Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, members of the committee, for allowing me to speak to this, because it bears directly on my rights.
I want to start by saying that I'm going to use some forceful language, but I want to make it clear that I'm speaking to the system that would allow this to happen and not to any of you as individuals. You're my friends, and this is not personal.
What's taking place here is essentially an attempt at parliamentary vandalism. The writing of laws and legislation usually goes through a long process when we're making a change to the rules. This is a backdoor mechanism. It's only a fiction that this is Scott's motion coming to this committee, because the identical motion came from Andrew Saxton at the finance committee, and there was a motion earlier today at the ethics committee. I imagine all committees are going to be asked by the PMO to put forward identical motions that fundamentally change the way legislation moves through the House but without the usual practice and study that take place. On behalf of a number of independent members of Parliament and me as a Green Party member of Parliament, I've shared with you a longer letter. I'm obviously not going to recapitulate those arguments, but they go to the fundamental principle of the following.
All members of Parliament in this place are equal, and we were functionally equal until 1963 when the organized political parties managed to get through a change to the rules that said that if you were in a party with more than 12 MPs you were going to get more financial resources. Over time that's been expanded to include rights. Although it wasn't actually written in the 1963 motion, I accept that it's been expanded. I'm not trying to overturn the notion that until you have 12 MPs in your party you don't get a seat at committee and you're not going to get a daily question in question period. That's all sort of latched on through incremental changes that came along with financial resources for parties with more than 12 MPs. But this is the first time that any motion, either through the front door or the back door, has attempted to reduce the limited remaining rights of people in parties such as my own and the Bloc Québécois with fewer than 12 members or of independent members who don't represent a party at all. In constitutional terms we're still all equal. In constitutional terms our constituents are all equal and deserve equal representation.
The second point I want to make briefly is that it is completely not equal, equivalent or fair to say, “oh well, we had rights to present amendments at report stage in the House and now those rights have been shifted to committee”. In the House, the only way I am ever able to speak to a bill in any substantive way other than through repeat interventions from questions and comments, and the only way I ever get 10 minutes to speak to a bill in the House, particularly with time allocation, is if substantive amendments have been accepted by the Speaker at report stage.
The only way to actually explain my amendments in any significant and real way is in those moments on the floor at report stage. It is not equal or equivalent to have motions deemed to have been moved, to allow members in my position a minute to speak to an amendment, but to prevent them from responding to misunderstandings of it from other members. I could not even respond when a member of the finance committee suggested a friendly amendment and asked me, “Is that friendly?” I wasn't allowed to answer. That happened last spring in the finance committee, the environment committee, natural resources committee, and justice committee. They all did the same thing. They allowed me to present an amendment for one minute but not to respond to it. That opportunity is not equivalent or equal to what's being taken away at the report stage in the House. This is subterfuge. This is an offence to individual members of Parliament and to the institution of Parliament itself, and because I believe you to be really good people over there, I would like to ask you respectfully to withdraw this motion. You don't have a bill before this committee right now. There is no urgency to pass this motion.
As the members of the official opposition have made very clear this morning, this committee has important work to do and this motion is in the way. Rather than push it through.... Although “might makes right” and you have all the votes, in this instance you're stomping on the rights of individual members of Parliament. I know that as individual members yourselves, you don't want to do that. Please withdraw this motion and don't put it to a vote today.
Thank you.