Evidence of meeting #55 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was opposition.
A video is available from Parliament.
9:04 a.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Yes. Thank you. You come close to living up to your last name, even though you don't like it pronounced that way.
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Voices
Oh, oh!
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NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
By the way, he's got a great father-in-law. I love this story. I bumped into him at the airport. He walked up and introduced himself—and you never know at airports, right?—and we shook hands, and he said he was so-and-so's father-in-law. He said, “Yes, I've got to tell you that when I first met the guy I wasn't all that impressed when he told me he wanted to get into politics, but it turns out that he's a pretty good guy.” At this stage, on a personal level, I would agree with him.
It gives me a chance to give a well-deserved compliment, if you'll allow me, Chair, to a Conservative, David Sweet, who, like Filomena Tassi, was the government go-to person in Hamilton—for a much longer period of time—but didn't have the benefit of being a cabinet minister to make these things happen. I know the difference. I was the regional cabinet minister. We had three or four of us, but I was the designated regional minister responsible for the entire region. I know what that job is. There would be lineups outside my constituency office. Virtually everybody had to see me, but at least I was a minister and I had the means to be at cabinet meetings. I had access to other ministers, and I could get into files, and I had the staff support to do it.
Madam Tassi, like David Sweet—and David Sweet did it for all that time—did not have the benefit of a cabinet base to be the regional minister. I have to say—I have said this before publicly—as much as David Sweet and I are about as far apart ideologically as you're ever going to find, he did one hell of a job as our regional representative, as our government representative.
For the Innovation Park, which bordered on his riding and mine.... In fact, you'd almost need a survey to accurately define the line of demarcation between his riding and mine where the Innovation Park is.
Filomena, that's now your riding and, of course, that site is the old Westinghouse site, as those of us who are long-time Hamiltonians would call it. Everything is known by what it used to be.
That is an amazing centre. I know that Filomena is very proud to represent that area. I have a little piece of that property. That's why I say that it's a little mixed, but the point I'm making is that, yes, that fund is the fund that money came from, I believe, and the Innovation Park on Longwood Road in Filomena Tassi's riding in Hamilton is a major success. It's something that I would not only say was a good thing but, as I said at the time and would repeat, is a positive thing.
I have another one for you, too, Hamilton related, just to give you your due. When John Baird was the environment minister, we wanted funding for Randle Reef. Again, Filomena knows the importance of Randle Reef. That has been on the docket now for a decade and a half, I think. We've been looking for funding from all three orders of government. It is one of the known toxic hot spots of the Great Lakes. I went to John not long after they formed the government, because I knew John from our days at Queen's Park. To his credit, David Sweet had gone to him right away, making the case. It's in my riding. The waterfront is in my riding, not David's, and yet. to his credit, he was all over it, with the government and with John.
I went to John and said, look, anything I can do, up to and including...but you do this and I'll say nothing but nice things about your government. Now, again, remember that at the time we had Harper, the environment...there was not exactly a lot of positive stuff, so something positive there was worth its weight in political gold. Yes, that was my strategy. Again, that's the experience of being an opposition member, because what he needed from me was time. What he was saying to me was that he needed some manoeuvring room and me being on my feet in the House drawing attention to it and putting pressure on it was actually not going to help.
I offered the two things I thought he wanted. I offered to stay quiet, which is offering a lot—you all know why—and I said that if he did it, I would say really nice things about his government, because he would deserve it. To cut a long story short, he held me to that. He called me up and said, “Well, Dave, I have two things to tell you: number one, the funding is going to be there, and number two, so are you.” He had me in the green room. They made hay of it. They marched me in there, profiled me, and said, “Even Mr. Christopherson is saying wonderful things.”
I did say wonderful things. I paid that price. But you know what? At the end of the day, it was the right thing. That's part of the job of an opposition member. Sometimes what you have to do is stand up and holler from the rooftops when something is wrong, and other times you need to be strategically smart, shut up, and take yes for an answer.
Again, to his credit, David Sweet played a key role in making that happen, and he did it without benefit of a cabinet position, just as Filomena did up until the recent appointment of our new cabinet minister in Burlington. I always give credit for that, because I know how tough that is. I did it in being a minister, and a relatively senior one at that. I can't imagine what it would be like to be the regional government go-to person and not have that behind you and to still do an effective job. Both David Sweet and Filomena Tassi did that, and they deserve that credit. I am glad to say so.
