A colleague points out that Petro-Canada was one of the examples of what was accomplished during that minority government.
So, we have all sorts of examples. Actually, we have more examples of where a minority government has actually produced results than we actually do of a majority government. Majority governments tend to be overconfident and actually not be that productive at the end of the day.
The current government, I believe, was an accidental government, in the first place. It was not guaranteed that it was going to become a government in the beginning in 2006. The Conservatives formed the government and they were still following their Republican advisers in how to deal with opposition by being obstructionist in committees and taking the attitude that if they could somehow just manage to make things not work, they could get themselves defeated in two years and then present themselves to the public as innocent victims of a minority government situation, unable to get legislation passed, and somehow they were going to be rewarded with a majority government. Not only that, they set a fixed election date and then proceeded to ignore their own fixed election date and called their own election in September 2008.
Well, look what happened. They ended up with a minority government again because, once again, for the second time in a row, the public did not really trust them. The public is not totally enamoured with them, or their leader, or the results that they have been able to show so far. There is a general lack of direction over there. There is confusion over there. They cannot decided whether they want to make a minority government work to their advantage or whether they want to mess up a minority government so they can go out and argue for a majority situation.
We see that on a daily basis here. We saw them in government in the election of 2008, with the Prime Minister travelling the country, wearing his sweater, saying, “The land is strong. Everything is going fine”. Meanwhile, the stock market was melting down around us, and what did he say? He said it was a buying opportunity. “Go out and buy stocks”, he said, as the markets were plunging.
The Conservatives are totally out of sync with what is happening in the economy. They are totally out of sync with what is happening in the country and the results show it. Within days of coming into power, they brought in their economic update and then wondered why the opposition parties were not happy with the results of their economic update introduction. What did they do? They prorogued the House. That got them through crisis number one.
We would think they would have learned by that close call. I think they were somewhat chastened. They came back in Parliament and we proceeded for another year. It was purely accidental. I really believe that the Prime Minister prorogued the House not really thinking that his numbers would drop a dozen points overnight. He did not anticipate the reaction of the public to what he had done. He created a lot of damage. Not only did he ruin his chances for a quick election after the Olympics and put his numbers down in the basement, but he created a reaction against Conservatives and the government across the country which has still not healed.
Not only that but he wiped out his legislative agenda. Thirty-six bills were wiped out by that measure. It would be humourous if it were not so sad. Nineteen of them were his justice bills, his tough on crime bills.
We do not have to worry about beating up on the government and knocking the government down. It seems to be doing a very good job of destroying itself and suffering from self-inflicted wounds at the end of the day. It does not need the opposition to take it down. It can do that by itself and it has proven it over and over again.
What my leader and our party did when we came back was to bring in a motion in this House, which passed, to deal with this whole issue of prorogation of Parliament. It is not that I believe that the Prime Minister will do it again, but we just feel that it is time to take a look at this issue and ensure that we examine it a little more and set up some guidelines. We know that when the Liberals were in power, they prorogued the House. All governments prorogue the House, but they do so when their agenda is finished. They do not prorogue the House when they are in trouble.
Today several speakers have talked about the 1800s and John A. Macdonald, being the last prime minister who prorogued the House when he was in trouble because he was trying to stop an investigation into scandals with the building of the railway. That is the type of thing we are trying to avoid. The government points to all those times that other governments prorogued. It says, “Look, other governments have done it. We should be able to do it too”. But the reality is that the conditions were totally different. This government prorogued the House to save its own skin.
Our leader brought in a motion, which was passed by the House. It said:
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.
That was passed by the opposition parties in this House.
The chair of the committee spoke today for 20 minutes. The member for Hamilton Centre, our representative on the committee, and other members have described how they and the Liberal members on the committee, the Liberal deputy House leader, the whip and the deputy whip, were happily dealing with the issue for the last three months.
The Liberals have to know that the report will be written in due course. It will arrive in October, November or whenever it arrives and everyone seems to be getting along.
People can imagine our shock when we found out that the Liberals used their last opposition day in the House to showcase not unemployment, MS or other serious issues. I went back to my hotel last night with a file on MS. I thought that was what the Liberals were going to be discussing today. I was told it was coming up.
The other night in the take note debate on MS, the Liberal member, who is very strong on the MS issue, did an excellent job. Just on the strength of the three questions I asked in that four hour period, I already have had a dozen emails from across the country on the issue of MS. People were very interested in that debate. I thought, for once, the Liberals made a smart decision to go with a discussion on MS.
