Yes, it's the supplementary estimates. It gives them an opportunity to ask questions of the ministers or departments or what have you.
I can remember all parties, whether they were in opposition or government or the third party or what have you, wanting ministers to appear before committee to ask questions. I can remember, and again, I was a rookie, sitting back and watching a minister literally being—to put it in words is hard—attacked. He was attacked again and again and again. This minister couldn't even get the answers out.
That's when it hit me—and I want to get back to the motion—that the opposition didn't want that minister there to ask that minister relevant questions or important questions on behalf of Canadians. On the contrary, they wanted the minister there for a snippet, a clip or a quote. That's when I started to say, hold on here.
I want to get back to this motion. Let's be straight up here. The Prime Minister is in the House of Commons every Wednesday for question period. This is just one example, and we went through this yesterday. To his credit, he takes questions for the whole question period. I don't want to say that's unprecedented, but certainly in my limited political experience I had not seen that before, that the Prime Minister of Canada comes and actually doesn't defer questions to ministers or other people. He doesn't sidestep. He stands there and takes questions from everybody for two hours.
I'll go back to the motion. I know this is all about getting the Prime Minister to come into PROC to testify, but I ask this question of the committee: If these questions need to be asked of the Prime Minister, why can't these questions be asked in question period? Again, as my New Brunswick colleagues will know, I'm not a political machine here. I was elected to represent my riding and I was elected to fight for my riding. On the actual political side of things, even though I'm a politician, I will admit that I'm not as strong as others are.
The Prime Minister is available each and every Wednesday to take questions. If these questions need to be asked so badly, why can't they be asked in question period? The last time I checked, the Conservative Party had lots of opportunities to ask questions, so why can't the questions be asked there? They would be asked in front of all Canadians, in front of all reporters, to be scrutinized, to be talked about on TV that night and to be in the papers the next day. He's available. He's there for opposition parties to ask questions of him.
I don't want to go too far down that hole. It really struck me this morning when I was thinking about this meeting. I can remember when previous prime ministers would duck question period. They wouldn't be available. You can count on your hand how many times they were available to take questions, yet the Prime Minister is there week in, week out, every Wednesday, standing there taking questions from opposition parties. It doesn't matter if you're the Leader of the Opposition, the leader of the next party or a backbencher. It doesn't matter; he answers the questions.
Then I go back to the fact that he's available to answer questions and he does. What's the big deal about getting him here to answer questions when he's available to answer questions? I just wanted to state that. Again, I certainly am the first to admit that I have some good support on the parliamentary side on the whys, hows and whats, but he's there to answer questions on Wednesdays, and I don't understand why those questions can't be asked.
The motion's there. I'm here to talk about the motion. I was certainly very appreciative of the opportunity I had last time to speak on the motion. I know everyone on this committee was waiting with bated breath for every word I said, and I certainly appreciated that. I could tell by looking at the Zoom screen that people were anticipating what was coming next and were excited for what was to come, but time did run out last time. Time did run out, unfortunately.
I want to pick up where I left off last time. I was talking about the historical precedent. I know it has been said earlier in the meeting, conveniently, with the greatest respect, of course, “That was then and this is now” or “Don't worry about the past. It doesn't matter what happened then. It doesn't matter what Prime Minister Harper did. It doesn't matter about the proroguing and about the minority government and proroguing to save his government. This is about now.” However, it's important. It's important for the committee. It's important for me to talk about that.
With respect to the motion and keeping the motion in mind, it's important to talk about what happened in the past to educate ourselves and to educate Canadians from coast to coast to coast about prorogation, what it means, how it's used, how it can be abused and how, at other times, it's not abused—how sometimes it's the proper thing to do, the right thing to do, when you're dealt with a curveball, with a generational pandemic. That does not moderately changed our lives. It has impacted every one of our lives in a major way.
Little did I know when I came back on March 13 from Ottawa how quickly things would change for us, how our world would change, how our country would change, how the way we needed to govern would change, how what we needed to do would change, how we needed to pivot and how we needed to come up with programs for Canadians, whether it was the wage subsidy, CEBA, CERB, the recovery benefit, expanded EI, rent relief—the list goes on and on. We all know them off by heart.