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Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
David, I think I might hire you as campaign manager—
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Voices
Oh, oh!
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NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Just remember that you get the whole package. You can't cherry-pick the parts that you like, as few as they might be.
To continue:
Canadians embraced Trudeau’s positive vision and took hope from early signals. His openness...is a clear improvement over his predecessor. The un-muzzling of government scientists and the restoration of the long-form census, too, were steps in the right direction.
That's true. It goes on:
But in other important ways, the prime minister is falling short. His delays on access-to-information reforms, his stubborn reliance on cash-for-access fundraisers, his bogus promise of “open” nominations, his electoral-reform charade—all of these weaken democracy. The potential proposals for procedural reform would, on balance, do the same.
It means that they would “weaken democracy”.
Chair, you'll be pleased to know that we're at the last paragraph of this editorial.
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An hon. member
More, more.
9:04 a.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
It concludes:
The spike in public trust that Trudeau brought with him to Ottawa provides a great opportunity for a government with ambitions for an active role. But it also carries a risk. We are seeing in America and elsewhere what can happen when hope turns to cynicism.
You'd almost think I was reading an editorial from a House organ of the NDP. Wow. Those are your buddies...?
I have something new. I know you like new stuff, because that means I'm not repeating.
Who doesn't like listening to and hearing from Andrew Coyne? I thought there might be some people who would shout it out, but....
He's a fascinating guy. I always appreciate his honesty when he's on At Issue. You never know for sure: “boilerplate arguments are not us” would be one way to describe Mr. Coyne. You're never really sure ahead of time where he's going to go. My impression is that he's constantly trying to remove biases and be as fair-minded as possible in his approach and analysis, which is why people listen to what he has to say. Clearly, it's from a small-c conservative perspective.
The lenses he uses often have him arriving at opinions that certainly I didn't expect. Whether I agree or disagree, oftentimes I'm caught off guard. Nobody can ever accuse Mr. Coyne of being anybody's or anything's mouthpiece. We know that democracy is something very close to him. He of course is an advocate for proportional representation, from a conservative perspective, I would say, for the simple reason that it's hard to defend first past the post as being fair.
That's why the current Liberal government ran on a platform to get rid of it. They didn't commit to proportional representation. In fact, what they hoped was that they were going to get the ranked balloting system. They did everything they could to cook the books so that would be the outcome, but nobody was biting. Everybody knew that if they rammed that through, it was further evidence of them trying to fix the system in their favour. We know that it likely would have led to far more majority Liberal governments than any other outcome.
Mr. Coyne is one of those who is a fervent—I think I can use that word—supporter and proponent of proportional representation. On March 27.... No, he got into this earlier yet. You have to give him a lot of credit. That was with the budget going on, and they still managed to see this, through all the smoke and attention around the budget. That really is something.
Anybody who is around here on budget day and the day before knows that the whole place is upside down. You know the budget is coming. In the lobby area, they're starting to bring in all the extra equipment and the extra sets. There's a whole lot happening, so I have to say that for anybody who's a political watcher, saw through all that, and identified something else going on in a small committee room in the basement, in Room 112 North, you have to give them their due. They're doing their job.
What did the ever-interesting and respected Mr. Coyne have to say about this subject?
Now, we all know that the journalists—the authors—don't write the headlines. The headlines are done by editorial people, and they're part of the management. In many cases, the headlines reflect the most attractive aspect they can capture in terms of conveying a message. Oftentimes, too, it's just for cleverness. They must have competitions in the world where people get credit for interesting, unique, and creative headlines.
In this case, it says, “Andrew Coyne: Renewed attempt to rewrite House rules confirms Liberals are not to be trusted”. It has to hurt just to hear that.
Chair, this article reads as follows:
The 18 months of the Trudeau government have been an education in cynicism. Every time you think you have plumbed the depths, every time you believe you have pierced the many veils of their duplicity, you are delighted to discover still another con wrapped inside the last—usually delivered by some smiling minister tweeting variations on “Better is Always Possible” and “Diversity is Our Strength.”
The Harper government never bothered to pretend they were anything other than grimly determined power-seekers, realists of the Don’t Get Your Hopes Up, This Is As Good As It’s Going to Get school. The...Liberals went to some lengths to emphasize they were something different—as if a rare window had been opened for a new kind of politics, whether by the Harper government’s excesses, or the changing of the generations, or the sheer dynastic appeal of the Hippie King. But of course the idealism was just a newer, slicker con, or perhaps an older, slicker one: Trudeau as Kennedy to Harper’s Nixon.
