Mr. Speaker, this is my first speech in the 44th Parliament, so I want to start by briefly thanking my constituents and my family, and recognizing that the riding I represent is on Treaty 6 territory. I will share more about the rich history, present vitality and bright future of my riding very soon.
Today, we are addressing a very striking matter of parliamentary business. The fact that the first motion the government has put before the House, Motion No. 1, ironically is about undermining the effectiveness and functioning of Parliament itself. The Liberals' first act in this Parliament is to attack Parliament itself. Rather than moving one of the many pressing challenges facing Canadians, inflation, lack of economic growth, mental health challenges and attacks on fundamental freedoms, instead of addressing these issues, the government is starting this Parliament by moving to neuter the tools that people have put in place for making their voices heard.
We, as Conservatives, are committed to standing up for Parliament, because Parliament is the only means by which the challenges facing Canada can be effectively heard and adjudicated.
During the speech I gave at my swearing in, I committed to my constituents that I would fight to make Parliament work again. Sadly, since the beginning of this pandemic, we have seen a clear decline in the effective functioning of Parliament as a result of the wearing down of this institution by the government. This decline has had profound consequences for the people we are supposed to serve.
On May 10, 1940, Nazi Germany invaded western Europe. On the same day, Winston Churchill became prime minister. He would go on to inspire a nation and lead the free world to victory against the odds.
Our struggle against COVID-19 has been compared by many to a war, but while the Liberal government has chosen to malign, marginalize and ignore Parliament, Winston Churchill understood that in the face of a great struggle facing his country, it was right and necessary to go to Parliament, to go to Parliament to explain the steps that he was about to take and to seek its support.
On May 13, three days after ascending to the highest office in the land, in the middle of the Second World War, Churchill addressed Parliament in person and asked for its confidence. He told the House that day:
To form an administration of this scale and complexity is a serious undertaking in itself. But we are in the preliminary phase of one of the greatest battles in history... I hope that any of my friends and colleagues or former colleagues who are affected by the political reconstruction will make all allowances for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act.
I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.
Winston Churchill took three days to go to Parliament. Our Prime Minister, who was after all not a new prime minister, took over two months to summon Parliament. Moreover, in previous sessions, the Prime Minister has always sought to actively minimize the role of Parliament, proroguing to shut down important committee work investigating his own ethical scandals; expediting complex omnibus bills through draconian programming motions; preventing Parliament from sitting at all during the early phases of the pandemic; and refusing to hand over documents ordered by Parliament, in defiance of all convention and in defiance of the Speaker's clear ruling.
Make no mistake that this is a government that is trying to manage the decline of our Parliament, because Parliament seeks to constrain the government's arbitrary exercise of power.
Today, again, we have before us a motion designed to allow ministers to avoid Parliament at will. In well-functioning parliamentary democracies, ministers must take to the floor and defend themselves, extemporaneously and on their feet, from the substantive challenges of all comers.
However, the Liberal government has devised a scheme by which ministers can instead participate remotely, often from their own parliamentary offices just a short elevator ride away, and thus mute and ignore Parliament, while reading pre-crafted talking points off a screen. We cannot replace Parliament with a Zoom call and expect it to fulfill the same functions. I believe the Prime Minister understands this, but he also perceives how the decline of effective parliamentary government advances his strategic interests by reducing avenues for ministers to be effectively held accountable.
The government has noticed, correctly, that a strong, effective Parliament with members elected by all Canadians can rhetorically and procedurally constrain the exercise of power by a government elected by less than one-third of Canadians. As a result, the Liberals want less Parliament and they want Zoom calls instead.
During his remarks yesterday on this matter, the government House leader defaulted to a well-worn logical fallacy; that is, he used the exceptional case to defend a rule that would apply to all. Exceptional cases can be accommodated through exceptions, but general rules overall should be applied in response to general circumstances.
The Liberal House leader says that members who are immunocompromised should be able to make the choice to join by Zoom, but in practice we saw that during a hybrid Parliament, 100% of Liberal ministers participated remotely in order to avoid meaningful accountability.
He says that it is statistically improbable that more than one Conservative MP has a legitimate vaccine exemption. Of course, he has no idea whether the number of Conservative MPs who have vaccine exemptions is zero, one or some other number because the advice that members receive from their doctors is none of his business. However, I might suggest, in light of the failure of any Liberal minister to attend question period last spring, that it is quite statistically improbable that 100% of Liberal ministers are immunocompromised.
If individual members have to miss votes in the House, there is a well-established parliamentary convention of pairing, whereby two members of Parliament from opposite sides agree to mutually absent themselves to ensure that one member's unavoidable absence does not upset the balance of the vote. Other targeted accommodations could—