Debates of Oct. 16th, 2012

Opposition Motion—Omnibus Legislation

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the government House leader's speech and the one thing he did not address was the main point of this motion, which is about respect. Clearly, the Conservatives have not shown respect for members of Parliament in the House when they have moved closure and time allocation. They do not want us to actually debate bills. At the root of this motion is also respect for Canadians.

There are many entry points for civil society to engage in the legislative process and this is something we should welcome. Whether they are ideas from our constituents for a legislative change, people can participate in many different ways. They can write letters to the editor. They can testify at committee. MPs can read into the record letters from their constituents about what people are thinking about legislation. There are all these entry points for civil society.

When the New Democrats read letters into the record, the Conservatives mocked us. When civil society came to committee and gave good feedback about how to make this legislation better, not one amendment was accepted. Effectively, the Conservatives are shutting out civil society, which is showing disrespect to Canadians and democracy.

What does the House leader think this process does to encourage Canadians to participate in our parliamentary democracy?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to have this opportunity to set the record straight because I believe my hon. friend from Halifax has created a very false impression.

When we look at the budget implementation debate from this past spring, one of the two bills that I am being allowed to address, I would point out that it had the most extensive debate at second reading of any budget implementation bill in Canadian history. That is a fairly strong example of respect for this institution in allowing it to be debated.

At second reading of the budget implementation bill, we had seven days of debate; at committee we had thirteen days of debate; at subcommittee, we had five days of debate; at report stage, we had a further three days of debate; and at third reading, we had another day of debate. That is a total of 30 days of debate.

Were enough people given the chance to speak? At committee and subcommittee, 145 groups and individuals had an opportunity to make representations in person, setting aside the number of written submissions. In this House, we had 214 speeches delivered. That is a tremendous amount of participation and process.

Therefore, to say that there is any lack of respect for these institutions, I would say that that amount of debate shows an unprecedented level of respect for the institutions and the process that has not ever been seen with any previous budget implementation bill. That is something for which the government should be given credit, not criticized.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Mr. Speaker, holy smokes, the minister saying that we are trying to create a false impression is very rich on his part.

The minister referred to a ruling by a past Speaker with regard other legislation that has come before the House. Speaker Parent said that it was well in line that a budget bill could amend several statutes. The minister tried to sort of lump this in with the abuses we have seen from the government. What about the 400-page document with 753 clauses changing or repealing 70 acts of Parliament and 60 distinct measures? How is that for several statutes? The minister should not lump the two examples together.

He also talked about consultation, the number of interventions and the 145 groups. There were 800 amendments proposed to the bill.

The government likes to say that it had this, this and this and that we voted against it. The fact is that it is a bouquet of thorns that may have a rose in it.

However, the government voted against the 800 amendments. It was 47% of the representatives in the House that put forward 800 amendments. Was there nothing there that the government saw that could have added to the overall bill or maybe to the debate? Was not one of them worthy of support?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things I did not include in the statistics I gave was the extensive amount of prebudget consultation that took place before committee when Canadians were asked for their views, and I participated in some of those. I was amazed to see the extent to which the submissions of Canadians were included and reflected in budget measures, far more than the impression given by the opposition. Canadians wanted to see steps taken in their budget to reduce waste in government. They wanted to see steps taken to ensure we balanced our budget. They wanted to see steps taken to make employment insurance more responsive to our economic needs. In those prebudget consultations, we had submissions about the importance of harnessing the resource potential and allowing us to move to create jobs in the resource sector faster and more quickly to respond to our challenges.

Those were the kinds of things that people talked about in those prebudget submissions and those made it into the budget. Those then were reflected in the budget implementation proposal. They were part of the comprehensive economic action plan, part of a comprehensive whole, that the budget reflected, which we are trying to implement.

Some people look for any way they can to stop measures with which they do not agree. I understand the opposition parties do not agree with lower taxes. They want higher taxes. I understand they do not necessarily share our priority with getting the budget balanced. We think Canadians share that as a priority. I know the opposition parties do not but these are important. They are important if we look at the global challenges elsewhere, the risks of having high debt and the economic instability in Europe that has been caused by that.

We do not want to go down that path. We want to go down the path that has given Canada the strongest economic growth of any major economy coming out of the downturn, the strongest job growth of any major economy coming out of the downturn, the soundest banking system in the world year after year, a strong track record that has given us the most skilled workforce in the world, which has helped us to respond to economic challenges.

