Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 9th, 2021

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Madam Chair, I see that we're getting to five o'clock. The bells will be ringing at 5:15.

I would like to suggest—and “suggest”, because I don't want anyone to go off there—that we suspend and then [Technical difficulty—Editor] I know that Kirsty has been on this call all day, and also Ryan and a variety of us. Perhaps you could give us a 15-minute break before bells and then we would return 15 minutes after the votes this evening, March 25. We would return right after the votes, 15 minutes later, and get back to this conversation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Would there be consensus to do that?

Ms. Petitpas Taylor, since you have the floor, were you wrapping up, or if you have a large portion—

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

I have about 30 seconds left, but if you want me to go on, I can certainly elaborate on other comments. I'll finish my time, if that would be okay with everyone and then I will cede the floor.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

That would be great. It would be a cleaner break for us.

Is everyone in agreement to suspend when Ms. Petitpas Taylor is done until 15 minutes after the votes tonight?

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Madam Chair, can I clarify who else is on your speakers list and the order? It's just so I know who's next.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes. It's Mr. Blaikie, then Ms. Vecchio....

Ms. Vecchio, you had your hand up, but then at one point you put it down. I still have you on my written list.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I'm on there, but you said that once you're on the list to take your hand down, so I took mine down.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

I have Mr. Blaikie, Ms. Vecchio, Mr. Turnbull and Mr. Lamoureux.

I'm sorry, Ms. Petitpas Taylor, for the interruption. We'll continue.

Once you're done, I will formally suspend until 15 minutes after the votes.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

And I would like to thank my colleagues too.

To wrap up then, the government will work with municipalities as part of a new commitment to expand urban parks, so that everyone has access to green space. This will be done over a period of five years, and will protect a quarter of Canada’s land and a quarter of Canada’s oceans, using nature-based solutions to fight climate change, including the planting of two billion trees.

The government will ban harmful single-use plastics next year and ensure more plastic is recycled. And the government will also modernize Canada’s Environmental Protection Act.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Ms. Vecchio, you're not on mute. Not a problem.... I don't know if you want to hear comments on climate change.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Perhaps not.

When the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration was closed by a previous government, Canada lost an important tool to manage its waters.

The government will create a new Canada water agency to keep our water safe, clean, and well managed. The government will also identify opportunities to build more modern water and irrigation infrastructure.

The federal government actioned this plan in the fall economic statement.

I will now give the floor to my colleagues for their comments. As I mentioned earlier, I think that we could move on to drafting the motion before us. However, Mr. Turnbull has suggested a compromise. I am in any event ready to support this motion.

On that note, I yield the floor.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Ms. Petitpas Taylor.

According to the consensus that we have found, we'll return after the votes. I don't know exactly what time that will be, but it will be approximately 15 minutes afterward. I'll wait for everyone to log on. Once I see that all members are here, we will proceed.

For now, we are suspended.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

We are back in session and we are still on meeting number 26.

We are on the amendment put forward by Mr. Turnbull to Ms. Vecchio's motion. We have a speakers list for the benefit of the new members who are here. I'll let you know who I have on the list so far. Members, for those of you who were here before, just a reminder in case you have forgotten—we had a long voting session—we ended with Ms. Petitpas Taylor. Next we have Mr. Blaikie, Ms. Vecchio, Mr. Turnbull and Mr. Lamoureux. That is all who I have on the list thus far. I'm sure there will be others who are looking forward to speaking to the amendment or the main motion, depending on how things go.

We'll start off with Mr. Blaikie.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Good evening to my colleagues on the committee. Welcome back to the meeting. It's so great we just can't seem to bring ourselves to end it.

I know there are a number of people on the committee now who weren't here earlier in the day, so I might just briefly summarize some of the points that I made earlier and then come to what I hope will be a novel contribution to the debate.

Obviously there have been a lot of arguments made in a meeting this long; that will happen. Some of them have even been made more than once. There's a tendency on the government side to kind of cast everything in a particular light and say that this is all just about politics and that it's really about trying to score points.

What I've been trying to say is that I've taken the Prime Minister, I think, at his word in terms of wanting to have a policy that would help curb the political abuse of prorogation. What we heard in testimony from experts all along is that, at the end of the day, the buck stops with the Prime Minister. It's the Prime Minister who is the principal decision-maker with respect to prorogation.

I think it stands to reason that, if we're going to honour this proposal that was made by the Prime Minister in the 2015 election coming out of some serious abuses of prorogation, in my opinion, certainly by the Harper government, in order to give this thing teeth and to make it useful in future instances, even for members who may feel that there was no political abuse of prorogation—there's obviously a difference of opinion about that—it would be useful to set the precedent that a prime minister would appear in order to defend a prorogation decision. Otherwise, I don't think we've really done enough to try to curb potential abuses of prorogation for political purposes.

Members who were here earlier, not just today but on other calendar days, will know that I really think we ought to have vote in the House of Commons in order to authorize a prorogation, which would be a departure from our historical practice, but I think a good one.

Then we heard a lot of arguments today about how wonderful it would be to have the Deputy Prime Minister come to committee. I'm trying to understand the hair that's being split there. I mean, if it's that we don't want to trouble important people in government, certainly the Deputy Prime Minister is an important person whose time is also valuable, and it's odd that there would be such enthusiasm on the government bench to have her come here, because she's not the ultimate decision-maker. I mean, she's called in the original motion along with many other people, and, as I say, I think there are answers to be had on the WE Charity scandal, and I think it's right for parliamentarians to be pursuing those answers.

