Amendments to the Standing Orders  It was indeed a shameful thing. Mr. Speaker, up until now, there has been a lot of discussion about this, but I do not think there have been real proposals to try to do something about it. It is difficult to do something about it because, in our Constitution, dissolving or proroguing Parliament is said to be a power of the monarch, of the Queen, or now the King.

Privilege  Madam Speaker, on a separate point of order, I noticed that, in his remarks, the member for Kingston and the Islands made reference to his presence or absence in the House, and seeing as he is a member of the House, I think he may—

Privilege  Madam Speaker, I apologize for the error. It was an absent-minded error and was not intentional. However, it was an important announcement that the government tried to make from a point of order after question period, which it could very well have made during question period if it wanted to take some of the political gamesmanship out of it.

Privilege  Madam Speaker, I will start by saying that I certainly agree with the member that the level of politicization of these issues has not been helpful in getting to the truth. However, I would also say, which was reflected in my vote earlier and the vote of the New Democrats, as it has been at various times when we have presented motions and voted before for a public inquiry into this matter, that the best way to depoliticize the issue is to have a public inquiry.

Privilege  Madam Speaker, earlier today in question period, my colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby asked the government if there are any other MPs that it was aware of who may have had threats made against thems or their families and who had not been briefed. My impression was that we did not get a straight answer to what I thought was a very straightforward question.

Electoral Reform  Mr. Speaker, the Canadian voting system promises 100% of the power to political parties that get less than 40% of the vote at election time. That is a problem the Prime Minister seemed to have understood in 2015 when he promised to change the voting system. Since then, opposition parties laid out a path forward and he threw that in the bin in the last Parliament.

The Canada Business Corporations Act  Madam Speaker, I have heard the member for Winnipeg North make reference several times today to the resources that have been dedicated to the CRA in order to fight tax evasion and other things of that kind. However, what we have seen from the CRA is a very persistent focus on Canadians in difficult financial situations, who availed themselves of CERB when the government encouraged them to do that at the height of the pandemic but do not have the money to pay the government back.

Canada Business Corporations Act  Madam Speaker, one of the big watershed moments was in the mid-1990s when the federal government decided to cut services massively and pushed the burden of spending down onto provinces. Many of them then pushed it down onto municipalities, and ultimately it has landed on the shoulders of Canadians because we do not have the same level of funding of social infrastructure that we had over 30 years ago in Canada.

Canada Business Corporations Act  Madam Speaker, we absolutely need to be engaging in the enterprise of trying to ensure that this tax revenue is not lost, to go out of the country or to go to people who already own and control 40% of Canada's wealth as part of that small 1%. I have a private member's bill requiring that if people want to benefit from the tax advantages of these tax treaties that Liberal and Conservative governments have put in place over the years, they have to have some economic substance to their business.

Canada Business Corporations Act  Madam Speaker, as I was saying in my concluding remarks, it is very important that the provinces be on board. Many provinces are showing leadership already. I think it is one of the virtues of the way the government is proceeding on this that provinces will be able to onboard and provide information out of their own registries into the federal registry.

Canada Business Corporations Act  Madam Speaker, one thing that has emerged from debate in the House is that the question of stacked ownership structures is something we need to look at. I will not prejudge the outcome of that study by already thinking I know the answer to that, but I certainly think this is something the committee should be looking into.

Canada Business Corporations Act  Madam Speaker, the short answer is no. The work will not end with the passage of this bill. I would say it is not a matter of resources, because the Canada Revenue Agency has a lot of resources, but rather a matter of resource allocation. The agency is heavily focused right now on recovering CERB overpayments from Canadians who are already experiencing financial hardship.

Canada Business Corporations Act  Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise today and speak to Bill C-42. There is a lot of talk in this place about government gatekeepers, and rightly so. There are a lot of important decisions made within government that have an impact on Canadians' lives, and Parliament is a place to hold the decision-makers to account and to press for better decisions.

Copyright Act  Madam Speaker, I just want to circle back to some of the member's reflections on the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement, which I know Conservatives were concerned to see pass very quickly. Of course, this was one of those extant issues. I am wondering if he could speak a bit to how he thinks our trade partners might respond to something like this and what the consequences could be.

Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1  Madam Speaker, I asked earlier about the urgency of employment insurance reform. I want to talk about another facet of the employment insurance problem that Canada has at the moment, which is the decision of the government to allocate $25 billion of CERB debt to the EI account. We know that EI was not in a good place prior to the pandemic.