Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the democracy-defending constituents of the autumn-coloured riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke. Today, we are debating a subamendment to the amendment of the motion. That is about as parliamentary a sentence one could say in this chamber. This motion calls for the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to complete a report on the government's green slush fund scandal. The amendment adds some witnesses, along with the subamendment. However, Parliament is what this debate is truly about: Parliament and the government's contempt for parliamentary democracy.
Exposing government corruption is a core function of Parliament. As one of the longest-serving members in Parliament, I have seen off a few governments. There is a natural tension between a government and any Parliament, but the current government is different because the Prime Minister is different. Never before have we had a Prime Minister who openly stated his admiration for the Communists who control China.
It is not unlike the praise that former Liberal prime minister Mackenzie King gave Adolf Hitler. Writing in his diary, the former Prime Minister described meeting Hitler. He wrote that he had personally praised Hitler for the “constructive work of his regime”. The current Liberal Prime Minister has made these comments: “There's a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say, ‘We need to go green...we need to start investing in solar.’”
Liberals like Mackenzie King were enamoured with how the national socialists turned the German economy around on a dime following the Great Depression. Both past and present Liberal prime ministers seem to forget what prevents them from simply waving their hands and issuing orders like some king is democracy.
These are not just a couple of prime ministers who admired dictators for their good looks and nice socks. These Liberal men were praising dictatorships for their dictatorial policies. If that were the end, if this had just been one comment one time, most people would have forgotten it. However, remarkably, the Prime Minister seems almost maniacal in his commitment to proving his critics correct. He heard the expression “do not judge a person by what they say; judge them by what they do” and took it to heart.
The Liberal government's refusal to obey an order of Parliament is the current thing it is doing. When sports leagues began shutting down in March 2020 and the government decided to follow the lead of the NHL, the first instinct of the government was to grab as much power as it could. The Liberals sought to rule without restoring Parliament for two years. When that was quickly rejected—