Peter Van Loan

[Business of Supply, September 29th, 2014]

That is not what it should be. It should allow for a free and frank exchange.

I heard him say that's what he said it should be.

[Business of Supply, September 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will use a simple example to illustrate the problem posed in this change of rules.

If the opposition were to ask a question about supply management and free trade, under its rules, we would be barred from saying that the NDP has a history of opposing free trade agreements, as we saw with NAFTA. Of course, the question was not about NAFTA; it was about supply management. They are going to say that is unreasonable, but then they are going to get up and argue it on a point of order in front of the Speaker, or we are going to argue it on a point of order in front of the Speaker, and so it will go with every question.

What they want is an environment that is very simple: they would get to ask whatever question they want on any subject without notice, and we would be forced to play in that very narrow kind of arena. We cannot talk about their past history on the same kinds of subjects, similar issues in the past, because they are not asking about the past; they are asking about today. We cannot ask about their track record. If they want to ask questions about ethics, we cannot point out their hypocrisy; that would be inappropriate, but guess what? They do not want question period to be about debate. They want it to be about a one-sided free hand to punch the government while the government has its hands tied behind its back.

[Business of Supply, September 29th, 2014]

On the contrary, Mr. Speaker, I would say that in the time I have been in the House, the one thing I have noticed most of all is that the tone of question period is set by the questions. Almost always, the tone of question period is set by the questions. I know certainly that when I have answered them, I have always answered in kind to the tone of the question that was asked. That is something all should reflect on when there is a motion before the House that is very one-sided and only seeks to affect what the government can do.

I will provide an example. Suppose there was a question, as we have had, on the government's policy on its recent EI job credit. It is a legitimate question to debate the alternatives. Is the opposition now saying suddenly that the government should not in response compare our policy with the policy, practice, or record of another party and what it did on the same issue in government? Is it saying that this kind of debate is no longer to be allowed? That is what this would do. They are saying that question period is only there for the government to lie prone while opposition members jump at the gun and beat it.

Government would no longer be allowed to respond with the record, statements, or positions of the other side. In fact, debate would no longer be debate. Debate would merely be an attack by the opposition, with no opportunity for the government to respond with comparisons of policies, track records, or approaches. Then we will be spending every day after question period with lengthy points of order debating whether what I said was responsive or was debate on something else to do with their separate policy on the same file and whether it was on topic or not on topic. We could see that this place would grind to a halt.

Debate should be debate. It should be free-ranging. People should be able to have an exchange of views and not a one-sided exchange.

[Business of Supply, September 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I should make it quite clear that I am not advocating that as an approach here. I think our forum for accountability is good. However, in answering, evaluating, and debating, we should realize where we sit on the ladder of accountability compared with other jurisdictions and do not require this. It would add a different measure.

Everyone should understand clearly that when they are hearing questions being asked in the U.K. parliament and seeing them on television, in most cases, those members have notice in advance. In fact, the current Speaker in Britain, Mr. Bercow, who has attracted a lot of controversy, was asked what his greatest change was in increasing accountability in Parliament. He said that it was the restoration of something called the “urgent question” whereby a member can write a letter to the Speaker that morning to say that a new subject has just broken and the member would like permission to ask a question on that urgent subject that day. The Speaker then decides if it is appropriate and gives notice to whoever the minister is for the subject of the question to be raised to please come to the House to answer questions on it.

That notice, on the same day, of the questions that are going to be asked is regarded as a radical approach and a step toward accountability in the U.K. Here we have it on every subject, on every issue, every day. We come here and do not know what we are going to face, and we have to get up and answer. We have to know our facts and be prepared to deal with any question—

[Business of Supply, September 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, we will continue to come to this House of Commons, which has the firmest, and as I indicated, the strongest accountability mechanism of any legislature in the world, to answer questions every day without notice. We will do so in a respectful fashion as fully as we can, more respectful, I might add, than some of the questions we hear from the opposition.

