House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2025, with 53% of the vote.
Committees of the House October 31st, 2018
Mr. Speaker, the very last comment the member made was about other members standing up. Does the member have any thoughts on the member for Etobicoke Centre, who in the past has been a strong proponent of building democracies and electoral fairness and who took disputed ballots all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada? Does the member for Durham have any thoughts on what the member for Etobicoke Centre should be saying in a situation like this?
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship October 31st, 2018
Mr. Speaker, on this question of privilege, I would draw the Chair's attention to past Speakers' rulings on this matter, particularly that of Speaker Fraser, that information distributed to the media prior to being tabled in the House constituted a clear prima facie breach of the privileges of the House. I would request that the official opposition be provided the opportunity to come back with additional information and citations on this matter, confirming this egregious breach of the privileges of parliamentarians in this place.
Points of Order October 31st, 2018
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order related to Standing Order 151. Last evening, an unlawful and illegitimate meeting of the Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association was held in this very building to orchestrate a coup against its chair, the hon. member for Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill.
After the meeting had been called to order, the chair entertained a point of order about the validity of the meeting. After taking advice from a procedural clerk in attendance, she ruled that the meeting was not properly constituted and therefore adjourned. Then the majority of the association members present left the room and left Centre Block, in fact respecting the chair's ruling that the meeting had been duly adjourned.
Those members were later shocked to hear that the hon. member for Etobicoke Centre then claimed to reconvene the group and presided over an illegal and entirely out of order meeting, where a purported sham motion was passed to remove the chair and install the member for Etobicoke Centre as the new chair of the association. This was done in utter and defiant breach of the association's constitution and by-laws, in disregard of all understanding of parliamentary procedure and in total defiance of fair play and the Liberals' claim to practise positive politics.
What it was, Mr. Speaker, was a hatchet job orchestrated by the Prime Minister's office and the chief government whip, whose staffers were at the meeting taking attendance and barring Liberals from leaving. The Liberal Party, which claims to bring us sunny ways, arranged for the political show execution of the hon. member for Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill because she had the courage to stand up to the Prime Minister and call out his arrogant and dangerous approach to governing.
Voltaire, an author whose works the Prime Minister probably had read to him as a child, described the court martial and execution of British Admiral John Byng with this line:
“[...] dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres.”
In English, the line is, “In this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.” Apparently, the same can be said about the Liberal caucus. So much for our so-called feminist Prime Minister.
As I mention, my point of order goes to Standing Order 151. That rule, which we do not often reference here, provides that:
The Clerk of the House is responsible for the safekeeping of all the papers and records of the House, and has the direction and control over all the officers and clerks employed in the offices, subject to such orders as the Clerk may, from time to time, receive from the Speaker or the House.
Within less than an hour after the illegal and illegitimate election, an election attended and manipulated by most of the cabinet, the sham election of the member of Parliament for Etobicoke Centre, the parliamentary website was updated to show that he is now the chair of the association.
Conservatives dispute the validity of this election and will be exploring all available avenues, including judicial recourse, to uphold the hon. member for Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill's continued service as chair of the association. I ask that you, Mr. Speaker, issue an order under Standing Order 151 to the clerks of this House to undo last night's changes in respect of the parliamentary records maintained concerning the Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association.
Additionally, Mr. Speaker, I ask that you also instruct the clerks under that standing order to advise the NATO Parliamentary Assembly immediately and well in advance of the 2018 session due to be held in Halifax from September 16 to 19 that Canada's delegation will be headed by the hon. member for Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill and that any claim by the hon. member for Etobicoke Centre to head Canada's delegation is entirely false, without foundation and illegitimate.
Elections Modernization Act October 30th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, a little know fact is that I and my colleague from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan went to university together. We were classmates at Carleton University back in the day. Therefore, it is an honour to now be a colleague of the hon. member.
The member talked about the very important issue of foreign influence. We do not want to see the challenges we have seen in other countries around the world being brought to Canada. We would have hoped that the Liberal government would have taken the issue of foreign influence seriously. Our Conservative opposition introduced a number of amendments that would have dealt with this, including one that would have had an outright ban on all foreign funding to third parties that were acting in our electoral process. Unfortunately, those were denied.
