Madam Speaker, I would like to start by informing you that I will be sharing my time with the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.
I am very pleased to rise today to speak to a motion that states the obvious, which is that holding an election during the pandemic is not a good idea.
People in Elmwood—Transcona and across Manitoba are experiencing a serious tightening in pandemic restrictions. Store capacities are being severely restricted, our schools are closing, visiting outside on the property of family and friends has just been prohibited. The last thing on the minds of people, just as my Conservative colleague said was true for his riding is true as well in Elmwood—Transcona, is having an election.
Even if constituents are not necessarily impressed with the response of the government to everything in the pandemic, I think they recognize that it is better that Parliament continue to work and put pressure on the government to get things right rather than suspend Parliament, allowing the government to govern with a free hand during an election. We also do not what the outcome of that election will be both in terms of who might form a government afterward and whether we will be able to elect a full House of MPs. We have the example of Newfoundland and Labrador, which was unable to complete its election as foreseen, and a lot of disputes about the legitimacy of political outcomes arose from that. What Canada cannot afford right now is to add a political crisis on top of a health and economic crisis, which is why this motion is so important.
As I said, restrictions are getting more serious in Manitoba. In some cases, that just means we are implementing things that have already been the case for some time now in the third wave in other provinces. There are some provinces where restrictions are still looser. However, the point is that even though we have seen some provincial elections take place during certain times of the pandemic, the challenge of pulling that off from coast to coast to coast, across 10 provinces and three territories, is far more than pulling it off at the provincial level. We have seen, even at that level, it can fail.
The logistics of a federal election are orders of magnitude more complex than a provincial election. That is why it is all the more important that we avoid, if we can, a federal election.
What does that take? It takes some good faith and good will by all players in the House, but particularly the government, which has to find a way forward. It does not mean that the government needs to always have a consensus among all the parties, but it at least has to have a meaningful partner on each of the initiatives it moves forward with, It also has to recognize that when it cannot find a meaningful partner, it does not have the mandate to move forward on a particular issue.
How does that fall apart? The only way it should fall apart is if the other parties all end up voting against the government at the same time. This is the only real proof that the government cannot find a consensus on an important or key part of its mandate. That is the real test. It is not how the Prime Minister feels when he wakes up in the morning. or whether he is upset because certain members of the opposition have criticized him too much on something or whether they are speaking more than he might like to certain things. If he can find another partner, certain things can be expedited, and we have seen that. It came up earlier. The NDP recently worked with the government to try to get Bill C-19 to committee, because we think it is important the bill passes. I will have to more say on that in a bit.
However, for the time being, I would like to know if the Bloc, in putting this motion forward, and not for the first time, does not think an election should occur in the pandemic and if it is committed to not cause an election during the pandemic. The Conservative Party has been on record for a long time now, at least back to February when the leader of the Conservative Party said very clearly in the Toronto Star that he would not trigger an election. Yes, the Conservatives voted against the budget and against other things, but they have done that knowing another responsible party would pick up the slack, do their job and ensure that there would not be an election. We all have strong feelings about what the government does, but we are very mindful of the consequences of our actions in the New Democratic caucus and we are willing to be the adult in the room.
We have said it for a long time, going back to June 2020 when I wrote to my colleagues on the democratic reform file, saying that we needed to talk about what would happen if the situation in Parliament lead to an election. We did not hear back for the summer, but we did eventually get a study at the procedure and House affairs committee. The outcome of that study was an all-party recommendation, no one dissented, which is in black and white in the final report of the procedure and House affairs committee. It says that there should not be an election in the pandemic unless the government loses a vote of confidence in the House of Commons, which it has not yet done.
It does not matter if some parties vote against the government. What matters is whether the government can find a partner to get its vital business through the House. So far, it has been able to do that, and our opinion is that it should continue to try to do that. As long as it is willing to make reasonable compromises, it can do that until we get out of the pandemic.
If the Conservatives, the Bloc members and the New Democrats are saying they do not want an election in the pandemic, how could it possibly happen except if the Prime Minister unilaterally decides to exercise the powers of his office and call an election even though the opposition parties do not think we should have one. After repeated calls for him to commit to not taking that road, putting Canadians who are worried that we might end up having a political crisis on top of a health and economic crisis at ease, the Prime Minister refuses to make that commitment, which is a point of serious frustration.
This leads me to the point about Bill C-19 which came up earlier. Yes, the NDP worked with the government because we saw a consensus around the principle of the bill. That is the same consensus that I witnessed around the table at PROC from an all-party point of view, which members can read about in the final report by the affairs committee. Under the current rules for an election, if we try to run an election just as if it is any other election and the pandemic did not happen, it will lead to failure, if not failure on the health side, then on the democratic side. We need to try to have some accommodation. Why is that a matter of urgency? It is urgent because the Prime Minister refuses to commit to not call one.
To some extent, I am surprised at the level of trust my Conservative and Bloc colleagues seem to have in the Prime Minister to put the public good ahead of his private political interests. The New Democrats do not share that faith. We are willing to negotiate with a government, which we often disagree with, to get things done and to make Parliament work. However, that in no way leads to any kind of naive faith on the part of our party about the Prime Minister, a Prime Minister whose right-hand man, Bill Morneau, through a large part of the pandemic, was just found to have committed ethical violations in respect of the WE Charity scandal; a Prime Minister who, himself on many occasions on a number of issues, whether it was billionaire island or other things, has been found to be in breach of the Code of Ethics for members of Parliament and for government. That has not happened with a lot of Prime Ministers, so this is not the guy to put our faith in when it comes to making decisions to put the public good ahead of his private interests.
We are not naive about that, and it is why we think it is important that Bill C-19 continue to make progress. Whether opposition parties and Canadians want it, the Prime Minister has made it very clear that he will defend his right to call an election whenever it suits his purposes. If he were not committed to that view, he would already have come out and said, “I' m not going to call an election unless I lose a confidence vote in the House of Commons”, but he will not say that. We are all good at reading between the lines on Parliament Hill. We know exactly what that means.
I never heard in the debate we had either at PROC on a pandemic election or in the several hours of debate we had in the House on Bill C-19 anyone disagree that the rules need to be changed. The point is to get those changes right. That work should happen at committee. The bill can be there now, once the Liberals stop filibustering at that committee, and then we can get on with that work. We need to get on with the work because we know the Prime Minister cannot be trusted to put the public interests of Canadians ahead of his private political gain.