Mr. Speaker, as I was saying, it seems that the Liberals and the Prime Minister have a lot of time for staged selfies and office renovations. The minute that the Liberals were elected, there were millions of dollars spent on office renovations. I think one television set was $15,000. That was one television set for a very important minister, I am sure, who really needed a very expensive television. The Minister of Infrastructure spent $800,000 on massive renovations to his office. The Minister of Status of Women spent another million dollars.
There were Snapchat filters, more photo ops, and a lot of work trying to get Fridays off. That was another big priority for the Liberals. Instead of working on legislation and getting things passed, the Liberals had and continue to have other priorities. That seems to be the perks and fun of being in government, as opposed to the hard work of debating and getting legislation through.
To highlight this, one only needs to compare our Conservative government record against the current Liberal record. Our 2006 Conservative minority government, compared to the current Liberal record with a majority government, in the same amount of time, managed to pass more than twice as many bills. Lest anyone say it was because we used time allocation, the Liberals have used time allocation on virtually every single one of the bills that they did manage to get passed.
The fact is, we were more serious about governing. Members of Parliament sit here day after day and see only one member get up to ask questions. There are other members who participate in actually giving a speech, but when it comes to questions and answers, we do not see the Liberal members on the other side getting up and asking questions. I guess they are busy doing other work. The Liberals do not seem to understand what it means to be in government. When we were in government, the entire team was up asking questions, debating, and listening. That was our job. We could not just come in here and ponder other things going on in our lives. We asked questions, and we certainly did not let one member dominate day in and day out.
Therefore, I challenge my Liberal colleagues on the other side. It is time that they start standing up and asking questions and not letting the member for Winnipeg North take all of their glory and, more importantly, abdicating their jobs to him. They are good at what they do. They need to stand up and participate. They need to stand up before the member for Winnipeg North. We need to hear questions from everyone on that side of the House. That is not in my notes. That is just a bit of free advice for the members opposite.
I am very proud that we managed to pass twice as many bills in the same amount of time, and in a minority Parliament no less. It is a striking difference, and it speaks volumes about how little the Liberal government is focused on results.
It is also interesting that last year the Liberals did not extend the hours at the end of the session. One can only guess that perhaps it was because they were not getting as much media coverage and some pressure in regard to the lack of legislation they have passed.
While we are more than ready, willing, and able to work extended hours, we do have some concerns with Motion No. 14. Therefore, I want to take a few minutes to talk about those concerns.
The motion would primarily extend the sitting hours, but it is interesting to see what is not included in the motion. Opposition days remain exactly the same. The government wants to have more time to debate its legislation. It feels it needs more time, and it wants to give us more time. I understand that. We are willing to be here and to do that. However, if that logic holds true, then the opposition also needs that extended time to counter and debate and talk about issues that the opposition has to talk about. It is only logical that if the government needs a certain amount of time and needs extended time, then the one day we have set aside for opposition day, we should also have, in relative terms, that same extension. That is not asking for anything unreasonable. That is a very reasonable and logical request.
Supply motions are categorized as government business and play an important role in our system of government. That is important to note. It is actually part of government business; it is part of how Parliament works.
We do not believe that opposition motions should be exempt from extended debates, making for opposition half-days, about which my hon. colleague talked. The opposition should not be punished for the government's mismanagement of its own agenda.
O'Brien and Bosc, at page 850, states:
The setting aside of a specified number of sitting days on which the opposition chooses the subject of debate derives from the tradition which holds that Parliament does not grant supply until the opposition has had an opportunity to demonstrate why it should be refused.
It stands to reason that if the time allotted to the government is extended, then the time allotted to the opposition to perform its important role to scrutinize the government should also be extended.
There are 128 sitting days in this calendar year. Just 22 of those days are allotted to the opposition, and there are two oppositions. That leaves 106 days to the government. The length of these sitting days is the same for both government and the opposition.
Motion No. 14 distorts this balance and is keeping with the government's agenda, unfortunately, of proposing changes to the rules that offer less, and less, and less time for the opposition to do its job and scrutinize the government. If the government feels it needs more time to consider its agenda, then obviously the opposition needs more time to scrutinize what the government is doing.
The hon. House leader for the government just spoke moments ago and said that Canadians elected the government to do something, that Canadians elected the Liberal government.
Well, Canadians elected each one of us on this side of the House as well. Canadians elected us to do a job. Although the Liberals may want an audience and not an opposition, Canadians have asked us to be the opposition. We take that job seriously, and we will do that job. It really bares the motives behind the Liberals cutting off all the tools we have, even with extending sitting days, not allowing us to have our extended opposition days. That is a big problem with the motion, and one that we seriously ask the government to reconsider; that it would allow us an opposition day to go to until midnight as well. It only makes sense.
Another issue we have some problems with stems from the government's previously stated threat to systemically use closure to shut down all debates from now until the end of June, when the House adjourns for the summer.
