Andrew Scheer

[Supplementary Estimates (B), 2023-24, December 7th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I hereby request a recorded division.

[Business of Supply, December 7th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I know we are not supposed to reflect on the vote that just took place, and the House generally does not take the same question twice, but if the government does want to avoid a marathon voting session, all it has to do is take the carbon tax off of farmers, families and first nations.

[Business of the House, December 7th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the government House leader if she can inform the House as to the business for the rest of this week and into next week.

I note that today is the final supply day, which means that we will be dealing with the supply bills this evening. Members may know by now that Conservatives have put on a number of opposed items in an effort to highlight the pain the Liberal carbon tax is imposing on Canadians, who are struggling with food prices at grocery stores.

I would like to take this opportunity to let the government House leader know that we can wrap all that up very quickly if she will do everything she can to ensure that the Senate repeals its amendment gutting Bill C-234, which would have the effect of taking the carbon tax off farmers to bring grocery prices down. If she would commit to doing that, we could deal with the supply bill this evening in an orderly and timely manner.

If not, in order to ensure Canadians understand the devastating impact the carbon tax will have on them, we will be voting around the clock until the government gets it through its mind that the carbon tax is causing all this misery for Canadians.

[Carbon Pricing, December 7th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, the transformation the government has caused to families is that working people now have to go to food banks after eight years of the Prime Minister.

Let me read a quote from the food price report: “Canadians are reducing their expenditures on groceries, either by reducing the quantity or quality of food they are buying”. This is unbelievable. This is in Canada. We used to have a high quality of life, especially for working people, and now people with jobs have to put water in their milk or literally go hungry.

Do the Liberals not realize what they have done to this country? When will they finally take the tax off so food prices can come down?

[Carbon Pricing, December 7th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, after eight years, Canadians are learning the hard way that the Prime Minister is simply not worth the cost. The latest food price report shows that Canadians are bracing for another devastating blow next year, with families being forced to pay over $700 more for groceries. That is on top of all the price increases the Prime Minister's carbon tax and inflationary deficits have already caused.

Instead of making food more expensive with planned tax hikes, why do the Liberals not support our common-sense plan to take the carbon tax off families, first nations and farmers?

[Privilege, December 5th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, this is a very profound question that warrants more time than I have.

I will just quickly say this: We have a government that has, for two elections in a row, received fewer votes than the main opposition party.

The vast majority of Canadians did not vote for the government, and especially when we have a government that was elected with such a low percentage of the votes, they need to have trust that, at the very least, the government is constrained by some of the rules and traditions of the House. The Speaker is the guardian of that. Canadians also have to have confidence in the impartiality of the Speaker.

[Privilege, December 5th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I think my colleague has made an important point. With the Bloc Québécois and the Conservatives, we are almost at a majority of the House.

I just have to say, for anybody in a leadership capacity to lead a group, especially a group such as members of Parliament in the House of Commons, who are divided by party, that relationship cannot be maintained with such a significant percentage of the group not having confidence in him. I hope the Speaker reflects on that.

I do not want to prejudge what may or may not happen or deal in hypotheticals, but I do not see how a Speaker could continue in the role knowing that virtually 50% of the people he has to administer over or guide have lost confidence in him. I hope he reflects on that in the coming hours and days.

[Privilege, December 5th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, the member touched on a very important point that I would like to address.

She talked about precedent. One reason I brought this through in the form of a question of privilege is this: I fully believe that an important concept here is that future speakers see very clearly that this type of activity is so offensive to the House that they should take extra precautions to never find themselves in a similar situation.

The member asked what specific course of action we recommend. I would just use this opportunity to again state our belief that the Speaker has reached the point where he should step aside. This would preserve or re-establish that trust between the office of the Speaker and individual MPs.

I will let PROC decide how best to deliberate. We believe there is a timeliness to this. Every day that goes by, there are questions before the Chair that need to be decided. It may interest the committee to hear from the Speaker, to get to the bottom of the invitations and any correspondence that went back and forth between the Liberal Party of Ontario and the Speaker's office to help substantiate what the Speaker claims to have happened. I will leave that to the procedure and House affairs committee.

However, it is our belief that at this point, the best thing for the institution would be for the Speaker to step down.

[Privilege, December 5th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I move:

That the Speaker's public participation at an Ontario Liberal Party convention, as Speaker of the House of Commons, constitutes a breach of the tradition and expectation of impartiality required for that high office, constituting a serious error of judgment which undermines the trust required to discharge his duties and responsibilities and, therefore, the House refers the matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs with instruction that it recommend an appropriate remedy.

I appreciate the difficult position this scandal has put you in, and I appreciate your ruling, where you spelled out the normal course of actions for members to follow when dealing with a chair occupant or dealing with the Speaker. I appreciate that you also acknowledged the time-sensitive nature of what this scandal has caused for the House and for members. As you know, I made substantive remarks yesterday in making the case for this privilege motion. To save the House's time, I will not go through all of those again, but will just sum up the points.

The Speaker has incredible authority here in the chamber. The Speaker makes decisions that are not subject to appeal. There is no higher authority whom members can ask for a second opinion should they lose out on a point of order or on a question of privilege. The Speaker's word is the command during debates. If the Speaker does not like something that was said, the Speaker can take the floor away from a member. The Speaker has the sole authority to expel a member from the chamber. The Speaker is the only person who can name someone and force them to leave the chamber for the rest of the day. That decision is not appealable either. In other parliaments, that type of thing must be ratified by the House. In our chamber, the Speaker has sole executive authority. The reason I am talking so much about the incredible powers the Speaker has is that, for members to accept someone to hold that power, there has to be trust in that person.

I would like to mention that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable.