I think of questions occasionally from the member for Timmins—James Bay or his seatmate, who often in their questions seem to have preambles that are not government business but rather are lengthy strings of perhaps ad hominem attacks, personal attacks, or smears. That is not our approach. We will not be doing that. We will be answering questions, and we will also be putting policy debates to this House.

This is where policy debates should occur. This is where differences in perspectives should occur, and just because one does not like it when we answer with a policy perspective in a policy debate, it should not mean that one can shut down the possibility of doing that, which is what the opposition would like.

[Business of Supply, September 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Outremont also must not want to be reminded that for almost two decades, he kept knowledge of bribe attempts to himself. The Leader of the Opposition does not want to explain to Canadians his risky high-tax schemes, like his $21-billion carbon tax that would hurt Canada's economy and kill Canadian jobs. Maybe it is that he does not want anyone to know about his employment insurance plan that would cost Canadians nearly $8 billion, or a 30% hike in EI premiums paid by hard-working Canadians.

However, I am not alone in being struck by this stark contrast between what the New Democrats proposed and how they actually behave. Let me quote from Martin Patriquin, of Maclean's magazine, from his appearance on CBC on Friday afternoon. He said that the Leader of the Opposition “...knows very well [that] being disingenuous in the House and deflecting questions. The guy practically invented it when he worked here in Quebec...it is an interesting switch of roles”. That is the take of a seasoned political observer in Quebec, where the hon. member for Outremont served in the legislature for over a decade.

Today we are going to hear a lot said by the New Democrats that everyone should be supporting this motion today because of the apology tendered in the House on Friday by my hon. friend, the member for Oak Ridges—Markham. However, that is one apology more than we have ever gotten from the leader of the NDP. We have yet to have an apology for the NDP's use of House resources for its mailings. What is more, we have likewise yet to have an apology for the NDP's use of House resources for satellite offices. It is interesting that in the discussion of those resources, we have had efforts by the NDP to pin it on the Clerk of the House of Commons and House staff. There was no apology after that.

There were other occasions. I remember when the hon. member for South Shore—St. Margaret's was the subject of a bit of an episode with the member for Outremont. There was no “I am sorry” back then, none at all. In fact, in the incident we are talking about right now, the member for Outremont, in this House, in that very same question period, said that the Speaker was biased, which is highly inappropriate and highly inaccurate. Do we see any apology for that now? Up to this point, there has been no apology whatsoever.

In fact, I can look to an exchange of my own. When I came across the House and we exchanged words, using somewhat inappropriate language, I apologized to this House for that inappropriate language. I invited my friend to apologize for having used the exact same inappropriate parliamentary words. Did any apology ever come? No. It is not surprising.

It is a two-way street. In fact, seized with his own hyperbole, the member called the finance minister a racist this past spring. There was no apology for that. Meanwhile, his fellow Quebec provincial politician, Yves Duhaime, was on the receiving end of some defamatory comments by the Leader of the Opposition, then an opposition MNA, including some startling four-letter names, which I could never repeat in this chamber. Mr. Duhaime had to take his grievances to trial in the Superior Court of Quebec for vindication through judgment and some $95,000 in damages.

The only way he will ever apologize for anything he does that is inappropriate is if one actually gets him in front of a judge and gets the judge to referee it and settle the dispute.

I hope that perhaps sometime today we will get that apology to the Speaker for the inappropriate comments the Leader of the Opposition made about him last Tuesday.

That is not the first time he has shown a distrust of an institution that does not do as he pleases. In April 2013, the Leader of the Opposition slammed the Supreme Court of Canada, the highest court in the land. Back then, he said:

The Supreme Court has already indicated they are going to carry out their own probe, but it's a little bit like when a complaint is made against a professional's conduct. You can't have the professional investigate themselves.

With the conclusion in hand, he was not deterred from impugning motives when he said:

You won't find something you don't ask for....

It's a clear indication that the Supreme Court had no intention all along of ever dealing with this issue seriously.

Is this an insight into how the New Democrats would govern? If the Leader of the Opposition is trying to change the rules to protect himself from hearing critical questions and uncomfortable facts in opposition, we can imagine what he would do to change the rules to protect himself if he were in government. In fact, Mr. Milliken, whom I quoted earlier, told the Ottawa Citizen that he was “surprised” that the Leader of the Opposition would be raising this topic.

