Michel Gauthier

[Standing Orders, February 26th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I would not like to be in your shoes at this moment, but even more so after the government motion is adopted by the House, because this motion will presumably be adopted quite swiftly given the large number of members the government can count on. This is the whole problem.

I listened to the government leader, who said that we are going to import from the British parliament an interesting feature for the conduct of our debates. To begin with, I would like to explain that, unless we want this parliament to end up looking like a circus, we cannot picked out rules here and there in other parliaments and other standing orders.

We must understand that the standing orders governing the debates of the House of Commons, be it here or in another parliament, are a set of rules which, taken individually, probably do not make much sense, but if taken as a whole complete one another. They allow us to preserve what has to be preserved in a parliamentary system, namely a fair distribution of powers and the capacity to influence the decisions brought to the attention of the House.

I have personally warned the government leader about the danger of upsetting a balance which is already too fragile in this parliament. I warned him about the danger of weakening even more the power relationship between opposition members and government members.

Unless we absolutely want to bring Canadians to the conclusion that it is no longer useful to elect members to parliament, unless this is our goal, we must not upset the balance between parliamentarians. Most of all, we must not change the rules a piece at a time, thinking that small changes here and there will have no consequence.

The parliamentary rules and the functioning of this House are like a huge block set or a house of cards. It works. It may even be pleasant to look at in some ways; it can be artistic. Changing a single piece in the middle of the structure can only result in the collapse of the whole structure. Such are the rules of the House of Commons.

Yes, this sounds simple, very simple. The government House leader's motion states:

For greater clarity, the Speaker will not select for debate a motion or series of motions of a repetitive, frivolous or vexatious nature or of a nature that would serve merely to prolong unnecessarily proceedings at the report stage and, in exercising this power of selection, the Speaker shall be guided by the practice followed in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.

Anyone who reads that or who is listening to us today must wonder who could be against the Speaker having the right to exclude repetitive, frivolous and vexatious motions.

A second question comes to mind. This would give a great deal of power to the Speaker of the House, whose responsibility is to ensure that all members, particularly those who do not benefit from the protection of the governing party, get to express themselves, to express the opinion of their constituents and to influence the debates that we have in this House.

What is a frivolous amendment, in the opinion of the Speaker of the House of Commons? Can we say today that all the Speakers, Deputy Speakers and all those who occupy the chair will use the same arguments to say that an amendment is frivolous? How many amendments among the 200 that were moved by the government on its young offenders bill will be judged frivolous? Can we say instead that it is the government that is frivolous because it did not present a well thought out bill in the House, a bill that respects the rules and the will of the people?

If by moving 200 amendments we are accused of trying to hold up debate, of using delaying tactics, I want to say today, and the people must know this, that the Government of Canada is its own worst enemy. It is using its own delaying tactics.

The reason it does so is this: the government is targeting only amendments moved by the opposition. It is clear that in today's motion, the government House leader has not thought for one minute that that the Chair would rule that 25, 50, or 75 amendments, among the 200 it moved to amend its own bill, were frivolous amendments.

I am sure that the government House leader would have an absolute fit if the Chair said that a government amendment was frivolous and used only as a delaying tactic. It is only the amendments moved by the members of the opposition that are at issue here, therefore.

Are we about to acknowledge that only the Liberals in this House can come up with well thought out motions? Is everything coming out of the Alliance, the Bloc, the NDP or the Conservatives frivolous or of a nature that would serve merely to filibuster?

Bloc members stand up to defend the youth justice system in force in Quebec, because that system has been yielding incredible and outstanding results, well above those in the rest of Canada. Is the Bloc frivolous?

Everyone in Quebec, whether they are Liberal, Bloc or Conservative, agrees that the system is in jeopardy. Is it frivolous for the Bloc to defend that system? Is it frivolous to bring forward amendments to a bill that was flawed right from the beginning and completely out of touch with reality.

Time has proven us right, because the work of the Bloc Quebecois, especially the amendments brought forward by my hon. colleague from Berthier—Montcalm, got the government to reconsider and bring more than 200 changes to its bill.

