Mr. Speaker, the House will note that the Liberal whip has described the government's promises to the people of Canada in all the constituencies as mere props. That is what they are designed for: to prop up this government so no one will notice its corruption.
In our British parliamentary system there is perhaps no principle more important than that expenditures by the government must be approved by Parliament. It is this principle, more than any other, that distinguishes a parliamentary system from an absolute monarchy or from a dictatorship.
Over 200 years ago, even before Confederation, visionaries like Louis-Joseph Papineau and Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine, with the help of Robert Baldwin and other reformers, fought for responsible government. This fight must be renewed today. We must rout the clique of profiteers and take back control of our money.
Josef Redlich, in this great study of the British House of Commons almost 100 years ago, wrote:
The whole law of finance, and consequently the whole British constitution is grounded upon one fundamental principle, laid down at the very outset of English parliamentary history and secured by three hundred years of mingled conflict with the Crown and peaceful growth. All taxes and public burdens imposed upon the nation for purposes of state, whatsoever their nature, must be granted by the representatives of the citizens and taxpayers, i.e, by Parliament.
The government, a minority government with the weakest position in this House and the weakest mandate from the Canadian people in at least two generations, is skirting the edge of this line and is violating the spirit of this principle which underpins the very foundation of our parliamentary democracy.
We are a democracy and a parliamentary democracy. If the government wishes to spend taxpayer money, or promise to spend it, it should be coming before this Parliament, it should have laid its plan before Parliament and sought approval of the Parliament, but it does not believe it has the confidence of this House, which, after last night, it plainly does not.
The government should stop flying around the country spending other people's money without the approval of this Parliament because, besides having no moral authority, the government has no financial authority to do this either.
The reckless and irresponsible way in which the government is spending taxpayer money without parliamentary approval is simply one of a series of steps where the government has flouted the democratic rules of this House.
Essentially, since Jean Brault's revelations, the Liberals have taken every step at their disposal to avoid accountability, even to the point of violating basic democratic and constitutional principles.
After Mr. Brault's testimony, everybody knew that it was only a matter of time before one of the opposition parties introduced a motion of non-confidence in the government. It was at that point, on the eve of our first supply day, that the government abruptly pulled the plug and cancelled supply and opposition days indefinitely. This broke a longstanding convention by which opposition days were allocated about once a week according to a rotating calendar agreed to by the opposition parties.
By denying the opposition its opportunity about once a week to choose a topic for debate and vote, the government is trampling upon one of the most basic democratic practices of this House and it is doing it all so it can avoid accountability for corruption.
In the last few days, since the opposition has been denied its normal recourse of moving supply motions to express judgment, we have been forced to seek other means to hold the government to account. Thus, through the auspices of the Standing Committees on Public Accounts and Finance, we introduced motions that were clearly intended as motions of non-confidence in the government as they expressed the view that the government should resign.
However the government, the same government that initially said that it would consider mild amendments to its throne speech an issue of non-confidence, even when those motions had been worded explicitly not to be confidence, now is saying that it will not consider even a motion calling upon the government to resign a matter of confidence.
Yesterday, a majority of members indicated they no longer had confidence in this government. What we are saying again today to the Liberals and the government could not be more clear. We are proud of our country, but we are ashamed of our government. Get out of here!
We are holding a debate today when everyone in this country knows that the government no longer enjoys the confidence of the House.
In fairness, there are some experts who believe that a motion to refer to a committee, even one that calls upon the government to resign, is not necessarily a motion of confidence. However the experts are almost unanimous that when a motion like this has raised a question about the confidence of the House, the government is obliged immediately to table a new motion seeking the confidence of the House.
I could quote at length the opinions of Professor Andrew Heard of Simon Fraser University, who is the author of Canadian Constitutional Convention: The Marriage of Law and Politics , from his website but I will not do that because every one of these opinions is clear: the government should either resign, seek dissolution or immediately put forward its own motion of confidence.
