2017-05-02

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence has a huge credibility problem and every time he stands up, he digs himself deeper into the credibility hole. He is tarnishing the reputation of the Prime Minister. He is tarnishing the reputation of the government abroad. Worse, he is tarnishing the reputation of our military. Nobody questions this man's honour and what he did when he served this country in the military. We are questioning his judgment and his honour today. Will he do the right thing for our men and women in uniform and step aside?

Mr. Speaker, when they were in opposition, the Liberals called for a public inquiry into the shameful Afghan detainee scandal. Why did the Prime Minister tell his defence minister to block just such an inquiry?

Mr. Speaker, I share the optimism of the member opposite about PROC being able to do its work. While I have the floor, I will remind the member that while in opposition he said: The government, by once again relying on a time allocation motion to get its agenda passed, speaks of incompetence. It speaks of a genuine lack of respect for parliamentary procedure and ultimately for Canadians. I would urge the member and his government to cease using time allocation to stifle debate in the House.

Mr. Speaker, earlier the Prime Minister refused to answer any questions, so I will try my luck directly with the Minister of National Defence. Why are the Liberals refusing to call a public inquiry into the Afghan detainee scandal? Why did the Minister of National Defence tell the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner that he knew nothing about this scandal because he was just a reservist?Would he be so kind as to tell the House specifically what role he played in Afghanistan? It is high time that Canadians knew the truth.

Mr. Speaker, the use of “alternative facts” damaged the reputation of the Minister of National Defence so badly that he has lost all credibility. He has lost the confidence of our troops, he is an embarrassment to veterans, and Canadians no longer believe him. He is a laughing stock and none of our allies will take him seriously.The Prime Minister lacks judgment because he refuses to dismiss his defence minister. As a veteran, I am asking the Minister of National Defence, who is a veteran, to step down if he has any honour left.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals spend a lot of time and effort championing what many have argued to be one of the planet's organizations that spends the most time on anti-Israel motions, and that, of course, is the United Nations. Today, while Israel is celebrating its 69th anniversary of becoming a modern state, the UN passed yet another anti-Israel motion.Will the Prime Minister today stand up in this House and condemn the United Nations for its continuous attacks on Israel?

Mr. Speaker, being sorry does not cut it once the confidence of our men and women in uniform is lost. Soldiers who pad their CVs may be court-martialled and face serious consequences.Now that the Minister of National Defence is seated at the cabinet table, does he think he deserves to be treated differently than the troops with whom he served his country?

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister refuses to acknowledge the severity of this and the damage it has done. That, more than anything else, tells us where his priorities are, and they are not with the military. He pulled our fighter jets out of the fight against ISIS when our allies asked us to stay. He cut $12 billion in funding to the defence department. Now he is refusing to remove a defence minister who has twice misled Canadians about his role in a military mission.Does the Prime Minister understand that his first step in changing course from the damage that he is doing to the military is to remove the defence minister?

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence refuses to explain why, on at least two occasions, he misled Canadians about the role that he played in Afghanistan. Simply saying that he has no excuse is not good enough. He has lost the confidence of our men and women in uniform. If the Prime Minister refuses to see the damage that this is doing, why should Canadians trust this government?

Mr. Speaker, I am only smiling a little, because that speech could have been given by Conservatives in the last Parliament when we in the opposition were trying to hold up some of their worst agenda. The history of this is important. The member would do well to remember that her own government tried to kill this motion by punting it into non-existence. She can wave away, but it was only the intervention of the Speaker which overruled the Liberals' attempt to kill this motion in the first place that allowed us to talk about it at all. She can be as sanctimonious as she likes about respecting taxpayers. Respect? My goodness, the Speaker of the House of Commons had to intervene with the Liberal government and say, “Whoa. Access to Parliament is incredibly important.” The Liberal Party tried to kill that motion in Parliament because it was interfering with the Liberals' machinations at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. What is going on there? Let us talk about respect. The Liberals are trying to ram their changes to Parliament through without all-party agreement. If they want to stop the filibuster, if they want to stop the mess that is going on in the House, they should respect the traditions of Parliament, which prime ministers Pierre Trudeau, Chrétien, Mulroney, even Harper, respected. The Liberals came in saying that they were going to do better than even Stephen Harper. They should at least abide by that tradition. If we are going to change the rules of the House, we have to do it together, because it is just too easy to break that tradition and then have majority governments force their will on Parliament. That is exactly what the Liberal Party is trying to do while it pretends that they are discussion papers and open conversations, and yet the Liberals will never at any point agree to one simple principle: that when we change this place, we should only do it together. That is a good principle that should be respected.

Mr. Speaker, I think the Prime Minister missed the question.The defence minister is on record as saying that it was the Prime Minister's Office that decided there would be no inquiry. We are asking the Prime Minister to explain now why there will be no inquiry into the shameful Afghan detainee scandal. He was in favour of it in opposition. Why did he tell his minister to block it now? That is the question. Why does he want to block an inquiry into the Afghan detainee scandal?

Mr. Speaker, today's debate is in fact about unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct.As I indicated before, this is not the first time we have had to deal with this issue. In fact, if we go back, May 12, 2015, was the most recent incident prior to this. During that debate, a total of five speakers—three New Democrats, one Liberal, and the Green Party representative—spoke to that matter of privilege.We have had 37 speakers, and that was even before we started today. We also know that members of the Conservative Party have said that this matter of privilege is all about a filibuster. There is a responsibility of the opposition, especially the official opposition, to behave in a more responsible fashion in dealing with the issue of unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct.I would suggest there are in fact some games being played, and it is not fair to point the finger in one direction. All parties need to take a look at what they are doing, especially on this issue with respect to the Conservative Party. Does the member believe there is a responsibility of the official opposition to behave in a responsible fashion when it comes to debate? If we had 338 members debate everything that came before the House, it would take over five weeks to do one measure, and we might have 100 more measures to do. Mathematically, it is just not possible, unless we have a Conservative opposition that has one purpose and one purpose alone, and that is try to demonstrate it is dysfunctional. If it is dysfunctional, it is because of an incompetent, unreasonable official opposition. It does not take much. Give me 12 members and I can cause havoc, too. It does not mean it is responsible. I am challenging the member across the way to acknowledge that there is an onus of responsibility for the official opposition to do the right thing. Maybe the member could tell us why the Conservatives have chosen to filibuster this matter of privilege, if it is so important.

Mr. Speaker, I am having a hard time understanding why the Liberals have been asking us all day why we do not just send this to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs as quickly as possible. Now, it is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance who is asking us that question. Earlier, it was the member for Winnipeg North. We are in this situation because the Liberals refused to do just that when this issue was raised in the House the first time. The question of privilege was simply swept under the rug. The Liberals killed it. They did not want to hear about it. At that time, some Liberal members even gave speeches about why the matter did not need to be sent to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. That is why they killed the debate. I am therefore wondering why they are asking us this question today. We are in this situation because they refused to send this matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs when it was first raised.I do not understand the Liberals' definition of filibustering. Members are in the House to debate issues. Why should members who want to speak be prevented from doing so? That is not what I would call filibustering. Members rise on behalf of their constituents and speak in the House. Whether there are 39 or 49 members, they are rising because they want to speak and share their opinions on this issue.Does the member agree with the definition of filibustering used by the Liberals, who believe that if many members want to speak about an issue, this automatically constitutes filibustering and we are trying to delay the whole process?

Mr. Speaker, in response to the question, or perhaps statement, of the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, I am a little taken aback that he would have the audacity to talk about this question of privilege going to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. That is precisely what the government tried to prevent from happening. The government tried to shut down an opportunity for the committee on procedure and House affairs to get to the bottom of this issue.It is the government that tried to do so. The only reason it backed down, although it never really did back down, was the hon. member for Perth—Wellington stood and said that it did not have a right to do it, and the Speaker agreed with him.We are going to continue to fight against the effort on the part of the government to roll back the rights and privileges of hon. members. It is unbelievable the member would talk about the procedure and House affairs committee, because it was exactly that, as I said, the government tried to prevent from getting to the bottom of this issue.

Mr. Speaker, it is rather ironic because there was a closure motion yesterday and another today. We are prepared to speak and to express our opinion. I believe that people expect us to talk about this question of privilege, and that is what I am doing. I know that my colleague was here for part of my speech and that he listened to what I had to say. However, he should have understood that my speech was about parliamentarians' privileges. These privileges give us the right to unfettered access to this place. These privileges give us the right to speak freely and to represent our constituents without any constraints. The opposition is fighting so that the government's backbenchers can enjoy these privileges and their power. That is what my honourable colleague should have understood and retained from my long 20-minute speech.

Mr. Speaker, I think it was the last comment from my friend from Kootenay—Columbia that talked about how we got here. Canadians will wonder, and the government will hold itself up and ask why there is such discord, having this almost oblivious attitude toward its own actions in getting us here.If the government wants to see the House functioning well and if it wants to see committees functioning well, it should ask itself how it is unable to do that with the majority that it has been given by Canadians. The simple request from the opposition is that in order to change the rules that conduct us here in Parliament, we should respect the long-held tradition that all parties agree to those rule changes, so that the power and balance of power that goes on between opposition and government is maintained with some dignity.Ultimately, is that not at the heart of the problem, and why so many things have fallen off the rails, and why the government seems incapable of actually passing legislation? This is probably one of the lightest legislative agendas we have seen in 50 years. It is incredible how little the government has been able to get done, outside of selfies, of course, because it does a lot of those.