I found out this morning it would be on prorogation. We already have a committee on prorogation and the Liberals have members on that committee. What went wrong? I guess during their garden party last night, they decided to make a change. It was either at the garden party or it was 8:30 this morning.
Let me give the Liberals some advice. It is not a good idea to making crucial decisions at 8:30 in the morning. Most of us are not fully awake at that time and our judgment can be somewhat impaired. Obviously theirs were.
Therefore, they introduced the motion and about 9 o'clock this morning, someone actually read this motion. They realized they would have to produce a report and have it done in six days.
We have members on a committee that have been working on this for three months. The eminent professors and constitutional experts in the country have been brought before the committee and testified. The Liberal members are at the committee, but they decided that it was not good enough. They wanted to set up their own committee and to report in six days. That would be a miracle in the making if they could do something like that.
The Liberals realized that six days was unreasonable, so they decided to amend their motion on the fly, on the floor. For those who have not been watching the debate, the motion reads, and bear in mind we already have such a committee:
That a special committee of the House be hereby established to undertake an immediate study of all relevant issues pertaining to prorogation, including the circumstances in which a request that Parliament be prorogued would be appropriate or inappropriate, and the nature of any rule changes (either by way of the Standing Orders or legislation or both) that may be necessary avoid any future misuse of prorogation;
We have already established, by virtue of the chair and other members of the committee, and virtually every member of the committee, except the three Liberal members on the committee, have actually spoken today, that the limits for the committee are broad enough to cover all eventualities.
Every possible area of this subject can be dealt with by the committee's rules. In fact, it can change the rules if it wants to add in new elements. All the Liberal members have to do is simply go to the next committee meeting and bring the ideas that the authors of this motion today want and they can be added into the process.
The motion says, “that, as a part of this study, the committee take into account the specific proposals for new rules pertaining to prorogation offered by the Leader of the Opposition”, and those ought to be pretty good, “including: (a) a requirement that the Prime Minister give Parliament written notice in advance of any request to prorogue”, and that is reasonable.
It goes on to say:
together with his/her reasons therefore; (b) a requirement that there be a debate in the House of Commons after any such notice is given, but before any request for prorogation is made; (c) a requirement that the express consent of the House of Commons be obtained at the conclusion of any such debate if (i) fewer than 12 months have passed since the last Speech from the Throne, (ii) the requested prorogation is for a period of more than 30 days, or (iii) an issue of confidence is outstanding before the House; and (d) a provision that allows committees of Parliament to continue to function during any prorogation; and
Then the Liberals came in with their amendment, which said:
—that the special committee also take into account any report on prorogation that may be forthcoming from the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, and provide an analysis of the consequences of the use of prorogation as a device to avoid accountability or to silence voices that may wish to express disagreement with the government;
All these things have already been covered by this committee for the last three months. The Liberals then go on to talk about the content of the committee, how it would be comprised of 11 members, including 5 members from the government party, 3 members from the opposition, 2 from the Bloc and 1 from the NDP, provided that the chair be from the official opposition.
As the chair pointed out, we will have the existing chair at this committee and we will appoint a new committee now with the chair being appointed from the Liberals. We will have a Liberal chair and we will have to pay that chair $11,165 plus the cost of bringing all those same witnesses we just heard from back again for another go around.
This is absolutely insane. No wonder the government is having its chuckles today at the Liberals' expense. I know it is having a great day. However, it should not be having a great day because it does not deserve one.
The amendment continues, “that the committee have all of the powers of a Standing Committee as provided in the Standing Orders”. That is exactly what we have already. Once again, there is more duplication. It goes on say, “that the members to serve on the said committee be appointed by the Whip of each party”. By the way, the whip is already on the committee. This whip is going to appoint members to the second committee as well. It goes on to say, “each party depositing with the Clerk of the House a list of his or her party's members of the committee no later than June 23, 2010”.
The Liberals then talk about membership substitutions. I guess the most important part of this is they are deleting June 23 and putting November 2 as the date. That gives the government a lot of time to have an election in the meantime, or maybe even prorogue the House again for all we know.
This is the sad state of affairs that we find ourselves in on the last day of the sitting of the House. I only wish the Liberal caucus members would take a little stronger stand. I do not blame the Liberal caucus members. I do not think any of them really had a clue what was coming down today. I am sure they are going to be taking this back to their next caucus meeting, trying to find out just what went wrong.
They are probably wondering why they gave up a perfectly good opposition motion on MS, or why they gave up a perfectly good opposition motion that had traction and was a great idea. They did a great job on it a few days ago. Why did they mess up and bring in a motion like this, which will not make it through the House of Commons, and it should not. It is simply a duplication of what we have right now.