Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to join the debate on Government Motion No. 7, particularly the amendment from my colleague for Cumberland—Colchester.
Toward the end of my speech, I will make some comments on Bill C-12, a bill with respect to seniors. It is a bill that Conservatives support. It is a bill that would address long-standing gaps in government support for seniors: perverse outcomes of some of the measures that came in during the pandemic. It is important to speak to those.
The specific issue that we need to discuss in Motion No. 7 is a programming motion by which the government seeks to set the agenda of the House and dramatically change the normal operating procedures for passing legislation. It is important that we talk about this, because this is one in a long list of things that we see from the government that really is an attack on the normal, proper functioning of our democratic institution.
To see the nature of that attack, one only needs to listen to what the government members are saying. We can listen to the member, for instance, for Kingston and the Islands, who spoke before me. He was so dismissive of alleged games being played. It is the expectation of members of some opposition parties, at least, that they have an opportunity to debate legislation and to see that legislation studied in committee, to see opportunities for amendments to be brought to that legislation, and then to see follow-up debate and a final vote.
This is the process we have for legislation. It is not a game. It is the way the process is supposed to work. Since the beginning of our country, we have had this process in place for how legislation has operated through Parliament.
When Conservatives were in power, from time to time we used mechanisms of closure to limit the time spent on debate at a particular stage of a particular bill. However, the government has gone so much further than that. It promised, in the 2015 election, to do away with the closure mechanism and not use closure. The Liberals were very critical of Conservatives for that closure mechanism, which limits the time spent in debate on a bill at a particular stage without limiting the study that can take place at committee and without trying to combine a bunch of stages into one.
In 2015, the Liberals were still very critical of the use of that procedure. However, now not only have they been using closure themselves, but they have gone further. They are putting forward motions that essentially wrap together all of those stages of legislative study and, for all intents and purposes, entirely skip the process of committee study.
This is a serious attack on the functioning of our democratic institutions. It is important to say that it fundamentally does not matter whether one agrees with the bill or not. We could be talking about a programming motion on a great bill, a terrible bill or a bill somewhere in between. The reason we have a legislative process for studying bills, and for understanding whether they work, is to be able to determine through that process of study how the bill would apply and what was missed in the bill.
It is possible that a bill could be motivated by an intention that everybody agrees is good, but then the process of committee study could reveal that there were some legal technicalities that lead to the bill having a perverse outcome. It is possible that there are some unintended consequences of the bill that are just not considered.
When I was a high school student, I remember that we spent some time at the Alberta legislature learning about the legislative process. One of the students asked about second reading, committee studies and third reading, and asked if it was possible to skip over this process as it seemed to take so long. The legislator who was speaking at the time said, I think wisely, that there were processes by which things could be skipped over, but there was a history of very bad outcomes associated with it.
He pointed out at the time that a terrible piece of legislation, a blight on our history, was passed at the beginning of the 20th century. It was a mandatory sterilization act that existed in Alberta for a number of decades. It passed extremely rapidly without the normal process of legislative study, because it seemed like a good idea to the people who were there at the time.
The lesson I learned, as a young student, and one that I have carried with me, is that one might be in a place in a moment in time when something seems like a good idea. That does not take away the importance of a process to study, and to reflect on, the value of the legislation.
On this point, I am often drawn to reflect on a particular exchange from the great play, A Man for All Seasons. The character representing Sir Thomas More is in dialogue with his son-in-law, William Roper, and Roper says, “So now you give the devil the benefit of the law,” and More says, “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?” His son-in-law replies, “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”, and Sir Thomas More replies:
Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
The point is valid, even if we feel very strongly about a particular piece of legislation, or even if we feel very strongly that our cause is just and that our opponents are on the wrong side.
I understand the member for Kingston and the Islands is very critical and partisan in his tone about Conservatives. I am not that enthusiastic about the Liberal government either, but respect for Parliament and respect for the process of studying legislation, even when we disagree, is how we ensure we leave in place what More's character in A Man for All Seasons calls “Man's laws”, which protect all of us from the perverse outcomes that come when we start to cut corners and say we do not need committee study, we do not need third reading, we do not need substantial debate at second reading, or that we all basically agree with an idea, so let us just rip it through quickly.
What happens then, when we have established that precedent, is that we start to do that more and more, and pass bills that are maybe still motivated by good intentions, but we start to miss more things, and we find out we have more problems because we are not doing the analysis work that our legislature is supposed to do.