Mr. Speaker, Ubique Quo Fas et Gloria Ducunt. “Whither right and glory lead” is the motto of the 6th Field Artillery Regiment, where I had the honour of completing my formal military service. Non-commissioned members like myself follow orders not because we fear officers, but because these orders ensure the protection of the federation and the honour of our homeland.The Minister of National Defence has breached that trust. Since his moral authority is gone, will he do the right thing and step down?

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise this afternoon to participate in the debate on the question of privilege. For some Canadians, this debate may seem a bit antiquated, a bit technical. They may not fully understand what it is we are talking about. Notwithstanding that, let us make no mistake about it that the debate today is of high importance, because it goes to the foundations of our democracy. It goes to the heart of the ability of members of Parliament to perform their functions to collectively represent Canadians. Having regard for the importance of this debate on privilege, it is disappointing to see that the current Liberal government has responded by trying to shut down debate, by trying to silence members of Parliament by bringing forward time allocation. Canadians will remember that during the last election, the Prime Minister talked so much about sunny ways. He waxed and waned eloquently. He talked about how there would be sunlight brought into this place and how everything would be wonderful, that members would be able to speak and vote freely and that we would have a government that respected the will of Parliament, and he admonished the previous Conservative government for bringing in time allocation, which of course is perfectly within the rules. It is in the Standing Orders. That was fair. There were a lot of Canadians who accepted that, who said that perhaps Parliament could work better, and they entrusted the Prime Minister to deliver. What we have seen, like so much of what we see from the Prime Minister, is that the words that he espoused during the election campaign were nothing more than empty words, because on this issue he has tried to shut down debate. The government is trying to shut down debate, but it is not just on this issue. It is on multiple issues. The government has moved time allocation more than a dozen times already. What is even worse is that the government House leader has now indicated that the government will use this issue as a pretext to invoke time allocation on a regular basis, so we have now a complete 180° turnaround from the government. Eighteen or 19 months ago, the Liberals were admonishing the previous Conservative government for imposing time allocation, and today the government House leader is talking about bringing in time allocation all the time, regularly, and with enthusiasm. It really speaks to the lack of trust that Canadians should have in the current government. I think that every day more and more Canadians recognize that the current government simply cannot be trusted.To the substance of this important debate on this issue of privilege, it arose on the day of the budget when access by the hon. members for Beauce and Milton to the parliamentary precinct to be able to get into this chamber and vote was impeded. Their access was impeded when they tried to access a House of Commons bus to come to the chamber to vote, to do what hon. members should do. The bells were ringing. They waited. They saw a bus coming. The bus driver apparently saw them, but the bus could not get to them because the bus was stopped. It was blocked by either the Prime Minister's empty motorcade or a media bus or a combination of the two. Nonetheless, it was blocked, and it was blocked, according to the hon. member for Beauce, for some nine minutes. As a result, the hon. members for Milton and Beauce were unable to vote.Upon the conclusion of that vote, those hon. members rose in their places and immediately alerted this House that their access to this House had been impeded, that they had been prevented from doing the job that their constituents had sent them here to do and doing what their constituents expect them to do, which is to vote on matters before the House of Commons, and that consequently there had been a breach of their parliamentary privilege.Upon hearing the evidence from the hon. members for Beauce and Milton, Mr. Speaker, you ruled that there was indeed a prima facie breach of a member's privilege.What should have happened then, and what has always happened upon the Speaker's finding of a prima facie breach of privilege, was for a debate to take place in this chamber, for a vote to take place, and in the event that the members of this House affirmed the ruling of the Speaker in finding that there was in fact a breach of privilege, the matter would then be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs so that the issue of privilege could be studied and the committee could get to the bottom of exactly what happened.That is not what happened in this case. What should have happened did not happen because the government decided instead that it wanted to attack the rights of hon. members to defend and protect the privileges of this House. What the government did in that regard was to bring forward a motion to proceed to orders of the day. In so doing, what the government did was shut down the ability of hon. members to debate the issue of privilege, to vote on the issue of privilege, and to have the matter referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, where it would have received precedence at that committee, just as it receives precedence in this House upon the Speaker's finding.What the government did was unprecedented. No government before has done what the current government did. What the current government did was very serious. It was fundamentally an attack on this place. It was an attack on this institution and on all hon. members, because the ability to debate and vote on a question of privilege is no small matter. It is significant. It is fundamental. It is fundamental to the ability of members of Parliament to perform the functions of the member of Parliament. It is fundamental to the ability of members of Parliament to do their job. That is why privilege is not the property of the government; it is the property of this chamber and it is the property of all 338 members of Parliament.To understand the significance of what the government tried to do, it is perhaps important to have some understanding of the history of privilege, the foundation of privilege. Privilege goes back centuries. It goes back to the 14th and 15th centuries, to the United Kingdom, when the king would interfere, impede, obstruct, use force, and in some cases arrest hon. members of Parliament, attacking and impeding their ability to do their jobs.Sir Thomas More was one of the first speakers in the House of Commons who petitioned the king for the recognition of certain privileges of the House. Those privileges included the right to be free from interference, obstruction, and use of force by the king and his executive in the House of Lords. What privilege really is and what it turned out to be was a compromise among the king, the executive, and members of Parliament, that Parliament, the House of Commons, would be a place where members could speak freely, debate freely, criticize, and depose the government without interference from the executive.In Canada, privilege was imported from the United Kingdom. The type of force, arrests, and intimidation that British members of Parliament had endured in the 14th and 15th centuries had passed. By the time of Canada's Confederation, however, what had not passed was the significance of members' parliamentary privilege. That is why parliamentary privilege was enshrined in our Constitution. Section 18 of the Constitution Act of 1867, provides that the House may define members' privileges provided that those privileges do not exceed the privileges enjoyed by members of the British House of Commons at the time of Confederation in 1867. Indeed, the House, through the act of Parliament, adopted all those privileges. Among those privileges is freedom from obstruction and interference. That is precisely what this question of privilege relates to: the interference of the hon. members for Beauce and Milton's access to the chamber to perform the most important function of a member of Parliament, and that is to stand and vote on behalf of their constituents.When we are talking about the issue of privilege, we are talking about something that has been constitutionally protected. We are talking about something that has been protected by our courts. We are talking about something that has been protected by the common law. It is why what the government sought to do to prevent members of Parliament from having an opportunity to debate and vote on privilege is so significant.When the arguments were put forward to the government about the seriousness of what was happening and the consequences of what was happening, the response of the government was, more or less, that it did not care. Given some of the actions of the government, when it comes to the disrespect it has exhibited to this institution, perhaps we should not be surprised that this was its attitude. However, Canadians should be surprised that, one by one, Liberal MP after Liberal MP stood and voted in favour of the government's extinguishing the ability of members of Parliament to defend and protect their privileges.It seems a lot of members over there perhaps forgot, or maybe they do not care, that they are not members of the government, other than those Liberal MPs who are members of cabinet. Perhaps they lost sight of the fact that members' privileges are privileges that do not just protect opposition members and enable them to do their work on behalf of their constituents. Members' privileges protect all members of the House, including government backbench MPs so they can carry out their jobs as well.It is unfortunate that it took the hon. member for Perth—Wellington, my colleague, to stand and question whether the government could in fact shut down a debate on privilege without a vote. He argued that it was a violation of privilege. You, Mr. Speaker, agreed with the hon. member for Perth—Wellington. As a result of that ruling, we are having a debate on this question of privilege. It should not have happened that way. It need not have happened that way. However, it happened because of the arrogance of the government.It does raise a question as to how that happened and why it happened. Why was the government so determined to extinguish the rights of hon. members to defend members' privileges? The answer is that had the motion passed the House of Commons, it would have been referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, where it would have received precedence, just as it receives precedence in this chamber. That happened to be an inconvenience to the government because the government was simultaneously trying to ram through, at the procedure and House affairs committee, the rules of this place, the rules in terms of how Parliament functioned. The government was trying to strip the rights and abilities of hon. members of the House to hold the government to account, and so we got this mess.The government has backed off a little in terms of its efforts to ram through changes in the procedure and House affairs committee. However, while it backed off a little at the procedure and House affairs committee, it nonetheless remained intent on shutting down debate on a most important question of privilege.What the government has done, and is doing, is wrong. It is undemocratic. It is an attack on all members of Parliament and, as a result, it is an attack on all Canadians. When the abilities of members of Parliament to speak and represent their constituents is impeded upon, that impacts all Canadians who count on us to represent them here every day.My colleagues in the opposition will continue to do what is necessary to hold the government to account, to call on the government to respect the House, to respect this institution, to respect the ability of members of Parliament to stand and vote on behalf of their constituents, and to respect the privileges afforded to all hon. members in the House.

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to trade with the Liberals, secrecy appears to be the name of the game. Last week it was revealed that the government secretly walked away from a potential softwood lumber agreement with Obama. Thanks to Japanese news reports last week, we learned that TPP negotiations are back on and are happening today in a secret location in Toronto. The Liberals in opposition criticized the Conservatives for negotiating major trade deals in secret and promised to do better. The TPP was a bad deal. Will the Liberals come clean with Canadians on why they are now leading the charge for TPP 2.0?

Mr. Speaker, in fact what the Ethics Commissioner said was that the defence minister told her he played absolutely no role. He gave the Sergeant Schultz “I know nothing” answer. The problem is that he then went on to claim to be an architect, and senior military officials described him as playing a key intelligence role. Does the Prime Minister actually believe his Minister of National Defence when he says he knows nothing about what went on with the Afghan detainees when we know he played an—

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I am shocked and appalled to discover that member introducing electoral reform into one of his comments.

