Thank you, Mr. Chair. I take your point.
I submit that I have wide latitude, but at your request to move closer to the text of the motion, I'll note that the bill was drafted behind closed doors with the NDP. The bill would push back the date of the next election. It was purported that the basis for pushing the date of that election back was to avoid a conflict with a cultural holiday. As I stated before, there was no reason the election couldn't have been moved ahead rather than back to avoid that conflict.
An official from the PCO said the election could not be pushed ahead by one week; if it did, it would conflict with Thanksgiving. I think most Canadians would agree that they don't want to see an election over the Thanksgiving weekend. However, if the election were pushed ahead a week or two weeks before that, Mr. Sutherland from the PCO, the Prime Minister's department, said that would go into the summer.
As I cited with the example of the 1990 Ontario election, there are plenty of examples of elections that took place over the summer. Indeed, my first election in 2015 started in late July and concluded in October. One can question whether it was the best decision to have an election at that time, but nonetheless, the election was called in the summer. There's plenty of precedent for it.
It is most ironic that this government is using the summer as an excuse to push the date of the election back one week to avoid a summer election is. When was the last time we had an election called in the summer? I don't know if anyone can remember, but those who can't remember obviously have short memories, because every member sitting at this committee contested a summer election. It was the last election called by the Prime Minister, as part of another cover-up relating to the national security leak at the Winnipeg lab.
The Prime Minister hid documents and refused to turn over documents ordered by Parliament. Does that sound familiar? He took the then Speaker, the Liberal member for Nipissing—Timiskaming, to court to stop those documents from being turned over to Parliament and called an election to cover up the massive national security leak at the Winnipeg lab.
It's quite unbelievable that a Liberal government that as recently as three years ago called an election during the summer—the most recent election—now says we can't push the date of the election ahead to avoid a conflict with a cultural holiday because it might encroach on part of the summer. It simply doesn't stand up to basic scrutiny. It is simply not credible. It's not credible because it wasn't the reason the Liberals, with the support and collaboration of the NDP, picked the date provided in Bill C-65, which moves the election back, not forward.
There was another reason cited by the minister for the need to change the date and move it ahead: The current fixed date would conflict not only with a cultural holiday but also with municipal elections in the province of Alberta. I understand that could potentially be an issue and might best be avoided, hence the need to change the date, but if that is the reason, why did the Liberals choose a date that conflicts with the territorial election in Nunavut? If the objective is to avoid having two elections on the same day, as was purported to be a secondary reason for the change in date, why would the date the government chose as a substitute for the current fixed date be one that does exactly that—conflicts with a territorial election?
It seems to me this is just the latest effort to try to provide reasons that were not in fact the reasons for the date the government chose. The date the Liberals chose, with the assistance of the NDP in drafting the bill, just happens to be the date when MPs elected in 2019 would suddenly qualify for their pensions.
Why would the Liberals and the NDP want to do that? Very simply, we have a Prime Minister who is the most unpopular prime minister in a generation. One would have to go back to the early 1990s, or back, frankly, to Pierre Elliott Trudeau. In fact, I stand corrected. I think polling might suggest the last prime minister who was more unpopular than the current Prime Minister was Pierre Trudeau. We have a very unpopular Prime Minister and an NDP that for more than three years has been part of the coalition with this unpopular Prime Minister and has at every opportunity propped up the costly and corrupt Liberal government.
Accordingly, the NDP is not doing well in the polls either. Jagmeet Singh and Justin Trudeau can certainly see where things are headed whenever an election is held. It doesn't look good for either Justin Trudeau or Jagmeet Singh.
Jagmeet Singh and Justin Trudeau have a problem on their hands with respect to the current fixed date: Many Liberal and NDP MPs will face almost certain electoral defeat. I don't want to be presumptuous, but based on every piece of information one can gather that assesses where the mood of the public is and where the mood of the public was when this bill was drafted, there's a very strong probability that many Liberal and NDP MPs elected in 2019, who wouldn't qualify for their pensions, will not be returned to the House of Commons whenever the next election is held. By moving the date back, the Liberal and NDP MPs who face almost certain electoral defeat will suddenly qualify for their pension.
Canadians are not unaware of this. Canadians immediately recognized the change in date for what it is. This bill, this fake elections bill, is a pensions bill. It is a desperate attempt by the Liberals and NDP to pad their pockets on their way out. It is cynical and dishonest, and frankly, it speaks to why the sooner we can have an election to replace this government and its coalition partner, the better.
Canadians are not buying the pretexts offered by the Liberals about why they changed the date, because we have heard their excuses, their justifications, of why they changed the date. They said it conflicted with a holiday. Then they said they moved the date to avoid conflict with a municipal election, but the date they chose conflicts with a territorial election. They said they moved the date back a week to avoid going into summer, yet they were happy to call an election in the summer when they wanted to cover up the national security breach at the Winnipeg lab.
With a straight face, despite the explanations they offered having no credibility and not making any sense, they say unequivocally that the date has nothing to do with pensions. It was just a coincidence. Come on. No one believes the Prime Minister, no one believes the Liberals and no one believes Jagmeet Singh on this one.
I think it would be helpful to get a sampling of some of the feedback I've received from Canadians outraged at this NDP-Liberal pension grab.
One Canadian wrote the following to me:
As a tax paying citizen of this Country (technically your boss) it has come to my attention that the Trudeau government wants to delay the next scheduled election by one week so that he can give dozens of politicians a taxpayer funded pension to the tune of $120 million. This may not seem significant to the Trudeau government given how he [has] taken our tax dollars and spent [them] on initiatives that have zero to no value to us (the tax paying citizen). All of you need to do the right thing and stop this disrespectful plan by the Trudeau government to take our hard earned dollars ($120 million) and give [them] to politicians that do not deserve it. The Trudeau government has proven over the past 9 years that they do not care about the well being of Canadian citizens...only themselves and this is just another example of that. Do the right thing and don't allow this plan to happen.