Debates of Dec. 13th, 2024

Foreign Affairs and International Development

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

I believe that is descending into debate. I do not know if we would get unanimous consent on that.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the love coming from that particular member. I am happy to sit on the side, if he would like to continue the discussions.

I suspect he is pleased when I am speaking because, 99% of the time, it is about facts. We can contrast that to what he hears within the Conservative caucus, which is a lot of social media spin, not necessarily based on fact. It is quite the opposite of fact. I want to be parliamentary, so I will not go any further than that.

Having said that, I was talking about the answers I received to my questions on this particular report. The Conservative members indicated to me that all we have to do is provide the unredacted reports to the RCMP. However, I will explain why that cannot happen. Even though a majority in the House of Commons supported that particular motion to give the documents directly to the RCMP, it needs to be noted that the RCMP, Canada's Auditor General and other legal experts have made something very clear: It would not be good for Parliament to be giving unredacted documents directly to the RCMP.

The motion, I would suggest, is in borderline contempt of the Charter of Rights, based on what we hear from the RCMP. We are going to listen to the RCMP, the Auditor General of Canada and other legal experts, and we will not produce those papers.

Then the Speaker made a ruling saying that the issue I just raised needs to be sent to the procedure and House affairs committee. His colleagues also said so; this was how they actually responded in their answer to me.

That is what the motion is. It is a Conservative motion, yet the Conservative members are now saying that they are going to put up dozens of speeches or more. I think there have been over 200 speeches on it now. That is even after we factor in the numerous concurrence reports.

[An hon. member]

Only one from the Liberals.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

No, actually about four or five.

Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day, we are talking about hundreds of speeches coming from Conservatives. That is why the Conservatives are getting bored with that topic. However, they do not want to let it go, so they are bringing in concurrence motions.

We can fast-forward to where we are today. We now have a concurrence motion because the Conservatives do not want to respect what the RCMP are saying. They do not even want to respect their very own motion to have it go to PROC; they would rather talk about this.

At the end of the day, we would love to see the Conservative Party reflect over the holiday season and have a merry Christmas type of thing. Maybe Conservative members could talk with their leader and say that the election is not until October 2025; there is so much more that we can actually do for Canadians. Let us try to be a bit cheerier. Conservative members could talk to the leader of the Conservative Party to see if we can redirect that far-right Conservative ship just a little. Then we could move on and do some things that would really help Canadians.

However, if they do not, not to worry; as a government, we will continue to focus on the interests of Canadians, first and foremost, as we have in the last nine years.

Fish are important. When I think of Lake Winnipeg, I think of goldeye, walleye, carp, whitefish, perch and northern pike. Our lakes are very important. We need to do what we can.

This is one of the reasons that I was so critical when the Conservatives, including the leader of the Conservative Party, cut the ELA programs. Having said that, I am down to about 30 seconds, so I would move:

That this question be now put.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the work that has been done on this file. The Great Lakes Fisheries Commission has done wonderful work in the Great Lakes for the environment, but also for planning our fishery resources and so forth. What we have seen over the years is Canada not paying its fair share, whether it be for sea lamprey projects or other matters, and it created much consternation.

Some members here in the House have come with me to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress and the Senate. We have to deal with so many different issues, but this irritant comes up all the time because we are stiffing on the bill or we had been in the past. The recommendation here is to move the project back to where it belongs in Global Affairs.

Why are we creating another problem with the United States, unnecessarily hurting Canadians and Americans through bureaucratic stubbornness and reluctance to correct the field? We have to lobby on all kinds of new things coming up with President-elect Trump. Why would we not just be taking some of these irritants that do not even serve Canadians very well off the table?

Why is he protecting internal bureaucratic machinations instead of providing us the opportunity to get better results for Canadians and better fiscal accountability? This is a major irritant that is really unnecessary and will provoke more nonsense from the U.S.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the government has moved it over to Global Affairs, which I think is very encouraging. I do not want to take anything away from the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission, which I know has done a great deal of work over the years. Representatives from Canada and the United States sit on it.

I think of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport and the incredible work he personally has done in advancing the interests of the Great Lakes. I know the Ontario Liberal caucus is very much on top of this issue because it realizes the strength and the benefits of our lakes from an economic point of view and in terms of the environment.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has skimmed $80 million out of the parliamentary appropriation to the Great Lakes Commission, against the authorization of this Parliament. This is the testimony before committee by the commission itself. The DFO acknowledged that.

