Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate the opportunity to join in the debate. It works out good that my colleague spoke before me.
The first thing I want to do is read back into the record comments that were made on November 4, 2011, by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence with reference to this legislation in its earlier version. He said:
As I begin my remarks, I would like to congratulate those of our colleagues, the hon. member for St. John's East, the hon. member for Scarborough—Guildwood, and the hon. member for Hamilton Centre, who worked very hard with members on our side to develop a common approach.
I thought that was a decent thing to do, early on to offer up. However, I would point out that he said that in a minority government. Whether the government was so inclined as to be friendly and wanted to work together and show a lot of camaraderie, it was really forced into it. When we get into a majority, we start to see the government's real view of the opposition. Let us just say that is less than encouraging in terms of wanting to “develop a common approach”.
I raise that because there has been a lot of discussion on all sides around process and a lot of questions about the way we view the process and why it is somewhat different than the way we voted previously.
What is really important is that the earlier version of this legislation was in a minority government. In a minority situation, there can be all kinds of preachers within Parliament. There can be coalitions, accords, day-by-day, which was the system that we lived under in a Liberal minority government and, ultimately, the Conservatives until the last election. We would have liked to have seen it more often but at times there was an element of working together, particularly on matters that were important, that had legal timeframes and that had legal implications, and this legislation was one of those. The military needed these improvements and, as we do every day, we wanted to put pressure on the government and hold its feet to the fire. At the same time, there are certain issues where we set that aside and work together because it is in the best interests of Canadians. When we are in a minority Parliament, the only way that can happen is when somebody works with the government to create enough votes to pass a law. That was one of those times.
I was given some acknowledgement because I was defence critic at the time and the reference was when we were trying to get the bill through the House at that time. The work at committee was done by my colleague from St. John's East who was the defence critic before me and continued as critic afterward when our new leader was sworn into office and created his shadow cabinet.
At that time, we had a bill that everybody had worked hard on. They put a lot of time and effort into getting a bill that they could agree on because it was important to the military. We did that job collectively. The remarks that the parliamentary secretary made at the time were in reference to the work that I was doing with him and his House leader, his minister and my party leader, our interim leader at the time, as we tried to find a way to get that bill in front of the House and get it passed because the work had been done and we had agreement.
I point that out because it is critically important to understand the context of the previous bill if we are going to understand at least the politics around the current bill.
We had this whole process. Compromises were made. Compromise is not a dirty word. That is how things get done. Everybody found language they could live with and, as far as I know, it was unanimous. There certainly was a majority, meaning our caucus and the government. There may have been others but I do not see any nod from the Liberals, but that is not relevant to this point. The point is that the bill would have been law had we been able to get it in front of the House. I do not want to point fingers. I do not know who to blame for that. There is lots of blame to go around. Everybody can have a bit. However, what matters is that it did not happen.
The government now has its majority Parliament and when we came back here, the bill came back. We had reasons. Any reasonable minded person would have reason to believe that the bill that would come back would be the bill that we agreed upon. That makes the most sense. That way it would have ensured a quicker passage through the House. We would not be standing here right now. It would already be law.
We were not about to change our minds or our position. We had made the compromises. We had put together a bill that we could live with and we were prepared to stand behind it, and dare I say, we would have been prepared to stand behind that bill in this Parliament had it been brought back in whole, but it was not.
I do not care whether it is one clause, one amendment, two amendments or a thousand amendments. When we are dealing with legislation such as this, one clause, if it creates an injustice or leaves an injustice in place, is not acceptable. It is not a question of how many amendments the government did not put in here. It is the point that it did not bring back the same bill that everyone had agreed on was in the best interests of this Parliament, and more important, of the military, and most important, of the personnel within our military.
That would have been the process that a reasonable person would have expected. It would have been one that I assure the government we would have responded to, because what ground would we have had to stand on? If we were standing here at second reading and for some stupid reason we were opposing it, the government would ask us what the deal was, and say that we agreed to it before so why were we not in agreement now.
We were not going to do that but now we, the official opposition, are in a position where the shoe is on the other foot. The government brought back a bill that is not the bill that was agreed upon. We will agree that this is a step forward. In this context I say to a number of members who have raised procedural questions about why we are not supporting it at second reading, even though we say it is a step forward, this is not a regular bill and it is not a regular situation. That is why.
I cannot imagine why we would support a bill that is not the bill we supported before and does not have the things in it that we thought were important and made other compromises and changes in the whole process. Why on earth would we now say that it is a great bill, no problem, let us whiz it through, when some of the things we fought for to make sure there was justice in there are no longer there. Why on earth would we support that bill?
Now we are left with the situation we are in right now, which is the making of the government. Government members own this situation. Had they brought the bill in that had been agreed upon before, the bill would already be law.
However, for reasons we do not yet know, government members went into that with the majority mindset that they do not have to listen to anyone anymore, they do not have to do anything, they have all the power, they have the stable majority and they can do anything they want. They could ram it through here. Hell, they control the Senate. They could ram it through there too. That is the mentality we are left with on the bill.
We are so far away from the climate of co-operation that existed in the creation of the previous bill, Bill C-41, that we have no choice but to make our principled stand.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the one-minute notice. I managed to get through two of my seven points.