The latest chance to refresh our acquaintance with how deeply cynical the Trudeau people are—not have become: are—is the clutch of grubby expedients the government is now trying to stuff down the opposition’s throats, in the name, prettily, of “parliamentary reform.”
“Prettily”: you've got to love it. That's quite a sentence:
The latest chance to refresh our acquaintance with how deeply cynical the Trudeau people are—not have become: are—is the clutch of grubby expedients the government is now trying to stuff down the opposition’s throats, in the name, prettily, of “parliamentary reform.”
It's poetry.
He continues:
Scholars of the Trudeau style will recognize the expression “reform,” like “merit-based appointments” and “evidence-based policy,” as a tell that some kind of humbug is afoot—
Isn't that great? Here we are in April and using the word “humbug”. It's just delightful. He continues:
—and this is no exception: this is no more aimed at genuine reform of parliament than the Harper government’s Fair Elections Act was aimed at making elections fair.
You would almost think that we were sharing notes with what the opposition is saying, what the Globe and Mail editorial is saying, what the Toronto Star editorial is saying, and what Mr. Andrew Coyne is saying. At some point, the government may need to realize that it's their little Johnny who's out of step. I remember the old joke. It can probably be done better than the variation that I can remember my Mom telling me, but it's something about a mother at the side of a road watching a military parade and seeing her son Johnny. Johnny is marching in a different step than everybody else, and Mom says, “Look at that: only my son is doing it right.”
No, this is not Johnny doing it right in terms of your government's one lone voice that this is the right thing to do. You really are out of step with the rest of the parade in terms of real democracy, real democratic reform, and real change.
He continues:
We had an early foretaste of this with the infamous Motion Six, when Dominic LeBlanc, that icon of new-age politics, was Government House Leader:—
I'm sorry, Dom, but that's funny. He continues, in reference to motion six, with:
a change to Commons rules that would have truncated Parliament's right to debate bills—that would, indeed, have allowed a minister or a parliament[ary] secretary to unilaterally adjourn the House—
As you'll remember, I was talking earlier about some of the powers it gave ministers. Wow. Talk about draconian. Indeed, that's what I was referencing. A minister could unilaterally adjourn the House—or a parliamentary secretary. Unilaterally adjourn the House.... That's the way King Charles wanted things to be. He liked that idea—very efficient. In a more modern context, not that he had them in his day, that kind of thinking does make the trains run on time. If you're concerned about something a little broader than just making sure the trains are on time, then you're going to have a problem with this.
The great democrats.... Yes, that's real change: we went from a democratic House to a parliamentary.... It's not that I'm putting down parliamentary secretaries. I used to be one; provincially, we called them parliamentary assistants. My first appointment was as parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Finance, and I held that position until I went into cabinet in my own right. I'm not putting down parliamentary assistants or parliamentary secretaries, but I am pointing out that they are rather low on the totem pole in terms of absolute power. Nobody ever mistook the powers of a parliamentary secretary and those of a full-line minister—nobody.
Yet this government, this Trudeau sunny ways and respect Parliament Liberal government, was prepared to give parliamentary secretaries the absolute power to adjourn the House of Commons. That would have been just one part of it, Mr. Coyne says:
—while imposing severe limits on the opposition's ability to delay proceedings—had L'Affaire Elbow not intervened.
He can be very funny, can't he? He continues:
That alone ought to have signalled how sincere Trudeau's frequent protests of his devotion to democratic accountability are: as calculated, as fake—and as useful!—as his feminism.
Ouch. That leaves a mark. He says:
Well now the Liberals are back, with a new, more attack-proof House Leader, Bardish Chagger, and a new attempt to rewrite House rules in the interest of “efficiency.”
My editorial addition would be “in the interest of making the trains run on time”. He continues, Chair:
Officially it's just a “discussion paper,” but if so it's one the government seems peculiarly unwilling to discuss or even explain. Once again there are [time] limits proposed on time-honoured procedural tactics with which opposition parties might delay government business or otherwise express their unhappiness. So, too, there are new and more draconian proposals—
That's not just a word that I've used, but one that Mr. Coyne feels is aptly used in this context.