Finally, after work of the fisheries committee and the pressure of the fisheries committee opposed by every Ontario Liberal, the Prime Minister assigned the order in council for it to be transferred to Global Affairs, except it was smoke and mirrors, like everything the government does. It was to help kill the sea lampreys, which suck the blood out of fish, somewhat like the Liberals. The issue is that they kept the money in DFO. The DFO still gets to control it, still gets to control the money switched over there, and is still skimming.

Why does the Liberal government believe it is right for over $80 million of taxpayer money to be skimmed out of this program against the authorization of Parliament?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, over the years, one of the things I have learned is never necessarily to believe everything we hear coming from the Conservative caucus. Where I would agree is that when I think of the Great Lakes Commission, I think of the individuals who are on the board, but I also think of the many different advocacy groups that surround the Great Lakes. I believe there are many advocates that have been very successful at receiving different forms of support from the federal government. What I would remind my colleague opposite is to reflect on the leader of the Conservative Party in terms of his actions when he cut the Experimental Lakes Area program at a great cost, which no doubt had an impact on the Great Lakes.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in his speech, the parliamentary secretary once again boasted about the merits of the GST holiday that the government adopted with a super closure motion and that we did not even get to study and analyze in committee.

In our opinion, the GST holiday does more to help higher-income households. Suspending the GST on diapers and children's clothing is obviously a good measure. However, considering the key items covered by the exemption, such as junk food, chips and soft drinks, nutritionists are telling us this is not a good idea. As for alcohol and restaurants, it is mainly wealthier people who are going to benefit in proportion to their income.

Rent and basic food, which make up the bulk of low-income households' expenses, are already GST exempt. All that is left are heat, electricity and phone bills, but they are not part of the measure. Why not simply double the GST credit to help those who really need it?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things about a minority government is that the government does work with opposition parties. I would ultimately argue this particular Prime Minister and government, even when we were in the majority days, continued to work with opposition parties. If the member has ideas that he would like to share with the Minister of Finance, other ministers, me or others, I would really encourage him to do so, because there is a great willingness to accommodate opposition where we can and where it makes sense for Canadians.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we know that water is a provincial resource, but one of the main levers that the federal government has for protecting Canadian water bodies, for ensuring that they are not polluted, is the Fisheries Act. The Fisheries Act prohibits the deposit of deleterious substances into fish-bearing waters, and we know that all waters are essentially fish-bearing. We know that the Conservatives promise, if ever, God forbid, they get into power, to chop expenses like crazy.

Does the hon. member fear that they would take away the capacity of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to enforce the Fisheries Act and prevent pollution in this country?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague brings up an excellent point. All one needs to do is to take a look at the past behaviour of the leader of the Conservative Party. The leader of the Conservative Party was the point person for former prime minister Stephen Harper on a multitude of different issues, which included the Experimental Lakes Area in which there were significant cuts. Dozens of scientists were actually let go.

If we take a look at that past and hear what the bumper stickers of the Conservative Party are today, Canadians need to be concerned in terms of the future of the Fisheries Act, as the member has pointed out. Canadians should be concerned, because all the Conservatives are focused on, as one of my colleagues would say, is “chop, chop, chop”. At the end of the day, that means a lot less protection for our environment and a lot fewer services to Canadians.

I would hope that the leader of the Conservative Party would be not as much of a grinch but a bit more loving, over the Christmas season, and maybe revisit some of the far-right policies that he has adopted.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure I am not the only member of Parliament in the House who has seen the Great Lakes Commission bring the sea lamprey to Parliament Hill, had the suction of the sea lamprey on their hand, felt what that is like and seen the teeth of the sea lamprey up close. It is not a good image, and I am certain I would not want to be a fish that comes across a sea lamprey.

This is the extent of the concern that we are talking about. We know the Great Lakes Commission does incredible work with sea lamprey control. The fisheries committee was very clear that we needed to change the governance to Global Affairs and that the funding stream also be held by the Great Lakes Commission, so it can do this important work that it needs to do and not have barriers in being able to do that work, which is ultimately our responsibility to do alongside our American partners.

