try to avoid a non-confidence vote. On that vote, I should add, they had no knowledge of whether or not they would lose, and you can recall, Mr. Chair, that in 2005 the non-confidence vote was passed at the end of the year.
What we had then was the situation of a government so fearful of being defeated that they would do anything and everything in their power to avoid even the chance of losing a non-confidence vote, and that's what we saw in June of 2005. We saw the Liberal government under Prime Minister Paul Martin and House leader Tony Valeri blatantly misuse the democratic rights and privileges of opposition parties with respect to their supply days. They crammed all of the supply days for all opposition parties into a short period of time towards the end of June.
Mr. Chair, we were vehemently opposed to that process. I know that both the Bloc Québécois and the NDP were as well. Since that time, we have not seen such an abuse. In fact, since we formed the government in January of 2006, I believe that our government, while perhaps not achieving the perfection the opposition would like in scheduling supply days, has at least been open, transparent, and democratic in our use and allocation of supply days.
I can honestly say, Mr. Chair, that our view as a government is that we would like to continue in that fashion. We would like to--
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
It's a pity, but we have reached one o'clock.
This meeting is adjourned.