This is exactly what they want to avoid. The government does not want to relive that situation. The opinion of the opposition is no longer significant. It is frivolous. Our debates are frivolous. My colleague from the government has unfortunately said more than once that the time we use in parliament to debate such frivolous issues in his view and to vote for hours on end on all kinds of amendments costs $27,000 an hour.

I have a suggestion to make. If he really wants to save money, he should eliminate the other House, which costs $50 million a year. That would be a start.

[Free Trade Area Of The Americas, February 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, what trust can we put in the comments of the Minister for International Trade when he tells us in the House that it is impossible for us, as parliamentarians, to have access to the texts of that agreement because, as he puts it, our partners are opposed to that? We assume leadership when it comes to transparency. We are clear.

The U.S. congress is no Mickey Mouse institution; its members have access to these documents. How can we find the minister credible?

[Free Trade Area Of The Americas, February 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, with such a protector, Canada is not out of the woods.

On the same issue, yesterday, during Oral Question Period, the Minister for International Trade said, and I quote: “If it is available to congress, it will not be long before it becomes public”. A few minutes later, during a media scrum, he said that members of congress are bound by a confidentiality rule.

My question to the Minister for International Trade is: Does he not have a serious credibility problem in the area of international trade, as he did with human resources, when he says one thing and then the exact opposite a few minutes later?

[Free Trade Area Of The Americas, February 19th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, once again, when the U.S. government, whose members are not exactly in the pee-wee league of this type of international negotiations—as members will acknowledge—consider it legitimate to make the other countries' positions public and accessible to their representatives, the minister should not be surprised that we consider it unacceptable for the Canadian government to call itself transparent and refuse to reveal its position. This is abnormal.

Instead of talking about transparency, the minister should act coherently, tell us the truth and show us the documents.

[Free Trade Area Of The Americas, February 19th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, this is very serious. On February 8, the Prime Minister said he could not make Canada's position public, because the other countries did not want it and he could not reveal it to us parliamentarians.

Today, the minister has just said the same thing, that we cannot make it public, since the 34 countries do not want us to. A U.S. government document, dated January 17, says that American elected representatives will have access to the documents.

How can the government justify what the Prime Minister said and what the minister has just said?

[Points Of Order, February 14th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, while I bow to the wisdom of your ruling, I would just like to raise one point not mentioned by my colleague.

The member for Beauséjour—Petitcodiac attributed to my colleague something he never said, to the effect that the francophones in Ottawa were unworthy of hosting the Games of la Francophonie.

Mr. Speaker, this is an extremely serious accusation which could mislead all those now listening, and which did not arise from anything my colleague said but solely from the desire of the member and of the government House leader to twist our words, to make us look bad to francophones in the rest of Canada, when it is absolutely false, unfair and wrong, and they must apologize.

[Privilege, February 13th, 2001]

When my colleague speaks of a threat to democracy, when debate on 21% of the bills introduced in this House end in time allocation, we are entitled to ask where the government is headed with this.

The ratio of time allocation to bills receiving royal assent was 1.3% under Trudeau, 6.3% in his third mandate, 16% under the Conservative Prime Minister and 11% under Trudeau-Turner at the time. How many times was time allocation invoked under the Liberals in the last session? We are not talking about 1%, 3% or 6% but 30%. Thirty per cent of bills passed by this House were subject to time allocation.

Seriously, how can citizens be expected to respect the work we do in the House? How can they be expected to respect members who are fresh from an election campaign and have promised to review a bill which has such a negative impact on Quebecers and Canadians?

How can they be expected to take seriously a government that promised right and left that it would sort out the employment insurance issue and that said it had not done so before the election because the Bloc Quebecois had blocked the bill, when in fact it was introduced just before the end of the session?

How can members of the public be expected to respect a government that allows only one day of debate so that it can officially get its hands on $30 billion belonging to them? How can we be expected to respect a parliament in which 30% of the bills passed were subject to time allocation? How can we talk about democracy when the primary objective of the government opposite is to prevent members on this side of the House from expressing their views on something as fundamental as employment insurance?

I too ask the Chair to keep a critical eye on the government's behaviour in the future. It is too late now, because, once again, we have just voted. The government brought in a time allocation motion. We will no longer be able to debate employment insurance in the House because after one day the government has decided that it has heard enough.

