Rick Perkins

[Privilege, May 28th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, in the first of six partisan incidents involving the current Speaker, coming out of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs as it was considering the question, a member of the committee said, “This cannot happen moving forward. From now on, you cannot have a Speaker engage in partisan activity.” Moreover, “if there were any derogation from that, in the weeks and months to come”, he said that his party would vote “non-confidence” in the Speaker.

Who was that member? It was the member for New Westminster—Burnaby. Was he telling the truth then or has he just become an unmitigated falsifier of veracity today?

[Privilege, May 28th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. That hon. member knows that this is debate and not a point of order. I would ask that those kinds of interventions stop, as the deputy government House leader does.

[Privilege, May 28th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I would ask the member about the member for New Westminster—Burnaby's quote after the first incident. He said to the media, after the incident with the Speaker, “This cannot happen moving forward. From now on, you cannot have the Speaker engage in partisan activity”. He also said, “if there is any derogation from that, in the weeks and months to come”, his party would be voting “non-confidence” in the Speaker.

Can the member explain why the NDP is going back on the word of its House leader?

[Privilege, May 28th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, the member for Lethbridge made a very compelling presentation, but she missed the original sin, and that is that there is a sixth incident, which is the very first incident, the one in which the Speaker, in his robes in his office, not far from this chamber, recorded a video to be played at the Liberal convention. While that privilege motion was being debated in the House, only a few days later he attended the function in Washington to which the member referred.

How many apologies and mistakes does the member think are acceptable in partisanship of the Speaker? Is it 10, 20 or one?

[Privilege, May 28th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I am sure the longest-serving NDP House leader in history, Stanley Knowles, is rolling over in his grave at what the House leader for the NDP just said: He thinks that one of the most fundamental principles of a parliamentary democracy, the neutrality of the Speaker, is not worthy of a privilege debate, when the Deputy Speaker has actually ruled that the Speaker pursued partisan activities, breaching his neutrality. The government House leader, who has a responsibility to enforce and uphold the rules of the House, has called that ruling of the Deputy Speaker “fake”. It is reprehensible that the government House leader would question the ruling of the Deputy Speaker on this issue.

As my colleague from Manitoba said, the government House leader has a responsibility, first and foremost, to understand that the rules say a privilege motion debate is more important than any other piece of legislation in the House. I know the NDP does not understand it. I expected more from the government House leader, yet, twice this week, he has imposed closure on issues. On every single bill, every single issue, the government imposes closure. They are cutting off democracy and debate at every turn, and he has no respect for the rules of the House.

[Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act, May 27th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the government's expenditures are not in people; they are in bureaucracy. I know the government likes to build up the bureaucracy. In Ottawa, 106,000 new bureaucrats have been hired since the current government came to power. Those are called expenditures. Day care with over 80,000 people in Quebec waiting on the list is called an expenditure. There are dental expenditures that have eight dentists total in Nova Scotia signed up for it; the inability of the program to actually work is an expenditure. A food care program that does not deliver food, just a bureaucracy to look at and manage food in Ottawa, is called an expenditure.

[Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act, May 27th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, there is an Ottawa-speak that happens, in which every time somebody spends a tax dollar, the government calls it an investment. Investment is really only when we buy equity in something, and equity generally is ownership of a company, so an investment is that kind of thing. When we spend money that leads to $40-billion deficits and that leads to $800 billion of debt being added, that is called an expenditure with very little result, as we have seen from the government.

We have the poorest productivity in the OECD, thanks to the government's expenditures. There is now a 40% gap between Canada and the United States in per capita income because of the expenditures, which the government calls investments. The purchasing power of our dollar is dropping, and our individual paycheques are dropping dramatically because the government's expenditure investments are producing very little in the way of economic benefit. In fact, they are hurting our economy, because the increased debt and increased spending have increased interest rates, which have increased the cost of everything to everybody and are causing an affordability and housing crisis in Canada.

[Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act, May 27th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the province with the longest-standing carbon tax is British Columbia, and it does not seem to have slowed down forest fires out there, and in my province, there have been forest fires; two of them were in my riding last year, and they were both man-made. I know that the NDP likes to pretend that all forest fires happen by divine intervention, but they do not. A lot of times they happen because they are man-made, and they put our communities at risk.

I would like to hear the NDP once in a while acknowledge the fact that not every forest fire is caused by some sort of natural cause that they see, and that most of the time they are caused by man-made intervention, either by mistake or intentionally.

[Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act, May 27th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I think it obviously was that way. I attended some of the natural resource committee hearings and meetings on that, and it seemed that the government members there were totally opposed to considering any other additions that could fix, help or improve the bill. That is obviously not the experience I have had in some other committees. In particular, I am vice-chair of the industry committee, a very collegial committee on Bill C-34, which amended the Investment Canada Act, and the government agreed to many of the amendments the opposition made.

Right now there are many amendments to Bill C-27, perhaps one of the most consequential bills that Parliament has dealing with privacy and artificial intelligence, a complete replacement of our Privacy Act, and we have already passed six amendments to the bill from all parties. The government is operating in a very different way in very different committees, which surprises me, but maybe it should not surprise me that it does one thing in one place and says another thing in another place.

[Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act, May 27th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I will answer my colleague's question by saying that, like the value of most Liberal campaign promises, the number of projects that would result in offshore wind would be zero. The ability for energy infrastructure to get approved under this is proven. It is not new. We are not making this up; it is proven. It has happened out west and it has happened in the seven or eight mining projects that I just outlined between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador that have been going for anywhere from five to 11 years through this process, which is designed not to happen.

We know that the average mine in this country now takes at least 15 years to get approved. No one with private capital is willing to wait that long when there are other parts of the world willing to get projects approved much more quickly, in less than two years or 18 months, and approved in an environmentally sustainable way.

I do not know whether we are allowed to talk about wagering, but I would make a wager with most of my colleagues on the Liberal side about what happens if the bill goes through in its existing form without the amendments that we have put forward to send it back to committee. I know the government finds democracy totally messy. The whole thing about parliamentary debate is bothersome to them. However, Conservatives are going to continue to push forward on these things and bother the government with the democratic right that we have to push back with a different perspective, with the facts and not with fantasy.