Mr. Speaker, I appreciate and will reflect upon your advice.
What we have happening today is that the Liberals have taken unprecedented steps in a pattern of trying to undermine democracy in this country. Canadians voted for a minority government, and the Liberals used all kinds of devices and connivance to draw in members with whatever conviction, with no consideration whatsoever of the beliefs of those members. They took members who, in normal times, would obviously not fit what the Liberal Party pretends to be ideologically, and they did so out of desperation for power.
Mr. Speaker, you have chastened me to not be too strong in my language, but I hope you will not mind me quoting some of the things the new member for Scarborough Southwest said about Liberals. Of course, I welcome her to this place, and I think she has had some very thought-provoking things to say in the past. She previously described the Liberals as “the surest path to greater evil”. What a thing to say. I am not sure if she could say that in the House. She described the Liberals as “the surest path to greater evil”, as well as “untrustworthy” and “conniving”. Those were things the new member for Scarborough Southwest had to say about the Liberals before she decided to run for them.
The member for Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong said that many Liberals think she belongs in jail. She said that about two weeks before she crossed over to join the Liberals. This is not about bringing people together with some common agenda. This is about Liberals who care about nothing except power and who are pursuing power, not as a means to advance anything in particular, but for its own sake.
Today we are debating this motion that they brought forward and quickly moved closure on. Now that, through backroom deals, they have a majority that Canadians did not give them at the election, they have quickly moved to impose upon committees a supermajority that Canadians certainly do not want.
I note that we have multiple committees right now where Liberals are actually filibustering. At the human resources Committee, which I am a member of, and a number of other committees, Conservatives are working with our Bloc colleagues in seeking information from the government. Liberals are filibustering those committees.
Members can bet that those requests for documents will immediately be shut down as soon as the Liberals who have taken the majority feel that they no longer have to be accountable. In fact, in the past when they have had minority governments, they have refused to hand over documents, even when they were ordered to by committees. These Liberals are completely allergic to accountability.
In a minority situation, committees must at least work together to achieve results. They are, in a way, forced to work together because no party has all of the power. This has led to very constructive outcomes.
In the last year, the committee that I am a part of has done very good work. We have tabled eight reports in the House, which is very productive work as a committee, because people have had to negotiate. It is not always easy. Sometimes there are conflicts, but people have had to negotiate to get a result.
Liberals do not want to have to do that hard work of listening to other ideas and working with other parties. They are pursuing power at all costs. They are pursuing power in defiance of democratic norms and in defiance of the wishes of Canadians. They would like to be able to impose their will on committees, prevent documents from being requested and prevent the necessary accountability work from being done.
I also want to also point something out, which may be something worth the reflection of the individual members of the government. Even if we were to accept the argument that the committee should have the same proportions as what the Liberals have engineered in the House through floor crossings, we might then say that there should be six Liberal members. Maybe we would say that, if we believed their arguments, we would go from five to six. Why are they asking for seven?
Why are the Liberals, who now have a very narrow majority in the House, seeking a supermajority on committees? It is particularly worth asking because, in practice, given the rounds of questions and the activity of those committees, the fifth, sixth and seventh members of that committee likely would not have an opportunity to do too much. The nature of time allocation within a committee, with questions, etc., means that the extra member at the table is probably just going to be sitting there, for the most part. Why does the government want to have seven members?
I will say that this demonstrates that the Prime Minister has as much respect for his own caucus members as he does for members on the other side of the House. He wants to have extra members there who will likely not have an opportunity to speak very much. He wants to keep them busy. He wants to prevent them from being able to engage in and challenge things, even in the very measured and limited way that government members sometimes do.
What the Prime Minister is trying to engineer is the greatest amount of power, not merely for his party, but for himself. He views members of Parliament as encumbrances to his exercise of executive power, to his pursuit of power, for reasons that are largely unspecified and that have not been articulated up until this point.
This is a sad day for Canadian democracy. The Prime Minister, through connivance, has weakened this institution and is pursuing a reality in which he can rule without the normal checks and balances that are supposed to be a part of our system, and without the checks and balances that Canadians voted for when they chose to elect a minority government.
We need to fight back against this abuse of power and defend democratic norms in this country. Conservatives, despite the limitations the government is imposing on us, will continue to fight for democracy and for the common good.