Did I say Laurier? I should have said St. Laurent. Thank you very much for the correction.
There was no appetite for closure, but because it was on the books, St. Laurent was able to utilize it.
I point this out for a reason. I mentioned earlier in my intervention that what we do now will have repercussions, will have consequences. It may not be apparent to individuals at the time, but any action causes a reaction. Even though closure was not intended to be enacted after 1913, it was, because it was available to the government of the day.
Fast forward from 1956 to 1969, when time allocation was first introduced by the current Prime Minister's father, Pierre Trudeau. It was hotly debated, but the reaction was not quite as visceral as it was in 1956, and certainly not as much as it was in 1913, because by that time Canadians had been somewhat acclimatized to the fact that parliaments had the ability to shut down debate. Prime Minister Trudeau the elder again whipped his caucus, and time allocation was something that came on the books as a standing order.
I note with great interest and point out to committee members that in the five years prior to the introduction, the approval, and the ultimate passage of time allocation as a parliamentary tool, a number of different parliamentary procedural committees discussed this very concept, and on five different occasions all-party committees decided not to approve time allocation. Why? Because they didn't have unanimous consent.
I'm underscoring this because it has been a long-standing tradition. Whether or not a special committee on parliamentary reform is constructed, whether or not an all-party committee is formed to examine potential changes to the Standing Orders, each and every time throughout history, all parliamentarians agreed that they must have unanimous consent—that is, until now.
Make no mistake that what this government is attempting to do is to shut down the ability of the opposition to prevent changes to a standing order by not agreeing to grant unanimous consent, merely allowing a parliamentary committee of which they have a majority to determine what standing orders should be changed.
Mr. Chair, that in my view is not a discussion, such as this government continually brays they want to have. It is not a conversation, because a conversation has to be two-way, and you have to be able to listen to and accept arguments from both sides and both points of view. This is merely a totalitarian attempt by this government to unilaterally impose their will on the opposition under the guise of a parliamentary committee.
I would suggest to my honourable colleagues on the government side that this has the potential to be extremely problematic for them from an electoral standpoint. This heavy-handed, ham-handed attempt by the government to curtail the opposition's ability to affect the rules of this place will be seen as dictatorial, as draconian, and they very well could end up paying the price for it.
I talked a little earlier in my intervention about how many of the Liberals were elected by a very small margin in the last election and how they have disappointed a lot of the progressive voters by their actions to date. They have greatly disappointed progressives who were looking forward to a government to follow through on their commitment to electoral reform. They were very disappointed with a government who said that they would respect the will of provincial and environmental jurisdictions by approving pipelines. They were disappointed, to say the least, that the government made a number of promises and have not fulfilled them—the two I have mentioned plus the fact that the modest $10-billion deficits have now mushroomed into a $30-billion deficit.
There is a host of progressive voters, I would suggest, throughout Canada from coast to coast to coast, and to the fourth coast, who will be looking to rethink their position and rethink their support for Liberals because of these disappointments. I would suggest that this course of action will only add to the frustration and disappointment of those progressive voters. I believe that will translate itself into votes, but they won't be votes for Liberals.
I would also suggest to members at this committee that one of the benefits of being elected is that backbenchers, in a truly enlightened government, have the respect of their party. I would humbly suggest that that respect has not been afforded anyone at this table. You know as well as I do that you have been instructed to follow a certain course of action to ensure that at the very least this filibuster continues. I suspect—although I will probably never be able to prove with any certainty—that many of you in your heart of hearts disagree with the approach your government is taking.
I can speak from experience that in the previous Parliament—I think most of my colleagues, if they were being completely honest, would agree—there were initiatives our government in the past engaged in that many of us did not agree with, but we only have ourselves to blame if we were silent. We can always fall back on the old tried-and-true adage that, well, we were just following party discipline. We wanted to be loyal. That's all well and good, and I agree with party discipline. I agree with having a united front, because if you didn't have it, it would prove to be politically disastrous for any political party. However, there comes a time when every single parliamentarian and every single citizen has to say stop.
I believe every Canadian knows the difference between right and wrong. We know that intuitively. It is simply wrong to try to impose the will of the government, the tyranny of the majority, upon the political process and the Standing Orders that guide us all. I believe that if members of the government—many of whom are sitting at this table—would speak honestly, they would agree with that statement.
That's not going to have any influence on the outcome, but I can tell you this. Having successfully run for election on five different occasions, I know what it's like to go back to my constituency and try to explain to constituents a course of action that my government took that was not appreciated. You can spin as long and as much as you want, but the reality is that constituents know when a course of action taken was wrong.
I heard it loud and clear in the last election and lead-up to the last campaign. Luckily for me, my voters did not blame me, but they blamed the prime minister and the government. Frankly, if I had been in any other region of Canada except the Prairies, there's a good chance I would not have been re-elected, simply because voters wanted to express their displeasure at the actions of our government.
The first individuals on the government side who will potentially experience some heartache from this action, combined with the actions their government did before, are backbenchers. They will be asked why they didn't stand up and say no.
To credit the current government, and to the members of the Liberal Party, on a few occasions I have been pleased to see government members stand up in opposition to their marching orders, usually with respect to private members' bills. I think that's extremely positive. I think that's healthy. But this is something that goes beyond just a private member's bill. If there is a point in time when government backbenchers should say, no, we don't agree with this course of action, then this is the time. Trust me, if some of these changes go through, and if you are successful in your re-election bids, at one point in time in your future you will be sitting in the opposition benches, and you will have to live with the changes you brought down yourselves. It will not be very pretty.
I would also suggest that if the government simply agreed to this long-standing tradition of unanimous consent being required, the government might be pleasantly surprised at the reactions of some of the points that you put up for discussion. More than anything else, this impasse we are currently seized with would be completely eliminated. There could be a fruitful discussion on potential changes.
I can let members of the government know that in the previous Parliament, during the discussions of our all-party committee, many of the items it raised in its discussion paper were raised and discussed by our committee. It wasn't that all of them were opposed vehemently. In some cases there may have been one party that had some objections for some particular reason. In that case we took that standing order proposal off the table. However, there was some intelligent, reasoned, and rational discussion. Arguments were being made that did sway from time to time the opinions of others. That could be the case here, but it will not take place if the government continues to take the position that it does not require or request unanimous consent.
Simply put, if the government wants to continue down this road, and it appears it is doing just that, members of the opposition will have no choice but to continue our opposition, and not just continue our tactics such as filibusters, but to increase in intensity our opposition in other tactical and procedural ways.