Madam Speaker, I will finish the quote before I was so rudely interrupted. He said, “My concerns over his mental stability and his obsession with guns was only confirmed when he heckled after the passing of the motion to devolve all relevant parts of the Firearms Act to the province. He twice yelled, open carry, open carry next.”
The attacks against the Speaker of the Saskatchewan legislature by the conservative Saskatchewan Party are very similar to the attacks we are seeing now against the speakership of the House of Commons. This is not something that is innocuous or innocent. It is something that needs to be taken under consideration.
I have repeatedly risen in the House, talking about the incessant attacks that we are seeing on social media from the Conservative Party against the speakership of the House of Commons. I will give credit where credit is due. The members of the Bloc Québécois, despite the fact that they continue to raise procedural blockages to the House of Commons, have not attacked the speakership of the House of Commons openly on social media. Why? Because it contravenes the rules of our House.
The rules of our House were set by the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle, the former Speaker of the House of Commons, the now House leader for the Conservative Party. He said, “Reflections on the character or actions of the Speaker—an allegation of bias, for example—could be taken by the House as breeches of privilege and punished accordingly.” The Speaker also said at that time, in this ruling that dates back to 2014, “I urge all members to be judicious in the expressions they choose to use.”
That was the Conservatives when they were in power, saying that there was no transgression against attacking the speakership of the House of Commons. Now we see them in opposition not doing anything that actually helps anybody. They are blocking dental care, pharmacare, affordable housing and the consumer protection provisions that the member for Burnaby South has brought forward, which would start helping Canadians against food price and gas price gouging, which has happened with corporate CEOs determining the prices and the gouging they do with impunity. Those provisions are something the NDP has been pushing for years, and finally they are coming into being. However, all of those pieces of legislation have been blocked by the incessant attacks by the Conservative caucus against the speakership of the House of Commons.
The Conservatives would have loved to have spent the next three weeks debating this, rather than getting pharmacare in place, which would help six million Canadians who have diabetes, and I will come back to that in a moment, and nine million Canadian women, who want their full reproductive rights and freedoms, to have access to contraception.
For diabetes, the Conservatives' constant blocking since February 29 of the pharmacare act that the NDP initiated, pushing in this minority Parliament to get it done, hurts people like my constituent Amber, who is paying $1,000 a month for diabetes medication. She is paying that out of pocket. She is struggling because of the lack of affordable housing, because of the Harper government's refusal to build affordable housing and the current government's reluctance, until the NDP forced it to finally budget that. All of the other provisions that would help Canadians, the Conservatives have blocked.
We are seeing, systematically, an attack not only on the speakership of the House of Commons, but also on all our institutions. People would say, and they would be right, that the NDP MPs are the worker bees of Parliament. We get things done for people, even people in Conservative ridings. In fact, Conservative ridings have benefited from the NDP's work perhaps more than any other, because of the success of the dental care program within even the first three weeks. More Conservative ridings are benefiting from dental care, because the seniors who have signed up are finally accessing, sometimes for the first time in their lives, it. Therefore, we are the worker bees, but we are also the adults in the House of Commons.
We saw this last fall when the former Speaker made a choice that, to our minds, simply compelled that Speaker to step down. Members will recall that no other party was calling for the Speaker's resignation. We put it forward with dignity. We did not criticize or attack the Speaker. In fact, we thought the former Speaker had done a decent job. However, given its magnitude, we believed that what unfolded last fall necessitated the Speaker's resignation. We clearly communicated that; eventually, other parties agreed with us, and the Speaker did resign.
We went through a process that took a couple of weeks, and we elected a new Speaker. However, the new Speaker initially made a number of errors that forced the House to consider the matter and refer it to PROC, which then referred it back to the House, and we voted on that. There were a number of sanctions and some solutions that were put into place. However, since then, we have not seen the kind of behaviour that would necessitate any kind of motion such as this, quite the contrary.
The Speaker has stood up and maintained decorum, but Conservatives have not liked that. The fact is, the member for Carleton was called to order when he used an atrociously unparliamentary, disrespectful term, attacking another member of the House. He was asked to withdraw it and refused; he was then asked to withdraw for the day. That happens, and we have seen it happen with other members of Parliament. When we use unparliamentary terms, we have to ensure that we are willing to undergo the consequences that come from that. It is a question of basic personal responsibility. I know that is alien to members of at least one party in the House, but when one makes such an error, one has to be willing to accept the consequences of one's actions. However, the member for Carleton did not accept the consequences. He renewed his attacks on the Speaker.
Now, we have a situation where the Liberal Party of Canada was clearly at fault and clearly disrespected the speakership by posting something without the knowledge or the authorization of the Speaker. However, the Conservatives did not attack the Liberal Party of Canada, which is what they should have done. They love to attack, so why did they not attack the author of the error? It was only the NDP that called on the Liberal Party of Canada to fully apologize to the speakership, which is ultimately, thankfully, what members of the Liberal Party did. They should have apologized right away, but they did not. However, pressure from the NDP meant that the Liberal Party of Canada apologized, which should have closed it and ended this.
We should not be spending days talking through this procedural delay when, at the same time, we have pharmacare pending. The sooner pharmacare is approved, the sooner the benefits can go to people such as my constituent, Amber, who is paying $1,000 every month. Conservatives do not seem to care about that, but for her, those costs are enormous, and six million Canadians like her struggle every single month. Therefore, to delay pharmacare by putting forward procedural motions that delay the adoption of the bill means that it takes that much longer to help Amber and people like her. In this case, we are seeing a deliberate attempt by Conservatives not to look at the speakership in an impartial way, in an adult way, and if an error happens, to ensure that there is the appropriate consequence. That is what happened last fall and last December. No, they now want to invent, push and expose anything they feel they can, attack the independent speakership of the House of Commons and, in a very real way, diminish our parliamentary institutions.
I lived through the incredibly dismal decade of the Harper regime, when Parliament was shut down and padlocked by Conservatives, when procedural things and the normal give-and-take of parliamentary debate ended, and when Conservatives forced through bills that were promptly thrown out by the courts. I do not want to live through that again. Most Canadians would not want to.
I want to get on with helping Canadians, and that is why I will be voting “no” on this motion and “yes” to getting back to the debate on pharmacare.