Again, Mr. Reid, I think it's fair to say that Mr. Coyne would be one who would come under the heading of “wordsmith”: every single word matters and is thought about for its impact, and for style, but ultimately impact. He used the word “draconian”.
Again, my good friend John Baird would love to hear all this, because I used to throw the word “draconian” around when it was Mike Harris I was facing. I'd had experience, before Harper arrived, in dealing with right-wing autocrats. Anyway, I was forever using “draconian”, and John would have great fun with that in different contexts.
I'll move along. He says:
So, too, there are new and more draconian proposals to limit debate and scrutiny of government business, with fixed numbers of days set for each stage of a bill's progress through the House—thus sparing the government the unpleasant necessity of passing a motion to curtail debate—limits on speeches in committee—
I have gone on about that ad nauseam, at great length. The chair is nodding his head, because he has to sit here through all of that. It continues:
—and the elimination of Friday sittings.
Other proposals are more in the nature of missed opportunities. As in the British Parliament, there is a proposal that one day of question period each week be reserved for questions to the prime minister, which would be more worthy of praise if this were in addition to his regular daily question period appearances and not, as seems strongly probable, in place of them.
Chair, again it deserves focus that virtually every comment from every opposition member, from the Globe editorial, from the Toronto Star editorial, and now the comments of Mr. Coyne, mentions that whether or not using Wednesday for the Prime Minister to answer all the questions is a good idea or a bad idea is in large part dictated by whether or not we can expect that it will be the only time the Prime Minister is going to show up, in which case there would be a huge net gain for the government, with no more of that pesky, time-wasting effort of getting ready for question period every day.
Again, I get it. Question period wasn't exactly my favourite time of the day when I was a minister, that's for sure. I can remember that the sweetest sound that I could hear was at some time in June, when the Speaker would say that “the House now rises until September” sometime. It was like, “Ah, great.” That's the best time in being a cabinet minister: when you don't have that pesky question period. You don't have to spend all that time preparing. You don't have to deal with all the messy parts of your portfolio. You don't have to go through the stress of the follow-up scrums, which are often tougher than the actual questions in the House. There, all you have to do there is answer and sit down. It's not so easy in a scrum.
It was always a sweet sound: this House now does rise for the summer until.... You would have two months of governing without that pesky House and that pesky question period. I got a lot more done. My day was far more productive because I didn't have to carve out anywhere from three-quarters of an hour to two hours getting ready for question period.
Given the ministries that I had, which were Solicitor General and Corrections, meaning all police, all fire, all emergency services, and all the jails, and probation and parole, and, and, and.... They are the stuff of great headlines. You know the saying, “If it bleeds, it leads.” I can't tell you how many times I was the focus of the lead-off question from the official opposition and then from Mr. Harris, who was the leader of the third party. If that wasn't enough fun, Senator Runciman, over in the other place here, used to be my critic in that place, and if you've ever had Bob Runciman come at you, then you know you have been come at.
He was a great guy, by the way.
I'll tell you a quick story, if I may. We were getting close to rising in September near the end of the term, and we all had a fairly good hunch that the House might not come back, so some of the veterans were getting up and saying a few things they wanted to get on the record. As it turned out, the House didn't come back, and we had a general election.
Senator Runciman was very generous when he got up. We had gone through quite a number of Solicitors General, both Liberal and NDP. The ministry was kind of chewing them up and grinding them out. It was my turn on the conveyor belt, and Bob was nice enough to get up and say—I can't remember the exact quote—something about how I was one of the nicest and most effective in a given period of time.
It was something very complimentary that normally you wouldn't say, especially Bob. I won't say it, but if anybody knows his nickname, you would know that he's not normally given to giving out bouquets in the House to cabinet ministers, particularly those for whom he's the critic. But he did on that one occasion. It was almost half a sentence; it wasn't that much. With me being a politician, never one to miss an opportunity, guess what happened in the next election in Hamilton Centre provincially. There were great big letters with quotes from the minister's critics, even, saying wonderful things about what a wonderful job I did.
Sure enough, I was in the House a couple of days after the election. I looked up and there was Bob Runciman standing there looking at me, saying, “Thanks, Dave, thanks a lot.” You and I both know what he heard from the Conservative candidate in that election: “What are you doing? How is this helpful? Thank you ever so much.” That's not to mention that I came kind of close to breaking I think an unknown code. You don't do that, especially when somebody is getting out of character. The problem is that I learned about that code afterwards. I didn't do it deliberately. I knew it wasn't going to be good news in his camp, but I wasn't really worried much about him. The election was coming up, and I was worried about my election.
