Well, wonderful. Buckle up because I have quite a lot to say.
I hadn't finished making my argument in our last meeting, but I ceded the floor to one of my colleagues because I felt I was slightly dominating the airwaves and I don't like to do that. I believe that everyone on this committee deserves a chance to express themselves. We're all equal members of Parliament. We all represent constituents who have points of view that are exceptionally important to us, and it is our job to express those points of view.
I have made an argument that is directly relevant, Mr. Nater, to the amendment that I put forward. I've been making it for multiple weeks.
As you know, I was away for a short period of time due to sickness, but I'm glad to be back so I can make my views known.
My argument is building. Each of my speeches and remarks builds one on the other. Like Ms. Duncan, my colleague whom I respect and admire so much, I really believe in science, evidence, facts and research. I believe in making rational arguments and I've mapped out my logical argument.
I took enhanced logic way back when I was in my undergrad in philosophy. I use it every day because I think it's really important that we understand the logic behind the arguments that we make and that when we come to debate, we actually debate things in a way where we're willing to be influenced by each other's point of view. I think that's the very heart of democracy. Dialogue, actually, and dialectics, which is the heart of democracy, is that we approach truth through an open debate process, whereby the principle of sufficient reason actually is the principle that we all subscribe to, where we approach the truth together. Although we disagree along the way, we express varying perspectives that differ, but that we give up something every step of the way.
Compromise is built into the very art of debate, but we don't see that in many of our debates, especially on this committee. We see, as Ms. Duncan said, partisanship over truth, over facts, over reason. I really feel strongly that what I've put forward as an amendment to Ms. Vecchio's motion was really an attempt to compromise. It gives you something. It gives the opposition parties something they wanted, i.e., I've left in the Honourable Bill Morneau and the Kielburgers to be reinvited to the committee, who I don't really feel need to be brought to the committee, to be honest, but I left them in as a bit of an olive branch.
The two ministers that Ms. Duncan spoke eloquently to wanting to hear from—and it's very intentional that they were left in there—are the honourable Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, and the honourable Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth, Bardish Chagger. There are very good reasons those two were left in there. Before I get into that, I want to summarize the argument that I've been making.
I'm glad you are here today, Mr. Aitchison. I don't know if you've been at PROC this time around, but it's great to have you and I'm glad you're here to hear the summary of my overarching argument.
My colleague Mr. Amos is also here, who hasn't been in attendance on this committee as far as I recollect. It is great to have you, Mr. Amos. I know you're a real advocate for the environment and climate action, among many other things. I have such respect for you. I will be making some remarks related to that.
I think this pandemic has taught us something about the inequities in our society and the deep economic impacts we need to recover from, but also the opportunities that we have to build a stronger economy that's more sustainable and helps protect our planet while hopefully protecting us to some degree from more incidents and public health crises like the one we're going through now. I think climate change can be linked to the incidence of communicable disease and I know that pandemics could be far more frequent in the future as the climate warms.
I won't go there yet because I want to summarize my argument. I'll make a few points and then I'll go into more depth and detail. I hope Mr. Nater hasn't tuned out and is still listening.
First of all, I want to say that our government has been more transparent than any government in Canadian history when it comes to prorogation, okay? I've said this, but I'm saying it again. I am repeating myself, because I don't think it has sunk in for some folks out there that we've tabled a report. Our government, in the past Parliament, actually is the one that changed the Standing Orders to require a report to be tabled in the House of Commons to explain the rationale for prorogation. That was the first time in history this change was made to the Standing Orders, and it was done by our government.
We prorogued, which hadn't been done in the entire term of Justin Trudeau's Liberal government, whereas it was done four times, I think, in Stephen Harper's time. When you think about it, we only used prorogation for a very good reason and we complied with the rule change to the Standing Orders, which required a greater degree of transparency. We provided a rationale and a report—a significant report. I've read it. I'm not sure whether every member on the committee from the opposition parties took the time to read it carefully, but I certainly feel that, based on their remarks in the past, they haven't really assessed it on its merits. I think there are merits to that report.
There are also merits to be given to the testimony of our government House leader and the many others who came before this committee, as we, the Liberal members on this committee, agreed to do a study on this very topic. It wasn't required for us to do that. We agreed to that. We allowed opposition parties to call witnesses. We all had a chance to scrutinize the testimony of those witnesses, ask them questions and make our arguments.
Now, what we have at the end of this, despite the willingness on our part and the commitment to that level of transparency, and no real argument that the opposition has made against the merits of that report or the testimony, a presumption that somehow there's some ulterior motive that is political in nature. This seems to be the driving force behind Ms. Vecchio's motion. I feel very frustrated by that, because I think we've made major improvements. There are so many other things to focus on. We've been more transparent than any government in Canadian history when it comes to prorogation, and still that's not enough.
