Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I am glad for the opportunity to weigh in on what has been going on at committee. It's hard to know exactly where to start, so forgive me if I seem a little ponderous at the outset.
I think the story of how we got here matters, because I've heard a lot about how desperately Conservative members want to hear from witnesses. I would point out that when we first embarked upon the study of the bill, there was lots of time to hear from witnesses—lots of time.
I share the frustration of Conservative members with the minister, who I think should have committed to come to committee far earlier and should have committed for the two hours. I've been very clear about that. Nothing has changed in that regard. I still think that's true.
I don't think it was helpful that the minister first of all refused to say that she would come for two hours and then decided to stay longer but didn't give anybody any notice. Frankly, I don't think it's what you do in a professional workplace.
I also know, and this is part of my frustration as somebody who is neither a Liberal nor a Conservative, that I came prepared to do the work of clause-by-clause. Members around this table will know that there's a fair amount of work that goes into preparing for amendments. There are lots of folks to talk to about different kinds of decisions. There's usually short notice on when amendments come, so it's a rush to talk to folks about what the amendments represent, what they mean, to talk to other members about their own amendments, and then talk to folks in our respective parties and many Canadians outside of the political system who are experts in those fields.
We do our homework and then we come prepared to work, as I did yesterday. I was and still am frustrated, to put it mildly, that having come prepared to work, I haven't been able to do that work and instead have been subjected to the same filibuster, largely, that we had before the minister came.
The Liberals say from time to time, “What's the point of giving the Conservatives anything they want because, at the end of the day, they're just going to keep filibustering anyway; they're first and foremost committed to obstruction, for no other reason than obstruction itself.” I would say to my Conservative colleagues, this spectacle that we're witnessing sure doesn't help any of us who would like to argue back to the Liberals, as I often have in defence of Conservatives, “Look, despite my own frustration with what they're doing, there's a legitimate point there. It's not just endless dysfunction.”
What we're doing here is endless dysfunction, except that's not exactly true, because there is an end date to this. The end date to this is Monday at four o'clock, as agreed to by the Conservatives. This is a filibuster that accomplishes nothing. They are building no leverage for anything. Monday, at four o'clock, we're going to start voting on clause-by-clause. We will go through every clause of this bill, with no debate, offering members of Parliament no opportunity to put on the record why they're voting for or against certain amendments. No useful purpose is served by that. That means Canadians won't get the reasons for why MPs are voting in any particular way. It means that we won't have any debate around this table.
All that the Conservatives are doing right now is pissing away the time we have to do that democratic work, both for now and for posterity. Later, if anybody can get through all of the many hours of ridiculous filibuster that we've been subjected to, they might care to find some of the reasons for why certain provisions that are in this act passed or didn't pass. However, the idea that somehow this filibuster is accomplishing anything, when the Conservatives have already agreed, apparently at the time in good faith, to an end to clause-by-clause is just ridiculous. It's complete fabrication.
Now I get that they want to hear more witnesses. I wanted to hear more witnesses. In fact, I said so while they ate up 23 hours of the committee's time. What the heck is going on here? Why should anyone watching this be impressed. I'm beyond the blame game. This is pathetic. It's just pathetic. Shame on all of us for not finding a way out.
What's going on doesn't help anybody, and it's certainly not in the spirit of freedom or democracy or accountability or any of it. What we're watching are the Conservatives talking the clock out to the deadline that they themselves set.
Now, why am I not prepared to extend the deadline? I think all that means is that I'm going to be subjected to more hours of Conservative filibuster and we're going to keep doing this until a majority of the committee has the ability to finally have a vote.
What is the point of Parliament? The point of Parliament and members of Parliament, first and foremost, is to vote on things. That's the one thing we can do that nobody else gets to do. That's it. That's what we're here to do. That fundamental purpose and right of parliamentarians is being hijacked by people who won't let votes happen.
The Conservatives know full well that the committee is prepared to move on and consider this legislation, and we should do it while we still have time to debate. But no, we're not going to, are we, guys?
What is up with that? I'm getting really tired of listening to people talk about how much they want to hear from witnesses after burning up all that time.
We have a problem. There isn't enough trust and good faith around this table. The Conservatives will say it's the Liberals' fault and the Liberals will say it's the Conservatives' fault. I don't care whose fault it is. We've got to do better, guys. We really do. This is not acceptable.
There are members of the committee who aren't permanent members of this committee and, of course, many Conservatives have changed. I think they're on their second leader or third leader of Parliament. They're on their eighth finance critic. I don't know. Those aren't real numbers—don't quote me. It's been a lot, though, so some of the folks around the table may not know that we did this on the fall economic statement or that we did that on the last budget bill.
This is like some kind of parliamentary Groundhog Day film. I watched this movie, and the ending is dumb and Canadians don't win.
What we should be doing is spending this time actually doing clause-by-clause. That's where we're at.
We had 10 hours of witness testimony. I agree that's not enough, but I'm not prepared to extend this circus. Do I actually believe we're going to hear more from witnesses? At this point, no I don't. I think the Conservatives are going to find something else that they want to complain about and then they're going to filibuster on that. I could be wrong, but I'm not interested in finding out that I'm right.
I thought we were done with this. I thought we were going to do some real work. This is the second day now that I've come prepared to do some real work on clause-by-clause and I'm not getting the opportunity. I'm glad that I at least got the floor to talk a bit about that.