I know that they are being vigorously pursued with some more success in other parliamentary venues these days, and I think that's a good thing. Here's a shout-out to my colleague Charlie Angus who is doing some of that work at the ethics committee, for example.

Really, if we want it to not be about that, then it has to be about prorogation, which is what it should be about. Then it's about PROC setting a good precedent for how these studies unfold in the future in order to make this a successful mechanism to try to curb political abuses of prorogation.

I think it stands to reason, then, that the decision-maker would come here. I think it's an odd argument to say that we should have the Deputy Prime Minister be the person to come. We've already had the government House leader.

It seems to me it's not unlike departmental estimates. We have ministers come to committee for departmental estimates, because they're the ultimate decision-makers for their department. We don't call the Minister of Finance to speak for decisions that are made in the department of the environment, even though she's an influential person and obviously her opinion will matter around the cabinet table and elsewhere. We don't call the government House leader to explain decisions that are made in the natural resources department. On the principle of responsible government, we call the person who is responsible for the decision.

We've heard loud and clear from a number of experts that it is the Prime Minister's decision. We can have different opinions about his motives. We can have a difference of opinion about how it unfolded, but if the idea of this mechanism of the government tabling a report and defending its decision.... Then we've heard in many cases—I don't want to characterize it pejoratively because I don't want politics to get in the way of the point—some people who might have offered an answer for why the government did what it did. At some point they just said, “Well, you know, I can't really answer that because ultimately it's up to the Prime Minister, and nobody knows the Prime Minister's mind.”

The Prime Minister knows the Prime Minister's mind. That's why it makes sense to have him here. I'm not saying that answers haven't been given, but I really do think it makes sense to have the Prime Minister come here. In terms of precedent, I don't think having the Prime Minister here for this study opens the floodgates to have him appear willy-nilly all the time at different committees on different issues. This is a particular kind of issue where the Prime Minister is really the sole decision-maker. I think it makes sense, again, to have him be the person to come here. I don't think a proxy really is sufficient.

What I've said is that if this is going to be a political exercise...and I don't think Canadians listening at home should make any mistake; the fact that we have gone through so many meetings with Liberal members speaking in order to avoid the motion that's on the table coming to a vote is itself a political act. It itself is the result of political interests. Nobody should kid themselves about that. We have people trying to do politics on all sides.

If we want to get out of the quagmire of the politics of it, I propose that we focus on prorogation. We get a commitment from the main decision-maker to come to this committee for one hour. If we do that, we can wrap up the prorogation study. I'd be satisfied, anyway. I'd be happy to work with whichever other members on the committee would at that point be satisfied that we had done our job. The rest of what's in this motion can go away. We can write our report on the prorogation study, having heard from the principal decision-maker, having had an opportunity to test his answers with him here, and having set a good precedent for the future. Even members who now don't feel there's been a political abuse of prorogation may feel, in a future instance, that there is one. They may find that they're grateful this committee established a good precedent and that the Prime Minister established a good precedent.

I just want to offer that up. When we do other things, like the parliamentary estimates, we want the decision-maker there. We've heard very clearly that the Prime Minister is the decision-maker here. I don't think inviting the Deputy Prime Minister as a proxy for that on a prorogation study makes sense. I think if we're not going to be able to get the Prime Minister, then we need to continue to ask people about the things that we think were behind the prorogation decision, including things having to do with the WE Charity.

That's why I'd be prepared to support this motion in the absence of a commitment by the Prime Minister to come to this committee, for one hour, to explain his reasons for prorogation directly to the committee. It's the Prime Minister's insistence on refusing to come to committee for one hour that is at the root of this prolonged debate here at the procedure and House affairs committee. I think it's a pretty simple solution. It would free up the time of many people—people in government and people in Parliament—if the Prime Minister would make that commitment. Then we could move on, draft our report and get to some of the other important issues that I think PROC should also be looking at.

Mr. Lamoureux has indicated that he has some ideas about what those things ought to be. That's fine. I'd be happy to have that conversation, not in the context of a motion about who's going to appear in order for us to be able to wrap up our prorogation study but to have it afterward as a committee. A number of study motions have been put forward. It's appropriate to have that conversation at that time. Tonight we're trying to figure out how we move forward and get to a place where we can wrap up this particular study on prorogation. I'm very much of the view that we should hear from the one and only decision-maker on that file before we do.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Mr. Blaikie.

Ms. Vecchio.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Thanks very much.

Daniel, thank you very much for providing that information on the way you see it as well.

Just as a reminder, because there are so many new faces at the committee tonight, I had put forward on Tuesday a request for a unanimous consent motion where we basically were looking at the actual motion I had put forward over a month ago. This is now day six of this filibuster. Today we have been here since 11 a.m. To anyone—perhaps my husband, who's viewing tonight—who is bored, I put forward a motion where it's really focusing on the Prime Minister. This seems to be the biggest concern.

Of course, government members of the committee would not support that. I believe at this time we've already heard from many members of government that they will continue to speak on this, so at this time I would ask for adjournment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

You're asking for a vote?

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Yes, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Mr. Clerk, can you help us with a vote on that?

[The Clerk]

Madam Chair, the question is on the motion that the committee do now adjourn.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I want to confirm that it's about adjourning the meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes, it's about adjourning the meeting.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 11; nays 0)

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Poor Kevin. I think he was looking forward to speaking, but I'm sure you'll all hear him in the House.

The meeting is adjourned.