Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise today to talk about what is going on in the House. I would like to provide some context as to why I think we are debating this particular motion today.
I will share my time with the member for Milton, who will provide his insight, perhaps a better insight, into the actual substance of the report.
I will start by saying that I appreciated the last comment from the member for Simcoe North about Bitcoin. I really hope he does not need to go anywhere and can stay in the House to get up when I finish my speech to ask me a question about Bitcoin. I would love to know more about his feelings on Bitcoin. The price has gone up, according to him. I did not realize that this morning, but the price of Bitcoin, according to the member for Simcoe North, has gone up, so I would love to hear more about that. I would also love to hear more about the policies the Conservatives have to offer Canadians on Bitcoin and investing in Bitcoin.
Perhaps this means we will soon see the Leader of the Opposition buy another shawarma with Bitcoin. That would be a great video, and what better time then when the price of Bitcoin is going up? I would encourage the member for Simcoe North to stay in his seat, bear with having to listen to me for nine more minutes and then get up so we can talk about Bitcoin. He can ask me a question about Bitcoin and provide me with some of the great insight I need to know about that. I would love to engage in that discussion.
We have to take the opportunity to understand why we are here right now talking about this particular issue. I am not saying it is not an important issue. I think that is an extremely important thing to ask the anti-competitive agencies to engage in looking at certain practices.
However, let us back up to about four weeks ago, when Conservatives started debating a privilege motion. I know the member who moved that motion likes to talk about procedure and how things happen. He makes sure those who are watching are properly informed, so I will do the same. The Conservatives moved a motion based on a ruling from the Speaker, and as a result, we have seen the Conservatives filibustering for the last four and a half weeks. They are filibustering their own motion, I should add. The motion is to send this particular question of privilege to PROC, yet they do not even want to vote on that.
Conservatives moved a motion to send this somewhere, but they absolutely refuse to do that. What have they done in the process? They filibustered by putting up almost all, and I believe at last count it was about 106 Conservatives, to speak for 20 minutes. They then moved an amendment, which allowed some of them to speak twice or even three times. When that started to run out, they then started to move concurrence motions like the one we are debating today. After that, they allowed the debate on the subamendment to the privilege motion to collapse so they could reset their speaking roster and start from scratch to give everybody another 20-minute round.
That is the game being played in the House of Commons right now. That is the game, which was referred to earlier as a multi-million dollar game, the Conservatives are playing. To the people watching, it is their tax dollars that are going toward that. It is their tax dollars being spent, in the millions of dollars right now, to keep the House operating in order to appease the Conservatives' desire for a filibuster. This is a filibuster on an issue that, by the way, the Speaker has ruled on. The Conservatives are the only ones who are speaking to it. At times, they are the only ones who are asking each other questions on the issue.
Conservatives are doing it for only one reason. They are doing it to support the concept and promote the idea that the House is dysfunctional and nothing can get done. This is because they benefit off of and see opportunity come from making things seem totally chaotic. Where have we witnessed that lately? It seems to happen a lot south of the border, so Conservatives have jumped on board and have said that this is how they are going to deal with things too. They are going to make things seem completely out of order. It is the only way to advance any of their personal political objectives, and this is where we have ended up.
The reason it is important for folks at home to know this is that we have an Order Paper and a projected order of business each day for the House of Commons. This is public. We can find it on the website and there is a printed copy provided every day.
Just so folks at home know what we would have been debating and discussing, had the Conservatives not chosen to continue this filibuster and bring forward concurrence motions like the one we have today, I will list some of the things that are on the Order Paper. The next item to be debated is from the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship and it is Bill C-71, an act to amend the Citizenship Act 2024, which would make amendments to our Citizenship Act. After that, there is a ways and means motion to bring in adjustments to the capital gains tax, which we had been talking about for a number of months. That is what we were going to debate after Bill C-71. Following that, there is the Minister of National Defence making changes to the military justice system. That is also listed on the Order Paper as one of the items the House would be debating. The Order Paper also lists an act to enact the Online Harms Act, to amend the Criminal Code, the Canadian Human Rights Act and an act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service and to make consequential and related amendments to other acts.
These are the issues that the Canadian public should know we are trying to debate in the House of Commons while the Conservatives are talking to each other all the time. As the Conservatives are setting up these concurrence motions and their motions of privilege, they are filibustering. We cannot talk in the House of Commons right now about protecting children from online harm because the Conservatives have chosen to bring this place to an absolute halt and not let anything proceed for five weeks now. I will put 90% of the blame on Conservatives, and then I will assign 5% of the blame to both the Bloc and the NDP because the Bloc and the NDP know that there is a way through this.