Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to this very important motion. I would like to focus primarily on two parts. The first is this idea that somehow the governing party, which now has a majority, does not deserve to have a majority on committees. Then, I would also like to speak to some of what I have been hearing in the House throughout this debate as it relates to floor crossings and their legitimacy, more generally speaking.
The reality of the situation is, if we had just had an election and it produced the numbers that are in the House right now in each party, we would naturally assume that the governing party, which has a majority in the House, would have a majority on committees. That is not a stretch. I think everybody would agree with that.
Let us look at where we are today with the fact that we have recently had some by-elections. We have had some floor crossings. We now have a majority on this side of the House. To suggest that we somehow should not have a majority in committees is, I think, extremely inaccurate and does not honour and pay tribute to the Westminster parliamentary system that we operate within.
The reality is this: We do not get a majority on committees just because we got a majority at the election. We get a majority on committees because a majority of the people who sit in this place, a majority of the members of Parliament, sit in this place on and with the governing party. That is Westminster democracy. That is how it works. That is how it has worked not just since the Confederation of our country, but indeed since Westminster Parliaments, going even further back.
I forgot to mention that I will be sharing my time with the member for Kings—Hants.
I really reject that notion. I feel that the majority of Conservatives understand this too. To be honest, I feel as though a lot of what we are seeing right now is performative. It is almost as though there is this idea they have to perform in this way, even though they would have done the exact same thing. I asked the member for Dufferin—Caledon moments ago if he could look the Speaker in the eye and tell him that they would not do the exact same thing. That was the closest I have ever gotten to a truthful answer from that member whenever I have asked him one. He was not even able to do that.
All he was able to say was that their motion would have been different. How would it have been different? The mover and the seconder would have been different, perhaps, but that is probably the extent of it. Maybe they would have done something more draconian, like actually remove a Liberal member. They could have done that. We could have done that.
That is not what ended up happening. We are proposing to add two Liberal members. They will say we added two members, so it is an overreach. Well, how do we achieve the majority on committees? We can either add one member and then have a tie, which is not a majority, or we could take away a Conservative and add one Liberal, and that would give us a majority. However, we can imagine the outrage that would occur if we tried to remove a Conservative.
Let us just imagine the Leader of the Opposition having to make 30 or 35 phone calls to people telling them they are not on committee anymore. That would probably completely seal the deal of the inevitable that is coming to the Leader of the Opposition, which is that he will not be the Leader of the Opposition anymore. This idea that somehow two is an overreach, I think, is extremely disingenuous if we take the time to sit down and look at the math.
I want to shift to the other thing that I want to talk about, and that is more specifically the idea of floor crossings and the idea that these floor crossings are not legitimate. I will read the quote that I read earlier. This is a quote from Stephen Harper when he sat in this seat right in front of me as prime minister. He was asked a question in question period about Bill C-306, which I will reference in a second, and whether or not the Conservatives would support it. This was a bill that would have forced a by-election if somebody crossed the floor.
Stephen Harper said:
Mr. Speaker, as I have said before, I believe members of Parliament should have that freedom and be accountable to their constituents for their decisions at the next election. However, in my observation, the only parties that really have this as an obsession are the parties that no one ever crosses to.
The irony about this, because it is a lot richer than just that, is that when it came time to vote for Bill C-306, which was put forward by the NDP, almost all of the Conservative bench voted against it, including the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Battle River—Crowfoot, who now claims that is what should happen.
Members will remember that in a press conference not long ago, the Leader of the Opposition said that if somebody crosses the floor, there should be a by-election. Well, if that is such a principled stand of his, why did he not vote for Bill C-306? He did not. By the way, there were a couple of Conservative members who did vote for Bill C-306, such as the member from Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, who still sits in the House. However, the member for Battle River—Crowfoot, who was the member for Carleton before, and I know it is a lot to keep track of, voted against it, but now he is suddenly taking a principled stand.
That is because it is not about the principle of the issue. It is about when the principle is convenient, and the principle is convenient to the Leader of the Opposition right now because it suits his desires. However, 10 years ago or 15 years ago, when he had to vote on Bill C-306, it was not a principle of his because he was not in that position. That is the reality of what we are facing right now.
Nobody really believes that floor crossings are illegitimate. It is performative to say that. The Conservatives are getting up here and talking about it as though it were the first time it has ever happened, not only in Canadian democracy but in Westminster Parliaments writ large. It is very common. As a matter of fact, people have crossed to the Conservatives before. In Stephen Harper's own words that I read out, the only people who are obsessed with preventing floor crossings are members of the parties that people are leaving.
It is time for the Conservatives to pause and to do some self-reflection, to focus not on attacking the people who are leaving them but on asking themselves why they are leaving. If the Conservatives were to go through that very simply exercise of trying to figure that out, I am sure they would come to some conclusions that would position them to be a better opposition and a better Conservative Party.
As much as I like to debate and to challenge Conservatives, and I also receive it from them, I also value in the Westminster parliamentary system a strong opposition, because I know that a strong opposition does hold the government to account and challenges the government, directly and indirectly, to do better, to be better, to make better laws and policies and to make the lives of Canadians better. That is why it is so important that we have a strong opposition.
Unfortunately, we do not have that now. The member for Dufferin—Caledon spoke before me, and his entire speech, yet again, and I have been hearing it for 10 years, was about some person doing something and some other person being in breach of something else. The Conservatives should stop focusing on people and focus on the issues. This is what matters to Canadians.
Members would remember that the Conservatives focused on Justin Trudeau relentlessly for 10 years. What did they accomplish by that? The minute he left, they became irrelevant, and they are still sitting in the exact same place they were back then. They can yell and say that they accomplished their goal and did what they set out to do, but at the end of the day, they are still sitting over there because they had nothing to offer.
The only thing the Conservatives offered was criticism of individuals, calling the former prime minister a “trust fund baby” and making up every name they could possibly come up with. They used cheesy slogans, which we heard day after day, rather than coming to the House and giving S. O. 31s on important stuff that was going on in their communities and that they could share with their communities. The Conservatives spent the whole time just attacking people, such as Justin Trudeau and Bill Morneau, rather than discussing the issues.
I mean this as honestly as I can: Canadians deserve an opposition that holds the government accountable to what makes the lives of Canadians better. If we get that, the Conservatives will actually challenge the government, and it will change things.
