Jay Hill

[Committees of the House, May 4th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions among all the parties and I think you would find there is unanimous consent for the following motion. I move:

That twelve members of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security be authorized to travel to the Institut national de recherche scientifique, University of Quebec in Laval, Quebec, on Thursday, May 10, and that the necessary staff accompany the Committee.

[Committees of the House, May 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I think if you were to seek it, you would find unanimous consent to grant the time extension for the bill.

[Committees of the House, May 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I think if you were to seek it, you would find unanimous consent to apply the results of the vote just taken to the motion presently before the House, with Conservative members present this evening voting opposed.

[April 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask that the vote be deferred until the end of government orders tomorrow.

[Committees of the House, April 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions between all parties. I think you will find that there is unanimous consent for the following motion. I move:

That, in relation to its study on the role of the public broadcaster in the 21st century, six members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage be authorized to travel to St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Montréal, Quebec, from May 23 to 25, 2007, and that the necessary staff do accompany the committee.

(Motion agreed to)

[Committees of the House, April 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to get back to the issue I raised earlier with the member for Charlottetown.

We are left to guess why the member for York West would move this concurrence motion on a Friday afternoon if it were not the case that the Liberals do not want to discuss and debate the legislation we are here to debate, which is Bill C-43, the reform of the Senate, long overdue reform I might add.

I would like to pose a question to my colleague. This report was tabled on March 27 and the Liberals, as other did, had 12 sitting days when they could have called concurrence on this issue and discussed the report. I am left to ponder.

I take the member for York West at her word. When she made her remarks earlier today, she said how important this issue was, how critical and crucial it was that we have a good, fulsome debate about the committee report. I do not disagree with that, but I am left wondering.

Given that the Liberals had 12 days and if it were that critical, why would they not have brought it forward?

If they are really serious about this issue, why would they have only notified their own colleagues? The member for Charlottetown said that he cancelled his flight home for the weekend so he could stay here to debate this issue. We are fortunate that my colleague, who just spoke, happens to sit on that committee. We had no prior knowledge of this so we could ensure that the government members, who sit on the public accounts committee, would be here to participate in the debate.

We are left to really question, along with the viewers watching this at home I am sure, how serious the Liberals happen to be about this debate.

[Committees of the House, April 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, earlier I posed the question to the member for Charlottetown, that despite the importance of this particular issue that has been moved by his colleague, whether this is a delaying tactic yet again on the part of the opposition to prevent the House from dealing with and debating Bill C-43, a very important piece of legislation that, I would argue, is long overdue to make some incremental changes to the other place.

Mr. Speaker, through you, with the greatest of respect, if I heard the member for Charlottetown correctly, and I want to give him the opportunity to correct the record if I misheard him, he stated that despite being in the House today and prepared to debate this particular concurrence motion, that he had no idea what the House would be debating today. Did I hear him correctly?

[Committees of the House, April 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague from across the way and his intervention on this particular concurrence motion. While I would agree with him that the subject matter is one of great concern, the whole business about accountability as it pertains to the public accounts act, the whole issue of accountability is one that we on this side of the House take very seriously.

My question for my colleague is relatively simple. It seems like every time we start to debate Bill C-43, the legislation that we were debating today dealing with Senate selections, in other words, to reform the other place, that one of the opposition parties, in this case the Liberal Party, takes it upon itself to get us off the agenda. I wonder why it is that those members do not want to discuss the reform of the upper chamber.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, April 27th, 2007]

Which is your position?

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, April 27th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I really do not know where to begin after that presentation by my colleague from the New Democratic Party, but I must say at the outset that it certainly does not surprise me.

All too often we see when parties and governments endeavour to make some substantive reform, some change, they run into this type of nonsense. Certainly, in the nearly 14 years that I have been here, I have confronted this at every turn. I remember the former Prime Minister, Mr. Chrétien. I remember the immediate past Prime Minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard, spouting the same kind of nonsense, that if we cannot have this all encompassing dramatic reform, then nothing is worthwhile.

The member used the terms “tinkering” and “half measures”, and that is why he is not going to support it. Even a cursory examination of reforms that have taken place in other countries would show that all too often this is how we have to begin. We have to start somewhere to make some change and get the ball rolling.

Our Parliament is well over 130 years old and that archaic other place, the Senate, still has vacancies filled by appointment. The current Prime Minister is the first Prime Minister who has decided to take definitive action by taking some steps to change that after all that time.

I am the first one to admit that this is not a triple E. We are not trying to fool Canadians into believing that somehow the bill is going to bring about an instantaneous triple E Senate. I still believe in the principle of a triple E Senate. I got involved in that. I used to proudly wear the three E lapel pin. I still have it at home.

I have not lost my desire to see that type of dramatic and substantive reform to the upper chamber in this country, but the reality is that we have to start somewhere.

I would suggest that this is a start. If we look at what happened in the United States when the Americans eventually arrived at a triple E senate, their senate was filled by appointments as well. But a few states started the process, just as Alberta has started the process in Canada, and it grew from there. This legislation will accomplish that.