Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Vancouver Quadra.
I rise today to speak to the Liberal opposition motion calling on the House to do the following:
[I]nstruct the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to study what reasonable limits should be placed on the consideration of omnibus legislation and that the Committee report back its findings, including specific recommendations for legislative measures or changes to the Standing Orders, no later than December 10, 2012.
To fully understand our motion, let us begin by examining what an omnibus bill is. Chapter 16, page 724 of O'Brien and Bosc, House of Commons Procedure and Practice, explains:
[T]here is no precise definition of an omnibus bill. In general, an omnibus bill seeks to amend, repeal or enact several initiatives.
Citing Speaker Fraser's ruling of June 8, 1988, O'Brien and Bosc further state that an omnibus has:
—one basic principle or purpose which ties together all the proposed enactments and thereby renders a bill intelligible for parliamentary purposes.
As Canadians await the impending sequel to the Conservative government's March omnibus bill, they clearly remember Bill C-38. Under the guise of implementing the budget, this 425-page Conservative omnibus bill amended more than 70 individual acts affecting an extensive list of departments, including 150 pages dedicated to gutting critical environmental protections and drastically changing the employment insurance program.
We can look at the media's response to this; it is not just Canadians from coast to coast to coast. An editorial in the Globe and Mail stated:
The federal government's 452-page omnibus budget bill contains too much for adequate consideration by Parliament, because it is really more than budget-implementation legislation. Only some portions of it are about public finance, that is, about such matters as income tax, sales tax and federal-provincial fiscal arrangements.
Another editorial in the Toronto Star said:
This is political sleight-of-hand and message control, and it appears to be an accelerating trend. These shabby tactics keep Parliament in the dark, swamp MPs with so much legislation that they can’t absorb it all, and hobble scrutiny. This is not good, accountable, transparent government. It is not what Harper promised to deliver.