Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate this.
I really appreciate the comments and sentiments of my colleagues. I substantially share them. I feel that the message from Mr. Lauzon about working together is really key for us to keep in mind here.
From my perspective, this feels like there's partisanship, a desire to win political points and assume what the conclusion will be of this study. I've done a bit of reading on this. Just looking back at some of the questions and testimony by members on this committee and other members of other parties in the House, it's obvious to me that quite a lot of comments have been made that assume this study's conclusion.
I would say this. What is the point of doing a study if we don't bring real, clear, honest, good-faith intentions in undertaking the study to get to a conclusion? If it's a foregone conclusion, then it seems like it's done for other purposes, and I call that into question. I just don't know.
I would like to say, for the record, that this committee has heard from senior officials from the Privy Council's Office about the norms and conventions regarding prorogation. Their testimony has reconfirmed for us what we've heard from multiple witnesses, namely, that prorogation is within the prerogative of the Governor General at the advice of the prime minister. This has been consistent. We've heard this over and over again.
Our government obviously believes, and has maintained all along, that we are being upfront with Canadians and explaining our decisions. This has not been the standard practice in the past. Conservative governments have made no attempt, as far as I can tell based on my research, to explain why they prorogued in the past. Stephen Harper prorogued, I think, four times. I calculated that Parliament was prorogued for something like 181 days in his time as prime minister. Some of those moments were quite controversial. Certainly, I'm sure the opposition benches were rightly skeptical about some of those, and I think that's fine.
In particular, in 2017, as members know, our government instituted a change that requires all governments going forward to table a report in the House of Commons explaining the reasons for prorogation. We have that report. This is a major improvement from the past, and I don't really hear anyone acknowledging that. Here we are in a pandemic and the government prorogued. I think there was a real rational basis for that based on the massive, full-court press approach that we all took collaboratively, and I think quite successfully, in the early stages of the pandemic and through the first wave.
Here we are, and the government has provided a detailed rationale. Instead of looking at the merits of that report, we're calling it into question. If there was a good-faith attempt at doing that, then I could see myself being very supportive. I think we have been very collaborative, in the sense that when the opposition parties wanted to dig further into this and do a study, we were very willing to undertake that. At this point, I feel like we've exhausted that study. We had witnesses who came forward—12 of them, in fact. We heard some substantial evidence. Perhaps that doesn't fit with what the opposition members want to try to prove, which they have no evidence for, which is something that is, really, from what I see, just being assumed.
Of course, committees have the ability to study certain matters. I know that PROC previously studied the prorogations of former governments.
Madam Chair, my concern is this. We've already heard loud and clear from opposition members and members of all parties on what they view to be the reasons behind prorogation. They've been clear on what they perceive the reasons to be, so I'm not sure what the purpose is of moving forward. We can belabour this, and keep studying and studying and studying, but there is so much other important business that we could be doing.
I believe in the role of opposition parties and the constructive relationship we can have in a minority Parliament. I really believe that this working together is extremely important. I'm just finding it hard to believe that there are good intentions here. There seems to be a presupposition of the conclusion. I have many examples of this.
I don't mean to pick on Mr. Blaikie at all, but the honourable member from the NDP said on January 28, at the very beginning of this study, that he believes it is “pretty clear...that the prerogative for prorogation was abused and was used to get the government out of a political crisis”. I mean, that showcases right there that you're putting your opinion and belief before actually undertaking the study. You're leading with that opinion. You're looking for evidence to support that. The fact that you haven't gotten that at this point....
You've gotten a whole bunch of opinions from academics. You've heard from the House leader. I will note that we had the Honourable Pablo Rodriguez, the leader of the government in the House of Commons. From the Privy Council Office we had Allen Sutherland, assistant secretary to the cabinet in the office of the deputy secretary to the cabinet; and Donald Booth, director of strategic policy and Canadian security to the Queen, machinery of government. These are two officials who....
