Mr. Speaker, it truly is an honour to stand in this very important debate about privilege. For people who are listening or who are in the House, the reason this debate is continuing so long is a bit of a concern and is certainly of the government's own making.
We have spent the last two weeks back in our ridings and we have heard what is important to the people we represent. My constituents are very concerned about the lack of judges and some of the decisions coming down, Jordan's for one, where people are getting off because of the lack of judges. I heard people, especially in the riding of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, talk about softwood lumber. They are very concerned about the lack of a softwood lumber agreement. They have questions about the proposed marijuana legislation, which was tabled right before we rose. People know that a budget bill has been tabled. Lawyers and some professionals said that the bill would have some important impacts for their businesses, and that these things needed to be heard. There was concern about NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and what was going to happen with it. I had a number people come to my office. They are now waiting six or eight months to get their old age security. However, things like the privilege debate and what was happening at PROC did not come up once.
It is of note that the people in the ridings know that things are sort of muddied right now and that we are not talking about the important things we should be talking about, but they really do not understand why. Therefore, I should take a bit of time and talk about what is happening, why it is happening, and unfortunately why we are continuing to debate something when we should be moving on to other issues. If the Liberals had any respect for Parliament, they would be doing what they said they would do and make Parliament work for all.
Today, we are talking about the fundamental privilege of a member of Parliament. There are 118,618 individuals in my riding and one of the most important responsibilities I have is to vote on their behalf. A few years ago we looked at the voting record of different members of Parliament. I was absolutely pleased to see I was one of five members who had a 100% voting record, which meant that throughout the year I never missed a vote. It was not always easy. I remember when we were going until midnight every night. At 10 o'clock I thought it was safe to go home and at 11 o'clock the bells would ring. In order to exercise my privilege of voting, I had to quickly get ready to come to the House, and would run from my apartment. It took extraordinary effort but an important effort to be here to vote on behalf of the citizens of my riding.
We have talked about the importance of voting. Not all votes are created equal. Obviously, some votes around “The member shall now be heard” versus voting on a bill about medical assistance in dying perhaps have different levels of importance, but there is a general concept that being able to get there, unimpeded, to exercise our right to vote is important.
The privilege motion is that two months ago two members of Parliament were denied their right to vote by being denied access to the parliamentary precinct. That means the constituents of Milton and of Beauce were prevented from having their votes cast, and this is a serious violation.
When we talk about having to run up to the House and then being stopped for nine minutes, thereby missing the 30-minute bells, it is something that all parties have now agreed was wrong and should not happen. We need to spend some time asking why it happened, so we have systems and structures in place that will not impede members of Parliament from exercising that right to vote in the future. Members should never be held up when they are coming to the House for a vote.
Members were held up and the Speaker, in his wisdom, agreed that there was an unacceptable delay on the buses due to motorcade security and a media bus, and that the delay experienced by these members and the subsequent missing of the vote was a violation of their privileges.
A motion was then moved to refer this question of privilege to the procedure and House affairs committee. This is a normal process.
However, this is where things get a little muddied. There is a whole lot of reasons it gets muddied. Again, I am going to show clearly that it is through the government's arrogance. Perhaps it is because there are so many new members and they are inexperienced, so many members do not really understand what privilege is and how important it is.
The Liberals moved a motion to proceed to orders of the day, which meant that it shut down the debate on the question of privilege without even a vote. That is absolutely extraordinary. Why did the Liberals do this?
The Liberals had some stuff going on in committee that they thought was more important, and I will talk about that in a bit. They said that we should skip this, not even vote on it or take the issue seriously. Again, I will call attention to the Speaker's ruling which called these actions unprecedented. Those in the opposition thank the Speaker for protecting the rights of all parliamentarians on this issue.
For the government not to allow debate before a vote is appalling, and it took away our rights as members of Parliament. We have to be very clear about that. It was a very bad decision on the part of the government.
From that, we then had the member for Battle River—Crowfoot raise a question of privilege on the fact that the original question of privilege was not voted on. Here we have privilege of privilege of something that should not have happened.
Meanwhile, the people in my riding are saying that we should be debating the budget implementation act and softwood lumber. We have a government that is not willing to do the few things it should have done so we could have proceeded in a timely way on the things that mattered to Canadians. For that, the Liberals should be ashamed of themselves.
We then have a member's motion calling for the matter to be studied at the procedure and House affairs and that it should take priority over all other matters at the committee. It is basic common sense that it should have been voted on, it should have been sent to the committee, and we would not be talking about it in the House right now. However, the government is still not giving any signals that it is willing to do what it should do to respect Parliament.
Why is the government doing this? There is some confusion. Why would the government not take something that we all agree was wrong and that we need to look at what happened in a violation of privilege and fix those issues so it does not happen again? It is pretty straightforward. It goes to committee and it takes priority at committee because it is a matter of privilege. The committee could look at the situation. It probably would not take all that long to figure it out and make suggestions to ensure this did not happen again.
However, the government did not want to send it to the committee. People might ask why. It was because it had already created a mess in the procedure and House affairs committee, or PROC, where Liberals had tabled a so-called paper outlining modernizing the way Parliament works.
Again, it is important for everyone to remember that Parliament can always look at some internal reviews, how we do things, and how we should them differently. That is not a bad discussion to have. However, the government did not do that. The precedent since Confederation, with very rare exceptions, has been to have consensus.