However, the government needs to take this issue seriously. It needs to realize that this is not a problem that will go away on its own. In fact, this problem will get worse. A number of amendments introduced by the Conservatives were voted down. The would have added safeguards for things like foreign influence with respect to social media financing and funding to third parties. It is unfortunate, but that was the reality. Now it falls to our opposition to hold the government to account and ensure that there are meaningful safeguards to prevent the foreign influence of Canadian elections.
Elections Modernization Act October 30th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, the member for Yukon chairs the procedure and House affairs committee. I have to give him credit. He is an exceptional chair when it comes to a very difficult file and ensuring the committee remains on track, especially during clause by clause. Therefore, I thank him. and I say that legitimately. It is a tough job.
The member asked for a specific example. I will use the issue of foreign financing. We heard recommendations at committee from none less an authority than Dr. Lori Turnbull, who was at one point a senior adviser to the Privy Council Office on democratic institutions. She recommended that there be segregated bank accounts for third parties to ensure that every dime spent in Canada by third parties would be from domestic sources, from Canadian sources that were legally entitled to donate to Canadian political entities, including third parties. The Conservative opposition introduced that amendment and it was voted down. It would have ensured a high degree of transparency and an appropriate usage of funds by a third party to ensure foreign actors would not unduly influence Canadian elections.
That is one major concern. If I had 20 minutes to talk, I could list off a number of amendments that were not approved but ought to have been approved.
Elections Modernization Act October 30th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, free and fair elections are a fundamental part of our Canadian democracy. Unfortunately, the entire democratic institutions file has been a failure since the Liberals took office.
One of the greatest promises they made in the last election was that the 2015 election would be the last election under first past the post. There was no asterisk. There was no disclaimer. There was no fine print that said it would be the last election under first past the post unless, of course, they did not get the type of electoral system they wanted that would benefit them, “them” being the Liberal Party.
There was no such asterisk. There was no such small print. Nonetheless, the Liberals walked it back, and they blamed everyone else for their failure. They blamed the opposition. They blamed the committee itself. They blamed the multi-party committee, which came to a general consensus. They blamed that committee, which included Liberal members, for its failure. They blamed the general public for not having a clear consensus on what an alternative electoral system ought to be. However, the failure rests with the Liberal Party. It is, and it continues to be, the Liberal Party's failure.
While the Liberals were failing at the electoral reform committee, they also introduced Bill C-33, which they claimed would implement many of the recommendations from the Chief Electoral Officer following the 2015 election. Here are the facts. Bill C-33 was tabled at first reading on November 24, 2016, nearly two years ago. Today that bill remains at first reading, unmoved and unloved. We have to question the motivation of the current Liberal government in introducing that bill, then allowing it to sit at first reading and never once bringing it forward for debate in this august chamber.
In testimony at committee, when the eminent political science scholar, Dr. Paul Thomas, questioned the very motive of the Liberal Party, he said:
The government's management of this file has been very poor, in my opinion. If [Bill C-33] sits on the Order Paper for 18 months, it says something about the commitment of the government to get this moving ahead
However, that is exactly what has happened. The Liberals introduced legislation for window dressing and allowed it to sit idly by.
There are other failures in the democratic institutions file. Take cash for access, for example, and the ethical lapses of the current Liberal Party when it comes to fundraising. The Liberal government had barely been sworn in when it was already using its ministers to fundraise, using lobbyists who were registered to lobby their own ministers to fundraise from them. Rather than admitting that they were wrong to be fundraising from access to federal ministers, the Liberals tried to legitimize this practice by introducing Bill C-50. Of course, being Liberals, they left a great big loophole, what we call the Laurier Club loophole, allowing their well-funded Liberal donors to continue to have unfettered access to Liberal decision-makers, as long as it happened at Laurier Club events. They might as well have named that clause the Laurier Club loophole, because that is exactly what it is. Rather than dealing with the issue, rather than dealing with the unethical nature of selling access to senior ministers of the Crown, the Liberals simply used legislation to try to legitimize their bad practices.
