Bill C-38 (Historical)

Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act

An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures

Part 1 of this enactment implements certain income tax measures and related measures proposed in the March 29, 2012 budget. Most notably, it
(a) expands the list of eligible expenses under the Medical Expense Tax Credit to include blood coagulation monitors and their disposable peripherals;
(b) introduces a temporary measure to allow certain family members to open a Registered Disability Savings Plan for an adult individual who might not be able to enter into a contract;
(c) extends, for one year, the temporary Mineral Exploration Tax Credit for flow-through share investors;
(d) allows corporations to make split and late eligible dividend designations;
(e) makes the salary of the Governor General taxable and adjusts that salary;
(f) allows a designated partner of a partnership to provide a waiver on behalf of all partners to extend the time limit for issuing a determination in respect of the partnership;
(g) amends the penalty applicable to promoters of charitable donation tax shelters who file false registration information or who fail to register a tax shelter prior to selling interests in the tax shelter;
(h) introduces a new penalty applicable to tax shelter promoters who fail to respond to a demand to file an information return or who file an information return that contains false or misleading sales information;
(i) limits the period for which a tax shelter identification number is valid to one calendar year;
(j) modifies the rules for registering certain foreign charitable organizations as qualified donees;
(k) amends the rules for determining the extent to which a charity has engaged in political activities; and
(l) provides the Minister of National Revenue with the authority to suspend the privileges, with respect to issuing tax receipts, of a registered charity or a registered Canadian amateur athletic association if the charity or association fails to report information that is required to be filed annually in an information return or devotes resources to political activities in excess of the limits set out in the Income Tax Act.
Part 1 also implements other selected income tax measures and related measures. Most notably, it
(a) amends the Income Tax Act consequential on the implementation of the Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act, including the extension of the tax deferral allowed to farmers in a designated area who produce listed grains and receive deferred cash purchase tickets to all Canadian farmers who produce listed grains and receive deferred cash purchase tickets;
(b) provides authority for the Canada Revenue Agency to issue via online notice or regular mail demands to file a return; and
(c) introduces a requirement for commercial tax preparers to file income tax returns electronically.
Part 2 amends the Excise Tax Act to implement certain excise tax and goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) measures proposed in the March 29, 2012 Budget. It expands the list of GST/HST zero-rated medical and assistive devices as well as the list of GST/HST zero-rated non-prescription drugs that are used to treat life-threatening diseases. It also exempts certain pharmacists’ professional services from the GST/HST, other than prescription drug dispensing services that are already zero-rated. It further allows certain literacy organizations to claim a rebate of the GST and the federal component of the HST paid on the acquisition of books to be given away for free by those organizations. It also implements legislative requirements relating to the Government of British Columbia’s decision to exit the harmonized sales tax framework. Additional amendments to that Act and related regulations in respect of foreign-based rental vehicles temporarily imported by Canadian residents provide, in certain circumstances, relief from the GST/HST, the Green Levy on fuel-inefficient vehicles and the automobile air conditioner tax. This Part further amends that Act to ensure that changes to the standardized fuel consumption test method used for the EnerGuide, as announced on February 17, 2012 by the Minister of Natural Resources, do not affect the application of the Green Levy.
Finally, Part 2 amends the Air Travellers Security Charge Act, the Excise Act, 2001 and the Excise Tax Act to provide authority for the Canada Revenue Agency to issue via online notice or regular mail demands to file a return.
Part 3 contains certain measures related to responsible resource development.
Division 1 of Part 3 enacts the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012, which establishes a new federal environmental assessment regime. Assessments are conducted in relation to projects, designated by regulations or by the Minister of the Environment, to determine whether they are likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects that fall within the legislative authority of Parliament, or that are directly linked or necessarily incidental to a federal authority’s exercise of a power or performance of a duty or function that is required for the carrying out of the project.
The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the National Energy Board or a review panel established by the Minister are to conduct assessments within applicable time limits. At the end of an assessment, a decision statement is to be issued to the project proponent who is required to comply with the conditions set out in it.
The enactment provides for cooperation between the federal government and other jurisdictions by enabling the delegation of an environmental assessment, the substitution of the process of another jurisdiction for an environmental assessment under the Act and the exclusion of a project from the application of the Act when there is an equivalent assessment by another jurisdiction. The enactment requires that there be opportunities for public participation during an environmental assessment, that participant funding programs and a public registry be established, and that there be follow-up programs in relation to all environmental assessments. It also provides for powers of inspection and fines.
Finally, the enactment specifies that federal authorities are not to take certain measures regarding the carrying out of projects on federal lands or outside Canada unless they determine that those projects are not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects.
This Division also makes related amendments to the Environmental Violations Administrative Monetary Penalties Act and consequential amendments to other Acts, and repeals the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.
Division 2 of Part 3 amends the National Energy Board Act to allow the Governor in Council to make the decision about the issuance of certificates for major pipelines. It amends the Act to establish time limits for regulatory reviews under the Act and to enhance the powers of the National Energy Board Chairperson and the Minister responsible for the Act to ensure that those reviews are conducted in a timely manner. It also amends the Act to permit the National Energy Board to exercise federal jurisdiction over navigation in respect of pipelines and power lines that cross navigable waters and it establishes an administrative monetary penalty system.
Division 3 of Part 3 amends the Canada Oil and Gas Operations Act to authorize the National Energy Board to exercise federal jurisdiction over navigation in respect of pipelines and power lines that cross navigable waters.
Division 4 of Part 3 amends the Nuclear Safety and Control Act to extend the maximum allowable term of temporary members of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission from six months to three years. It is also amended to allow for a licence to be transferred with the consent of that Commission and it puts in place an administrative monetary penalty system.
Division 5 of Part 3 amends the Fisheries Act to focus that Act on the protection of fish that support commercial, recreational or Aboriginal fisheries and to more effectively manage those activities that pose the greatest threats to these fisheries. The amendments provide additional clarity for the authorization of serious harm to fish and of deposits of deleterious substances. The amendments allow the Minister to enter into agreements with provinces and with other bodies, provide for the control and management of aquatic invasive species, clarify and expand the powers of inspectors, and permit the Governor in Council to designate another Minister as the Minister responsible for the administration and enforcement of subsections 36(3) to (6) of the Fisheries Act for the purposes of, and in relation to, subject matters set out by order.
Division 6 of Part 3 amends the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 to provide the Minister of the Environment with the authority to renew disposal at sea permits in prescribed circumstances. It is also amended to change the publication requirements for disposal at sea permits and to provide authority to make regulations respecting time limits for their issuance and renewal.
Division 7 of Part 3 amends the Species at Risk Act to allow for the issuance of authorizations with a longer term, to clarify the authority to renew the authorizations and to make compliance with conditions of permits enforceable. The Act is also amended to provide authority to make regulations respecting time limits for the issuance and renewal of permits under the Act. Furthermore, section 77 is amended to ensure that the National Energy Board will be able to issue a certificate when required to do so by the Governor in Council under subsection 54(1) of the National Energy Board Act.
Part 4 enacts and amends several Acts in order to implement various measures.
Division 1 of Part 4 amends a number of Acts to eliminate the requirement for the Auditor General of Canada to undertake annual financial audits of certain entities and to assess the performance reports of two agencies. This Division also eliminates other related obligations.
Division 2 of Part 4 amends the Trust and Loan Companies Act, the Bank Act and the Cooperative Credit Associations Act to prohibit the issuance of life annuity-like products.
Division 3 of Part 4 provides that PPP Canada Inc. is an agent of Her Majesty for purposes limited to its mandated activities at the federal level, including the provision of advice to federal departments and Crown corporations on public-private partnership projects.
Division 4 of Part 4 amends the Northwest Territories Act, the Nunavut Act and the Yukon Act to provide the authority for the Governor in Council to set, on the recommendation of the Minister of Finance, the maximum amount of territorial borrowings and to make regulations in relation to those maximum amounts, including what constitutes borrowing, the relevant entities and the valuation of the borrowings.
Division 5 of Part 4 amends the Financial Administration Act to modify, for parent Crown corporations, the period to which their quarterly financial reports relate, so that it is aligned with their financial year, and to include in the place of certain annual tabling requirements related to the business and activities of parent Crown corporations a requirement to make public consolidated quarterly reports on their business and activities. It also amends the Alternative Fuels Act and the Public Service Employment Act to eliminate certain reporting requirements.
Division 6 of Part 4 amends the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act to establish the Social Security Tribunal and to add provisions authorizing the electronic administration or enforcement of programs, legislation, activities or policies. It also amends the Canada Pension Plan, the Old Age Security Act and the Employment Insurance Act so that appeals from decisions made under those Acts will be heard by the Social Security Tribunal. Finally, it provides for transitional provisions and makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Division 7 of Part 4 amends the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act to add provisions relating to the protection of personal information obtained in the course of administering or enforcing the Canada Pension Plan and the Old Age Security Act and repeals provisions in the Canada Pension Plan and the Old Age Security Act that are substantially the same as those that are added to the Human Resources and Skills Development Act.
Division 8 of Part 4 amends the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act to add provisions relating to the social insurance registers and Social Insurance Numbers. It also amends the Canada Pension Plan in relation to Social Insurance Numbers and the Employment Insurance Act to repeal certain provisions relating to the social insurance registers and Social Insurance Numbers and to maintain the power to charge the costs of those registers to the Employment Insurance Operating Account.
Division 9 of Part 4 amends the Parks Canada Agency Act to provide that the Agency may enter into agreements with other ministers or bodies to assist in the administration and enforcement of legislation in places outside national parks, national historic sites, national marine conservation areas and other protected heritage areas if considerations of geography make it impractical for the other minister or body to administer and enforce that legislation in those places. It also amends that Act to provide that the Chief Executive Officer is to report to the Minister of the Environment under section 31 of that Act every five years. It amends that Act to remove the requirements for annual corporate plans, annual reports and annual audits, and amends that Act, the Canada National Parks Act and the Canada National Marine Conservation Areas Act to provide that that Minister is to review management plans for national parks, national historic sites, national marine conservation areas and other protected heritage areas at least every 10 years and is to have any amendments to a plan tabled in Parliament.
Division 10 of Part 4 amends the Trust and Loan Companies Act, the Bank Act and the Insurance Companies Act in order to allow public sector investment pools that satisfy certain criteria, including pursuing commercial objectives, to directly invest in a Canadian financial institution, subject to approval by the Minister of Finance.
Division 11 of Part 4 amends the National Housing Act, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act and the Supporting Vulnerable Seniors and Strengthening Canada’s Economy Act to enhance the governance and oversight framework of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
This Division also amends the National Housing Act to establish a registry for institutions that issue covered bonds and for covered bond programs and to provide for the protection of covered bond contracts and covered bond collateral in the event of an issuer’s bankruptcy or insolvency. It also makes amendments to the Trust and Loan Companies Act, the Bank Act, the Insurance Companies Act and the Cooperative Credit Associations Act to prohibit institutions from issuing covered bonds except within the framework established under the National Housing Act. Finally, it includes a coordinating amendment to the Supporting Vulnerable Seniors and Strengthening Canada’s Economy Act.
Division 12 of Part 4 implements the Framework Agreement on Integrated Cross-Border Maritime Law Enforcement Operations between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of America signed on May 26, 2009.
Division 13 of Part 4 amends the Bretton Woods and Related Agreements Act to reflect an increase in Canada’s quota subscription, as related to the ratification of the 2010 Quota and Governance reform resolution of the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund, and to align the timing of the annual report under that Act to correspond to that of the annual report under the Official Development Assistance Accountability Act.
Division 14 of Part 4 amends the Canada Health Act so that members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are included in the definition of “insured person”.
Division 15 of Part 4 amends the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act to
(a) remove the office of the Inspector General;
(b) require the Security Intelligence Review Committee to submit to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness a certificate on the Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s annual report; and
(c) increase the information on the Service’s activities to be provided by that Committee to that Minister.
Division 16 of Part 4 amends the Currency Act to clarify certain provisions that relate to the calling in and the redemption of coins.
Division 17 of Part 4 amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act in order to implement the total transfer protection for the 2012-2013 fiscal year and to give effect to certain elements of major transfer renewal that were announced by the Minister of Finance on December 19, 2011. It also makes certain administrative amendments to that Act and to the Canada Health Act.
Division 18 of Part 4 amends the Fisheries Act to authorize the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to allocate fish for the purpose of financing scientific and fisheries management activities in the context of joint project agreements.
Division 19 of Part 4 amends the Food and Drugs Act to give the Minister of Health the power to establish a list that sets out prescription drugs or classes of prescription drugs and to provide that the list may be incorporated by reference. It also gives the Minister the power to issue marketing authorizations that exempt a food, or an advertisement with respect to a food, from certain provisions of the Act. The division also provides that a regulation with respect to a food and a marketing authorization may incorporate by reference any document. It also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Division 20 of Part 4 amends the Government Employees Compensation Act to allow prescribed entities to be subrogated to the rights of employees to make claims against third parties.
Division 21 of Part 4 amends the International Development Research Centre Act to reduce the maximum number of governors of the Centre to 14, and to consequently change other rules about the number of governors.
Division 22 of Part 4 amends Part I of the Canada Labour Code to require the parties to a collective agreement to file a copy of it with the Minister of Labour, subject to the regulations, as a condition for it to come into force. It amends Part III of that Act to require employers that provide benefits to their employees under long-term disability plans to insure those plans, subject to certain exceptions. The Division also amends that Part to create an offence and to increase maximum fines for offences under that Part.
Division 23 of Part 4 repeals the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act.
Division 24 of Part 4 amends the Old Age Security Act to provide the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development with the authority to waive the requirement for an application for Old Age Security benefits for many eligible seniors, to gradually increase the age of eligibility for the Old Age Security Pension, the Guaranteed Income Supplement, the Allowance and the Allowance for the Survivor and to allow individuals to voluntarily defer their Old Age Security Pension up to five years past the age of eligibility, in exchange for a higher, actuarially adjusted, pension.
Division 25 of Part 4 dissolves the Public Appointments Commission and its secretariat.
Division 26 of Part 4 amends the Seeds Act to give the President of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency the power to issue licences to persons authorizing them to perform activities related to controlling or assuring the quality of seeds or seed crops.
Division 27 of Part 4 amends the Statutory Instruments Act to remove the distribution requirements for the Canada Gazette.
Division 28 of Part 4 amends the Investment Canada Act in order to authorize the Minister of Industry to communicate or disclose certain information relating to investments and to accept security in order to promote compliance with undertakings.
Division 29 of Part 4 amends the Customs Act to allow the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to designate a portion of a roadway or other access way that leads to a customs office and that is used by persons arriving in Canada and by persons travelling within Canada as a mixed-traffic corridor. All persons who are travelling in a mixed-traffic corridor must present themselves to a border services officer and state whether they are arriving from a location outside or within Canada.
Division 30 of Part 4 gives retroactive effect to subsections 39(2) and (3) of the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985.
Division 31 of Part 4 amends the Railway Safety Act to limit the apportionment of costs to a road authority when a grant has been made under section 12 of that Act.
Division 32 of Part 4 amends the Canadian International Trade Tribunal Act to replace the two Vice-chairperson positions with two permanent member positions.
Division 33 of Part 4 repeals the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development Act and authorizes the closing out of the affairs of the Centre established by that Act.
Division 34 of Part 4 amends the Health of Animals Act to allow the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food to declare certain areas to be control zones in respect of a disease or toxic substance. The enactment also grants the Minister certain powers, including the power to make regulations prohibiting the movement of persons, animals or things in the control zones for the purpose of eliminating a disease or toxic substance or controlling its spread and the power to impose conditions on the movement of animals or things in those zones.
Division 35 of Part 4 amends the Canada School of Public Service Act to abolish the Board of Governors of the Canada School of Public Service and to place certain responsibilities on the Minister designated for the purposes of the Act and on the President of the School.
Division 36 of Part 4 amends the Bank Act by adding a preamble to it.
Division 37 of Part 4 amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to eliminate the requirement of a hearing for certain reviews.
Division 38 of Part 4 amends the Coasting Trade Act to add seismic activities to the list of exceptions to the prohibition against foreign ships and non-duty paid ships engaging in the coasting trade.
Division 39 of Part 4 amends the Status of the Artist Act to dissolve the Canadian Artists and Producers Professional Relations Tribunal and transfer its powers and duties to the Canada Industrial Relations Board.
Division 40 of Part 4 amends the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy Act to give the Round Table the power to sell or otherwise dispose of its assets and satisfy its debts and liabilities and to give the Minister of the Environment the power to direct the Round Table in respect of the exercise of some of its powers. The Division provides for the repeal of the Act and makes consequential amendments to other acts.
Division 41 of Part 4 amends the Telecommunications Act to change the rules relating to foreign ownership of Canadian carriers eligible to operate as telecommunications common carriers and to permit the recovery of costs associated with the administration and enforcement of the national do not call list.
Division 42 of Part 4 amends the Employment Equity Act to remove the requirements that are specific to the Federal Contractors Program for Employment Equity.
Division 43 of Part 4 amends the Employment Insurance Act to permit a person’s benefits to be determined by reference to their highest earnings in a given number of weeks, to permit regulations to be made respecting what constitutes suitable employment, to remove the requirement that a consent to deduction be in writing, to provide a limitation period within which certain repayments of overpayments need to be deducted and paid and to clarify the provisions respecting the refund of premiums to self-employed persons. It also amends that Act to modify the Employment Insurance premium rate-setting mechanism, including requiring that the rate be set on a seven-year break-even basis once the Employment Insurance Operating Account returns to balance. The Division makes consequential amendments to the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board Act.
Division 44 of Part 4 amends the Customs Tariff to make certain imported fuels duty-free and to increase the travellers’ exemption thresholds.
Division 45 of Part 4 amends the Canada Marine Act to require provisions of a port authority’s letters patent relating to limits on the authority’s power to borrow money to be recommended by the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Finance before they are approved by the Governor in Council.
Division 46 of Part 4 amends the First Nations Land Management Act to implement changes made to the Framework Agreement on First Nation Land Management, including changes relating to the description of land that is to be subject to a land code, and to provide for the coming into force of land codes and the development by First Nations of environmental protection regimes.
Division 47 of Part 4 amends the Canada Travelling Exhibitions Indemnification Act to increase the maximum indemnity in respect of individual travelling exhibitions, as well as the maximum indemnity in respect of all travelling exhibitions.
Division 48 of Part 4 amends the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority Act to provide that the chief executive officer of the Authority is appointed by the Governor in Council and that an employee may not replace the chief executive officer for more than 90 days without the Governor in Council’s approval.
Division 49 of Part 4 amends the First Nations Fiscal and Statistical Management Act to repeal provisions related to the First Nations Statistical Institute and amends that Act and other Acts to remove any reference to that Institute. It authorizes the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to close out the Institute’s affairs.
Division 50 of Part 4 amends the Canadian Forces Members and Veterans Re-establishment and Compensation Act to provide for the payment or reimbursement of fees for career transition services for veterans or their survivors.
Division 51 of Part 4 amends the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act to add powers, duties and functions that are substantially the same as those conferred by the Department of Social Development Act. It repeals the Department of Social Development Act and, in doing so, eliminates the National Council of Welfare.
Division 52 of Part 4 amends the Wage Earner Protection Program Act in order to correct the English version of the definition “eligible wages”.
Division 53 of Part 4 repeals the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act.
Division 54 of Part 4 amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Budget Implementation Act, 2008 to provide for the termination of certain applications for permanent residence that were made before February 27, 2008. This Division also amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to, among other things, authorize the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to give instructions establishing and governing classes of permanent residents as part of the economic class and to provide that the User Fees Act does not apply in respect of fees set by those instructions. Furthermore, this Division amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to allow for the retrospective application of certain regulations and certain instructions given by the Minister, if those regulations and instructions so provide, and to authorize regulations to be made respecting requirements imposed on employers in relation to authorizations to work in Canada.
Division 55 of Part 4 enacts the Shared Services Canada Act to establish Shared Services Canada to provide certain administrative services specified by the Governor in Council. The Act provides for the Governor in Council to designate a minister to preside over Shared Services Canada.
Division 56 of Part 4 amends the Assisted Human Reproduction Act to respond to the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Reference re Assisted Human Reproduction Act that was rendered in 2010, including by repealing the provisions that were found to be unconstitutional and abolishing the Assisted Human Reproduction Agency of Canada.