The other thing I was struck by, in the comments of the previous member, was that he spoke about how, at the beginning of this pandemic, all parties worked together to very quickly pass, by unanimous consent, a number of measures that were urgently needed in the context of the pandemic. Let us recall that was at a time before we knew much of anything about the operation of the virus, and before we were set up to do any kind of virtual Parliament. This was even before there was the same awareness there is now about the impacts of masks.
There was no viable way for all members of Parliament, or most members of Parliament, to get together in Ottawa. There was not that awareness about masks, and we did not have the tools to meet virtually, so in an extremely exceptional circumstance, we worked with the government with unanimous consent to adopt some pandemic measures. I think, importantly, that those of us at least on the Conservative side saw this as a very exceptional situation and believed that it should not, under any circumstances, be precedent-setting.
However, members of the government are now invoking some of these past precedents, as if to say, “We did it in extraordinary times, so why can we not just do it in normal times?” This is the problem. When we suspend normal rules, even in extraordinary circumstances, we get people such as members of the government saying, “If we could do it in that situation when we really needed to, why do we not have these kinds of programming motions skipping committee study and analysis, even when we do not need them?”
We do so much better as a legislature, and we do our jobs as legislators, when we actually study and analyze bills. This means voting on the principle of second reading, sending bills to committee where they can be studied and where questions can be asked and answered, and experts can weigh in, and amendments can be sent back for a final decision at third reading.
That would be the right way of proceeding. Instead, we have this draconian programming motion from the government that says we would have a limited number of speakers from each party, and then after those speakers were finished speaking the vote on the bill would take place, and then it would immediately be deemed to have gone through all of the remaining stages without any of the consideration that normally takes place at committee.
We are under the general terms of the debate on the government motion, but in particular what we are debating is an amendment from the Conservative Party caucus. We have tried to meet the government partway here, in terms of saying we understand there is value in passing this bill quickly, and we understand that bills on which there is general agreement do not require the same level of debate as bills on which there is substantive philosophical disagreement that has to be worked through. We accept that it is reasonable for different bills to be debated for different amounts of time.
What we are trying to do to meet the government halfway here is say that we will have the debate and then the bill will be quickly referred to the Standing Committee on Health, where the Minister of Health will be ordered to appear as a witness. That committee hearing will occur the day after the bill is passed, and clause-by-clause consideration will have to be completed effectively by 11 p.m. that night. If it is not completed by then, all remaining amendments and clauses will be considered immediately without further debate. We would put in place a mechanism that is extraordinary anyway, and it would involve the bill being able to progress very quickly. However, it would still involve the committee looking at the bill, hearing from witnesses, hearing from the minister responsible, considering possible improvements or amendments and then referring the bill back to the House.
We hear members say that it is a simple bill and they ask, “What possible amendments?” However, that is really not the point. Regardless of the particulars of the bill, the committee and the members of Parliament who are responsible for being experts on the bill should have the opportunity to weigh in on it. We have put forward a reasonable amendment to a very draconian programming motion, and I hope members will look at it and consider it.
Frankly, we see many ways in which the governing Liberals have been willing to attack and weaken our democratic institutions. I am particularly disappointed that the federal NDP is joining arm in arm with the government. This is, I suppose, consistent with what we have been seeing in this Parliament, which is a de facto coalition between the federal NDP and the Liberals. In the past, NDP members have generally always opposed even closure motions, yet they have gone from opposing closure motions across the board to joining in with the government on a programming motion that skips all of the stages, not just limiting time at a particular stage. It skips through all of the subsequent stages of the bill. It is disappointing to see these two parties standing together in this attack on our democratic institutions.
It is important to remind my colleagues that the use of these programming motions is not happening in isolation. It is part of a broader pattern of behaviour. We have seen the government's refusal to hand over documents ordered by Parliament in the Winnipeg lab affair. The Speaker ordered the government to hand over the documents and said that Parliament had a right to request them, and in defiance of the legal and constitutional authority of Parliament, the government refused to hand over those documents.
We saw the attempt initially, at the start of the pandemic, to effectively shut down Parliament and give the government the power to make laws, introduce new taxes and raise taxes without consultation with Parliament, effectively trying, for a relatively extended period of time, to negate the basic principles of parliamentary supremacy. Of course, the Conservatives stood against that and were able to stop it at the time. However, it shows the government's horrific ambition to weaken our parliamentary institution.