The Liberals' failures do not end there. The Liberals even failed in the appointment process for the Chief Electoral Officer, the person in charge of ensuring that our elections run smoothly and appropriately, free from all interference.
The former chief electoral officer, to his great credit and foresight, announced that he would retire early from his position. He announced this in the spring of 2016 to allow whoever succeeded him as CEO to have enough time to get familiar with the job and to prepare for the 2019 election. However, at the end of December 2016, when he formally resigned and retired as chief electoral officer, there was no replacement in the offing. In fact, there was no replacement until this spring, nearly two years after Mr. Mayrand announced his retirement.
Even when they finally replaced the Chief Electoral Officer, they could not do it without failing. The media reported that a new Chief Electoral Officer had been chosen on April 4, 2018. They noted that someone had been selected, that the consultation had been done with the Leader of the Opposition and the leader of the third party.
Lo and behold, weeks later, we found out that the original name circulated in both the media and to the opposition was in fact not the new Chief Electoral Officer. Rather, the very competent interim Chief Electoral Officer was appointed as the permanent replacement. I have to wonder how the Liberals could have waited nearly two years to appoint the person who was already doing the job. It is yet another example of the Liberal government's failing on the democratic institutions file.
That brings us to this bill itself, Bill C-76. Both the former and current Chief Electoral Officers were very clear about the need to have this legislation tabled and implemented early so that they could be prepared for the next election. In fact, when the acting, now permanent, Chief Electoral Officer, Stéphane Perrault, appeared before committee, on April 24, 2018, he stated:
When I appeared last February, I indicated that the window of opportunity to implement major changes in time for the next election was rapidly closing. That was not a new message. Both Monsieur Mayrand and I had previously indicated that legislative changes should be enacted by April 2018. This means that we are now at a point where the implementation of new legislation will likely involve some compromises.
What did the Liberals do? They sat on their hands for nearly three years and then finally tabled Bill C-76 on April 30, 2018, the same day the Chief Electoral Officer said he needed legislation fully enacted, with royal assent. The Liberals only introduced it on April 30 and then expected the opposition and the third party to simply roll over and allow this legislation to pass expeditiously.
We cannot ignore the fact that this very debate we are having in this chamber is under the guillotine of time allocation. Frankly, I am shocked, because it was the Liberal Party and the Prime Minister who introduced and supported a motion that would have amended Standing Order 78 so that:
No motion, pursuant to any paragraph of this Standing Order, may be used to allocate a specified number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of any bill that seeks to amend the Canada Elections Act or the Parliament of Canada Act.
Here we are with a bill that has 401 clauses and 352 pages. It is a bill the Liberal Party itself accepted as being flawed by introducing 65 amendments during the committee analysis, because it recognized that despite waiting nearly three years, it was rushing at the last minute to try to get some legislation on the books, and it tried to correct its own legislation this past summer.
We see that work has yet to be done in the Senate, in the other place. I am intrigued to see what amendments it will be relying on to fix some of the concerns expressed about this piece of legislation.
This legislation is flawed, and we will be voting against it.
Elections Modernization Act October 25th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, here we are once again with time allocation on an electoral reform bill, on a bill that would change how we run our elections.
I wish I could say I am surprised by the Liberals, but this is yet another failure on their part. They failed when they tried to do electoral reform. When they did not get what they wanted, they left it. Bill C-33, introduced in November 2016, was left unmoved and unloved on the Order Paper for the last two years.
The Chief Electoral Officer and the former chief electoral officer both said they needed legislation passed with royal assent by April 30 of this year, yet this legislation was not even introduced in this place until April 30. This was yet another failure on the part of the Liberals.
Why will they not just admit this is another attempt to game the system in their favour?
Points of Order October 23rd, 2018
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order to ask you to rule new clause 344.1 in Bill C-76, reported back from the Procedure and House Affairs Committee yesterday afternoon, out of order for offending the so-called parent act rule.
