Foreign Affairs Committee on May 16th, 2022

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

On the same point of order—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Ms. Bendayan, thank you for that.

Again, as you can accept and as we can all agree here, relevance is elastic, but the subamendment before us is a pithy one. I think we can all agree that the scope of the debate is very limited in this instance.

Given the numerous points of order that the members have asked for, in the event that a member does not keep their comments relevant and they continue to repeat the same thing, they will have to cede the floor to the next person on the list.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Chair, can I speak to the point of order?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Yes, Mr. Genuis.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Chair, with respect to the rules that are being discussed, I do think it's important to note that the length of the amendment, one way or the other, does not define the scope of the subject. You could add one word. For instance, you could add another country to the list of countries. That would be a one-word amendment that would invite discussion about the particulars of that country.

The other thing is that I do just think it's very unusual that a member would cut off another member after they've spoken for a period of about 15 seconds and say that it's not relevant. It is part of the debates we have here in the committee and the House to make arguments. If a person speaks for 10 minutes and there's no obvious connection, then, okay, fair enough. If a member is speaking for 15 seconds and is offering a quotation—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Mr. Genuis, are you debating this, or...?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I'm speaking to the matter of order, Mr. Chair.

I hope that in their repeated interruptions around alleged relevance issues, members will take these precedents into consideration.

That's all I wanted to say.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you, Mr. Genuis.

Yes, Mr. Aboultaif.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Thank you, Chair. I appreciate your role today. Your role is to set the framework around this motion and the subamendment that was presented by Mr. Bergeron.

On the other side, I heard what Mr. Oliphant said at the very beginning. I think between what he said and what we've been hearing from different members on the government side, the narrative is really unclear on what the parameters of those discussions have to be. That's what is leaving everything in limbo here.

I would appreciate it if you would take the initiative as the chair and try to set clarity over this so that we don't have to run into interruptions here and there after 15 seconds. At the end of the day, we're talking about a very wide subject, a very important subject, that's dominating everything. It's dominating all our lives these days. That's the Ukrainian war. All of that is coming at the same time that we are in the middle of this conversation here.

Chair, the bottom line is that I believe it would be helpful if you could set those parameters in a clear way so that we could all work together. At the end of the day, I believe we need to be very constructive in what we're doing here, and I think we have a responsibility to do so. When I look to request that, I look at you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you.

Again, I think it's important, given what you have just said, that, first of all, we try not to substitute our own judgment for the judgment of the person who is speaking. However, the person who is speaking should make every effort to ensure that the points they are raising in debate are relevant and they are not repeating themselves.

Ms. Gray, please do bear those principles in mind.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for those comments.

Just for clarification, I hadn't repeated myself at this point, but moving forward for maybe other conversations, that's good to know.

Again, with regard to Ukraine, I was going to talk about gas prices, but it was relevant to Ukraine. It wasn't just in general, so again, tying it in to the Prime Minister's comments on how he feels that it's tied to Ukraine, I just wanted to outline a few things here on how this is important and how it could definitely tie into what we're discussing here today.

Some of the numbers that I have here are from June 2. The source was today's gas prices, and it was from the Canadian Automobile Association, the CAA—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Mr. Zuberi, do you have a point of order?

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I'd like to get on the speakers list.

My apologies, Ms. Gray.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Okay.

On that date, which was a couple of weeks ago—and we know that things are actually even higher in many parts of the country than this—in Toronto, the price was $2.01.8 per litre. In Montreal, it was $2.11.1 per litre—

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Yes?

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

—you have instructed the member to move on to something that is relevant, and it is now twice that she has continued to read from her prepared filibuster remarks. It is clear that you have made a ruling and that she is not respecting that ruling.

I would also note that Ukraine is not mentioned in the subamendment and would ask for you to direct the member to perhaps switch pages to something that is actually relevant to the motion on reproductive rights or, more specifically, the subamendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you, Ms. Bendayan.

Let me say, Ms. Gray, that you do consistently say that you're setting the table but you have not modified your arguments, and you continue to highlight the very same issues, so even if one can say that they are relevant, you are repeating them. I really do ask you to actually bear in mind what the subamendment is or else I truly will have to ask that you cede the floor.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate those comments.

I talk for about 20 seconds and get interrupted. It's difficult to move forward without being able to get into anything in depth. I think for the amount of time I've been here, I've had three or four interventions and I have not been able to get into what I wanted to. That's made it really difficult. Obviously, that's a strategy here today, and that's fair enough. I think as we're discussing this, one has to be given the opportunity to go into the details of what their rationale is and set the tone, and it's difficult to do that when you talk for 20 or 30 seconds and get interrupted. That makes it much more difficult to be able to carry on the conversation.

Talking about Ukraine and how this fits into the amendment and the subamendment and part of this discussion, if we can't talk about the price of gas and how that all fits in, I'll move on to another topic. I was setting the tone.

What I'd like to bring up is the price of wheat in Ukraine, because that is one of the important topics right now. We're talking about food security and, as we're looking at the study and all of the amendments, how important this topic is.

Again, I'll bring out the example to set the tone here. I'll point to a conversation that happened on March 3 in the House. There was a question in the House of Commons asked by my colleague from Foothills. He asked:

Mr. Speaker, Europe, Asia and Africa all rely on corn and wheat from Ukraine, the region's breadbasket. With Russia's invasion, a global food crisis is emerging. The United Nations has already warned of catastrophic hunger and hundreds of millions are facing famine.

Canada can help. We have a crippled supply chain, punishing carbon taxes, a looming rail strike and PEI farmers are being forced to destroy millions of pounds of potatoes. In a global food crisis, when Canadian farmers want to help, why is this Liberal government neglecting Canadian agriculture?

The response from the member for Vancouver South was:

Mr. Speaker, at a time of crisis like this, I completely agree that Ukraine does supply the developing world with wheat. This crisis is going to be extremely serious. I have been at the UN speaking with the heads of the world food program and other organizations and Canada can play a very important role in this. We will work with our counterparts on how we can provide—

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Mr. Chair, I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Yes, Mr. Sarai.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Again, I'm trying to find any relevance at all. What does the price of wheat in Ukraine have to do with a subamendment that's proposed by one of our colleagues on an amendment on reproductive facilities? Again, I don't need to know what somebody said in the House with regard to the price of Ukrainian wheat.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

It's in the amendment.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I have a point of order.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

It's explicit in the amendment.