Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I will just put on the record the motion I put forward on Tuesday, November 26. It reads as follows:
That, given that the committee has learned that staff from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Office of the Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs met with New Democratic Party (NDP) representatives, representatives from the Privy Council Office (PCO), and the Chief Electoral Officer on Thursday, January 25, 2024 on matters relating to Bill C-65, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act, and that the Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs, along with his Parliamentary Secretary and staff from his office and the Parliamentary secretary’s office met with NDP representatives, an NDP Member of Parliament, representatives from the PCO, and the Chief Electoral Officer on Saturday, March 30, 2024, on matters relating to Bill C-65, the committee:
a) order the Office of the Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs and the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) to provide the committee with all of the dates on which any representatives from the Liberal Party, including Party Officials, Ministers, Parliamentary Secretaries, Minister’s Office Staff, and Members of Parliament met with any representatives from the NDP, including Party Officials, and Members of Parliament on matters relating to Bill C-65, and the names and titles of the individuals who attended those meetings;
b) order the production of any documents under the control of the PCO, PMO, any Minister’s office, and Elections Canada, including any documents used as briefing materials in any of those meetings, and any records of conversations, including emails, text messages, or any other form of communication, about those meetings, and any records of discussions that took place at those meetings and/or decisions that were made at those meetings, and that these documents are to be provided to the Clerk with no redactions within one week of the adoption of this motion; and
c) invite Daniel Blaikie, former Member of Parliament for Elmwood–Transcona and former Democratic Reform Critic for the NDP and a co-author of Bill C-65, to appear before the committee on its study of Bill C-65.
It is important that we have from this government and their coalition partner, the NDP, transparency about what went on leading up to the tabling of Bill C-65, a bill that purports to be an elections bill but is in fact a pension bill in disguise.
This is a government that snuck a clause into this elections bill that pushes the date of the next federal election by one week. The basis upon which the date of the next election was moved back was purported to be that the current fixed election date conflicts with a holiday of cultural importance to certain diaspora communities in Canada. That was the pretext.
One may say the election could be changed in light of that. I don't object to that. In fact, we Conservatives have been calling for a carbon tax election as soon as possible so that Canadians can have an opportunity to go to the polls and replace a government that has for the past nine years been costly and corrupt, a government that really has lost, for all intents and purposes, the moral authority to govern, a government that Canadians cannot wait to see replaced.
Yes, we would like to see an election—not in October 2025, but as soon as possible. It's why, this week, we're going to be moving a motion of non-confidence in this government. It's so that Canadians can get the carbon tax election they want and the carbon tax election they deserve.
Be that as it may, going back to the bill and the purported reasons for moving the date of the next election back by a week, the Minister of Democratic Institutions, Dominic LeBlanc, asserted it was on the basis of avoiding a conflict with a cultural holiday for certain communities. The election could have been pushed ahead by a week, but we were told that would conflict with Thanksgiving. If the election were moved ahead a week prior to that, it wouldn't conflict with anything, as I understand it. If it were pushed ahead a week before that, again, I don't believe there would be any conflict.
The point I'm making is that there were plenty of options on the table for the government to accommodate Canadians who celebrate this particular holiday, Diwali, without selecting the date provided for in this bill, which pushes the date of the election back by one week.
One of the objections to moving the election ahead by two or three weeks instead of pushing it back by one week, according to an official from the Prime Minister's department, the PCO, when he appeared before this committee to speak on behalf of the PCO and therefore on behalf of this government, was that it would result in the election getting into the summer period and would conflict with the Labour Day holiday. I believe he said it was the Labour Day holiday.