Debates of June 10th, 2021

The Environment

[Some hon. members]

No.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions among the parties, and if you seek it, I believe you will find unanimous consent for the following motion: That this House offers its deepest condolences to the family of Salman Afzaal and Madiha Salman, to friends and to the community of London following the tragedy of last Sunday; that this House strongly denounces all forms of hatred and violent crimes; that this House denounces the conflating issues between the events in London and a Quebec law.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

All those opposed to the hon. member moving the motion will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

Business of the House

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, House Leader of the Official Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, could my ministerial counterpart, the hon. minister and member for Honoré-Mercier, inform the House what business lies ahead in the coming days?

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his loyalty to the tradition of the Thursday question.

This afternoon we will continue debating the motion to extend sitting hours. After that, we will proceed to the report stage of Bill C-30, the budget implementation act, 2021, No. 1, and that debate will continue tomorrow.

On Monday, we will resume debate at third reading of Bill C-6, which deals with conversion therapy. Following that, we will consider report stage and third reading of Bill C-12, the Canadian net-zero emissions accountability act.

Tuesday and Thursday will be allotted days.

On Wednesday, we will continue debate on Bill C-30.

In closing, I would remind the House that there will be a take-note debate on Tuesday evening so that members not seeking re-election may make a farewell speech, as agreed upon among the parties.

The House resumed consideration of Government Business Motion No. 8, and of the amendment

Extension of Sitting Hours in June

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, before I get directly involved in the debate on Government Business Motion No. 8, I just want to take a minute to offer my sincere and personal congratulations to three first nations on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island for having come together to directly take ownership of their traditional territories when it comes to managing the resources. This has been a long journey in my riding, and there have certainly been some high emotions present on the subject of old-growth forestry. It is nice to see the first nations come together and really take ownership of this issue. I just want to offer my congratulations to them for taking this important step on this journey.

I will now turn my attention to the business at hand. As my colleagues in the House know, we are here today debating Government Business Motion No. 8. This motion comes before us under the authority granted under Standing Order 27(1).

The main government motion aims to make sure that the House can extend its sitting hours. The government side would like to see us continue to sit on Mondays and Wednesdays until midnight and have the Friday sitting extended until 4:30 in the afternoon. I believe my Conservative colleagues want to see the motion changed so that on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays we would only sit until 8:30 p.m.

I cannot continue to speak about Government Business Motion No. 8 without talking a little about the circumstances in which we find ourselves, which gives me sympathy for Shakespeare’s character Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet when he cried, “A plague o' both your houses!” However, in this case, I think we can substitute the Capulets and the Montagues for the Conservatives and the Liberals. Both of these parties are demonstrating no room for co-operation and no finding of a middle ground in order to move forward important pieces of legislation, which I think many Canadians would like to see us pass.

I will start with my Conservative friends, and because of what happened yesterday and what has already happened this morning in the House, we are not actually going to see a vote on the motion before us until Monday, and so we have lost a lot of very valuable time.

Yesterday, the Conservatives were successful at prolonging the Routine Proceedings of the House by forcing a vote to move to Orders of the Day, which, of course, we as a House rejected, and that then finally allowed the government to actually introduce the motion that is before us. However, this morning, they moved a motion to adjourn the House, then there was a debate on a random committee report, which was then followed by an extended debate on a question of privilege. These parliamentary shenanigans, members can see, are very naked attempts to try to delay, and quite successfully, a vote on the motion before us.

I have been a member of the House since 2015, and experienced members should know that this is a time of year when we usually find the time to come together and usually agree in some straightforward fashion that the House does need some extended sitting hours so that we, as members of Parliament, have the time to represent our constituents and to give voice to important polices and pieces of legislation that concern them. I will never not be in favour of allowing my colleagues to have extra time to do work, which is why I took strong umbrage against the motion to adjourn the House today. It is a Thursday, and unlike a Friday, it is a full sitting day. I think our voters would be shocked to see one party wanting to so blatantly quit the business of the House while there is so much important work to do.

