Mr. Speaker, I am glad I am debating at so late an hour. It is not quite midnight, but we are getting there.
Like I mentioned before during the questions and comments of other members, I made comments that, really, we should be renaming the bill “the pay raise for Liberal cabinet ministers”. I really do feel that way. I know some people say that the pay was adjusted before. Then the logical question is, why are we considering this legislation if it is just to change a bunch of titles? The Liberals could have done that before. They really did not need to do anything. They could have just scribbled all over their notepads and on their business cards, and got it done.
They come into the House, consuming so many hours of the debate that supposedly, they said, was to improve the middle class. I do not really see how the Liberal cabinet getting a higher pay raise improves the fate or the economic ability of the middle class.
As for the content of the bill, I am looking at it and I have read through it several times now. It formalizes its eight new Liberal cabinet ministers. These are so-called full ministers, but as we heard from the member for Calgary Nose Hill, they actually will not be full ministers because they will not be able to bring MCs directly. They will still have to ask the ministers that they report to in order to be able to do that.
They are also asking for three new cabinet ministers yet to be named. I will be referring to these as the mystery cabinet ministers, and a good deal of my speech will focus on them, because what the Liberals are asking us to do, just like the member for Calgary Rocky Ridge said, is to give them a blank cheque. They want these three new cabinet ministers to be appointed some time in the future, so I have a bunch of suggestions on roles they could fill on their side in areas in which I feel they need desperate help. They need reinforcements to actually get their agenda through.
I do have a Yiddish proverb. It will come up very soon, because I know several members are looking at me, expecting one ready.
As for raises for salaries of junior ministers to cabinet ministers, like I said before, every time there is talk of openness and transparency in this place, it seems to cost the taxpayers ever more money. Why are the Liberals raising cabinet ministers' pay? Why not lower all pay? I see some ministers in the House are probably very worried when I mention this, but that would be the right thing to do for taxpayers when we have a nearly $30-billion deficit we are rolling through and for which the Liberals will be punishing the taxpayers of the future, who will have to pay for it.
This would be a great way to treat everybody equally: just lower everybody's pay. It is equal. It is fair to everyone. It is open. It is transparent. It is generous. Why not? Like I said, we could do the opposite. That would just require a minor amendment on the government side. Why is it always more money, more expenses, a car, a deputy minister, more exempt staff, more ability to travel. It is always more money, more money from the taxpayers. It always winds up being that way.
The Yiddish proverb I wanted to use is, “A wise man hears one word, but understands two”, and I feel like that wise man when I say, “Read the legislation”, because there is much more at stake here than simple pay. There are these three mystery cabinet ministers the Liberals will be introducing. It is not as if they do not have enough cabinet ministers already. We see week after week so-called ministers not delivering on their press releases, not delivering on their mandate letters. In fact they had cabinet shuffles, and I fully expect another cabinet shuffle in the future and certain ministers to be moved around, especially after the week they have had with the failure to appoint a Commissioner of Official Languages who will be fair to all parties in the House and with the true consultation of all members in the House.
Let us talk about these mystery ministers, because I think that is the right terminology. If the Liberals had amended the legislation and called them mystery ministers, I might even have considered voting for it, just a little bit.
Now who among the Liberal backbench has worked hard enough to join and become a mystery minister? What kinds of positions could they hold? Who has distinguished themselves the most? I have wondered that, and I have a few suggestions. However, let us go to those new portfolios first.
I think we should have a minister for balancing budgets, because I can see the Minister of Finance suffers terribly in the House not being able to follow through on what he believed when he was in the private sector working for Morneau Shepell, for a company that worked in human resources, a well-known EAP. I worked in human resources before with many HR professionals. It was the company that was involved in it. It was considered an expert in the field. Now they need to help. A full minister responsible for balancing the budget could find those savings all across government, and they would not even need to rely on the Minister of Finance to accomplish that.