Let me also say that people had turns to ask their questions. I went through the testimony, and Mr. Deltell and Mr. Therrien had two rounds. Mr. Blaikie had two rounds; Mr. Nater, Mr. Lukiwski. All asked very good questions of the government House leader. We had our round. It was a fair process. Everybody had their turn. We got the answers that the government provided in addition to the substantive report.
With regard to the officials, Ms. Vecchio had two rounds. Mr. Kent had a round; Mr. Therrien, Mr. Blaikie and Mr. Nater again. I hope I didn't miss anybody. There has been quite an opportunity here to question those officials and the government House leader. When I look at some of the other comments that individuals made prior to getting into the study, and even how they framed their questions, most of the questions assumed the conclusion they were looking for.
I guess what I'm asking is this: What's the point? Is this just a political play here to win points? I mean, it just seems pretty clear. Furthermore, the House leader for the Bloc Québécois said at the last meeting, before we even heard from witnesses, that it was clear to him that Parliament was prorogued to put an end to the work of the committees that were looking at the WE Charity scandal.
Madam Chair, would you call it a good-faith question when you're assuming the answer that you want to hear in the question itself? Like, what's a study for? A study is to explore an issue that we all think is important. This is one, we've agreed with you, where, okay, let's dig in further and study this. We've done that, at this point. It just seems like we've exhausted the list of witnesses.
Ms. Vecchio, I don't understand why you included certain witnesses in your motion. I wish you could tell us. Why is the Minister of Finance, for example, in the motion? It makes no sense to me. I don't understand why the Honourable Chrystia Freeland, the deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, would be in there.
Obviously, all of the other witnesses imply an agenda, which is to somehow link prorogation to WE Charity and the things that happened. I will note that I followed the work of the finance and the ethics committees and some of the other committees and I know most of that work picked up basically where it left off after prorogation. When I think about this from a rational perspective, I think the honourable members of this committee sometimes claim this was an attempt to shut down that committee work.
I'm on another standing committee, HUMA, and we resumed our work and put all the motions forward again in one, very large motion that put all of those things back on the agenda. My understanding is that other committees largely did the same. There may be some exceptions, but that work continued.
Also, I'd reference the Conservative member for Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, who rose in the House of Commons on September 24, 2020, to say “that the Prime Minister, we all know, decided to prorogue Parliament because of his involvement in the WE charity scandal”, and that prorogation was all about distraction. Furthermore on October 5, the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman stated that, “The only reason we had prorogation by the Prime Minister...is the WE scandal”, and he went on to say that it was about trying to do a cover-up.
There seems to be a deliberate attempt here to put out these statements and conclusions without any evidence other than what we've heard from people, which I've hotly contested, that just because of the timing there are really good reasons the government prorogued at that time. It made sense to re-evaluate at a moment when we were in-between the first and second waves of COVID-19. It was a natural point at which you could reflect on how we were going to prepare for the second wave and how we were going to deal with the deep economic scarring and the incredible vulnerability that Canadians have been suffering through coming out of this.
Certainly I see how much work we did during that time. Mr. Blaikie has claimed that we took a break. We didn't take a break. So much consultation and so much work went into essentially trying to evaluate where we were as a country after this exhausting full-court press of a major global crisis. To me that seems very rational, and it coincides with what others have said. There's testimony on this from, I think, our first meeting. I can't remember the name of the person. I do have it here, but I won't go there yet. I'll save that one for a little later.
Essentially one of the many reasons that governments have prorogued throughout history was a major shift in context, which certainly causes people to ask if our priorities as a government are the same. Should we be re-evaluating them and ensuring that we have the confidence of the House and that we're addressing the needs of Canadians? To me that's responsive, responsible government.
Not only have we been more transparent than any government in history in Canada by tabling a report and undertaking a study willingly, but now we're also at a juncture where, okay, the opposition parties aren't getting what they want, so they're trying to bully or force us into delays that eventually, I'm sure, you want to continue and to—