Madam Speaker, I rise today on this important question of privilege. On March 22, two of my colleagues, the member for Milton and the member for Beauce, were blocked from accessing the House of Commons, allegedly by the Prime Minister's motorcade. As a result, they were unable to fulfill their principal role as parliamentarians, namely to represent their constituents in a vote in this place.
When the member for Milton raised this question of privilege in the House, the government made the decision to end debate and proceed immediately to orders of the day. The Speaker ruled this decision to be “unprecedented”. The Speaker of the House ruled that no other government, Liberal or otherwise, had gone so far as to end debate in this fashion on a reasonable question of privilege.
The government's action on March 22 appeared to speak volumes about its level of disrespect for members of Parliament and the work we all do in this place. I say appeared to, because one wants to get this to the procedure and House affairs committee for the thorough review it merits in light of this unprecedented action.
Canadians need to know just what happened, how it happened, and how it can never happen again, because this goes to the heart of what we are doing in this place: representing our constituents as best we can. If we cannot get here, allegedly because the Prime Minister's motorcade blocks us from doing that work, I think every Canadian who may be watching this debate will understand why this is so vital.
Parliamentary privilege allows MPs to fulfill their most important role: representing their constituents by voting on business in this place. By shutting down debate the way it did, the government acted with blatant disregard for the way some members were treated in that they were prevented from doing the very thing that each of us in this place is elected to do.
The government's power to move to silence the members for Milton and Beauce demonstrates that to the government, apparently, MPs' privileges and the ability to do their job is less important than government business. I was struck by the government House leader's use of the word “efficiency” and words like “modernization” in describing what they are trying to do, euphemistically, in this fashion to change the very rules under which we operate in this place.
The underlying factor is the precedent these government actions set, whether it is refusing to allow a debate on a question of privilege or unilaterally pushing through changes to the Standing Orders, thereby changing the very process for establishing these rules. We have heard a number of times already how outrageous it is. There is a long-standing convention and tradition of securing party approval from opposition members of recognized parties before proceeding to overhaul the standing rules.
It is unusual, to use a neutral word. Many of us have spoken about how the government had the opportunity to do what Prime Minister Chrétien did when he was prime minister, and that is to allow a committee, chaired by you, Madam Speaker, or someone like you, and representatives of the recognized parties to roll up their sleeves and modernize, to use the House leader's favourite word, the way in which we do business in this place. I was so hopeful that this is what would have happened.
Today I had the opportunity to ask the government House leader a very specific question, which she answered, I think. I asked if she was going to proceed with ramming the cherry-picked parts of her so-called discussion paper through in a motion later this year over the opposition of all opposition members. I believe she said yes. I may be wrong. That is certainly how I heard her answer. In other words, it would break the tradition that goes back to 1867. Here we are celebrating 150 years of Confederation, and the government proposes to make sweeping changes to the way democracy works. Why? It is because the Liberals ran on that, as if that somehow gives them the right, in a fused parliamentary system like ours, to do that.
I was taken by the eloquence of the speech this morning by my friend the member for Burnaby South, who reminded this House about how Charles I lost his head, literally, when the executive tried to make such changes to the parliamentary process. The Liberals seem to forget that although they had all of 39.5% of Canadian voters support them, they do not have powers that are dictatorial in nature. We have traditions to preserve in this place, and I know I speak for opposition members on this side of the House, both Conservative and NDP, when I say that we will not allow those traditions to be broken so easily.
It is quite shocking that the government said it is not going to let the opposition block it from doing what it ran on. We know how sacred the Liberal promises are. I do not know how many times the Prime Minister came to my riding and said that this would be the last election fought on the basis of first past the post. I have lost count of how many times that promise was made. I guess that was a different kind of promise. The Liberals said in the election, and it is right on the Liberal platform page, that they would restore home mail delivery. I guess that was another promise of a different kind than this promise that has to be kept.
The point is that this is not just another promise of that sort. If the government wants to spend money differently in a budget, it is the absolute right of the government to bring a budget bill and use its majority to change things. The point Canadians need to understand is that we do not change the rules of this place because the government claims it ran on that. That is not sufficient. Changing the rules of the House of Commons is not the same thing. The Liberals are but one party, literally, in this place, and that seems to have escaped them.
Canadians should understand how outrageous it would be if the government decided to say in a campaign that it was going to change the way our courts work. After all, that is another part of our democracy and the institutions that make Canada what it is. People would say that of course it cannot do that, because that is another institution it does not have the unilateral right to change. Similarly, it does not have the unilateral right to make sweeping changes, as it purports to do here. I am sure that we on the opposition will continue to remind Canadians of what it is purporting to do.
The Liberals have talked about their so-called modernization in what they initially termed a discussion paper, which is kind of soft and cuddly. They said, “We are going to discuss this with Canadians and have a little chat about how we change the rules.” That changed pretty quickly over the weekend when, late last night, the government House leader called to say, “By the way, you know that discussion we were going to have? Actually, what we are going to do is ram through changes to the rules. We are going to choose a few that are maybe easier to ram through than others, but we are just going to go ahead, bring a motion in, and ram it through using our majority. Have a good day.” That is not going to work for Canadians as they begin to understand the enormous arrogance that statement reflects.
As a matter of fact, one of the things the Liberals would do is take away the tool of filibustering, a tool that, admittedly, should be used very rarely and is used very rarely, but an essential tool nonetheless for parliamentarians in this place. They think that can and should be done. They are also apparently going to use closure. I did not say time allocation, because I believe that under the rules, and members can confirm this, time allocation can be used on bills, but when they wish to limit debate on motions on privilege matters, that is done through closure. I presume that when they face this opposition united against them, they will choose to use closure to ram through their changes.
So much for a warm, friendly, accountable, and transparent government. We look forward to that with interest, when it chooses to do that, this overwhelmingly top-down, Prime Minister-controlled government.
To add irony to irony, the government has said that one of the things it wants to do is change omnibus bills. Let me stop here and say that sometime this week, we are about to begin debate on an omnibus bill the government is introducing, a budget bill. Why is it an omnibus bill? The government is saying that it is going to change it under these modernization processes.
It is an omnibus bill for a couple of reasons. The Judges Act would be amended. The veterans legislation would be changed. By the way, the artificial intelligence bill, which the Liberals introduced, and the veterans bill are both now part of this omnibus bill. Is that not by definition what we do when we add a bunch of things together? It is an omnibus bill, something the Liberals quite properly complained about under Mr. Harper.
It is time for Canadians to recognize what is going on. This opposition is united in fighting against these changes.