Anyway, I say all of that because there's a consistency to almost all of these arguments. Let me frame it this way. Do you notice that in the respected critiques and criticisms from The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and Mr. Coyne, notwithstanding that histrionics is a justifiable accusation and I wear it because it's true, there aren't that many arguments we're using or creating that are over the top and not reinforced by these other serious entities? They don't care about our politics. They deal with the issues as they see them.
I think it's edifying that those arguments in all three cases are so similar to the arguments we're making, and the absence of arguments we're making that they aren't reflecting also.... Again, Chair, all of these I'm raising to show that what I think was the government's reason for what they're doing, and to try to find some justification for all this, is at the very best a failed plan. These comments from editorial panels, editorial boards, and individuals of the stature of Mr. Coyne reflect the fact that there is something seriously wrong in the state of Denmark.
The blame goes nowhere else other than to the feet of the Liberal government, which to this second refuses to acknowledge the legitimate criticisms and critiques of the opposition and those of third party interests in our pluralistic democracy. It's very telling. It's also a bit unusual.
Normally what happens is that you throw everything but the kitchen sink into an argument, and many times you're throwing everything you can to see what sticks. There are all kinds of different techniques that we've used and that the Liberals used when they were in opposition. Many times when the grown-ups weigh in and give a dispassionate analysis of things, a lot of the stuff that we're off on flights of fancy with don't even get mentioned because it's more political and entertaining than it is germane to the point.
I think it's fair to say—and it's a bit of self-criticism—that is often the way it goes. It's very rare that the arguments of the opposition so finely focused and replicated in other arm's-length, third party opinions. That should be worrisome for the government. Well, a lot of this should be worrisome, but that should be very worrisome. There are no cracks here. It's not as if the government is going to take the floor in a minute and start giving, what, bigger editorials? There may be some that support the government, and I'd be interested in seeing which newspapers are putting their reputation on the line to back this sort of thing, but the government certainly can't get any of the biggies. Where there might be a compliment, it's more than wrapped in criticism. I'll go back to that in one second, Chair, but that has to be making Liberal backbenchers nervous.
I remind Liberal backbenchers of my experience and more of the scars when I was in government and then in re-election. We started with a big majority of 74 seats on election night. By the time the polls closed on the next election night, there were 17 of us.
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An hon. member
Shameful.
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NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
What's relevant in my message to the Liberal backbenchers is that, of the 17, only four weren't cabinet ministers, and I was one of them. On election night in 1990, we had six seats. There were six seats in Hamilton; we had six seats in our government. In the following election in 1995, when I looked around, I was the only New Democrat left standing, and I won my seat by less than 1,000 votes, as Filomena knows very well.
Was that the one you were in, Filomena?
9:04 a.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Filomena was my Liberal opponent and damn near defeated me. It was close. I'm going by memory, but I think I won by 900 votes and change.
Quite frankly, if the Cons hadn't done so well, I'd have gone down the tubes. But because it was a Harris landslide, there was enough spillover—they could never win Hamilton Centre—to save my rear end. That's the closest election I've ever had. I just barely won. I'd just point out to the government backbenchers that out of the 17 elected only four weren't ministers, which shows how hard it is to survive when the tide goes out if you don't have the added profile of having been a cabinet minister, with all the benefits of that. You can show that you've done things, yada, yada.... There were only four of that 17, so when government backbenchers—most of you—start to see these kinds of stars lining up, take a look at what's in front of you.
The Conservatives and the NDP are practically blood brothers over here. Do you know that once a day we hook arms and sing Kumbaya? If it were allowed, we'd have a little campfire and we'd wear team jackets.
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An hon. member
Blue ones.
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NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Not blue, but blue and orange, which, by the way, happen to be the colours I used when I ran for mayor and went down in flames. That's a different story.
The first thing you did was what one would almost believe to be an insurmountable challenge, a politically impossible assignment, but the Liberals have done it: the Cons and the NDP are united in opposition against the government, to the point that our staffs are working with each other seamlessly. Some of us feel that we almost should have a chair with our name on it in the Conservative House leader's office, because we're over there all the time, with me partly reminiscing but mostly hatching up schemes against you guys.