We need to keep building on those things. We cannot rest on our laurels. We cannot go backward. We have to go forward into the economic future and think about that future. This is why our budget and our budget bill are focused on the long-term economic prosperity of Canada.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, during the course of an omnibus bill many changes are made to legislation. In my experience in the House of Commons changes to legislation require careful attention. They require the attention of a committee, through witnesses, to the way that legislation will work.

What we saw with the omnibus bill was legislation that changed 70 bills with no amendments. That is a bad situation for Canadian legislative procedure and will likely lead to problems in the future. Even people who supported some of the proposed environmental changes said that amendments were needed, but they did not happen.

Part of what is wrong with omnibus bills is that we do not get proper legislation, even if it is in the way that the government wants it. For the government to think it can put forward legislation that will change 70 bills without proper consultation and proper work done at committee is really bizarre to say the least.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my friend is disregarding the important process of consultation that I did not even talk about in my original outline of the days of consultation. Almost a year of prebudget consultation took place. In fact, many of his constituents called for changes to resource development so they could create jobs in the north, changes that he and his party opposed.

Therefore, when the member talks about who respects the input we get, I would put it to him that the government is far more respectful of the priorities of northerners, as reflected in that bill, for job creation and economic growth, for the opportunity to share in the resources and the potential of their territory in the way that provinces in the south of Canada have been able to.

It is remarkable that my colleague would have difficulties with that, but it made sense to do that in one economic action plan, in a budget that set out our plan for economic growth for the future and a budget implementation bill that implemented the budget.

I knew my colleague has other priorities, things like a carbon tax. A carbon tax would not be in the interest of northern Canadians because they would be the ones who would be punished most of all by a carbon tax that would increase energy costs and harm the important potential resource development opportunities they would have.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House, where the role of each member is to understand the government's proposals and to advance other ideas to improve the situation in Canada.

Contrary to what my government colleague was talking about, today's debate is precisely about the tactics used by the government, namely omnibus bills. Now that it has a majority, the government is abusing its power to use this procedure.

Unlike my colleague, my friend the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, I can talk about a subject for 10 minutes or more without always getting off the point, as the government does every day.

I will be sharing my time with the member for Toronto—Danforth, who has a great deal of experience and expertise in this area.

There are many who suggest that the debate today is in particular to what we have seen over the current year. In respect to the Speaker's earlier comments, I will touch briefly on the most recent example of the abuse of power of what is omnibus legislation, because it sets a certain context for today's discussion.

However, it is in the larger context of the gradual reduction and authority of the role of Parliament that brings us to support this motion and brings us cause for concern for where the current Conservative government is heading. In the context of the majority that it has, with the 100% of power that is given to it by our parliamentary system and by a voting system that we think should be changed to be more proportional, more representative of the intentions of voters, that was achieved through a vote of 39% in the last federal election, with a 60% turnout of all eligible voters, which actually equates somewhere down to a little less than 25% of all eligible voters having supported what mandate the government sought throughout the election.

Let us expand that to the notion that the Conservatives did not run on a number of the changes we saw in last spring's omnibus budget bill. There was no mention in the last election campaign to gut the protections in the Fisheries Act. To protect the notion that habitat is somehow connected to the resources of fish, that fish need a place to spawn, is somehow a foreign concept to the government. It included that in the bill.

There was no mention in the last election, in which the Conservatives received less than 25% of eligible voter support, of the notion of destroying the environmental assessment process, particularly in relation to large projects. According to what little evidence we did have from the Auditor General of Canada, who I hope the government still has some modicum of respect for, these were the facts. Under the changes proposed by the government, we would move from 4,000 to 5,000 environmental assessments a year down to somewhere around 12 to 15, not thousand, environmental assessments. We are not talking about small projects. We are talking about major mines, pipelines and significant projects that have some sort of environmental assessment, some place for the public to interact with the government, the proponents of the project and to raise concerns.

Later today, I will be intervening in one of those such processes around the Enbridge northern gateway pipeline, a process that the government also undermined midway through the use of these omnibus bills, which some will suggest is somehow only an issue for progressive-minded voters.

