Debates of March 26th, 2026

Public Accounts

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Madam Speaker, honestly, as I listen to what the member for Winnipeg North is saying, I get the impression that everyone is to blame except the Liberals. It is the fault of seniors that they are not receiving their benefits. It is the civil servants’ fault for not implementing the program properly, because the instructions were so clear. To me, there is a problem.

I heard something interesting in my colleague’s response: Parliamentarians are not doing all they can right now and they should be the ones looking into this issue. We can have a debate to determine whether an independent public inquiry is the best approach. I sincerely believe that it is, because it would move this debate outside the parliamentary sphere, and experts could examine the issue in depth. However, the parliamentary secretary just said that he agrees that parliamentarians should look into the matter further. This morning, a motion was moved at the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

My question is very simple. My colleague will support that motion if he stands by his words and if his vote aligns with those of his Liberal colleagues.

Here is the motion: That the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities ask the Department of Jobs and Families, the Department of Government Transformation, Public Works and Procurement, the Privy Council Office and the Office of the Prime Minister to forward to the committee clerk, within 30 days of the adoption of this motion, all reports, correspondence, emails and documents related to the management of the benefits delivery modernization program since January 1, 2017, and that the departments and offices tasked with producing the documents apply redactions as per legal obligations under the Privacy Act and Access to Information Act.

Will the Liberals be consistent and transparent?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I acknowledge and appreciate that the member has indicated that maybe the public inquiry is not necessary and that there are other alternatives. That is what the member has implied. I respect that. At the end of the day, hopefully we can build a consensus that this modernization, which would be the largest of its kind ever in the history of Canada, needs to be afforded the opportunity to go through.

As I say, it would not be complete until 2030-31. That would provide us the optimal time to actually review and take a look at how it has been ultimately implemented. Millions and millions of Canadians are dependent on this thing's being a success, and there are all sorts of opportunities in our standing committees, in a proactive, positive way, to be able to contribute to its success. That is going to be up to the membership of the standing committee. I believe that, with the right attitude going into it from both government and opposition, there is a lot that can be contributed to this. Over the next few years, I look forward to those discussions that would take place in the standing committee.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member speaks as if this is something that should take five, six or 10 years to complete. He is talking about 2030-31, as if we are supposed to be looking forward to really accomplishing something five or six years from now. I do not know that he can look seniors in the face in his own riding and say that we are going to get it straight and that they should come back around in about five or six years, and then we will see if we can get the cheque they need every month sorted out for them.

The member also speaks about, and this is interesting, the standing committees of Parliament. He does not currently sit on a standing committee of Parliament, so I give him a bit of leeway. If he did, he would know that for any suggestion of any opposition member, whether it is a member of the Bloc or the Conservative Party, any amendments we propose, the Liberals very cleverly vote against them. If they do not get their way in a standing committee, they just bring it to the House and get the NDP to vote for them and vote us down anyway.

In terms of getting meaningful amendments across and actually listening to what other members of Parliament have to offer in order to make legislation better, the member and his party always vote against.

My question to the member is simply this: Why is it taking so long to get this program? He says it is the biggest ever in the history of Canada. There are other countries around the world that are a lot bigger than Canada, and the member knows very well that it does not take them five, 10 or 15 years to get a program right.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, we talk about the conclusion of the program in four to five years, when it would be fully implemented. Noting that, I would talk to any senior in Canada about the importance of making sure that, as we implement the program, it would be done in such a way that it would have a marginal negative impact on any senior and on anyone who is unemployed. It is not something for which we just throw something in, which could lead to huge problems. To try to fix a system in a crisis situation would cost a whole lot more.

In regard to the standing committees, when the Conservatives had a majority government, there were never any amendments from the opposition that were passed.