Normally, the Liberals can expect that because the Conservative ideology and the NDP ideology don't tend to overlap too often, it's a great advantage, especially for a majority government that has all that power that we've talked about, as referenced in these editorials. What better than to add to that an overwhelming majority, with all the power you get, and divided opposition benches? It's the sweet spot. But in this case, the government gets to claim the trophy, because they have managed to unite the opposition benches.
How did they do that, Chair? By being even more anti-democratic than Harper. Now, I could be missing something. I'm not always the sharpest pencil in the box, and I don't say that I am.
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An hon. member
Say it isn't so.
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NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Well, you have to be truthful. When you get to be my age, you have to do an honest reflection.
In my estimation, it seems that the backbenchers in particular should be paying very close attention to these stars lining up: the opposition is united; the major opinion leaders of the nation are calling out the government on a file on which they already broke a major promise and betrayed untold thousands of their supporters; and, drip, drip, drip, this committee continues to meet day and night with not very nice things being said about the government.
I don't know what they're thinking in the PMO, but if I were over on those government benches that I'm looking at and were one of those backbenchers, I'd surely be paying a whole lot of serious attention to this, because a lot of the people who voted for you wanted to get rid of first past the post. You promised that you would and you turned your back on that promise. Trust me: it's not as big a problem for the Attorney General to overcome that and get re-elected because, remember, “all politics is local”.
Mr. Reid, that said was by what American House Speaker? We both know it.
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NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
It was Tip O'Neill, absolutely.
All politics is local, so if I were these government backbenchers—on this committee in particular, but even as a backbencher in general—in terms of my own re-election, I would be paying great attention to how much traction the label “anti-democratic” has and is sticking.
We do know from certain little birdies that there were some interesting discussions at the Liberal retreat last weekend about this matter. It would seem, from some little birdies' reports, that some of you are getting the message that this could be a problem, that it is not something you're going to counter-spin with a ten percenter, and that the longer this goes on, as my friend Jack Layton would say, the more this circles the stain. The stain is the betrayal in regard to changing first past the post. It was an outright, flat out—there's no other interpretation—betrayal. Then, on a related file, this government decided to get even more anti-democratic than breaking their campaign promise to the very people who elected them.
It would seem that some of the brighter lights over there, according to birdie reports, reflected their concerns at the caucus meeting. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though anyone was listening. No one is listening. They're just leaving you out here, stranded in this lifeboat. You just float along, getting pushed by the waves of arguments—justifiable arguments—coming from the opposition benches. Boy, if ever there were a time to be on the transportation committee, the health committee, or the public accounts committee—anything other than PROC—this would be it. Maybe it wasn't such a gift, my friends, I'll just leave it at that, and it's getting worse every day.
I know that I'm starting to grate on some of you. That's fair, but the really bad news, well, the good news, is that eventually I do stop. That does happen.
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An hon. member
It does?
9:04 a.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
It does. At some point, I stop. I only got about three hours' sleep, so it may happen more quickly than I would prefer today. I was lying there last night, quiet, but with eyes like silver dollars. I couldn't get to sleep. I kept thinking about all the arguments I didn't make.
That's a little bit of good news, but really, is that as good as it gets? Is the best news you have for today that at some point Christopherson is going to shut up? Is that the highlight of your day? The bad news is that once I'm done, there are more than enough willing Conservatives ready to take their places and point out how undemocratic this government is being.
9:04 a.m.
An hon. member
Amen.
9:04 a.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Aforementioned cabinet ministers are off doing ministerial stuff, important stuff, and being treated importantly, being on TV, being talked about, and being the focus of Question Period. It goes a long way to helping get you re-elected when you have all that extra attention for being a big shot.
To be an MP is to be a big shot, but it's a much bigger shot to be a cabinet minister, and the Prime Minister...? Well, I don't think he's too worried about your plight over here, because he's down in New York rubbing elbows with the Secretary General of the United Nations. I'm sure that no muscles are getting sore and that there's no dirt under his fingernails. He's doing just fine, thank you. He's taking care of international business, being the Prime Minister, and doing the selfies—all the stuff that he does. He probably has a good chance of being re-elected in his riding, too, all politics being local. It doesn't do you any good to be a big-shot cabinet minister if you don't have a seat under you anymore. You're no longer a big-shot anything.
They're all fine, but some of the backbenchers on other committees are starting to get a little concerned, especially the ones who've been around for a while. I won't say anything more, other than to just take a look at who's sitting close to the action and who's sitting as far away from the action as he can get and still be declared a member of the committee. There these members sit: sitting ducks come to mind.
