Another says, referring to the Prime Minister in question period currently, that he refuses to answer when he's there now.
That's a good point; he rather does.
Again, another person says, “There needs to be a vote of no confidence” and puts three exclamation points after it.
“He is destroying our country with a smile on his disgusting face.” There are four exclamation points after that sentence.
Another fellow says: “Hold him accountable, Blake. I know you're committed to that. Thank you.”
I guess what I would add to that is that I'm not the only one committed to it. There are many opposition MPs—in fact, I'm sure every single one of them—committed to it. That's why I hope they have comfortable seats on the other side: they're going to need them.
Another person said, talking about the Prime Minister: “He is never held accountable, never answers a direct question. He makes me sick.”
The next one I actually can't use, because it refers to the Prime Minister in a very uncomplimentary and unparliamentary way, so I won't cite it.
The next gives good advice, I think, for her fellow Canadians. She says: “Should start putting the heat on Trudeau MPs on 'How can they support their leader?' and make his caucus start going against him. Everybody should start calling the Liberal members of Parliament.” It's good advice, actually. People need to hear it. The Liberal MPs need to hear from people who are concerned about this.
I also had an email, which I got earlier—I have my phone plugged in, so I may read it a little later—in which someone talks about feeling that there should almost be a revolt in Parliament, I guess. That's essentially what they're trying to say. I don't have it in front of me, so I won't read it word for word, but that's essentially the point they were trying to make.
The point is that this isn't just a few opposition MPs lighting their hair on fire over nothing; this is Canadians saying this is not acceptable. They get it. They even understand some of the tools that Parliament might be able to use to hold the government to account.
Maybe I shouldn't have shared those, because maybe the government will try to take them away too.
It obviously concerns me, and it concerns a lot of Canadians. I think that's something the government needs to pay attention to: the reaction of people that I'm seeing on social media, as I've outlined from some of the comments on my page. I know that a number of things have been going around on social media showing concern about this, and there have been many media articles.
This can't be going well. Next week, Liberal MPs will be back in their ridings, and maybe—I'm not sure, but maybe—they will hear from their constituents and their concerns about this. Maybe that will give them some fresh perspective. Let's hope.
I want to address this idea in a little more detail, Mr. Chair, the whole idea about this being rammed through Parliament. It's a word that's been used a lot today. It's been used in the media; Canadians are using it; it's really a good way of describing what's happening here: it's being rammed through. That's the attempt, anyway.
This also has been alluded to many times today: the so-called “discussion paper”, which I'll talk to in more detail, because I've analyzed it and see the key.... I guess what the Liberals have to do is to accomplish their marching here at committee. This was put out, as was mentioned, on a Friday as a constituency or break week, or whatever you want to call it, was starting, essentially meaning that they wouldn't have to be accountable in Parliament for the next week concerning these items.
Then of course came the motion that Mr. Simms put forward within minutes or an hour and a half or whatever it was of that meeting, which is—and I'm not casting aspersions on Mr. Simms, because I know it isn't really something he wrote himself—draconian. It's: “Ram this through. Don't let the opposition have any say. Get it back as quickly as possible.”
Where's the accountability? Where are the “sunny ways”? Where are the efforts to be open? Where's the different kind of politics? Where's any of that in this? I don't see it.
Maybe it's invisible ink or something, because the stuff I see on the paper is certainly not any of that. When I look at that, and I look at the report this committee put out previously....
We started looking at the Standing Orders. At one of our very first meetings as a committee in this Parliament, we had then House leader Dominic LeBlanc come in and break up the Standing Orders into chunks. I could be a little bit off on how he explained this, but think it was his suggestion and not the committee's—although we took it up as a committee—to look at the family friendly initiatives. I believe that came from the House leader—I could be mistaken—but in breaking it up into chunks, we certainly looked at the so-called family friendly initiatives.
Of course, one of the things the Liberals were trying to call family friendly, somehow—I'm still not sure how it really would be so—was this idea of eliminating Friday sittings so that Liberal MPs could have another day off every week. It was opposed pretty vigorously by opposition MPs. I would say it was pretty significantly opposed by Canadians as well.
I'm just trying to find the report. I have a lot of papers here in front of me. I believe this is it, but give me a second, Mr. Chair.
Yes, this is the report itself. It was a unanimous report, I believe. Was it not, Mr. Chair? I believe it was a unanimous report of the committee. We had looked at the Friday sittings, and the conclusion was this:
Given the lack of consensus the Committee has heard regarding whether the potential benefits of eliminating Friday sittings outweigh the potential drawbacks, the Committee does not intend to propose a recommendation regarding this matter.
Now I'm going to point something out here, because one could try to read into this some intention of “at this time,” or “Maybe we'll revisit this.”
I'll point out that a couple of pages later—and this is in referring to the idea of implementing proxy voting or electronic voting—it says:
The Committee has no recommendations to make at this time regarding the implementation of proxy voting or electronic voting; it may revisit this topic in further study.
There's a clear distinction between that and this other one about the Friday sittings. In the one about the electronic voting or the proxy voting, in two different ways, it indicates that though they're not going to do anything with this now, they may come back to look at it later. It says that it has no recommendations to make at this time, and that it may revisit this topic in further study.
However, when we were looking at the changes about Friday sittings, there was nothing that indicated any of that. In fact, it clearly says there was no consensus and that the Committee did not intend to propose a recommendation regarding this matter, period, full stop, end of story.
The committee has expressed its will unanimously. That means including opposition MPs from two different parties. It means government MPs, who had the majority and who, had they wanted to try to ram a change through at that time, could have done it. But they unanimously agreed with the opposition members at that time that this was not something we should proceed with.
Let's see. It looks like that was on February 2 of last year. Fast-forward about a year, and we get this letter or whatever you want to call it, a directive, whatever it is, from the new government House leader.
I'll go through it in detail in a few minutes, Mr. Chair. It does refer again to the electronic voting, but it also brings in the idea of getting rid of the Friday sittings, giving Liberal MPs that Friday off that they're so seeking, for whatever reason that might be.
Explain to me how that is any kind of effort to work with the committee, which was so promised to us by the new democratic institutions minister. Maybe this is why they keep having to replace these people. They keep making promises that....
Mind you, I guess that's not true, because then we'd have to replace the Prime Minister too, if we were going to get rid of the people who didn't keep their promises. So that can't be it, I guess.