Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege to speak to a question of privilege. Before question period today, I finished my remarks by talking about how the subamendment that has been moved in this House is to address this question of privilege by having it take precedence at PROC. I would like to spend the remainder of my time trying to persuade some of my colleagues here on the import of supporting this particular subamendment.
Right now, I believe PROC is looking at an issue that should definitely be punted to the side in terms of the importance of this particular motion of privilege. What is PROC looking at right now? As I mentioned earlier, the government House leader has introduced some marching orders on behalf of the Prime Minister to unilaterally change the rules of Parliament. The proposed changes would effectively and permanently shut down Parliament on Fridays, allow the Prime Minister to be accountable to this place for only 45 minutes per week, and also permanently curtail my voice and the voice of others who are sitting here, in terms of the amount of time and the different mechanisms at our disposal to raise the issues that our constituents bring to us.
I believe that PROC started looking at this particular issue on March 22, and that meeting has extended until today because, regardless of political stripe in this House, we feel that nobody should be able to change the rules such that they make it more convenient for the Prime Minister to push an agenda forward. My colleague from Chilliwack earlier today talked about how these seats do not belong to us but rather to the people of Canada, and our role here is to hold the government to account in its legislation. That of course means that many of us are not going to agree with government legislation. Sometimes we might. However, our purpose here is to come up with policy instruments that are in the best interests of all Canadians, which is why this place exists. This is why debate exists. Each of us is elected by people to stand here and debate legislation. What these marching orders from the government House leader would do is permanently curtail our ability to do that, because the Prime Minister sees this place as an inconvenience.
Earlier today, I noted that the key difference between us and dictatorships like China is that we actually have the ability to push back and hold the government to account. This place here is Canadian democracy, and if they take away our ability to utilize the rules of democracy, they are actually fundamentally changing the tenets of Canadian democracy, which we do not support.
PROC has become a tool of the Prime Minister's Office, so instead of the committee itself becoming a master of its own domain, it is taking orders from the Prime Minister's Office. Some of the things that are in here are very Orwellian newspeak. The term “modernizing the Standing Orders” I find hilarious. Basically, what the Liberals are trying to do is to permanently take away my right to speak for my constituents, and even Liberal backbenchers would lose their ability to hold the government to account. That is not modernization.