Evidence of meeting #21 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was amendment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Liberal
Joe Volpe Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON
Mr. Chairman, I'm trying as hard as I can. As I said, I'm trying to look at the new amendment that's before us, the new amendment with the same words, the same syllables, the same vowels and consonants grouped together to present language that is still in the English dictionary; it's even in the French dictionary. And you know what? They are exactly the same words. So I'm trying to be relevant to the constancy and the integrity of the words that are in this amendment.
I have to speak as well to the fact that this is a new amendment, so because it is a new amendment, the words that are coming out have not been heard before. They haven't been heard by anybody. In fact, they don't make any reference at all to this letter by the Canadian Jewish Congress that was read in part into the record. So I'll only address the part that was read into the record.
Because this is a new amendment, and these are new words, new syllables, new vowels, and new consonants, it means, to anybody who would follow this, that the Canadian Jewish Congress no longer supports the government's position, because it's brand new. It's completely different, even though the words, the syllables, the nouns, the consonants, the vowels, are all grouped in the same phrases and paragraphs.
Mr. Chairman, the reason the government withdrew that old amendment and introduced this new amendment is because they realized there was no support for the old amendment. They realized they were giving members of the community, the larger Canadian public, and specific elements of the Canadian public, less than what the House of Commons had insisted they receive.
You know, he said a few moments ago that this issue has been on the table for 10 to 15 years. I just got off the phone with the person who signed the letter that hasn't been tabled but was read--
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
Yes, relevance. He's filibustering. If he's going to filibuster, at least utilize the proper amendment.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed
I will have to ask one more time, Mr. Volpe. You're making reference to a lot of items that aren't included in this amendment. I would ask you one more time to please deal with the amendment.
Liberal
Joe Volpe Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON
Mr. Chairman, I will try very hard to do this. I mean, I wasn't challenged before, but we were dealing with an entirely different amendment.
Now this one here, because it appears to the great unwashed to be exactly the same—oh, I'm sorry, I shouldn't use that language—to be absolutely similar, by vowel, by consonant, by word, by phrase, by paragraph, then you'll have to forgive me if I try to find the self-evidence that the member from the opposite side suggests is there, because it's not obvious to everybody. It's not obvious to everybody that the government would want to redo what it cannot do by--
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed
I'll rule first, if I may.
You have to be relevant to the conversation, and it is the amendment we're addressing.
I'll address Mrs. Crombie's point of order.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
The point of order is that the member across the table is interrupting the member who is speaking by asking for relevancy. Mr. Volpe, from my view, is speaking specifically and entirely specifically to the new amendment, describing it by consonant, by vowel, by sequence, by phrase, and he continues to be challenged. Mr. Chairman, I ask you, can you censure this individual for constantly interrupting a member who is speaking?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed
Thank you for your intervention. It's not a point of order.
Mr. Volpe, I would ask that you stay relevant to the amendment. I think, as has been said before, I've tried to maintain a fair and balanced.... I don't want to have to exercise some of the rights that a chair may have to bring relevance to the discussion. I would ask that you do that.
Liberal
Joe Volpe Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON
Let me address the issue of covering the cost of planning.
Now, obviously, whenever the government, by authority given in the House of Commons, is about to engage in a particular enterprise, a particular project, it has to address the issue of costs. All of us, as responsible parliamentarians, want to know that things are affordable, whatever project we're talking about. The cost of planning a project is inherent in the overall expenditure plan that the government puts when it plans to do something.
We know, Mr. Chairman, that the government, through its backbench MP, presented this bill initially. Only now are we being asked to take a look at the cost of planning. But there is no business plan presented to us--none whatsoever--with this amendment. There's no indication of how much it will cost for the land, how much it will cost for the erection of a monument, how much it will cost for the maintenance. In fact, we don't know the scope of what is planned because we haven't even got it to the point of the design phase. So what is the cost of the design phase, and what cost is the government planning to offload onto the council?
Remember that the House of Commons said that in principle, this is what we want. There was unanimous agreement in the House of Commons by all parliamentarians of all parties that the costs would be absorbed by the House of Commons, by the Parliament of Canada. Now there's an amendment in which the government says, “No, we want the council “to cover the cost of planning”—without a business plan—“designing”.... Can you imagine?