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Over the 11-plus years I have been in this House, I have witnessed all kinds of heckling from all corners of the House, and depending on the subject, some with more volume and some with less. I would hazard to say that if everyone looked in the mirror, members would see that they are guilty on a continuum in some way, shape, or form. Certainly one of the people who has been the least guilty of that has been the member for Thornhill. In fact, the only thing I can remember is that the member for Thornhill was the victim of one of the most egregious heckles, calling him a piece of waste, from the other side of the chamber. Therefore, I would ask you to maybe reassess that judgment with respect to taking a question from the fine member for Thornhill.

Mr. Speaker, the government could start by respecting the ability and right of hon. members to debate this question of privilege by backing down on trying to shut down debate. A second thing the government could do is respect the fact that before it changes the rules of the House, in order to do so, there must be consensus. That has been the tradition. I know the government House leader has backed down somewhat on the government's intent to change the Standing Orders, but she has not committed to doing so on the basis of consensus. That would be a second major thing the government could do to show it finally does have respect for this place and for members of Parliament. However, I do not have a lot of confidence in the government when it comes to doing that. We see no indication that it is prepared to do that. For the government, it really comes down to how far it can go and get away with it. We saw that last spring when the government introduced Motion No. 6 to literally try to take away every tool that was available to opposition members to do their jobs to hold the government to account. It only backed down after that unfortunate incident involving the Prime Minister. Then we saw the government try to prevent a vote in the House on the ability of members to defend the privileges of members. The government was stopped as a result of my hon. colleague, the member for Perth—Wellington, raising a new question of privilege and the Speaker ruling on it. Now we see that the government has sort of backed down on changes to the Standing Orders, but only partly. It would not surprise me, given the arrogance and attitude of the government, that before much longer we will see another effort to try to do what it has not been able to get away with yet. Canadians should be very concerned.

Mr. Speaker, the defence minister refuses to provide any explanation as to why he, on at least two occasions, misled Canadians about the role he played in Afghanistan, fabricating that he was the architect of the largest battle Canadians fought in, but he was not. This is not one of those things where saying sorry is going to be enough. He should be moved out. If the Prime Minister refuses to see the damage that this is doing, why should Canadians have confidence in him?

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about openness and transparency. I have been transparent and I know that some of my colleagues who do not speak French would have been able learn about this great editorial had I been able to table the document.Yesterday, I also had the opportunity to participate in a scrum where the opposition was commenting on the new discussion paper. We should really be calling it a new attempt by the Liberals to grab power and absolute control over the House of Commons. A journalist asked me if I could explain to Madame Brossard from Brossard why I do not agree with the changes proposed by the Liberals. I would say this to Madame Brossard from Brossard: my role is to stand up for her when the government forgets about her. Today, the government wants to muzzle her because it does not want to hear what she has to say when she disagrees with the government. I am standing up for Madame Brossard from Brossard against the arrogance and absolute power of this government.That is what Madame Brossard from Brossard has to understand. In the heat of the moment at the press conference, I was unable to think of the right words. I was not sure how to respond to Madame Brossard. However, what Madame Brossard needs to know is that the official opposition, the second opposition party, and the independent members of this House all have a role to play in representing their constituents.When MPs are prevented from playing their role, when they are prevented from coming here to express themselves and share their constituents' thoughts, when they are prevented from voting, it is all the same thing. Those members are being prevented from playing their role properly. It is your duty, Mr. Speaker, to ensure that all of these rules are followed. I am very grateful that you agreed to allow us to discuss this question of privilege. The number of people who have spoken about it shows that this is a very sensitive issue and that you were right in allowing us to discuss it so that you could hear what all of our colleagues had to say. I am convinced that their comments will be very useful to you in the future.The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons turned a deaf ear. She never wanted to reassure us despite our repeated requests not to make any changes unilaterally. My colleague the House leader of the official opposition co-signed a letter with her colleague the leader of the second opposition party. They sent that letter to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons more than three weeks ago. We finally received a response this past weekend, or three weeks later. When two people are talking and they ask a question, but the answer arrives three weeks later, I do not call that a discussion. It would take quite some time if we had to wait three weeks for an answer every time we discussed something. I do not call that a discussion. I call that a dialogue of the deaf.Unfortunately, this answer came quite late. It is true that it came, but it was also released to all the media without allowing for a real discussion, without allowing the leaders to play their role, in other words to talk together to find a way to manage the situation. What about the mutual respect that we should have in this House? If this is transparency, if this is sunny ways, then we will seriously take a pass.The dictionary definition of arrogant is, “unduly appropriating authority or importance”. What better way to describe this government?In closing, the government needs to see reason. It needs to take measures to ensure that no member is ever prevented from doing their work. It needs to drop its idea of changing parliamentary procedural rules without the unanimous consent of the members of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege of serving our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces as the Minister of National Defence. Every single day I will work hard, as I have always done, to make sure that they have all the right tools, the right funding, and care for them to carry out their missions. I will do that every single day.

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin this debate by reading from one of our national newspapers some words of Chantal Hébert: [The Prime Minister] does not much like the House of Commons and the feeling is mutual....[The Prime Minister] rarely engages with the opposition in a meaningful way. For the most part he speaks past his critics’ arguments. The attentive hearing he affords those who challenge him in town halls does not extend to opposition parliamentarians. When not on his feet, [the Prime Minister] can be the picture of adolescent boredom....All of which brings one to the wide-ranging House reforms the Liberals have recently brought forward under the guise of what they call a discussion paper. For the four opposition parties the proposals add up to a heavy-handed bid to erode their already limited capacity to hold a majority government to account. This resonated with me and it resonated with my very Liberal father, who was embarrassed to see a journalist he admired speaking in such a way of the party he used to support.The reason we are in this debate today is that on March 22, two members of Parliament were blocked from accessing the House of Commons by the Prime Minister's motorcade. That is quite an emblem, the privilege of being in the Prime Minister's limousine blocking those of use who come to work using the parliamentary public transit. These members of Parliament were unable to fulfill their principal role as parliamentarians, which was to come to the House to represent their constituents in a vote of this Parliament.When the member for Milton raised this question of privilege in the House, the government made the decision to end debate, to shut it down, and the Speaker of the House ruled this decision to be “unprecedented”. The Speaker of the House ruled that no other government, Liberal or Conservative, had gone so far as to end debate in this fashion on a reasonable question of privilege.The actions of the government members on March 22 to me speak volumes about their level of disrespect for members of Parliament and for the work we do in Parliament. By shutting down debate in the way they did, the government acted in blatant disregard for the way some members were treated, that they were prevented from getting here by the physical transportation logistics outside, and that then the government did not want to debate the fact that they were unable to do the very thing they were elected to do in the House.The government's so-called modernization of the House has proved to be much more of a power consolidation process, drastically reducing the resources available to the opposition to hold it to account. I am very much reminded of the Prime Minister's invitation and welcome to new parliamentarians, and 215 of us in the House are new parliamentarians. My colleague, the member of Parliament for Kootenay—Columbia, reminded us of that invitation, that reminder from the Prime Minister to new parliamentarians that the opposition's job was to hold the government to account. For the government to now have tried, I believe, three times to remove those tools from the opposition is in stark contrast to the Prime Minister's sunny ways message to us just a year and a half ago.I am afraid these government actions set precedent, whether they are refusing to allow debate on a question of privilege or whether the government is unilaterally pushing through changes to the Standing Orders, thereby changing the very process for establishing these rules. This long-standing convention of securing all-party approval before overhauling the Standing Orders of the House of Commons must be preserved. That all-party consensus is the tradition that includes Harper and Chrétien.Consensus is something we have talked about quite a bit in the House on other matters, and it is confusing for all of us. The government says that consensus is not needed to change the House rules, although that has been the parliamentary tradition. The government says, though, that consensus was needed in order to change the voting system, although the promise the Liberals made to Canadians was to make every vote count, which in every case is interpreted as proportional representation, if we follow Fair Vote and some of the other NGOs that have been holding this light up for so long to bring democratic reform to Canadians.There was nothing in the Liberal platform that said we needed a consensus of parliamentarians. This was a solemn promise, repeated more than 1,000 times, apparently, by the Prime Minister to change the voting system. However, once he got here and did not like the way the committee recommendation was going and the consensus of Canadians, he said we needed consensus in this House.We do not need consensus to change the Standing Rules of the House, but we did need consensus to change the voting system.Then consensus was, again, not needed when it came to approving the Kinder Morgan pipeline and its associated oil tanker traffic. The government's campaign platform was that the pipeline approval would not be forced through without revamping and redoing the regulatory process that had been so undermined by the Harper Conservative government. That was a solemn promise again, with hand on heart, that they would change the regulatory review process before pushing through the pipeline, but then, in the end, consensus was not needed, although we will find virtually every coastal community, especially around the hub of transportation, having opposed the pipeline; municipal government bodies like the Union of BC Municipalities, and a significant number of first nations opposed the pipeline approval, particularly in my area, coastal British Columbia, where our $8-billion maritime marine industry is threatened by the potential of an oil spill.Again, no consensus was needed there, and that very much feels like a broken promise, I must say. Women rely on public transit, such as buses, to get to and from work. If they do not have access to that public transit, their employment is put in jeopardy. Not only that, but tragedies like the Highway of Tears show that women's safety is put at risk when they do not have access to proper transportation. We are hearing about this right now at the status of women committee. Jane Stinson, who is a research associate with the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, said: If you think about it, it's particularly people who have lower incomes who use public transit, because they can't afford their own cars. Women have lower incomes, so it's not surprising.... [Public transportation] is a big issue, for some of the reasons that you mentioned.... ...the absence of public transit in northern communities is a major problem. It puts women at risk, as you mentioned. The Highway of Tears is perhaps the most shocking example, but I'm sure it's not alone; it's just better known. In lots of cases in the north women have to hitchhike, as do others, to get around. In urban locations, our research in Ottawa showed that it was very serious. It was accessibility, and that meant cost—the cost was too high for people—and also lack of schedules, and sometimes where the routes went. Again, there's a responsibility with the federal government, even in local transportation. It's a question of transfers. We also heard testimony from United Steelworkers. Meg Gingrich said: We call on the government to invest in social infrastructure, such as affordable housing and public transportation, and...for procurement provisions and policies that meet gender and equity standards with clear enforcement mechanisms and that do not simply continue occupational segregation. I am hearing this in my own riding, as well. Lack of public transit, again and again, is a barrier to women accepting jobs and being able to carry out their responsibilities.Disappointments about implementation of such promises are epitomized by the government's current approach. Sunny ways and hope and hard work seem to be election promises that have now been abandoned. We have had time allocation imposed in the midst of very emotional, vital debates, such as physician-assisted dying. Three times, I was ready to give my speech, trying to convey constituent concerns. Three times, I was unable to deliver it. I never could stand to debate that vital issue for Canada because of time allocation imposed by the government. Motion No. 6 last year seemed designed to neuter the opposition, and so did the so-called discussion paper that we have been debating these last few weeks.Again, it is so out of step with the promise of the present government. I ask the government, in every way, to return to being co-operative, collegial, recognizing it can use its majority, recognizing the opposition has a job to do as well.

