Nathan Cullen

[Business of the House, October 18th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, what a great idea.

It is an honour for me to rise to ask the government, on behalf of the opposition, what it has in store for the House for the rest of this week and for next week.

This government clearly did not understand the message that thousands of Canadians sent it last spring regarding the omnibus Bill C-38 on the budget. Canadians said that the bill was an attack on the democratic process and on the integrity of the House, and a violation of the right of all Canadians to hold their government to account.

Today we have received Bill C-45, another monstrous bill from a government that simply does not seem to understand. The bill is 450 pages long and combines measures such as cutting funding for research and development and watering down environmental assessment rules with actual budgetary measures.

Clearly this government has not learned its lesson. Canadians expect more transparency and accountability from the Conservatives.

Eighteen years ago, the member for Calgary Southwest, the Prime Minister, said, and I want to quote him to set the context for what I am about to approach:

Mr. Speaker, I would argue that the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.

We now know that same member, as the Prime Minister, does not believe that applies to him any longer. At the very least, as we need to understand this bill and fully analyze, I will ask the government three questions about what follows.

Will the government split this bill into its component parts to allow for proper study?

If not, will it allow for multiple standing committees to study the divisions of this bill that fit into those committee mandates?

At the very least, will it allow for full debate on this bill without slamming the door with further closure or time allocations, as we saw last spring?

Last, New Democrats welcomed this morning's long overdue arrival of Bill S-11 from the Senate, which has been waiting for passage there for more than 120 days, and was killed by prorogation by the government previously. We are interested in passing this bill quickly to committee.

We are also interested in the integrity of the legislative process. I am somewhat surprised that the government is not so much. It has had to amend a number of its hastily written bills and has asked Canadians to simply trust it on this one and move it all stages. It cannot work with a Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food who has failed us repeatedly and seriously in his role.

With Bill S-11 in mind, I believe that if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent for the following motion: That notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, this House move immediately to debate at second reading of S-11, that today's order for supply be deemed not to have been called, and that the order for the putting of the question on the supply motion and the deferral of that vote be deemed to have been withdrawn.

[Budget Implementation, October 18th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the minister and the government seem to have learned nothing from their experience in bringing in the first omnibus bill. Now they want to ram through another bill of over 450 pages.

How do they expect Canadians to understand all the devious schemes and plans the government has for them in such a short amount of time?

This is a Prime Minister who used to have contempt for such tactics. Why is the same Prime Minister so keen to misuse his power and ram this budget down the throats of Canadians?

[Business of Supply, October 18th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, at the heart of the opposition motion today is a question about ministerial accountability and responsibility. This speaks obviously to the role that the agriculture minister plays on behalf of Canadians, but also the role that the Prime Minister has to play in holding his ministers to account.

I want to pick up on the last point my friend raised, because I remember well being in the House the day the minister got to his feet and said that no tainted meat will reach the store shelves of Canadians. That was the reassuring work that the minister was doing that day, when in fact that was not true at all.

Canadians get frustrated, when looking to the government to protect them and their families when an incident like this happens, if they are not told the truth.

Here is my question. Why does the government seem so comfortable with the double standard of allowing meat to continue to ship to Canadians while preventing that same meat from travelling to American families? I do not understand how a minister of the Crown, of the Canadian government, can feel comfortable sitting in that role knowing that is what went on day after day.

[Business of Supply, October 18th, 2012]

There was a summer break.

[Criminal Code, October 18th, 2012]

Allow me this, Mr. Speaker, because I thought the government actually had some respect for the parliamentary process. If the Conservatives sought some urgency on this, clearly more than four months in the Senate does not describe urgency. If they had sought some urgency on this, why was it killed through prorogation in the previous iteration of the bill. It seems like a strange idea that they would now come through and say that there have been consultations to do what the minister has just suggested when there have not been.

We will move this expeditiously through while respecting the democratic principles that I thought we had all agreed with.

[Criminal Code, October 18th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on this point of order because I am slightly confused by what the Minister of Agriculture just proposed. He suggested in his submission that there had been some sort of consultations that had been agreed to by the other parties. The bill sat in the Senate for more than 120 days. The bill was also killed by the government by prorogation. We have told the government quite clearly that we are looking to expeditiously move this through to the second phase into the committee for study--

[Budget Implementation, October 17th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the foreign affairs minister has a certain set of skills that are unique to his position.

Last spring, the Conservatives presented a bill that not only killed more jobs than it created, it weakened environmental protection, gutted the Fisheries Act and further cut EI to Canadians. Across the country, people were clear in saying that this was not how Parliament should work.

However, it is not too late for the Conservatives to do the right thing. Will the government work with opposition parties and respect Parliament, do what even the Prime Minister used to believe and allow parliamentarians to do their jobs?

[Budget Implementation, October 17th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, budget bills should be used for things that are in the budget, but last spring the Conservatives--

[Budget Implementation, October 17th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I hate to attack the minister's fragile ego but Parliament still goes on when he is not here. The opposition has been asking questions despite his lack of attendance.

Let us try this challenging line of logic. Budget bills should be used for what things that are in--

[Budget Implementation, October 17th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the failures keep coming.

The last time the Conservatives introduced a budget implementation bill, there were hundreds of things hidden in it: attacks on the environment, on seniors, on the unemployed, on the Auditor General.

Will the Conservatives be honest with Canadians for once, or will they table yet another Trojan Horse with disastrous consequences?