Standing Committee on Finance

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on a very specific point of order with regard to Bill C-60, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2013 and other measures, and the work that was done by the committees that were studying this bill, particularly the finance committee, which invoked some measures we believe are not in order and fell well outside of its mandate.

As some context for those Canadians who are not familiar with Bill C-60, this is another piece of omnibus legislation. We rose earlier on similar points of order with respect to how the bill was handled.

In its nature, being an omnibus bill under the current government's watch, with the expansion of omnibus legislation to include so many different matters, the government has faced a difficulty of its own making in that it is not purely a financial bill and it is not simply a bill to implement the budget; it would do much more. While it has an anti-democratic nature and tone for us, in various ways we have struggled with the ability for members of Parliament to properly study and amend legislation that is so broad.

I wish that you would review the motion adopted by the standing committee on May 7, as well as the proceedings that resulted from this specific motion, and that you rule to determine whether these proceedings were in order or not and whether the committee overstepped its authority when adopting this particular motion. I will refer in detail to what the motion accomplished and how it fell outside of the mandate of the committee.

We raised a very similar point of order, if you will remember, around Bill C-45. That was the second omnibus bill that followed on Bill C-38. We had deep concerns about the fact that the Standing Committee on Finance, during its consideration of that massive omnibus bill, went beyond its mandate and usurped the authority of the House when it invited other standing committees to study particular sections of Bill C-45. On their own mandate they started to carve the bill up and send it out. It then allowed these committees that were studying the bill to move amendments and then saw it as if those amendments had been moved by members of the finance committee.

We argued at the time that this went beyond the mandate and the reference from the House, from you as the Speaker.

A similar argument could be made about Bill C-60. It was introduced on April 29.

On May 7, after the government used time allocation to shut down the debate once again on discussions at second reading, it ended with the passage of the following motion, which stated:

...that Bill C-60, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2013 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to [the Standing Committee on Finance].

Hansard on that day of May 7 specifically quotes you as saying:

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Finance.

It is pro forma and it is how bills are referred to the committee.

The committee acted outside of its powers and authority, those powers conferred on it by this House, when it adopted a motion on that very same day asking other committees to study sections of the bill, namely the standing committees on industry, science and technology; veterans affairs; human resources, skills and development; the status of persons with disabilities; citizenship and immigration; as well as foreign affairs and international development. That is where the government sought to parse out the bill.

It is very difficult to deal with omnibus legislation that is so obviously varied that it implicates so many different committees. The government has pushed, and I would argue broken the democratic limits of our legislature, by packing so much into these individual bills. In essence it is hiding from Canadians what its agenda is as these bills then come back to the House for one single vote on so many matters. This was something that the Conservatives concerned themselves with greatly when they were in opposition. You have heard me mention many of the quotes from the Prime Minister and various ministers in his cabinet on how much they disliked this tactic when the Liberals used it. It is now a tactic that the Conservatives seem to enjoy using with much relish.

Although I believe the Standing Committee on Finance went beyond its mandate to ask these five other committees to study the bill, this is not the principal concern that I want to raise with you today.

The committee went even further this time in going beyond its mandate, by adopting a motion to allow members of Parliament who are not members of a caucus represented on the committee to file amendments to the bill. It went further by directing that any amendments suggested to the committee would be deemed to be proposed during the clause-by-clause consideration on Bill C-60, even if the member who presented the amendment was not present.

Let us take a moment with this. Out of some seeking of convenience, the committee members passed the motion at their own discretion, not by any power given to them by the House, to allow amendments that came from people who do not sit on the committee, who are not recognized parties in the House. They allowed amendments to suddenly appear and be presented as if they came from somebody on committee. This goes against three fundamental principles that we hold dear in the House.

Only the House can appoint committee members. This is well known. It is done at the beginning of every session when we constitute our committees. No committee can self-appoint members. It has to come from an order in the House.

Only committee members who have been appointed by the House can move a motion. In order to move a motion, a member must be present at the time the motion is moved. We just dealt with a piece of private member's legislation before my point of order. A seconder was missing from her particular seat. The House properly waited until that member took her seat so that she was present. Motions cannot be moved if people are not here.

The rules of committee as established by the House specifically prescribe that members of a committee are designated by the House and cannot include members of a non-recognized party. This is a practice and a procedure we have used for many years. The rules established by the House also specifically prescribe that only a member of a committee can move a motion.

According to O'Brien and Bosc's House of Commons Procedure and Practice:

Only a member of the committee, or his or her designated substitute, may move an amendment or vote on an amendment.

Standing Order No. 119 stipulates that:

Any member of the House who is not a member of a standing, special or legislative committee, may, unless the House or the committee concerned otherwise orders, take part in the public proceedings of the committee, but may not vote or move any motion, nor be part of any quorum.

The O'Brien and Bosc text, on page 1019, states:

It is the House, and the House alone, that appoints the members and associate members of its committees, as well as the members who will represent it on joint committees.

The status of member of a committee is accorded to Members of the House of Commons who belong officially to that committee. This status allows them to participate fully in their committee's proceedings: members may move motions, vote and be counted for purposes of a quorum.

The Speaker has ruled that this is a fundamental right of the House. It cannot be taken away. A committee simply cannot move a motion to take such a power away from the House. I am quoting now:

The committees themselves have no powers at all in this regard.

I would like at this point to mention your ruling, Mr. Speaker, from last December. You will recall that at the time, we moved our point of order regarding the last omnibus bill, Bill C-45, specifically with respect to the role and rights of independent members in the context of report stage.

The government House leader argued that the current process by which independent members are not allowed to present motions at committee means that at report stage of bills, a single independent member has the ability, in his words, “to hold the House hostage in a voting marathon”, as if voting were somehow connected to a hostage-taking, by submitting numerous report stage amendments.

In response, Mr. Speaker, you suggested that members may try to find ways to accommodate independent members at committee in order to allow them to present motions. You said the following:

Were a satisfactory mechanism found that would afford independent members an opportunity to move motions to move bills in committee, the Chair has no doubt that its report stage selection process would adapt to the new reality.