To wrap up, the motion put forward by the hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster is flawed. It is based on motivations one is bound to question, and it is just the latest example of the “do as I say not as I do” approach of the New Democratic Party.

In closing, I move:

That this question be now put.

[Business of Supply, September 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, today's debate is on the opposition motion, sponsored by my NDP counterpart, the hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster. He suggests that the House change Standing Order 11(2) in respect to responses given to oral questions. That is not in respect to questions, merely in respect to responses.

Question period is fundamental to our system of parliamentary government. It is democracy in action. Canada's approach to the parliamentary questioning of the government makes the House of Commons a leader in the world for accountability. Simply put, there is no similar forum in the world as openly accountable as Canada's question period. Every single day, when the House of Commons sits, the prime minister and ministers are held to account for their policies, the decisions that they make and the actions of their departments. For 45 minutes, the opposition can ask any question on any subject, without any forewarning, without any notice at all.

Question period is also a key forum for providing members of Parliament and the public with information about the government's plans and priorities. That is unlike, for example, in the U.K., a country that has played a fundamental role in our own country's parliamentary evolution. Here, ministers are not given the benefit of a formal prior notice of the questions they may be asked. I know perhaps once a week a minister might get a warning from a member opposite, but the norm is no notice at all. Instead, ministers must come to question period every day prepared only with the sound knowledge of all the workings and policies of the departments for which they are responsible, ready to answer any and all questions, those foreseen and those unexpected.

The very nature of Canada's question period ensures that the debates are always topical and relevant. We have even seen an issue arise outside the House during question period and asked at that very moment.

In the United Kingdom, for example, it is different. In Britain, members of parliament often have to give up to two weeks' written notice of the question they plan to ask a minister in question time. In the U.K., each sitting day, but never Fridays, as we have here on Fridays, only some ministers are scheduled to answer questions. This, of course, significantly limits the range of subjects on which questions can be asked on any given day to just a minority of the full range of government responsibilities. The prime minister answers questions only one day each week and most other ministers even less frequently. The minister then arrives in the chamber of the House of Commons in the U.K. supplied with a prepared answer to a question that is often outdated. Supplementaries must be tightly relevant to the question put on notice.

In Canada, however, questions cover a broad range of subjects and departments, every day, without warning. The Prime Minister and ministers must be ready. The issues of concern to Canadians change quickly, and the questions put to the Prime Minister and cabinet members change just as quickly.

Furthermore, if a member is not satisfied with the answer to an oral question, he or she can pursue the question at greater length during the adjournment proceedings, which we all affectionately call the “late show”.

I have yet to have anyone point to any country with as much accountability as our question period here in Canada.

Our neighbours to the south have no question period that allows legislators to hold the president and his cabinet accountable. There is no forum to hold the administration and Congress directly accountable.

In the United States, there is no process at all like our question period, at any time, for the president and his cabinet to be held accountable by legislators.

I next want to turn to the actual wording of the motion before us. It states:

That Standing Order 11(2) be replaced with the following: The Speaker or the Chair of Committees of the Whole, after having called the attention of the House, or of the Committee, to the conduct of a Member who persists in irrelevance, or repetition, including during responses to oral questions, may direct the Member to discontinue his or her intervention....

This change, as I pointed out, would affect responses to oral questions but it would not touch the actual questions. This is yet another greatly cynical, one-sided proposal for the NDP. It wants to improve Parliament insofar as it helps the NDP, but not insofar as it would help the government, for example, to have more information on which to provide those answers. “Do as I say not as I do” has been the watchword for the New Democrats throughout this Parliament and here it makes yet another appearance.

Apparently, they do not want to be subject to the same rules that they want to see applied to others. The Leader of the Opposition would prefer to make question period a one-way street. He wants the rules changed to keep him from facing any tough questions or cold facts in the House about his own party's operations or policies. In reality, he wants to avoid facing any basic facts in the House, since he wants to ban repetition of answers. The facts will not change simply because an individual asks the same question over and over again.