I am not sure if the member was denying what my Conservative colleagues are saying, but perhaps he can clarify whether the funds are still flowing through DFO and if he is aware of the concerns that were brought forward through the fisheries committee of this continuing.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the short answer is that it has already been changed over to Global Affairs Canada.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to this issue, which is very important to me. I will not go on the attack, since I do not think that would be appropriate just a few days before the holiday season begins. Instead, I would like to thank the members of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, with whom I have been working since 2021.

I want to recognize my government colleagues, of course, along with my colleagues from the official opposition and the third opposition party. Together, we talk, argue and review dozens of statements drawing on the testimony of many valuable witnesses, who are all experts in their respective fields. I want to sincerely thank those witnesses for their graciousness and their generous and valuable contributions. I also want to say a special thank you to our captain, the committee chair, the member for Avalon in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Witnesses include spokespeople from fishers' organizations or management or representative bodies, independent scientists, Department of Fisheries and Oceans scientists, top researchers, processors and other specialists in the ocean-to-table food chain. There are also professionals from the field, fishers, owners, employees, young fishers, retirees and former departmental employees. All of them have recognized and indisputable experience and knowledge, and all are clearly seasoned experts who generously offer their relevant contributions.

Now, I am going to take the liberty of making a small aside in my speech to talk about my own history, because, as the daughter and granddaughter of captains, the scion of generations of seafarers, I am not overly surprised by the range of issues and challenges facing the wonderful world of fishing today.

As soon as I was old enough to understand life, I heard my father talk about the sea and his love for it, but especially about its risks and perils, the bounty and dangers it held. He would make simple observations of the conditions or complex analyses as the vast ocean demanded. It all belonged to him, including the St. Lawrence, the estuary, the Gulf of St. Lawrence and everything that lived in them. All this was home to my father. The horizon, with its telltale lines, and the colour of the sky were his way markers. Even on land, my father stayed connected to the estuary. He would spend hours just gazing out to sea.

My grandfather was as wise as an old sea wolf, and I can vouch that he was one of them. He had plenty of sea yarns and tales to spin us. I remember many of them, obviously, and I could share a whole range of stories. My grandfather was a good storyteller, especially after sitting down with a bottle of De Kuyper gin spiced up with a drizzle of honey and a tablespoon of boiling salt water. No more than a tablespoon, he would be quick to say, because there was no need to drown it.

He would make observations about the movement of fish stocks in response to major ocean currents or about the behaviour of beluga, which taught us much more than anything else could about the health of the river and the state of the resources. From time to time, my grandfather's teachings seemed more like old proverbs, but there was a lot of truth to them.

My grandfather would tell anyone who listened that the best mariners did not know how to swim and that is why they had to be such good sailors. He also said that no one is stronger than the sea, that the sea commands respect, respect for everything that it gives, including all things mysterious. He said that we must not think we can outsmart the sea, which is a challenge in and of itself, because if we defy it or underestimate it, one day, unfortunately, it will make us aware of our own insignificance. Grandpa had a predestined path.

He was called Ligori. He hated that name. It was after the election in the late 19th century, and his grandfather wanted to call him Laurier. An argument broke out because his godfather, a Conservative supporter, was determined to be the one to name his godson. That is how the choice of name came down to either Ligori or Zothique, but not Laurier. He always said he had no choice but to become a good sailor, because when a person's name is Ligori, they have to find their talent.

He sailed his schooner three seasons of every year. Before railways and roads, these schooners were the only means of transportation, helping coastal villages grow. Considering the number of coastal villages along the north and south shores of the St. Lawrence and the gulf, there can be no doubt that the schooners of the St. Lawrence played a key role in shaping the people and their future.

Speaking of the people, my two grandfathers also ferried people back and forth between Isle‑aux‑Coudres and Baie‑Saint‑Paul in canoes in the winter, providing islanders with the only contact they had with the northern mainland. There was also a fine science to conquering the ice. Perhaps one day I will have a chance to tell members more about that. My great-uncle even composed a song about the miraculous crossing of January 15, 1929, which I recorded and performed in concert for over 20 years. Everything is connected. Like fishing and politics, artistic creation is in my blood.