I will leave aside the Conservatives and now turn my eye to the Liberals, because I think it is the height of irony and hypocrisy for the Liberals to stand before us and talk about the dysfunction of the House. When we look at what has been happening in several of the most prominent committees, the Liberals have actively filibustered to prevent those committees from arriving at a point where members can collectively make a decision on a motion that is before them.

I am very lucky to sit on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. I invite my colleagues to substitute on that committee to see what a well-run committee of the House is able to do. We have differing opinion on the agriculture committee, but the one thing that unites us all is the fact that every single one of our parties represents ridings with farmers and has strong agricultural basis. We usually find a way to work together by consensus to arrive at decisions in a respectful way. It does not mean to say that we do not have our debates and our points of disagreement, but it is probably the most ideal demonstration of how committees can work.

The actions of the Liberals at various committee by filibustering are adding to the situation in which we find ourselves. I would have preferred for us to have arrived at a place where we could get a vote on Government Business No. 8, but unfortunately we will have to delay that until Monday because of the special orders we are operating under in this current hybrid system.

Standing Order 27, I believe, dates back to 1982, but even predating that year, it does reflect a long-standing practice that has existed since Confederation for Parliament, and I am sure in the provincial legislatures, to seek the time necessary to advance important legislative agendas.

When we look at why we are where we are today, we also have to identify the fact that the government needs to bear a lot of responsibility for the mismanagement of its own legislative agenda. It has left a lot of very important bills in limbo. We are not very sure if the Liberals will have the runway left for them to arrive at the Governor General's doorstep for the all-important royal assent.

We seem to be operating right now under this sort of manufactured emergency. I use that term because if my colleagues look at the parliamentary calendar, we as a House are scheduled to return on Monday, September 20. Therefore, there really is no reason for this panicked rush to try to get these bills passed or sent to the Senate. We should, under normal circumstances, be planning to have a pleasant summer in our constituencies where we get to engage with our constituents and, hopefully, as the lockdowns lift, attend limited participation in community events. Then as the summer draws to an end, we should look forward to our return to Ottawa, to the House of Commons, on September 20, when we can resume this important business.

The reason we are operating under these circumstances right now, which is quite clear to anyone who has the slightest sense of political know-how and what is quite apparent to many skilled observers, is that the Liberals are very much putting everything into place to call an election. There is no matter of confidence coming up except, of course, the votes on the estimates. There is no motion before the House, no budget, except for Bill C-30, which I believe will pass because we do not want to have an election during this third wave, from which we are recovering. The only plausible reason we would be entering into an election is because the Prime Minister will take it upon himself to visit the Governor General unilaterally and recommend the dissolution of Parliament, as the Liberals seek a new mandate. All signs are pointing toward this.

We should have the time when we return on September 20 to effectively deal with a lot of this. We scheduled a take-note debate next week to give MPs who are not running again the opportunity to give their farewell speeches. The Liberal Party has implemented an emergency order so it can hand-pick preferred candidates instead of letting local riding associations democratically go through the process of selecting their own people. The signs are all there.

When I look at the House schedule for March and April, and the government's completely scattergun approach to how Government Orders were being scheduled at the time, there was really no rhyme, reason or logical pattern to the government bills that came before the House. The Liberals are paying the price for that right now. At the time, they should have identified maybe two or three key priority pieces of legislation and put all their efforts into seeing those across the finish line. Instead, they wasted a lot of time on bills that really were not going anywhere. This is why we see this rush right now.

The Liberals have to realize that this is a minority Parliament. Yes, they are the government, but they were elected to that position with only 33% of the vote in the 2019 election. By virtue of the quirks of our first past the post system, even though the Conservatives got more Canadians to vote for them, the Liberals still ended up with more seats. Therefore, they have to realize that if we are in fact going to have government legislation passed, they have to do so with the consent of another opposition party, and that is a good thing. As an opposition member who sat across the benches from a Liberal majority government, it is good policy and gets more Canadians involved when we have more voices at the table and we try to reach that kind of consensus.

I am proud of how the parties have worked during the worst of the pandemic. If we look back at the history of how we were able to work together in the 2020, I am really proud of the accomplishments that New Democrats were able to provide for Canadians. The major amendments we made to pandemic response programs, such as the Canada emergency response benefit, increasing the Canadian emergency wage subsidy from the initial 10% to 75%, getting those improvements to programs for students and persons with disabilities, putting pressure on the government to fix the much-maligned commercial rental assistance program and ensuring that it was turned into a subsidy that went directly to the tenants instead of having this complex process that involved landlords, are good accomplishments and really demonstrate how minority parliaments are able to work. Again, we are not scheduled to have an election until the year 2023, so theoretically we could have two more years of this, where more voices are at the table for important legislation.

I would like to turn my attention to some of those important bills that will be well served by the extra time we get as a Parliament to debate. I am very proud of the fact that Bill C-15 has made its way to the other place. I want to take the time to recognize Romeo Saganash who brought in Bill C-262, which served as the precursor to Bill C-15. I am glad to see that important legislation seems to be on its way to becoming one of the statutes of Canada and that we will finally have in place an important legislative framework to ensure that federal laws are brought into harmony with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

However, there are two bills in particular that have not yet crossed the House of Commons' finish line, and those are Bill C-6 and Bill C-12.

I had the opportunity to speak to Bill C-6 earlier this week. It is incredibly important legislation. It is a very important use of federal criminal law power. It is high time the House of Commons, indeed the wider Parliament of Canada, made this very significant and important amendment to the Criminal Code to ban this practice. It has been rightly criticized by many professional organizations around the world and we know it has done incredible harm to people who have been forced through it.

It is sad to see members of the Conservative Party trying to hold up this legislation. They are clinging to the belief that the definition of conversion therapy in that bill is not specific enough. Those arguments have been discounted. They have been refuted effectively through debate in the House. I look forward to us having the required number of hours to get Bill C-6 passed so we can get it on its way to the Senate. It is incredibly important for us to get the bill passed into law.

The other bill that we hope will be affected in a positive way by the passage of government Motion No. 8 is Bill C-12. I would agree with some people that Bill C-12 still leaves a lot to be desired, but the important thing to remember is that this is a Liberal government bill and improvements have been made. The amendments made at committee have made it a stronger bill from what was initially on offer at the second reading stage. We need to see that bill brought back to the House. We need to see it passed at third reading and passed on to the Senate.

We are in a critical decade for properly addressing climate change and we need to have those legislative targets put in place. I think of all the years that we have lost since Jack Layton first attempted to pass a bill to put in place those legislative targets. I think about the damage that has been done by climate change since then, about how much further Canada would be ahead if we had taken the steps necessary all those years ago.

We see Bill C-12 as an absolute priority and we want to see it positively impacted by the extension of sitting hours. I want to take the time to acknowledge the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley and the member for Victoria for their incredible work on the bill, helping to shepherd its way through the committee process and for their sustained engagement with the Minister of Environment in laying out our priorities. I want to take the time to acknowledge that.

With Bill C-6, I would be remiss if I did not mention my hon. colleague and neighbour, the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, for his incredible advocacy on this issue over the years. He has done yeoman's work on the bill during debate, standing and refuting some of the Conservative arguments against it. He deserves special recognition in attaching importance to that bill and in trying to get it through to the finish line.

I want to reiterate that I was elected to come to this place to work. We all knew when we signed up to be members of Parliament, when we were privileged enough to be elected, that this job would sometimes require us to sit extended hours, to work those long hours, to do the work on behalf of our constituents. We certainly have a lot of stuff pulling at our attention these days. It is a careful balancing act between our critic role, our constituency work and what goes on in the House. However, we all know that this is the time of year when we have to roll up our sleeves, get to work, find a way forward to identify the pieces of legislation that are important to us all and work together to get it done.