If people watching this debate think that what is proposed is a simple fix, well, it is not. Let me quote a distinguished former speaker, Speaker Milliken, the individual who had the longest tenure in that big chair you are sitting on, Mr. Speaker.

On enforcing the concept that the NDP is proposing, Mr. Milliken told the Ottawa Citizen:

There’s nothing a speaker can do about that. ...what constitutes an answer? There’d be constant argument about it.

In fact, there would be points of order raised interminably at the end of every question period.

There has been a lot of recent commentary related to what the change is, and I will come back to the substance of today's motion in a bit, but why the change is being proposed is somewhat obscured by a recent event.

What people really need to understand about the NDP leader's motion is that it is an oversensitive reaction to efforts to hold the New Democratic Party and the Leader of the Opposition accountable on certain issues. The Leader of the Opposition wants the rules changed so that he will not have to answer hard questions or have the whole truth be known here in the House of Commons.

The Leader of the Opposition does not want to answer for the NDP misuse of House resources on inappropriate mail-outs. The Leader of the Opposition does not want to answer for the NDP inappropriate use of taxpayers' dollars in setting up unauthorized satellite offices, which, curiously enough, just happened to be at the same place that partisan NDP work was taking place.

New Democrats have been caught breaking the rules and abusing taxpayers' dollars, but most regrettably, they do not want to be held to account or for anyone to be even reminded of it, all of which is witnessed—

[Business of the House, September 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, on the question of missing and murdered aboriginal women, I was pleased that last night the House of Commons had an opportunity to vote to concur with the excellent work in the report done by the committee of parliamentarians that examined that issue, one of well over two dozen such studies that have been undertaken on the subject. They have been helpful in forming the government's action plan that is taking place to help address this problem and help to improve the conditions of aboriginal women on reserve and elsewhere.

In terms of the government's agenda, this afternoon we will continue the second reading of Bill C-41, the Canada-Korea economic growth and prosperity act. This important bill would implement our landmark free trade agreement with South Korea, Canada's first in the Asia-Pacific region, I might add. It would provide expanded access for Canada's businesses and workers to a growing G20 economy, Asia's fourth largest.

Free trade with South Korea is projected to create thousands of jobs for hard-working Canadians by boosting Canada's economy by almost $2 billion annually and increasing our exports to South Korea by almost one-third.

That debate will continue next week, on Tuesday.

Tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, will see the conclusion of the report stage of Bill C-36, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act. The House will recall that we are working to implement this legislation before the Supreme Court’s decision in Bedford takes effect before Christmas.

Monday shall be the third allotted day, with the New Democrats choosing the topic of discussion.

I am designating Monday as the day appointed pursuant to Standing Order 66.2 for the conclusion of the debate on the first report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

On Wednesday, the House will return to the report stage debate on Bill C-13, the protecting Canadians from online crime legislation.

Thursday morning should see the end of the third reading debate on Bill C-8, the combating counterfeit products act. Then we will resume the second reading debate on Bill C-40, the important bill to establish the Rouge national urban park. After question period we will start the second reading debate on Bill S-5, which would also, in a similar vein, create the Nááts’ihch’oh national park reserve.

Friday will be set aside for third reading of Bill C-36.

[Privilege, September 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the question of privilege that has been raised by the member for Acadie—Bathurst is important. It is an important question that members do have unimpeded access.

I would appreciate the opportunity to see if I can ascertain any additional facts that might be helpful to put to the House before a determination is made by the Speaker on the question of whether we do have a prima facie case. However, the principle is an important one.

[Energy Safety and Security Act, September 25th, 2014]

moved:

That, in relation to Bill C-22, An Act respecting Canada's offshore oil and gas operations, enacting the Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, repealing the Nuclear Liability Act and making consequential amendments to other Acts, not more than one further sitting day shall be allotted to the consideration at third reading stage of the said bill; and

That 15 minutes before the expiry of the time provided for government orders on the day allotted to the consideration at third reading stage of the said bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this Order, and, in turn, every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment.