Debates of Nov. 26th, 2024

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I want to remind members on both sides of the House, as some have been trying to answer questions while others are trying to ask them, to please wait until the appropriate time, if they happen to be recognized.

The hon. member for Niagara West.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is because of the carbon policies, the policies of the government. It is so hypocritical to tell people that they need to choose between heating and eating, yet fly all around the world as if that is not an issue.

As a matter of fact, coming back from COP the other day, I think the environment minister was talking about how we could put some carbon taxes on the marine industry. Talk about another cost. We receive all of our goods from around the world through shipping. The government has never found any avenue that it would not like to try to tax.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Madam Speaker, I was wondering if my colleague could talk about the Liberal Party members thumbing their noses at democracy. As he knows, we are the elected officials in the House, and we did have a vote. We voted that the government produce the documents.

As the member said, quite rightly, the government has a history. He talked about the Winnipeg lab. We went to an election so the Liberals would not have to share information with elected members of Parliament.

Could the member talk about how important it is to our democracy that we make sure these documents are produced? Right now, we have a government that just thumbs its nose at the elected representatives of Canadians.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Madam Speaker, this is the whole reason we ask questions. This is the whole reason we hold people accountable. At the end of the day, we never had the chance to have a debate about the Winnipeg lab. We never had the chance to have any of that information. Maybe the outcome of the last election would have been different. We do not know because we did not get that information.

The government promised to be so transparent. The government has been anything but transparent.

Business of the House

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam 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, notwithstanding any Standing Order, special order, or usual practice of the House, during the debate pursuant to Standing Order 52 later this day, no quorum calls, dilatory motions, or requests for unanimous consent shall be received by the Chair.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

All those opposed to the hon. parliamentary secretary's moving the motion will please say nay.

It is agreed.

The House has heard the terms of the motion. All those opposed to the motion will please say nay.

(Motion agreed to)

The House resumed consideration of the motion, of the amendment as amended and of the amendment to the amendment.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is always a privilege to stand here on behalf of the good people of Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola.

Before I begin, I would like to remind the House why privilege is important. Privilege goes to the very core of how we as elected officials do our job and hold the government to account. It encompasses both the rights and the immunities that every member of the House requires to fulfill our duties as parliamentarians.

In a democracy, it is the people, not the Prime Minister and not his increasingly insular office, who must prevail. If powerful unelected individuals can prevent us from doing our job, the people become powerless. Let us never forget that in Canadian democracy, it is Canadians who elected their representatives to be their voice in this place.

The current debate has become lengthy, but I can summarize it effectively. The Prime Minister's Office claims, “There is nothing to see here.” The Liberals accuse the opposition of holding Parliament hostage, and they blame us entirely.

Let us recap the facts. The Liberal government appointed the people who ran the SDTC program. They had full control and knowledge of what was happening, and yet it was whistle-blowers, not the government, who exposed the truth.

The Auditor General has since confirmed the disturbing extent of fiscal corruption. Consider the audacity of being entrusted with scarce public dollars and then funnelling them into their own company. What kind of culture enabled such corruption? To every member on the government side, I say that if they believe this conduct is acceptable, then they should think again.

Consider the audacity of being entrusted with scarce dollars funnelling into their own companies. I just want to impress upon members that we would never allow this in a private corporation or a not-for-profit organization that we were part of. Why would we allow it in a case like this? As Lord Acton famously observed, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men”.

Once exposed, the Liberal government ended the program, and now it wants to sweep everything under the rug. “Nothing to see here”, it says; “trust us.” Well, Canadians remember when the Prime Minister looked them in the eye and declared that the allegations in the Globe and Mail story that morning were false. Later those allegations proved to be true and accurate. The only accountability in that sort of affair was the punishment of former minister Jody Wilson-Raybould for refusing to believe in the Prime Minister's Office and its corruption.

So many times when a scandal erupts, we hear the usual excuses from the Prime Minister's Office and from ministers. First comes denial, then comes leaked truth, and then the ministers did not know, because ministers, particularly Liberal ministers, never seem to know, do they? When powerful Prime Minister's Office insiders or ministers appear at committee hearings, their standard response to tough questions is “I do not recall.” It is not a denial, but it is convenient should the truth emerge. Is this fulfilling the public trust?

Let us return to the privilege motion frankly. The Prime Minister's Office controls which documents are released and redacted, and yet it has the audacity to say, “Trust us.” Why would anyone trust the Prime Minister or his PMO, given their track record of deception? How do we break the impasse? Fortunately, we have parliamentary privilege or a production order, a tool that allows us to demand all documents, unredacted.