I understand that the motion adopted for Bill C-60 at committee was somehow a response to this ruling and an attempt by the Conservative Party to cut short the proceedings at report stage. However, I believe that the Conservatives fundamentally misinterpreted your ruling to in fact allow independent members to move motions to amend bills at committees. The Conservatives should have, and must have, sought agreement of the House to allow the members to sit on that committee. That is a power they cannot take away simply by a motion at committee. Indeed, it is from the House that committees derive this power. Committees on their own do not have absolute powers.

While committees are often quoted as being masters of their own fate, I will cite from O'Brien and Bosc at page 1047:

The concept refers to the freedom committees normally have to organize their work as they see fit and the option they have of defining, on their own, certain rules of procedure that facilitate their proceedings.

A second quote, on page 1048 of O'Brien and Bosc, states:

These freedoms are not, however, total or absolute.... committees are creatures of the House. This means that they have no independent existence and are not permitted to take action unless they have been authorized/empowered to do so by the House.

A second quote on that same page states:

...committees are free to organize their proceedings as they see fit.... committees may adopt procedural rules to govern...but only to the extent the House does not prescribe anything specific.

Members of a committee, and only members of a committee, as well as associate members when they replace those members, are able to attend the committee and thus move a motion at committee.

O'Brien and Bosc further tells us that:

Standing Orders specifically exclude a non-member from voting, moving motions or being counted for purposes of quorum.

The rules also clearly state that a member must be present for the motion. This is a fact. We have never moved away from this fact or this rule or procedure. To suddenly invent a process by which a motion can be moved but the member may be absent contravenes the basic tenets of democracy and representation. We could suddenly have votes where people just call in and speak their intentions rather than be here themselves.

Where a notice of motion has been given, the Speaker will first ensure that the Member wishes to proceed with the moving of the motion. If the sponsor of a motion chooses not to proceed (either by not being present or by being present but declining to move the motion), then the motion is not proceeded with....

This has happened many times in the House. We have seen private member's bills that members chose not to move. They either made themselves absent from the House or they remained in their seats and the motion was not moved forward. Nobody else can do it on their behalf. No one can simply come in and say, “The member intended to be here, but is not. Please allow the member's private member's bill or motion to be considered”.

There is a precedent for a Speaker overruling a committee matter, because sometimes Speakers, often, and I think for good reason, have been loath to involve themselves in committee business.

I quote from O'Brien and Bosc, page 775:

Since a committee may appeal the decision of its Chair and reverse that decision, it may happen that a committee will report a bill with amendments that were initially ruled out of order by the Chair. The admissibility of those amendments, and of any other amendments made by a committee, may therefore be challenged on procedural grounds when the House resumes its consideration of the bill at report stage. The admissibility of the amendments is then determined by the Speaker of the House, whether in response to a point of order or on his or her own initiative.

Amendments were moved with no member present who was actually intent on moving that motion. People were made members of the committee, one assumes, by a motion the committee did not have the power to designate.

For the House to now consider, at report stage, Bill C-60, with these amendments in place, is strictly out of order. It is the proper role of the Speaker of the House to intervene to say that things were done improperly and have to be done right.

In 2007, a point of order was raised in the House dealing with the admissibility of three amendments contained in a bill at report stage from the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

Speaker Milliken ruled two of the amendments out of order, finding that they imported into the bill concepts and terms not present in the bill and were therefore beyond the scope of the bill.

I quote from Speaker Milliken's ruling on February 27, 2007:

...the Speaker does not intervene on matters upon which committees are competent to take decisions. However, in cases where a committee has exceeded its authority, particularly in relation to bills, the Speaker has been called upon to deal with such matters after a report has been presented to the House.

That has happened here today.

In terms of amendments adopted by committees on bills, if they were judged to be inadmissible by the Speaker, those amendments would be struck from the bill as amended because the committee did not have the authority to adopt such provisions.

This means there exists a precedent for the Speaker rejecting amendments to a bill and the process by which it was there.

Mr. Speaker, I ask you to rule and review the motion adopted by the standing committee on May 7, 2013, as well as the proceedings that resulted from that motion, and that you rule to determine whether these proceedings were in order and whether the committee overstepped its authority when it adopted the motion.

The House of Commons and Parliament, and democracy in general, have suffered much abuse under this tactic and use of omnibus legislation. We have presented ourselves many times in defence of the institution and the right of members to speak and the people we represent to clearly understand the legislation the government is attempting to move.

The abuse of omnibus legislation has been a decision by the government. The difficulty it is having in the way amendments are moved and the process by which a bill goes through are of its own making, and it has only itself to blame.

A committee cannot take powers the House did not give it. Simply accepting motions from members who are not part of a committee and are not present to move the motion, contravenes the basic tenets of this place. The presence and acknowledged presence of a standing member of any of these committees is required—it is a basic, fundamental requirement—for a motion to proceed. These motions were considered improperly. We ask that you rule in this matter.

Bill C-49—Time Allocation Motion

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to welcome everyone to this, the 36^th time allocation motion. This is a record. It makes you wonder how the government justifies once again invoking time allocation.

In October 2002, when referring to the number of times that the Liberals had invoked time allocation, the Prime Minister said the following:

“The government has used closure and time allocation more frequently than any previous government.”

The government has beaten this record, a record that the current Prime Minister denounced approximately 10 years ago.

Professor Ned Franks, an expert in constitutional matters, stated a little earlier this year that no government in Canada's history had invoked time allocation as frequently as this government. It is a record. It is thoroughly undemocratic.

I would once again like to quote the Prime Minister. On December 9, 2002, in reference to the then-Liberal government, he said the following:

He said that the government invoked closure because “...there are no plans”. He added “...the government is simply increasingly embarrassed by the state of the debate and it needs to move on”.

We are faced with a similar situation today. The Conservatives are so ashamed of what is occurring in the Senate that they want to cut short debate as quickly as possible, and prorogue the House, once and for all. It is, quite simply, undemocratic. When a time allocation motion is invoked, there is no opportunity to properly and fully discuss prospective legislation. Bill C-38 is a prime example of this.

The government has amended so many bills that it is now trying to fill in the gaps left by the dearth of debate. For example, the Fisheries Act was amended to change the definition of fish habitat protection. Last month, Fisheries and Oceans Canada called on stakeholders across Canada to help it define fish habitat protection because it was unable to do so itself. Had we debated Bill C-38 last year, we would have found a solution.

Invoking a time allocation motion is undemocratic and leads to second-rate legislation that will end up before the Supreme Court. It really is a waste.

Technical Tax Amendments Act, 2012

[Annick Papillon, NDP, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak in the House in support of Bill C-48 at third reading.

This is a rather large bill that is more than 1,000 pages long. I just want to point out that Bill C-48 looks like a mammoth omnibus bill. It is a two- or three-inch-thick brick with more than 1,000 pages.

Last year, we had the mammoth Bill C-38. Then we had the mammoth Bill C-45. Now we have Bill C-48, which is extremely large and complex. What is more, the font is quite small. It is very hard to read and very complicated.

It makes many technical changes to the Income Tax Act, the Excise Tax Act, the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, and other legislation. This topic may seem very technical and unappealing to many people, but these changes are often necessary and can have a significant impact on the Canadian economy. The majority of the measures proposed in this bill have already been in place for many years, but the bill makes them law.

Unfortunately, the massive size of this bill shows that there is still work to be done to convert similar technical changes into legislative measures in a timely fashion. Failure to update our tax code on a regular basis makes it hard for Canadians, business people in particular, to find any clarity in our tax system. We must also look at the growing complexity of tax law and focus on the need to simplify it over time.

The more complicated the system, the more flaws it contains, and the more room there is for loopholes. When that happens, then there are bound to people who will take advantage. That is why it is important to simplify everything.

On that subject, I would like to quote the 2012 pre-budget submission from the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada:

[We] strongly believe that the key to sustained economic recovery and enhanced economic growth lies in the government’s commitment to tax reform and red tape reduction.

CGA-Canada went on to make two recommendations. First, it recommended modernizing Canada's tax system to make it simple, transparent and more efficient. Second, it proposed implementing a “sunset provision” to prevent future legislative backlogs.

The government has been very slow to legislate technical amendments. In a report tabled about four years ago, in 2009, the Auditor General at the time, Sheila Fraser, pointed out that the Department of Finance Canada had a backlog of at least 400 technical amendments that had not been enacted. Here is what her report said:

No income tax technical bill has been passed since 2001.

It is now 2013. That means that two previous governments have been asleep at the switch, and for a considerable amount of time. Today's majority government has been in power for nearly a decade, yet an income tax technical bill has not been passed. What is it doing? We do not know.

Sheila Fraser's report goes on to say:

...the government has said that an annual technical bill of routine housekeeping amendments to the Act is desirable...

Yet we know that nothing has been introduced since 2001. They are not doing what the Auditor General suggested:

...an annual technical bill of routine housekeeping amendments...has not happened. As a result, the Department of Finance Canada has a backlog of at least 400 technical amendments that have not been enacted.... If proposed technical changes are not tabled regularly, the volume of amendments becomes difficult for taxpayers, tax practitioners, and parliamentarians to absorb when they are grouped into a large package.

At one point, people said that Beta videocassettes were the future. We no longer use videocassettes. We are making technological advances. The same thing applies to taxes. It is time for us to get up to date.

Obviously, the size of this bill and the long period of time that passed between the introduction of the previous technical bill and this one show that this process still needs improvement.

On another topic, the NDP thinks that we need to combat tax avoidance and tax evasion, while preserving the integrity of our tax system. That is why we support the changes that this bill makes, particularly those aimed at reducing tax avoidance.

However, we also believe that much more needs to be done to truly address the problem of tax evasion.

According to some estimates, the Canadian tax system is losing between $5.3 billion and $7.8 billion in revenue a year to tax evasion alone. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists recently acquired a long list of individuals from all over the world who are holding billions of dollars in tax havens. According to the consortium, approximately 450 Canadians are on that list. We are not just making this up. We need to find out where all of this money is going.

What is more, according to the information that was recently published by Statistics Canada on foreign direct investments, Canadian investments in the top 12 tax havens worldwide exceeded $170 billion, which is equivalent to 10% of Canada's GDP.

It is true that the majority Conservative government is capable of losing track of $3 billion earmarked for public safety. As a result, it may have difficulty understanding what I am saying about tax evasion. I understand since the government has trouble implementing its own budget.

One of the main reasons why wealthy Canadians and large corporations want to put their money in tax havens is to simply avoid paying their fair share of taxes. That means billions of dollars in lost tax revenue for the federal government and fewer new jobs in Canada.

The government boasts that it has announced new investments to combat tax evasion, but unfortunately, this new money totals just one-quarter of the $113 million that this government has spent since 2009 to advertise its budgets.

Furthermore, the government has made some $250 million in cuts to the Canada Revenue Agency. These cuts led to the loss of about 3,000 jobs within that department.

The government is cutting the jobs of the people who are supposed to be working on combatting tax evasion. The Conservatives want to reduce the size of government—cut the red tape, as they say—but at what cost? They do not realize that sometimes we have to rely on the people who are able to help us. I do not think the Conservatives truly understand how important it is to combat tax evasion.

In spite of the government's lack of conviction, we believe that Bill C-48 will have a positive impact and will help discourage tax evasion.

In conclusion, the sheer size of this bill shows that the government must be more responsible in managing the tax system. More specifically, the government must ensure that it periodically passes legislation on proposed tax measures. Failure to do so creates uncertainty for business people, jurists and tax experts, and makes it nearly impossible for parliamentarians to do their jobs when they are faced with bills as big as the one we have today.

I must point out how important it is to focus on compliance to guarantee the integrity of the tax system.

The NDP believes that we must eliminate tax loopholes and work harder to combat tax havens. This government is tired and it is time for a change.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Chambly—Borduas for agreeing to share his time with me. I am very grateful.

I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-48, which is a step any government would need to take in order to update our Income Tax Act. It is a relatively complex law. To begin, I would like to point out that I am not a tax expert or an accountant. I did study the bill, which is about 950 pages long. I did not read the whole thing because, unfortunately, I ran out of time this morning. I do understand the broad strokes of the bill, however.

As a parliamentarian, I must say that it is always disappointing to be faced with bills of such scope. I would be surprised if a single one of my colleagues has read the entire 950 pages, one by one, and knows exactly what is in this bill, unless they happen to be one of the public servants who wrote it. It is always disappointing to see such massive bills, which no average person has the time to read or reflect on. We are asked to vote on these kinds of bills, as was the case for budget implementation Bills C-38 and C-45, which were 400 pages each.

They were mammoth bills, like today's. I must say that these are important and useful measures. They have their purpose, but it is important to mention that more frequent updating could have at least made things easier for MPs. We would not have had to read 950 pages today if tax laws had been updated more frequently over the past 10 years.

The most recent technical bill of this nature dates back to 2001, and it is now 2013. As a result, some things have been dragging on for over a decade and need to be changed for the better. This bill is not flawed, but before going into details, I wanted to point out that a bill of this size is problematic for MPs and prevents them from doing their job properly.

With a 950-page bill, we need to wonder whether the government has done a good job. Why did the government wait so many years to introduce it? Why not introduce it earlier? More frequent updates would have helped. That point was raised several times in committee. I did not have the opportunity to be there, but I read the transcript.

As the member for Sherbrooke, I agree with the principle of having a clearer system and more frequent updates to allow for more effective management, particularly for businesses and individuals who do their taxes each year and must comply with fairly complicated legislation. The Income Tax Act must be one of Canada's largest pieces of legislation at hundreds of pages long.

Of course, the NDP believes that we must fight tax avoidance and tax evasion while preserving the integrity of our tax system. That is why we support the changes proposed in this bill, for they are meant to address issues that allow tax avoidance. This is not a mammoth bill like the budget implementation bills, Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, but still, it is nearly 1,000 pages long. There is a difference though. This time, these are very technical measures that we supported and that we will support again at third reading.

These changes are important. I would like to talk about the major changes, so that the viewing public can understand what they mean.

Part 1 of the bill deals with offshore investment fund property and non-resident trusts in accordance with proposals announced in budget 2010 and August 2010. These measures will ensure the taxation of Canadian residents' worldwide income from all sources.

Part 1 will therefore update the legislation in order to guarantee the integrity of the tax system and prevent tax avoidance. Of course, the NDP supports this change in order to try to keep our tax system as clear as possible. The NDP also wants to make tax avoidance impossible in any way, shape or form.

We realize that the existing legislation has some loopholes that people can use to avoid paying part of their taxes or to evade taxes in other countries. This fight will never end. People will always try to find ways to get around the law. Unfortunately, that is just how society is; some people will always try to abuse the system. As legislators, we must ensure that these people are punished or amend the legislation so that these things never happen again.

Parts 2 and 3 of the bill deal with taxation of corporations with foreign affiliates.

Part 4 deals with something important that I wanted to address as well, and that is bijuralism, an important aspect of our Canadian legal system. In Quebec we have civil law and the rest of Canada has common law. These are two different types of law. Part 4 deals with this situation that can sometimes be unclear and cause confusion.

It is therefore important in the Canadian context that these legal systems be respected in our federal laws, laws that apply to the entire country. There are differences between civil law and common law when it comes to real property, personal property and joint and several liability. The bill addresses these issues and clarifies them for individuals and businesses that have to deal with these differences.

Most of the changes are based on the specific circumstances of people in industry. In their testimony, they made their case to the legislators and the government to have the changes made. As the member for Sherbrooke, I pay taxes every year like everyone else, but I cannot put myself in the shoes of those whose tax circumstances are different or who are part of a business, for example. It is therefore important to have their comments so that we, as legislators, can change things that are flawed. Obviously, nothing is perfect.

In closing, I take issue with the size of the bill and the fact that the government waited so long to introduce such a technical bill. I am in favour of having a clearer, more precise process that is used more frequently so that the necessary changes can be made more quickly with smaller bills that are easier for parliamentarians to understand.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the hon. member for Sherbrooke.

Contrary to what we just heard, while the government is trying to make up stories about a non-existent carbon tax, Bill C-48 has to do with actual tax-related issues.

This is not a platform for Conservative members to invent stories. No, this is a very important process. We are looking at how the system will change, as well as at the implementation of certain procedures and recommendations that came out of letters sent by the Minister of Finance, communications with accountants, for example, and pre-budget consultations.

We certainly support the various measures in the bill. As a result, we will be supporting the bill today at third reading.

However, a number of aspects of the overall process are problematic, and some issues have to be given due consideration. We were given 1,000 pages all at once. People will wonder how we can support what is basically a 1,000-page omnibus bill after we opposed the omnibus budget bills introduced in the past year. The answer is simple. The difference today is that we are discussing a bill that deals with the same subject, namely, various related acts. This is not like what happened last year. For example, Bill C-38 covered employment insurance reform, environmental protection and so on. For that reason, we do not have a problem with this bill.

What does bother us about the omnibus nature of this bill is that many of these measures have been dragging on for over a decade. We are not the only ones saying so. The former Auditor General also commented on the situation in her 2009 report. At that time, she pointed out that there were 400 measures that had not yet been enacted. These measures were proposed in comfort letters from the Minister of Finance or previous finance ministers in recent years, but none of them had been legislated.

I will explain how this works for the benefit of our viewers. Unlike with other bills, tax-related measures such as these are initially implemented through comfort letters in order to expedite their application. However, the House of Commons must later pass a bill to truly finalize these measures.

What the former Auditor General meant was that 400 measures had been proposed but that the House had not yet passed legislation on them. Bill C-48 contains only 200 of these 400 measures, so there is still a great deal of work to be done.

I mention this because the former Auditor General is not the only one who raised this problem. Various members of the business and accounting communities have also done so. They have testified before the Standing Committee on Finance and written letters to the Minister of Finance and the various MPs who have held that position in the past 10, 12 or 13 years, while these measures have sat on the shelf.

These people have said that it is not good for the business community, small businesses or people who have to deal with the tax code or the tax system. There is a great deal of uncertainty. The finance minister tells them that certain measures are going to be implemented but then the government waits 5, 10, 13 or 15 years before it passes legislation on these measures.

This creates a certain amount of uncertainty, which is not good for the economy, or for business people and individuals who are trying their best to understand issues that are already quite complex. Very few people outside the accounting community can really stand up and say that they truly understand the entire tax code. It is extremely complex. Fortunately, we have accountants who can help us to understand it. However, they are the ones who are saying that this somewhat haphazard approach is causing them problems.

Although we support these measures and therefore the bill, I believe that this process and this debate highlight the fact that the process needs to be reviewed and made faster.

If the minister is going to promise measures to business people, accountants and everyone concerned, those measures need to be passed in a timely manner, which has not happened in the past. Another issue that was raised is the fact that a number of measures are being passed at the same time. We need to avoid that.

As I explained, this omnibus bill is less problematic than the budget implementation bills. However, to wake up one morning to all these measures and so many related tasks will create a lot of work for accountants, business people and the public, who want to understand how the government manages the taxes they pay. It is important to make the process easier, and that is what the government should be focusing on.

As I already mentioned, we need to look at how the world is currently evolving. Tax season brings with it television ads encouraging people to buy tax software. People are making money off that, which is fine. I am not out to attack or criticize them. However, let us put ourselves in the shoes of someone who is not a tax expert. In my opinion, if the government simplified the process and made it more efficient and easier to comprehend, the public would be in a better position to understand how the system works. People would be more inclined to trust the government and how it spends taxpayers' money.

Just look at the current climate: people do not have a lot of faith in how their elected representatives are spending their tax dollars. This would be a step in the right direction and a good way to regain the public trust. Of course, this is not the ultimate solution. However, the government should have a closer look at this issue, and that is what the bill before us proposes.

I am not a member of the Standing Committee on Finance, but I had a chance to read the testimony given at that committee. It is quite interesting, because it shows just how out of touch past Liberal governments and the current Conservative government have been with reality as expressed by various accountants' associations during pre-budget consultations. They stated repeatedly that the government really needs to re-evaluate the situation.

The bill contains measures that have been under discussion since 1998. The time frame is completely absurd. If I were a small business owner who had to pay taxes and was trying to understand these measures, I would see that some of these measures were supposed to have been incorporated into our tax law in 1998 or 2001. It is 2013, and they have not yet been incorporated.

These measures are not yet part of the legislation. I see that as a serious problem. The process really needs to be re-evaluated. Every political party in the House would agree to that. Furthermore, members of the Standing Committee on Finance could examine it.

I will close on that point, Mr. Speaker. I am pleased to have had the opportunity to speak to the process, because although we support the bill, this has really highlighted some of its flaws. I think we need to use this debate as an opportunity to address these flaws and find ways to improve the system. We should not have to do this every 15 years, nor should we have to add hundreds of tax measures at the same time. A more appropriate approach would be better for taxpayers, entrepreneurs and accountants, to name a few.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I now invite questions and comments from my colleagues.

The Environment

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would remind my colleague opposite that using rhetoric to avoid the issue or distract people from the issue will not help protect our parks, much like making investments does not create long-term jobs.

I would remind her that her Minister of the Environment recently won a fossil award.

Why not invest in our future instead of wasting money on advertising campaigns filled with lies or spreading propaganda to try to enhance the Conservatives' image?

The government spent $500,000 on training to brainwash scientists so they could then brainwash the public.

The Conservatives want to sell pipeline and oil sands projects without any real environmental assessments, which they did away with in Bill C-38.

This government also plans to spend another $16 million on advertising in the coming year to try to enhance its image. Why?

Why not spend that money where it is needed? Why not spend that money on parks or measures to stimulate the economy? Why not invest the money in environmental technology or in sustainable infrastructure? That is how you look after the economy and the environment.

I will repeat the question to my colleague. What is this government's priority? Its own image or the well-being of Canadians? Does it care more about statistics or about looking at studies and facts to ensure it is making positive changes?

Incorporation by Reference in Regulations Act

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Peace River eventually got around Bill S-12. However, I would like to ask him a question.

I am thinking about small business as well in the context of this act. Some commentators have noted that will be difficult for people who are affected by regulations to stay on top of those regulations with the ease with which things can be incorporated by reference. There will be less scrutiny and, while things may be in legislation described as “accessible”, we have seen the Conservative government take labels off cans and say that they are now accessible on a website. We have already seen that under Bill C-38 pharmaceutical drugs will be maintained on a list as opposed to posted in the Canada Gazette for full regulation.

Is the member not just a little troubled that some of the people in business with whom he empathizes, and rightly so, could find themselves on the wrong side of a regulation about which they had much less notice because of Bill S-12?

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would agree with the member opposite if that is what Bill C-38 said. However, it does not say that we are to harmonize our regulations with the provinces. It does not say that at all. It says that the minister may make regulations that can be amended at any time and those regulations can reference other jurisdictions, not just the provinces. It could be anywhere. Bob's towing company could be the one setting the regulations for our environment. That is not acceptable.

If it specifically mentioned the provinces, I would not have a problem with it.

In my speech, I actually referred to some specific things that could be done to make this a better bill, but maybe he was not listening.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member across the aisle for his speech. I would like just to go through a few points in it.

He did mention some of the changes that happened to Bill C-38 to amalgamate 41 different agencies into 3. Obviously, there were some changes there, and so I think some answers need to be forthcoming.

For example, he said the minister would be able to delegate authority to certain processes that had not been yet named. That is simply because we work with our provincial partners that have equivalency or may want to substitute certain environmental processes to ensure it gets done on a timely basis. Whoever has the most expertise, I think, should be in charge of that process, whether it be the federal government or the province. That is to be worked out.

However, if we look at labour and environmental health and safety, we work with the provinces all the time, and so when we harmonize these things, it would be better for business, better for Canadians—one set of rules.

Again, I have heard multiple references to amendments. People have said that we say we welcome amendments. I say we do.

However, here is the problem. The member for Kings—Hants, in Bill C-45, put 300 amendments forward, each one like 101 bottles of beer on the wall, such as asking for one day to be changed as to when the bill would then take effect.

I would like to hear from the member one amendment that is—

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, l want to thank my other colleagues for having raised the level of debate on the bill before us.

When I was asked to speak on the bill earlier today, it looked like one of those dry and incomprehensible things that would be very difficult to get one's teeth into. However, upon reading it, I discovered there is actually a huge change being proposed in the powers of Parliament and the ability of Parliament to do its job, which is to make laws that affect the lives of Canadians. It is such a huge change because the bill proposes to make legal what the government has apparently already done 170 times since it has been in office without some check and balance on that ability.

The bill proposes to make legal the ability of the Governor in Council, which is the 60 men and women who make up the Privy Council, I suppose, to make regulations that are open-ended, to make regulations that are determined by third parties and to make regulations that are actually put in place by some other agency, maybe even a foreign government.

That is huge. It is very difficult for me, as a parliamentarian, to accept.

That said, there may in fact be rare occasions when it is appropriate to incorporate by reference a regulation that is created by an agency that everybody understands, trusts and accepts as the agency that is the world's leading expert on X, Y or Z. With that in mind, the NDP is determined that the bill go off to committee to see if we can whittle down this power to something that is acceptable.

I will read the summary of the bill, which is:

This enactment amends the Statutory Instruments Act to provide for the express power

—a power the government has actually already taken—

to incorporate by reference in regulations. It imposes an obligation on regulation-making authorities to ensure that a document, index, rate or number that is incorporated by reference is accessible. It also provides that a person is not liable to be found guilty of an offence or subjected to an administrative sanction for a contravention relating to a document, index, rate or number that is incorporated by reference unless certain requirements in relation to accessibility are met. Finally, it makes consequential amendments to the Statutory Instruments Regulations.

On the issue of accessibility, it says “unless certain requirements in relation to accessibility are met”, and those are not defined. Is that going to be a regulation to the Statutory Instruments Regulations? I ask because the definition of “accessibility” is not here.

I could not get a straight answer from any of the Conservatives I was able to ask questions of as to what exactly “accessibility” means in the context of the bill. It is not provided by the bill itself, yet the summary suggests that there are certain requirements in relation to accessibility. However, they are just not here. Does that mean we are regulating the regulations? It is very confusing.

