Debates of May 2nd, 2022

Extension of Sitting Hours and Conduct of Extended Proceedings

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

Mr. Speaker, why is the member misleading Canadians by suggesting that this is the case and that ministers can arbitrarily prorogue Parliament when they cannot? They need the support of a majority of the members in this House.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, apart from correcting the member on the rules of the House, where we cannot impugn another member for intentionally misleading the House, which is against the rules in the Standing Orders, I will remind the member that it is his own government's motion that says the following: “that the said motion shall be decided immediately without debate or amendment”. It can only be moved by a minister of the Crown.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

Order. Let us ask the question and let us answer the question as best we can, without others having to talk at the same time.

The hon. member for Calgary Shepard.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, to finish what I was saying before the heckling drowned me out, only a minister of the Crown can move it. Only a cabinet minister can move said motion.

These Liberal members have ensured themselves the vote of the NDP. They bought the vote. Therefore, it is a guarantee that this will happen. They will have a majority, so it is a guarantee that they can shut down the House at any moment.

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I hear the member for Kingston and the Islands heckling me again. I am happy to take another question from him.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do indeed appreciate the hon. member's use of proverbs. In fact, if his words were a stick, one could not lean on it.

It was 92 times under the Harper government, and Peter Van Loan, that they used the same type of tricks in this House.

My question for the very hon. member is this: Why this change of heart now? Why is it good for the Conservatives when they do it to move forward with what they call good government, but it is not good in a minority situation for the opposition to actually work with government and finally get something done for Canadians?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, let me quibble first with the number. Obviously, when a time allocation motion is moved, there is a difference between having a 24-hour notice that debate will be shut down versus having two weeks to debate the matter.

I know the member for Hamilton Centre is heckling and would perhaps like to jump in and correct what I am trying to say, but again, there is a huge difference between informing members ahead of time that they will have a week's worth of debate on a particular piece of legislation versus having the ability to completely shut down the House or impose evening sittings when they do not even have to participate in the debate, because Parliament cannot even be shut down.

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I hear the member heckling me again.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, being over in the corner here, I have to make dramatic hand gestures to get your attention. Thank you for noticing me.

I, too, want to correct the member for Calgary Shepard. He stated boldly, but I think incorrectly, that it is the Liberal government House leader who is at fault for this. I notice that there have been a number of government House leaders over the past six or seven years, and there is always this problem. I posit the alternative hypothesis that this might be a problem with the Prime Minister and the people he chooses as House leader. I would ask the member what he thinks about that possibility.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will always be happy to be corrected by the chair of our caucus and one of the longest-serving members on the Conservative side in the House of Commons.

He is right. The end person, the person who decides who is the government House leader and who is supposed to be responsible for the government's agenda and making sure it goes through the House if not smoothly at least assuredly, with an end deadline so the government can pass the agenda that it was supposed to be elected to do, is in fact the Prime Minister.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, to my hon. colleague from Calgary Shepard, this comes from having the memory of this. We have had a lot of people back and forth in the House saying, “Well, this did not happen when the Conservatives were in power.” I just want to make it clear that there is a problem, and I think it is reflected in the culture of Parliament and the change that has happened over decades.

I worked as a staffer to the minister of the environment in the 1980s. We did not have the sense then that the opposition existed to obstruct. That has been a growing sense, and certainly during my first time in Parliament, which started 11 years ago today, May 2, the Harper Conservatives, in majority, moved us to sitting every day of the week until midnight to catch up with the agenda. No one said they were to blame for not managing themselves properly.

We need to work together far better, which requires setting partisanship aside after an election.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will agree with the member's concerns about the culture of this place. That is probably unusual for a Conservative, to agree with the former leader of the Green Party, but I have sat at many prayer breakfast tables with her, so I know her heart is in the right place.

