Mike Lake

[Committees of the House, April 24th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member has been in this House for a long time. She just said if we wanted to do something we could do it. She should know that it is very clear that the Liberals have expressed support for what she wants to do. Her party is in a coalition agreement with the Liberals. All she needs to do is walk across the floor to the two Liberal members who have been heckling me the entire time I have been speaking and cut a deal with them to do it tomorrow—

[Committees of the House, April 24th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, again, we are talking about a Senate public bill that could be supported by all parties and we are having a conversation about some parties in the House taking the bill in a completely different direction than the senator originally intended. Not one member in this House would accept that if it was their own private member's bill, but they are expecting us to move on with it today. The government could do this if it wanted to tomorrow.

[Committees of the House, April 24th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, we had a vote half an hour ago to move on, and the Liberals voted against it.

[Committees of the House, April 24th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, this is the first time I have ever spoken where I have had members stand up three times and raise of points of order to try and delay the speech that I am making.

I will sit down after making this final point, which is, again, the same point that I have been making.

This is a Senate public bill that is very important to the senator who is moving it. The Liberals and the NDP have very clearly tried to change it into something completely different than what it is. That is not acceptable, and I would encourage the Liberals and NDP that, if they feel very strongly about the things that they are bringing up and the ways that they want to change the bill, they move forward with government legislation as quickly as they can. We can have this conversation tomorrow if they choose to.

[Committees of the House, April 24th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, it is kind of funny to see these two members. I will not make any Muppet references here, but to hear them chirping from the gallery, and here we go again—

[Committees of the House, April 24th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, there is latitude. I am talking about process, which is really important here. The two members that keep rising on points of order have the highest word counts in the House of Commons. I have listened to many speeches where they have not even been in the same area code as the subject being discussed. I am actually talking about a process that is important here. I am talking about something that is critical.

The senator who moved this bill said that she does not want to see the bill go in the direction that opposition members from the Liberals and NDP are taking it. It is very clear. I think they are over there strategizing what other point of order they can raise so that we can avoid moving on that talk about—

[Committees of the House, April 24th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, again, the issue today is that there is a Senate public bill, moved by a senator. The issue is very serious for her. She has asked specifically, in testifying before committee, not to go way beyond the scope of the bill.

We all have those opportunities where we get a chance to move things that are very important to us. I have had the opportunity to do it myself. In fact, we just had much co-operation in the House around a Senate public bill on autism. After taking the time to do the research and put together a private member's bill, working with stakeholders and fine-tuning it to be something, I cannot imagine moving it and then having members from other parties trying to turn it into a completely different bill than the one I was moving. I think any member of the House of Commons could understand this.

Any member of Parliament who has taken the time to move a private member's bill and do all that work to prepare it could understand—

[Committees of the House, April 24th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, of course, but I will point out that the hon. member who just rose on this point of order speaks more and uses more words in the House than almost any other member of Parliament. He has the opportunity to stand any time he wants. He is getting applause. I cannot say how many members he was getting applause from, but it was very quiet. I will point that out—

[Committees of the House, April 24th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, since we are having this conversation, I have a couple of points on this. It is interesting that we are supposed to be talking about the budget today. The NDP and Liberal members have agreed to have this debate here in this House because they do not want to talk about the budget, including all the challenges with the budget and the economic disaster that reflects the previous approach taken by a different Prime Minister Trudeau back in the seventies and eighties. It is also interesting that the debate we are talking about today is something that the coalition could decide to have any day, if they wanted to.

Any day, NDP and Liberal members could decide to move legislation to accomplish exactly what we are talking about today. Instead, they have chosen to do this in a different way, using up valuable House time when we could be talking about the budget. If it was something that was important to them, they could do it on their own through their coalition.

I am not on the immigration committee, but my understanding is that parties have worked collaboratively on that committee. I understand that the senator who moved this Senate public bill did not want to move beyond the scope to the degree that we are talking about right now. This goes way beyond the scope of the bill. It is very unusual to see this approach.

It is sad. First of all, it is an important issue that deserves to be discussed seriously. The bill itself is a bill that members from all parties of the House should be able to support. Instead, we have this political gamesmanship of sorts today.

It seems that this is all because the NDP and Liberal members do not want to talk about a disastrous budget. What we are not talking about today, because we are talking about this, is an approach with the budget that projects endless deficits into the future. If we look at the impact of this budgeting approach, again, we only need to look back to the Trudeau government of the seventies and eighties to see what that disastrous approach would look like. In those years, there was a deficit in 14 out of 15 years. The then Trudeau government came into power with almost no debt in Canada and left with a generational debt. It was a debt that, a generation later, required another Liberal government in the late nineties, the Chrétien-Martin Liberal government—

[Committees of the House, April 24th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I am not sure whether the offensive reference was “old” or “Muppets”. Usually they get their back up when I start talking about the Trudeau legacy. We have had this happen on multiple occasions as we talk about budgets and disastrous Liberal economic policy. We get talking about the Trudeau legacy. Of course, I am talking about the Pierre Trudeau legacy.