You ought to be awfully worried. You really, really should be. That's not everybody. Some of you got elected on your own name, but let's face a lot of the votes that went into that ballot box and had an X beside your name were there because of the brand that Justin Trudeau presented the Liberals as. As both the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail pointed out, that part of what they offered, at the very least, is not on display here now, today.
To the best of my knowledge, there are still no talks going on with the House leaders. Sometimes they happen quietly and quickly, so I'm not saying with 100% certainty that they aren't, but I am saying that in most cases, if there were any movement like that, Tyler and I would at least be given a heads-up, so that we would know in the back of our minds as we are going through this that there's something at play there, we should keep it in mind, and things could change quickly as a result. I don't have such notice.
Have you been notified of any meeting, Tyler?
No. Tyler is telling me he has not been notified of any meetings. It would seem the government is just going about its business, leaving the Liberal MPs to their own destiny.
I will continue with the excellent contribution of Mr. Coyne to this discussion:
The only limit on the government's power to prorogue the House, which Stephen Harper notoriously used to get out of tight political situations, would be a requirement for the government to explain its reasons for proroguing. (In fairness, the Liberals did not promise to limit this power, only that they would not abuse it.)
There is not a lot of evidence that we do not need to keep a standing watch on that one. He continues:
More encouraging is a proposal to give the Speaker the power to break up omnibus bills into separate parts, with separate votes on each.
Taken as a whole, however, there is much in the document that might legitimately alarm the opposition.
Do ya think...? I will say it again:
Taken as a whole, however, there is much in the document that might legitimately alarm the opposition.
He continues:
As if to rub the opposition's noses in it, on the same day the “discussion paper” was unveiled, a motion was put before the relevant House committee (on Procedure and House Affairs), ostensibly on the initiative of a Liberal member, demanding it report back with recommendations for changes to the House Standing Orders by June 2. The government has offered no explanation for the unseemly rush; neither has it indicated a readiness to entertain any opposition amendments, on a matter that plainly affects the balance of powers within the House. It is not unreasonable to call this Motion Six Redux.
I've already gone on about how vicious motion six was, and how rapidly the government backtracked when it became clear that just because they were the ones doing it, it would be no less odious or undemocratic. That's an argument that we've been making for some time, which is that this is like motion six all over again, even the part where you're going to ram it down our throats.
To continue with Mr. Coyne:
If all this sounds unduly suspicious, recall that there is a context to this. After the prime minister's insouciant refusal to admit fault in the matter of the cash-for-access fundraisers, after the charade of “open nominations” in ridings that had clearly been fixed to suit the prime minister's preferences, after the elaborate fraud that was Senate reform, after all the broken promises on everything from the combat mission against ISIL to the open bidding on the CF-18 replacement to—sigh—electoral reform, the Trudeau government has earned no benefit of the doubt.
9:04 a.m.
An hon. member
Heavy sigh.
9:04 a.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
That got the heavy sigh. You're right. That's what it should be: a heavy sigh.
To continue:
Whatever short-term advantage these and other ruses may have yielded them, they came with a price, and that price is very simple: as they are not to be trusted, so they are not, in fact, trusted.
Circle the stain. Damage the brand. How could you hurt the Liberal brand more than by having all these influential entities calling you all these awful undemocratic names? The biggest problem for the government backbenchers is that the criticisms are true, they are warranted, and they are justified, and your government is doing nothing to get you out of this mess.
They had a week to come up with a strategy. When they didn't use that time, the chair gave them another two days. They still did nothing except, to the best of my knowledge, one relatively brief meeting with the House leaders, and that was it—kaput. We came back here yesterday at four o'clock, picked up where we had left off, and went until midnight. We started again at 9 o'clock this morning. Nothing is moving out there.
I say to the government backbenches: we here on the opposition benches have more than enough fuel to keep this fire going for a very long time. It would seem that by the time your government figures out what they're going to do.... They've done the math, and you have such an overwhelming majority that they really can afford to lose a couple of handfuls of you. It doesn't even affect the majority government. Nobody ever believes they're one of those who's being thrown overboard, but I have to tell you that if I were a Liberal member of PROC right now, I'd be reaching for my life jacket just in case.
Chair, that would be the end of that article.
9:04 a.m.
An hon. member
So close....