The bill would put extreme amounts of power into the hands of the executive. As we have already experienced in this House, there have been complaints by certain members of the government party about too much power being in the hands of the executive. Those complaints led to a series of interventions before the Speaker of the House to ask that the Speaker actually rule to limit the power of the executive in controlling its ability to speak in this chamber. I would think that those same members of Parliament would be concerned that the bill before us would put even more power into the hands of the executive without any checks or balances or any way for the Parliament of Canada to determine in advance whether or not it is appropriate to incorporate by reference, which is what the bill suggests we should give the executive the power to do.

There is a Latin phrase, delegatus non potest delegare, which means that a delegate cannot give his power to another delegate. One cannot transfer one's ability to somebody else and say, “Here, you do it for me.”

That is essentially what this bill is suggesting should happen to the laws of this land, that we will make the law, as Parliament, but we will let somebody else determine how that law is actually written. That kind of rubs the wrong way. That is not something that I signed on for, to give somebody else the power to make the laws that we have been sent here to make.

I understand there is a majority position in the House, and so I do not get a whole lot of say. The government rejects any say we try to have in legislation 99.3% of the time, but at least we have that opportunity. This would actually give that power to a third party, to someone outside of this chamber, to change the laws of Canada. The government has already done it on 170 occasions, but until now it has been on a case-by-case basis. This act would actually make it legitimate every time. I have some difficulty with that.

Other legislatures have looked at this problem and come up with rules around how this delegation of authority should be used. Perhaps that is something we should be talking about in committee, because we are not going to have any amendments here. Maybe there are places and times when delegating a regulation is an appropriate thing, but we need to know when those times are and what those regulations would be.

I would suggest, as was suggested by some other legislatures on this planet, that one of the things would be only if it is impractical to do otherwise than to transfer that authority. It should be expressly authorized. It should be clearly quantified. The rules regarding subsequent amendment to that regulation should be clearly stated, so that we cannot just have some third party deciding how to change those regulations.

There should be consultation before those regulations are incorporated. There should be access, and we have talked about access. There ought to be accountability in the hands of the minister. If a minister is going to actually delegate his or her authority to a third party, that minister then has to be accountable for whatever that third party does.

None of that is spelled out in this bill. I worry, too, that we open the door to creating regulations that are in another jurisdiction, in another country, in another part of the planet. As an example, we have privacy regulations in this country that determine that our personal information should be kept private, should be kept in a way that is not disclosed to third parties. However, as we have discovered over the past few years, many of our banking institutions, our utility companies and our telephone companies routinely put that information in other countries.

Does that mean that the government could then legitimize that practice by making those other countries' privacy laws apply to those transactions? That would bother me. I would not want to have that happen. I do not want some other country determining the privacy of my personal information. It then encourages the harmonization of our laws with other perhaps less democratic jurisdictions or perhaps less forward-thinking jurisdictions or perhaps less effective jurisdictions. I do not want to encourage the government to get lazy.

On the issue of accessibility, I have asked the question several times, “Is this accessible in terms that a person with a disability would understand?” I have not gotten a clear answer from the government.

It appears that the word “accessible” is just the word “accessible”. There is no definition of what accessible means anywhere in this act. There is no definition of what is not accessible. It just says it must be accessible. Does that mean that if I have $250 to get a copy of the regulation, I have to pay $250 to get a copy of the regulation from some third party, if that is what that third party wants to charge? Does that mean it is then therefore accessible, because somebody with money can get it?

That is not what our normal level of accessibility is. Accessibility means that all of our laws are published in such a way that libraries across the country have them, and all of the regulations are available to anybody in this country who can walk into a library and get them for free.

Does the word “accessible” mean that we can have costs now for the regulations that are part of the laws that govern this country and, therefore, if a person does not have the money it is no excuse?

The other concern I have, and some my colleagues have already mentioned it, is the origin of this legislation. It is ironic that we are discussing a Senate originating bill when we are in the midst of quite an all-consuming controversy about the Senate.

Many Canadians have phoned me and have emailed me to say they no longer have any confidence or trust in the Senate and that they no longer have any use for the Senate. We are dealing with a government bill originating in the Senate that gives the government huge, sweeping powers and originates from an organization, the chamber down the hall, in which many Canadians have lost complete confidence. Many Canadians have lost complete confidence in the Conservative government's ability to use the Senate. They are calling upon the Government of Canada and us as parliamentarians to do away with the anachronistic and unrepresentative organization down the hall.

That then lends me to have some difficulty dealing with a bill that came from there when Canadians are saying they do not trust it. I am not certain that will not colour how we deal with future bills from the Senate, or even this bill. If this bill from the Senate, where I am told to not trust what they are doing, because the place is rife with difficulties, should this bill not have originated there? Should this bill, and any bill that were are dealing with, originate here in the House for it to be trusted and accountable to the people?

In terms of the actual specifics of what the government has done over the past few years, the example that jumps immediately to mind is Bill C-38 from last year, which was the first bill of the big 450-page omnibus bill that eliminated the old Environmental Assessment Act and replaced it with a new, more tepid, Environmental Assessment Act. "More tepid" is probably the best thing I could say about it. Buried in that act is exactly what this bill intends to make law:

(1) A regulation made under this Act may incorporate by reference documents that are produced by a person or body other than the Agency, including a federal authority referred to in any other paragraphs (a) to (d) of the definition “federal authority” in subsection 2(1).

(2) A document may be incorporated by reference either as it exists on a particular date or as amended from time to time.

(3) The Minister must ensure that any document incorporated by reference in a regulation is accessible.

(4) For greater certainty, a document that is incorporated by reference into a regulation is not required to be transmitted for registration or published in the Canada Gazette by reason only that it is incorporated by reference.

Therein is the most telling example of what is intended by the government. This is not something that is benign or innocuous because some other agency does a better job of determining health and safety regulations. We now have given over to an agency and we have no idea who it is because the regulation has not yet been made.

Schedule 2 of that act said that the components of the environment that can be studied in an environmental assessment will be determined by regulation. Until that regulation is published, we cannot really study the environment. Now, we learn that the government can also incorporate by reference some other agency's determination of what the environment is. It can determine whether or not human health, the socio-economic well-being of Canadians and the physical, cultural, architectural and historical heritage are part of the environment. All of these things are no longer defined. They are incorporated by reference. That regulation now can be determined by some other body or agency.

Maybe that “some other body or agency” is a provincial government. Maybe it is a territorial government. Maybe it is the Government of Venezuela. It does not say.

There is nothing specific in this regulation whatsoever. It says we can do whatever we want. The minister can also enter into an agreement with a foreign state or a subdivision of a foreign state or any institution of any such government or an international organization of states or any institution of such an organization with respect to Canada's environment. This is part of what bothers me with this huge law. We are walking down a road that lends itself to letting other people decide what is good for Canadians and I want to know exactly what is in here. We have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of what the government intends to do by suggesting that regulations defining the environment can be determined by some other body and can be amended from time to time by some other body. That body is not defined. There is no justification for doing that.

We have had an Environmental Assessment Act for many years that had a good definition of the environment. Why the government chose to change it, we can probably guess. This is a classic example of what we are afraid of. By making this legal, the government will take really key things that are important to Canadians and make the regulations governing them amendable by some third party and we have no idea who they are.

I am trying to be helpful here. I will give an example of something that might actually be a good way to incorporate a regulation by reference. If, for example, the Minister of Health were to determine that there needed to be a regulation governing diesel exhaust and its effect on humans adjacent to a rail corridor, something that is near and dear to the people in my riding, she might decide to make that regulation accord with the World Health Organization's standards, which most people agree are by far the most up-to-date and scientifically accurate standards. The World Health Organization would then be, by reference, the standard by which Canada would measure carcinogens and particulate matters as a way of regulating them. That may be an example of something where incorporation by reference is actually not a bad thing. We would not have to duplicate the effort of the World Health Organization. We could feed into the World Health Organization rather than creating our own system of measurements and standards. That is not all this bill says.

Another possibility is the Labour Code has health and safety regulations that include references to elements of the environment to which a worker in a federally regulated workplace might be exposed. There might be an organization out there that actually publishes good standards that all in the House could agree that, as amended from time to time, are not a bad way to go. However, we do not have any limit that says we should agree on them first.

In conclusion, we do not necessarily disagree with the premise, in some limited circumstances, of ambulatory references, references that can be changed from time to time without reference back to the House, but we need some strict controls on when and how they are used. That is not in this bill. We need the agreement of all in Parliament on the specific reference. That is not in this bill. We also need at least some guidelines and controls for the government to actually utilize when it is drafting legislation so that it knows that this is not something that will run afoul of the general agreement that we might be able to give if we can put some guidelines, controls and strictures around this regulation-setting power by the government.

Extension of Sitting Hours

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the motion before us is rather bizarre. As many members have said before me, it is quite surprising that the government is using the excuse of urgency.

The government has imposed closure a record 33 times, as well as restrictions on the time allowed to study bills in committee. With Bill C-60, this same government gave notice of a time allocation motion after only one hour of debate. I did say only one hour of debate. This is the same government that introduced monster omnibus bills because it did not want the committees and parliamentarians to properly study their legislative proposals in good faith.

I am not afraid of hard work. I am a doctor by training and I am used to 12-hour and even 24-hour shifts. It is not pleasant, but you get used to it.

My colleagues and I have not hesitated to stand up to the government and to do our jobs, as was the case with legislation to force Canada Post employees back to work and regarding their working conditions. We stood our ground when necessary.

It is obvious that the Conservatives do not have any respect for democratic institutions. I just mentioned the 33 time allocation motions they have imposed since May 2, 2011. What a sorry record.

The omnibus bills, such as Bills C-38 and C-45, are perfect examples of this. The Conservatives have steamrolled their way through adopting measures that Canadians and parliamentarians did not have the chance to scrutinize.

As everyone knows, the appropriate committees were unable to properly study Bill C-38 because it was not split up. That is disrespectful. With Bill C-45, the Conservatives used a different approach in order to curry favour with the public.

However, I can speak from my experience with the Standing Committee on Health. What a joke. The committee's meeting on Bill C-45 started late because of yet another time allocation motion. We then heard from witnesses and had just one round of questions. It is clear to me that the government did not really want the committees to study the impact of the measures. It just wanted to look better without having to do better. That too shows a lack of respect for our democratic institutions.

I also think that what is happening in committee is not right. Many witnesses take the time to come here to speak to subjects or bills that are important to them. Most of the time, however, their contributions are ignored. It is as though the committees were a waste of time. In any event, the outcome is prepared in advance by the Prime Minister's Office and so are many of the Conservative members' statements.

Yesterday, the House Leader of the Official Opposition said that 99.3% of all amendments proposed by the opposition have been rejected by the government.

This implies that every single one of the bills the government introduces is practically perfect.

In 99.3% of the cases, the government outright rejected all of the testimony from witnesses and experts, all of the comments from the public and all of the amendments proposed during the study of the bill. That is simply impossible.

Based on what we heard from witnesses, and after studying some bills in the Standing Committee on Health, I know that some of these bills could have benefited from the proposed amendments.

The NDP is not afraid of work. The problem is that I am not sure the government wants to extend our hours in order to get more work done. It has not guaranteed that we will be here until the summer recess.

I belong to a party that has the word “democratic” in its name, and I take these issues very seriously. The people of Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert put their trust in me on May 2, 2011, and I am doing my best to represent them.

Canadians sent us here to ask the necessary questions and to implement the best policies and public practices. We think that the government should take action so that we can do our job properly. The Prime Minister is now playing the victim over what happened in the Senate with senators he himself appointed solely to raise money for the Conservative Party of Canada. The Prime Minister is now playing the victim and wondering how this could have happened.

How could his chief of staff give a $90,000 cheque to a senator the Prime Minister himself appointed? How could his chief of staff—who sat right next to him every single day, who knows the government's deepest, darkest secrets and who the Prime Minister put in charge of major trade files and negotiations with other countries—do that?

Of course, the Prime Minister's hands are clean, and he has nothing to say about this. He believes that his hands are so clean that he is not going to answer any questions about it. He is going to South America for trade talks with countries we already have trade deals with.

Parliament should become less irrelevant. We think it is wrong that it ever became irrelevant. When the government is wrong in its treatment and abuse of Canada's Parliament, that affects all Canadians, whatever their political persuasion. We think what the government is doing is fundamentally wrong and that it needs a little adult supervision from time to time to take some of those suggestions and put a little, as we say, water in its wine. The government needs that more than anything.

It has the majority. This is the irony of what the government is doing. In moving more time allocation than any government in history, shutting down debate more than any government in history and relying on the tactics it is using today, it is showing weakness, not strength.

The Conservatives have the numbers to move legislation through if they saw fit, but they do not. They move legislation, they say it is an agenda and they hold up a raft of bills.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will share my speaking time with my colleague, the member for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert.

I have been given time to speak to this motion. Once again this week, the government is moving to extend our evening sitting hours significantly. It wants Parliament to sit until midnight.

We have to take a close look at this motion because similar motions in the past have often resulted in a shorter parliamentary calendar.

Since the beginning of this discussion, the Conservatives have continually surprised us with messages utterly at odds with what we are used to hearing.

Just like that, the government wants to extend the time we spend in the House. It claims this approach will enable members to debate bills on the order paper in detail and work hard for Canadians.

How ironic. After constantly curtailing debate ever since the last election, the government now says it wants to extend sitting hours to provide opportunities for debate.