However, I will quote my friend, the knee-jerk lefty radical Andrew Coyne, who had some important things to say in his opportunity to speak to the public. He said:

So this is not remotely a budget bill, despite its name. It is what is known as an omnibus bill. If you want to know how far Parliament has fallen, how little real oversight it now exercises over government, this should give you a clue....But there is something quite alarming about Parliament being obliged to rubber-stamp the government’s whole legislative agenda at one go.

My friends from the Liberal corner of the House have been a little cute in their motion today because they have chosen to be supportive of the old version of the Prime Minister. When he was the member for Calgary West, he raised similar concerns over a much smaller omnibus bill. Now the government will try to slide those things away and say that it was a different context and a different time.

However, it is a good moment for New Democrats, as the official opposition, in seeking to renew and restore the faith that Canadians need to have in this parliamentary system and to be able to see the Liberals, now out of power, saying, “Mea culpa, we apologize for past abuses of power with this tactic“, which the Liberal House leader said today. They are sorry, in effect, but we have seen that movie before from Liberals. When in power, they go one way and then they get out of power and they realize the error of their ways and seek forgiveness from the public, it is a “one more time, please” notion. That is fine, but it is good to admit errors in judgment.

The Conservatives, when in opposition, had significant problems. We have quotes from the Minister of Canadian Heritage, from the Minister of National Defence and from virtually the entire front bench of the Conservative cabinet saying that this was an abuse of power when the Liberals did it. Now that the Conservatives are in power, this is okay, and in fact they will double down.

The only excuse the Conservatives have is that Liberals did it, but that is not much of a bar. That should not be the standard for them to say that the people they used to fight, they used to disagree with and fundamentally argue with, did things that were wrong, that this would justify them doing those same things, and in fact, making them worse by increasing the scope and scale, as they did last spring, in a bill of more than 400 pages that affected 70 acts of Parliament.

At one point, we were voting through changes in Canadian law at a rate of every seven to eight minutes. If Conservative members of Parliament actually took their jobs seriously and if they understood the fundamental nature of their jobs, they would hold government to account, including their own government. To suggest they had some comprehension of what they did every seven minutes, some understanding of what the impacts would be on fisheries, on employment insurance, on Canadian pensions, on the environmental assessment process, all things the Conservatives did not run on, but felt comfortable voting for with at such a frequency in rate, suggests they were all legislative geniuses. It suggests they were up all night, cramming page after page of all the implications in the assessments. We heard from people, both experts in those fields, be it in energy, fisheries, the environment or pension security, that these changes would have some significant and potentially very damaging consequences, people who are experts in the field of this place and in democracy.

I will quote Dr. Errol Mendes from the University of Ottawa, who said:

We are transferring responsible government under the centuries-old tradition of parliamentary democracy into PMO ( Prime Minister’s Office) government. And with PMO government, we have one-man government.

Dr. Errol Mendes is no radical. He has spent a lot of time studying, considering the ebb and flow of politics and the health and strength of our democracy, not just in Canada, but around the world. He and other experts agree about the path the government is taking us down as a nation. This is not just about an election cycle or one particular party's interest in ramming through a budget or a particular piece of legislation, this is about the general trend and trajectory of where our democracy goes.

Then for any Conservative to go out in the next campaign and lament that only 60% of Canadians come out to vote, meanwhile, showing such disdain for this place and for the roles that all members of Parliament face, is hypocrisy of the highest form. Whatever our political divisions on any given issue, be it the environment, or the economy or social programs, those are all well and good. However, on the exchanges that we need to have over the health and sanctity of our democratic principles, is where we should find that common ground. We should find that place where we say that the supremacy of Parliament is absolute.

It is not up to a prime minister, be he or she in a majority or minority position, to ram through legislation that has nothing to do with what the title or description of the legislation should be. There should be some holding, regardless of an individual's political orientation, to a belief that democracy still counts, that Parliament still matters.

A government that has broken every record in parliamentary history on closure and shutting down debate has nothing to be proud of with respect to that. The Conservatives have destroyed that common ground place to which Conservatives and progressives alike should aspire. We support the motion presented by my colleague from Montreal. We support the notion of them being in some sort of reform program and learning that what they did in the past is wrong and that has somehow opened up a precedence for this abuse of power to get worse and worse.

