Madam Speaker, it is a shame that I was interrupted. I was saying that she cares about her community. She is a wonderful person. I hope she enjoys a rest, and I wish her every success in her future endeavours. I think that it is well deserved. I think that we should take time to acknowledge the work of elected officials from all parties who are close to their communities. It is very important to me to do this today, especially since this may be the last time that I speak in the House before we adjourn.
Now that that is done, we are discussing closure. Madam Speaker, I should say that I would like to share my time with the member for Rimouski—La Matapédia.
Closure is being imposed. Today, we are once again faced with a government that has decided to shut down debate and impose its agenda. This is the second time in a very short period that closure has come up, along with super closure. Last time, I said that the government had bought itself a majority. Since getting that majority, it has used it to go against the interests of taxpayers and the public in many respects.
For one thing, it used it to impose closure on the Driver Inc. issue. This was at a time when the chair of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities was attending events organized by the very people at the centre of this scandal, which has cost lives.
The government used its majority to halt debate on an ethical issue involving the Minister of Finance and National Revenue, whose wife is Alto's vice-president. I am not saying that anything inappropriate happened, only that the matter deserves some discussion.
Closure has been imposed on several bills by a government that is having trouble managing its agenda. That is what has happened here, with Bill C‑30. The Liberals are going to keep saying that Parliament is at a standstill and that the opposition parties are to blame. The government was a minority during the 44th and 45th Parliaments, and back then, the Liberals kept saying that the opposition parties were using their majority to paralyze the work of the House.
Now we are dealing with a majority government that constantly chooses to shut down debate and impose its agenda.
I am the vice-chair of the Standing Committee on Finance. I attended the debate on Bill C‑30. Did things get out of hand? Was there filibustering? Of course there was, as there often is. However, when the Liberals say that there were 30 hours of debate and that the opposition filibustered for 30 hours, some clarification is in order.
Starting from the very first amendment, the very first minute and even the very first second of the committee meeting, the Liberal Party decided to block everything. The Liberals made this very, very clear to the committee: No amendments would be allowed, and the bill would not be discussed. This was clearly stated by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance and National Revenue, the member for Whitby.
If I recall correctly, the first amendment was intended to obtain more detailed data on the Canada pension plan. Since I am from Quebec, my public pension plan is with the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, so none of this concerned me personally. However, I thought it was reasonable. Officials were at the meeting in person. They told us it was possible to make a change to make it entirely feasible, but the government said the data would never be available.
That is when we realized that the government was going to hold this up until the very end and that it did not want to debate the matter.
The Green Party member, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, attended the full 30 hours of committee meetings. She was waiting for the opportunity to debate the issue of pesticides. The fact is that the government is using an omnibus bill to grant itself the power to authorize any pesticide. The Green Party member stayed until she was completely exhausted and, after seeing the government's behaviour, she realized that she would not have the opportunity to debate this.
Why, then, is this being blocked? It is being blocked because the government does not want Bill C-30 to be debated.
My colleague from Rimouski—La Matapédia is going to talk about pesticides. We have known for years that the process for approving new pesticide formulations needs to be expedited. The scientific analyses need to be conducted more quickly. The process needs to be more efficient. That is what the industry is calling for. It is asking for things to move faster. However, no farmer has ever asked the government to approve any old pesticide behind closed doors without any scientific analysis. The agricultural industry has never asked for that.
To avoid debating the subject, the government decided to block its own bill, like it did when it had a minority.
When it comes to air passenger complaints, what the government is doing under division 17 is serious. From now on, air passenger complaints will no longer be dealt with by a public entity. If the Minister of Transport, who is not known for his transparency, so decides, air passenger complaints could be dealt with by private companies chosen by the minister himself, perhaps after a phone call from the airlines, rather than through a more transparent system.
The government is cutting public service jobs. We understand that the it wants to reduce day-to-day government spending, but what good does that do if it ends up costing the government even more to have private companies do this work and there is a complete lack of transparency? The Liberals are blocking their own bill because they do not want to discuss this.
The same goes for its “sovereign wealth fund”, which is a misnomer. According to La Presse, it is a wealth fund with no wealth. The government is giving itself the authority to conduct all sorts of studies and analyses with a view to possibly privatizing our airports, some of which have serious governance issues. Perhaps it wants to privatize them to fill this fund with money. Is that the case or not? It is hard to say, because today we are going to pass a bill without debate, without a proper clause-by-clause review, without parliamentary scrutiny, without expert testimony, without witnesses, and without sufficient parliamentary time. People need to understand that when there are tax measures in an economic or budget update, they take effect when the notice of ways and means is tabled in the House. That means there is no rush.
We are dealing with a government that has made up its mind. The parliamentary secretary told us earlier that the government had a job to do, that Canadians had elected it to do that job, and that it would run roughshod over us if necessary to get it done. Some members rightly asked where, in the election platform, it was stated that a public servant could approve any pesticide or that complaints from airline passengers would be outsourced to the private sector. We hear that Air Canada was already ready to implement this law before members of Parliament had even seen it. Where in the Liberal election platform was there any mention of the possibility of privatizing airports? Nowhere.
I said this last week and earlier today when I asked a question. I get the impression that the Prime Minister thinks of himself as the CEO of Canada. He sometimes forgets that he is the Prime Minister. I wonder if he knows where Parliament is on a map. It is a fair question, and I am asking it. No one knows. I know that Parliament deserves better than what the Liberals are currently doing.
I would like to repeat that, when the government was in a minority, it kept justifying its constant need to limit debate by claiming that the majority opposition was preventing business from moving forward. Now the Liberals have a majority. Members of the committee can attest to the fact that Bill C-30 is being blocked by the Liberal Party, which clearly told us that no amendments would be allowed.
That is a very disturbing approach to democracy.