Under the Prime Minister, there have been amendments passed at standing committees. Even in the previous Parliament, under Justin Trudeau, amendments were passed at standing committees. I would suggest that the potential for members of Parliament on both sides of the House at standing committees is really quite impressive, if in fact the will of the committee membership on both sides of the House is one of—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Calgary Midnapore.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Madam Speaker, before I begin, I wish to inform the House that I will be sharing my time with the member for Shefford. I also want to thank my colleague from the Bloc Québécois for moving the concurrence motion today. I believe this issue is truly important to Canadians. I am always happy to speak out against government waste.

I am very fortunate to have had the position of shadow minister for the Treasury Board for three and a half years. I am very grateful that the Leader of the Opposition gave me the role all that time ago. At the time, he told me it was a result not only of my Master of Business Administration degree but also of the time I had spent as a public servant within the federal government.

I have been following these issues and the waste for close to four years, and we see these consistent problems with the government time and time again. What I have learned is that Canadians hate two things. There are many other issues they disagree on or perhaps do not have consensus on, but Canadians hate waste, first of all, and they hate inefficiency. I have some data to support that. A poll by Arcus indicates that 73.9% of Canadians believe that the federal government is inefficient, and 50% believe in making government more efficient without reducing services. Canadians recognize the waste and inefficiency of the current government. This is something it has a very good track record of and has chosen time and time again in the many situations where they have failed.

Just this week, the Auditor General tabled her evaluation of modernizing the pay system. This is a major project, with $4.2 billion of Canadian taxpayer funds being used to overhaul the system, yet the government is failing. It is failing to do the transfer from the old system to the new system, and that is costing Canadians $4 million a year. Over several years, this is millions of dollars to add to the $4.2-billion project.

With that, it is a significant failure. There is currently still a backlog of 235,000 cases, with many of them more than a year old. The Auditor General went on to say that the government “need[s] to simplify and standardize pay rules before introducing a new system”, something the government should have learned from the Phoenix evaluation and the Phoenix fiasco but did not learn.

The government continues to waste Canadian taxpayer dollars and continues to be inefficient. Worst of all, it is not learning the lessons. We saw that in the presentation of the Auditor General's report on Monday, but not just there.

In 2025, the Auditor General also tabled the review of the ArriveCAN application. Again, her report showed more of the same, with the Liberals not having learned their lesson when it comes to being able to deliver effective and efficient services for Canadians. In addition, they have a significant problem enforcing their own rules. Not only are the Liberals incompetent, but they are also unable to provide a clear standard of service across their government when improving something or implementing something.

The examples in the ArriveCAN review included that 21% of the individuals who were brought in to work on the project lacked security clearance, 33% of contracts could not show contract resources had the experience and the qualifications needed to complete the required work, and 58% did not document assessment of evaluation of ongoing bids. Again, this is a waste. The Liberals are not doing a comparison of value for money to see whether they are receiving the best bid, the best value for money.

Fifty per cent of individuals in the sample did not have adequate security clearance, in addition to the 21% with no security clearance; 58% had poorly documented time sheets of individuals who submitted documents within the project; and 82% of federal organizations could not prove that fees did not exceed the market rates.

This is why the Liberals are failing as a government. They are incapable of achieving market rates, something that small businesses, medium-sized businesses and large corporations have as a practice and must do within Canada. The Liberals are not capable of doing it, and they are not capable of learning how to do it, as these repeated reports of failure keep coming in from the Auditor General and elsewhere.

In only 54% of contracts could the government prove that deliverables were received. When we go to the grocery store and pay for a tomato, we have the tomato. When we buy a T-shirt, we have the T-shirt. The government could not do this. It could not prove that it actually received what it had paid for.

We can point to another example if we go back to the 2024 ArriveCAN report, which stated that the Canada Border Services Agency, the Public Health Agency, and Public Services and Procurement Canada repeatedly failed to follow good management practices in the contracting, development and implementation of the ArriveCAN application. As a result of the many gaps and weaknesses, the Auditor General found issues with the project's design, oversight and accountability, and stated that it did not deliver the best value for the taxpayer dollars spent. Again we see the waste and the inefficiency.