However, the culture of this place has gone in the wrong direction over perhaps the last 40 to 45 years, and I do not think that is particularly the fault of any individual party in this area here. I think it is a combination of technology, mass media and also the fact that there are now 338 members in the House of Commons, which makes it far more difficult to get to know each other across the way. That includes the pandemic, which has made it extremely difficult to get to know other members and build that relationship of trust.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Mr. Speaker, from the outset I want to say that it would warm my late Baba Gertie's Yiddish heart to hear my colleagues use Yiddish proverbs. In fact, I think she would be schlepping nachas right now if she were watching this wonderful debate.

Most Canadians take for granted that politicians always seem to be at each other's throats over something or other. I often get asked why our party is so critical of the government, why we are always opposed to everything the government does. My response is usually something like that it is actually the job of the official opposition to oppose the government and to hold the government to account. It is an extremely important role in a parliamentary democracy.

We see, time and time again, that countries without a strong political opposition often take a dark path. We see this happening right now before our eyes as Vladimir Putin wields the full military might of Russia against the freedom-loving democratic state of Ukraine. Mr. Putin has no real political opposition to hold him to account, and we know what happens if somebody actively speaks in opposition to his government: He punishes them.

We are lucky to live in a country where we are free to speak our minds and where the official opposition operates as a check and balance in a system designed to hold the Prime Minister and his or her government responsible for the decisions they make. The Prime Minister in our system has tremendous power, and our job as the official opposition is to keep the government in check. In fact, Michael Ignatieff, the former Liberal leader of the official opposition, said, “The opposition performs an adversarial function critical to democracy itself.”

This is why we are concerned about this motion, as it limits the ability of Her Majesty's loyal opposition to keep the government in check. Here is why. Motion No. 11 says, among other things, “after 6:30 p.m. the Speaker shall not receive any quorum calls”. Quorum is vital to a properly functioning government. Taking it to its extreme, let us imagine that only one MP is in this House. In the absence of a quorum requirement, that one member could have unlimited power to introduce motions and laws, literally in the middle of the night, without proper parliamentary oversight.

Under the Constitution Act, a quorum of 20 members is legally required “to constitute a Meeting of the House for the Exercise of its Powers”. Any member has the constitutionally entrenched right to make a quorum call and to bring this to the attention of the Chair, except after 6:30 in the evening if the NDP-Liberal coalition passes this motion. This is unprecedented. This is unconstitutional. Quorum rules exist to ensure that a small number cannot take matters into their own hands.

Another thing about quorum is that it can be used by democratically elected opposition members to make a point. Quorum busting is a tactic that prevents a legislative body from attaining a quorum and can be used by opposition members seeking to block the adoption of some measure they oppose. For instance, Abraham Lincoln, during his time back in the Illinois legislature, actually leapt out of a first-storey window, in a failed attempt to prevent a quorum from being present, as the doors of the capitol had been locked to prevent legislators from fleeing.

I want to be very clear so that government members do not ask me if I am endorsing this. I am not endorsing this. Please, no one go and jump out of a window to avoid a quorum. However, we do have the right. We are maybe more civilized as to how we approach quorum busting, but we have a right to call out lack of quorum. One of my hon. colleagues from the Bloc made the point earlier that it is very difficult right now with the hybrid Parliament to know whether we have a quorum, and that is another issue that we need to settle here at some point. We do have lack of quorum as a legitimate tool of accountability. Motion No. 11 would take this away.

Regarding dilatory motions, Bosc and Gagnon state that dilatory motions do not require notice, are not debatable or amendable and, if in order, are to be put to a vote by the Chair immediately. Motion No. 11 says the Speaker shall not receive any dilatory motions. In fact, the motion says, “a minister of the Crown may move, without notice, a motion to adjourn the House until Monday, September 19, 2022” and, ironically, that motion can be “decided immediately without debate or amendment”. That sounds to me an awful lot like a dilatory motion. On the one hand, we have the motion saying no dilatory motions, and then we have the motion saying that here is a dilatory motion and that is okay.

