Mr. Speaker, there is an old saying that is very appropriate for what we are about to go through in the House of Commons and something I want all Canadians to think about. It is that when they show us who they are, we should believe them. One hour into the debate to give the Liberals a majority on all committees, a majority which was not obtained through the results of the last election, they brought forward a closure motion. A closure motion is used to close down debate.
Why am I talking about closing down debate? It is because the Liberal government has a strong authoritarian streak. It has been found guilty of invoking the Emergencies Act. It has used parliamentary overreach at every single opportunity it has. In fact, earlier in the week, we were conducting a debate on Bill C-22 about lawful access, a very serious piece of legislation that sets the parameters for which police and other authorities can access Canadians' digital footprint. Every time a Conservative member got up in this chamber to debate the issue and make points about the problems with the legislation, the Liberal deputy House leader got up and accused them of filibustering and obstruction.
If that is not bad enough, right after he would accuse Conservatives of engaging in filibuster and obstruction, a Liberal member would get up and speak. We can see the authoritarian streak in the Liberal Party every single day when we engage in debate in the House of Commons. If a Conservative member or an opposition member from the Bloc or the NDP gets up to speak, that is obstruction and filibustering. However, if a Liberal member gets up, it is somehow a wonderful thing that is happening in this place. This is how Liberals engage. This is the respect they have for the democratically elected opposition parties.
While they were in a minority status, we were able to keep that in check, and we did that in many ways. For example, Bill C-22 came from a piece of legislation, Bill C-2, which contained all kinds of Liberal authoritarian overreach. Through opposition to that, the bill was split. Now that they are going to reorganize committees, the opportunity to do that would get significantly smaller. It would almost not exist because they could do such things as what they have just done. This is a motion to radically change the composition of committees. It would not just be adding one extra Liberal member, as would be appropriate; they would be adding two. They would not just be adding two extra members to the committees that they say are the ones to get things done, such as finance or others; they would be taking control of the oversight committees.
Why is that important? Why would I say this is something that Canadians should be very concerned about? I will give a couple of examples. Right now, at the ethics committee, which is one of the oversight committees, the Liberals have been filibustering for I do not know how many days. What are they filibustering over? Is it something important, a critical piece of legislation, a bill they think the opposition parties are going to use to destroy Canada? No. What they are filibustering and preventing from happening is the finance minister's going to committee to testify on his clear conflict of interest with respect to the Alto project. It is a clear conflict of interest. He has voted on issues that deal with Alto. Alto was in the budget, and the finance minister's partner is an executive at Alto. This is a clear ethical violation.
The minister should be held to account and go to committee, but the Liberals have been filibustering for days to prevent that from happening. Now what are they doing? They are giving themselves a majority on that committee so they do not have to filibuster away accountability anymore. No, they do not have to bother with that because now they have the votes. They just say the minister clearly violated the conflict of interest laws and too bad, he is not going to committee to testify because they have the votes.
Right now, on my committee, the HUMA committee, they have been filibustering, for two days, a document production order. Why do we want documents? We want documents to look into the cost overruns of another Liberal technology project. Everybody remembers ArriveCAN, the tiny project that went massively over budget. This is another IT project that has gone wildly bad under the Liberal government. All we have asked for is for the Liberals to produce some documents. They have spent the last two meetings filibustering that document request. Guess what. If the motion passes, they do not have to filibuster any more. They will have the votes to deny accountability, to deny transparency and to do whatever they want. That is the real reason why we are having changes to committees. They do not like the scrutiny that committees provide.
We have had all kinds of Liberal members wax poetic about the wonders of committee and the work that committees do. Guess what. They do amazing work when there is a minority government and the government can be held to account. We can get the documents that we need. We can have the ministers who have engaged in unethical conduct come before committee and answer for that unethical conduct. We can look at pieces of legislation that have terrible government overreach and we can say that they will not pass without amendment. All of that will now be gone.
As if that is not bad enough, I will go back to what we did earlier today. It was one hour into the debate, a debate about these Liberals taking control of all of the committees so they can ram through their legislative agenda any way they want, with little or no scrutiny. I say that because they can do very simple things. They can bring a programming motion when they put a piece of legislation in the House of Commons, and they can program the amount of time it will spend at committee and have it brought back. They can vote down every single amendment the opposition might want to do. This is a very important debate. This should be debated. They should have extended hours in the House to have this debate. Instead, what did they do? They moved closure.
After one hour, they said they have had enough of the debate. It goes back to what I said when I first opened this speech. When someone says who they are, believe them. They do not believe in an opposition that can hold them to account. They do not, or they would not be resetting the numbers on the accountability committees. If they wanted to, they could say that they are taking control of committees to get their legislative agenda passed. I could maybe understand that, especially if it were six members instead of seven. The committees would then be where they should be and the chair would have to break the tie. It is a Liberal chair. The Liberal chair would break the tie in their favour.
They are going to seven, which reduces the opportunity for opposition members to speak at committee. They are also doing this for the accountability committees: public accounts, access to information, ethics and government operations. We wonder why they are doing it? We do not have to wonder. They are doing it to avoid scrutiny. They are doing it to avoid accountability. They are not Liberals who believe in any of those things.
I am saying this very clearly right now and I am talking directly to Canadians: Watch what happens over the next year with the Liberals and watch what happens at committee. There will be constant motions to shut down investigations at committee. There will be constant motions in the chamber to shut down debate. There will be programming motions so that things barely go to committee at all. They will not be held to account for ethical violations.
We know that where there is a Liberal government, there are ethical violations. We all remember the ad scam, the green slush fund, arrive scam, name it. When there is money involved, the Liberals get their hands involved and all of that will be silenced by the Liberals.
I think it is an outrage that they would use a closure motion on a motion to take control of committees. It tells us exactly what they are going to do and exactly the kind of government they will be, and it is not what Canadians wanted.