If there is truly nothing to hide, an innocent government should welcome the opportunity to prove it. Who would not, unless there is something to hide, something the Prime Minister's Office does not want Canadians to know? Would the PMO openly admit it is hiding something? No, of course it would not. It needs an excuse, which is precisely why it has invented the creative fiction of hiding behind the charter.

The Prime Minister and his office have lived in their bubble for so long, isolated in an echo chamber, that they have lost touch with reality. To many Canadians, the charter argument suggests that powerful Liberal insiders have a constitutionally protected right to misuse taxpayer money. Why else would the Liberals continue stonewalling?

Before the government benches raise their predictable objections, let us ask this question: Is there a better way? As the Prime Minister once said, “better is always possible”. Let us discuss how the process could work better.

Some of my colleagues were here during the issue of former senator Mike Duffy. The opposition then, as now, wanted facts and accountability. That is after all one of our core duties, except for the NDP opposition, which seems to blindly support the Liberal government at every turn.

Regarding Senator Duffy, former prime minister Harper faced two choices. He could have hidden behind privacy laws, solicitor-client privilege and cabinet confidence, exactly as today's Prime Minister's Office does, to withhold unredacted documents. Instead, having nothing to hide, he did what an honourable prime minister would do; he waived all privileges and instructed his office to share every document. That is what an accountable, transparent and honest government looks like.

Interestingly enough, while the current Prime Minister has mentioned his predecessor's name nearly 300 times in the House, he has never once mentioned this example of integrity. To my friends on all sides of the chamber, this shows that better is always possible and shows how the Liberal government could improve. It should choose transparency and accountability, but we know that the Prime Minister and his PMO will not take that path. They will not even consider it. Why is that?

Imagine that, if by some miracle, the Prime Minister releases all documents unredacted, as the order states, and gives them to the law clerk, who transfers them to the RCMP. If there is truly nothing to hide, we resume business. However, if there is something hidden, someone might face accountability somewhere. In the dark world of Liberal back rooms, who that someone might be makes all the difference. I do not believe, and I doubt many government members truly believe, these things happen by accident with nobody's knowledge. Someone knew, and that someone is being protected.

Meanwhile, Parliament's work stalls, and one of our most important tools, the production order, is being trampled on. This is not the first time the government has tried to usurp a production order. Remember how it attempted to take the Winnipeg lab production order to the courts, in a case that became moot when the Prime Minister used his COVID-era powers in summer 2021 to dissolve Parliament, all in the pursuit of a majority.

What we have here is that instead of resorting to the courts as it did in 2021, the government has chosen to stonewall the House. Is protecting potentially guilty parties worth defying and ultimately sacrificing an honoured ancient tool of Parliament? Some on the government side apparently think so, or we would not be here today.

Consider this. If we in the opposition did as the Liberal government asks, simply trust it and move on, nobody would face accountability. Taxpayer dollars would vanish, wealthy insiders would have profited without any consequence, and the people responsible would escape judgment. That is exactly what the government proposes in order to avoid exposing its program mismanagement.

Does anyone believe this represents good governance? Did the people on the Liberals' side seek office to protect the people who abuse public trust and profit from taxpayers? I would like to believe that none of them did. Certainly no one on this side did.

As we approach what the Liberal government calls the holiday tax break, or what the Toronto Star calls the “shameless giveaway plan” that is “incoherent, unnecessary, and frankly embarrassing,” my inbox fills with concerns from small businesses about lack of consultation and information. Like so many Liberal government initiatives, it emerged seemingly from nowhere. The messaging is almost comical. Are expensive gaming consoles really essentials? Promoting more consoles means parents face pressure for costlier Wi-Fi plans. This is great for Canada's wireless cartel, but terrible for struggling families.

I have one final thought. In my riding, constituents accidentally overpaid the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, CERB, and had every dollar clawed back by the CRA. Others deemed ineligible faced the same, yet what about the people who received SDTC funding through conflicts of interest or whose projects were totally ineligible to receive the money in the first place? Will these people who obtained millions of dollars face similar clawbacks, or do the Liberals believe that these individuals and their companies deserve impunity?

Why does the Prime Minister maintain double standards? Why do his expectations for others not apply to him and to other Liberal insiders? Consider his message: millions of dollars in tax dollars for friends who wrongly benefit, while the average Canadian gets $250 of their own money back. That is an attempt to distract from what has happened.

