Michelle Rempel

[Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023, November 3rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, it is vitally important that Parliament and the Canadian government consider the economic self-determination rights of indigenous persons in all activities. This should be a principle that is extended beyond these agreements to natural resource development, environmental assessment and the inclusion of indigenous and traditional knowledge in policies such as health, science, and research and technology. As such, it is encouraging to see more discussion of this and this particular principle included in debate in Parliament writ large.

[Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023, November 3rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, that is an excellent point. I know that the member's colleagues in her party have been making this point in debate, and it is a good one. It is a strong contrast to what the parliamentary secretary said when he characterized the scrutiny of the agreement as “silly games”. That is not appropriate. That actually denigrates Parliament and our role.

I would point out again that, in debate, our colleague from South Okanagan—West Kootenay pointed out that the government made a commitment to Parliament to give advance notice and to have trade negotiation go through the international trade committee. That has not happened in this case, and it is incumbent upon us to point out that Parliament has a role. We have a large, diverse regional economy, where we have many stakeholders who will want feedback. That is our job, and I fully support the member's assertion that the government did not undertake that in this instance, and now we have a duty as parliamentarians to undertake that role.

That is an excellent point that I fully agree with.

[Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023, November 3rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I am actually surprised my colleague brought up the incident that happened during President Zelenskyy's address. It did not go so well for the government. I think the government owes a significant apology to the Ukrainian people for its complete mishandling and the debacle that ensued there. It was disgraceful, what happened, and the government should be ashamed of itself.

In terms of calling the review of legislation that is before this place “silly games”, I think that is very indicative of the government and the Liberal Party's disrespect for Parliament and parliamentary privilege.

[Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023, November 3rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to this important agreement.

I want to focus my comments on a few things. First, I noticed in debate that there has been some insinuation that reviewing this bill and its contents is somehow inappropriate for Parliament. I want to refer colleagues who are making that assertion to comments that were made earlier in debate, I think it was last week, by the member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay. He talked about how, in previous trade agreements that have come before the House, the government has not afforded Parliament a lot of time to review things.

He actually cited that, in February 2020, ahead of the renegotiated CUSMA agreement, the minister made the following commitment: to require that a notice of intent to enter into negotiation toward a new free trade agreement be tabled in the House of Commons at least 90 calendar days prior to the commencement of negotiations, and to require objectives for negotiations towards new free trade agreements to be tabled in the House of Commons at least 30 calendar days prior to the commencement of negotiations. Under normal parliamentary procedures, these objectives would be referred to the committee on international trade.

As far as I understand, and I am happy to be corrected, I do not believe that the government actually did that in this case. That is problematic. Because the government has failed to do this, it is incumbent upon parliamentarians to take time to scrutinize this legislation. It affects many different aspects of the economy, some in very positive ways. Our job here is to scrutinize legislation, and the assertion that somehow we should not be doing that is actually anti-democratic.

I hope that hon. colleagues refrain from making that assertion and, instead, focus on the subject at hand today. I also hope that, if the government is going to enter into future negotiations such as this, they abide by the rules that they have put forward to this place. It would make things a lot more productive, and it would be far more respectful of our time and parliamentarians' time here.

On the subject of the agreement, I would like to focus my comments on this bill for consideration in two key components. First is the concept of treatment of intangibles in free trade agreements. There was quite a bit of rightful concern about the government's lack of focus on how to treat intangibles in the previous Canada-U.S. free trade agreement. I think it is incumbent on us to be looking at this particular aspect in any free trade agreement, including this one. I would just implore colleagues to do so, should this bill make it to committee.

I want to read one passage, just to put it into the record for colleagues to consider as they are deliberating this bill. It was a passage by Jim Balsillie, a Canadian industry leader, talking about intangibles in trade:

The instruments designed to govern the intangibles economy – including the new-age trade agreements such as CUSMA, CPTPP, and the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) – entrench and expand protection for owners of IP and data.

However, he noted that this is not new. He said:

... in 1990s trade agreements became the main tool for devising preferential marketplace frameworks that suit the owners of IP.... Nowhere was the shift from a tangibles to an intangibles economy set in sharper relief than with Canada’s largest trading partner the United States.