We don't know whether they're going to do a national or international competition to get people to make—
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I looked at the original bill we had, which the House of Commons voted on, and it clearly states, “The Council shall spearhead a fundraising campaign to cover the cost of constructing the Monument”. Now, that's what we voted on. The entire House voted unanimously on that, and Mr. Volpe, with respect, just misled anybody who is listening to this, because they know, clearly, that the original vote by the House of Commons included the fundraising campaign to cover the costs. We had the same thing here. It's an amendment, not a change.
So if Mr. Volpe is going to filibuster today and take our time--and I have no problem being here until tomorrow night, actually--let's have the truth. Let's have it so that Canadians know that fundraising was mentioned in the original bill, and there's fundraising in this bill. It's consistent.
Liberal
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed
I will rule on the point of order.
It's not a point of order. It is debate.
Please continue.
Liberal
Joe Volpe Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON
The truth is, of course, Mr. Chairman, that the government decided to amend every single clause in the bill that it now says it supports. I don't know whether you can have it both ways or three ways or four ways, but the government appears to want everything its way. That's irrespective of what the rules or what the procedures or what the principles that are agreed on 10 minutes ago might be today, 10 minutes later, or indeed a couple of hours later. It doesn't matter. This is a very whimsical approach to anything.
Now we're still talking about covering the costs of planning and covering the costs of design. There's no indication of the process of how to get to the point where we have a design project in place. We don't know what the cost of that might be. We don't know what the cost of the whole planning process might be. We don't even know what the cost of the construction process might be, because we haven't even taken a look at what the materials are that are going to be used and how much of those materials are going to be used. What is the extent of the project? All of these factor into the cost.
So what we might be doing is we might be saddling this council with an enormous cost that the public doesn't want to offload on to a private concern. It said we want this monument and we want it at the expense of Canadians. No, I'm sorry, it shouldn't be at the expense...it's at the contribution of all Canadians. We all want to participate and it becomes ours. We become proprietors of it because we participated through our tax structure. We want the minister, as a representative of the government and as a representative of the people of Canada, to absorb that cost because that's the only way we can demonstrate that it is ours. It's not somebody else's. It is not some nameless council's. Anybody can make a contribution.
As I indicated at another discussion with another particular amendment, in this one here we're talking about construction, installing, and maintaining a monument that reflects the will of all Canadians. Where's the business plan, as I said a moment ago? We want to be relevant. We want to be responsible. You want to indicate that you're doing what the right thing would be. Well, tell us what the scope and size of this monument would be. Tell us what the cost range might be. And tell us in fact how this is going to be covered. What are the mechanisms? What are the responsibilities? Don't tell us that while you've accepted the principle that this be there, a private group of five individuals is going to assume all the responsibilities for covering the costs and then eventually might be able to say that this belongs to all Canadians.
Any five individuals, any 10, any 20, any 500, any one can go ahead and erect a monument on his or her own, but it reflects his or her own.... Here we're talking about covering the cost, the planning, the design, the construction, the installation, the maintenance of a monument, and any other costs included by the council. Why? Why would we tell everybody, here you are, you can go ahead? You can formulate yourselves into an organism that we will approve--although you don't need our approval--and then you can go out there and raise the money and you can build this, and then we'll call it Canadian. That's a user fee. That's a tax on a particular community, not the general taxation system, where every Canadian makes a contribution, directly and indirectly.
You know, Mr. Chairman, I can't believe the chicanery associated with trying to get this passed when the government knows it is unacceptable. It was unacceptable because you as the chair received the studied opinion of those who procedurally look at what this clause means in respect of everything else that's been done--
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
It's the relevance again, Mr. Chair. I don't believe what the member is suggesting is relevant and I would ask him to quit his filibuster.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed
I won't rule it a point of order, but I think you were starting to move off the discussion around the amendment and I would just ask that you keep to that.
Liberal
Joe Volpe Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON
You're right. And nobody's filibustering. But I realize the talking points given to the government members are to utilize certain language in order to engage in ad hominem attacks on--