This is a disgrace. I am asking the Chair to try to remind the government that it is engaged in an extremely dangerous exercise, which consists in gradually eliminating what is left of the democratic process in parliament.

The government is not only arrogant because of its strong majority, it also no longer tolerates, in a debate like this one, the diverging views expressed by the opposition. Electronic voting will soon be introduced in the House. Perhaps the whips will rise to vote on behalf of members of parliament. We will become mere pawns in this place and we will no longer be allowed to talk or to vote. We will no longer be able to remind the government that it made promises to people and that it is not fulfilling them.

I want to tell the government House leader that Quebecers will remember that, during the election campaign, the government promised to tone down the provisions of the Employment Insurance Act. Quebecers will remember that the House leader and his government took steps to ensure that the real issues would not be debated and solved, and that they have given official sanction to their holdup of the employment insurance fund. This is unacceptable.

[Privilege, February 13th, 2001]

—the government is in such a rush to follow up on the commitments it made half-heartedly during the campaign that it wants to stop talking about them.

In certain cases, those promises have had the effect of misleading people in need of employment insurance. They were led to believe that the government would be open to bringing in changes to put an end to unfair treatment. The government claimed to be concerned about the unemployed and those with major social problems caused by government funding cuts. This is what people were promised during the campaign. Today, after one day of debate—could we say one day plus one hour—the government wants to end the discussion.

The people of all of Canada, and particularly the people of Quebec, to whom these commitments were made, have a right to know that today the government wants to muzzle the members of the House of Commons, prevent them from discussing these vital matters, prevent them from raising here the many cases in their ridings reported to them daily over the past few years by people who are suffering because of the government's appetite and never-ending desire to pocket money that belongs to someone else. That is reality.

I would remind hon. members, and I support my Canadian Alliance colleague on this, that the Liberal government has changed, but changed for the worse.

I would point out that, between 1968 and 1972, under the Trudeau government—and these figures are meant for you, Mr. Speaker, and I hope they will guide you in your ruling—during the 28th parliament, the ratio of time allocation motions to the number of sitting days was 0.3%. This means that, at the time, for 0.3% of sitting days, debate was held under a time allocation motion imposed by the government.

In the last parliament, for 7.7% of sitting days, there was a threat to cut off debate, which was held under a time allocation motion.

In the sessions under Mr. Trudeau, between 1968 and 1972 and between 1974 and 1979, time allocation was imposed in the case of 0.9% of the bills introduced, that is 4%. That is the percentage. In other words, time allocation, as we are facing now, was invoked in the case of 4% of the bills introduced under the Trudeau government.

In the last parliament, under this government, the figure was not 0.9% or 4%. Of all the bills tabled in this House, 21.6% were passed under time allocation.

[Privilege, February 13th, 2001]

—the government is in such a rush to legalize the holdup of the employment insurance fund—

[Privilege, February 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to add my voice to that of my colleague from the Canadian Alliance. I am concerned that the arguments put forth by the government House leader relate to behaviours exhibited in the Alberta legislature, not here in the House of Commons.

The debate must be put back in its proper perspective. Let us look at what is going on here in the House of Commons.

Let me simply remind the government House leader that, before throwing stones in the neighbour's backyard, he should look at the figures for the sessions during which he has been in charge of the business of this House.

The hon. member is right on target when he stresses the importance of the bill before us, in this second day of debate. We have had one day of debate, one hour yesterday, in the afternoon, and this morning the government is moving time allocation.

So, the first argument to the effect that this is the third day of debate is completely inaccurate. In fact, there has been one day of debate, one hour at the end of the day yesterday and today the decision has been made to move time allocation.

This is totally unacceptable, because the bill before us more or less seeks to restore and review the employment insurance program which, in recent years, has aroused very strong criticism from people in all regions of Quebec and Canada.

Moreover, this bill follows a government commitment dating back to the last election campaign. People have a right to know that what triggered an extremely important debate in Quebec and a commitment by the Prime Minister and most of his big guns in Quebec is now being debated in the House of Commons for a few hours, because of a gag order.

Now we are being asked, after a few hours of debate, to put an end to the discussions. The government is in such a rush to get its hand officially on the $30 billion belonging to the taxpayers—