Now we are in a context where the government has decided, for the first time in history, to use this legislative instrument called the Emergencies Act, and I think the trust that many Canadians had in the government prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act impacts how they view its use. We have a government with a long-running pattern of disrespect for Parliament in refusing to hand over documents ordered by Parliament and trying to shut down Parliament and give itself the power to rule by fiat. The government has done all of these things. It does not think its bills deserve to be studied by committee and it thinks that trying to spend more than a single day on a piece of legislation is playing games. However, now they want to use the Emergencies Act and tell us not to worry because they are going to be very cautious and measured in how they apply it. There is a lot of broken trust between Canadians and the government when it comes to whether we can have confidence in its ability to use very severe and potentially dangerous instruments in that way.
This is on the minds of many Canadians. It is a lack of regard for the democratic process, and it is kind of a precursor to the step the government has now taken of using the Emergencies Act. We have to be very careful. I think it is important that we do not take our democratic institutions for granted and preserve the functioning of Parliament as the people's House, as a democratic institution that studies legislation. It does not just exist as a group of spokespeople for government legislation. It exists to challenge, to question, to reflect, to analyze and to make laws better. We need to protect our democracy by protecting our democratic institutions, Parliament foremost among them.
In the time I have remaining, I want to make some brief comments on Bill C-12.
I support this bill. We need to do more to help and protect seniors, especially during the pandemic.
However, the Liberal government has done too little, too late. The Liberals were well aware of the problems caused by the clawback of the GIS and CERB almost two years ago, and yet it took them nearly eight months to come up with any solutions and fix these problems. That is simply unacceptable.
I have heard from many seniors in my riding who are still waiting for their payment from the government. They are expecting it to be tax-free. What took so long, and why are seniors being arbitrarily penalized by the government's mistakes?
Furthermore, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has stated that the cost of clawing back the GIS and CERB is $400 million, but we know that the government has set aside $742 million for the clawback. The Liberals need to explain the huge discrepancy between those two numbers.
This reminds me of the net versus gross income issue when it comes to CERB. The Liberals made the mistake, but Canadians have suffered the consequences. The Liberals need to explain how they are going to get this money to the right people and make sure there is no fraud.
That is why I support this proposal to amend the Old Age Security Act. Bill C-12 will help correct one of the many mistakes made by this government during the pandemic, especially with regard to seniors.
Essentially, the need for this bill demonstrates the importance of careful study of legislation. The reason we need Bill C-12, the reason we support Bill C-12, is that it corrects an error in previous legislation, an error that effectively would limit seniors' ability to access their regular benefits based on support they received during the pandemic. We need this bill to protect seniors from facing clawbacks to their regular benefits as a result of what they received during the pandemic.
Here is the point. This bill underlines the fact that governments, hopefully with the best of intentions, make mistakes in the legislation they put before Parliament. That is why we have Parliament. The government, with all its access to information and experts, puts forward a bill in good faith before Parliament, and then it is critiqued and analyzed by opposition parties and hopefully by backbench members of the governing party. It then goes to committee, where experts outside of government can testify and raise concerns, and amendments can be put forward. Problems with the bill can be identified and then perhaps the bill moves forward in the same or amended form. There are many cases, actually, where government members have moved amendments to government legislation at committee. This is an important part of the process.
We have this bill before us because the government failed to take important issues into consideration in its previous pandemic benefits. It is ironic: On a bill that corrects an error existing in previous benefits because of insufficient attention to detail, we are being told we need to pass it without attention to detail. Some members of the government say they have a problem and they want to be able to pass more bills. They say the opposition wants to spend all this time talking about bills and it slows down the ability to pass bills. Well, if we did not have to pass bills correcting errors in previous bills, then maybe the government would not have a problem in moving forward aspects of its legislative agenda. However, I still say that if we spent two or three days on this bill instead of just one, we would be doing Parliament a great deal more credit than we are doing it right now.
I encourage members to take into consideration the reasonable amendment from the Conservatives, which still involves dramatically expediting the bill, but also creates some mechanism and some opportunity for committee study on the bill. I think that is the least we can do to show Canadians that we have a real job as members of Parliament. We are not just here to provide a rubber stamp. We are here to make Parliament function and do a service on behalf of Canadians, which is to study legislation that comes before us, to understand it, to analyze it and to make it as good as possible so that we can then assure Canadians that the bills we are passing have gone through the due diligence they deserve.