All jokes aside, I still remember the precious stories and teachings of my ancestors, and, at every committee meeting, I write in my notes, as a directive or instruction of sorts, that we must not think that we are stronger, wiser or smarter than the ocean itself. Otherwise, it will show us, in this context too, just how small we really are. A good example of this is the overpopulation of seals. The day that Brigitte Bardot and a group of activists used disturbing photos showing what is, of course, a cruel reality, but also just a tiny part of a noble and natural practice used for millennia to maintain an ecological balance and provide food security for thousands of Inuit and Magdalen Islanders, my father, who was a cod fisherman, shared with me his concern that the cod in the St. Lawrence River would become more and more scarce until they almost disappeared.

The ill-intentioned exception confirmed the rule, and we all know what happened next and how it impacted resources. Twenty years earlier, my father had told me to enjoy my fresh cod, this delicacy of the sea. He knew that in 20 years or so, the prey-predator chain of human-seal-cod would be broken and the cod would disappear into the bellies of overpopulated, starving seals. The ecological balance would be upset, and it would take a long time for it to be restored.

He was right. He did not need innate knowledge, laboratory tests, measurements, or cross-Atlantic consultations. It was just an observation born of his long years on the river with the fish, marine mammals and pinnipeds, the winds and tributaries, the warm and cold currents, the surprising things he caught in new areas. He called that reading and understanding the movement of species. His ability to read those things accurately, his wisdom and respect for maritime elements, his skill in knowing how to read the sea, are qualities I hold in the highest regard, now more than ever when I talk to fishers.

My father also taught me that the sea lamprey, a veritable invader of the seabed in the Great Lakes, is also a scourge that would alter the river before long. He thought that the issues of the Great Lakes, a marine area protected and maintained by a bilateral commission between Canada and the United States, would one day be beset by the problems of an overly complex management, which would take precedence over the imperative of acting quickly to deal with the lamprey, not to mention a whole host of other issues. That brings me to my point.

The past few months have proven that his science is still sound and has helped me to grasp and offer an obvious solution, as well as to intervene on the importance of considering this solution, to bring it to light for the other members of the committee in order to fully support a clear and unequivocal request from the Great Lakes Commission itself during the study on the management of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. This request concerned the co-management of the commission, the basis and principles of its funding, and the challenges associated with the consultations and communications when the time came to intervene effectively on the various issues faced by the commission, which was then under the DFO's watch. Incidentally, the overall budget had practically no budgetary components—

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

It is my duty to interrupt the proceedings on the motion at this time. Accordingly, the debate on the motion will be rescheduled for another sitting.

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

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I caught your eye right away so that I could rise and speak to this issue once again and raise matters that are of great importance to the residents of my riding, Calgary Shepard. They care about government accountability and the efforts of the government to continue to hide nearly 30,000 pages of blacked-out, redacted documents that the House and a majority of members of Parliament have ordered the production of and that everybody agrees should be given to us. This is why Parliament is now paralyzed: The Government of Canada and the cabinet ministers who sit in the front benches over there continue to refuse to provide these essential documents, which should then be passed on by the law clerk to the RCMP.

Again, I want to reiterate the point that it is a great privilege and an honour to rise and speak on behalf of the residents of my riding. It has now been over three years that they have given me the privilege of representing them in Parliament. I assured them when I was first elected that government accountability would be my top priority. I did not know at the time, though, that the openness of government and open government by default would be the slogans that the Liberal government would use. In fact, the Liberals even produced an entire document saying just that. It was first released in 2015; it was then updated this year to ensure accessibility. I will be quoting from it extensively to remind the cabinet ministers of their mandate letters, of the document they all signed on to when they took the oaths of office and became ministers. This is the document that the government, from 2015, sloganeered incessantly on for the first four years it was there.

Now we are at a point where the government is refusing an order of Parliament to produce documents that it has in its possession, which we all agree we should have. This is not just happening here on the floor of the House of Commons. It is also happening in parliamentary committees. We saw this during multiple other scandals, including the WE Charity and the SNC-Lavalin scandal. This is a repeat performance by cabinet ministers. What document protection they are doing is to protect their own political hides, rather than doing what is right by taxpayers and citizens of this country and just giving over the unredacted documents. If there is nothing to hide, they should just hand everything over.