Later, he went on to critique how:

Canada’s woefully late recognition of the shift to intangibles and failure to understand its significance for national prosperity and security resulted in its falling behind, walking into strategic errors, and now leaving it poised to enter the post-pandemic world not just in catch up mode but relegated to competing globally on the cost of its tech talent with low-wage jurisdictions.

He talked about how:

Canada has an IP trade deficit. The Council’s recommendation would have us paying even more rents out to IP owners, who are principally foreign.

This is something that I really hope colleagues will consider in their deliberations over this bill, particularly as Canada still lags behind the rest of the world in terms of dealing with artificial intelligence regulations.

We are entering a phase where the global economy is not just entering into a digital economy; it is in a digital economy and progressing into a generative economy.

If we just have widgets and tangibles as a primary focus of trade agreements, and we promulgate other aspects, such as intellectual property protection and data ownership, without thinking about the downstream impact on our economy in 10 or 15 years, then we are setting Canada's economic prospects behind. I am not necessarily saying that is the case in this agreement, but I would just hope that parliamentarians who are tasked with looking at it, particularly in the committee stage, would focus on the precedent that is being set with regard to intangibles and the intellectual property component. Moreover, with any other trade agreement, that is something that Parliament needs to be seized with. This is just a note to colleagues who might be looking at that in the future.

The other thing I want to focus on would be article 13.10 of the trade agreement, under subsection 8(d), which says, “promote the rapid transition from unabated coal power to clean energy sources”.

This is a great, laudable objective. As colleagues have talked about previously in the House, the provision of clean energy and reducing Ukraine's and other European countries' reliance on Russia for energy should be an objective of the Canadian government. However, as other colleagues have pointed out, the government's own actions over the last eight years have been antithetical to that posture. Therefore, it is very difficult for the government to make such an assertion in a trade agreement after eight years of failing to acknowledge that Canada has a duty to build up facilities to provide cleaner sources of energy, such as liquefied natural gas, to other economies.

The reality is that Canada's government has taken a posture that is against the development of this resource. In fact, I would draw members' attention to an article in Reuters from October 6 of last year, over a year ago, titled “Canada's [Prime Minister] under pressure from Conservative rival to back new LNG”.

This article extensively covered what happened when the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, came to Canada. He was seeking a major role for Canada in replacing Russian supplies, such as energy. The rebuff that our allies in Europe got from the current government was wholly inappropriate. A year has gone by, and we are now taking this posture in this trade agreement without having seen any movement forward from the government on how to increase this type of export in an environmentally sustainable way. That is wholly irresponsible.

Earlier, my colleague from Calgary Heritage talked in his speech about Canada's failure to provide when we have this resource in abundant supply and some of the strictest environmental controls in the world. Canada is actually remarkably well placed to develop this resource in an environmentally responsible manner. There are colleagues from all different parties who represent ridings that are part of the development of this resource. There is a bit of cognitive dissonance between the posture that the government has taken in article 13.10 of the trade agreement and the reality of building out this infrastructure.

Therefore, I would encourage colleagues, as they consider this bill, as well as colleagues from the governing party, to look at ways to close that gap or to bring those two postures together. We cannot be putting postures like this in a trade agreement with any sort of truth to it without building out that infrastructure. It is good for the Canadian economy, and it certainly would defund the Russian war machine. This is really important. It is a broader objective, and it would provide stronger economic support for the country.

I will just close with this: Many colleagues in the House have pointed out in the debate over the Conservative motion on removing home heating tax, which will be voted on this Monday, that natural gas is a cleaner source of energy and that we should be looking to displace it. I do not understand why that cognitive dissonance exists in other areas.

[Business of Supply, November 2nd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today and implore colleagues to support the common-sense and fair-minded motion before us today. For those watching at home, the motion reads:

That, given that the government has announced a “temporary, three-year pause” to the federal carbon tax on home heating oil, the House call on the government to extend that pause to all forms of home heating.

The motion is about the carbon tax, but it is ultimately also about being fair to all Canadians, regardless of region and home heating source. That is what this motion is asking for: fairness.

It also acknowledges something else, in direct response to the assertion made this morning by the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River. He asserted that the carbon tax is working and that it is worth the immense cost to the constituents in his expansive riding, many of whom pay a lot to do things such as heating their homes and getting around.

I want to lay out for the House that the carbon tax is not working and is not worth the cost. In the heart of this motion is the fact that, after eight years of Liberal government, not only is the carbon tax not working, but it is also exacerbating the inflationary crisis and financial hardship for Canadians. This is another reason Conservatives have put the motion forward today.

