Thanks, Chair.
I guess I don't understand the reason for this filibuster today by my Liberal colleagues.
I'm just going to put this out here. When I was parliamentary secretary.... I'm dating myself, but back in the day, my opposition critic was Megan Leslie. She was a formidable parliamentarian. Seriously, if you guys ever want to blame somebody for why I'm as good as I am, it's because of Megan Leslie. She really forced me to up my game. We had a majority in the committee at that point in time. I was parliamentary secretary and she was my critic. We met once a week. I knew she was going to push her issues. I was going to push mine. We met regularly on programming. I would go back to my team—my members on the committee—and I'd say that the NDP want to do this, but we want to do this and then I'd ask them what they thought. I'd go back to her and we'd have things negotiated ahead of time.
I just don't understand what the filibustering is. If there's something in this motion my colleagues on the Liberal Party don't like, they should propose an amendment. Mr. Powlowski just talked about how no one discussed this with him. That's the purpose of giving notice of a motion. I gave proper notice on this, so Mr. Powlowski would have gotten this. The standard procedure at that point for a member on a committee is to call the parliamentary secretary. I don't know who the quarterback on the Liberal side is. I've never really had anyone say, “I'm the quarterback; can we work together? We might get frustrated, but can we work together?” No one has actually done that with me.
Through you, Chair, Mr. Powlowski could have phoned the parliamentary secretary, asked what the plan is or asked what the MINO is saying. He could have asked if they wanted an amendment or suggested that he was thinking that they could do this. He could have asked them to talk to me about it.
Actually, when I was parliamentary secretary, I saw it as my job to phone my colleagues on the committee and be like, “I think we should do this. What do you guys think?” If there was a filibuster.... I don't think there was on health. I think the NDP might have done it once when I was on the environment committee. We didn't filibuster on programming because it was all pre-negotiated.
I have been frustrated that there haven't been more people taking the lead or reaching out on this. We don't have time to waste.
I would say this: If there's something in this motion that the Liberals don't like and they want to change it, there's this thing called a phone. You guys can email me. You guys all know the parliamentary email account. You guys could be emailing me right now. I know other colleagues are. We could have sorted this out.
I think what happened here—and I would just like somebody to tell me not—is that the meeting on the Liberal side didn't happen. That's what I think happened here. It's that the meeting to discuss whether they can negotiate with the opposition on this, what they want to do, what the direction from the government is and how they can marry that with their role as committee members didn't happen.
What's happening here, I think—and I hope I'm wrong—is that members are being directed to filibuster so that we have another meeting on Monday, which is a subcommittee meeting. That actually takes up another meeting, as our colleague Mr. Davies pointed out, because we have to approve that. Then we've wasted two meetings.
The goal of this motion and giving appropriate notice of it was that I just assumed that my Liberal colleagues would come prepared or at least would phone and say, “Okay, can we do this? Can we do that?” Then we would have passed something today. I've heard a lot about Minecraft from somebody, but I haven't heard any amendments or.... Nobody has emailed me from the Liberal side. Nobody has said, “Hey, you know, I kind of need this”.
I guess I would ask respectfully for my Liberal colleagues to think about that.
Clearly, somebody prepared remarks for Liberal members coming in on a filibuster. Why didn't you guys prepare amendments? Why didn't somebody phone?
Chair, that's my concern here. I did try to draft this motion—and draft it with colleagues from other parties who talk to me—to be fair. It gives the government a lot of latitude on the witnesses that they want. If the opposition wanted to ram a motion through that was unfair, we could have done that, too. We didn't because we're in the middle of a global pandemic.
Departmental officials need to be here because we need to be holding the government to account. There are hundreds of billions of dollars going through our department that need to be scrutinized. The efficacy of funding needs to be scrutinized. If it's too much, too little or if it's effective—that's our job here. That's what this this motion is for.
Colleagues, please don't continue to read prepared notes. I don't know who's preparing them, but ask your parliamentary secretary what the game plan is. They're good, and this is not that bad of a motion. If there are proposed amendments, we should be considering that and debating the merits of moving forward.
I don't think any Canadian would want to see a continued filibuster on a programming motion in the health committee in the middle of a pandemic. I certainly would be raising this issue on every platform I had at my disposal and within the media.
If there's an amendment, if there's something that the Liberals don't like about this, they should be doing that. Also, do your job. To the Liberal members on the committee, what happens is that when you get a notice of motion, you should read it. You should phone your parliamentary secretary. I don't know who the quarterback is; I'm assuming it's the PS, but it might not be. Just ask, what are we doing on this? You guys might vote your own way, too. I don't know; maybe there is no quarterback.
Every individual member has a responsibility to come here, be prepared, read motions and be prepared to vote or put forward substantive amendments. That's how it works. I hope we can come to a resolution on this today, because I'd really like to get going with further work next week.
Yes, we will have moments in this committee where we disagree on partisan principles or policy positions, and do you know what? I am good at my job. I put a lot of time into it and I don't apologize for that. However, this is how collaboration works on a committee. It works both ways.
I will give a shout-out to Mike Kelloway. He did reach out to me once and we had one conversation.
On this motion, no Liberal has reached out to me. Guys, the phones and emails work both ways. I hope that if anybody has any more comments they are substantive and that we can proceed with programming out the business of this committee.
Thank you.