The enduring benefit of the ArriveCAN application cannot be proven, and, thank goodness, as of October 2022, ArriveCAN has no longer been used to collect travellers' health and contact information, although I do think I have seen it recently. It goes further back than that, to the 2023 Auditor General report on the transformation of systems delivering critical benefits to Canadians, the benefits delivery modernization program, which had experienced repeated delays, cost increases and staff challenges since its launch in 2017.

We always hear the Liberals blaming the previous administration. They have had a decade now to clean up what was reported on the modernization pay system. There is a new system in addition to Phoenix, called Dayforce, which the Liberals are failing on as well. Going back to the benefits delivery modernization system, we are seeing failure in a benefits system, failure in a system that was supposed to help Canadians at a critical time in our history, and then failure for public servants in the pay system. There is a history of failure with the government.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, I have been in this role for a long time now, and I have consistently seen three problems with the government. I will summarize them.

Number one is that the government really likes to get its friends to do things. We saw this with McKinsey in the last Parliament. We could pull in so many different government departments, such as immigration, housing and infrastructure, that use their friends from McKinsey. If we go to our friend, are we going to get a good deal? No, we are not. The government wants to help its close friends and insiders. The Canadian taxpayer loses. The Canadian taxpayer does not benefit when the government gets a good deal for its friend.

Number two is that the Liberals are incapable of maintaining a project within its scope and not having an overrun. All three of the examples in the reports I have mentioned today have shown overruns and a lack of capacity to get things done efficiently, on time and within the parameters that were described.

Finally, number three, is that no one in the government ever takes accountability. It is always the last administration's fault or some director general's fault. We saw this with ArriveCAN. The government would rather ruin the life of an individual than take accountability for the mistakes it made.

We see time and time again with the current government that it is incapable of efficiency, and it does nothing but waste the money of the taxpayer. All these examples prove it. I am happy to stand up here and talk on and on about that today, because it is so easy to.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her very insightful remarks. It is refreshing to hear someone talk about transparency and accountability in the House.

The Cúram software was known to have glitches. Five countries have adopted the Cúram system and experienced significant glitches. Australia has been dealing with Cúram glitches for 20 years. The same goes for Ontario. In 2015, a report by the Auditor General of Ontario said that Cúram was flawed. In 2017, the government decided to implement Cúram anyway. Who was the minister at the time? I wonder. I am just throwing that out there because we cannot name names. Now, under a new Prime Minister and after 10 years of Liberal government, computer glitches and non-existent monitoring and forecasting, the current Prime Minister is reappointing the same minister and giving her the same responsibility, namely Employment and Social Development Canada.

Who is responsible for Cúram? Should there be an independent public inquiry to get to the truth?

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Madam Speaker, I think we agree. That is why we are having this debate today. It is because we agree that there are serious problems. The government is incapable of avoiding waste and lacks the ability to do things right.

As my colleague said, we could look for examples of good projects and improve the way things are done, but right now, that is not an option under this government. Like my colleague, I want to note that the Liberals have been in power for over 10 years. It is unbelievable.

We agree that we must continue to demand that our government do better.

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

Madam Speaker, the member said that we could have done better. It would be no surprise to the member that, at the end of the day, I think that the principle of doing better could apply universally to any provincial or federal government, not just now, but also historically. We can always do better. That is one of the reasons why I would ultimately argue that there is a potential role for opposition members and government to work well at standing committees to try to get some of the answers the member is looking for.

Does the Conservative Party support the principle of modernization with respect to what is happening?

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Madam Speaker, what I support is a government that chooses to do better. That was the trademark of the Liberals' previous prime minister. In the previous iteration of the government, which continues to this day, that was the mantra, that it could do better.

Does doing better mean 2.2 million Canadians going to the food bank? Does doing better mean an $80-billion deficit? Does doing better mean 100,000 job losses in a single month?

I continue to urge the government, and the member, to try to do better, because for a decade it said it was going to, and it has not.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague hit the nail on the head with respect to how the government looks at Parliament and how it acts when it comes to having to do something as important as the system we are talking about today.