The motion gives a procedural right to a minister of the Crown that is unavailable to any other members to avail themselves of. This seems inherently unfair to me, and I would go so far as to say that a matter of privilege could be considered as to whether it is in order.

Motion No. 11 seeks to tie the hands of the official opposition while expanding government authority. It is clear that the government wants to give itself an escape hatch: the ability to prorogue. I know hon. members across have argued that this is not prorogation. They say they will put the motion and there has to be another House leader and it is going to be put to a vote, but the reality is that in this place we cannot do indirectly what we cannot do directly. That is the effect of this motion: the ability to avoid the scrutiny of the opposition, which, as Mr. Ignatieff said, is “critical to democracy itself”.

To be clear, the government wants to give itself the power to stop opposition motions, to prorogue whenever it wants, to avoid accountability, to stop important committee work in its tracks and to govern without a quorum. That is what this motion would do. What this motion would also do is neuter Parliament, plain and simple. It is a brazen power grab.

About working until midnight, I hear government members, particularly the member for Winnipeg North, my colleague from Winnipeg, claiming that members of the Conservative Party have a problem working late. With respect, I believe all members in this House have always worked hard. In fact, we cannot get here without working hard. I am happy to work as long and as late as it takes, as are my colleagues. Therefore, let us show a little respect and stop inferring that somehow some hon. members do not want to work. That is just not true at all.

The problem is not working late; the problem is the last-minute nature of the decision. The motion would allow the government and the NDP House leader to decide at 6:29 p.m. to sit until midnight. I know the NDP claims to care about workers. There are hundreds of staff members who run this place: the clerks, the cleaning staff, security, kitchen staff, the interpreters, the good folks who drive the shuttles we rely upon to get around the Hill, and our young pages. How is it fair to them to say at 6:29 p.m., after working since 9 a.m., that they will have to stay until midnight? Perhaps their unions will take this up. If not, I think they should.

I am looking forward to seeing the Liberal-NDP coalition members in the House with us as we all work late into the night for the betterment of Canadians. I take them at their word that they will be here. If they unilaterally choose to extend hours and do not show up for debate, perhaps we need to rethink the standing rules that currently prevent us from commenting on the presence or absence of a member.

The goal of this motion is to limit the opposition parties' ability to hold the government to account, plain and simple. The motion erodes our ability to hold the government to account and erodes the trust that Canadians have in our institutions. How can a government that claims to want to work across the aisle ever be taken seriously when it pulls stunts like this? The Prime Minister is giving himself the power to shut down Parliament until September, as well as the power to disrupt the work of parliamentary committees. We should not be surprised, though. It is part of a pattern of behaviour where the Prime Minister runs from accountability and transparency.

Last week, the Liberal and NDP members on the foreign affairs committee voted against the member for Wellington—Halton Hills' reasonable motion for the production of the Winnipeg lab documents. Ironically, this is the same motion the NDP voted for in the last Parliament. In addition, the Prime Minister is withholding documents related to the invocation of the Emergencies Act. He may be the subject of an RCMP criminal investigation. The list goes on and on.

I will close by saying that this motion is an affront to our democracy and, if I have not made it clear so far, I am voting against it. In the meantime, Canadians can rest assured that Conservatives will fulfill our constitutional obligations and continue to hold the government to account.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

It being 8:02 p.m., pursuant to order made earlier today, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of government business No. 11 now before the House.

Pursuant to the Speaker's ruling earlier today, the first question is on the subamendment, paragraphs (a) to (d) of government business No. 11.

Shall I dispense?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

[Chair read text of subamendment to House]

If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes to request a recorded division or that the amendment to the amendment be adopted on division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of Her Majesty's official opposition, I ask for a recorded division.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

Call in the members.

[And the bells having rung:]

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

The question is on the subamendment.

(The House divided on the amendment to the amendment, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #67

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

I declare the amendment to the amendment lost.

The next question is on the amendment for government business No. 11. May I dispense?

[Some hon. members]

No.