Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's no problem at all. Mr. Lawrence is doing great work here and on his excellent private member's bill, which we hope will pass into law soon.
The subamendment adds “and Minister of Public Safety” after the word “Finance”, and it changes the term “this appearance” to “these appearances” for grammatical clarity. It adds, before the word “appear”, the word “each”. That's earlier. After “Finance” is “and Minister of Public Safety”, then “be invited to each appear for two hours”. It should say “each appear separately”—because sometimes they'll show up together and that isn't as effective—“for two hours on the bill, and that these appearances”. It continues with the language of the amendment as it was written, then adds the full phrase afterwards, “and that, notwithstanding the proposed date, clause-by-clause not be scheduled unless both of these ministers have each appeared for two hours.”
If the subamendment is accepted, the amendment would read as follows:
“That the Minister of Finance and Minister of Public Safety be invited to each appear separately for two hours on the bill, that these appearances be scheduled on or before May 18, 2023 and that, notwithstanding the proposed date, clause-by-clause not be scheduled unless both of these ministers have each appeared for two hours.”
I have some comments on that subamendment. Before I proceed to those comments, is it understood by all members?
I'm being told that it all works in French too. That's great.
First of all, let me speak to the issue of why I think it's important that the committee hear from the Minister of Public Safety. As I said, yes, this is a budget implementation act. Yes, it's a budget bill. Yes, it's proposed in the House by the Minister of Finance. However, it is also the case that the budgetary framework of the government—the budget or budget implementation act we've seen—covers a broad expanse of different issues. I could have proposed any number of ministers, I suppose.
It's interesting to me, in general, in this place how sometimes we give so little time to the most significant issues. So much of the decision-making of the government and the legislative work of the government is packed into one document, which is the budget. There's some expectation that we rush it through quickly, and then committees spend substantially more time doing studies, which lead to recommendations but don't even necessarily lead to legislation.
When the committees are at their peak in terms of exercising real, hard power, I personally think that sometimes we seem to spend less time on that and substantially more time on issues that may be important in terms of the philosophical matter they raise but don't actually involve committees' exercising their hard power.
It is important that this committee, in the process of taking the time it needs for the study, hear from ministers—I think multiple ministers—who can speak to the importance of this.
In terms of the full spectrum of possible commentary that we could hear from ministers, though, let's acknowledge that the particular issues that might be present in the testimony of the Minister of Public Safety are a real priority for the consideration of this committee. This budget and budget implementation act come at a time when I think there's really significant, heightened concern about the issue of foreign-state-backed interference in our country, which is the defining national security challenge of our time.
When I was growing up, I think there was a lot of discussion of terrorism, and it's still very much an issue in terms of national security threats. However, I think we need to adjust our paradigm to recognize that there's this issue of foreign state-backed interference in our country that, in the past, has been under-engaged in by the government. We have tried to sound the alarm on it for a long time. I was the vice-chair, in the last Parliament, of the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations, and we began a study on the national security implications of Canada's relationship with the People's Republic of China, trying to understand what those dynamics were and what things we could do to respond to them.