Mr. Speaker, I understand that the member opposite has a job to do. As Minister of National Defence, I am making sure we have all the right tools. We work very closely with our coalition partners in making sure, as we have done as government, we are taking a leadership role at NATO, increasing our contribution to the Iraq mission, and making sure our men and women have all the necessary tools to carry out the missions at home and abroad, and we will do just that.

Mr. Speaker, Canada is a steadfast friend and ally of Israel, as I was honoured to say at the World Jewish Congress in New York last week. I will be delighted to repeat that tomorrow at the Israeli embassy, where I will be the guest of honour at the Independence Day celebration.I believe the member opposite was speaking about the UNESCO action. I want to be clear that we object to any attempt to unfairly single out Israel for criticism, including in multilateral forums like UNESCO.

Mr. Speaker, I do not hear much sincerity from the defence minister today and no apology for his remarks and exaggerations. The military's feelings toward our defence minister have gone from disappointment to outrage. Former air force commander General Bill Carr wrote that our defence minister's image is “at best, one of an insecure veteran in a field he professes to know. For the good of the Canadian Forces, his departure would be a relief. He has no alternative but to step down.”Does the defence minister have any honour, integrity, or humility left? Will he do the honourable thing and step down?

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister keeps telling us that Canadians expect people to apologize when they have made a mistake, but actually, Canadians also expect people to do the right thing when they have done something wrong. The right thing for the minister to do is step aside. On two occasions, he made a political calculation that, by exaggerating his military resumé, somehow this would get him further ahead in politics. That might be something that he did as a Liberal politician, but it is wrong for a minister who represents our men and women in uniform.Will the Prime Minister do the right thing and move him away from the defence portfolio?

Mr. Speaker, it is such a remarkable moment to hear the Liberals talk about taking too much time to respect Parliament. That is a bit of a contradiction of things as Liberals are going through the process of disrespecting Parliament, as Liberals are going through the process of saying they want to change the rules that guide all parliamentary debates, that they want to change the rules by forcing bills to only have a certain amount of time for debate at their discretion and nobody else's, to not even have a vote on it, and that it should be built into all legislation so that they can curtail Parliament and shut down discussions so there will be less scrutiny over what it is they are doing. They want to be able to stand and say that omnibus bills are bad in a campaign and the Prime Minister says that he will not use them, which, by the way, is a quote, and then the government introduces an omnibus bill that does exactly what the Prime Minister said he would not do.Governments need to be held to account. Governments from time to time, as shocking as this might be for some of my Liberal colleagues to hear, need to be corrected and their power needs to be checked. The last I checked, in the last election, less than 40% of voting Canadians voted for that party. That means there is a majority of Canadians who did not. That means their voices need to be heard and their opinions need to be respected. That is the job of the opposition and that is what we will continue to do, despite these trickeries by the government.

Mr. Speaker, how does the minister explain making what he calls a mistake? Standing in this House and saying he owns a mistake without any explanation as to why he made it is not contrition; it is deflection. No one disputes the minister's service, but why did he feel justified in so blatantly exaggerating his record? Our troops need a minister who has their back, not someone so eager to pat himself on his. Will the minister stop with the Prime Minister's talking points and explain to Canadians why he fabricated the story?

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that observation, which is very relevant to this debate. Indeed, we have seen this government flip-flop more than once over the past few weeks.The government seems to flip-flop every day now, because it is reacting to the public service and to what the newspapers are saying. The government does not control Parliament, and that is what it wants. It is tyring to do so, but it is realizing that, fortunately, there are parliamentary rules and traditions that prevent it from doing whatever it wants. The reality has caught up with them. My hon. colleague saw it for himself, as the government tried to cut off the debate, which addresses a very important matter, a question of privilege. Certain impediments prevented some members from voting. Our rules and traditions are what protected them. That is precisely what we are standing up for, and that is precisely why we are here and why the government realized that it had to back down. It did a complete 180, and now it wants to send this question of privilege to committee.That is another trick. The government wants to do this because it wants to put an end to our filibuster. The government realized that we figured out what it is up to with the changes it is making to the rules and procedures of the House. It realized that changes like that could not be passed without unanimous consent. The government realized that the opposition would not stand for what it is doing. That is another reason why the government keeps flip-flopping. As the editorial writer said this morning, it is not necessary. The opposition has a role to play and it will continue to play that role.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud of the service of our Minister of National Defence, whether it was as a police officer, as a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, or as our defence minister today. I am proud of the work we are doing to support our men and women of the armed forces, to fulfill our international commitments, and to contribute in a constructive and productive way to the fight against Daesh or with NATO to promote regional stability. We are always there, and we are always ready to serve Canadians.

Mr. Speaker, as I stated, I would never want to detract any confidence from our Canadian Armed Forces. Our government is focused on making sure our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces have all the necessary tools to make sure that we are doing a good job, whether it is in domestic operations supporting Canadians, or whether it is in taking the increased leadership role in NATO, or whether it is in increasing the fight against Daesh. We are making sure that they all have the necessary tools. That is exactly what our government is going to do.

Mr. Speaker, the work the Minister of National Defence has done to serve his community, to serve his country, and continues to do is to the honour of all Canadians. The work we are doing internationally in the fight against Daesh, supporting our allies in NATO, and continuing to be strong leaders around the world, while we give the right tools and opportunities to show the leadership of the Canadian Armed Forces around the world, is something that is truly important to me. We stand by the Minister of National Defence and the great work he is doing.

Mr. Speaker, we are focused on making sure that we provide all the necessary tools for our Canadian Armed Forces, to make sure that they have all the necessary tools when we as government send our folks on important missions. I have the privilege of serving as Minister of National Defence. I am honoured to serve our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces. I am honoured to be able to stand as a representative of this government and work through the defence policy to make sure that there are all the necessary tools and the care for the men and women who serve us.

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader stated numerous times today that the opposition is being irresponsible in wanting to continue debate on the question of privilege. I want to get the member's comments on that.

Mr. Speaker, I take every opportunity to make sure that we highlight the great work of our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces, such as by taking trips into Iraq and making sure they have the necessary tools. I recently was in Malaysia where we had two of our ships there highlighting the great work that they do in the Asia-Pacific. I will always highlight the great work of the men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces as I have always done.

Mr. Speaker, the real question Canadians have is how we got to this point in the House, and how the Liberals put us in this situation where we are sitting today.The Liberals put us in this situation by shutting down debate prior to sending the issue to PROC. You tried to shut down debate last time prior to sending it to PROC, and the Speaker overruled what you wanted to do. Now we are facing that same situation, where once again you are shutting down debate on a really important question of unfettered access to Parliament.That is the real question Canadians want an answer to. Why has the Liberal government put this House in that position?

Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal of respect for my friend, as I do for a number of folks on all sides of the House, who deeply enrich themselves with the knowledge and history of this place. It is important that all sides have members who dedicate themselves to that conversation, because we all are actors passing across the stage. We are here for a time, we never how long, and yet we must maintain and, I would argue, improve the quality of what Parliament does on behalf of Canadians. The issue we are debating now is the ability of members just to get into the House to vote on behalf of their constituents, a motion which, by the way, the Liberals tried to kill at one point in these proceedings, which is ironic to a detrimental level. We have been talking about the rules that govern us as members of Parliament representing our constituents and that the long-standing tradition by prime ministers throughout history was to never change those rules unless all parties agreed, simply because it is a good test. Otherwise, one could imagine a government with a majority, a false majority, in this case, changing the rules to its own advantage over the opposition. We all recognize that a majority government has enormous strength and power to pass through its agenda, yet the role of the opposition to hold it to account is central to everything we do.The Liberals are using the line that they would not give a veto to the Conservatives over one of the Liberal election pledges. Ironically, that did not stop them from breaking their pledge on electoral reform. They themselves broke that with no help from anybody else. However, this notion that it went from an election pledge to somehow override the long-standing and important tradition that we as parliamentarians try to make the place better seems to me a distortion of the power of a promise ill-defined and badly made at some point by some political leader in the middle of a campaign versus the strength and integrity of the House of Commons.I have a frank question for my friend, which I might ask in private but am asking in public. He mentioned the pattern we were seeing from the government, which came in with great promise to make Parliament better, to be more open and transparent about the way to conduct ourselves, yet has demonstrated its tendency to want to override the will of Parliament, to distort the power that already exists in its favour. Can that pattern be broken or has this ship simply sailed too far away to get it back to some level of sanity and decency?