Ahead of our Wednesday morning caucus meeting and as winter temperatures began to set in across the country, the Leader of the Opposition announced that Conservatives would in fact force a vote in the House of Commons on Monday to extend a three-year carbon tax exemption to all forms of home heating in every part of Canada. The exemption was announced by the Prime Minister last week for Atlantic Canadian home heating oil.

I know that the temptation for Liberal and perhaps NDP colleagues will be to continue to toe the line the Prime Minister took this week and vote against this motion. Perhaps the Bloc will as well. This line was that no additional carve-outs on the carbon tax would be forthcoming.

However, that position would be a mistake, both morally and politically. If anybody in this chamber cares about public support for climate action, the inflation crisis and, frankly, keeping their jobs, they should vote in favour of this motion. Here is why: While inflation and the cost of living remain the top electoral concerns for Canadians, a very recent survey by Leger suggested that about 70% of Canadians are worried about climate change. However, support for keeping the Liberal signature climate policy, the carbon tax, only registers with the support of 18% of Canadians.

The reason for the vast delta, that gap between public concern for addressing climate change and support for the climate tax, is something that few NDP, Liberal or Bloc intelligentsia appear to have considered. This blind spot is now both biting them in the rear politically and preventing Canada from meeting its emissions targets.

What is the reason behind that gap? It is that the carbon tax is failing to move consumer preferences away from high-carbon products and practices in the way Liberals promised it would, and Canadians know it. In the middle of a generationally high cost of living crisis, all Canadians, even those very concerned about climate change, are unwilling to pay for a policy they know to be ineffectual. Put differently, people will only choose alternatives to things such as driving carbon-powered vehicles and heating their homes with carbon-based fuels if other options exist and if those options are readily available and affordable.

Those circumstances may be partially available in more temperate and highly populated regions of the world, but that is not so much the case across the rest of our country. Even though the Liberals, the NDP and, frankly, the Bloc, seem to be content with keeping the tax in this scenario, Canadians are not choosing to purchase alternatives; in most parts of Canada, they do not widely exist and are completely unaffordable.

If one is ever in the beautiful riding of Calgary Nose Hill, I encourage them to come and drive up a piece of road called Centre Street, which turns into Harvest Hills Boulevard. There is a beautiful laneway along a big chunk of that for a light rapid transit. For 10 years, I have been imploring different levels of government to build out light rapid transit in that corridor. That would pull 50,000 cars off the road every day. Yet, we do not see leadership from the Liberal government on building out this type of critical infrastructure that would actually deliver social inclusion for my community, and could materially reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Instead, we see this dogmatic adherence to a policy that does not work. This concept is simple to grasp for even the most politically disconnected Canadians, particularly when they fill up their car and pay a carbon tax, but have no public transit alternatives and pay a carbon-based home heating bill for six months of brutal cold with no other option.

There are LRT debacles in Ottawa. I encourage everybody to try to take the LRT to their place here in Ottawa tonight. I wish them good luck. Edmonton, Calgary and the greater Toronto area are perfect examples of this situation.

Another good example is that after nearly a decade of wasted time, greenhouse gas emissions and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the administration of the carbon tax, the Liberals have not managed to deliver alternatives to things like heating oil. The measures the Prime Minister announced this week, a decade late and thousands of dollars short, would not even pay for a Big Mac value meal for rural Canadians each month. Earlier today, the NDP member for Timmins—James Bay said as much in the debate when he said that in Canada, heating homes is not a luxury. He is right. It is not a luxury, it is a necessity. If people cannot heat their home, they freeze.

The Liberal member for Kings—Hants also said something similar when he said that if Canadians do not have the money to make a change to a different form of heating, then they are stuck. Stuck is a great way to describe the situation many Canadians find themselves in right now.

The question Canadians now want answered is how the Liberals and their coalition partners in the NDP plan to get them financially unstuck after a decade of failure. A decade of Liberal rule has also shown people that the federal government is not, putting it mildly, particularly good at building out the infrastructure, like public transit, beefed-up electrical grids or a national system of EV charging stations needed to do things like pull gas-powered cars off the road.

