Murray Rankin

[Government Accountability, May 8th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals want to severely restrict the ability of the parliamentary budget officer to initiate studies by requiring him to have a work plan approved by the Speakers of this House and of the Senate.

They also want to prevent members of this House from requesting cost estimates of government projects. That means previous reports on old age security, F-35 fighter jets, and crime legislation would simply not have been possible.

Is this what an independent parliamentary budget officer looks like to the government?

[Public Safety, May 4th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the flawed study of the Afghan detainees scandal was cut short by the Conservatives after only reviewing an initial set of documents. Stéphane Dion at that point said, “[w]hen you read these documents, you will have questions to ask to your Prime Minister”. He also said that the Conservatives were blocking an inquiry because of being “afraid of having to answer to Canadians”.

Therefore, will the Minister of National Defence appear before the defence committee to answer questions about this scandal, yes or no?

[Physician-Assisted Dying, May 2nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, last year the health and justice ministers commissioned the Council of Canadian Academies to conduct independent studies on the eligibility criteria under the new law on medical assistance in dying.

Dr. Harvey Schipper is a vocal opponent of that law, yet he has now been made chair of a committee under it. This raises serious doubts about the impartiality of the entire process. How can Canadians have any confidence that the working group will examine the issue fairly, when its chair opposes medical assistance in dying?

[Privilege, May 1st, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I had the pleasure of working closely with my colleague and friend from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot on the medical aid in dying bill, and I know her to be a thoughtful colleague and very sincere with her questions in this place.

We are here to represent all those people who voted for us, irrespective of that voting record. We are here to represent everyone in our riding, and I believe every member of this House understands and does just that. However, the changes that would be made by one party, albeit the government, to the rules under which we all work for Canadians, need to be understood by all those voters as being unprecedented. Yes, there have been the odd times when changes have been made, as in the election of the Speaker, without this support, but for sweeping changes of this kind, the member's constituents and mine understand this to be what it is, a power grab by the Liberals.

[Privilege, May 1st, 2017]

Madam Speaker, for my hon. colleague across the way to suggest somehow that we are the ones making political this debate is really quite disturbing. It is the government's choice to bring in these unilateral changes and to force them through this place. We are simply responding to that reality. Do I think the rules of this place need to be modernized? Yes. Did I propose a way to the government to do that, along with my Conservative colleagues? Yes, and that was the way former Liberal governments under Mr. Chrétien did it.

I would love to speak about omnibus and prorogation, because the Liberals do not do anything but normalize those processes. They do not make them better. They just make them, to use the words of the government House leader, more efficient.

[Privilege, May 1st, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I rise today on this important question of privilege. On March 22, two of my colleagues, the member for Milton and the member for Beauce, were blocked from accessing the House of Commons, allegedly by the Prime Minister's motorcade. As a result, they were unable to fulfill their principal role as parliamentarians, namely to represent their constituents in a vote in this place.

When the member for Milton raised this question of privilege in the House, the government made the decision to end debate and proceed immediately to orders of the day. The Speaker ruled this decision to be “unprecedented”. The Speaker of the House ruled that no other government, Liberal or otherwise, had gone so far as to end debate in this fashion on a reasonable question of privilege.

The government's action on March 22 appeared to speak volumes about its level of disrespect for members of Parliament and the work we all do in this place. I say appeared to, because one wants to get this to the procedure and House affairs committee for the thorough review it merits in light of this unprecedented action.

Canadians need to know just what happened, how it happened, and how it can never happen again, because this goes to the heart of what we are doing in this place: representing our constituents as best we can. If we cannot get here, allegedly because the Prime Minister's motorcade blocks us from doing that work, I think every Canadian who may be watching this debate will understand why this is so vital.

Parliamentary privilege allows MPs to fulfill their most important role: representing their constituents by voting on business in this place. By shutting down debate the way it did, the government acted with blatant disregard for the way some members were treated in that they were prevented from doing the very thing that each of us in this place is elected to do.

The government's power to move to silence the members for Milton and Beauce demonstrates that to the government, apparently, MPs' privileges and the ability to do their job is less important than government business. I was struck by the government House leader's use of the word “efficiency” and words like “modernization” in describing what they are trying to do, euphemistically, in this fashion to change the very rules under which we operate in this place.