Mr. Speaker, we have asked many times for an explanation of the bizarre double ambassadorial appointments of Stéphane Dion after he was shuffled out of cabinet, appointments publicly ridiculed by former Canadian diplomats, as well as more quietly among current foreign affairs professionals, and which did offend the EU.Today Mr. Dion finally came clean before the foreign affairs committee. His bizarre twofer appointment, he said, was the Prime Minister's decision and the PM's alone.Will the Prime Minister finally take responsibility for his spectacularly bad decision?

It is the obvious analogy, Mr. Speaker. There is one distinction between the electoral reform promise that the government gave and the promise it gave here, which is that the electoral reform promise was dramatic in terms of timing. The promise was that this would be the last first-past-the-post election. It was not clear what the government was going to replace it with. When we proposed on the electoral reform committee to give the government free rein to choose any system that it saw fit as long as it then introduced that system to the Canadian public in a referendum vote and as long as that system was five or less on the Gallagher index, which means highly proportional, it was at that point that the Prime Minister fessed up and said he was only ever willing to consider preferential voting. That was good to learn. It would have been nice to have known that in 2015. I suspect that a number of ridings might have gone NDP but for the fact that some of their swing voters went Liberal. We might now have NDP members there had this promise been clarified at that time, as opposed to after the fact.The member asked if the ship can be turned around. I would suggest that the House is doing the work of turning it around. On the electoral reform issue, it is unfortunate that the whole shebang ground to a halt. Should it arise in the future, the nature of that debate will be very different as a result of the clarification that we collectively brought to that discussion.Here too we see that a number of the items that were on the Liberal agenda, such as programming motions, which was the most devastatingly bad of all the ideas the Liberals had, are off the agenda. Here the idea was essentially to do what they were going to do on procedure and House affairs, which is shut down debate and make it impossible to move forward, but we have now come to a resolution. I think those are off the agenda. The governmentt House leader said in her letter that they are off the agenda, and on this one I take her at her word. That is progress, but it is unfortunate that we have to achieve progress in this way. However, that is the idea of the Westminster system. The government's feet are actually held to the fire. It is not a very pleasant process for the government and it may not be a pretty process from the point of view of the Canadian public, but I am not sure we are after a system that is pretty. We are after a system that in the long run delivers incrementally better and better government, and on this matter, despite other philosophical differences between me and my colleague, we are 100% in accord.

Mr. Speaker, we were here today because of the issue of unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct. This is not the first time. In fact, in recent years I have had to deal with it at the procedures and House affairs committee. Prior to going to PROC, it justifies a few hours of debate; then there is a vote, and it goes to committee.Now, on the other hand, there is a hidden agenda coming from the Conservative Party on this issue. The member actually made reference to it, and I applaud him for doing so, but other members of the Conservative Party have also made reference to it, and for them, it is all about filibustering. They are filibustering on a matter of privilege, the issue of access, which every member of the House takes very seriously, with the exception, it would appear, of some from the Conservative benches, who want to manipulate this issue in a very irresponsible fashion. That is what we see when opposition members admit this is a filibuster. They are debating it today because they want to have a filibuster on the very important issue of unfettered access. I know the constituents I represent would like to see a modernized Parliament. They would like to ensure that all members have unfettered access to the chamber. I believe they would be disappointed in the irresponsible behaviour of the Conservatives, because there is a responsibility for the official opposition to also be responsible inside the House. Today we have not witnessed responsible opposition.

Mr. Speaker, as much as these Liberals claim to be consulting and listening, over at the finance committee, witness after witness, including the Liberals' own witnesses, told us they were not consulted before the Liberals forced their mortgage changes onto Canadians. Had the Liberals bothered to listen to the industry, they would know that the issues facing companies such as Home Capital are very serious.When will the finance minister start listening to the experts from the Canadian mortgage industry?

Mr. Speaker, the defence minister has been telling so many fictional stories that he cannot keep his facts straight. For example, in 2015 the minister claimed that General Vance coined the term that he was the architect for his work back in 2006 on Operation Medusa, but that cannot be true because General Vance did not take command in Afghanistan until 2009. The minister's fabrication was no mistake. This was his personal choice. If the Prime Minister lacks the good judgment to fire the minister, will the defence minister do the honourable thing and resign?

Mr. Speaker, the answer is in the question.The fact that this type of question even needs to be asked in the House shows that there is a problem. We have noticed that there is a problem that affects every member on this side of the House. This problem also exists for the members across the way, but it especially affects the backbench Liberal MPs who are also getting tired of this procedural wrangling. There is a simple solution. All the government has to do is get rid of the threat hanging over the opposition that our rules are going to be changed without consensus or unanimous consent, and then everything will be just fine.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to pick up where I left off before question period, in order to discuss this important question of privilege. I must digress a little first, however.In their responses today, the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Defence repeated the same talking points, regardless of the question. After hearing the Prime Minister give the same answers in the same way to every question he was asked, I have to wonder why this government wants to give the Prime Minister a full question period to answer the opposition's questions. I think he would be able to give identical answers to everything in three minutes and we would see right away that it would always be the same. To come back to my speech, we can all agree that as representatives, we are all entitled to the same parliamentary courtesies and privileges regardless of our political affiliation. Whether we are on the government benches, on the opposition, or independent MPs, we all have the right to the same consideration when it comes to accessing the House of Commons. Preventing a parliamentarian from exercising his or her right to vote, regardless of the reason, is unacceptable. The Liberal government was elected on promises of transparency. It referred to sunny ways. It also promised the following on page 29 of the Liberal platform: For Parliament to work best, its members must be free to do what they have been elected to do: represent their communities and hold the government to account. That is exactly what we are doing, and it is exactly what the Liberals are trying to do with the proposed changes to our rules, to our Standing Orders, our bylaws, and how our House operates. In light of what has gone on in the past few weeks, it is clear that this promise from the Liberal platform is unfortunately not one that the Liberals will keep, just like the promise they made to have only a small deficit.The deficit is currently quite enormous and the books will not be balanced before 2055. It is the Minister of Finance himself, not the opposition, who is saying this. If the opposition had not done its job and raised the issue, we would never have found out because the minister kept this tidbit of information to himself. He made it public a few days before Christmas and most Canadians would not have learned this important information. It is not surprising, coming from a political party that mastered the art of making promises during the election and doing the opposite once elected.The government says that it is honouring its promise to improve and modernize Parliament. On page 30 of the Liberals' platform, we read: “We will not resort to legislative tricks to avoid scrutiny.” That really takes the cake, because it is exactly what the Liberals did.First there was a discussion paper containing a threat regarding the adoption of a report before a certain date. If that is not a trick, I do not know what is. The Liberals realized that it did not work, so they backed down on their discussion paper and took away the committee's right to do its work. Then they brought the matter back to the House, where they have a majority and where they could be sure to have more control over the opposition members. The government had to back down because of a public outcry. The government now says that it is backing down and that it wants to go ahead with just what it promised during the election campaign. However, as I just clearly and explicitly demonstrated, not only is the government not keeping all of its promises, but it is cherry-picking the ones it wants to keep. That is a trick.It still wants to make changes without assuring us parliamentarians that it will not impose any changes without the unanimous consent of all parties of the House. This is a power grab. How else can we describe what this government wants to do?I would like to quote a few articles. I especially liked one that was in Le Devoir this morning and was entitled “Liberal Doublespeak”. I will not read the whole article, because that would take too long.However, there are certain passages that warrant our attention. The title of the article is “Liberal Doublespeak”. I will read a few passages. The parliamentary process has its faults, but that is the price we pay to keep tabs on our governments....In trying to escape that scrutiny, the Prime Minister's Liberals are only making things worse and casting some serious doubt on their promise to respect Parliament. Since March, work in the House of Commons has been slowed by the opposition's stalling tactics, brought about by an argument largely provoked by the government, its parliamentary leader, and their proposals to make changes to the rules of Parliament. Were it just a matter of making changes, there would be no problem, but the government insisted on a tight deadline and stubbornly refused to commit to not act unilaterally in the event of a stalemate.... The opposition is furious, and rightly so, because, according to the conventions of the House, consensus must prevail, promise or no promise. I think that is fairly clear. It is not the opposition that is saying it. Anyone who has seen what has been happening here over the past few weeks knows that the opposition is just doing its job. The opposition is defending the right to speak of Canadians who are represented by the MPs they duly elected. That is what we are doing, and the media is starting to pick up on it. Surprise. Now the Liberals are trying to take a small but strategic step backwards. Unfortunately, as we can see from the editorial in this morning's edition of Le Devoir, journalists and Canadians can see right through those tactics.The article goes on as follows: This backtracking is welcome, but the Leader of the Government is using it as a pretext to issue a warning. Did I understand the meaning of the new proposal correctly? The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons is giving us a warning. She wrote, “under the circumstances, the government will need to use time allocation more often in order to implement” its legislative agenda. One would think she was a Conservative minister. When the Liberals were on this side of the House, they sang a different tune. They promised sunny ways, a new way of doing things, and so, so much respect. Now it looks like they have opted to stick with the tradition of government acting in accordance with rules approved by consensus. That is what we did when we were in power. That is what they should keep doing if they want to restore respect and balance to the House.The editorial writer went on to say this: Nothing justifies this threat. After a year and a half in power, the government's legislative agenda is pretty thin. Even so, it has used time allocation to expedite the study of 11 bills. [The Liberals] say they want to consult and talk, but attacking the Conservatives, insisting on taking unilateral action, and threatening closure sends quite a different message to the other parties. The reason their legislative agenda is being obstructed, as it was last year, is that they are no better now than they were then at resisting the temptation to manoeuver in a bid to take greater control over Parliament. Their appetite for power not only hinders their ability to keep their promises, it is inconsistent with those promises. Those excerpts were from an editorial by Manon Cornellier in today's edition of Le Devoir.Mr. Speaker, I believe that if you seek it, you will find the unanimous consent of the members of the House for me to table this article so that everyone can read it.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal House leader claims she is having discussions with all MPs about substantive changes to our democracy. What she is actually doing is ramming through a motion to make the Liberals less accountable to Canadians.The Liberal member for Malpeque thinks there should be all-party consensus. Even the Liberal platform itself says so: We will look at...ways to make Question Period more relevant...and will work with all parties to recommend and bring about these changes. Did she actually read their platform, or is she taking communications lessons from the defence minister?

