Evidence of meeting #14 for Justice and Human Rights in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was c-9.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Jacob Mantle Conservative York—Durham, ON
Mr. Chair, just to clarify, there is no unanimous consent.
Conservative
Andrew Lawton Conservative Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON
On a point of order, with respect to my colleague, when we were suspended earlier, there were some discussions among the parties. Conservatives have always been willing to try to find a way forward on this.
Given that the Minister of Justice is in Ottawa today, I wanted to ask that the committee invite him to appear immediately in relation to Bill C-14.
Conservative
Andrew Lawton Conservative Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON
They haven't heard what I'm asking unanimous consent for. They don't know they're against it yet, unless they're against all requests to co-operate across party lines.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
I understood what you were asking for, and I heard a no, so we're going back to Mr. Mantle.
Conservative
Andrew Lawton Conservative Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON
I didn't finish the request. Don't the Liberals want the minister to testify?
Conservative
Conservative
Jacob Mantle Conservative York—Durham, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
To recap my understanding of my requests, there is no unanimous consent to table information about the case of Bailey McCourt.
Conservative
Jacob Mantle Conservative York—Durham, ON
Thank you. That's unfortunate. I don't know why members of the Liberal Party would not want more information about a very serious case, but Canadians can make their own judgments on what that says about the priorities of the Liberal members of the justice committee and what they want to talk about.
Conservative
Jacob Mantle Conservative York—Durham, ON
They can heckle that it's nonsense, but I leave it to Canadians to decide for themselves what they think those priorities are.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
I'm sure there are a lot of Canadians asking those questions today, Mr. Mantle. Rather than ascribing motives and things to other people, let's stick to the core discussion here.
Conservative
Jacob Mantle Conservative York—Durham, ON
Mr. Chair, I completely agree with you. On the record, I did not suggest their motives. I said the public can make their own determinations.
Going back to my discussion of misplaced priorities, they are misplaced. I think the members of the Liberal Party on this committee have misplaced their priorities in not wanting to discuss the issues of bail and sentencing reform. We have asked numerous times to go to the consideration of Bill C-14, the bail and sentencing reform act, which the government said is an important piece of its criminal justice agenda. I have to wonder if it really is when Liberal members refuse to move to consider it. It's not like they're suggesting there's something more important that should be considered; they're suggesting that, instead, we should be arguing about the circumscription of religious expression and freedom in this country.
To me, that's very clearly a misplaced priority on the part of the government. It doesn't want to talk about bail and sentencing reform and how we fix a broken system, which has been broken, frankly, by the actions of the Liberal government.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
On a point of order, what's the relevance of this to the amendment on the table, Mr. Chair?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
You don't have the floor. We're not going to have this back-and-forth across the table, please, gentlemen.
You made your point of order.
Mr. Mantle, can you explain how this is relevant to the subamendment?
