Thank you, Chair.
I am quite opposed to the motion that Mr. Cullen has put before this committee limiting the speaking times on Bill C-377 clause-by-clause to two minutes per member of committee. Chair, we need to have thorough debate, and as I said before, we've heard every witness group raise concerns about Bill C-377. We have had amendments from the Liberals, from the Bloc, and from the NDP. Every party in opposition presented a major rewrite of the bill.
I had suggested to Mr. Cullen, and I think it was Mr. Bigras also who recommended, that Bill C-377 be rewritten. Well, in essence, it was. But we don't know--it's still missing so much and we haven't heard back from any witnesses since this attempt to rewrite--whether it is a good bill or not. I believe genuinely that Bill C-377 is not a good bill, but we already have a good bill.
What Mr. Cullen is attempting to do in this motion now is stifle healthy debate. Chair, freedom of expression is a cornerstone of a functioning democracy. Freedom of expression promotes certain societal values, as noted by Professor Emerson in 1963:
Maintenance of a system of free expression is necessary (1) as assuring individual self-fulfillment, (2) as a means of attaining the truth, (3) as a method of securing participation by the members of the society in social, including political, decision-making, and (4) as maintaining the balance between stability and change in society.
Our constitutional commitment to free speech is predicated on the belief that a free society cannot function with coercive legal censorship in the hands of persons supporting one ideology who are motivated to use the power of the censor to suppress opposing viewpoints. That's what I see happening right now with this motion.
They do not want to see an opportunity for members achieving self-fulfillment, members of this committee being able to share their moral concerns of Bill C-377, commitments to see a clean air environment. Bill C-377 will not achieve that. What this motion attempts to do is stifle self-fulfilment, an opportunity to share with this committee the importance of a bill that will accomplish reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
We all in this committee know the importance of doing real actions, real things on cleaning up the environment, the environmental mess left by 13 years of Liberal inaction. Maybe that's why the Liberals also want to stifle this opportunity for healthy debate, limiting it to only two minutes, because they're ashamed of their track record and our opportunity to remind Canadians of that--that for 13 long years they made a lot of promises, a lot announcements, but emissions continued to rise. So if they can keep members of this committee stifled to only two minutes, two minutes per clause, then we're not going to have the opportunity to be able to tell Canadians what happened.
Chair, we need, as Professor Emerson said back in 1963, the importance of individual self-fulfillment, and the attempt now of the NDP to stifle that is wrong. It should not be happening.
Point two was a means to attaining the truth, and Canadians need to know the truth of what is Bill C-377--
