Daniel Blaikie

[Criminal Code, May 16th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps the member intended to rise on a point of order himself, intending to say that these sittings of Parliament to debate Bill C-21 are not constitutional. However, I wonder why this is coming up in the context of his speech, instead of as a challenge to these extraordinary sittings of the House, in order to consider the bill.

If he wants to make a point of order, he can do that. The appropriate time to do that is at the first possible moment, once the breach of our rules of order has come to light. However, Conservatives have been participating in these extraordinary sittings for some time, without having raised a point of order of this nature.

I think we are past the point where that point of order could be raised. I wonder why we continue to reflect on a decision of the House.

[Criminal Code, May 16th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I am not laughing. What I would say is that if I wrote a speech before entering the House that infringed upon a ruling of the Speaker or rules of the House, I would expect that, it would not be okay for me to if I breach those rules simply because I wrote it down before coming into the House. I would be expected to adapt to rulings of the Speaker on the fly.

The member has a prewritten speech, but if it is infringing upon the ruling of the Speaker, simply having written it down beforehand does not mean that he is allowed to continue.

[Criminal Code, May 16th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I am at a loss as to how to proceed. I think the Speaker has made it clear that the line of argument infringes upon certain rules of the House. I appreciate that the member already wrote his speech. As somebody who does not use notes, and I know that the member knows the content of the bill very well, I just encourage him to get out of his notes and speak to the content of the bill. In this way, he will not be infringing upon the rules of the House or upon your recent ruling.

[Criminal Code, May 16th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, there is an established rule that members are not to reflect on a decision made by the House. The House did decide to have extended evening sittings for the purpose of hearing members who rightly want to speak to the bill, but they are not to reflect on a decision of the House that was made to not require quorum in order to create more time for members to offer their thoughts about the bill on the record.

The line of argument that my colleague is adopting makes it harder for the House to adopt such motions in the future, which I think would be very unfortunate because they are critical to providing the space and time for members to put their thoughts on the record about legislation before the House.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for trying to enforce established rules of the House and I support you in continuing to do that.

[Criminal Code, May 16th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I will remind the member that removing clause 43 is one of the Conservative amendments at report stage, so I would encourage her to do her homework on her party's own amendments. If she does want to take a little time to let us know whether she is in favour of or opposed to a Conservative Party amendment, I think we would all appreciate knowing whether she supports her party's amendments or not.

[Criminal Code, May 16th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I did not hear it in her speech specifically, but I know Conservatives have expressed concern about clause 43 and moved to take it out of the bill. Can she affirm her support for removing clause 43 and explain to the House why she thinks that is so important?

[Criminal Code, May 16th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, we just heard from House staff that the kitchen is completely out of tinfoil.

[Rail Transportation, May 16th, 2023]

Publicly delivered.

[Amendments to the Standing Orders, May 12th, 2023]

I do believe that all too often, the government does not take the work that we do in the House of Commons and its committees seriously. That is why I think that we as members of Parliament must take measures to ask for that respect. This is about targeting the Prime Minister's important powers and saying the elected chamber should have more say in these decisions. We can get the federal government to take us much more seriously.

[Amendments to the Standing Orders, May 12th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, the issue of confidence has been studied a number of times. It has been studied in the House and outside the House. The reasons why I chose not to refer it to the procedure and House affairs committee are twofold.

The first is out of respect for the work that it is doing currently on foreign interference and a number of important issues, and an issue of privilege, actually, after the last day, with respect to the member for Wellington—Halton Hills.

The other reason is that I think it is high time we just got this done. I do think there is enough time to examine the content of the motion. I think that this would be a significant improvement on the current state of affairs.

I want to make change and one cannot make change without doing something novel. I do not hide from the fact that there are novel ideas in here. I think they are good ideas and I welcome the debate that is to come.

I hope that members here will fall on the side of asserting the power of the House of Commons over these decisions and making a change to something that has been open to abuse now since Confederation and that it is high time we did something about.