The Liberals expect people to pay a carbon tax, with no alternative. They expect people to pay a carbon tax on home heating, with no alternative. That is the record of eight years of Liberal government. The carbon tax is not working and yet the Liberals expect people to pay for it in the middle of winter, on their heating bill.

However, the Liberal government does seem to be good at one thing, blowing a lot of tax dollars and political attention on waste and scandal, like the SNC-Lavalin scandal, the WE charity scandal, the ArriveCAN scandal and the foreign interference crisis. None of those things would bring inflation under control or address climate change.

The Liberal government's record on both fronts is abysmal, and it does not want to be held to account on that front. The government is not meeting its climate targets. It is just taxing Canadians with a policy that does not work.

Further to this point, this week's serious whistle-blower allegations regarding allegations of gross misappropriation at Sustainable Development Technology Canada, an agency that is supposed to spur the development and deployment of emissions reductions technology, will undoubtedly further erode public trust in the Liberal government's capacity to provide lower-cost alternatives to carbon fuels.

I want to read from this article, because I do not think people at home have heard much about this scandal. It just broke this week. Somebody named Doug McConnachie, assistant deputy minister at Innovation, has been working with whistle-blowers on this file, and they recorded him. This is what came out of the recordings when they were looking at the misappropriation of funds in this giant slush fund that is supposed deliver low-cost alternatives and combat climate change.

This is from a CBC article:

By late July, McConnachie was convinced certain spending decisions were badly handled, including the payments of nearly $40 million during the pandemic that was not based on precise needs and did not require follow-ups.

“It was free money,” he said....

I know there are a lot of people in my community who would like free money. This was free money designed to combat climate change that went to some Liberal cronies. We do not even know how, and the people who made these decisions still have jobs. The government has known about this for months or years. Those people still have jobs, and the Liberals expect us to believe that they care about getting inflation under control or that they care about climate change.

The article goes on: “‘It was free money,’ he said, before making an analogy with the controversy that affected Jean Chrétien's Liberal government in the early 2000s.” “Affected” is putting it nicely. It was brought down. “‘That is almost a sponsorship-scandal level kind of giveaway.’”

This is a fund that was supposed to address climate change in Canada, and it turned into, as everything else has with the government, a slush fund for Liberal cronies. People who care about climate action and care about getting inflation under control should not look at the Liberal government, because it does not care. Its members just virtue signal on these things and give away tax dollars to their friends while people are expected to pay tax on home heating in the middle of a Canadian winter. That it disgusting. That has an impact on climate change. Again, how do those people still have jobs?

Members do not have to take my word for all of these facts, because the results are laid bare in recent government reports that show that even with the carbon tax, Canada will still miss its 2030 emissions targets by close to 50%. I have heard so many Liberals get up today and talk about forest fires and the impacts of climate change, yet they are dogmatically supporting a policy that does not work and that, according to the Governor of the Bank of Canada at the finance committee, is affecting inflation in a major way. Tiff Macklem said this at committee yesterday. The Liberals are dogmatically adhering to a policy that does not work when they know that Canada is on track to missing its emissions targets by 50%. Canadians know this. They know the carbon tax is not working.

There is proof of these facts in recent political trends too. The Liberals' capitulation on the tax on home heating oil should have been viewed as an inevitability for even the most lay observer. The signs have been present for months. For example, in August, a Nova Scotia provincial riding that had been a safe Liberal hold from time immemorial was flipped by provincial Conservatives due in part to the unpopularity of the federal Liberal carbon tax.

Within the federal Liberal backbench there has also been extreme dissent over this issue, likely due to the sustained precipitous drop in polls that the party has seen. These incidents have followed nearly a year of high-profile campaigning by the leader of the Conservative Party against the tax. I have heard colleagues in the Liberal Party complain that we have brought motion after motion in this House to fight the tax. They are absolutely right. We are going to keep doing it, because it does not work and it is costing Canadians.

Now that same crisis has overlaid the tax and it means millions of Canadians are facing the prospect of choosing between heating and eating, never mind considering, as some of my colleagues are talking about, buying expensive alternatives that might not even exist in their regions. That is the most bourgeois concept I have ever heard. It is much like when the member for Edmonton Centre said that everybody can buy a heating pump. Does he not know that people in his own community cannot even afford their rent?