My question for my hon. colleague is simply this: Why does she think the government would not say that it has made a mistake and that it did not do a good job?

Being humble is a good attribute. Why do the Liberals not just say that they did not do a good job and they did not want to listen to us at the standing committee? Why do the Liberals not just ask us to help them get the job done right? There are seniors, people and families across the country who are so dependent on the system that they are unfortunately suffering as a consequence of the lack of action from the government.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Madam Speaker, the government does not care. It does not care about Canadians. It does not care that there are 2.2 million Canadians going to the food bank. It is willing to waste $80 billion of your money just this year alone. It is willing to allow 100,000 people in a single month, your dad, your brother, your son, to go without a job. If it really cared, it would try to do better, and it does not.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

I want to remind the hon. member to speak through the Chair. None of those statements apply to me.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Shefford.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, I want to address this issue with a great deal of compassion today.

I will start with a bit of history. After I was first elected in 2019, I was deeply affected by one of the first cases I dealt with in my office. It was the case of a young woman who came to my office in tears, carrying her infant in a car seat. I handed her a tissue box and invited her in. This mother, who had just started her maternity leave and had a baby to support, was not getting her benefits as a federal employee because of the new Phoenix pay system. This woman was going through a profound personal crisis, when she should have been spending this time cherishing her little one. That really stuck with me.

Then, during the pandemic, ArriveCAN came along. Once again, there were problems. In the case of Phoenix, money was not being paid to the people who needed it. In the case of ArriveCAN, there were cost overruns that were brought to our attention during the pandemic. Now we have the Cúram fiasco.

I would like to point out that the first person to alert me to the situation was Nathalie Sinclair‑Desgagné, whose work in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts I would like to commend. Since she knew that I was concerned about the situation of seniors, she warned me at the start of 2025 that some seniors would have a hard time receiving their benefits. She also brought my attention to cost overruns associated with the new pension management program, Cúram.

It was then that my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue, whom I commend, and his assistant Jean-François picked up the ball. They worked very hard on research and investigative work. They, too, knowing that I was concerned about the situation of seniors, told me that some seniors would experience hardship because they would not receive their benefits or would receive them late.

Of course, we are aware of the scale and scope of the system. It is a fact that between 7.1 million and 7.5 million seniors collect OAS. It is also a fact that $9.4 billion is paid out annually. Projections show that 9.4 million seniors will be receiving this pension by 2030, for a total of $105 billion in benefits.

Obviously, one might ask what the situation is with delays and backlogs. In January, there was a backlog of 85,537 cases. We were told that, in February, that number was down to 69,180. According to other internal sources, 69,000 seniors have been impacted. The minister said the number of cases has dropped to 63,000. Here is an important definition: A case is considered delayed when it has not been processed by the date of eligibility or within 60 days. With Cúram, these timelines have been significantly exceeded.

Let us turn to the system's performance before and after Cúram. Before Cúram, 87.5% of benefits were paid within the first month, and the government target was 90%. It is not clear whether the current performance is better, and there is nothing to show a clear improvement. We are starting to have questions that may come up in an independent public inquiry, such as the one we are calling for today in the House.

There is also the issue of ballooning costs that we would like to examine closely. The original estimate in 2017 was $1.75 billion. This was revised to $2.5 billion, an increase of more than 43%. According to one estimate, the costs could reach $3.4 billion. The actual expenditures incurred by 2025 are expected to be $4.4 billion. Currently, the figure being quoted is $6.6 billion, and we could very well reach that amount.

We now know that the cost of the project was underestimated from the beginning. Even worse, the Auditor General raised the alarm about the cost overruns back in 2023. Things always have to come out in the media before this Liberal government takes action. The government will not intervene until it has no choice. I will come back to that. The main problem I wanted to highlight first is the fact that the project cost was underestimated from the beginning.