Before getting into the substance of my argument, I want to acknowledge that this is essentially an appeal of a committee chair's ruling. However, this issue falls within the allowable categories of such points of order. On April 28, 1992, at page 9801 of the Debates, Speaker Fraser said:
As the House knows, the Speaker does not intervene on matters upon which committees are competent to take decisions. However, in cases where a committee has exceeded its authority, particularly in relation to bills, the Speaker has been called upon to deal with such matters after a report has been presented to the House.
Your immediate predecessor cited this passage as an authority in a ruling he delivered in relation to the parent act rule on May 1, 2014, at page 4787 of the Debates.
Turning to the substance of my point of order, the parent act rule, page 771 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, states:
In the case of a bill referred to a committee after second reading, an amendment is inadmissible if it proposes to amend a statute that is not before the committee or a section of the parent Act, unless the latter is specifically amended by a clause of the bill.
That latter point traces back to citation 698(8)(b) of Beauschene's Parliamentary Rules and Forms, sixth edition, edited by Fraser, Dawson, and Holtby.
In the present case, an amendment, known in the Procedure and House Affairs Committee proceedings as “Liberal amendment 55”, purported to add a new clause to Bill C-76 for the purpose of making an amendment to section 498 of the Canada Elections Act. Bill C-76, as introduced, would amend both sections 497.5 and 499 of the Canada Elections Act, the two sections that bookend section 498, but not section 498 itself.
In ruling on my point of order at committee, the chair stated that there is an exception to the parent act rule for consequential amendments, but cited no authority in that regard. An exception such as that could have wide-sweeping consequences, which merits a passing reference somewhere in our various procedural authorities so that members may be guided appropriately.
No such reference, aside, or footnote articulating this exception to such a clear-cut rule appears in a canvassing of Bosc and Gagnon, O'Brien and Bosc, Marleau and Montpetit, Beauschene's or Erskine May. However, I have found the words of Mr. Speaker Fraser, from the ruling I cited earlier:
When a bill is referred to a standing or legislative committee of the House, that committee is only empowered to adopt, amend or negative the clauses found in that piece of legislation and to report the bill to the House with or without amendments. The committee is restricted in its examination in a number of ways. It cannot infringe on the financial initiative of the Crown, it cannot go beyond the scope of the bill as passed at second reading, and it cannot reach back to the parent act to make further amendments not contemplated in the bill no matter how tempting this may be.
This sentiment was reiterated much more recently by no less an authority than this House's esteemed former law clerk, Rob Walsh. Mr. Walsh, at page 115 of his book On the House: An Inside Look at the House of Commons, published just last autumn, offered this perspective from a drafter's point of view:
An amendment to a bill amending an existing Act of Parliament, if passed, cannot amend a section in the “parent act” that may be implicated in the change but is not being amended in the bill. As a lawyer, I found this rule problematic at times. Occasionally it seemed clear that a section in the parent act, untouched in the amending bill, would need to be amended if the bill's amendments were passed. This is a “consequential” amendment, an amendment that is a consequence of another amendment. The lawyer drafting an amendment for a private member...might see that another section in the parent act would also need to be amended if the member's amendment is to work effectively, but the procedural rules won't allow the consequential amendment to be proposed.
These citations, I submit, are quite clear that consequential amendments, no matter how tempting, cannot be made to a bill if such amendments run afoul of our clear rules and procedures.
Accordingly, Mr. Speaker, I would ask that you find new clause 344.1 to be out of order and that it be struck from Bill C-76. Nonetheless, should you find favour with the analysis of the member for Yukon, the chair of the committee, I would ask that the Chair's ruling in consideration of Standing Order 10 “state the...authority applicable to the case” so that all members will understand the applicable limits when contemplating amendments they might like to propose to legislation in the future.
Petitions October 23rd, 2018
National Defence Act October 1st, 2018
Madam Speaker, I want to welcome my hon. colleague for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord.
I congratulate him on his recent election to the House of Commons.
During his election campaign, did his constituents talk about the importance of standing up for victims of crime?