Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her very interesting speech. Like her, I am very happy to have the right to vote as part of a new committee. I have just one question for her. Would the NDP be prepared to change its position only on some aspects of a proportional system?

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I think today's debate will go down in history, as the motion really did strike a blow for democracy, where parties were prepared to put Canada first and partisan interests second. As we go forward, I want to ask the parliamentary secretary if she agrees that it woul

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, when I say I favour proportional representation systems I would exclude one, which is the one where there is no connection between an MP and a community. It is really important that people know who their MP is, and by that I would exclude the system that is used in I

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, there is a rich literature on this. The committee is lucky in that several citizen assemblies in British Columbia and Ontario have already been held. We can benefit from the work that has already been done by those bodies, but the academic literature is rich. A stu

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour today to join this crucial debate on our democracy. Today, we are witnessing a truly important event: the Liberal government has agreed to the NDP's proposal to create a committee in which the Liberals will not have the majority of the votes. T

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston has written extensively on this topic, and I commend the fact that historically he has always opposed first past the post, the system that the Speech from the Throne commits Parliament to eliminate before the 2019 elect

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I do not want to take very long, because there are a lot of questions. However, I want to thank the hon. minister and the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley from the bottom of my heart for putting Canada above partisanship and working so hard to craft a committee that

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Skeena—Bulkley Valley for bringing forward a motion today that allows us to talk about how we can begin a process as we intend to continue a process in a non-partisan way, seeking what is best for all Canadians. In his motion he suggests we wi

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to present two petitions. The first is from petitioners across Canada calling on the government to pursue investigations to determine the illegal use of live calls or robocalls that interfered with Canada's electoral process in the 2011 e

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, the second petition is from people across Canada who are calling for our government, in the interest of protecting pollinators on this continent and elsewhere, to ban the use of neonicotinoid insecticides.

The Environment  Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Northumberland—Peterborough South and it is my sad responsibility to tell her that what she has just read is not true. All major projects did not fall under the interim measures. Only pipeline projects do. I hold the Minister of Environment an

The Environment  Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to rise tonight in adjournment proceedings to pursue a question that I originally asked on March 24. It pertains to something that is fundamental to the concept that Canada has any framework of environmental law, any regimen of review in advance befor

Democratic Reform  Mr. Speaker, referendum is indeed a noun and like all nouns it has a definition. This one is found in the Referendum Act of 1992, which makes it clear that we can only hold a referendum in Canada—unless we go through the process of changing that act—on a constitutional matter. Ch

The Environment  Madam Speaker, of course I do not disagree with a single thing that the parliamentary secretary said about the last 10 years. In fact, I would go further and say that in 2005, the previous government of the Right Hon. Paul Martin had in place a plan that would have taken us very

The Environment  Madam Speaker, it is my honour this evening to take up a question I originally asked the Prime Minister on the subject of the Paris accord on climate change. I asked him if he was planning to attend the April 22 United Nations meeting at which the Paris accord would be open for s