I'm kind of merging the two. I can understand why my friend might be confused, but I was talking about the Liberal election. The Trump election plays into this too; there is a merging of the thoughts. I can appreciate where I'm maybe not being as clear as I need to be when I'm talking about mandates and newly elected people.
Thank you for that, Mr. Reid. I will be on guard to try to be clear in my differentiation.
No, it's quite the opposite. Again, I'm talking about the beginning, which almost seems like it was a different party or, at the very least, a political lifetime ago. Really, we're only talking about weeks, not even months, since they suddenly became as vicious as they are now. There had been indications. We saw things, such as, for example, Bill C-33 and motion number six. This stuff was already there. It just hadn't burbled to the top.
In reference to the Star editorial, I'll read it again. It's good for the government. Where is it...?
Sorry, Chair. I'm not trying to deliberately delay.
It says:
This jibes with an Ekos poll that found that, after decades of erosion, public trust in government spiked after Trudeau’s election win.
I was commenting on how well they played that out, just like a symphony, for days, weeks, and what became months. It looked like it was going to be years. It was politics at its best.
Again, I remember some of those heady days. Our honeymoon didn't last quite as long as this one did, and most don't, but, boy, the government just played it brilliantly. I give the government full marks. There was nary a stumble. Where there's a stumble, a picture of the Prime Minister underneath a headline that attacked the government, just like the Star editorial, takes a lot of the sting away.
This is the only thing that has really stuck in a big way. There have been some other things.
We should have known when we saw motion six. That was unreal. It practically suspended every right the opposition had. The only saving grace was that there was a time limit, but that doesn't change the fact that for a period of months the government was about to give itself spectacular omnipotent powers to run roughshod, at will, over the opposition.
If anybody thinks I'm being a little histrionic in that, go take a look at motion six. Find out what ministers could do by declaration alone. I haven't visited it in a while, and I stand to be corrected. I believe a minister could actually end debate by a declaration. If that's not accurate, there was a similar application. It was, like, unbelievable, let alone having it come from a Liberal government, let alone a Trudeau-led Liberal government.
The only thing that caused the government to back away was the explosion on the floor of the House, when there were accusations of people being manhandled. That brought everything to an acute head. The Prime Minister had to apologize. To his credit, he said that he would take action to ensure that the tone changed and that we would see that action imminently.
To the Prime Minister's credit, within a couple of hours, the government House leader, who I referred to earlier in terms of his respectful request of this committee, Mr.Dominic LeBlanc, rose in his place and announced that the government was withdrawing motion six. That took all the sting out of it. That took the air out of it. Everybody calmed down. That did give us a chance to get back on track.
Most of us thought, okay, that's the last we'll ever see of that ugliness, because even Harper, in his wildest dreams, would never have suggested that he take that kind of power—raw power—and remove what little rights the opposition still had. Lo and behold, motion six finds itself in a reincarnated form known as a “discussion paper”. It's not quite as ugly as motion six, but it is politically ugly in its own right in terms of what it suggests the government would like to do to the nuisance opposition.
To continue with the editorial:
Canadians embraced Trudeau's positive vision and took hope from early signals. His openness with the media, for instance, is a clear improvement over his predecessor.
It was a pretty low bar, which he more than cleared, I will say, but it was a low bar.
