Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to offer a few brief comments on this amendment.
Let's just imagine for a second that there were a body where people from across the country were brought together into one place on a regular basis, perhaps 338 of them, and who were somehow representative of the people in those geographic regions, and that somehow they were able to be brought together in some magical place, in some magical building. We could call it the “House of Commons”, or something like that.
My goodness, this amendment makes me want to pull my hair out. My goodness, if we want to start fixing our own house, let's start with the House of Commons itself, rather than creating new bodies external to the representative house to which we were all democratically elected.
First of all, if the Liberals are truly wanting to see greater debate and discussions of the different issues that come before us as parliamentarians, let's allow Kevin Lamoureux to sit down from time to time and have other parliamentarians speak in the House of Commons.
I think I speak for many [Technical difficulty—Editor] you know. It's almost laughable. We only see Kevin Lamoureux jumping up and speaking in the House of Commons, now closely rivalled perhaps by Mark Gerretsen, who is the only Liberal actually in the House of Commons, whether the Liberals are participating or not. Let's start with that.
The House of Commons is a duly-elected representative house of the people. Why don't we look at improving debate in the House of Commons on the issues that matter to Canadians across the country?
This debate on a citizens' assembly for every issue that might come forward is a classic—I'll be blunt—Liberal technique of “Let's talk everything out. Let's have a great opportunity to talk, talk, talk”.
Some of that discussion reminds me of undergraduate seminar courses where people have read one chapter of a poli-sci textbook, and then assumed they were experts on XYZ. That's exactly how this debate sounds like and is unfolding right now: “Let's take this one idea we read about in a poli-sci textbook, and let's run with it for every issue we can think about.”
Citizens' assemblies serve a role. They serve a role when we're discussing complex issues related to electoral reform when it's a time-limited process and designed to come to an end point on very specific issues. It would be a dereliction of our duty as parliamentarians if we start shuffling off every issue elsewhere.
We have parliamentary committees to review issues. We have the House of Commons to review issues. We have the Senate, for goodness' sake, that can review issues such as this. For us to go down this rabbit hole of amending this motion to include a discussion on citizens' assemblies for these vast variety of issues, I see it as nothing more than adding issues to just further the discussion and talk out the clock on this particular issue.
Let me blunt. I'm voting against this amendment. This is just nonsense, and I apologize if I'm offending anyone because I'm telling the truth here. This is just nonsense. Let's get the House of Commons in order before we start delegating our responsibilities elsewhere.
If there's a problem with how we operate as a legislative branch of government, let's fix it, rather than create something else.
I'll be voting against the amendment when it comes to a vote.
Thank you, Madam Chair.