Mr. Speaker, criticism was swift and consistent in response to the dual appointments of Stéphane Dion as ambassador to both the European Union and Germany. Each is a crucial and critical portfolio to manage. Now the European Union has rejected Stéphane Dion as ambassador.Can the Prime Minister explain why he would insult two of our strongest and closest allies by suggesting that Canada's relationship with each of them is a part-time job?

Mr. Speaker, next, the PBO plays a crucial role in holding a government to account, and that is what the Liberals used to believe when the Conservatives were in power. If the Prime Minister's changes had occurred under the last government, we would not have known about the F-35 costs, for example.The Prime Minister said that the PBO must be “truly independent”, so the question is, why is he muzzling it?Why is the Prime Minister attacking the parliamentary budget officer?

Mr. Speaker, I am very glad indeed to participate in this debate. I want to address the problem that faces us as we decide on this matter of privilege to face the fact that we are going to be sending this question of privilege to a committee which has itself largely broken down. It is a committee in which the spirit has been adopted by the current government of running roughshod over the traditional rights and privileges of the opposition. These are privileges that are the practical basis on which the opposition can carry out its job of ensuring proper scrutiny of what the government does, ensuring that government business can be slowed down and examined at sufficient length so that if there is a problem with it, it can then be brought to the attention of the Canadian public. This would allow the Canadian public to then say they expect changes, thereby pressuring the government, which after all wants to win the next election, into respecting the wishes of the people and changing its policy. That is what the opposition does under our system. It is what the opposition has always done under our system. It is a good way of organizing things. That is why these rules have evolved over time, over centuries. It is why they have been maintained over the decades of the past century. It is why we have, among other things, concluded as a parliamentary community that we ought not to change the Standing Orders without the consent of all parties. That, of course, is the approach that all the opposition parties want to take right now. It is the approach that was taken under the Harper government and under the Chrétien government. There have been very few occasions on which changes to the Standing Orders have been pushed through without the consent of the opposition, and that is a very good thing. Those changes that have been pushed through without consent are almost invariably, but they are invariably, changes that have had the effect of stripping the opposition of its ability to do its job on behalf of Canadians, and therefore of destroying, in part, the constitutional apparatus. When I say constitutional I mean that in the traditional British sense of how we conduct legislation in a Westminster system in Canada. The practices on the committee that have veered so far from what is acceptable need to be enumerated here, and I propose to do that today. At the committee on March 21, a motion was introduced at an in camera session, and in all fairness, it was a session that started off in camera and then went public. A Liberal member of Parliament proposed that all changes to the Standing Orders would be implemented and a report submitted to the House of Commons by June 2. This was effectively a way of ensuring that a single report containing all the necessary provisions, everything the Liberals wanted, would be produced. There could be a dissenting report, I guess, but there would be no option of trying to place limits on what gets agreed to by saying that no, the opposition does not support this or that particular change to the Standing Orders, including ones that had never been contemplated in the Liberal election platform or discussed with the Canadian public. All of these could be pushed through at the government's discretion. Lest anyone suffer from the illusion that we had any idea of which policy option would be preferred, we have a government discussion paper which includes a whole range of topics, some of which contradict each other. We would either sit on Fridays and make them full days or not sit on any Fridays. Numerous other options were put out there which could not be compatible with each other. New items could be added in and the government would not indicate it. At no point between that day and this day would the Liberals ever indicate which of these items were the ones that were their bottom line, so we never knew. We had no security at all. We were told to have a discussion and the Liberals would not provide us with any details; we would get to find out once we had consented to allow them to move forward with the motion. Of course, we opposed that.I proposed an amendment to this motion in that committee which said that we would still maintain the June 2 deadline, but we would only have such changes to the Standing Orders as had the unanimous consent of all members of that committee. This followed the practice established in the past and actually spelled out in the House orders during the last Parliament in which Jean Chrétien was our prime minister. That is what we proposed. For the intervening period between March 21 and today, that is all we discussed, endlessly.The first big surprise and the first deviation from appropriate practices came immediately after I proposed that amendment. This would have been on March 21 at the end of the normally scheduled meeting. We started the meeting at 11 a.m., as the procedure and House affairs committee always does. We were getting close to one o'clock, which is our normal time for adjournment. I proposed my amendment, expecting that we would come back if we stayed on this topic and deal with it at our next meeting, which would have taken place two days later, on March 23, but the chair at the appointed time for adjournment said, effectively—I do not have his exact words in front of me, but they are in the committee Hansard—that we were not going to adjourn because the chair may not adjourn without the consent of the majority of committee members; it is not in the power of the chair to adjourn, and the Liberal members indicated they did not want to adjourn. The purpose of this quite clearly was to keep the debate going until the opposition ran out of steam and then the government would simply push through its motion in that committee and that would result in the Standing Orders being unilaterally changed in a way that could not be controlled or modified in any way by the opposition in that committee.At that time, I argued that the chair was misinterpreting the practices of the House. There is no standing order that says the chair cannot adjourn the committee without the expressed consent of the majority of the committee at the time when the committee normally adjourns. However, the chair argued back that no, he cannot adjourn. He went on at some length that he could not do this, and so in the end we had no choice. We could hardly stand up and walk out of the committee. That would result in the Liberals getting what they wanted, and subverting all of our rules, all of our protections, so we had no choice but to talk and talk. We started a filibuster, which has become the longest filibuster, to the best of my knowledge, in the history of this country. Until it was adjourned this morning, in that committee it was still March 21. Instead of being adjourned, the meetings would be suspended, and we would come back sometimes after a break of a day or two days and on one occasion most recently after a break of two weeks, but always to the fiction that it was still March 21. It is one thing for us all to see the clock as a certain time in order to wrap up the proceedings of a committee or of the House early, or to do the opposite and see the clock as being a little earlier than it actually is to allow the committee to go on a bit longer. I used to do this all the time when I chaired the Subcommittee on International Human Rights. I would say to the committee members, and members can examine the committee Hansard to see this, “I see the clock as not yet being 2 p.m.” When we looked at the clock it was clearly 2 p.m., which was when we adjourned, but as long as no other member disagreed, that allowed us to maintain the official fiction that it was prior to 2 p.m., so that we could continue hearing witness testimony. We would hear heartbreaking stories about people who had been tortured and murdered in other countries. It was our job to listen to this testimony and then make use of it in preparing our reports. I always sought the consent of the committee in that matter, but I understood that a meeting ends at the time it is scheduled to end. The chair took a different position. Then today he came to our meeting. We met at 9:02 a.m. The chair said, “It being 9:02 on May 5”, not maintaining this fiction that it is March 21, “good morning. Welcome back to the 55th meeting of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. This meeting is being televised. Prior to our suspension on April 13, the committee was debating” the member for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston's “amendment to [the] motion. Also, I'll bring to your attention the two excellent papers we asked for, done by our researcher, one on the standing orders in Quebec's National Assembly dealing with omnibus bills, and the other one on the historical contents of budget implementation bills.”Referring to the debate that is happening right now, he said, “It is my understanding that all parties have signalled their intention to support the subamendment and amendment on the question of privilege currently being debated in the House. As members know, when this question comes to a vote it means that ultimately this committee will be seized with the matter of access of members to the parliamentary precinct. Given this information, I'm happy to say that this 55th meeting finally stands adjourned.”He then gavelled us out.There are two problems with this procedurally. This is the same chair who said that a meeting cannot be adjourned without the consent of the members of the committee. Now he said that he was adjourning it. He made no effort to even look up from his papers. He adjourned the meeting of the committee without the consent of the members. Unlike the previous occasion, when we actually had arrived at the pre-scheduled end time of the meeting, this was in the middle of the meeting. This was clearly in violation of the traditional practice in this House that the chair cannot adjourn a meeting. It is not a standing order. It is a practice to ensure that chairs cannot adjourn meetings in the middle of a meeting, in the middle of a proceeding, to prevent some item of business from being dealt with or to prevent discussion. Our name is Parliament. Parlement. Medieval French is where this came from. It is a place to speak. Our default setting is to be able to continue debate, and he shut that down in a way that violated the practice of this place, as stated on page 1087 of O'Brien and Bosc: The committee Chair cannot adjourn the meeting without the consent of a majority of the members, unless the Chair decides that a case of disorder or misconduct is so serious as to prevent the committee from continuing its work. That is something that would only occur in the middle of a meeting, not when we have arrived at the end and are past our time. The chair has violated this rule twice. Once was by misusing it to justify keeping a meeting going indefinitely. That particular meeting started at 11 a.m. and concluded at 3 a.m. and then was picked up after a suspension the next day and the next. The second was by actually overtly and egregiously adjourning the meeting a minute into a meeting that was expected to be several hours long, and, I might add, in the midst of me attempting to raise a point of order on this very point. I stated, “point of order.” He heard me and chose to ignore me. That was an egregious, deliberate, and overt abuse not of the practices but of the Standing Orders. This is the committee to which we propose to send items of privilege, a committee chaired by someone willing to violate the practices and the Standing Orders of this place.That is one problem. Let me talk about something else that was wrong in the way this was done. It was with respect to the suspension of the committee. What the chair did at the end of the first meeting, the first sitting of this committee, which started on March 21 at 11 a.m. and carried on until 3 a.m. the next morning, was suspend, suddenly and without warning, and we came back the next day, I believe at noon. After that, the tendency was to suspend at midnight and come back later on. Let me give members an idea of just what I am talking about. They will see the importance of this in a second. We started on March 21 at 11:05 a.m. There were a number of brief suspensions for votes during the day. We then suspended at 3 a.m. There is an oddity here. It says we suspended on March 21 officially, but it was really March 22, until noon the next day. On March 22, we then suspended until March 23 at 10:30 a.m. We then suspended and recommenced on March 24 and then again on March 25. On March 25, there was a suspension during a break week. We suspended on March 25 at 11 a.m., and we returned on April 3 at noon. We suspended on April 3, coming back on April 5. We suspended on April 5 and came back on April 6. On April 6, we suspended and came back on April 7. On April 7, we suspended and came back on April 11. On April 11, we suspended and came back on April 12. On April 12, we suspended until April 13. On April 13, we suspended and came back on May 2, today, and we had this adjournment.I want to talk about what O'Brien and Bosc say about suspensions. They say: Committees frequently suspend their meetings for various reasons, with the intention to resume later in the day. Suspensions may last a few seconds, or several hours, depending on the circumstances, and a meeting may be suspended more than once. So far, so good: The committee Chair must clearly announce the suspension, so that transcription ceases until the meeting resumes. Meetings are suspended, for example, to change from public to in camera mode, or the reverse, to enable witnesses to be seated or to hear witnesses by video conference, to put an end to disorder, to resolve a problem with the simultaneous interpretation system, or to move from one item on the agenda to the next. It also notes: Speaker Milliken expressed reservations about the power of a committee to suspend proceedings to the next day.... This is not something that is an approved practice. I then looked up Speaker Milliken's ruling, delivered on June 3, 2003. He stated that it was inappropriate. It was not a breach of the rules or the Standing Orders but a breach of precedence for the chair of the Standing Committee on Transportation to suspend a meeting on May 28 and resume it on May 29. He said: Your Speaker is...somewhat troubled by the notion of an overnight suspension of proceedings. As hon. members know, if the Speaker's attention is drawn to a lack of quorum and no quorum is found, the House must adjourn forthwith. While it may be argued that no such obligation exists for committees, I would not consider the unorthodox actions of the transport committee in this particular instance to be a precedent in committee practice. This is a quorum issue that caused them to suspend. In other words, their suspension to be back the next day was not a precedent that says that this is acceptable. This is not an acceptable practice, and that was a situation in which a committee suspended once for 24 hours.Here is a situation where the committee suspended 10 times for breaks ranging from 24 hours to two weeks. This was not a suspension. This was adjournment and reconvening of the committee. To this chair's credit, when I asked him, he started to let us know what the next time we would be coming back would be, and he started to let us know when our next suspension would be so we could at least plan.However, initially, in this particular situation, the government members apparently knew when the suspension would be, but the rest of us, who had to keep the debate going, were hamstrung. These are all examples of an absolutely egregious abuse of the way in which this place works.I intend, now that I have seen how these particular practices have been abused, to come back with proposals to change the Standing Orders to make sure that suspensions are used as suspensions, not as adjournments, and to make sure that the rule, the practice on adjournment, is actually put down as a Standing Order. We cannot adjourn a meeting as the chair in the middle of a meeting, but at the end of a meeting, we cannot keep the meeting going unless we have the consent of the majority of the committee. Hopefully that will remove some of the abuses that have gone on in this committee.Let me just say this. There is a pattern here, not just in this committee but in the government, of absolutely having no regard for the traditional way we have done things. This is a majority government. It has enormous power. The powers of a Canadian prime minister far exceed those of an American president, far exceed them, domestically speaking, but they are not the powers of a dictator. The rules that keep them from being the powers of a dictator are the ones that are incorporated in our Standing Orders and in the respect we all have, until recently all had, for the practices of this place. These are slender threads that preserve our liberties, but they are vital. We should not sweep them aside, and I encourage all members to take great caution not to allow this practice on this committee to become the practice of the House or of the committees in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot do justice to the hon. member's quite detailed and lengthy paper on changes to the Standing Orders. She came forward in good faith with a substantial number of proposals.Rather than dealing with any of the specifics, I will make this observation. What she has done—and this is the best practice for any of us here—is she has looked at best practices of other Westminster jurisdictions, of which there is a treasure trove, a cornucopia, and drawn upon some of those best practices. She has pointed in particular to themes of working consensually together. This is a theme that has animated the hon. member's work on electoral reform. It defines the kind of system she is working toward with electoral reform. She wants a system that makes us more consensual. The same general thesis animates her proposals for working in the House. That is not easy in a Westminster system. We all know the famous story of our being two swords' lengths apart. I assume the purpose was to prevent us from actually stabbing each other, but that is not to say that we have to keep on doing that into the future. We can work more consensually, and the theme that she is proposing is a profound one that I hope will be picked up by members in all parties in the remainder of this Parliament.