The threat of shutting down debate on all government business is particularly egregious, given that this would presumably include shutting down debate on any debates regarding changes to the Standing Orders, which the government House leader has previously stated she intends on doing by passing a motion to implement changes to the Standing Orders before we adjourn in June. We have a problem with this. Let me explain why.
The government continues to offer up the threat of making changes to the Standing Orders and it does with the threat that it is going to do it unilaterally. These changes are tailored to benefit only one side of the parliamentary equation.
Someone once said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. If the government House leader does indeed proceed with her threat to propose a unilateral motion changing the Standing Orders, she will be repeating the mistake her government made just a month or two ago at the procedure and House affairs committee.
For everyone's benefit, let me briefly review how all of this started and how all of this bad faith and all of this poison entered the House just a few months ago.
The Liberal House leader published proposals that would undermine the opposition, but she published them in a so-called discussion paper. Within hours of the discussion paper coming out, the Liberal member of the Standing Committee of Procedure and House Affairs submitted a closure motion, proposing an end to all discussion on the discussion paper. We have heard over and over again that it was a discussion paper, that we were supposed to have a conversation, that we were supposed to have a dialogue, that it would open and transparent, mom and apple pie. Except it was none of that because no discussion would be happening at that committee. Now we are hearing from the House leader that there will be no discussion happening in the House of Commons.
Let us remember exactly what the Liberals want to change. We know they want Fridays off and we know it is a big deal to them. They do not want to be working Fridays. They do not realize that Canadians work five days a week, and many times it is more than five days a week.
Then, and I think this all boils down to the Prime Minister, he only wants to be here to answer questions for 45 minutes, one day a week. Last Wednesday, nothing was answered. The Wednesday before that, nothing was actually answered again. We we asked the same question 19 times, and it was a very simple question. How many times has the Prime Minister met with the Ethics Commissioner? As members know, the Prime Minister is under investigation by the Ethics Commission for his ethical lapses and for breaking the rules around travelling in private aircraft.
The Prime Minister was supposedly here for 45 minutes to answer questions. We asked him a really simple question. He could have said that he would not answer that, that he thought it should be private between he and the Ethics Commissioner. That is one option. We might not have liked it, but it would have been an answer. He could have said that he had met with her once. If that was true, that would have been wonderful. He could have said that he had met with her three times. If that was true, that would have been refreshing. He could have said that he had not met with her, but he planned to.
There were a lot of options. The Prime Minister had 19 times to formulate an answer, but he did not answer. The fact that he only wants to be here 45 minutes, one day a week, to give us that kind of a performance, to slap Canadians in the face by not answering a very simple question is something we absolutely cannot accept on this side of the House. However, it is key to the reforms and the changes the Liberals want to ram through.
The Liberals also want to ram through changes on omnibus bills and proroguing. Again, it is so ironic. We just saw time allocation on an omnibus bill that they just rammed through. We cannot make it up. It is hilarious, but it is actually very sad to see. It is so disingenuous.
When this first happened and the government House leader said the government was going to ram these changes through, there was filibustering at the committee. We were intent on not letting that happen. When that happened, we sat down and wrote a letter. When I say “we”, it was the House leader of the NDP, as well as Conservatives. Together, we sat down and offered a better way. We wanted to offer a solution. We are still open to a solution and finding ways to fix this.
I want to talk a little about some great examples of the way Standing Orders rules can be changed so everybody agrees. I want to quickly explain why it is so important that everybody agrees.
When we change the Standing Orders, we change the way we operate here. However, it does not just affect us now, it will affect all governments and all oppositions. Therefore, when we come together on these changes through consensus, that means each side has to explain that the change it is proposing is not just for its own benefit. Each side needs to make the argument. For example, as an opposition member, I need to make the argument to my colleagues in government that the change I have proposed is not just to benefit our party but it is to benefit all of Parliament and all democracy.
Just like when the government wants to make changes or feels it needs to make changes, it needs to make the argument to all of us that it is a rational thing to do and that in the in the future all of those changes are for the greater good. That is why a consensus had been primarily reached in the past and really why we wanted to reach a consensus.
I want to go through some really good examples from both Liberals and Conservatives, with some great input from NDP members, who in the past have talked about this type of thing.
On May 31, 1982, the Lefebvre committee was created. The committee recommended several changes in the Standing Orders on a trial basis, such as the automatic referral of departmental and crown corporations annual reports to committees and the requirement for a government response to these reports within 120 days. The prime minister at the time was Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and the reforms were adopted unanimously.
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's government created the McGrath committee on December 5, 1984. The principle goal of that committee was to find ways to give private members a meaningful role in the development of public policy and in doing so, to restore the House of Commons to its rightful place in the Canadian political process. The committee went on to table three reports, all of which were adopted unanimously.
McGrath and Lefebvre proposed ideas that enhanced private members' business, strengthened the powers of committees, and enfranchised members.
Is everybody okay over there?