I can remember at the end of March wondering if I could remember the names for CERB and all that stuff. I think all of us go to bed at night quoting CERB and the programs that we have delivered. Things change, and we did need to reboot, if you will, to restart, reload and refocus. It was the proper thing to do. It was the right thing to do, and it was needed.
First and foremost, I want to talk, again, about history. I want to get back to the motion on that. It's important for Canadians to have the proper context when they're watching us and making decisions on whether this is the right thing or the wrong thing to do, and whether PROC should be seized with this when so much is going on in our country.
I did a quick tally this morning again, preparing for this. I'm very active on social media. I'm very active on Facebook. Last week, I did four posts. On one site, I did three videos. The videos were seen by, give or take, 65,000 people, the three videos. There were over 1,000 comments, including my “Ask Me Anything”, which I referenced at the last meeting. There were 1,000 comments about what we needed to do as a government, what we needed to focus on, where we needed to go and how we needed to deliver for Canadians.
Do you know how many comments talked about prorogation and PROC, and asked for the Prime Minister to appear before PROC, for what I would classify as a theatrical event? Do you know how many out of those 1,000 comments? I see my good friend MP Turnbull put up the proper amount. It was zero, none, because Canadians want their members of Parliament, all of us, in all parties, to govern. They want us to have their backs. They do not want us spending time on things such as this.
A couple of MPs would know where my office is. I'm in a mall, for what it's worth. If I walked out my office door right now, if I walked out into the mall today and asked the first 100 people who walked by my door whether they were aware of this, were concerned about this, knew about it or cared about it, I'll tell you straight up, none of them would, because Canadians are concerned about where they're getting their next paycheque and whether they're going to be employed. If they lose their jobs, are there benefits for them? That's what they're concerned about. Is there a business account loan, if they can save their business? Is there rent relief?
Those are the things Canadians are seized with. They are not seized with us sitting here talking about trying to get the Prime Minister to come in. As you know, I've sat on PROC a bit, and hopefully people are happy about that, but I've also listened to witness after witness's testimony, and we're still searching. It's like we're an answer searching for a question. It's like we're not getting what we want to hear so we're going to continue. We're going to continue to move on, and we're going to continue to try to get the Prime Minister come in. We're going to try to continue to get a sound clip here and there. I'm just imploring all of us that Canadians aren't seized with this and the polls show it.
Anyway, I want to get back to the motion. I want to get back to make sure Canadians have context. In April through October, in 2010, the same committee was seized with prorogation when Prime Minister Harper was in. We know he used prorogation regularly. He used it on a regular basis for many months. It was a regular thing.
I would say the most egregious use of prorogation was to save their government from a non-confidence vote, and he did it.
Again, for the education of members who were not in the House at that time and are unaware of what happened, in 2008-09, during the 40th Canadian Parliament, the Conservative government of the day created legitimate outrage on a national scale for the prorogation of the House. I remember it. I wasn't even involved in politics; in fact, being an MP was the furthest thing from my mind. It was really far from my mind. I was in hockey, I was travelling the country, but I remember that. I remember watching it on TV on CTV and CBC and all the channels.
I remember how they were talking about how he prorogued to avoid the non-confidence vote, and that's when I was, like, isn't that interesting. How is he allowed to do that?
It was triggered by the express intention of the opposition parties. We were going to work together. The opposition parties held the majority of seats in the House and we were going to defeat the Conservative minority government on a motion of non-confidence, and it was only six weeks after the federal election of October 14, 2008.
The intention to vote non-confidence arose from the government's fiscal update, tabled on November 27, 2008. It included several contentious provisions that the opposition parties rejected. The Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party reached an accord to form a minority coalition government. Imagine.
The Bloc Québécois agreed to provide support on confidence votes, thereby enabling the coalition a working majority in the Commons.
On December 4, 2008, then Governor General—