That is the type of authority the Speaker has here in the chamber. Around the precinct, the Speaker also has incredible authority as well. He chairs the Board of Internal Economy. The Board of Internal Economy sets the rules about how members are able to use resources to fulfill their functions, which is everything from printing protocols and ensuring there are adequate translation services to what types of expenses are allowed. It is a very important role. For members to accept someone to hold that authority, they must have 100% trust that the person holding that position is exercising their duty free of any partisan bias and free of any favouritism or preferential treatment.

It can be challenging. We all get elected through a political process. All of us seek a nomination. We join a political party. We sell memberships in that party in advance of a nomination race to win that nomination. During general elections, we pound in signs promoting our party, in terms of the brand, the policies and the leader. We all understand that.

When somebody enters this place and decides to run for Speaker, they usually go to some length to assure members that they do have a non-partisan side, that they can put aside their partisanship and partisan affiliations, and that they can take the Speaker's chair, put on the Speaker's robe and be impartial.

In the case of the current Speaker, the current Speaker was the former president of the Liberal Party. The current Speaker was the parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, right up until he ran for Speaker. In the course of this Parliament, between the last election and the date he was elected as Speaker, the current Speaker was engaged in very partisan activities. As the Prime Minister's parliamentary secretary, he was busy because there were a lot of scandals the Prime Minister was involved in. There were all kinds of ethics violations, spending scandals and allegations of corruption across multiple departments. The current Speaker would dutifully go to committee, defend the Prime Minister, engage in filibusters to prevent the committee from arriving at a decision, go on TV with other members of other parties, make accusations and defend his boss in a very partisan way.

We were all asked, as MPs, to take a leap of faith with this current Speaker that after being elected, after winning a majority of the votes in the House, he would go above and beyond what might be expected. Since his partisanship was so intense and so recent, we went out on a bit of a limb to believe he would put aside all that partisanship and would conduct himself in a way that would earn that trust and would justify that trust.

We gave him the benefit of the doubt. That is why it was so shocking. I could not believe my eyes when I saw the image of the Speaker in his robes, in his office on Parliament Hill, at a hyperpartisan political event. This was no quiet dinner among friends. This was a leadership election convention for the Ontario Liberal Party, a party in a province that he does not currently reside in.

I was shocked. At first, I honestly thought it was a bit of a joke. I thought somebody was trying to troll me or something. I did not believe it at first. Upon seeing the other images shared and the video itself, I realized, oh my goodness, the Speaker has actually done this.

Here is why it matters for Canadians. We heard the Speaker's excuse yesterday. We talked about the incredible authority, the need for trust between the House members and the Speaker.

We can think of other examples of institutions in Canada in which we can all instantly recognize the need for impartiality and the need to make a serious change if that impartiality is ever broken. Imagine a case in the NHL, if there were images displayed of an NHL referee wearing his referee's uniform and giving a pep talk to the Toronto Maple Leafs in their locker room during intermission.

How would fans of the Montreal Canadiens, the Ottawa Senators or the Edmonton Oilers feel if they ever had to see that referee ref a game between their team and Toronto?

It would not matter if the referee did that because he happened to know one of the players or maybe he had some close personal relationship. He did not expect it to be videoed; he just thought he could go in and say a few encouraging words and then leave. It would not matter, because once one sees that image, one cannot unsee it. That doubt will always be there. Doubt is the opposite of trust.

Imagine a defendant in a court case, where someone texts them an image of the judge, in his robes, at a backyard barbecue with the Crown prosecutor. The judge might have all kinds of context that he would want them to understand before jumping to conclusions, but would a defendant want to go through a trial proceeding with a judge who had shown that kind of partiality and bias? I would not.

Imagine a situation between a union and management that has gone to arbitration; the arbiter is then seen at a restaurant in his attire, in the same clothes he wears during the mediation session. Now he is sitting down with one of the parties involved in the dispute. Would a union want to accept a ruling, even if there was context and a rationale behind it? Of course it would not.

That is the situation we find ourselves in here in the House. That is why our recommendation to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs will be to recommend to the House that the Speaker resign. We do not believe that, to go forward, to accept those rulings without appeal, the current Speaker can fulfill that role.

Yesterday, I mentioned a few very important cases that are technically still under the purview of the Speaker. One touches on whether the budget bill was properly introduced. The government made a ways and means motion error, and we contend that this motion should have been ruled out of order. That is taxation and spending.

For us to trust that the Speaker made that ruling last week free of any bias or partiality is just impossible after seeing those images.

I hope my colleagues in the House will agree with me that this situation is serious and that it matters not just to members but also to Canadians. This is the pillar of our parliamentary democracy. Members should support this motion and support our calls at committee for the Speaker to do the right thing, put the institution above himself as an individual, make the role primary and step aside.

[Questions on the Order Paper, December 5th, 2023]

With regard to the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, and all departments and entities the minister is responsible for, broken down by year since January 1, 2016: (a) what was the total amount spent on consulting contracts related to housing; (b) what was the total amount spent on consulting contracts related to the (i) Rapid Housing Initiative, (ii) Housing Accelerator Fund, including the development and implementation; (c) what are the details of each contract in (b)(i) and (b)(ii), including, for each, the (i) date, (ii) vendor, (iii) value, (iv) description of the goods or services, (v) manner in which the contract was awarded (sole-sourced, competitive bid); (d) what are the details of all contracts in (a) worth over $10,000, including, for each, the (i) date, (ii) vendor, (iii) value, (iv) description of the goods or services, (v) manner in which the contract was awarded, (vi) type of consultant; and (e) did any of the consulting contracts in (a) or (b) result in the government receiving a report or recommendations, and, if so, what are the details of each, including the (i) vendor, (ii) date the reports or recommendations were received, (iii) title, (iv) summary of the contents, (v) website where the report is available online?