Canadians deserve accountability and transparency. Whatever happened to the idea that sunlight is the best disinfectant, or, as I said earlier, to “better is always possible”? Those were supposed to be core principles; “open by default”, he said. Instead we get scandals, corruption, stonewalling and efforts to hide truth from Canadians. This is wrong. Deep down, every member knows it is wrong. We must send the Prime Minister and his PMO a clear message: enough. The people responsible for the SDTC program's failures must face accountability, full stop.

I call on all members to stand united against corruption and concealment of the truth from Canadians. We should protect our privilege, in this case the tool of a production order. The government should square up to the fact that, whether Liberals likes it not or not, a vote was held, a division was made, a decision was cast by each member here, and the majority demanded an ancient right, something that the government cannot ignore.

A government is not separate from its people. A government is not somehow above the fray of Parliament. In our Westminster system, the government is fused with the legislative assembly. Those people are here and are meant to be accountable to us, those of us who do not sit in cabinet.

The rest of the members in this place have a duty and an obligation to hold the government to account. I do not care whether members do so in the open, like I am doing right now. I do not care whether it is done at a caucus meeting with other people inside the same party. However, my goodness, we owe this country and this institution better than what they are getting right now.

It is easy I guess for me to get on my high horse and say that all of us should be like white knights coming to the rescue. However, if we do not, who will? If the government does not learn the lesson that it is chained to this place, that when a production order is made it must respect it. If we do not defend that as members of Parliament if the government does not agree with it, then the solution is to either hold the line or vote the government out. When I talk about a carbon tax election, many of my constituents have said that to me, and some of them were former Liberal supporters. They get the sense that nothing can be changed in this place unless we change the government.

Therefore the government has a tough question to answer its own members of the Liberal caucus: Do they respect the institution and bring forward the production order in its entirety, whether or not they agree with it, or do they simply say no and let their names in their communities get dragged through such that people believe that they are not there to do what they asked?

I am not asking everyone to agree with me all the time. I am just saying that on this one we have to have a line in the sand that we and others who have come before us have drawn, and not allow the issue to go any further. I ask all hon. members to hold the line with me and with other members to make this place a place that governments respect, or they will find that this place will be diminished, and it will be because of their inaction. Again, this is about something bigger than us.

Members may suggest we are wasting money by talking about what has made this institution great, but we can never put a price tag on democracy. They say we are wasting money by talking something that does not matter, but it does matter. This place has a foundation. If a person sees the foundation of their home start to crumble and they do nothing, that is an act of omission. If they do as the government is doing and bring a sledgehammer to that foundation, that is an act of commission. Both are wrong because eventually the house falls and everyone suffers.

I am more than happy to be accountable to my constituents. I am happy to answer questions on why I made these statements. I believe my constituents are firmly behind me on this one, as I have asked them multiple times if we should continue to hold the line. I will warn members in the governing party that people are starting to say the only way this ends is by an election and a new government.

The members can get to their microphones tomorrow, talk to the Prime Minister and tell him to stop this sledgehammering of an institution we all care about.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, the majority of members of Parliament want this issue to go to PROC. That is the motion we are debating today. The member knows that. However, he wants to talk about a report and a specific motion that was dealt with six months ago or so. That report says we are to give all the documents we have collected directly to the RCMP. The RCMP has said no, it does not want them. It would potentially be against charter rights, something we should be concerned about.

Why should the government listen to a Conservative leader who is more interested in his personal self-interest, in advancing the Conservative Party, than in what the RCMP, the Auditor General of Canada and other legal experts are saying? At times, I would suggest, the leader of the Conservative Party is in borderline contempt of Parliament.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, the oracle from Winnipeg talks about an idea that somehow a majority believes this should go to PROC—

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

Madam Speaker, on a point of order, it certainly is not appropriate to be calling people names in the House, even if the member is going to suggest he was trying to be kind. The reality is that he meant it in a sarcastic way and I would encourage the Speaker to encourage him to withdraw that.

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member for Peterborough—Kawartha does not have the floor. If the member has anything to add, she should wait until the appropriate time.

The rules of the House are that we refer to other members in the House by their title or riding. I hope all members will take note of that. It is something that everybody fully knows.

