We then moved a subamendment at the last meeting of this committee to see that there is a fixed election date that is moved up, not back, to February 24, 2025. That is hardly consistent with some sort of a plan for Conservatives to secure their pensions. It's quite the opposite of that; we brought another subamendment forward to provide for an election on February 24, 2025, or within 50 days of the legislation coming into force. Again, that is hardly consistent with her claim that Conservatives somehow want their pensions and want to delay the election.
No, we don't want to delay the election; we want an election, and we want an election now, or, at the very least, as soon as possible. We want one now, but of course she voted in the House of Commons to vote confidence in this government and to backtrack on her leader's words. She voted against our subamendment to move the date of the election to February 24, 2025, which happens to be the day before her leader, Jagmeet Singh, qualifies for his $2.3-million pension.
I presume she was taking his orders to vote against that subamendment, because Jagmeet Singh, on the one hand, professes to lack confidence in these Liberals, but on the other hand, at every opportunity, votes with them to prop them up. Why? Very conveniently, it seems it's because he wants his $2.3-million pension, and a fixed election date on February 24 would have gotten in the way of that. Today, once again, Ms. Barron was directed by her coalition masters to vote against the Conservative amendment to also see that there be an election at the earliest opportunity.
I underscore that the position of the Conservative Party is that the time is up for this NDP-Liberal government. We want this government to just stop the inflationary spending, stop the tax hikes, stop the crime—stop it all. Get on with it and put it to the people of this country and see what they have to say. I have a feeling they're not going to be very kind to the Prime Minister or to the sellout leader of the NDP.
Ms. Barron acts as though she and the NDP are bystanders in all of this, except for the fact.... She cited CTV as an accurate source of news, and I have a CTV article in front of me from January 27, 2024, in which the then-NDP democratic reform critic Daniel Blaikie is quoted as saying that there had been “a fair amount of work done” towards what is, or what became, Bill C-65. The headline from CTV in January was that Trudeau's and Singh's teams were “quietly planning” this legislation.
We know that there were secret meetings between Daniel Blaikie, officials within the NDP, the NDP executive director, Minister Leblanc, parliamentary secretary Jennifer O'Connell and members of the PMO and PCO, etc. We of course saw Daniel Blaikie standing behind Dominic LeBlanc at the press conference announcing this bill that, very conveniently, would move the date of the next election back to secure the pensions of soon-to-be-defeated NDP and Liberal MPs. Ms. Barron asserts that this was all inadvertent and it was just by happenstance that this particular date was selected.
Well, give me a break. Give Canadians a break. It's patently absurd. It took me all of a few moments upon opening up the bill to see what the effect of the change in the election date is. Within minutes, it was apparent to me that the date had been moved back by a week, which suddenly ensured that soon-to-be-defeated Liberal and NDP MPs who don't qualify for their pensions on the current fixed date would now qualify for their pensions. It's hardly rocket science. It was there right upon looking at the bill. For the NDP to pretend that their co-author of the bill had no idea—that it didn't even cross his mind—is absurd.
That absurdity is underscored by the excuses that have been offered by the Liberals and the NDP. The first justification was that the date had been pushed back so as not to conflict with Diwali and the municipal election scheduled in my province of Alberta. Then, when the Chief Electoral Officer came here, he was asked, because he had meetings with the minister, along with the NDP—