Also ironic is the fact that the government has so much to say about democracy despite its unrelenting and unprecedented contempt for our parliamentary bodies.

Such principles were conspicuous by their absence when the government prorogued Parliament for purely partisan reasons, a move that was bad for Canadians.

Let us not forget that the Prime Minister had absolutely no compunction about letting dozens of bills die on the order paper when he wanted to save his government's hide. How can he say that he wants to let bills move through the normal legislative process when his political agenda has been given top priority in the current legislative cycle?

When a government constantly uses adjournment motions as a tactic to limit participation in and duration of debates, that is not democracy. It is exactly the opposite of what has been moved today.

May 8 was the 33rd time the government brought a vote on a time allocation motion that effectively limits the number of MPs who can speak to a given bill.

It sure looks like the Conservatives have been hell-bent on beating their own record for shutting down debate ever since the beginning of this Parliament.

How can the government say that it wants to promote free debate when it holds the record for cutting debate short? Are we supposed to believe that the government really wants to have it both ways?

Nor is it very democratic when the Prime Minister's Office muzzles its own members in their statements in the House.

Personally, neither I nor my colleagues in the official opposition have to get our speeches approved or adjusted to go with the soup of the day. We speak freely, without constraint from our party, but the government members cannot say the same.

How can the Conservatives stand here today and say that they defend democracy when they put gag orders on their own party's statements and speeches in the House?

Working for Canadians does not mean introducing three mammoth bills like Bills C-38, C-45 and C-60, and then watering down debate, limiting discussion and preventing parliamentarians from learning about what is happening in parliamentary committee, as is the case with a typical bill.

How can the Conservatives claim that they want to let the parliamentary process follow its course when they are the first to short-circuit it by forcing the vote on hundreds of measures without allowing representatives to do their work properly?

Never in the history of this country has a government shown such contempt for our institutions. That is why it is becoming difficult today to understand and believe the lines the Conservatives are trying to feed us.

You cannot on the one hand advocate for extending our sitting time to encourage debate, and on the other hand interfere constantly, as the Conservatives have done with complete impunity.

Therefore, we must question the motives behind the government's desire to extend the sitting hours.

If we look at what has happened in the past, we see that, in general, extending the sitting hours allows the party in power to make the parliamentary calendar shorter. Right now, the Conservatives clearly do not have enough credibility for us to believe their intentions and trust them.

We have to wonder whether the government simply wants to be forgotten as quickly as possible over the summer and to have people forget about all the problems that its wilful blindness caused with the temporary foreign worker program.

Yesterday, the government House leader said that he wanted to accelerate his government's economic measures. If he really cares about the economy, how could he let senators make such extravagant expenditures on the backs of taxpayers? The fact is that the government would rather shirk its responsibilities than face any challenges, answer the official opposition's questions and allow a real debate on issues that are of concern to Canadians. That is the real problem.

If the government wants to fully debate the bills on the order paper, then it should allow the House to sit until June 21, as set out on the calendar. The NDP is prepared to debate. The NDP is prepared to sit until June 21, as scheduled.

We have demonstrated our commitment and dedication to Parliament on numerous occasions. One of our members once even sat for 22 consecutive hours. When the government wanted to lock out Canada Post employees, we were there to debate and to stand up for Canadians.

Every day, we are here to stand up for the interests of Canadians. We routinely propose amendments in order move forward on bills that have sometimes been introduced over a year and a half ago, but these amendments are rejected by a government that wants to promote a political agenda rather than work for Canadians.

First and foremost, we oppose the government's motivations for wanting to impose extended sitting hours. Canadians will not be fooled. They understand the political game that the Conservatives are constantly playing. Canadians know that they cannot trust the Conservatives.

Natural Resources—Main Estimates, 2013-14

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Mr. Chair, I was hoping the minister would have that information, especially since the Conservatives made changes under Bill C-38 to the eligibility of witnesses to appear in front of the National Energy Board. Certainly it is a question that is on the minds of many people because it has such important repercussions.

The latest environmental commissioner's report gave a scathing review on the federal government's and the two offshore petroleum boards' readiness for a major oil spill. Is there any funding in the estimates to fix this negligence by the minister and his government?

Extention of Sitting Hours

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am not very happy about being here. However, I am here because we need to stand up to this government, which believes that Parliament exists only for its benefit and that it is just a place concerned with the government's problems and accountability.

It is almost as if a new party came into the House today, as we listen to the Conservative House leader speak. It certainly is not the party that moved prorogation and killed legislation time and again. This new Conservative Party is suddenly interested in not defeating legislation. It could not be the same Conservative Party that has shut down debate in the House of Commons more than any party in Canadian history. It could not be a member of the same party who was speaking here today, talking about opening up debate. The Conservatives have invented a new world for themselves that is fascinating.

I am reflecting on my friend from Langley, who sought to speak in this House on what they call an S. O. 31 statement, which happens just before question period. It is a statement that lasts for about a minute. Usually members of Parliament get up and make a statement about their ridings about some issue that is important to them. My friend from Langley, who sits in the Conservative Party, was a parliamentary secretary, I remember, for the Minister of the Environment, a chair, a well-respected member of Parliament, and a friend. He sought to stand up and speak to something he thought was important to his constituents.

It was the old Conservative Party that shut down that member of Parliament and every other one who tried to get up and speak, because this new Conservative Party talks about wanting people to speak in the House and wanting to have debate.

While it is refreshing to hear it, I do not believe it, and I do not think Canadians are going to believe that suddenly accountability and democracy have broken out within the Prime Minister's Office. It is the office of this particular Prime Minister who, rather than face any uncomfortable questions from the media or the official opposition members today, or for the rest of this week, has decided that going to South America to sit with other trading partners from other countries we already have established trade deals with to talk about trade deals that already exist is much more important than asking questions about the Senate.

It must be a new Conservative Party that suddenly has on its agenda a legislative directive that the members need to sit longer hours and work hard on something that might be quite topical today, something such as the reform of Canada's Senate, which has been long overdue and long called for by Canadians and New Democrats who said that the place was fundamentally broken. There is no accountability. Unelected and under investigation is the new Senate.

I remember the old Reform Party. You probably do as well, Mr. Speaker. It came in riding from the west, from my part of the world.

I see a member across the way, who was one of the founding members of the Reform Party, calling it a beautiful thing. While I disagreed fundamentally with many of its positions, certainly its social positions, there was something on which I could see some common ground. That was to make Parliament more accountable and to reform the Senate.

The current government has now been in power almost seven long years. Is that right? The time goes slowly. In those six or seven years, the Prime Minister made a promise as one of his fundamental commitments to Canadians. Commitments should be treated sacredly, I believe.

We all get up at elections. We have party platforms and promises we make to Canadians. If we win, that platform and those promises become our agenda. That is what we would seek to do in office. It is simple. One of his promises, one of his agendas, one of his reforms was on the Senate. When the Conservatives were in opposition, they would see those Liberal senators down there taking their money, not really representing anybody, going on trips and maybe even defrauding taxpayers. Who knows? The Reform movement came in and said it was wrong and anti-democratic.

For a party that decided to put “democratic” right in the middle of our name, we take these questions seriously. We feel that it is accountability to the people we on the orange team represent. In a sense, we are watching this Prime Minister now play victim to what is going on in the Senate with senators he appointed exclusively and explicitly to raise money for the Conservative Party of Canada. Now this same Prime Minister claims victimhood and wonders how this happened. How did his chief of staff, who sits to his immediate left every day and knows his deepest, darkest secrets, whom he put in charge of major trade files and negotiations with other countries, cut a $90,000 cheque to a senator he appointed? However, obviously, the Prime Minister's hands are clean, and he has nothing to say about this. He believes that his hands are so clean that he is not going to answer any questions about it. He is going to go to South America to be in trade talks with countries we already have trade deals with. That is the new Conservative Party, which is the old one, the same one that has forgotten its roots.

Dear Mr. Manning is still with us, so he is not spinning in his grave, but he is definitely spinning. He was asked recently whether the Conservatives have lost their principles. He said, no, they have maintained their priorities. It is an interesting dodge of a question. Mr. Speaker, you have been around politics a bit. You know when a question is put directly and someone answers it indirectly.

I find it incredible that we have before us a motion that continues to abuse Parliament. This motion is designed simply to restrict debate and demonstrate to members of the House of Commons that the only reason Parliament exists is so that the government can do what it wants.

I remember a comment made by the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. When we were debating a time allocation motion, he said that their intention was not to put an end to debate or to censure it, but just to control Parliament.

It is incredible that a minister is admitting that the Conservatives just want to control the Parliament of Canada. It also reflects the Conservatives' esprit de corps. They want to control everything, not just the opposition and Parliament, but their members, as well as the media and the public.

The current vision of the Prime Minister and the government leaves the public with no choice and no voice. It is all about the kind of country that the Prime Minister wants to build.

We see a government moving this extraordinary thing, which will see, big deal, members of Parliament sitting until midnight.

New Democrats have been known, sometimes to our detriment, to be willing to force the calendar to the very last minute and sit all night, such as when the government moved anti-worker legislation against a very profitable Canada Post, which, I might add, in a parenthetical way, then lost money.

After the lockout by Canada Post, the government imposed wage contracts on those workers that were less than what the company was willing to offer. Then it said that it needed to shut down Canada Post offices around the country, as Canada Post was losing money because of the lockout it allowed them to do. The logic is inherently twisted on that side.

Remember the omnibus debates and the voting we had. I remember my friend from the Green Party moving a certain number of amendments to the bill, which forced the House to sit all night and vote, hour after hour. I remember some of my friends from Surrey who stayed in their seats for 22 hours.

No one has ever accused New Democrats of not being willing to come to work and work on behalf of our constituents. We may do some things wrong. We may sometimes fall short in some areas, but hard work has not ever been one of those things.

There is such irony in hearing a Conservative House leader who, with his Prime Minister, has prorogued Parliament, shut it down, and killed their government's own legislation time and time again, say to the Speaker that the problem is that they cannot get their legislation through.

It had been there for 12 months. After eight months, they killed it themselves and prorogued the House.

One prorogation was quite notable. The government looked to be in a bit of trouble. It was in a minority position. The world was entering into a very deep recession. The Minister of Finance, who claims to be the best in the world, ignored the recession and introduced what the Conservatives called an austerity budget at the very moment when the rest of the world, realizing that the economy was coming to a virtual standstill, was introducing budgets that did the opposite.

The finance genius we have sitting in the chair said, “Never mind what the rest of the world thinks about what is going on in the global economy; we know that Canada is not going into recession”, even as we were in the midst of a recession. He introduced an austerity budget to cut back billions in job creation, in grants and in all the things the Conservatives take credit for, such as unemployment insurance for a bunch of Canadians who were just being thrown out of work.

The opposition said that it was not a very good budget and suggested that we vote against that budget. The government panicked and prorogued. Canadians got a civil lesson in how Parliament works. They had never heard the word “prorogation” before. Then we got to learn.

The Prime Minister had to go to the Governor General. He sat there for a number of hours, perhaps being lectured about how undemocratic it was, when facing a non-confidence vote, to head down the road to the Queen's representative to ask for permission to shut it all down before he was thrown out of office. He was more worried about his job that day than about Canadians. That is for sure.

That is a government that killed its legislation in order to save itself, and did it time and time again.

Here is the trend that we worry about with today's motion. For a government that has broken the record by shutting down debate more times than any government in Canadian history, it has refused 99.3% of all the amendments that the opposition has brought to its legislation.

Let us look at that for a moment. The way a bill is supposed to work is it comes into the House and gets debated. There is a pro and con and the real coming together or clash of ideas to improve the legislation because no one is perfect. The drafters of legislation do not get it right. They are sometimes hundreds of pages long and very complicated. The House is meant to debate that. Then we send it to committee and hear from experts, not just members of Parliament who are not often experts in these areas, but people who work in the field. They are the social workers, the financial experts, the crime experts and the police. We hear those suggestions and write amendments based on those ideas. That is the way this place is supposed to work.

However, the government is saying that in 99.3% of those cases those experts are wrong and the government is right. It will not change a period, a comma, not a word in any of the legislation. Then lo and behold, time and time again, the legislation is challenged in the courts successfully. The legislation does not fix the problems identified and costs Canada and Canadians billions.

We all remember well Bill C-30, the Internet snooping bill that would allow the state to look in on the Internet searches and emails of Canadians without any warrant. The government decided in its vigour for its tough on crime agenda that it would pass a law that said that at any point, at any time, Canadians anywhere could have their BlackBerrys and iPhones tapped by the government, that web searches on home computers could be looked at by the government and the police. There is no country in the world, outside of Iran and North Korea, that would even consider doing this. The Conservative government thought it was a fantastic idea. In trying to argue the case, it said that if we were not into exposing our Internet searches and our emails then we must be in support of child pornography.

Has any more offensive or stupid an argument ever been made on the floor of the House of Commons? It is offensive to basic civil liberties and decency, to the role of members of Parliament trying to do our jobs and to the Canadians who said that they were not sure they wanted the government looking at their email?

I look at the member for Yukon right now. I do not know what he is searching and I do not want to know. It is his privacy to look on his computer and do as he sees fit. That is a civil liberty I am sure he defends as well, but not his government.

Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill, was the flagship. The government rammed it all into one bill and said that it was such important legislation it would shut down debate on it too. Then whole sections of the bill were taken out. Why? It was because they were unconstitutional.

Now we know where that all comes from. Canadians actually pay for a service. Many members of Parliament may not know this, but when a government introduces a bill it goes to constitutional legal experts to determine if the new legislation goes against our constitution, our foundation as a country? If it does, it is a good idea to modify the law to ensure it does not get challenged in the courts, which costs upwards of $3 million to $5 million to taxpayers every time there is one of those challenges. The government did not check on Bill C-10. We know that because the people who work for the Government of Canada, who do this work, are no longer receiving references from the government.

The government is not even asking anymore. It is choosing ignorance. This is incredible. It is saying that it does not want to know whether the laws it writes are constitutional, whether the laws it writes as a government are for or against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is incredible. This is not a mistake. It is by intention. Therefore, we have these lawyers sitting in their offices, being paid every day, waiting for the government to refer the bills it introduces here to ensure they can survive a constitutional challenge. The government does not ask anymore.

Bill C-38, the first omnibus bill and Bill C-45, the second omnibus bill, were both challenged in the courts as unconstitutional. First nations are challenging it. I need to address this because the government House leader mentioned two bills that are being moved, so-called, on behalf of first nations. They are Bill S-2 and Bill S-8. One is matrimonial property rights. It sounds pretty innocuous. Most Canadians would say that matrimonial property rights for first nations women on reserve maybe protects their rights. Who is opposed to it? It is not just us in the opposition, but aboriginal women, every first nation women's group in the country. My friend across the way shakes his head, but I can show him the testimony that says the bill is no good for aboriginal women.

However, the Conservatives know better. With their shameful record on aboriginal rights and title in the country, suddenly they know better than aboriginal women, than first nations women. Bill S-8 is a bill to help first nations have clean drinking water because the record has been shameful.

Government after government has failed first nations communities. Thirty-five per cent of the people I represent in northern British Columbia are in first nations communities. The water conditions there are incredibly bad. We have to do something about it. There are fixes and there are ideas coming from those communities.

Instead the government moves the bill, handing all responsibility down to first nations in terms of cleaning up their own water mess, but none of the resources to do it. Are first nations supportive of it? No. Nor would any municipality or any province in Canada be supportive of legislation that rams down responsibility without any of the support, money or help to get that done.

Most of these first nations communities are living in abject poverty. Where does the government think they are going to get the money from? The government will not settle treaty with them in the west. First nations are having mining, oil and gas exploration and pipelines put everywhere and are receiving none of the royalties, none of the compensation and the government will not move treaty forward.

I was just in Gitxsan territory, speaking with the Gitxsan and the Wet'suwet'en, talking about basic child services, kids who are being abused in their homes and setting up a program that the federal government said that we should enact 20 years ago to allow first nations more rights and responsibilities to rescue those kids and help them kids integrate back into their communities.

Who is not coming to the table? The Conservative government. This is the government that on Bill S-2 and Bill S-8 suddenly said that it had first nations rights and title and priorities at heart, when it did not.

The place can work. Members can sense a certain amount of frustration in my voice, because Parliament can work. It is actually designed to work. I love our system. It is so superior to many other systems I have studied around the world, that have consistent congressional gridlock on legislation and on budgets. We can make things happen here.

However, with the power that is afforded a majority government, which is a lot, comes a certain amount of responsibility to use the power wisely and not abuse it. Yet time and again we have seen the government House leader and other ministers get up and say that they are not looking to limit the debate; they just want to control it. They reject virtually 100% of all the amendments and all the changes and suggestions they hear at committee because they know better and they have the votes to push it forward.

It is at such a point that the control has extended deeply into the government's caucus. Some of the more socially conservative members of the Conservative caucus are no longer free to speak, or are only free to speak on certain things, in certain ways, if the Prime Minister's Office allows for it.

In a small program that we run in northern B.C., initiated a number of years ago, I hold a conference call with all the detachment commanders from all the RCMP outposts that exist in my riding. It is a very large riding facing a lot of tough, difficult situations with policing. Once every two or three months I get on the phone with 12 detachment commanders and we talk about what is going on. We talk about what is happening in crime, what the drug use is like, what legislation is moving through the House that will help or hinder these hard-working, hard-serving officers.

I am not allowed to have that conversation with these RCMP officers anymore. I am not supposed to talk to them. As a sitting member of Parliament, I am not supposed to go to them. A number of them have come to me because they are friends and we have known each other for years. They offer good, on-the-ground advice about what is happening.

They say that they are sorry, that they cannot talk to me. They tell me that I have to phone the Prime Minister's Office in order for them to talk to me about what is going on in Prince Rupert, or what is going on in Dease Lake or Bella Coola.

It is insane. This is wrong. Government officials at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, who I have known for years and who I phone just for an update to see what is going on with our fish on the west coast, tell me that I am a member of Parliament from the opposition and that I need to phone the people in the Prime Minister's Office and that they will give me permission as to whether they can tell me what is going on in Canada's fishery.

This is not their government. This is not a Conservative government. This is Canada's government. We pay for these civil servants. We pay their salaries to do work on behalf of Canadians. Whether it is silencing scientists, shutting down access for members of Parliament to basic conversations, or shutting down debate in Parliament, the consistent voice from the government is that it will not be held to account.

This is bad. This is not just about the privilege all members of the House need to do their job. The government says there is some urgency, but there is not. There is no urgency when it comes to the government's mandate or agenda.

It is very strange for the government to say it is very open, when we see what is going on in the Senate.

We have senators like Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau. All current senators have potentially stolen money from Canadians. These are the same senators that the Prime Minister says are very good people. These are the same senators using money from the Canadian people to travel during an election and raise money for the Conservative Party. That is the new Conservative Party. I do not understand.

I remember the Reform Party of Canada and some reforms that Mr. Manning wanted to make. With the current party, it is the same story as with the Liberal Party and the Gomery commission and all the rest. I am both angry and sad.

The majority of Canadians did not vote for this government, which has a majority, but does not have the majority support of Canadians. Close to 60% of Canadians voted against this agenda, against this sort of arrogance. They voted not to have the kind of government that now uses brutal tactics, not against the New Democratic Party, but against Parliament.

Lastly, I think we need to have a referendum, which may not happen until the next election.

It bears some comment, not only with respect to the Senate scandal but even the motion today.

I watched the government House leader and the Prime Minister on television earlier. He actually allowed the media into his caucus room for a second, which was bizarre. The bully turns into the victim, that somehow this is put upon them, that they are somehow being victimized here.

What frustrates me is not just the work that we have to do as parliamentarians that is constantly thwarted by the government at committee stage, and my friend laughs, but how can it be possible that 99.3% of all amendments were rejected? The evidence is clear.

My friend can shake his head and laugh and treat this with disdain or heckle out what seems to be a favourite tactic of some of my friends who cannot win the debate, but can simply sit in their seats and heckle, yell and try to put down a comment that hurts a little too much, that being that 99.3% of all amendments were rejected, that the witnesses were all wrong, that the government was always right and that the courts must be wrong too. Soon the Conservatives will call them activist courts like the Republicans do in the states. Members should watch for it because it is coming.

We believe this motion is fundamentally flawed in its abuse of this place and of all members. I do not speak just for the New Democrats or the folks down the way. I speak for the backbenchers who have been rubbing up against some of the limitations. What is sad about most of it and is most concerning is those who are not agitating against the Conservative government's control over its backbench and accepting it. I lament the most for those who are so comfortable reading the script from the Prime Minister's Office and repeating it like robots, feeling that is their work and whose expectations of what it is to be a member of Parliament are so diminished that they simply accept it, not those the media have called rebels who have stood up and stated that they want to have their own statement but the Prime Minister's Office has shut them down. They run under the blue banner, which is their choice.

I lament for those who seem so happy to get up and repeat the mindless dribble that is put to them by the Prime Minister's Office day after day. When they first ran for office, I wonder if they said that they wanted to be a member of Parliament to represent people and get to Parliament to speak with a strong voice of conviction on behalf of the people they represent and that in order to do they would read whatever was put in front of them by the Prime Minister's Office, written by a 24-year-old intern who types out some sort of nonsense and makes up policies that the NDP does not have, making personal attacks on a regular basis as a substitute for honest and sincere debate? Was that really their expectation?

I wish I had some video evidence from some of those early debates because I know that is not what those members ran on. I know their nomination meetings did not look like that, nor did any of the debates they attended during the campaign. That is not what they said. They said that they would speak on behalf of their constituents, fight for them and still raise their voice, even if that meant it was contrary to what their government suggested.

I am sure that is what my friends across the way said. They are very nice people. I know a lot of these folks, as we have spent some time together. I know some of their inner thoughts about the way Parliament ought to be, and some of them lament it. However, it is the ones who do not who worry me. They are the ones who so comfortably slip into that straitjacket day after day. Maybe they just get used to it, but they are able to rationalize that there is some larger agenda that is more important than their having an independent and free voice.

They can keep yelling and you can allow them to if you wish, Mr. Speaker, but the truth often hurts, and the truth of the matter is that with a majority government, this member and his colleagues have chosen to vote for closure more than any government in Canadian history. With a majority, the Conservative government has refused the evidence, has refused the science time and time again, and that government is bad government.

The Conservative government appointed senators, and I am sure some fundraising went on for some of my friends. Maybe Ms. Wallin, Mr. Duffy or Mr. Brazeau came by and raised a few dollars, shook a few hands and got a few votes for my friends. Maybe there is a little bit of a tarnish on my colleagues, which is why they are calling out and why they are worried. It is because their base hates this. They hate the idea of entitlement and of an insider's game that goes on in Ottawa all the time, and that friends of the Prime Minister's Office get some sort of special treatment.

Talking about special treatment, how about a $90,000 personal cheque just cut off the back and handed over to somebody who may have defrauded taxpayers? Where is the Reform Party now? Where are the original Conservative intentions now? They are gone, bit by bit, eroded piece by piece. That is where it has gone, and it has all been subjugated to some idea that there is a better and bigger cause, that this grand scheme they are involved in somehow makes all of it justifiable.

Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, what these guys would sound like if the roles were reversed? If it were a Liberal government with senators getting cheques from the Prime Minister's chief of staff or a New Democratic government acting the way the Conservatives act, could you imagine the hue and cry and the calls for resignations every second minute? They would be losing their minds.

Now the Conservatives play the victim, saying that these senators were put upon them, that they didn't know what they were doing, that it is terrible. They only have a majority, both here and there. The Prime Minister has appointed more senators than any Prime Minister in Canadian history. How many did he say he would appoint? None, but he had to appoint some, and then it had to be justified. These are small and slow slippages, and this motion is a continuation of that.

This motion says that Parliament matters less and that those Canadians who have grown cynical about the role of MPs are justified in their cynicism. We say that is wrong. How do we turn to the young voters coming up? How do we turn to people who come to us and say that they might want to run for office one day? How can we say that their voices will matter when the government moves motions like this time and time again, shutting down debate?

As my friend the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development said, the Conservatives do not want to shut down debate; they just want to control it. Is this is how one entices people into a life of politics? Is this how one encourages young people to vote? Do we say, “Welcome to Parliament, where we are going to control debate and shut it down time and time again”? This is the Conservatives' call to action.

It is not a call to action, but a call to inaction. It is a call to cynicism. It is calling to people, “Do not look over here; nothing is happening here in government. Go on with your lives and other things that are more important and distracting.” The government is counting on people to have an attention deficit rather than realize that the decisions we make here in Parliament every day affect Canadians in every way.

If members of Parliament cannot do their work, as this motion suggests, and hold the government to account, it is bad government. It is bad government when it cannot find $3 billion that may be under a mattress or in a banana stand or wherever it happens to be, and when senators rip off taxpayers with no consequence whatsoever. We think the RCMP might have a role to play here.

What would happen if any of the Canadians in our gallery today or watching on TV defrauded the Canadian government of $500? They would get charged. However, if it is a Conservative senator, what happens? Oh, they just recuse themselves from caucus. Wow. They still get paid, they still have all of their privileges, but they cannot go to caucus meetings on Wednesday mornings.

Mr. Speaker, do you think that maybe that punishment is a little severe? I mean, having to recuse oneself from a two-hour meeting on Wednesday morning for defrauding taxpayers—boy, that seems pretty harsh.

Why the double standard? We used to call that the culture of entitlement. I remember a colleague of mine in this place, Ed Broadbent, asking a former Liberal minister who became head of the mint and was claiming packets of gum and coffee on his receipts, “Are you entitled to your entitlements, sir?” This person took a moment of authenticity and said, “Yes, I am entitled to my entitlements.”

The Conservatives railed at the Liberal entitlement, the culture of entitlement, the Gomery inquiry and all those terrible things that went down.

History repeats itself if one is not a student of history, and it seems that the Conservative Party has not looked at the history of this place or of other parliaments.

The fact of the matter is that debate in and of itself is not a bad thing. The exchange of ideas is not in and of itself a bad thing. Being wrong from time to time is not of itself a bad thing; learning happens in those moments, and the government needs to learn, because I can read off the list of the bills it had so fundamentally wrong that it had to withdraw them. The Conservatives had to say that they got it so badly wrong because they listened to none of the amendments that they have to fix it now, at the very last minute, or wait until it gets to the Senate and let the unaccountable, unelected and under investigation senators deal with it. That is no form of democracy worth defending, and the Conservatives know it. They know it better than most.