Mr. Morantz earlier quoted somebody who said that omnibus bills are terrible. One reason for that is that the finance committee members are expected to be subject matter experts on everything.
I would remind Mr. Morantz and other members of the committee of the original study motion that we had. Had we got to a vote when we should have got to a vote, after some debate, within the context of a two-hour meeting....
A two-hour debate is still a fair amount of debate for 12 people sitting around a table discussing how to study a bill. It was not the content of the bill that we were discussing at that time—if we were actually on topic. You may recall that was the debate where we heard a lot about eels and the fishery on the east coast. Again, it's a fascinating topic, but we should have been able to get to a vote on that. Had we got to a vote, the very thing that Mr. Morantz was just quoting, which he said he wanted to have happen, would have happened. We would have sent the sections of the bill that properly belong with our critics who are experts in other areas to those committees. We would have benefited from their wisdom. We would have multiplied the ability to hear witness testimony, because there would have been other committees providing time slots to hear witnesses on the content of the bill.
That was the whole point of breaking up the bill. I think that's a better process, given that omnibus bills, not just by this government—in spite of a promise not to do omnibus bills—but by the previous government, which made an art form of them, the Harper government....
If they're going to become a fact of parliamentary life, then we need to find a better way, as parliamentarians, to study them and push back against the government's effort to effectively impose closure by putting a whole bunch of things in one bill. We don't appear to be able to stop them from doing that. What we can do is change the way we study the bill so that there is more time and there is the ability to hear witnesses.
I thought that was a good thing that our committee was on to, but we have failed to set a precedent for that yet again. Instead, we've had to listen to a filibuster. If we take Parliament seriously and we take our role and our job.... If we don't think our job is a joke, then we could actually take the time to do the work, and we could set interesting precedents for how you go about studying a budget bill given the fact that government seemed pretty committed to doing omnibus legislation. We could set a new standard. We could raise the bar for accountability in terms of Parliament hearing witnesses and having subject matter experts examine legislation.
I actually thought we were on the cusp of that. What a fool I was. I'm sitting around feeling like I've been had, because I thought we were having some good conversations through the winter, trying to figure out how we weren't going to repeat last year's gong show, yet here we are right back where we started, except even more futile. At least last year, once the Conservatives were done their filibuster and agreed to a timeline to do clause-by-clause, we actually did clause-by-clause. Now we're not.
I'll say to you, it is a real problem if we get to Monday at four o'clock and we start voting on this stuff without any of us having put our reasons on the record. I think that will be a bloody shame. I think anyone who is really committed to accountability and democracy in Parliament would not allow that to happen.
I am not prepared to extend the deadline. From what I've seen, extending the deadline just means more of this. This is the problem. You can't negotiate a process to get to the outcomes that everyone, through the filibusters, says they want to achieve, because you think you have, and then they eat up all the time to accomplish that other purpose with more filibuster. Eventually, you need a deadline.
I participated in a filibuster in the 42nd Parliament, when the government was contemplating making unilateral changes to the Standing Orders. I thought they needed at least one other party to agree. I thought that was a filibuster with some principle. I thought it was worth getting animated about and worth showing up for, so I did it.
I also respect that there will be filibusters. I've seen those, too, believe me. It's not just here. At the procedure and House affairs committee in the last Parliament, it was Liberals tying up the committee because they didn't want the committee to invite the Prime Minister. There are going to be filibusters that I don't agree with, and I'm okay with that. I have to say, for what's being held up, and for the amount of work we haven't been able to do, the goal of this filibuster is pretty light. It wasn't worth losing all the good work we could have done.
The minister is intransigent, and I'm mad about that. Parliament doesn't have the ability to compel the minister to appear. We have the ability to do our own work, but we don't seem to be able to get that done. Let's not throw stones in glass houses. I think the minister should be held to account for not having been clear that she was willing to show up for an hour or two hours. I think, in the end, it was an hour and 40 minutes, or whatever. Sure, but are you really going to let the attitude of that minister derail the entire work of the finance committee for months? We deserve better than that. Canadians deserve better than that.
This work deserves to get done, and we're not going to agree on all the outcomes, guys. I'm not looking for a Kumbaya moment. All I'm looking for is for everyone on this committee to say their piece and then allow us to vote on things so that we can make decisions and move things along. If Parliament can't do that, we have a big problem. That's where the feeling that some people are just committed to endless dysfunction gets harder and harder to shake.
I'm not going to go on and on. There are a number of claims I think are worth responding to, except it's hard to feel that they really are, because this whole thing feels, in an important way, fundamentally unserious. I have to say, we're talking around a lot of serious things, but I don't feel like we're doing it in a serious way anymore, and I'm disappointed by that. I think we could do a lot better. As somebody who believes in making decisions based on evidence and experience—my experience on this committee and the evidence that any Canadian is welcome to look at not just from this budget bill process but also from the many we've done before—I am finding it harder and harder to believe that I'm sitting around a table with serious people who are honestly committed to getting a job done.
That's my point of view. I get that we're all going to have different points of view about this. I just feel that if Canadians are sitting at home wondering what the heck is going on, somebody should have the decency to call out what I think is really happening and the only way you can make sense of what's going on here.
The clock is running. The time will not be extended, because I am tired of these shenanigans. Let's think about what we do with the time we have and how we do the best job, instead of asking for permission to continue this charade.
Thank you very much.