Evidence of meeting #144 for Public Accounts in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was point.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
I'm going to bring our meeting back to order.
Ms. Khalid is not here, so I'm just going to move her down one.
Mr. Genuis, you have the floor.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Thank you, Chair.
I'll just very briefly observe that we are clearly in the middle of a Liberal filibuster. The Liberals are filibustering to prevent accountability. Liberals claim to be confident that the Speaker would not consider this a matter of privilege. If that is the case, why are they filibustering? Why are they filibustering if they're confident that the Speaker wouldn't rule in their favour anyway?
Let this go to a vote. The Liberals can vote against it. We'll vote in favour of it, and the chips will fall where they may. The fact that the Liberals are filibustering suggests that they're not confident in the outcome at this committee and that they're not confident in the outcome in the House. If they are confident, then let it go to a vote. Stop the filibustering, and let's get some accountability. The Liberals are filibustering to try to prevent this privilege motion involving former Liberal minister Navdeep Bains from going to a vote.
Conservative
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Thank you very much, Chair.
I'll just start by saying that I've seen the Conservatives filibuster their own privilege motions in the House and committees so, no, this is not a precedent.
I love that Mr. Genuis brings so much to contribute to this committee, but I would like clarification through you, Chair, to the clerk, as to which Conservative members are subbed in on this committee. We have seven of them here in the room, and I just want to know which ones are here—
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
The permanent members are at the table. The permanent members vote. That's the rule.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Would you like to do the clerk's job for her? I didn't ask you.
Conservative
Liberal
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Which is fair, but again it goes against exactly what Mr. Nater quite wholeheartedly tried to mansplain to me, which is who is at the table and who is not at the table. I don't appreciate it, but I do appreciate that the clerk clarified—
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
It has nothing to do with gender. You don't know the rules.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Please don't heckle me. You're not at the table, buddy. Walk away.
Conservative
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Thank you so very much, Mr. Chair.
I'll let the chatter in the room kind of die down a little bit before I continue, if that's okay with you, because I think what I have to say will probably want to be heard by members.
Conservative
Liberal
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
No, please, get the heckles out. I have a really prolonged comment to make so, please, get your heckles out.
Are we good? Okay.
Chair, as this motion of privilege has been called, I sat here and reviewed committee after committee, not just on the SDTC issue but generally all committees, all questions and all studies that have been put forward. There is one common denominator in the way that questions get put from the Conservative benches to witnesses.
With question after question, it is unfortunate to see.... I know I get called out on calling so many points of order on the way that the Conservatives treat witnesses, but we see time and time again—and I can go through the transcripts and relay to you what they are—the way the questions are posed to witnesses. Whether they're friendly to the Conservatives or not friendly to the Conservatives, they're not welcoming an answer.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
I'm happy to let the chatter die down. It's fine.
Respectfully, Chair, they're all in the back of the room, and I can hear exactly what they're saying over here. They're from your whip's office, and I don't think that I should be hearing what they're saying.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
I couldn't hear anything except a mild murmur.
Ms. Khalid, this is a committee room. It's not a library.
You have the floor. It is relatively quiet in here.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Thank you, Chair.
As I was saying, transcript after transcript of committee meetings have shown that Conservatives don't want to hear the answers. They want to ask the questions. They want to get their clips and move on, but not let the matter move on. They want to move on to their next objective.
My dad says this one thing: “Iqra, don't be somebody who wants to be someone. Be somebody who wants to do something.”
The way the Conservatives are behaving with this bogus privilege motion shows me they are very much in the business of wanting to be something, rather than doing something good for Canadians.
I've seen time and time again how questions are posed to witnesses in this committee without giving them the opportunity to answer the questions and without giving them the opportunity to clarify. It's been said here before: This is not a courtroom. This is a place for, hopefully, distinguished and educational conversation. The fact that we don't have that right now is kind of disturbing.
This privilege motion itself has no water to float on, because of the nature of the questions that have been asked over these past.... I've been on this committee for the past year. The fact of the matter is that, the way questions are posed again and again, witnesses are disrespected again and again. If this were the case, the member opposite would feel that his privilege was violated, because nobody was answering his questions, Well, he's been on this committee for a very long time. He's been on many committees for a very long time. Why has he never brought such a motion forward before?
Is it because the witness is a former minister of the Crown? Is it because the Conservatives are looking for dirt, or whatever it is that they're looking for? I have no idea, to be honest.
This motion was put forward before the Conservatives had all of their time to ask the questions. This motion was put forward while the witness was not able to answer all of the questions. The witness kept getting heckled, and he kept getting cut off with the questions that he was supposed to answer with whatever limited time the Conservatives were going to give him.
As he was trying to answer, he would get cut off after the first couple of words he was trying to get out of his mouth. That is unfortunate, because when we invite witnesses to this committee, we invite them, hopefully, with the intent that we're going to learn something from them. It's not to interrogate them, not to humiliate them and not to move bogus privilege motions based on a political need.
It is a political need right now from the Conservatives. They're just grasping at straws, anything and everything, whatever can stick. It's really unfortunate. Quite frankly, I don't think the other opposition parties have done this debate any favours either. As I was reading through the transcripts, I see that the member from the NDP has a page-long question. You don't get a lot of time to ask your questions.
Obviously, we want to hear what people have to say, rather than indulge our witnesses with soliloquies. However, that is exactly what has happened. That is exactly what I see in our transcripts: elongated paragraphs and broad statements trying to virtue signal all of that. Then, when it comes time for a witness to answer a question, what happens? It's “Oh, no, you didn't answer my question”. Well, buddy, give him some time to answer the question. How about that?