The Prime Minister's late-stage partial capitulation on removing the tax for heating oil but not other carbon heating fuels also risks creating perverse incentives, like the one mentioned by Rural Municipalities of Alberta, which suggested that the Liberals' partial tax exemption may generate higher demand for higher-emitting heating oil in certain circumstances. Keeping the tax's regional inequities will also further divide our country at a time when we need to unify. The world has changed, and those in our country need to be strong, not pitted against each other by inequitable policies that do nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our country.

Contrary to the opinions of many left-leaning pundits, after eight years of climate failure and the creation of an inflationary crisis, no one here should continue to lean into this tax. It needs to go.

[Business of Supply, November 2nd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, my colleague talked about efficiencies in terms of the fight against climate change. I am going to quote from an Edmonton Sun article. It says, “Answering in question period Wednesday on behalf of an absent Prime Minister...[the member for Edmonton Centre] suggested unhappy Albertans and other Canadians could always switch their natural gas furnaces for heat pumps”.

The article goes on to say that this would cost $20 billion or more if this was to be implemented across the country.

How is that efficient?

[Business of Supply, November 2nd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, earlier this week—

[Privilege, October 16th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. Let me begin by emphasizing that I have deep respect for the Speaker's office and for parliamentary procedure. Every point contained herein is made out of a desire to uphold the rules of Parliament and to bolster public faith in Canada's democratic institutions.

With that said, I am rising today on a question of privilege concerning the disclosure outside of the House, by the Speaker's office, of your decision to recuse yourself from the pending ruling on the question of privilege which I had raised before Thanksgiving. It is an established convention that the House has the first right to information concerning certain House of Commons business, such as the content of bills and committee reports presented to the House, failure of which is a breach of the House's privileges. It will be my argument that this situation is equivalent to one of those cases.

While the events in question arose as a consequence of my previous question of privilege, this disclosure outside the House is, I believe, a separate and discrete incident giving rise to a separate and discrete question of privilege and requiring a separate decision on its own merits. In my original question of privilege, I argued that it is both inappropriate and impossible for a Speaker to recuse themself from ruling on a question of privilege in which they have some involvement. That involvement, of course, turned on your signature, Mr. Speaker, as parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, which understated the cost to taxpayers of the Prime Minister's Montana vacation this spring by over $200,000. I argued that, in circumstances where the Speaker has some involvement in the matter, the only appropriate recourse available is for the House itself to exercise the Speaker's screening function on a question of privilege as part and parcel of its deliberations on a privilege motion.

I would incorporate the same position and argument into the present question of privilege, where responsibility for the disclosure has been attributed to your office. In short, I believe that you also, Mr. Speaker, must refer this matter to the House.

As for the facts of this matter, on the afternoon of Friday, October 6, you emailed me to inform me that “as of early this morning”, you had recused yourself from my original question of privilege. What might have been considered, possibly, a personal and confidential heads-up about a forthcoming statement you would make to the House, turned out not to be. Despite your decision having been made in the morning, no announcement of this was made in the House.

Further, almost immediately after I received your email, which appeared above a signature block identifying you as the parliamentary secretary to the President of the Treasury Board and the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Health, I noticed that the news of your recusal was published on Twitter, or X, and then on a Substack blog entitled Political Watchdog, both purportedly run by a teenager named Nolan Stoqua. The Substack posting included the following comment: “The Speaker's office confirmed to Political Watchdog that the Speaker...will recuse himself from ruling on the Member for Calgary Nose Hill's question of privilege. The Speaker has asked that the Deputy Speaker consider the matter and determine the next steps, says the Speaker's office.”

The House sat that Friday, yet you did not make a statement about this so-called recusal. The Deputy Speaker, who presided over most of the day's sitting, similarly did not make any statement on your behalf before the House adjourned for Thanksgiving. The first time that members of the House would have officially learnt of this significant development was via a teenager's Twitter feed. This, I respectfully submit, raises serious questions about whether the privileges of the House may have been breached.

House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, at page 81, explains that:

There are, however, other affronts against the dignity and authority of Parliament which may not fall within...the specifically defined privileges. Thus, the House also claims the right to punish, as a contempt, any action which, though not a breach of a specific privilege...is an offence against the authority or dignity of the House....In that sense, all breaches of privilege are contempts of the House, but not all contempts are necessarily breaches of privilege.