Mr. Speaker, no one has questioned the bravery of the Minister of National Defence when he was a soldier, but there are two documented cases of the Minister of National Defence taking credit for the hard work and bravery of others, vastly exaggerating his role in a military operation. This is a serious issue and it has deeply offended those who were actually on the battlefield. He said these things as far back as 2015 when he was campaigning as a Liberal candidate in the last election.My question for the Prime Minister is this. Did he know, was he aware, about these fabrications before he appointed the Minister of National Defence?

Mr. Speaker, on Sunday, my colleague from Jonquière and I joined thousands of people at a march in Dolbeau-Mistassini, which is in my region, to remind the Government of Canada how important the forestry industry is across the country, including in our region.When he got back from China, the Minister of International Trade told us it would be good for Canada to sell its wood elsewhere. We have been trying to do that for 20 years. We will keep trying, but that is not something we need to be told.What is your plan? Never mind what you say; what are you going to do to keep forestry workers employed?

Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing me to respond. Once a day is enough. I will answer the question.The hon. parliamentary secretary has a lot of experience in the House, but, unfortunately, he does not seem to have listened to my colleagues' speeches. I think that the parliamentary secretary is talking about tricks. He is talking about all of the tools that the opposition has at its disposal to make itself heard. However, we, the opposition, are not making our own voices heard. We are making the voices of Canadians heard. Canadians are saying, through us and all of the methods at our disposal, that this government is going too far. They are saying that this government is using tricks. We have been talking about a discussion paper. Let us look back at what has happened. The government presented a discussion paper. Discussion means that we talk but that no decisions are made. First development: the discussion paper was sent to committee and, all of a sudden, a decision has to be made and the government will impose it, if necessary.That is what happened. It was another trick. Fortunately opposition members saw through it. Fortunately, my colleagues saw through it. That is why it is important to remember that the rule for accessing Parliament is not the only important rule. All our rules are important. Some members, my colleagues, were prevented from coming to vote here and this government is trying to take away our right to speak. It is trying to take away our right to represent our constituents. That is what the parliamentary secretary, my hon. colleague, should have understood during our interventions. That is the truth.

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. The ability of an hon. member to access this House in order to vote on a matter before the House is of utmost importance. Indeed, there is nothing more important in terms of the function of a member of Parliament than to stand up and vote on matters before the House on behalf of their constituents. That is what our constituents elect us to do. Unfortunately, in the case of the hon. member for Milton and the hon. member for Beauce, that privilege was infringed upon when they were prevented from getting here. That is why this debate is so important. In terms of the consequences of what could have happened, one consequence was that two hon. members were not able to stand in their place on behalf of 100,000 or so constituents. That is a pretty significant consequence, but it could have been an even worse consequence if we had been talking about a vote of confidence. The inability of the members to access this House, to show up and vote, could have the consequence of literally resulting in a potential loss of confidence in the government. We are talking about very serious consequences that could flow from the privileges of members being infringed upon in terms of being able to access this place.

Mr. Speaker, a meaningful apology must be followed by changed behaviour, transparency, and accountability, and that is just not what we are getting from the minister.The defence minister told the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner that he knew nothing about the transfer of Afghan detainees to face torture. However, both he and his supervisor in Afghanistan have said that he played a key role in intelligence liaison with local Afghan forces. Can the Minister of National Defence tell us how he can simultaneously have known nothing about prisoner transfers to local Afghan authorities and at the same time have been Canada's key liaison person with these same forces?

Mr. Speaker, last month our government joined the Province of Manitoba and the Association of Manitoba Municipalities to announce 24 new water and waste-water projects with a combined investment of $34 million to upgrade, rehabilitate, and expand water and waste-water facilities. These investments will have a real and tangible impact on communities and families while ensuring they have safe and clean water to drink.