This is what happened in February 1968 when the Pearson government was defeated in the House over a taxation matter. The government moved immediately to bring in a new confidence motion that clarified that the previous vote was not a question of confidence. I will remind the Speaker that at that time the procedure by which that was moved and delayed a couple of days was done so with the collaboration of the then leader of the opposition, not made up itself. I should point out that the acting prime minister, who was responsible for managing that motion, was the current Prime Minister's father, Paul Martin Senior.
If the government believed in the role of Parliament the way Lester Pearson, Robert Stanfield and Paul Martin Senior did, then it would already have immediately moved to table a new motion of confidence, not to try to put off the moment of democratic reckoning.
The government has not done this. It is simply trying to rag the puck to avoid itself being held accountable.
The people of Canada are not interested in the sterile quibbling of constitutional experts. They do not want interminable parliamentary debates. They want nothing more than what is to be found among all democratic governments in the industrialized world, an honest and competent government.
Spending taxpayer money without parliamentary approval, cancelling opposition day debates, ignoring majority votes in the House, filibustering its own legislation and ignoring calls for the government to resign is not the behaviour of a democratic government. None of it is consistent with the spirit and the principles of parliamentary democracy.
This is the kind of abuse we hear about periodically, not just in dictatorships but in countries with democracies that are struggling. We have seen it in recent years in countries like Venezuela and Russia where the executive, although elected, is willing to run roughshod over the democratic procedures of their legislatures.
A year ago the Prime Minister was promising to slay the democratic deficit. Today he is threatening to slay democracy itself. The Prime Minister, I add, has no moral authority to govern. The government has no financial authority to govern and it has no constitutional or democratic authority after last night to govern this country.
I have outlined reasons why we should reject the government's most recent budget bill, but it is more than that. We must remove the government.
First, the Liberal Party is deeply involved in the most serious corruption scandal in Canadian history.
Second, the government has entered into a fiscally irresponsible, financially unprecedented cash grab, which will gut tax cuts for business, gut debt repayment and allow the government to pour billions of dollars into slush funds without any parliamentary accountability. It racked up $22 billion in spending commitments in 21 days.
Third, in its attempt to avoid accountability for the sponsorship scandal, the government has resorted to unprecedented, undemocratic tactics to cling to power, including removing opposition supply days and now ignoring a democratic vote and refusing to seek the confidence of the House.
The Liberal Party was caught acting illegally. The government is budgeting and spending illegally and it is governing illegally, all contrary to constitutional and parliamentary convention, I should also add that every day it stays in office it does incalculable damage to the image of this country and to federalism in the province of Quebec. The image of federalism in the province of Quebec cannot be corruption.
Quebeckers have a democratic right and options other than corruption or separation. Without corruption, Quebeckers will continue to vote for Canada and federalism. They will not vote for Liberal corruption.
Since we do not have the direct ability to put a direct question of confidence to the House because of the government's abuse of procedure, I intend to move another motion which will allow the House to express its lack of confidence. I firmly believe the life of the government is over, that it has lost the moral, financial and democratic authority to govern.
Therefore, I invite all hon. members who believe that the government should be removed from office to support the motion I am going to move. The purpose of this motion and its passage is to signal to the Canadian people at large, and more precisely to the Governor General, that the government no longer enjoys the confidence of the House of Commons.
I readily accept that the government has the ability to cling to office, but it has lost its moral legitimacy in doing so. If the government wishes to hang on even in defiance of a second vote of confidence, it may want to heed the words in some of the writings of the late Senator Eugene Forsey. I could quote from Forsey and Eglinton, but more important the essence of the quote is that “any motion in the proper context is a confidence motion, including a motion to adjourn”.
My colleagues and I, on behalf of millions of Canadians who believe the government should be removed from office, that business as usual cannot proceed, that the country can no longer put up with corruption, fiscal irresponsibility and undemocratic tactics, believe that the House needs to decide now and needs to move forward.
Once again, I reiterate that by voting for this motion today, it will be a clear signal to the country and to the Governor General that the government has lost the confidence of the House.
I move:
That this House do now adjourn.