This is the House of the people. This is not the audience for the government. We are the opposition for the government. It is the House of the people. When we are talking about the rules of the House, it is not just the government that should get to decide how they are changed. It should be, and has been throughout Canada's history, done by consensus and moving forward.
The Liberals created a mess in this committee. They were not all bad suggestions. Their discussion paper is basically creating an audience as opposed to an opposition. It is really about creating convenience for themselves, that they want to make these rule changes. The majority of the things in the discussion paper are not about making things better.
They have number of themes.
The first is the management of the House. Under management of the House is sittings. They do not want to work Fridays. Constituents in the riding I represent ask how often I am in Ottawa. I tell them I am here 26 weeks a year. Twenty-six weeks a year is really half a year. We have a lot of time in 26 weeks to do other things in our constituencies.
Yes, we need to have a balance between what we do in Parliament and what we do in our constituency, but right now when we are in Ottawa half the time, plus we can go home on weekends, if we choose, and at home half the time, we have created what is a reasonable balance. When people hear we do not want to work Fridays and we are only there 26 weeks a year, they want to know what this is all about. Being from the west coast, it costs a lot of money for me to fly here for the week. People might ask why I should only work a four-day week rather than a five-day week when the government spends thousands of dollars to fly me to this place to work.
Electronic voting is another theme. We could have a debate about it, and perhaps PROC should have a debate as well, but we might lose something if we do not stand to be counted. Yes, we could say electronic voting would be more efficient, but is efficiency everything? Is that all that matters? Because we are here for thoughtful deliberation, voting. It does take a long time sometimes, when we have seven or 10 votes in a row. However, when we have to stand to be counted, when people have a vote that matters to them and they watch it on television, they can see how their member of Parliament has voted. They can see it quickly and easily. We all think very carefully every time we stand to exercise our privilege of voting. We would lose something. We can talk about whether it is more important to be efficient and push a button or whether it is more important for us to stand, take a bit of time to show Canadians, and be very transparent in what we do and how we do it.
Then there is the House calendar theme. The Liberals looked at the calender and what they should do. I think the bigger thing is the Friday issue.
There is theme about routine proceedings.
Throughout this paper, the Liberals want to do many things. They have a majority government. They can ultimately get anything they want done, but they want to take away the few tools that an opposition has to sometimes say that we are not sure the government is on the right track, or that we are going to make this a bit more difficult for it. However, when the Liberals have a majority government, they will ultimately get what they want done, but there are some ways that the opposition can show the government that perhaps it is not totally pleased with the direction it is taking. They wanted to take that way. Again, they want an audience, not an opposition.
Private members' business is another theme. There are a lot of things.
Management of debate is another one the Liberals want to change.
Lots of times in the House, if we agree on a piece of legislation or know that it will ultimately pass, there will be very limited debate. When there is something as important as perhaps the marijuana legislation or the assisted dying legislation, many people want to speak to it, and it is important that they be given the opportunity. The government wants to program manage, put all of the bills on some sort of even playing field and manage it so that it makes it easier for the government. When the Conservatives were in government, they had a majority and managed to get the important pieces of legislation through without taking away the tools the opposition has to show displeasure.
Another one is question period. We are here 26 weeks of the year and the Liberals are suggesting that the Prime Minister show up one day a week for not even an hour; it is actually 45 minutes. They think a great way to modernize Parliament is that for one day a week during the 26 weeks, the prime minister will be in the House for 45 minutes so the opposition can hold him to account. That is what they are suggesting is a good step forward for efficiency and modernizing Parliament.
That could be done right now, as has been shown. The Liberals do not have to change the rules of the House for the prime minister to take every question. Indeed, today the NDP leader stood and asked a lot of questions, and for the first time ever, the Prime Minister showed disrespect in not answering a question posed by another party leader.
Why does he only want to attend question period for 45 minutes 26 days of the year? Maybe he does not like being here. Maybe he finds it tough to answer questions when his budget is not balanced the way he said it was going to be. Maybe it is tough to explain why the defence minister has stolen the valour of our military. Maybe it is hard for him to explain why he did not follow through with his electoral reform promise. However, that is his job. It is his job five days a week for 26 weeks. Whenever possible, the Prime Minister should be in the House to answer questions from the opposition.
The committee was very concerned that there was going to be a decision to ram the discussion paper through, contrary to the workings of the House since Confederation, and contrary to the consensus that we should build for these sorts of changes. The majority of the changes were only in the interest of the government creating an audience rather than an opposition.
Where are we now? We have seen this playbook before by the government with Motion No. 6 last year, which is when the government tried to change the Standing Orders unilaterally. We all know what happened then. That very bad motion had to be retracted. The Liberals' instincts keep showing through on these issues, in terms of blurring government versus Parliament. Sometimes there is great value in having the perspectives of the different sides of the House. Some members who have been around for a long time are expressing concerns with what the government is doing. The newer members perhaps are not aware how serious it is.
It is time the Liberals reflected on what they are doing and how they are doing it. We need to have the question of privilege dealt with so that people are not impeded in their ability to vote. The government needs to seriously think about how it is manhandling and abusing Parliament and the parliamentary system. I hope the Liberals will do some soulful thinking over the next few days.
