Well, I managed to find a Subway last night. I didn't get to eat anything here, but I found a Subway last night. I'm not going to waste away to nothing. I'm fine.
I was saying that in terms of the accumulated heft of the credibility of the criticism—the Globe and Mail editorial, the Toronto Star editorial, Andrew Coyne—just to give you a sample of what I have to choose from next in terms of the heft of their credibility, and the aforementioned Lawrence Martin, Chantal Hébert, and John Ivison.... These are the kinds of heavyweights who are stepping in and stepping up and making almost identical arguments, and it's not because of plagiarism. It's because they are seeing it in the same way, and that happens to be, in the main, the same perspective as the opposition's.
We know that at the end of the day public opinion is the most powerful force in a democracy. We always run the risk when we do these kinds of things that we'll get easily labelled “obstructionist”, in which case exactly what I'm doing is done by the government to the opposition benches when the government members take great delight in going through the Globe editorial, the Toronto Star editorial, Lawrence Martin, Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne, and John Ivison, when the arguments are against the opposition because we're being histrionically over the top.
More times than I want to admit, we are. That's just the nature of the business. I'm looking at some of you who were here the last time, when you were in exactly the same spot I am, in third place in the House, and you know of what I say, which is that when you're in opposition, sometimes the government has the more persuasive argument, and the opposition is flailing away. That's not unusual.
It is unusual, though, for this many opinion leaders to be consistently in sync with where the opposition members are coming from, because we tend to add partisan spin and components to it, such that we're seen to be kind of over the top. Then these other opinions come wading in and call us on it.
This time, that's not what's happening. You're being abandoned by those who said nice things about your agenda when you were living up to your campaign platform and, in most cases, the way you were conducting yourselves.
Again, as you know, you get it from the analysis. You cannot help but believe that the Prime Minister really does see Parliament similarly to how Mr. Harper did: that it's a nuisance, that it's something that gets in the way of the right thing being done.
The usual arguments for attacking what little rights we have are consistently the same: efficiency and modernization. That's really just another cover for taking away rights from the opposition to make it easier for the government to pass laws. Our job as the opposition, official and otherwise, is to put up resistance and to put up alternatives.
However, there is also a fine line when it's in the nation's interests or in international interests that we would get out of the way and allow things to happen. That's just like today. Today, we find that balance. Here we are. We're in the ditch. This is as big as it gets. We're into a 24-7 filibuster against the initiatives of the government.
This committee made a previous commitment, back in the good old days when we were actually working together in a positive way, that we would meet the Speaker of the Scottish legislature during his visit, which is today, in less than an hour, at one o'clock. When the chair asked us privately if we as a committee were going to honour that commitment, I don't think there was a heartbeat's time before I readily said, “Yes.” So did the Conservatives. Why? Because we have so much respect for Parliament that we believe, even on the opposition benches, that it would be wrong for Canada, especially in our year of great pride, our sesquicentennial....
We had that in Hamilton in 1996. That's how we learned how to say it: sesquicentennial. It took me most of the year.
We believe that the right thing to do would be to not let our domestic politics get in the way of our international obligations. Internationally, we have one Parliament. We are one voice. When I travel in delegations, as a Canadian delegation we present a unified front. We find the ground that we're unified on and we stand there. We don't let our domestic politics.... We don't put out our dirty laundry; we keep that to ourselves. We wait for the bus, the hotel, dinner, or lunch, and then we have 'er out.
When we're with international players, out of respect for the citizens we represent, we all—opposition members and government—present a united front. The corollary to this is that the government members aren't going to turn this into a bring-and-brag and a dog-and-pony show for the government and everything they're doing, because that's going to quickly cause a problem. Normally, in most of the cases I've been involved in, the government members and heads of delegations set a tone that creates ground we can all stand on so that we are a united front. As for our dirty domestic politics and everything that we have—like every other country has—we keep that separate and apart.
On this issue, we did not say no. We did not say that we're in a filibuster, this committee is seized of that, and that meeting is not going to happen, so too bad for the government and let the Minister of Foreign Affairs explain why their actions have resulted in this committee's not honouring its commitment. We could have gone down that road and made a case, and it would have been wrong. The Speaker of the Scottish legislature is here. We've previously said that we would meet with the honourable Speaker, and we will keep that commitment. We will set aside our domestic differences for an hour to allow us to collectively do the right thing.
No matter how much damage this government does to the collegiality of this House, the tradition of our Parliament prevails, that is, that selfless part where as parliamentarians we have to put our own best interests aside from time to time—or those of our party and our caucus aside—and do the right thing for Parliament in looking at Parliament as a symbol of her people. If we disrespect Parliament, we disrespect our own people.
That, Chair, is why, at a minute before one, you will ask whoever has the floor to cease and hold over until after QP, because you've indicated that we're going to rise for QP so that we can all participate. Then we'll all be back here. We'll pick up where we left off and continue to have our knock-down and drag-'em-out fight, but we'll do it Canadian-style. When necessary, we stop fighting and we respectfully do what we need to do as a Parliament.
If I may say so, Chair, it's that potential damage to our Parliament that has us and all these other respected entities and people so up in arms. There's no fairness in any of this, and if ever there was one word that represents a Canadian value.... We try so hard to be fair-minded. That starts with how we treat each other. It showed itself in how this meeting started. Even though we're having pitched battles, colleagues went out of their way to make sure that even though I was held up in traffic, I wasn't denied my otherwise rightful opportunity to continue my remarks.
That's respect. The rules could easily have been used to deny me the floor because I was five or six minutes late in taking my seat. The rules could have been used to deny me that, and that had to be appealing. It just had to be, yet you did the Canadian thing. You were fair-minded and didn't link rain, bad weather, and slow traffic with the rights of a colleague to continue to have their say.