The green slush fund is the term we have been using to describe this. An Auditor General's report slammed how the fund performed after the Liberals removed all the previous persons involved on the board of directors and replaced them with their own cronies. Its original name was the SDTC fund, the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund.

Up until 2017, when a previous Liberal cabinet minister started to muck around with the board of directors, SDTC actually had a clean bill of health. If we go back to the Auditor General's reports over multiple years, it had a clean bill of health in those audits. Starting in 2017, though, multiple problems began to appear. This has now been the issue at hand for weeks and months now. Parliament has been paralyzed because the Government of Canada and cabinet ministers refuse to follow through with that order, as I mentioned. When the Auditor General did the review, it was found that almost $400 million was misspent, corruptly spent. That is just on a sample. That was not all the projects.

Actually, the Auditor General has not had a chance to go through every single project to find out if money was spent corruptly in those situations. In one of the samples, 10 out of 58 projects were audited. The Auditor General found $59 million of payouts that failed to meet even SDTC's own eligibility requirements. If we go through some of those emails that were being shared between the board chair and persons operating within the fund, the board chair was bringing projects of her own, so there were conflicts of interest involved. While it was found that those payouts did not qualify for that particular fund, the emails indicated they would find another fund to get the money that was being asked for. In fact, they did. There was a situation of corruption in that particular case.

There was another case of $76 million that was awarded despite the fact that there were clear conflicts of interest. That was on top of the fact that there was a senior assistant deputy minister who sat in every single one of those meetings. That should have been an immediate red flag. That person should have gone straight to the minister's office to inform them of what was going on.

I do not believe the minister at the time, Navdeep Bains, and the minister now can claim that everybody was asleep at the switch and, gosh darn it, they did not know what was going on. They are kind of like a crew that comes upon an accident scene and says they cannot believe the accident happened when they are the ones who caused it. Liberals are the ones who created the situation by inviting corrupt behaviour, inviting misspending and inviting people to take advantage of the taxpayer. That is what they have done.

There was a previous chair of the SDTC board, the green slush fund board, when it was not the green slush fund yet because it was getting clean audits by the Auditor General. I believe it was Jim Balsillie. Jim Balsillie has a reputation for speaking his mind. He is well known among Canadians as a gentleman who has had a great career in finance and technology, and he speaks his mind. He freely attacks all sides of the House, I would say, whenever he sees things that do not match up with his beliefs. That just did not fit with the views of the minister at the time, so he fired him and replaced him with Annette Verschuren.

In fact, the same Annette Verschuren confirmed before committee that she has never applied for a job and never had to. In contradiction, the minister at the time, Navdeep Bains, claimed the Liberals hired her from the people who were applying and that is how she got the job as chair. She specifically said she never applied for that job. The job was posted, then the job was taken down and she was awarded that particular position. He recruited her. He called her twice to personally recruit her, despite the fact that she reminded him she had conflicts of interest.

Those same conflicts of interest then came up during the decision-making, because she was at the table making the decisions that the Auditor General later found were corruptly made. This is where we find ourselves. A fund that used to function properly, because it was getting clean audits from the Auditor General, does not exist anymore. This is how bad it is. This entire fund was completely shut down and rolled into the NRC, the National Research Council, because that is how fast the Liberals wanted to run away from it. They thought that would be enough, to simply sweep it under the rug, “nothing to see here”, mistakes were made.

It is like one of those old episodes of Yes, Minister from the 1980s. I highly recommend them to anyone in the House. Sometimes I will get that whiplash experience, where I will say, “I have experienced that.” I can say we are experiencing it right now. On this comedy series, there is one of those private secretaries at a U.K. committee who says lessons were learned, we will never do it again, or mistakes were made, but it was an interesting pilot project. There was some corruption, but there is nothing much to see here and we should just move on. They admit to it and then shut down the fund completely. It is, indeed, the green slush fund when close to half of the money was improperly spent.

The arguments I hear from one particular member on the other side of the House, because it seems nobody else wants to, or is allowed to, rise to defend this, is that there are charter implications, the RCMP does not want the documents and the law clerk has problems with it. Those are all arguments that should have been made in June when we first voted on the matter and a majority of parliamentarians decided the minority was wrong. At the time, the Bloc, the New Democrats and the Conservatives all agreed that these documents should be made available to the public and then passed on to the RCMP.