The estimated operating costs are about $60 million per year, but officials are unable to provide the cost per transaction or the actual operating costs. It would be useful to look at these aspects as part of an independent public inquiry. A system was built without anyone knowing how much it would actually cost to operate.

That is what we asked about, and we hope to get answers. This morning, in committee, we said we wanted some potential solutions and some answers. If we do not get them there, we will need to get them through an independent public inquiry.

In terms of the migration and deployment, 7.5 million beneficiaries are being transferred to Cúram. According to internal tests, the accuracy rate is allegedly 99.9%, but again, there is a contradiction between the successful tests and the on-the-ground reality of widespread delays. The 85,000 cases we knew about at the start were too many, and there are still 63,000 outstanding. Those cases involve people who need their pension to pay for rent and groceries. It is far from a luxury for everyone. We know that there are tragedies unfolding. What is the reality on the ground? What is the reality behind the widespread delays? That is another area we would need to explore.

As far as human resources are concerned, although 5,300 employees have been trained, 93% of public servants have given the system a failing grade. In fact, I commend the public servants who said last June that problems were on the horizon and that seniors were not getting their benefits. Again, it was whistle-blowers within the public service who spoke out about the situation. It was the public service union that spoke out against it. We know from their testimony that training for public servants is insufficient, that there are daily computer glitches and that this is affecting mental health.

As my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue also mentioned, we also know that there are problems with the French language and translation, making the public servants' jobs harder. The system is not designed to take into account Quebec's unique linguistic reality, the French language, or our distinctiveness when it comes to social programs, given all the programs we have. The system does not take our separate pension systems into account.

There are real human consequences. Some seniors are waiting up to nine months for their first payment. We also know that some payments are late or incomplete. The amounts are sometimes wrong, with some seniors receiving overpayments. What will the tax implications be? We do not really know yet, but we know that there will be some. Still, given the systemic issues that have been identified, we know that there is inconsistent data. That is what we are being told. We are hearing about direct deposits, tax data and the fact that information is missing from some files. Those are the answers we are hearing. We are told that there are problems accessing certain proofs of residency, for example, and that officials are dependent on systems built 50 or 60 years ago. All of this could have been prevented with better planning, and that is what we are criticizing the government for.

There are major demographic issues. There were 7.5 million seniors in Canada in 2023, and that number is expected to rise to nearly 20 million by 2066. Seniors will make up 30% of the population. The other issue that should be investigated through an inquiry is the fact that the system is already in trouble, and demand is set to skyrocket. Will the system be able to handle it?

We also know that this will have knock-on effects on other federal systems, such as EI, which is governed by much more complex legislation. The application forms are very complex, but when someone ends up collecting EI, that is a critical time in their life. If people entitled to EI do not get their EI payments, what happens then?

Essentially, the minister is saying that seniors themselves are to blame. The reason for the delays is that they are not filling out their forms correctly, so they should stop using paper forms. We all know that digital literacy is an issue. For people in general in our society who have to use these systems, switching from paper to online is not that easy. It is more complex than that, and the government must recognize that this is an issue for people.

There is also the wait time to get help over the phone. It is supposed to take 20 to 25 minutes, but in reality, people are waiting an hour or more. I have Conservative colleagues who have cases in their ridings where people report having waited longer than the expected 20 to 25 minutes. Finally, we also know that seniors in rural areas are underserved.

I have one last thing to say. There have been failures elsewhere, such as in Ontario. That, too, has been mentioned. The government was unable to take this into account to avoid repeating those mistakes. We know there was even a National Assembly motion in support of an independent public inquiry because Quebec's MNAs also want to get to the bottom of this. It is a matter of respect for seniors and for taxpayers.

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

Madam Speaker, the member started her speech by talking about a situation in which a young lady visited her constituency office in tears. I would ultimately argue that the reason this modernization is so critically important is the need to provide the service not only for today, but for future generations. The service should be available for people who collect employment insurance, old age supplements and Canada pensions, which are the programs in place to support vulnerable Canadians. These are programs that are there because seniors have dedicated so much of their lives to building Canada into what it is today. By bringing in the system, we are providing assurance.