I will move that the motion be amended by deleting all the words after “Fridays” and replacing them with the following: “(b) when oral questions are to be taken up pursuant”—

Points of Order

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize for interrupting my colleague just at the beginning of his speech on the justification for the motion that he has just presented to the House, but we have a point of order that we need to raise because I think it establishes a couple of important things for you, as Speaker, to determine before we get into the context and the particulars of this motion.

Specifically, I will be citing Standing Order 13, which says:

Whenever the Speaker is of the opinion that a motion offered to the House is contrary to the rules and privileges of Parliament, the Speaker shall apprise the House thereof immediately, before putting the question thereon, and quote the Standing Order or authority applicable to the case.

This is the standing order that we cite, because we have looked at the motion the government has presented here today with some notice given last week.

This motion goes against the Standing Orders and certainly the spirit of Parliament. The government is not allowed to break the rules of Parliament that protect the rights of the minority, the opposition and all members of the House of Commons who have to do their jobs for the people they represent. This motion is very clearly contrary to the existing Standing Orders.

I have some good examples to illustrate this. In my opinion, there is no urgency that would justify the government's heavy-handed tactics to prevent members from holding a reasonable debate on its agenda. I say “agenda”, but for a long time now it has been difficult to pin down what this government's agenda is exactly. This is nothing new.

The motion comes to us today at a difficult time, but just because the government held a brief caucus meeting and is facing numerous problems and a few scandals, it is not justified in violating the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. No one would accept those excuses. There is no historical basis for the government to use the Standing Orders in this way. That does not work.

There are a few important things we need to point out. One is that it behooves us to have some explanation of what this motion actually does. For those of us who do not intimately follow the rules and history of Parliament, it can be quite confusing not in terms of the intention of what the government has read but certainly in the implications. It needs some translation, not French to English or English to French, but translation as to what it actually means for the House of Commons. That is why we believe a point of order exists for this motion.

The motion essentially would immediately begin something that would ordinarily begin in a couple of weeks, which is for the House to sit until midnight to review legislation. This is somewhat ironic from a government that has a bad history with respect to moving legislation correctly through the process and allowing us to do our work, which is what we are here to do on behalf of Canadians.

I am not alone in seeing that the government has shown the intention of having some urgency with respect to 23 bills, 14 of which have not even been introduced since the last election. Suddenly there is great urgency, when in fact it is the government that has set the agenda. The urgency is so great that it has to fundamentally change the rules of how we conduct ourselves in this place in response to an urgency that did not exist until this moment.

One has to question the need. Why the panic? Why now, and why over these pieces of legislation? Are they crucial to Canada's economic well-being? Is it to restore the social safety net that the government has brutalized over the last number of years? What is the panic and what is the urgency?

Context sets everything in politics, and the context that the government exists under right now is quite telling. Every time I have had to stand in this place raising points of order and countering the closure and time allocation motions that the government uses, I am often stating and citing that this is a new low standard for Parliament. I have thought at times that there was not much more it could do to this place to further erode the confidence of Canadians or further erode the opportunity for members of Parliament to speak, yet it has again invented something new, and here we are today debating that motion.

That is why we believe that Standing Order 13 needs to be called. It is because it is very clear that when a motion is moved that is contrary to the rules and privileges of Parliament—which is what I would underline, as it is the important part—the Speaker must involve himself or herself in the debate and ask that the debate no longer proceed.

The privileges of members of Parliament are not the privileges that are being talked about by our friends down the hall to falsely claim money that did not exist or privileges of limo rides and trips around the world. The privileges of Parliament that speak constitutionally to the need for Parliament are that members of Parliament have the opportunity to scrutinized and debate government bills.

Just before the riding week, we saw the government introduce another time allocation on a bill that had received exactly 60 minutes of debate. Somehow the Conservatives felt that had exhausted the conversation on a bill they had sat on for years, and suddenly the panic was on. We are seeing this pattern again and again with a government that is facing more scandal.

I was looking through the news today. Every morning I start my day with the news and we consider what we should ask the government in question period. There are some days when the focus can be difficult and one may not be sure what the most important issue of the day is. However, the challenge for us today as the official opposition is that, as there are so many scandals on so many fronts, how do we address them all within the short time we have during question period or in debate on bills.

I listened to my friend for Langley, who has been somewhat in the news of late on his attempt to speak on issues he felt were important to his constituents. We saw him move a new private member's bill today. He withdrew the former bill, and now he is moving one again. The New Democrats will support the bill going to committee for study because we think there are some options and availability for us to look at the legislation and do our job.

Whether it is muzzling of their own MPs and the Conservatives' attempt to muzzle all MPs in the House of Commons, or using private members' bills to avoid the scrutiny that is applied to government legislation, and one important piece of that scrutiny is the charter defence of the legislation and so, in a sense, the Conservatives are using the back door to get government legislation through and move their agenda in another way, or the omnibus legislation, which has received so much controversy in Canada as the government has increasingly abused the use of omnibus legislation, or the F-35 fiasco, or the recent Auditor General's report, or the former parliamentary budget officer who was under much abuse and the new Parliamentary Budget Officer who has asked for the same things he did, or infamously, prorogation, time and time again the pattern is the same. The government has complete disdain for the House.

Whether it be the scandals in the Senate, or the China FIPA accord, or the recent problems with the Prime Minister's former chief of staff, or the employment insurance scandals, or the $3 billion missing, or the 300,000 jobs that have not been replaced, the government keeps trying to avoid proper scrutiny out of embarrassment. However, the House of Commons exists for one thing and one thing alone, which is to hold the government to account.

The government will make some claims that the urgency right now is because there has not been enough progress on legislation. Therefore, the Conservatives have to hit the panic button and would have the House sit until midnight, which has consequences beyond just being a late night, and I will get into those consequences in a moment because they support our notion that it infringes upon the entitlements of members of Parliament to debate legislation properly.

The Conservatives' record shows, and this is not speculation or conspiracy, that when they ram legislation through, they more often than not get it wrong. That is not just expensive for the process of law making, but it is expensive for Canadians. These things often end up in court costing millions and millions of dollars and with victims of their own making. The scandal that exists in the Senate is absolutely one of their own making. The Prime Minister can point the finger where he likes, but he appointed those senators.

Specific to the point of order I am raising, this motion would lower the amount of scrutiny paid to legislation. It would allow the government extended sittings, which are coming in the second week of June anyway, as the Standing Orders currently exist, to allow the government to do that, but the Conservatives want to move the clock up and have more legislation rammed through the House.

Also, as you would know, Mr. Speaker, the order of our day includes concurrence reports from committee, which allow the House to debate something that happened in committee which can sometimes be very critical, and many are moved from all sides. However, they would not get started until midnight under the Conservatives' new rules. Therefore, we would study and give scrutiny on what happened at committee from midnight until two or three o'clock in the morning.

As well, emergency debates would not start until midnight. Just recently we had a debate, Mr. Speaker, that your office agreed to allow happen, which was quite important to those implicated. We were talking about peace and war and Canada's role in the world. It was a critical emergency debate that certainly went into the night. However, the idea is that we would take emergency debates that the Speaker's office and members of Parliament felt were important and start them at midnight and somehow they would be of the same quality as those started at seven o'clock in the evening.

The scrutiny of legislation has become much less important than the government moving its agenda through, which is an infringement on our privilege as members of Parliament. The Conservatives' so-called urgency, their panic, is not a justification for overriding the privileges that members of Parliament hold dear.

As for progress, just recently we moved the nuclear terrorism bill through, Bill S-9.

We also had much debate but an improvement on Bill C-15, the military justice bill, to better serve our men and women in the forces. The original drafting was bad. The Conservatives wanted to force it forward and we resisted. My friend from St. John's worked hard and got an amendment through that would help those in the military who found themselves in front of a tribunal.

We have the divorce in civil marriages act, which has been sitting and sitting. It would allow people in same-sex marriages to file for and seek divorce. All we have offered to the government is one vote and one speaker each. The government refuses to bring the bill forward and I suspect it is because it would require a vote. It is a shame when a government resists the idea that a vote would be a good thing for members of Parliament to declare their intentions on, certainly something as important as civil liberties and rights for gay men and women.

I mentioned earlier why, in the infringement of this privilege, it causes great harm and distress not just to Parliament but to the country.

I asked my team to pull up the list of bills that were so badly written that they had to be either withdrawn or completely rewritten at committee and even in the Senate which, God knows, is a terrible strategy for any legislation.

There was the infamous or famous Bill C-30, the Internet snooping bill, which the Minister of Public Safety said something to the effect that either people were with the government or they were with child pornographers, which may be an example of the worst framing in Canadian political history. There has probably been worse, but that was pretty bad. The Conservatives had to kill the bill.

We have also seen Bill C-10, Bill C-31, Bill C-38 and Bill C-42, all of these bills were so badly written that oftentimes the government had to amend them after having voted for them. After saying they were perfect and ramming them through, invoking closure and shutting down debate, the Conservatives got to committee and heard from people who actually understood the issue and realized the law they had written would be illegal and would not work or fix the problem that was identified, and so they had to rewrite it. That is the point of Parliament. That is the point of the work we do.

We have also seen bills that have been challenged at great expense before the courts. Former Bill C-2, the tackling violent crime act, with huge sections of the government's main anti-crime agenda, was challenged and defeated in court.

Bill C-38, arbitrarily eliminating backlog for skilled workers, was challenged and defeated.

Bill C-7, Senate term limits, was after years just now deferred to the Supreme Court. It is called “kicking it down the road”.

Also, there are Bill C-6, Bill C-33 and others, and there are those that are being crafted and debated right now that are going to have serious problems.

The essential thrust of our intention is in identifying the rules that govern us, and specifically Standing Order 13. The government has time and again talked about accountability before the Canadian people and talked about doing things better than its predecessors in the Liberal Party, the government that became so arrogant and so unaccountable to Canadians that the Conservatives threw it out of office. History repeats itself if one does not learn true lessons from history.

As I mentioned, Standing Order 27(1) already exists, and it allows the government to do exactly what we are talking about, but not starting until the last 10 sitting days. The Conservatives have said that there is so much on their so-called agenda that they have to do this early, allowing for less scrutiny, allowing for emergency debates to start at midnight, allowing for concurrence debates that come from committees to start at midnight and go until two, three or four o'clock in the morning.

This is contrary to the work of parliamentarians. If the Conservatives are in such a rush, why do they not negotiate? Why do they not actually come to the table and do what parliamentarians have done throughout time, which is offer the to and fro of any proper negotiation between reasonable people?

We have moved legislation forward. My friend across the way was moving an important motion commemorating war heroes. We worked with that member and other members to ensure the bill, which came from the Senate, made it through speedy passage.

Parliament can work if the Conservatives let it work, but it cannot work if they keep abusing it. Canadians continue to lose faith and trust in the vigour of our work and the ability to hold government to account. We see it time and again, and I am sure, Mr. Speaker, you have as well, in talking to constituents who say that they are not sure what goes on here anymore, that it just seems like government will not answer questions, that everyday they ask sincere and thoughtful questions and the Conservatives do not answer. Bills get shut down with motions of closure.

Let us look at the current government's record.

Thirty-three times, the Conservatives have moved time allocation on legislation, an all-time high for any government in Canadian history. Through war and peace, through good and bad, no government has shut down debate in Parliaments more than the current one.

Ninety-nine point three per cent of all amendments moved by the opposition have been rejected by the government. Let us take a look at that stat for a moment. That suggests that virtually 100% of the time, the government has been perfectly right on the legislation it moves. All the testimony from witnesses and experts, comments from average Canadians, when moving amendments to the legislation before us, 99.3% of the time the government rejects it out of hand. It ends up in court. It ends up not doing what it was meant to do.

Ten Conservative MPs have never spoken to legislation at all. I will note one in particular. The Minister of Finance, who has not bothered to speak to his own bills, including the omnibus legislation, Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, which caused so much controversy. He did not bother to stand and justify his actions. I find it deplorable and it is not just me, Canadians as well, increasingly so.

This is my final argument. We cannot allow this abuse to continue. This pattern has consequences, not just for what happens here today or tomorrow, but in the days, weeks, months and years to come and the Parliaments to come. If we keep allowing for and not standing up in opposition to bad ideas and draconian measures, we in a sense condone them.

We say that Parliament should become less irrelevant. We think that is wrong. We think what the government is doing is fundamentally wrong. It is not right and left; it is right and wrong. When the government is wrong in its treatment and abuse of Canada's Parliament, that affects all Canadians, whatever their political persuasion. We built this place out of bricks and mortar to do one thing: to allow the voice of Canadians to be represented, to speak on behalf of those who did not have a voice and to hold the government of the day to account. Lord knows the government needs that more than anything. It needs a little adult supervision from time to time to take some of those suggestions and put a little, as we say, water in its wine.

It has the majority. This is the irony of what the government is doing. In moving more time allocation than any government in history and shutting down debate more than any government in history and using what it is today, it speaks to weakness not strength. The Conservatives have the numbers to move legislation through if they saw fit, but they do not. They move legislation, they say it is an agenda and they hold up a raft of bills.