Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank my colleague Mr. Lawrence for his bang on remarks. We're having this problem in the finance committee today because, ironically, the finance minister won't commit to coming to the finance committee to answer questions about her own budget. I think it's important that Canadians know what it is we're talking about.
I want to try to follow the rules, Mr. Chair, as much as I possibly can. Since we are debating a motion, I thought we should take a few minutes to go over the wording of the motion so that everyone watching can understand what it is we're debating about.
The motion begins with this:
That the committee continue its pre-study of Bill C-47, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, by:
(a) Inviting witnesses to appear on the contents of Bill C-47 during meetings scheduled the weeks of May 1, May 8, and May 15, 2023, and that;
Members of the committee submit their prioritized witness lists for the study of Bill C-47 to the clerk of the committee by no later than Wednesday, May 3, 2023, at 12:00 p.m., and that these lists be distributed to members of the committee as soon as possible;
(b) Moving to clause-by-clause—
For those watching, “clause-by-clause” essentially means we literally go through the bill, discussing each and every clause and voting on every clause. That's some of the terminology we like to use here on the Hill when we're dealing with legislation.
—review of Bill C-47 no later than Thursday, May 25, 2023, at 11:00 a.m., provided that the bill is referred to the committee on or before Thursday, May 18, 2023, and that;
i. amendments be submitted to the clerk of the committee in both official languages [by] no later than 4:00 p.m. on Friday, May 19, 2023;
ii. the clerk of the committee write immediately to each member who is not a member of a caucus represented on the committee and any independent members to inform them of the study of Bill C-47 by the committee and to invite them to prepare and submit any proposed amendments to Bill C-47 which they would suggest that the committee consider during the clause-by-clause study of the Bill;
Now this particular portion is very important because, for those watching, they may not realize that it is generally officially recognized parties that sit on the committee. For example, this committee has 12 members. There are six Liberal members, four Conservative members, a Bloc member and an NDP member, but there could also theoretically be other parties—there aren't right now—in the House that are official and that might not have a member sitting on the committee. That could happen. There's the Green Party, but they're not actually an official party. They are not a member of the committee, so technically, under our rules, they're independent members even though, out of deference to them, we call them the Green Party.
What this clause is speaking to is giving those types of members notices. Also, there are independent members who deserve the right to be able to come make submissions for recommended amendments to the committee. Therefore, (b)(ii) is an extremely important measure to make sure the democratic process will be followed and be inclusive of members who are either a member of an official party that is not represented on the committee or independent members who have no party affiliation. That's what that particular clause is trying to deal with.
Let me move on. There are a few more points here:
(c) If Bill C-47 is referred to the committee by the House during the subject matter study of the Bill, all witness testimony, evidence and documentation received in public in relation to its subject matter study of Bill C-47 be deemed received by the committee in the context of its legislative study of Bill C-47;
(d) Subject to the approval of the recognized parties’ whips, and the availability of meeting slots from the House of Commons, the committee hold as many additional meetings as possible with the goal of accomplishing at least 20 hours of study prior to the beginning of clause-by-clause consideration of the bill;
(e) That the Chair of the Committee write, as promptly as possible, to the Chairs of the following standing committees to invite them to study the subject matter of the following provisions of Bill C-47, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023:
I'm going to go through these letters, but I think this is an important point that I want to circle back to. It's something I raised earlier in the meeting. It's very important that Canadians who are watching this meeting right now understand this. Budget implementation bills are supposed to be about the budget. They're supposed to be about revenues and expenditures, economic policy, fiscal policy and that kind of thing.
The problem is that a massive part of this bill has nothing to do with any of those things. They call it an omnibus bill, and it's really an opportunity for government, politicians and public servants to basically get into legislation things that they should really be trying to get into legislation through the normal course, through the ordinary process of introducing a bill, having it go through the various readings, the committee stage, third reading and then over to the Senate.
This omnibus method is essentially a shortcut, particularly in a budget bill, which is essentially considered to be a confidence motion. The reason that's important is that a confidence motion is a bill for which, if the government loses the vote on it, it loses the confidence of the House and in all likelihood an election ensues.
I think public servants and politicians who put those types of non-budgetary matters in the bill think that it will slide by, and it's going to pass because we have the costly coalition. The NDP's going to support it no matter what, because they're basically not an opposition party anymore and they're just going to support this budget. This is an opportunity for them to get something passed, to short-circuit the process, essentially, to get something passed that they might not be able to get passed in the ordinary course. That's really unfortunate. I'm really not a big believer in these types of bills, but I'm not the only one. In fact, I have very well-known company on this opinion. I'll tell you what he said before I tell you who said it.
He said:
Omnibus bills—I’d like to say I wouldn’t use them, period. There will always be big bills, but they need to be thematically and substantively linked in all their different pieces so that they form a piece of legislation. The kitchen-sink approach here is a real worry to me.
There's also this:
Stephen Harper has also used omnibus bills to prevent Parliament from properly reviewing and debating his proposals. We will change the House of Commons Standing Orders to bring an end to this undemocratic practice.
Do you know who said that, Mr. Chair? It was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who said that.
He and I are of the same mind on this one. There's not a lot that we agree upon, but it begs the question of why he would say that back in 2013 and now be doing the exact same thing he said he would never do. He called it undemocratic.
I shouldn't be surprised because there are so many things. They said, we'll plant two billion trees; it didn't happen. The debt-to-GDP ratio is going to go down; it didn't happen. We will have electoral reform. This was the last first-past-the-post system election. We should be worried about deflation not inflation. Interest rates are going to stay low. We're going to have the budget balanced by 2019. Don't worry; vote for us. By the way, you get more back from the carbon tax rebate than you pay in carbon tax. We know all that's not true, so I shouldn't be surprised when the Prime Minister says something for political convenience and then literally does exactly the opposite thing.
That gets me to the rest of this motion, because what this bill ironically tries to do is deal with all these non-budgetary rules, things like the style and title of the King of England. Some of them may be laudable goals, like experimentation on animals and things like that, but I don't know what that has to do with a budget bill.
What they try to do to get around that is say to us that they recognize that the expertise to study all sorts of things in this budget bill doesn't really exist at the finance committee, so they're suggesting that we send letters to a bunch of other committees and ask them to study those types of things. For example, earlier today I was asking about the amendments to the sanctions legislation, or what's called the Special Economic Measures Act and the Magnitsky act.
I was surprised to see in this motion that, although there are referrals to a number of different committees, there's no referral to the foreign affairs committee, which would be the right place to study those provisions. I don't see that in this memo, unless I'm missing it.
That also begs this question: What else isn't in here? In part 4, there are 39 different pieces of legislation, most of which have actually nothing to do with the budget.
What they're doing is saying that they recognize that, so we're going to send the immigration stuff to the immigration committee and the foreign affairs stuff to the foreign affairs committee. We'll send the national defence piece to the national defence committee. We'll sent the natural resources stuff to the natural resources committee. We'll send the environmental stuff to the environment committee. However, so many of these things have actually nothing to do with revenues, expenditures, fiscal policy or economics.
It's just a kitchen sink that the government has decided to throw this stuff into to try to get it through the legislative process and make it very difficult for members of Parliament to scrutinize all these different pieces of legislation. I think I mentioned that, in the briefing notes of the department for dealing with some of the border stuff, the briefing note itself was 21 pages long. It should be its own piece of legislation.
I have a lot more to say about this, Mr. Chair, but I know that my colleague, Mr. Chambers, is chomping at the bit to finish off his arguments. I am prepared to cede the floor to him since I don't see the Liberal member here.