Does the member not agree that this modernization is a good thing?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, of course, we have to modernize our systems. The problem is that this modernization was poorly planned and poorly executed. In my speech, I raised a lot of questions that could have been asked beforehand, questions that we still do not have answers to.

The reason we are calling for an independent public inquiry is so that we can find out what was not done properly in the planning stages and what could be fixed. It seems as though the government is putting more energy into sweeping this problem under the rug than it is into solving it.

First, there was Phoenix, with its cost overruns and federal employees speaking out. Then, there was the ArriveCAN app. It has been scandal after scandal. Yes, seniors deserve respect, but we also need to think about the taxpayers who are footing the bill and who feel as though their money is always being squandered.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Abbotsford, BC]

Madam Speaker, one of the first issues I raised in Parliament six and a half years ago was about the outdated technology system for the employment insurance, CPP and EI model through Employment and Social Development Canada. Unfortunately, the Government of Canada continues to face these horrible situations because the Treasury Board guidelines for technology employees specifically have not been modernized.

The Government of Canada relies so heavily on outsourced consultants because the pay scales do not allow for the Government of Canada to hire the experts. What it ends up doing is going to those experts, who charge them over $1,000 and sometimes $2,000 a day to do the work, instead of changing the Treasury Board guidelines and allowing those people to come into the public service.

Would the member for Shefford agree that if the Government of Canada wants to stop running into all these scandals, all this mismanagement, it would update the guidelines for the Treasury Board Secretariat to hire the best and the brightest in Ottawa to do the necessary technology upgrades the Government of Canada needs?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, that is an excellent question. That is probably also a big part of the problem. During the last election campaign, the Bloc Québécois called for cutbacks in the use of outside consultants, because it leads to both money being wasted and contracts being awarded under questionable circumstances. Furthermore, it leads to a loss of expertise within the public service.

Modernization is certainly necessary, but, as my colleague said, we must also stop constantly turning to outside consultants, because we lose a great deal of expertise that way, and that is how we end up with financial scandals and cost overruns. We should also listen to public servants.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Shefford for her being so compassionate, for providing accurate information regarding the 85,000 affected seniors and for calling for answers and accountability from this government.

Speaking of government accountability, this morning, at a meeting of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, we were told something that we have heard many times before: The government received warnings as early as 2010 that the system was facing a critical threat and that it needed to be reformed. Why then, did the government wait until 2025-26 to roll out a new system?

We need to remember that, nearly every year, the auditors general questioned whether the government was taking this seriously and indicated that the departments and agencies were all doing things their own way without any real coordination. Is the mess we are in with the old age security system a consequence of that?

I would also like to remind the House of the government's dependence on firms like Deloitte, which was telling the IT group how to do things; IBM, which was making programming errors and lining its own pockets; and McKinsey, which carried out the comparative analysis of services to the public. It is clear that there have been problems.

I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on that.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, as I said, there has been a loss of expertise within the government. It has been shifted to external consultants. Perhaps the government should have listened more closely to the public servants who raised concerns about the Phoenix system. It is clear that their comments were not taken into account.

I would also like to address the fact that the government tried to downplay the situation. There was talk of 85,000 cases. Initially, that was not what the minister told the House, and it took a few weeks before we got the truth. We finally managed to obtain this information about the 85,000 cases in committee. We were told that it was zero point something per cent. At first, the Liberals downplayed it and refused to answer questions during question period. It took some hard work in committee, which is why I want to acknowledge the efforts of my colleague, who succeeded in getting his committee to call for this independent public inquiry.

That is what we are debating today in the hope of shedding light on all this.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

The question is on the motion.

If a member participating in person wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division, or if a member of a recognized party participating in person wishes to request a recorded division, I invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I request a recorded division.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

Pursuant to Standing Order 45, the division stands deferred until later this day at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.