The hon. member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola has the floor.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, I will refer to the member as the member for Winnipeg North in future discussions, but I will point out the continued belief that members cannot use sarcasm or satire. How do we know we live in a free country? It is when we can criticize those in power openly and freely. If the Liberals have better ideas than mine, they should use them. The answer to free speech that one disagrees with is free speech that one agrees with.

Getting back to the point I was making, the member said a majority of people in this place want this to go to PROC. If that were the case, we would not be here. There would have been a vote and then the—

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

If you would stop talking, then there would be a vote.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

No, Madam Speaker—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

That is debate. The hon. parliamentary secretary had an opportunity to ask a question and I am sure there will be another opportunity.

I will ask the hon. member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola to wrap up because other individuals would like to ask questions.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, again, the member seems to think everyone shares his reality. I would point out that is not the case. We have different points of view. I enjoy his interventions, but if members on the other side are unhappy with what I have to say, they should respond at the appropriate time with their own counter-arguments.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech, and especially for the answer he just gave.

I just realized that he was actually being sarcastic. The satire, the sarcasm, was his own speech, coming from a party that was found in contempt of Parliament and that used closure motions and omnibus bills over and over and over again. They are lecturing us about respect for the institution, which is rather ironic. To use his own word, it is sarcasm.

If, by some misfortune, his party returns to power after the next election—which I do not want, because I want the NDP to win the election—will it commit to respecting the institution and parliamentarians, and will it commit to not using closure and omnibus bills?

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would have hoped the NDP member from Quebec, who I believe came in 2011 as the official opposition, would respect that I made specific reference to the duties of the loyal opposition, something his former leader Thomas Mulcair did when he had the opportunity to hold Prime Minister Harper to account. As I said, Prime Minister Harper actually waived client-solicitor privilege when the RCMP had specific questions about the Mike Duffy affair. I would have thought the member would appreciate that kind of open result.

The member talks about how we were in government. Let us talk about how they were in opposition with Thomas Mulcair holding the government to account. Now, under the member of Parliament for Burnaby South, the New Democrats say at every turn that they do not support the current Prime Minister, yet they vote to keep him in power. That is contemptible.

That is the problem, because what happens in this chamber here and now is what we should be most concerned with. I would ask the member to reflect upon that.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Madam Speaker, given that the Auditor General only reviewed a minority of the contracts, in the member's view, as an experienced member of Parliament, how much worse could this actually be? We are talking about $400 million of misappropriated funds. In his estimation, how much worse could the rot actually be?

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, this is the proverbial challenge. The Auditor General, particularly under the current Prime Minister, has publicly asked for more funding to keep in line with the amount of spending that has happened. This is the same Prime Minister who has 40% more public servants and has seen a 200% increase in the use of consultants. For the program spending we have seen, some may think it was okay. Some may have some concerns about what was spent during the COVID period, where we went from an average budget under Mr. Harper of around $250 billion to, in some cases, topping $700 billion in a single-year budget.

The Auditor General has not had the resources to do exactly what the member said, which is to really go through that file 100%. She has said publicly the Prime Minister and his cabinet will not support her allocation so she can do the job commensurate with the amount government has grown under the Prime Minister.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I really believe the member is somewhat confused. The motion we are debating, if the Conservatives actually stopped talking, is to have the issue they want to talk about go to the procedure and House affairs committee. Instead of allowing that vote to take place, the leader of the Conservative Party insists we play this multi-million dollar self-serving game at great expense to Canadians so we cannot debate other issues that are critically important to Canadians.

Does the member not agree we should follow the Conservative motion, allow it to come to a vote and have the issue go to PROC? That was the ruling of the Speaker.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, as I have said before, there are some deeply held principles at stake here, and I for one, as a member, want to force the government to admit it was wrong and that it has to follow up with what Parliament has asked of it.

As long as members want to get up and continue debate, I support that. This member can talk about the trade-offs, but that is something he should be talking about with the Prime Minister and cabinet, who have not given the law clerk what Parliament ordered them to. That is the fastest way to end this. We would have this go to PROC right away. Unfortunately, this is the only mechanism we seem to have.

I hope other Liberal members of Parliament will be at the caucus meeting tomorrow with that member and the Prime Minister and knock some sense into them, figuratively, by communicating that they need to stop this stonewalling of Parliament.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Madam Speaker, happy birthday.

My colleague has really hit the nail on the head in terms of the deep-seated issue. If there is nothing to hide, why does the government not just give all of the unredacted documents to the room? Why not? Why are the Liberals refusing to do this?