Now I think they also need a minister for the tabulation of Liberal broken promises. I say that tongue in cheek, but there is just so many of them, it would be a full-time job. It would probably mean overtime and many late hours of tabulation. I also think they could use a minister for strategic photo-ops, or photo bombs, as the member for Calgary Rocky Ridge likes to say, maybe Instagram as well, because that seems to be an all-consuming passion of the Prime Minister. Why not make it a full ministry while we are at it?
The minister for seniors is a very serious suggestion. There is no minister for seniors, but I have a colleague here who was the minister of state for seniors. That is the seriousness of what we are doing for seniors and the growing seniors population in Canada. There are many members on our side of the House that advocated for the government actually appointing a person, a champion, an advocate for seniors in government to bring those issues forward. That one is far less tongue in cheek. That would have an actual impact on government legislation and government regulation, and their focus areas as well.
I will suggest another one: a minister for anti-corruption. We have had Liberal cabinet fundraising on the cocktail circuit, and really iffy appointments being brought before the House for an official languages commissioner, which is now pulled. Many other ones have come through for ACOA and for other organizations in government. We are still waiting on those judges to be appointed.
How about a minister for procurement to actually fix what is happening on that side of the House. Between the Minister of Public Works and the Minister of National Defence, they just cannot get it done, and they will not get it done. Why not appoint a person whose sole job in this government will be to procure equipment for our Canadian Armed Forces, for the Coast Guard, and throughout government? Just appoint someone, and not the Minister of Public Works. Obviously, she cannot get it done.
How about we appoint a minister dedicated to holding the President of the Treasury Board's hand to actually follow through on his mandate letter that says he will go ahead and amend the Access to Information Act, which he has now said he will not do. They are not following through on those reforms. They have no intention of doing it anymore. Why not actually have meaningful transparency and fulfill a campaign promise, one of which I thought was not a bad idea? Why not do it?
I have been on the receiving end of ATIP and how it does not work. Right now I have an access to information request with a government department for what I think is the fictional orphan drug framework. I have been basically told that I will not get it for another eight years. It is a very reasonable access to information request, but they told me they would use the extension provisions in the act to prevent me from getting what I am a actually asking for, the thousands of documents, until eight years from now. That is far beyond the mandate of a member of Parliament.
How about a minister for sock selection? That is more tongue in cheek. Obviously, we have seen there are lots of different permutations they could have.
Mr. Speaker, you do not have interesting socks like the Prime Minister does. I am sorry to see that.
Like my colleague for Perth—Wellington said, the government is all socks, no action. We seem to spend way more time talking about the Prime Minister's socks than his achievements. What has he actually done? What has he actually achieved almost two years into this mandate? There is barely any achievement, any legislation passed, a massive deficit, a huge debt, a carbon tax, and really no plan. Actually they are forcing carbon taxes on every single province whether the population wants it or the government wants it.
I will say that there are lots of good members on that side of the House who could make it into these mystery ministerial portfolios. I am looking at one gentleman whom I am sure would desperately want to get one.
How about the member for St. John's East, a member I travelled with on the Canada Post review committee through Atlantic Canada, or the member for Malpeque, who has an independent streak?
I will end on this one point, I think the last ministerial position they could appoint, from one of my very favourite shows, is the minister for administrative affairs. I am sure Paul Eddington, Nigel Hawthorne, Derek Fowlds, and Diana Hoddinott would be supremely pleased by such a title in this government because I think Yes Minister represents exactly the fulfilment in this government of everything they are able to achieve, which is very little, blocked by the bureaucracy that seems to love them very much, but is unable to actually achieve any of the goals they were elected on, unable to actually follow through on any of the goals set out in the mandate letters, and actually have achieved very little in the past two years. Except now, we have a late evening sitting and we are debating cabinet raises, pay raises for cabinet ministers as opposed to the Cannabis Act or maybe balancing the budget or actually any number of the other pieces of legislation before the House that could have been brought forward by the government. They have chosen not to.
It is just a poor piece of legislation and I will not be voting for it.