Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join with my colleagues in debate on Bill S-16, a bill to amend the Criminal Code to deal with contraband trafficking in tobacco.
As I have done with all the bills we have been debating the last number of days, weeks and hours, I have to underline and underscore where this bill comes from, denoting for those who are watching from home that when it has an “S” in front of it, it is of course a Senate bill.
As an elected member of Parliament representing my constituents, I have to underscore my concern about how egregious it is that we have yet another bill coming from the other place. It is clearly a strategy of the government to start legislation in the other place and then send it over here. We just debated one on cluster munitions. It is actually the wrong sequence, and the current government is seemingly dependent on it. It is like a crutch. Relying on the Senate is the government's own addiction.
For reasons of accountability, be it on this bill or on the bill we just debated on cluster munitions, it is important to underline that we should not have bills coming from the other place. Now we are at Bill S-16, but the numbers go higher than that, if members can believe it.
The government should not be dependent on the Senate to be the originator of these bills. We cannot honestly look at ourselves as an institution doing the best we can when we have bills coming from an unelected Senate that is right now under investigation. It is unaccountable and it is a problem.
It is a problem because we get these bills at the end of a session in which they have already been debated as fully as they can be in the other place, with witnesses, and then we get time allocation on bills of this nature. We have it on contraband tobacco. We had it on cluster munitions. We had it on a bill that was to deal with foreign corruption. They are very serious issues.
We are getting these bills through time allocation. I underline that point. We had time allocation for the 47th time in this House for bills that the Conservatives want to get through. It really undermines our ability to do our job.
They have not had to deal with that in the other place. They have had time to examine bills and have witnesses without the pressure of time allocation. This bill is under time allocation, as members know. That is why we are debating it for five hours with the clock running.
The Conservatives say it is important and tell us what a great job they are doing on fighting crime, and there is all the other propaganda we hear. However, the point is that this should be the place where we have full debate. When legislation comes from the other place—the unelected, unaccountable and under-investigation Senate—we cannot do that to the extent that we should. Why? We are at the last couple of days of this session. In the last couple of days of this session, what are the Conservatives doing? They are rushing, putting time allocation on bills and pushing them through.
We just had it at the foreign affairs committee with a very important bill that we just dealt with there. The Conservatives actually went further than the time allocation at our committee. They said they would put five hours on it, but then asked if we would be willing to go down to three hours. That is what it has come to: rushing things through. Who cares if we even have five hours of debate? They just want to get it through. It is as if this is a rubber-stamp place.
I am sorry, but the Senate is the place that should be receiving the bills after we have a full debate here and hear from witnesses and have amendments. It would be nice if the Conservatives would actually accept an amendment every once in awhile. That would be just wonderful, but it is not likely.
We need to underscore this, because it is undermining our legitimacy as a House and it is undermining our committee work. I can say that for certain. If we just accept bills coming in and do not care where they come from and do not mention that, we fail to do our job as parliamentarians.
I mentioned at the beginning that this bill should not be originating from the Senate. It should be coming from the House of Commons. If the Conservatives cannot figure out how to make things work with a majority government and have to rely only on the Senate, then not only does the government have a problem, but our Parliament and our system have a problem that the Conservatives have created, and I need to underscore that.
The Senate is a crutch for the government, after 59 senators were appointed so they could do the business of the government, not the business of the people, and now we have bills coming through one after the other in the last number of days. One Senate bill after the next Senate bill; it is as if this is being passed along, photocopied and pushed out the door. It is offensive.
When we have senators like the one who apparently represents my area, Mac Harb, under investigation, the credibility of the institution is right now under question. We are now getting bills from senators as if we are supposed to be checking their work. It is supposed to happen the other way around. We are supposed to have the full debate; we are supposed to have the amendments here; we are supposed to have an ability to have good legislation written starting here. Yes, they can look at it. That is the way our system works for now until we deal with that problem.
However, to have it the other way around is offensive. It is offensive to our constituents. It is offensive to our system, and it actually does not make for good law because of the pressures we are being put under: the time allocation pressures; the pressures at committee where the mentality is that we get only a couple of witnesses, we do the line-by-line and then we get the sucker out of there. That is the mentality of the government, and it undermines the credibility of our Parliament. It is on the government's watch, so at the end of the day it undermines the credibility of the government for any kind of notion of accountability.
I also have to underline the government's dependence or addiction, almost like a tobacco addition—