One does lament what the future is with the Conservative government. One does have hope, though, for progressives across the country who are uniting under the NDP banner and understanding that there is something better, something more to expect from our political leadership than this abuse of power that we so often see from the government today.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we do agree that we need to find limits on the misuse of omnibus legislation. It is not, as the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons would have it, a matter of procedure or political games. The motion before us today is, at its essence, about democracy. I commend to my hon. friend this quote from Professor Ned Franks, one of the leading political scientists in Canada, professor emeritus at Queen's University, who wrote that,

“...budget implementation acts...have morphed from short bills dealing with minor items...to enormous bills”.

He said:

These omnibus budget implementation bills subvert and evade the normal principles of parliamentary review of legislation.

As such, they are at the heart of respect for Westminster parliamentary tradition. I am not going to cite any specific examples of the misuse of an omnibus bill, of which there have been many, but most of them have been in recent years: the 700-page omnibus bill of 2009, the enormous omnibus bill of 2010 and, of course, the most recent one this spring.

I think my hon. friend's speech has already answered the question of whether we need to get this to a committee. How quickly can we get this to a committee? When can we set these limits?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there are two places where these limits get to be set. One is that, with the good intentions and hope of all members of Parliament, we would suspect that the government would be open to this. This is something that can happen through the Conservatives' voting for this motion today, and they clearly are vitriolic in their opposition to anything that would curtail any of their power whatsoever, any sensible or reasonable conversation about limitations on power. The Conservatives think it might need to be absolute.

The second place, and this is an important one, is the effort we make beyond this chamber to talk to our constituents. We know some Conservatives actually heard from their constituents and agreed with them that the last iteration of this omnibus bill, this abuse of power, was something that should have been broken up, that it was incomprehensible and not justifiable in its massive form. The member of Parliament from British Columbia who had that moment of reflection, new to the Conservative caucus, had his mind changed for him within a number of hours. I lament that, because we should all be meeting with our constituents and reflecting their interests, not reflecting what the PMO thinks back to them, which is so common a case with my Conservative colleagues.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, going back to the last answer that the House Leader of the Official Opposition gave with respect to new members of Parliament, I too am a new member of Parliament. When I came here, I thought that one excellent opportunity for me to make a contribution was at committee. I am on the veterans affairs committee, and the last omnibus bill actually had provisions in it that amended legislation that affects veterans. I was of the understanding when I came here that one of the roles for committee members was to debate changes to legislation that comes under the purview of the committee. We were denied that opportunity.

My question for the hon. member relates to the work of committees and the impact of omnibus legislation such as we have just seen on the very effectiveness and the mandate of members of Parliament here in their committee work.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the government makes great fanfare out of its support for troops but only when it is buying military equipment, not so much when the troops come back home as veterans. Only recently, with the clawbacks of social support that the Conservatives were doing to our veterans, did the government finally wake up and realize that the criticisms we as opposition have been offering from those veterans groups were real and authentic and things needed to be changed. It took forever, and veterans lost a lot of money. We are now seeking some sort of justice and compensation for those veterans who were cut out by the government.

In terms of the committees, I lament my friend's and all of my colleagues' inability to actually address legislation, which is the highest role for a committee, but I lament more for those Canadians who want access to those committees to give their experience, expertise and testimony. It is not just those experts' ability to access, but the common, ordinary, everyday Canadians who want to get into the debate and want to enhance their democracy are shut out when the Conservatives ram so much together into one bill and shuffle it off to a finance committee that is ill equipped and without the time to actually study and understand the implications.

The government is ruling without evidence. It has cut the census. It cuts scientists. It cuts the idea that evidence should inform the decision, so that only Conservative ideology of a particular nature should inform the debate, whether it is veterans, the environment or everything on down the line. That is worrisome, not only to me and the New Democrats but to Canadians across the country.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to address the motion today by starting with the observation that there are effectively two points to this motion.

One is that the motion asks us to agree with some sentiments expressed several years ago, almost 20 years ago, by the member for Calgary Southwest, who is now the Prime Minister, with respect to a certain characteristic of what he called omnibus bills and what we are now discussing as omnibus bills in the current Parliament.

The second point is a concrete recommendation to have the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs study and report on exactly what omnibus bills are and how in fact they can be regulated within the confines of parliamentary procedure.

I will start with the second part and say simply that we would, I believe, benefit from such a study. It would clarify practice and allow a serious discussion of how bills called “omnibus”, whether by the government or by the opposition, do or do not undermine parliamentary democracy and indeed democracy at large.