...the House of Commons enjoys very wide latitude in maintaining its dignity and authority through its exercise of contempt power....In other words, the House may...consider any misconduct to be contempt and may deal with it accordingly. This area of parliamentary law is therefore extremely fluid and most valuable for the Commons to be able to meet novel situations.

Continuing at page 84, it reads, “By far, most of the cases of privilege [raised in the] House relate to matters of contempt challenging the perceived authority and dignity of Parliament and its Members.”

The footnote which follows, footnote 125, points to the first in a series of precedents which I believe are most instructive in the present circumstances:

For example, in 2001, a question of privilege was raised regarding a briefing the Department of Justice held for members of the media on a bill not yet introduced in the House, while denying Members access to the same information. Speaker Milliken ruled that the provision of information concerning legislation to the media without any effective measures to secure the rights of the House constituted a prima facie case of contempt.

While it is understood practice now that the contents of bills that are on notice must not be disclosed before introduction in the House, something which Speaker Regan described on June 8, 2017, at page 12,320 of the debates as “one of our oldest conventions”, it was nonetheless a novel situation when Speaker Milliken gave his ruling.

Just as the 2001 case would not have appeared in House of Commons Procedure and Practice, first edition, often known as “Marleau and Montpetit”, we will not find in Bosc and Gagnon any precedent concerning the matter I am raising today, but that is not a barrier to proceeding.

In reaching his landmark ruling, Speaker Milliken said, on March 19, 2001, at page 1,840 of the Debates:

with respect to material to be placed before parliament, the House must take precedence...The convention of the confidentiality of bills on notice is necessary, not only so that members themselves may be well informed, but also because of the pre-eminent rule which the House plays and must play in the legislative affairs of the nation.

Thus, the issue of denying to members information that they need to do their work has been the key consideration for the Chair in reviewing this particular question of privilege. To deny to members information concerning business that is about to come before the House, while at the same time providing such information to media that will likely be questioning members about that business, is a situation that the Chair cannot condone.

The matter was then referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, which subsequently concluded in its 14th report in the first session of the 37th Parliament, “Such an action impedes, obstructs, and disadvantages Members of Parliament in carrying out their parliamentary functions. In all of these circumstances, the Committee has come to the inescapable conclusion that the privileges of the House [of Commons] and of its Members have been breached in this case.”

Just as the House has a pre-eminent position in the legislative affairs of the nation, it holds no lesser place when it comes to the law of parliamentary privilege. Bosc and Gagnon remind us, at page 76, “Matters that fall within parliamentary privilege are for the House alone to decide.”

The procedure and House affairs committee added, at page 3 of its 42nd report in the first session of the 41st Parliament, “Parliament is the sole judge of the appropriateness of the exercise of any of its privileges.” The House concurred in this report and its view, which I quoted, on December 2, 2013.

The Supreme Court of Canada shares the view at paragraph 9 of its unanimous 2005 Vaid decision: “In other words, within categories of privilege, Parliament is the judge of the occasion and manner of its exercise and such exercise is not reviewable by the courts”.

To hold such a place in our constitutional order is significant and must be treated with great respect. That, I would argue, means the House itself must be the first recipient of rulings and decisions related to its privileges, not outside media or teenagers' blogs.

As for context of the role the House holds, Bosc and Gagnon note, at page 62, “Parliamentary privileges were first claimed centuries ago when the English House of Commons was struggling to establish a distinct role for itself within Parliament. In the earliest days, Parliament functioned more as a court than as a legislature, and the initial claims to some of these privileges were originally made in this context.”

Erskine May, 25th edition, paragraph 12.1, adds, “The power to punish for contempt or breach of privilege has been judicially considered to be inherent in each House of Parliament not as a necessary incident of the authority and functions of a legislature (as might be argued in respect of certain privileges) but by virtue of their descent from the undivided High Court of Parliament and in right of the lex et consuetudo parliamenti.”

Put another way, when considering matters of privilege, the House is cloaked with the vestments of a court. In a court of law, one would imagine the decision of a judge, who has been asked to make certain decisions, not being provided to the parties equally and in public, but instead passed to a teenaged blogger, to be a scoop from a court clerk. However, that is effectively what happened before Thanksgiving when the “Speaker's office” provided a statement to a person ostensibly named Nolan Stoqua.

Via these actions, I believe the House's pre-eminent place in being the sole judge of its own privileges has been breached. The dignity and authority of the House has been negatively affected by this.