The underlying factor is the precedent these government actions set, whether it is refusing to allow a debate on a question of privilege or unilaterally pushing through changes to the Standing Orders, thereby changing the very process for establishing these rules. We have heard a number of times already how outrageous it is. There is a long-standing convention and tradition of securing party approval from opposition members of recognized parties before proceeding to overhaul the standing rules.

It is unusual, to use a neutral word. Many of us have spoken about how the government had the opportunity to do what Prime Minister Chrétien did when he was prime minister, and that is to allow a committee, chaired by you, Madam Speaker, or someone like you, and representatives of the recognized parties to roll up their sleeves and modernize, to use the House leader's favourite word, the way in which we do business in this place. I was so hopeful that this is what would have happened.

Today I had the opportunity to ask the government House leader a very specific question, which she answered, I think. I asked if she was going to proceed with ramming the cherry-picked parts of her so-called discussion paper through in a motion later this year over the opposition of all opposition members. I believe she said yes. I may be wrong. That is certainly how I heard her answer. In other words, it would break the tradition that goes back to 1867. Here we are celebrating 150 years of Confederation, and the government proposes to make sweeping changes to the way democracy works. Why? It is because the Liberals ran on that, as if that somehow gives them the right, in a fused parliamentary system like ours, to do that.

I was taken by the eloquence of the speech this morning by my friend the member for Burnaby South, who reminded this House about how Charles I lost his head, literally, when the executive tried to make such changes to the parliamentary process. The Liberals seem to forget that although they had all of 39.5% of Canadian voters support them, they do not have powers that are dictatorial in nature. We have traditions to preserve in this place, and I know I speak for opposition members on this side of the House, both Conservative and NDP, when I say that we will not allow those traditions to be broken so easily.

It is quite shocking that the government said it is not going to let the opposition block it from doing what it ran on. We know how sacred the Liberal promises are. I do not know how many times the Prime Minister came to my riding and said that this would be the last election fought on the basis of first past the post. I have lost count of how many times that promise was made. I guess that was a different kind of promise. The Liberals said in the election, and it is right on the Liberal platform page, that they would restore home mail delivery. I guess that was another promise of a different kind than this promise that has to be kept.

The point is that this is not just another promise of that sort. If the government wants to spend money differently in a budget, it is the absolute right of the government to bring a budget bill and use its majority to change things. The point Canadians need to understand is that we do not change the rules of this place because the government claims it ran on that. That is not sufficient. Changing the rules of the House of Commons is not the same thing. The Liberals are but one party, literally, in this place, and that seems to have escaped them.

Canadians should understand how outrageous it would be if the government decided to say in a campaign that it was going to change the way our courts work. After all, that is another part of our democracy and the institutions that make Canada what it is. People would say that of course it cannot do that, because that is another institution it does not have the unilateral right to change. Similarly, it does not have the unilateral right to make sweeping changes, as it purports to do here. I am sure that we on the opposition will continue to remind Canadians of what it is purporting to do.

The Liberals have talked about their so-called modernization in what they initially termed a discussion paper, which is kind of soft and cuddly. They said, “We are going to discuss this with Canadians and have a little chat about how we change the rules.” That changed pretty quickly over the weekend when, late last night, the government House leader called to say, “By the way, you know that discussion we were going to have? Actually, what we are going to do is ram through changes to the rules. We are going to choose a few that are maybe easier to ram through than others, but we are just going to go ahead, bring a motion in, and ram it through using our majority. Have a good day.” That is not going to work for Canadians as they begin to understand the enormous arrogance that statement reflects.

As a matter of fact, one of the things the Liberals would do is take away the tool of filibustering, a tool that, admittedly, should be used very rarely and is used very rarely, but an essential tool nonetheless for parliamentarians in this place. They think that can and should be done. They are also apparently going to use closure. I did not say time allocation, because I believe that under the rules, and members can confirm this, time allocation can be used on bills, but when they wish to limit debate on motions on privilege matters, that is done through closure. I presume that when they face this opposition united against them, they will choose to use closure to ram through their changes.