At minimum, through such a study there could be a debate, hopefully not in camera, on best practices without there needing to be a decision or recommendation to give more power to the Speaker to rule on a bill in terms of it being out of order or that it should be split. We could have a study on best practices that would actually share the sentiments of all members of this House about what ideal practice would look like. Then governments, including the present government in the years of its mandate and future governments, can make their own decisions about how they want to situate themselves within a best practices framework. That is all that this report need be. Therefore, I certainly would like to commend this second part of the motion to the House.

On the substance of the issue and the specific reasons for which the motion refers to omnibus bills as problematic, it is clear that the point of order raised by the member for Calgary Southwest in 1994 talks about the problem of diversity of content in what he was calling an omnibus bill. Members should remember that this was a 21-page bill versus the almost 500-page bill that we received, which passed the House in the spring, and a much larger bill that we hear will be coming at us. However, on the 21-page bill, he says:

How can members represent their constituents on these various areas when they are forced to vote in a block on such legislation and on such concerns?

His concern was that members of the House should be able to vote on specific issues more often than is permitted when omnibus bills, or something resembling omnibus bills, become standard practice. He sees it as a question of accountability to constituents.

I would suggest that it could also end up in the context of some kinds of bills being a question of conscience. There may be elements in a bill that members would very definitely want to vote for or against and want that known and on record.

It is certainly the case that the commentator from Postmedia, Andrew Coyne, also sees it in this way when he says:

But lately the practice has been to throw together all manner of bills involving wholly different responsibilities of government in one all-purpose “budget implementation” bill, and force MPs to vote up or down on the lot. While the 2012 budget implementation bill is hardly the first in this tradition, the scale and scope is on a level not previously seen, or tolerated.... We have no idea whether MPs supported or opposed any particular bill in the bunch....

Keep in mind that 70 pieces of legislation were amended in the recent Bill C-38.

He goes on to say: “...only that they voted for the legislation that contained them”.

This is the concern specifically referenced in the motion, and it is a real concern for the reasons given by the Prime Minister in his former capacity as solely the member for Calgary Southwest, and as Mr. Coyne has just articulated the question.

It is also important to know that there is another dimension to this that is at least as worrisome. That is the subsequent use that governments or MPs from the government party make of an omnibus bill in their debates and references in the House, quite commonly in ripostes in question period. What will they do? An MP from the opposition will raise a question in question period on unemployment insurance or on food safety. Lo and behold, a minister will stand up, give some sort of answer and say that “In any case, you're the party that voted against” this, that or the other measure. “You're the person who did so, because you voted with your party”. What they are almost always referring to when that tactic is used is budget implementation bills. We know this.

We in the House know there can be many features of a budget implementation bill that everyone is perfectly happy to see and support. Almost always, when ministers answer in that way their reference points are precisely the provisions that accord a hundred per cent with the sentiments and policy of the opposition. The opposition would have voted for it if given the chance to vote separately. The government knows this.

Omnibus bills are dovetailing with what is effectively, and what we all know to be increasingly, a deliberate strategy of misdirection and indeed mistruth on the part of the government.

We must be very clear that this practice of responding to questions in this way, by attributing votes against matters that members of Parliament are perfectly in favour of, is very much a combination of deliberate party tactics. I hesitate to say this, but it is becoming more apparent that it is a culture and mindset that is taking over the government party. It is a mindset of complete subservience to a Prime Minister's Office and an approach that really plays fast and loose with the truth and demands that its MPs fall in line with that strategy.

Even today, the House leader managed to bring it up at one point in his response to a speech. He parroted the exact same nonsense we have been hearing for a month now with respect to a carbon tax. Why, I would ask, would so many respected journalists take to print over the last month to speak out on exactly this particular tactic of using the carbon tax spectre by the government, this culture of misdirection and mistruth? It is because they know that something profound is underway in terms of the extent to which untruth is becoming part of the democratic fabric of the country, to the point that we cannot talk about a democratic fabric if it takes hold as deeply as it is starting to.

I would add two final points about the democratic problems. One is the problem that committees cannot achieve any kind of scrutiny of omnibus bills. We have to take into account how democracy is profoundly limited by lack of scrutiny. We also have to understand that omnibus bills end up being a game of cat and mouse or even catch me if you can, because of how much time is spent just trying to understand what is hidden and buried in the bill.

