Madam Speaker, I hope that the Liberal members are paying very close attention. What they are trying to do also permanently curtails my voice, and the voice of others who are sitting here, with respect to the amount of time and the different mechanisms at our disposal to raise issues that our constituents bring to us, the issues they elected us to represent them on.
The Liberals are going to eliminate our ability to discuss committee reports. They are going to eliminate the ability of members of Parliament to move procedural motions and to do such things as adjourn debate or move that a member now be heard. As members of Parliament, we have many of these tools at our disposal to ensure that we hold the government to account, and the Liberals are trying to take those tools away.
That is what has been happening at the procedure and House affairs committee. The government has shown very little willingness to work with the opposition parties to come up with solutions that all of us can agree on. I hope the Liberal backbenchers are paying very close attention to what is occurring in the House right now, because sooner or later, though they might not like it, they will be in opposition, and when that time comes, they will have to reap what they sow. Right now they are robbing the opposition of all of the critical tools we have to do our job and hold the government to account. Whatever party is in government when the Liberals are relegated to the opposition and pounding on the desks about how unfair these Standing Orders are, it will be interesting to see if that government will be keen to change the rules back to their advantage.
The opposition parties do not always have to agree. However, when we are talking about the fundamental rights of the opposition, the integrity of our parliamentary institutions, and the ability of MPs to do their job without impediment, when we come together to challenge the abuses being imposed on us by the government, that is when we should be coming together. We do not want to set a precedent of the government making unilateral changes to the way our democracy works to its own advantage. I think the government members can understand that this would be a problem, because they will not be in government forever.
The House does not belong to the executive branch. The House of Commons belongs to each and every member of Parliament, to every one of us as parliamentarians. We must be free to do our job without impediment, without intimidation, and without interference. We must be able to speak for our constituents. It is for us to decide how we govern ourselves in this place. We are not to be told how to govern ourselves by the executive branch.
The purpose of these rules is to protect the rights and voices of the minorities in this House. They are a crucial part of our democracy. They are not there to make this place more predictable and more convenient for the government and they are not there to give the government an audience. They are there to hold the government to account. When members are denied the right to vote, we do not expect the government to take action against members of Parliament by cutting off their right to debate. We expect the rights of the minority to be protected. That is what the House rules do. That is what we are doing here when we talk about privilege: we are protecting the rights of the minority, protecting the rights of each individual member of Parliament.
That is why, as government in the last Parliament, never once did we propose changing these rules without the consent of all of the other parties. That is why the only changes ever made by the Conservatives to the Standing Orders were made with the consent of all opposition parties.
Many of my colleagues have pointed out that Jean Chrétien, Stephen Harper, and Paul Martin, all previous prime ministers, sought the consensus of the opposition parties before making fundamental changes to the Standing Orders and how the House of Commons operates. However, the Liberal government is eager to make unilateral changes to the Standing Orders without allowing a meaningful voice to the opposition.
It was not without hard work and filibustering at the PROC committee for weeks that the Liberals have now removed some of the more controversial points in the discussion paper from their proposed reforms. However, this does not change the overall tone of the government, its blatant disregard for the privileges of all members of this place, and the important role the opposition has in holding the government to account.
We are now at the point where the government has sought to adjourn the debate on the question of privilege without a vote. We have arrived at this place, and this point of debate, because of the efforts of the Liberals to force through unilateral changes to the Standing Orders.
The Speaker quite wisely ruled that it was not appropriate for the debate to simply end at that point, and the possibility of a motion to discuss this was brought forward at committee. It does not replace the important decision on what is happening here. It needed to happen in the House of Commons. It needs to be followed by a vote in the House of Commons and to then go to the procedure and House affairs committee.
Never before in the history of this place has a matter of privilege been dealt with in this way. Never before has a government shut down and prevented all 338 members of the House from voting on a matter of privilege. Shutting down debate on a question of privilege and moving on to orders of the day is simply unprecedented. When members of Parliament are denied the right to vote on whether it was a violation of privilege, we see the arrogance of the Liberal government, and it is unprecedented.
My colleague from the New Democratic Party made an excellent point in his speech when he was explaining why the question of privilege is so important. He said, “Access to the Hill is a very important issue. However, the problem is the government unilaterally decided, as has been the style for several months now, to put an end to this debate, which sends the message that the members' privilege is not as important” and we have to move on to one bill or another.
The Liberals are fighting against the right of their own colleagues from Milton and Beauce to be heard at PROC. They are our colleagues, all of us together in the House. Are the rights of all members of Parliament to represent our constituents not something we all should be fighting for? If so, why will you not fight for it?