I appreciate this opportunity to weigh in on Government Business No. 8. I look forward to us having those extended hours next week so we can attach the priority to those bills I spoke about.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

I suspect we are debating this motion because the Liberals may not have managed their legislative agenda properly and now we need to work quickly to pass all the important bills.

The NDP also wants Bill C‑12 to be passed quickly. We saw it in committee.

The member said that Bill C‑12 is flawed and that more improvements could have been made to it. However, his party chose to vote against almost every amendment that the Bloc Québécois proposed to improve Bill C‑12 and to make this climate bill truly binding and transparent by establishing accountability mechanisms, which is currently not the case.

I would like to know why the NDP decided to leave their environmental convictions at the door for the debate on Bill C‑12.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, I will remind my colleague, first of all, that this is a Liberal government bill, so the Liberals can take ownership of its shortcomings and its faults. We worked with the limited tools before us to make the improvements that the Liberals ultimately would allow.

I guess the decision or the choice before us was whether to stop this bill completely in its tracks, given the importance of climate change and the little time that is left before us, or to pass a bill that at least sets up a framework that hopefully can be improved upon at a later date. We chose that option because we believe that climate change needs addressing right now.

I will admit that the bill is still flawed and needs work, but it is a significant improvement from where we are, and we look forward to the opportunity in the future to work on that bill and make the improvements that are necessary. I can certainly give my commitment to doing that.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I note that the NDP members, probably more than any other of the opposition parties, often talk about the need to have additional debate time.

I want to reference the behaviour of the Conservatives today, and that is all I am specifically focused on right now. It lasted for about two and a half hours of chamber time. Had that not occurred and had we gone right into the process, it would have allowed for at least a two-hour period with 24 members being able to participate, for example in the budget debate, whether with longer speeches or questions and comments.

Could my colleague provide his thoughts on these lost opportunities? In fact, we are trying to extend hours and the government is, to a certain degree, being frustrated even in using the hours that we currently have to deal with government business. Next week, we have two opposition days.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary brings up a good point. That was a bit of a crazy morning with all kinds of procedural shenanigans. If the business that was planned for today had proceeded in a smooth fashion, we would have looked forward to having a vote on Government Business No. 8 immediately following QP. Because of the results of this morning, we of course now have to wait until Monday.

With a bill as important and as all-encompassing as a budget implementation act, I agree that it is probably in the House's interests to allow as many members to speak to the bill as possible. There are a significant number of changes in that bill that are going to have impacts on communities across the country. Some are good and some leave a bit to be desired, but we need to provide the room, the time and the space for members to contribute to the debate on behalf of their constituents. Therefore, yes: It is incredibly important for us to give space for that.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. When I first came he was very supportive in assisting me with the procedures of the House.

I heard tales of the Conservative blue book that was used to frustrate committees and council at the whole, and now we are seeing the Liberals do the same thing with filibustering, and there are conversations around filibustering in the United States.

Could the hon. member give his opinions on how filibusters are used to sometimes frustrate democratic processes?

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

That is an excellent question, Madam Speaker. We have, at various times during my tenure as a member of Parliament, had important debates on the nature of the filibuster. It is an important tool in the hands of the opposition because it is one of the few tools we have to try to blunt what we may see as heavy-handed government overreach. We certainly saw that at the Procedure and House Affairs Committee in the last Parliament, when the government was trying to unilaterally change the Standing Orders. However, it is a tool that needs to be used wisely and with a careful goal in mind.