Finally, we have to understand the role of the media. The media too need to be able to understand, report and critically discuss bills. In a world where we have media concentration and fewer and fewer journalists dedicated to this kind of enterprise, their task as part of the democratic enterprise is more and more compromised by the practice of omnibus bills.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. friend from Toronto-Danforth for putting it so clearly the chilling lack of respect for democracy, even in the government's response in the debate today. I am deeply saddened as a result of that.

I thought today's motion would be an opportunity by the Liberal Party for us to revisit the difficulties the Speaker has faced. I raised these issues in a point of order on June 4. I believe, with all due respect for the Speaker, whose ruling I am not challenging, that there is enough in our jurisprudence from previous Speaker's rulings to find that certain omnibus bills are out of order because they fail to have a unifying theme or central purpose in the way the legislation is brought forward.

Accepting the Speaker's ruling, as parliamentarians we now have an obligation to find a way to set some limits around omnibus legislation. Accordingly, I thank my friend from Toronto—Danforth for an extremely well prepared contribution to today's debate.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands that Speakers are working within the framework of very confining rules about how far he or she can go in challenging the approach the government has taken with respect to what we are calling omnibus bills. That I why I think the study could be useful. As I indicated in my speech, the purpose should be about best practices and not necessarily one of giving additional power to the Speaker to challenge what governments are presenting.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has given a very clear speech on what is happening with our parliamentary democracy.

The concerns have not just been raised in the House. I was going through some mail, which I want to share with my colleagues. I received a card signed by four constituents in my riding: Hannah, Sofia, Natasha and Dom. They said they had been very upset with the way Bill C-38 had been debated and how there were so many things in that bill. They said, “Thank you for standing up for democracy”.

As a fairly new MP, I have been really disturbed by the lack of parliamentary debate and the shutting down of the voices of members of Parliament.

What steps does my colleague think can be taken to make sure that we do not keep facing bills the size of the phone books of a very large city?

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the answer simply lies in a change of practice on the part of government. As we are currently structured, it cannot come from the Speaker. There may be some more room for Speakers to challenge certain kinds of bills but I will not go any further on that point.

We need to have governments, if they have a comprehensive vision, willing to present legislation either in one bunch or as a series of parallel bills that would go to specific committees with the expertise and the time to study the diverse aspects of the bill, which cannot be properly studied if they only go to a finance committee or to one subcommittee hurriedly put together at the last minute.

One of the key issues is how a government channels a very large and complex bill into the committee process. If the government does that differently, the size and complexity of the bill becomes a very different issue.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

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.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I would point out to the hon. member not to use the name of any other member of Parliament. Please address them by their position or riding.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

It was a quote, Mr. Speaker, an editorial in the Toronto Star, but I appreciate—

[The Deputy Speaker]

The fact that it is a quote does not justify the use of the name.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Mr. Speaker, by throwing everything but the kitchen sink into this omnibus bill, the Conservatives have attempted to pull a fast one on Canadians, hoping that they would not take the time to consider each devastating page of the bill.

Fortunately, Canadians were not fooled and have expressed their outrage at the Conservative government by encouraging this motion today. Indeed, when we had the Liberal opposition introducing 500 amendments in an attempt to have the bill divided so that it could be voted on properly, we know that we and other parties were hearing from Canadians from coast to coast to coast. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the Conservatives used their majority to push through the bill without amendment anyway.

That brings us to today, days before the Conservatives are set to introduce a follow-up omnibus bill rumoured to be even larger and more expansive than its predecessor.

While omnibus bills may present an easy opportunity for governments to introduce complex legislation affecting multiple acts, they are not always the most democratic approach. Lumping dozens of individual pieces of legislation together limits the ability of a voter to hold his or her member of Parliament to account by forcing a member's wide-ranging opinion into a simplistic yes or no.

For example, we expect the next Conservative omnibus bill to make substantive changes to parliamentary pensions. Let me be clear: I support reductions to parliamentary pensions, including my own, so they better reflect the Canadian standard. I think that is the fair and right thing to do. However, if the Conservatives decide, for instance, to include measures in their omnibus legislation that would continue their pattern of dismantling search and rescue in my province, Newfoundland and Labrador, then I would have a real difficulty supporting that particular piece of legislation. I made a commitment to my constituents to oppose any measures that would risk the lives of those who make their living at sea and I intend to keep that commitment.