Still that's not enough, so what more does the opposition really want here? What really is the driving motive behind the motion that Ms. Vecchio put forward? I would say that the WE Charity issue has been studied over and over again at other committees. Ms. Shanahan has been involved in some of that and spoke in our last meeting about how that work continued even after prorogation. There's really no reason to go on another fishing expedition in this committee, PROC, which is, I'm told, the mother of committees. I think we have other really important business to attend to.
All that said, in an effort to compromise and give a little more opportunity to extend this study and have a few more witnesses attend and give testimony, I put forward an amendment that I thought was very reasonable, and still there's no movement. It's partisanship over science and evidence, and over facts and information, in a global health crisis the proportion of which we have never known in our lifetimes, in a hundred years. We say it's unprecedented. I've said this before. I hate using that word these days because it's just so overused, but it really is something that I never thought I would live through or experience in my lifetime, to be honest.
My parents, and even my grandmother, who passed away this year during the pandemic, never lived through a crisis like this. Really, we have almost no.... Although we've learned a lot from other outbreaks that have happened—the SARS outbreak, Ebola, etc., and other communicable diseases that I think have taught us things—we really haven't learned the lessons.
We don't have any real memory of the—I know it's called the Spanish flu, and that's probably not the right term to use. I know that it was named and there's probably some controversy around that. Maybe Ms. Duncan can speak to that at a later date. She probably knows infinitely more than I do about that. I'll just refer to it as the Spanish flu for the moment. I know that's incorrect, so my apologies to her for all her astounding work in the area.
I want to get back to my argument, which is that we prorogued Parliament. There's that word, “prorogation”, that Ms. Vecchio was looking for, so this is relevant to prorogation. Prorogation was done at a time when doing so made complete sense. It was absolutely rational for a government that was working at full court press for many, many months in a row to reassess and re-evaluate between the first and second waves of a pandemic. That makes sense to me.
In addition, during the process we went through, as I've said, we didn't sit around and do nothing during that time. There was so much work and consultation that was undertaken during that time. There were interdepartmental meetings. I personally participated in something like 15 to 20 different consultation sessions, some in my community with constituents and some with caucus, the various caucuses we had, and those all informed a new Speech from the Throne. When you look at that Speech from the Throne—and opposition parties have stated over and over again that there's nothing of substance in the Speech from the Throne. I've heard them say this over and over again, and I wonder how anyone can say that.
I've done a full analysis of it. The last time, I actually outlined about 15 or 20 themes and parts of that throne speech that are unique, that were not there before and that were context dependent. In other words, they were grounded in the public health crisis. They came out of that, and they're supported by evidence, research, and consultation work that was done. It wasn't as if they came from nowhere. They came from the very process that was undertaken during the time of prorogation.
Again, this seems to be common sense. As I have reflected on it over and over and over during the time we've been debating this, I have come to the same conclusion. I'm very much a critical thinker. I studied philosophy for eight years in university. I have taught it around the world. I'm a critical thinker. I criticize myself just as much as I do the opposition members or anybody else. Reflecting deeply on this, I still can't find any reason to really support the opposition's intended motive or the narrative that they seem to be adamant about trying to boost or prop up at all costs.
Here's the main point, though, that I want to make. I've made this over and over again. It's repetition for emphasis' sake: if a global pandemic is not a good enough reason for proroguing Parliament, then nothing is. Nothing is. Literally, I can't think of a better way to say it than that. I've reflected on it over and over. Stephen Harper prorogued twice, once in 2008 and once in 2009, and he claimed that the recession at the time, so the shock to the economy of that recession, was his reason for proroguing not once but twice to re-evaluate and assess the impact on the economy and work on the plan to help the country recover.
What I've maintained and I've argued and I have ample evidence for—piles of evidence for, Mr. Kent—is that this pandemic is at least 10 times worse in terms of economic impact than the 2008-09 recession was, at least 10 times. That is based just on information that was available in August 2020. At this point, we've gone through the second and third waves, which were much greater than the first.
I'm using information that's based on the time when prorogation actually happened, that was available at that time, to demonstrate to you that the government in power, which I'm very proud to be a part of, was using that information to inform decisions that were made about what appeared in the throne speech, what then appeared in the fall economic statement and what then appeared in our 2021 budget.
Again, when you can draw direct links, logical links, rational links that are based on evidence and consultation across Canada, to the things that appeared in the throne speech, how can anyone even maintain the claim...? How can any rational person maintain the claim that there's nothing in the throne speech that justifies reasons for prorogation? It makes absolutely no sense. It's nonsensical. It's absurd. It's absurd, given the evidence that we already have.
So, why are we here? Why are we doing this? There are at least four other motions in this committee that my colleagues and I have put on notice that we could be doing and which are significantly, exponentially and infinitely more important than this staring in the rear-view mirror.
I quoted last time a highly respected doctor at the World Health Organization, Dr. Michael Ryan. He said that we just can't afford to be staring in the rear-view mirror. We need to be ahead of the curve of this pandemic. Curve after curve, wave after wave, we, as Canadians, have been behind. We're not in front. Dr. Duncan said this so eloquently, but I believe it wholeheartedly, too. We are behind the curve every time. We need to move faster.