Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Winnipeg North for splitting his time with me. I am pleased to stand up and give my thoughts on the motion before us today.
We have heard a lot of discussion from Liberal members. They keep on referring to the fact that it was just a discussion paper. “What is the matter with the opposition? It is just a discussion paper. We just wanted to have a discussion. These were just ideas.” What they conveniently forget to look at is the Trojan Horse that discussion paper was riding in, and that was the motion that was moved at the procedure and House affairs committee just a few days after the discussion paper came out, and imposed a timeline on when the committee was to complete its study. It was basically putting us into a straitjacket, and we know that with the Liberal majority on committee, they could have basically gotten any change they wanted. They would have reported that back to the House, and then that report, which would have reflected all of the Liberals' wants, would have then just been voted on by this House. We recognized that for what it was, a Trojan Horse, and we used every tool at our disposal to stand up.
There is a lot of alternative history and alternative facts being uttered in this place, but let me remind members that it was the Conservatives, in addition to the NDP, who proposed a reasoned amendment that stated that:
the Committee shall not report any recommendation for an amended Standing Order, provisional Standing Order, new Standing Order, Sessional Order, Special Order, or to create or to revise a usual practice of the House, which is not unanimously agreed to by the Committee.
That is the sticking point that the Liberals refused to agree to. They could not bring themselves to honour the time-honoured practice of this House that when any change is made to the bylaws by which we operate, we usually try to get all-party consensus, because these rules do not affect just the government members, they affect all members, and we all live by these rules. We all deserve their protection, and that is why we sought unanimous consent.
The Liberals refused to budge on that, so what does the opposition do? We use the tools at our disposal. We use the equivalent of pulling the fire alarm, and to this day, Liberals still express confusion as to why we were using all of these dilatory motions. Why were we moving that the member now be heard? Why were we calling ministers in for votes at inopportune times of the day? Because those are the only tools we have at our disposal, and they worked, because we forced the government to climb down, to wave the white flag, and the opposition did its job. Every national paper started running stories on this, the disgrace with which the government tried to unilaterally change those rules.
We will not apologize on this side of the House for using the rules that we need protection with. As soon as the government withdrew that motion, the dilatory motions stopped. What a surprise.
On the discussion paper that came about, what was causing so much consternation on our side was the fact that the Liberals wanted to codify in the Standing Orders the ability to add programming to bills so that they would not have to move time allocation. They wanted to limit the ability of the opposition to move motions during routine proceedings. They wanted to curtail filibusters at committee.
When there is a majority government in the House of Commons, those members have tremendous amounts of power. If only the new Liberal MPs could sometimes see what it is like from this side of the House, how much extreme power they wield in this House of Commons and how few tools we have at our disposal. Those rules are very sacred to this side of the House; they allow us to speak up with the voices of our constituents. For the Liberals to claim they have some sort of legitimacy to proceed with this, let me remind hon. members on that side of the House that the opposition, all parties combined, collectively represent 61% of Canadians. The majority of the population did not vote for the Liberal Party, so our voices deserve to have a say in this House, and we will fight as long and as hard as we can to make sure that we have that right.
We did enter that fiasco of the filibuster, as I like to call it. It spilled out into the House of Commons. We finally got the government to back down, and I am extremely proud of the work that we collectively did. I always say that politics makes for strange bedfellows. Any time that we can get the Conservatives and the NDP working together on something, it must be an important issue to fight for.
I want to go to the motion at hand. We try to reach changes in the House by consensus. What we see before us today in Motion No. 18 is an extremely watered down version. We do not see any substantive changes because, unfortunately, the government ruined its attempt to find those meaningful changes with the ham-fisted way it approached this whole reform package. As a result, here we are with a very watered down version of change in Motion No. 18.
I believe the government House leader claimed her mandate letter gave her some sort of mandate to proceed with changes in the House and how this place operates. The Liberals pursued that change with a lot of vigour initially, starting in March. If only they had had the same vigour for their promise on electoral reform. I can remember, and I think my hon. colleagues will also remember, how many times that promise was uttered, both in the House and out in the Canadian public, that 2015 would be the last election held under first past the post. That was not even worth the paper it was written on.
Let us look at the changes listed in Motion No. 18. The government wants to have the ability, when omnibus bills come before the House, to give the Speaker the ability to make changes so we can have multiple votes on areas that are unrelated to each other. My friend from Beloeil—Chambly has moved an amendment that would also give the Speaker the ability to carve the bill up into separate bills, because if we really want to put an end to omnibus bills that should be the way. The way this motion is written, it does not pay any heed to a 300-page omnibus bill, or 400 or 500 pages. It is all well and good to split up the constituent parts so we can vote on them individually, but it does not stop the fact that we collectively have to debate on a giant bill with the 10 minutes we are given.
Our major source of frustration with this is that it would actually legitimize the use of omnibus bills. The government could just say that because the Standing Orders have been changed, it can just clump everything together because we can vote on it separately, conveniently forgetting the fact that our debate is going to still be constrained to the same amount of time as if it was just one bill.
Another part of the motion is adding parliamentary secretaries to committees. This flies in the face of what the government's promise was. I am lucky enough to sit as the vice-chair on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. The two parliamentary secretaries to the minister of justice are very honourable people, and I enjoy working with them, but there is nothing there to prevent them from coming and joining our committee. Parliamentary secretaries, whether they like it or not, are representatives of the executive branch. A committee is a constituent and important part of the legislative branch, and I resist any attempt to have that influence from the executive branch on a legislative committee. We have already given so much power in the House to the executive to allow parliamentary secretaries to now sit on the committee as members. They are not able to vote, but to give them the opportunity to question witnesses, that is our job. We already have so much time devoted to the executive in the House. Ministers can appear before committee if they wish to clarify points. They are allowed to have unlimited speeches when they introduce bills. There is already a tremendous amount of power that rests with the executive.
Finally, the part on prorogation. Let us face it, this is a bit ridiculous. To be able to, within 20 days of a new session, table a statement as to why a government prorogued, what good is that going to do? Whatever the party in power, it could simply spin the reasons and say they did it for this or that reason. There would be no debate on it. It would just be tabled. It does not stop the fact that prorogation, which I know is a constitutionally protected right, still happened. For us to just continue down that path with a simple discussion paper tabled in Parliament, I do not see that as a substantive change.
I see my time is running out, but I will note that the great Stanley Knowles gave an address to the Empire Club in 1957. He stated that the rules are the only thing the opposition has for its protection. The majority has so much power at its disposal, the opposition depends on these rules. I hope Liberal MPs will now understand why we mounted such a stiff opposition. It is all we have in the House. We will go to the wall to defend the rules, and I am proud of the job we did together.