Thank you, Chair.
Part of democracy is that we all get to have our say. There are rules to be followed—understood.
I think there are two parts: One is transparency and one is about the spirit of the rules. I'll speak to transparency first.
Even though we've talked a lot about perhaps seven people in this room making this decision, we know that's not necessarily the way it is. I don't for one second believe—and no disrespect to many of my colleagues on the other side of the horseshoe—that they dreamt this up and then suddenly said that this is a great thing just this evening: “We should actually support this. That's something I never heard before. Let's do that, and let's move forward as a group. Let's not even talk about it on our side. Let's just use our telepathy to understand that this is what we should be doing.” We all know this is not true, and that points back to the lack of transparency of the costly coalition as well.
We've heard before in the House of Commons about this great and transparent government, how they were going to be the most transparent government in the history of governments in the entire world. Once again, we know this is just not true. That's a falsehood, and I will say that.
There is no way that this happened this evening. There was no discussion on that side amongst them, and I don't believe for a second that they all have telepathy. I don't believe that. I could be wrong, but I don't believe that for one second, and I don't think they share their telepathy with Ms. Kwan. I don't believe that's true. I'm open to challenge on that. If any of you have telepathy, please let me know. I would like to speak to you about it, because it would be a neat superpower to have.
That being said, we know there's clearly a lack of transparency here. We know that the costly coalition, guided by the PMO, had input into this. As my great colleague pointed out, this was a foregone conclusion. I would suggest that this is, again, a banana republic that we're looking at—the foolishness coming up next. Please, indulge me and prove me wrong, and I would be happy to retract that. That's no issue.
The other part that is related is about the spirit or the gestalt of what we are to do here. I realize that there are rules. I get it. You like to bend the rules; you like to fiddle with the rules. However, clearly the gestalt of the whole thing—the idea, the spirit—is to understand that these rules should be applied justly and fairly and evenly. We, as parliamentarians, have an opportunity to partake in that in good faith, and to say, “Yes, that makes sense” or “You know what? I haven't done a clause-by-clause review before.”
When the chair brought forward the big book of words, as we might say, and said that this was important, that we can't be meddling with a bill that the government has said is a priority, and how much we're going to pay for it—which we already talked about almost ad nauseam—my colleagues across the way were saying, “Oh, well, it's not that much money.” Well, guess what. If you continue to add to it, your little tiny snowball, as it rolls down the hill, is going to run over your VW Beetle at the bottom. It started off as a snowball that you want to throw at each other, and now we're continuing to add to it willy-nilly, outside the spirit of everything we're here to do. I find that very frustrating.
Yes, I understand: You have your say. You can take it back to the House. You can do this; you can do that. That being said, it's outside the spirit of what we're actually called to do here. What regulations exist to guide us in the deliberations that we have? This is an utter travesty.
Again, it's a sham. It's ridiculous. I think that continuing on in this nature, as I said previously, is an utter waste of House time and resources that we continue to want to talk about being held so dear. I can't believe that my colleagues, with whom we have bargained in good faith—and I thought we were doing great work in this committee previously—continue to be disappointing in their approach.
Obviously, there's a scorched-earth approach, “my way or the highway” or whatever euphemism you'd like to use. That is where we are in this committee, and that is a shame. It's a darn shame. We're lacking transparency. We're lacking the spirit of the rules. When we get to that point, I am unsure of how to move back from the precipice in terms of moving forward as a committee.
I think that should weigh heavily upon my colleagues on the other side of the horseshoe.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.