So much for a warm, friendly, accountable, and transparent government. We look forward to that with interest, when it chooses to do that, this overwhelmingly top-down, Prime Minister-controlled government.

To add irony to irony, the government has said that one of the things it wants to do is change omnibus bills. Let me stop here and say that sometime this week, we are about to begin debate on an omnibus bill the government is introducing, a budget bill. Why is it an omnibus bill? The government is saying that it is going to change it under these modernization processes.

It is an omnibus bill for a couple of reasons. The Judges Act would be amended. The veterans legislation would be changed. By the way, the artificial intelligence bill, which the Liberals introduced, and the veterans bill are both now part of this omnibus bill. Is that not by definition what we do when we add a bunch of things together? It is an omnibus bill, something the Liberals quite properly complained about under Mr. Harper.

It is time for Canadians to recognize what is going on. This opposition is united in fighting against these changes.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, May 1st, 2017]

With regard to the regulatory requirements under sections 141 and 142 of the Health of Animals Regulations that “each animal is able to stand in its natural position without coming into contact with a deck or roof” and that “every equine over 14 hands in height shall be segregated from all other animals during transport by air”: (a) will the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) verify that horses being exported overseas are currently meeting these requirements; (b) can the CFIA verify that inspectors are enforcing these regulations on a consistent basis; (c) who has the authority to declare that the requirements under section 141 do not apply; (d) is the CFIA's professional judgement and previous experience on this matter based on any scientific evidence that they can cite; (e) do the exporters receive a veterinary certificate from a CFIA veterinary inspector or otherwise accredited veterinarian at the quarantine feedlot that certifies that there is no disease or injury present and that it is permissible to export the horses; (f) who transports the horses and crates them at the airport; (g) is there a second veterinary inspection at the airport and, if so, is a second certificate provided to the airport and the aircraft carrier; (h) at what point are the horses examined at the airport; (i) since Canada is a World Organisation for Animal Health member country, is there also a document signed by the port veterinary stating that the shipment meets International Air Transport Association requirements; (j) with what method are the horses individually identified for the purposes of being crated together, so that compatibility is ensured; (k) how was incompatibility determined with regard to the incident filled out on March 10, 2015, non-compliance document Humane Transportation of Animals HT-2015-083416 and what specifically made that incident non-compliant; (l) how many incidents of incompatibility and non-compliance occurred in 2015; and (m) what are the details of all documents and certificates required for the air transport of live horses from Canada to Japan?

[May 1st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague, the member for Burnaby South, for a really excellent speech and for putting this apparently esoteric discussion into something of a historical frame so people who watch these debates will understand just how important it is.

Charles I, as the executive, lost his head over this very topic, and here we have a government that seems to think, as the executive, that it has the ability to ram through changes unilaterally. The government got 39.5% of the vote and believes that gives it the mandate to change the rules of the House.

He talked of the fused legislature and executive in our parliamentary system and how they think, as an executive, they can impose their will on this place. I would like the member to speculate on how that might have been done if the government wanted to make changes to another branch of the government, such as the judiciary. Would that have been acceptable?

Could he enlighten us with the experience he had when he made his changes to the parliamentary rules to bring in electronic petitions and how that compares with how the present government is choosing to proceed in this instance?

[May 1st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, are we to understand that the effect of this motion that the government intends to bring regarding the vast majority of items contained in the discussion paper is that the government will, with its majority, ram those changes through against the opposition of recognized parties in this place?

[Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act, April 10th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, despite the hon. member for Yukon's fatigue from travel, I thought he did an admirable job of explaining a complex bill.

I was pleased to be involved as a lawyer in the creation of the final agreements in those 20 years culminating in the YESAA and am very pleased to be standing in support of the bill today. He talked about the four new clauses that Bill S-6 brought in and how, obviously, they were contrary to the letter and spirit of treaties. Of that there can be no doubt.

I have two questions, if I could, for the hon. member. He referenced the case of the Peel watershed that last month was before the Supreme Court of Canada, talking about the honour of the crown and the like. I would like to know if he feels that case could have any impact on the YESAA bill before us and, second, whether he believes that the free, prior, and informed consent of the Yukon first nations is required as a consequence of the YESAA in its current form.