In fact, the law clerk even confirmed it. I have the sessional paper here, from the law clerk to the House Speaker, saying the law clerk will comply. The law clerk said that “the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel shall provide forthwith any documents received by him, pursuant to this order, to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police”. The law clerk has no problem, will dutifully do the job he is here to do, and will then simply pass everything on to the RCMP.

Then in the same letter from Michel Bédard, dated November 18, he goes on to say, “All three government institutions provided documents containing redactions and/or withheld some pages purportedly relying on the Access to Information Act. A copy of the letters I received are reproduced in the annex.” We know there continues to be documents that government agencies and institutions refuse to provide us. One of them is ISED, which continues to refuse to comply with the motion from Parliament that compels it to provide all of the information.

We know this from past rulings by the Speaker and from government documents, and there is a terrific manual that members of Parliament should be using from a former Liberal MP, Derek Lee. The House has an absolute right to documents. The taxpayers and citizens pay for these documents to be produced. They have paid already, so now they have a right to see them.

Orders to produce documents are not common. I would say they are rare. In rare situations, there is an order to produce a document. In this situation, while the government has produced some of the documents, it has chosen to redact 30,000 pages of them and to not see them handed over to the RCMP.

I will note too that a common argument being used by the opposite side is that the RCMP does not want the documents, which is absolutely false. The RCMP has not said that. In fact, the RCMP commissioner, when exiting the Hogue inquiry room, was scrummed by reporters. When he was asked the question of whether he had received the documents, if the RCMP had received the documents, he said that the RCMP did, that they had them, that it would take them and that it is up to the RCMP whether it wants to use them.

At no point does the order of the House tell the RCMP how to use these particular documents. The order does not instruct that the RCMP must use them. I will also add that in the documentation provided by the RCMP, in the letter that was sent to the committee on July 26, it also distinctly states, and this is directly from the letter:

The RCMP has also reviewed the implications of the Motion in a potential criminal investigation.... The Parliamentary production order does not set aside these legal requirements.

The legal requirements being referred to are about privacy. The letter goes on to say:

For the reasons set out above, the RCMP's ability to receive and use information obtained through this production order and under the compulsory powers afforded by the Auditor General Act in the course of a criminal investigation could give rise to concerns under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is therefore highly unlikely that any information obtained by the RCMP under the Motion where privacy interests exists could be used to support a criminal prosecution or further a criminal investigation.

That is not saying that the RCMP does not want it. It is not saying it cannot use it. It is saying in a “privacy interests” matter. Nowhere I note is it said that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was intended to be used as a shield against government corruption. That is nowhere. It was never the intention of the original founders of that document to use the charter to protect government cabinet ministers from accusations of corruption in a potential criminal investigation by the RCMP. That is the lead argument the government is making today.

Therefore, let us go back to what the cabinet ministers have all agreed to do. In past mandate letters, there has been a common reference, even in the latest one, about open and accountable government. I will note this reference is to a public document that is available on the website of the Prime Minister: “Open and Accountable Government”, 2015.

At page 34, under “Public Access to Information and Privacy”, it states, “The government is committed to ensuring that government data and information is open by default, in formats that are modern and easy to use.” The 30,000 pages of blacked out ink in the documents are not easy to use. It goes on to say, “When producing papers in Parliament, Ministers are expected to ensure that requests for information...are met. Matters related to the production of papers in Parliament are coordinated with the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons.”

Now Liberals have refused to comply with one of the very first initial government documents they all signed on to. They all agreed to do this. They had no problems at the time to sloganeer and claim that they were going to be the most open government in the history of Canada, and they would never, ever, in a million years, dare to even think about keeping something from the public.

Then we had the SNC scandal. Then we had the WEF scandal. Then we had ministers fired because they did not want to do whatever the Prime Minister ordered them to do and to hide information from the public. We have learned our lesson as Canadians, as parliamentarians, to distrust everything the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister's Office or PCO has to say.

Much of this is at, I will say, the direction of the Prime Minister's Office and PCO to continue to hide documents. This is intentional. The paralysis of Parliament is intentional by the Liberal government, because its members know darn well if they just give the 30,000 unredacted pages, this all ends and this all stops. For every single private member's bill on the Conservative side, on all the opposition sides, we have lost all of those slots.

