Madam Speaker, they are heckling me now. I can always tell when I hit a nerve. I can always tell when the truth is starting to sink in. When someone is calling them out, we can tell, because that is when they start to heckle, and that is exactly what they are doing right now.
When it comes back to this particular report and the committee work that was done, Liberals did participate in this committee at the time. They participated in the committee. They helped studies with the witnesses. They helped to create their own recommendations. I know that three recommendations that came from the Liberal benches, which I do not see in the same form in the report, were never adopted. I would like to read out what those recommendations were.
The recommendations from the Liberal members do not mention individuals' names or look to berate people. They look to set and develop policy. The recommendations, which were in the dissenting report, were that the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics conduct, at an earliest opportunity, a full statutory review of the Conflict of Interest Act with appropriate recommendations.
It seems like a legitimate thing to do. It seems like a legitimate thing to do from a policy perspective if we are is generally interested in trying to fix perceived flaws in our system. That is what we would do, not talk about all these recommendations that they have in here referencing the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister's wife and various other people, as well as how certain information needs to be turned over immediately. The reason I say that is that colleagues will recall that the Ethics Commissioner was already doing his own study on this issue.
Everything that the committee was demanding in the form of recommendations through this study was for no purpose other than to grandstand and put all the dirty laundry of everybody out in public, regardless of what their involvement was. They are attempts to do that. That is all this was. We know that is because the Ethics Commissioner is not going to do this to the same degree as the official opposition wanted the committee to do it. That is all they are interested in.
The Ethics Commissioner was already investigating this, and it was as if the committee said, “No, no; we're better at this. We should do all this work instead of the individual who has been hired to do this in a fair, non-partisan, unbiased way.” That is exactly why this report has been tabled again.
As I mentioned previously, this is not a report generated by this particular Parliament at the ethics committee that sits now, but one from the previous Parliament. They basically just grabbed the report and retabled it so that the Conservatives could continually do this over and over and over.
The second recommendation that the Liberals put forward in that dissenting report was that the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics conduct at the earliest opportunity a full statutory review of the Lobbying Act, with appropriate recommendations.
Again looking at it from a policy perspective, the Liberals were saying that they recognize there is concern out there, that it is possible there are flaws out there, and that this is how they would address it. They would look at the Conflict of Interest Act and look at the Lobbying Act and at ways to make them better and strengthen them. That is what proper policy from a committee should look like, not these arbitrary demands that are being made by the opposition for no purpose other than to try to shame individuals and try to keep a scandal going as long as they possibly can. That is all they were interested in.
The third and final recommendation made by the Liberal members in the dissenting report was that the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics refrain from conducting parallel investigations with any independent office into the conduct of members of Parliament, either directly or by proxy.
That last recommendation was the Liberal members saying, “Hold on a second, as this ethics investigation is already ongoing by the individual who has been appointed to look into this stuff. Maybe it is not a good idea that we do this at the same time.” It would be the equivalent of a judge reviewing a case in court while a parliamentary committee is trying to do the exact same thing on the side. They are trying to influence it. They are trying to highlight and bring everything possible to the surface so that they can try to attack individuals and personalities. They do this time after time.
This brings me back to where I started in the five minutes I have remaining. What we are seeing here today is part of a pattern. It is part of a pattern that has been developed lately by the Conservative Party of Canada, a pattern of continually trying to put up any possible roadblocks. They are moving concurrence on a report that a committee in this Parliament did not even write. They are not even doing the work before trying to move the motion here. They are just grabbing a report from the last Parliament and retabling it here so that they can move concurrence on it. We are seeing this time and time again.
As indicated by the member for Winnipeg North on a number of occasions, the Conservatives have complained, saying they want debate, that they want to debate the issue. They say, “Why won't you let us debate these very important pieces of legislation?”
Then the government says, “Good point. Maybe we do need some more time to debate.” Motion No. 11 comes along, basically saying, “Let us sit later into the evening.” What did the Conservatives do? They tried to filibuster that. We had to move closure on that motion, the motion to try to set our work schedule. That is how incredibly obstructionist they have been.
Earlier today we saw a Conservative member stand up and move an amendment to the concurrence motion. He was just trying to create another vote. He was trying to burn more time. That is what is happening over and over in here. This is not about actually debating policy.
If Conservatives wanted to debate policy today and had a genuine interest in advancing the objectives of Canadians, they would be debating Bill C-18, something we know they care about because it was in their platform, and something they had said they are pushing forward on.
However, it appears as though the Conservatives are only interested in moving it forward if they form government. As we saw, they put it in their election platform and they ran on it. We get here and say, “Let us bring this idea forward.” It should be a fairly easy one to get through, because we know the Conservatives support it, but every single time we bring it up in this House, they put up a roadblock like this to prevent us from actually talking about it.
The Conservatives are only interested in delivering for Canadians if they can be in the driver's seat. That is not how democracy works. Democracy works, in Canada at least, with people being elected from 338 parts of the country, coming together and figuring out the best way forward. If we cannot do it through consensus, which by default we rarely ever could, then we vote on it. Then we move on. We recognize that we played our role in that democratic process, that we helped advance the lives of Canadians for the better. We accept the roles that we have been given in the House.
Canadians will notice that the Liberal Party said that we accept the role we have been given in this House. We accept the role of being a minority government. What did we do? We looked to other parties. We went to the NDP to see if it wanted to work with us to advance issues for Canadians. The NDP accepted its role. It said yes. It had an interest in advancing issues for Canadians and wanted to get together and work together. That is how we got a supply and confidence agreement.
We know what the Bloc's objective is. It is interested in being its own country. I guess, by default, it is going to be a lot harder to work with them for the interest of all Canadians, but at least we know exactly what its position is. We know exactly where it is coming from. The Conservatives, however, are literally rudderless right now. Who is driving the ship over there? I would absolutely love to know. There is no way that they can continue to operate in this way. They do not even know what their role in this House is.
I have no problem voting against this concurrence motion and I have given my reasons. I have referenced the report, but this is not what we should have been talking about today. We should have been talking about Bill C-18, an issue that would genuinely advance the interests of Canadians and make our country more independently focused for news organizations and outlets throughout the world. Unfortunately, we are not there, because the Conservatives are once again playing games.