To further this point, colleagues who had indicated that they had intended to come back to the House to make interventions on my original question of privilege and my call for your referral of the matter to the House were effectively denied the opportunity to do so.

Indeed, my colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby, the New Democratic Party's House leader, raised similar concerns in his intervention about this matter earlier today. He said that, even more frustrating, was the fact that the office confirmed this decision to a member of the media, in the case, an unverified blogger, and then did not inform the House as a whole or even the House leaders group.

He went on to say:

As the House of Commons Procedure and Practice states:

The Speaker is the servant, neither of any part of the House nor of any majority in the House, but of the entire institution....

He continued:

The responsibility of the Speaker is to the institution of Parliament and to the House of Commons as a whole, not to an individual member who raises a point and not to reporters who may be interested in the decisions taken by the Speaker. Providing more information to the media than to Parliament on matters that are fundamentally parliamentary in nature is really not acceptable.

In discussing how Speakers' rulings are delivered, House of Commons Procedure and Practice, our bible, further states:

Sometimes, a ruling is delivered quickly and with a minimum of explanation. At other times, circumstances do not permit an immediate ruling. The Speaker may allow discussion of the point of order before he or she comes to a decision. The Speaker might also reserve his or her decision on a matter, returning to the House at a later time to deliver the ruling.

He concluded:

It is clear that rulings are meant to be made in the House. There is no precedent for a Speaker doing otherwise, and the rule book does not contemplate otherwise.

I agree with my colleague from the NDP on this point. It should be considered in the deliberations on this potential breach of privilege.

I believe the appropriate course of action to determine whether a prima facie case of privilege exists when the Speaker has a conflict of interest, as when the Speaker's office is said to be at the heart of the actions in concern, is to simply turn the matter over to the House. An appropriate analogy lies, I would submit, in the circumstances of a chair of a committee when a question of privilege is being raised in that venue. Bosc and Gagnon elaborate on page 1060, stating:

The Chair of a committee does not have the power to rule on questions of privilege...If a member wishes to raise a question of privilege during a committee meeting, or an incident arises in connection with the committee’s proceedings that may constitute a breach of privilege, the committee Chair allows the member to explain the situation. The Chair then determines whether the question raised in fact relates to parliamentary privilege. If the Chair determines that the question does relate to parliamentary privilege, the committee may then consider presenting a report on the question to the House.

Accordingly, in closing, I believe the correct course of action on this matter is twofold: first, for you to refer this matter to the House for deliberation, given your personal involvement and your office's involvement in this matter; and, second, should the House agree with me that my concerns raised today in this new question of privilege constitute a breach, the matter can be referred to the appropriate committee to determine the appropriate remedy.

As such, I am prepared to move the motion.

[Carbon Pricing, October 6th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the Liberal carbon tax was supposed to lower greenhouse gas emissions, but after eight years they are higher than ever, and the cost of fuel and groceries is unaffordable.

After eight years, the Liberals were supposed to have alternatives to carbon, like better transit and EV charging stations everywhere, but they failed on that too. Now whistler-blowers say that nearly $40 million for clean technology was misdirected by Liberal appointees.

For the sake of the planet, will the Liberals admit that they are making Canadians poorer and Liberal insiders richer and that they are just not worth the cost?

[Privilege, October 6th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on a point of order to briefly provide additional information on the question of privilege I raised yesterday.

I would like to point out that the government failed to disclose over $200,000 in costs incurred for the Prime Minister's ski trip to Montana, in Order Paper question responses, not once but at least twice. In the government's response to Question No. 1417, which was filed by the member for Mégantic—L'Érable and signed off by the then parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister and the current Speaker of the House, part (f) of the question clearly asks, “are there any costs incurred or expected to be incurred by the government related to the trip that are not included in the response to (a) and, if so, what are those costs or expected costs, broken down by item and type of expense?”

The government was clearly aware of the extra $200,000 in costs that would be incurred, yet it failed to provide that information in the response.

In a second Order Paper answer, this time to Question No. 1582, which was also filed by the member for Mégantic—L'Érable, the government was given a second chance to provide the real cost of the Prime Minister's trip. However, again, it failed to do so.

This is a pattern. I ask that it be considered that the government misled the House in both Order Paper questions answered, and that both instances be considered.