Madam Speaker, I want to start this debate by reading the NDP motion. So far I have heard some of the comments primarily from the government side. It has been a collection of four months of mixed metaphors, mixed messages as to why this prorogation existed in the first place. Let me get to the motion first, which I support. The thrust of the motion is exactly what the House needs in order to attain the supremacy of the House, in which I firmly believe. I think all members do unless placed under a cone of silence:
That, in the opinion of the House, the Prime Minister shall not advise the Governor General to prorogue any session of any Parliament for longer than seven calendar days without a specific resolution of this House of Commons to support such a prorogation.
Therein lies the thrust of this. I fully support that the House of Commons should support such a prorogation.
Let us put the clock back for a moment and paint a picture of what we have heard. Today I have heard three different responses as to why this recalibration was to take place. At Christmas, I heard the reasoning of many individuals. This is my favourite and it is the one that really made me laugh at them, not with them.
My hon. colleague from the Conservative Party said that we needed to wait so we could put our attention on the Olympics. I have no doubt that our two-man bobsleigh team was very excited and thrilled to have those members of Parliament rooting for them at home, with their feet up drinking a nice hot cup of coffee. As a matter of fact, poor Pierre Lueders never even stood a chance. He never got to the point where he wanted to, and the government is to blame. How absurd is that? However, to basically say that we needed to shut down the House so we could focus on the Olympics had to be at the pinnacle of why we would shut down a functioning House such as this in such a democracy. It was absolutely ridiculous at the time.
Then the answer had shifted in many directions. I called it the prorogation that ran madly off in all directions. We had one answer about the Olympics. We had another answer about the economic action plan. However, what I do not understand, and I will not even condemn the Conservatives on this one but I do have a lot of questions about, is this. They said that they needed to implement the second phase of their economic action plan so they had to shut down the House. What changed? Nothing really. The money rolled out as they said it did under the way they said it would. There was nothing in the way of taking money from one area and putting it in another area. The deadline was January for major projects in my riding. Everything was proceeding as they said, as normal, or maybe it was not.
The only thing that really changed was the fact the Conservatives did not renew the tax credit for home renovations. They do not need to sit around for over 30 days to realize they will not do something. Where was the vision? I expected a modicum of vision to come away from the prorogation. Instead I was told I had to leave, go home and watch the Olympics. However, I did not get to watch much of the Olympics because I was working in my riding, like many other MPs.
However, can we not walk and chew gum at the same time? Can we not elevate ourselves to be smart enough, to be talented enough to do two things at once? On this side, maybe. That was a catty remark and I apologize to my hon. colleagues. I say this because there is a whole heap of scorn being thrown upon us for what happened. It is not the time nor the venue to do this.
Let us have a look at prorogation. What exactly is it? One of the definitions is that we have to close down the House because the bulk of the work has been done. Professor Errol Mendes, University of Ottawa, said:
A proper democratic use of the prerogative power is a legitimate power to end one session of Parliament after a substantial part of the legislative agenda has been fulfilled leading to a new speech from the throne.
I see the nodding heads, therefore we all agree. Here is what else he had to say:
The use of the prerogative power by the [Prime Minister] in Dec. 2008 and again in Dec. 2009 has been used instead to avoid democratic accountability and transparency...
This is the best part. Remember I talked about the Olympics? Remember I talked about the fact that the Conservatives had to recalibrate the economic action plan? If the economic action plan had to be recalibrated, rejigged, then it really was not much of a plan to begin with, but we could go on about that for quite some time.
Every time we asked why Parliament was shut down, we were told that it was normal because this party had done it when in government. Shame on the Conservatives. Congratulations, the Conservative government has now become everything it said it would never be. That is the crux of it. Every time the Conservatives are in trouble, they always turn the spin this way.
In Atlantic Canada there is a fish called a flounder. It is flat fish. It has two eyes on one side. It swims along and whenever it sees trouble, it flips, rolls over and goes back in the other direction.
We have the government floundering its way through excuse after excuse. At times it becomes absolutely comical. It is like an episode of Yes Minister from BBC. It is absolutely ridiculous. What I call a bit of a charade continues. The Conservatives talked about the fact that they recalibrated. They came back to the House and what did they want to do? Change the national anthem. That is the best they could do, change the national anthem and only 48 hours later, like the flounder, went in the other direction.
The issue then becomes this. Where is the vision? Does the Conservative Party not have the vision by which it can see beyond this point? Did the Conservatives not know that Canadians would be upset if they changed the national anthem? Did they not know that they would be upset by shutting down Internet sites under the CAP program? Then 48 hours later, we remember the fish, back the other way. That says they lack vision. Five year programs relegated to one year funding. This is the recalibration.
To top it all off, at the end of the day, what does the world think of what we are doing here? The Conservatives keep talking about this, that and the OECD. Let us hear what Ned Franks of the Economist has to say:
Far from completing its work, Parliament was still considering important measures, including bills that are part of [the Prime Minister's] crackdown on crime, as well as ratification of free-trade agreements with Colombia and Jordan. All must now be reintroduced.
The Economist asked, why shut down Parliament? It did not make sense to it. A lot of people around the world thought the same thing. It was rather bizarre. The British Columbia legislature stayed open during the Olympics. Members of legislature did not feel it was necessary to focus on the Olympics by being off work. For some odd reason, the Conservatives did. They did not have to recalibrate. They kept pursuing their agenda.