Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith. I am sure she will do an excellent job, as usual.
I am honoured, and perhaps a little saddened, to rise in the House to speak to the privilege motion currently before us. I say it saddens me a little because it is unfortunate that we have to move privilege motions and hold a debate on this matter, rather than doing our usual, ongoing work. Nevertheless, this is a very important matter, and I will come back to it in more detail later.
I think this question raises a much broader issue, that is, our ability to do our work in general. It is important because we are all here to represent our constituents and all Canadians. It is crucial that we be able to do so properly, because that is our most fundamental role.
One of the opposition's key roles is holding the government to account. Although we often hold it to account on budget issues, I feel we should hold it to account for all of its decisions. To do that, we need to be able to have in-depth debates and move about freely on the Hill so that we can take part in those debates.
During the election campaign, the Liberals said they wanted to work on creating a more collegial atmosphere and making it easier for us to do the job people elected us to do, but it really seems like things are going the other way and the Liberals are breaking their promises, just as they have done so many other times.
We were promised sunny ways. We were told everything would be great and everyone would get along and work together. However, for the last little while, the government has been trying to change the system so it can get its hands on all the power. Initially, I thought its goal was to prevent the opposition from having a say, but that is not quite right. What the government is really trying to do is make it so that anything said in the House, any argument the opposition might make, is simply ignored or carries no real weight.
For example, the government wants to change the rules of the House. I have no problem with discussing the rules of the House. However, what we are seeing now and what we saw last year during the debate around Motion No. 6 is the government's desire to foist its own vision of how the House should work on us, and that vision involves more power for the government.
People keep saying there is going to be a conversation about this. I bet I am not the only member of the House who is starting to wonder if “conversation” is really the right word here.
As we get to know this government better, we realize that having a conversation means that it will talk, it will listen, it will allow us to talk, but at the end of the day it is still going to do whatever it wants. The government wonders why the House is dysfunctional at times. The answer seems obvious when we look at what the government did with Motion No. 6 and what it is trying to do yet again to limit our powers.
The government is not really leaving us the choice to rise or not rise on motions like this on a question of privilege. On behalf of the people we represent, we have to express our right and our privilege to truly be heard on these major issues.
I was talking about the word “conversation”, but another way of saying it is “keep talking”. In other words, we can talk all we want, but at the end of the day, the government is going to do what it wants. Electoral reform is another fine example. The government promised to have a conversation and listen to what Canadians had to say about electoral reform. The government formed a committee that travelled across the country. It was all very nice.
Almost 90% of the experts and Canadians who appeared before the committee were of the same opinion, agreeing that we should have a mixed member proportional system. The Liberals did not like it because, as we know, it would not necessarily give them the advantage. Suddenly, the conversation came to an abrupt end. The Liberals said that they had let the people speak, but now they would do what they wanted and break a promise that they repeated many times.
This has happened in connection with several issues. There is the matter of House procedure. They are trying to limit the powers of the parliamentary budget officer. How will limiting these powers help transparency and accountability? They are also using closure. On this issue of privilege, it is quite interesting, given that our colleagues from Milton and Beauce were unable to vote because they did not have access to the House.
When members raised this question of privilege, the Liberals' reaction was to use their majority to prevent the matter from being debated. Even the Speaker said that it was unprecedented, that a government had never before used its majority to prevent a debate on a question of privilege.
In the end, they changed their minds, so we could discuss it here today, but now here we go again. The Liberals are imposing a gag order on this matter. In this context, we have to wonder what happened to all the lofty promises to be more collegial and work together. All this is coming from a government that promised transparency and openness.
Everyone here today saw question period, for instance. So much for transparency and openness, when the Minister of National Defence speaks out of both sides of his mouth and the Prime Minister does not really answer any questions. I think that is why more and more people are saying that, in the end, the Prime Minister and his government are just like the Harper government, but with a grin. We are happy to see a smile, but we would like to see a little more in terms of fundamental changes.
I would like to say a quick word about one of my memories of Jack Layton, from our first caucus meeting. We are not supposed to discuss caucus outside of caucus. He spoke to us at length about respect. That is what this is about, respect for members and for our institutions. I think that is what everyone here today is asking for.