I see the tool being used now by government members to frustrate the opposition. It is being used for, frankly, very silly purposes including trying to prevent the Prime Minister from appearing before the Procedure and House Affairs Committee and preventing the national defence committee from accurately coming to the end of its report. These have no rhyme or reason other than a government that is afraid of transparency and afraid of the opposition coming to the truth. That has been very well exposed by the opposition and also by the media. The Canadian public can see through the Liberals' antics in this regard.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, on the topic of filibustering, the member should know that actually the records for filibustering the longest belong to members from his political party. I believe former MP David Christopherson has the record, and I believe that the member for New Westminster—Burnaby is often contending for that record.

If I understand this member correctly, filibustering is okay, as long as it serves the NDP purpose. Is that what we are to believe?

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am glad we had time to mention the legendary David Christopherson. I was very pleased and honoured to serve in the caucus with him for four years. His knowledge of public accounts and procedure and House affairs is unparalleled among parliamentarians. Certainly, the member for New Westminster—Burnaby, our House leader, has been fearless in going to the wall when he thinks there is government outreach.

What I would say to the member for Kingston and the Islands is basically a repetition of my previous answer to the member for Hamilton Centre. Filibustering is an important tool in the hands of the opposition, but it has to be used with a clear purpose in mind. I would argue that David Christopherson and the member for New Westminster—Burnaby had clearly set goals in the use of their filibusters. If we look at the various Liberal tactics at committees, the Liberals are quite obviously trying to avoid transparency and trying to avoid the opposition uncovering the truth in its various investigations.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford for his really excellent analysis of how we got here and the issue of how much time was wasted by the government through the fall and early spring, when the only goal it seemed to have was how to get an election under way. The Liberals suddenly realized that an election was not going to happen in the near future, so they are trying to rush things through, and now the Conservatives are just wasting time to try to block those actions.

Could the member take some time to speculate on where we would be if we did have a government that governed with the best interests of the country in mind? Where would we be if the government had just worked with the NDP? We have focused on what would be good for Canadians.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, those were excellent points raised by my friend for South Okanagan—West Kootenay. It is a very beautiful riding, for those members who have not had the opportunity to visit that part of British Columbia.

I talked in my speech about Bill C-12 and Bill C-6. Those are obvious areas where the government could find co-operation from our party in moving them forward. Also, another bill, Bill C-22, is important to reform our justice system by reforming the Criminal Code and would put some important reforms on the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. I just wish, in hindsight, that the Liberals had focused laser-like attention on two, three or four government bills at the most, and tried to shepherd those through. Instead, I made mention of the scatter-gun approach. It was all over the place, with no rhyme or reason, and suddenly we are in late May and June, and the government is looking at the calendar and panicking. That is where we are today.

We are scheduled to return on September 20. There should not be a reason for panic, but we know the Liberals are trying to engineer an election this summer.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, the previous member started off his intervention by talking about the Liberals and Conservatives taking the lead roles in a Shakespearean novel. I would love to hear his thoughts on where the NDP falls into that, but perhaps that is for another day.

Given that this motion now is going to be impacted, because we are after question period and there have been some antics put forward by the Conservatives today, I would like to move, seconded by the member for Winnipeg North:

That the amendment be amended by deleting all the words after the word “deleting” and replacing them with the following: the words “Friday, June 11, 2021”, and replacing them with the following “Monday, June 14, 2021”.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The subamendment is in order.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Niagara Falls.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Madam Speaker, as a point of clarification, would that amendment then end up having the extended hours start on Monday instead of tomorrow?

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, effectively that is correct, I believe they would start on Monday. However, the reality of the situation is that because the Conservatives put us in this position of having to end this debate after Question Period, it throws off the wording in the motion and possibly subjects us to the motion being out of order.

In keeping with making sure the motion would be in order, because I am sure all members of the House would like to see that, we made sure that the motion could be amended so that it would retain its status of being in order.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, since we will not be voting on this motion until Monday, am I to understand from my colleague's amendment that we will not be able to retroactively say that tomorrow's sitting will be extended?

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have been known to see the clock into the future, but certainly not into the past. I would agree with what the member is suggesting.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Resuming debate.

Is the House ready for the question?