This is my opportunity to remind the Speaker how low in the private member's bill draw he drew my name; I think I was third from the bottom when he did the draw. This is my gentle admonishment of the Speaker, for drawing me so low and not giving me the opportunity to have a private member's bill—

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

I really appreciate that. I do want to thank the hon. member, because he was the only member of Parliament who was there watching the draw, and I felt really bad for doing that.

The hon. member for Calgary Shepard has the floor.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Speaker for recognizing that fact. I was indeed there because I was hoping to be drawn with the high number so I could put forward another private member's bill, perhaps on the disability tax credit or on bereavement leave, which was something the House was able to agree on in Bill C-3, so let it not be shown that we cannot reach some type of accommodation. It actually happened right before Christmas, too. Perhaps we can have a Christmas miracle again this year and have the 30,000 pages of unredacted documents given out to the public so the RCMP and the parliamentary law clerk can see them.

It happened before, in 2021, with my private member's bill that was introduced into Bill C-3, in a deal that was made at the time. Let it not be said that the official opposition, the Conservatives, cannot make Parliament work. I also remind the House that six Conservative private members' bills have been passed into law. I think, actually, in this fall session of Parliament, it is possible that we have passed as many private member's bills, on the Conservative side, as the government has. That might even be a first in Canadian history, because of the Liberals' own decisions to paralyze Parliament and not have it proceed with government bills.

Later in the “open and accountable” document that the Liberals have chosen to ignore now, talking about ministerial relations with Parliament, there is a fantastic paragraph on page 16. I will draw it to the attention of the House. In the PDF document, it is on page 54. It goes on to say:

The Prime Minister expects Ministers to demonstrate respect and support for the parliamentary process. They should place a high priority on ensuring that Parliament and its committees are informed of departmental policy priorities, spending plans and management challenges, including by appearing before parliamentary committees whenever appropriate.

It then goes on to say what these priorities should be and that ministers should give information when the information is needed for Parliament to “fulfill its role of legislating, approving the appropriation of funds and holding the government to account.” This is the current situation. We ordered the production of documents. The government is defying its most basic government policy, the one it keeps referencing in mandate letters.

Like I have said before, this is not the first time; it happens at parliamentary committees as well, including one on which I sit, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, where we now have an order to produce documents on a briefing note on the changes to the international student program. The government has defied the order to produce the documents. We are again finding ourselves in a situation where we are re-ordering the production of documents and more documents.

The most interesting thing that happened is that the Liberal members of the committee tried to throw the deputy minister under the bus and say that if the documents were not released within the mandatory 30 days, the deputy minister would be obliged to appear on the 31st day and explain himself as to why the government did not produce the documents. If anybody out there still believes anything the government has to say about open government, being open by default and doing things on behalf of Canadians and having the best interests of Canadians in mind, they should take a moment to go through the quotations and citations.

The Liberals have paralyzed Parliament. If that were all they had done, then I would say, on the opposition side, that it might not be so bad. However, what they have also done is just blown through an extra almost $25 billion of spending this week. They had the other opposition parties vote for it. It is money that Canadians just do not have, so the Liberals are blocking Parliament and spending billions of dollars like this.

I always have a Yiddish proverb, something appropriate to the particular situation. I know that members wait for it too. There are some I use more often than others. I know that on a three-legged stool, if one of the legs were the word of the government, its solemn ability to fulfill its promises, we would fall right off that stool. We could not lean on that stool and actually trust it so we could sit on it. It is a great Yiddish proverb that is very true.

The current government is the most untrustworthy government one could ever find. It claimed, in 2015, the things I cited; it sloganeered on them. However, it has been incapable of keeping its word to parliamentarians and to the citizens of Canada that it would be, in fact, open by default like its government document claims, that it would work with parliamentarians and ensure that Parliament can meet its accountability function. These things are in the very documents it has never reneged on, never rejected, but it refuses to comply.

There are 30,000 pages of unredacted documents missing. Let us have a Christmas miracle; let us have the documents released.

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

The hon. member for Joliette is rising on a point of order.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if you seek it, I believe you will find unanimous consent to see the clock at 2:30 p.m.

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

Is it agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.