Herein lies the dilemma with omnibus legislation. In such a circumstance, if I chose to support the reduction in parliamentary pensions, then I would also be forced to break a separate commitment to my constituents. That is why Liberals believe that measures to change the pensions of members of Parliament should be introduced through separate legislation so we have the opportunity to vote in favour of it. We have raised this point both in and outside the House of Commons time and time again, calling upon the government in fact to introduce a different piece of legislation with respect to the pensions of members of Parliament.

In the end, the Conservatives will undoubtedly continue their history of partisan gamesmanship and will predictably include these pension measures in their omnibus legislation, not because it is easier and because the pension measures are related to the budget, but because they can falsely claim that we did not support reducing our pensions if we vote against their millions of dollars in advertising or raising of EI premiums on job creators.

They know that their assertion is patently untrue, but they also know that it will make it easy for them to give stock answers in question period, as my colleague referenced in his earlier remarks. When we are holding the Conservatives to account for reckless policies, it gives the government the opportunity to stand and say, “Well, you voted against it”.

This scheme is insulting to the intellect of Canadians and is, at its heart, intentionally misleading. However, do not take my word for it. Let us listen to what the current Prime Minister, the right hon. member for Calgary Southwest, said in response to an omnibus bill on March 25, 1994:

—I would argue that the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.

Keep in mind that the bill the member for Calgary Southwest thought was too diverse at that time to hold a single vote on was only 21 pages long. Twenty-one pages is less than 5% of the length of the last Conservative omnibus bill the Prime Minister introduced.

Ironically, the Prime Minister's reservations could not be more relevant than to his own omnibus legislation. The same Prime Minister who now tries to use an omnibus bill to sneak substantive legislation past Canadians previously asked:

How can members represent their constituents on these various areas when they are forced to vote in a block on such legislation and on such concerns?

We can agree with some of the measures but oppose others. How do we express our views and the views of our constituents when the matters are so diverse?

He went on to suggest the following:

Dividing the bill into several components would allow members to represent views of their constituents on each of the different components in the bill.

That is exactly what we are saying in our opposition day motion today. What the Prime Minister said in 1994 is exactly where we are coming from today. I would like to think that his view would still be applicable today if he were to be asked the question. Unfortunately, that is not the case and we are finding ourselves having to introduce this private member's motion dealing with omnibus legislation because of the actions of the government.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech, which has evoked a reaction, because the Conservatives' bill was an attack on democracy.

Earlier, we heard the Conservatives say that they had agreed to hours of debate and consultations. However, they failed to mention, and they are unwilling to admit, that almost all the experts who appeared before the committee said that the bill should be split. Amendments were proposed, but none of the Conservatives agreed to them, as was mentioned.

How is this respectful? What better approach can we take so that this type of bill is never brought forward again?

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Mr. Speaker, we are clearly finding ourselves in a situation where, if we do not all come together and recognize that this is the wrong way to go, then we are going to find ourselves in this situation as long as the government is in power.

The procedure and House affairs committee can look at this, with representation from all parties in the House, to try to change the way we have been dealing with legislation, particularly legislation that is so large, considering that the last omnibus bill included 70 acts. We need to come together and work on this, recognizing that it puts members of Parliament in a very difficult position when they are being asked to vote on one piece of legislation that covers so many topics; some of which we could never vote for and some of which we do not want to vote against.

This is why it is important for us to work together and for the procedure and House affairs committee to be asked to look at this and to find a way to make sure that members of the House of Commons are not put in a situation where we are dealing with legislation of this magnitude.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Mr. Speaker, earlier today there were some comments made by the government House leader that caught my attention. People listening to this debate at home who are long-time supporters of the Liberal Party of Canada are on to the fact that these guys are abusing Parliament. Long-time supporters of the New Democratic Party understand fully that the government has abused the chamber and its majority within the chamber. This debate is really targeted at independence and some conservative-minded people or Conservative supporters who still have a high respect for democracy in this country and what goes on in the chamber.

The government House leader made reference to a ruling by then Speaker Gilbert Parent on a point of order by the current Prime Minister when he was questioning the use of omnibus legislation. In the ruling he said it is okay to amend several statutes, but in fact—

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order. The hon. member's time has expired. He has five seconds to put the question.