Mr. Speaker, I would rather characterize the appointment of Stéphane Dion, an outstanding Canadian, to this essential role as a spectacularly good decision.Stéphane Dion has fulfilled, over many years, many roles in the service of Canadians with honour, dignity, and intelligence. He will do the same thing in Europe. We should all be proud that he will be there for us.

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith. I am sure she will do an excellent job, as usual.I am honoured, and perhaps a little saddened, to rise in the House to speak to the privilege motion currently before us. I say it saddens me a little because it is unfortunate that we have to move privilege motions and hold a debate on this matter, rather than doing our usual, ongoing work. Nevertheless, this is a very important matter, and I will come back to it in more detail later. I think this question raises a much broader issue, that is, our ability to do our work in general. It is important because we are all here to represent our constituents and all Canadians. It is crucial that we be able to do so properly, because that is our most fundamental role.One of the opposition's key roles is holding the government to account. Although we often hold it to account on budget issues, I feel we should hold it to account for all of its decisions. To do that, we need to be able to have in-depth debates and move about freely on the Hill so that we can take part in those debates. During the election campaign, the Liberals said they wanted to work on creating a more collegial atmosphere and making it easier for us to do the job people elected us to do, but it really seems like things are going the other way and the Liberals are breaking their promises, just as they have done so many other times.We were promised sunny ways. We were told everything would be great and everyone would get along and work together. However, for the last little while, the government has been trying to change the system so it can get its hands on all the power. Initially, I thought its goal was to prevent the opposition from having a say, but that is not quite right. What the government is really trying to do is make it so that anything said in the House, any argument the opposition might make, is simply ignored or carries no real weight. For example, the government wants to change the rules of the House. I have no problem with discussing the rules of the House. However, what we are seeing now and what we saw last year during the debate around Motion No. 6 is the government's desire to foist its own vision of how the House should work on us, and that vision involves more power for the government.People keep saying there is going to be a conversation about this. I bet I am not the only member of the House who is starting to wonder if “conversation” is really the right word here.As we get to know this government better, we realize that having a conversation means that it will talk, it will listen, it will allow us to talk, but at the end of the day it is still going to do whatever it wants. The government wonders why the House is dysfunctional at times. The answer seems obvious when we look at what the government did with Motion No. 6 and what it is trying to do yet again to limit our powers.The government is not really leaving us the choice to rise or not rise on motions like this on a question of privilege. On behalf of the people we represent, we have to express our right and our privilege to truly be heard on these major issues.I was talking about the word “conversation”, but another way of saying it is “keep talking”. In other words, we can talk all we want, but at the end of the day, the government is going to do what it wants. Electoral reform is another fine example. The government promised to have a conversation and listen to what Canadians had to say about electoral reform. The government formed a committee that travelled across the country. It was all very nice. Almost 90% of the experts and Canadians who appeared before the committee were of the same opinion, agreeing that we should have a mixed member proportional system. The Liberals did not like it because, as we know, it would not necessarily give them the advantage. Suddenly, the conversation came to an abrupt end. The Liberals said that they had let the people speak, but now they would do what they wanted and break a promise that they repeated many times. This has happened in connection with several issues. There is the matter of House procedure. They are trying to limit the powers of the parliamentary budget officer. How will limiting these powers help transparency and accountability? They are also using closure. On this issue of privilege, it is quite interesting, given that our colleagues from Milton and Beauce were unable to vote because they did not have access to the House.When members raised this question of privilege, the Liberals' reaction was to use their majority to prevent the matter from being debated. Even the Speaker said that it was unprecedented, that a government had never before used its majority to prevent a debate on a question of privilege.In the end, they changed their minds, so we could discuss it here today, but now here we go again. The Liberals are imposing a gag order on this matter. In this context, we have to wonder what happened to all the lofty promises to be more collegial and work together. All this is coming from a government that promised transparency and openness.Everyone here today saw question period, for instance. So much for transparency and openness, when the Minister of National Defence speaks out of both sides of his mouth and the Prime Minister does not really answer any questions. I think that is why more and more people are saying that, in the end, the Prime Minister and his government are just like the Harper government, but with a grin. We are happy to see a smile, but we would like to see a little more in terms of fundamental changes.I would like to say a quick word about one of my memories of Jack Layton, from our first caucus meeting. We are not supposed to discuss caucus outside of caucus. He spoke to us at length about respect. That is what this is about, respect for members and for our institutions. I think that is what everyone here today is asking for.

Mr. Speaker, I would never detract from the accomplishments of our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces. Our government will always work hard to make sure that they are truly served.I am honoured to serve our men and women in uniform. I am going to continue to work hard for them every single day to make sure they have the right tools, the right capabilities, and the right care, so they can carry out their missions.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals failed to negotiate a softwood lumber agreement. They also failed to come up with a plan to deal with the crisis, which is now very real. Countervailing duties are already affecting sawmill production. The government needs to understand that these countervailing duties are affecting thousands of jobs and that thousands of families are going to suffer as a result. How is it possible that the Minister of Natural Resources still has not presented any immediate measures to deal with the crisis? How much longer is he going to drag his feet on the softwood lumber file?

Mr. Speaker, my question has to do with my colleague's speech.Does he know what drove the Liberals' 180 on this issue? They first time the question of privilege came up, they totally shut down debate instead of taking the stance that a committee should look at the issue, which is what they are saying now. After a few hours, they decided that was enough, they did not want to hear another word about it, and they would not send it to committee. Now they are telling us this issue has to go to committee as quickly as possible and the debate has to end.Can the member tell me why the Liberals reversed their stance on referring this issue to committee? The first time we talked about this, they said it was out of the question and shut down debate. Now they are saying we need to expedite things and send the question to committee immediately.

Mr. Speaker, he has already distracted from the good work that the men and women in uniform have done and are doing. That is done. He can now try to make it right by giving them their honour back. If our men and women in uniform try to steal valour and try to take credit for something that they did not do in the military, there is a consequence in terms of discipline, in terms of the trust that they will have lost with their colleagues. Does the Minister of National Defence not understand that he broke this code of conduct, that he broke trust? The only fix is for him to step aside and let our men and women in uniform have a leader who they can actually trust today.

Mr. Speaker, I hope you will not object if I take a moment to give context to the comments of my hon. colleague from Winnipeg North. In the last Parliament, I proposed a motion to amend the Standing Orders and when that motion came before the House, it was voted on in a free vote. All members of the Liberal Party, with one exception, voted in favour of it. About two-thirds of Conservatives voted in favour of it, and about 20 NDP members voted in favour of it. The member's point is that we do not have unanimous consent and, therefore, it would be hypocritical for me to be advocating unanimous consent for changes to the Standing Orders, which was not the matter I was addressing. I was addressing abuses on the procedure and House affairs committee. However, let me deal with this.What happened was that proposal to change the Standing Orders went to the House, it was then sent to the procedure and House affairs committee. The procedure and House affairs committee made a unanimous recommendation that the matter be referred back to the House of Commons without a recommendation in favour of or against, and that all parties consider the possibility of engaging in a free vote on the matter, which was done. If we follow, there was all-party consent on this matter at committee, which is what I have been arguing all along. If the member goes back and examines the record, he will see that I have always said that we need all-party consent. In the context of the procedure and House affairs committee, that means unanimous consent. It does not mean I am trying to suggest that if we change things here, we should give any one member of Parliament the ability to stop the change from going forward. I am saying all-party consent, and that practice existed in the past. That was the practice, for example, in the committee I mentioned under the Chrétien government, where all party House leaders were members of a committee. It was the committee that had to approve changes, not a member of the House of Commons but every member of that committee, every party, in other words. That practice was followed with the changes that I proposed and that were eventually adopted with regard to the election of the Speaker. They are the practices that should be maintained for all future standing order changes.

Mr. Speaker, it seems as though Liberal promises are hard to keep, even within the party. To thank Stéphane Dion for his years of service, or perhaps it was to push him aside and free up a seat in Montreal, the Prime Minister appointed him ambassador to Germany and ambassador to the European Union. However, in a dramatic turn of events, the European Union refused to play along with the Prime Minister.Can the Prime Minister now tell us why the European Union refused his appointment? Why did it insist that he be a special envoy rather than an ambassador?

Mr. Speaker, I am proud of the work that our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces and our civilians conducted in Afghanistan. As I stated, I am pleased to speak with any officer of Parliament. I have spoken to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. She is satisfied with the answer and she considers the matter closed.

Mr. Speaker, when the member himself changed the Standing Orders for the election of the Speaker, for which we used to have a runoff ballot, he brought in a ranked ballot system. Forty per cent of the members of the House actually opposed that. Why the double standard? Why did the member not seek unanimous consent when he wanted to change the rules?

Mr. Speaker, as I already said, Stéphane Dion has always fought for a better country for all Canadians. Mr. Dion understands the transatlantic relationship that we have with our European allies and he will be able to advance our interests and our common values. It is a privilege for me to work with Mr. Dion, and I know that our European allies, like all Canadians, have the greatest respect for him.

Mr. Speaker, I do not think Toronto is very secret, by the way. We all know that trade is good for our nation. Trade means growth and growth means jobs. What the member should understand is we want to be front and centre when it comes to engagement about principled, modern, and inclusive trade in the Asia-Pacific. That is why I offered to have the officials come to Toronto. Canadians expect that of us. The Prime Minister expects that of me. That is the smart thing to do for Canadians.

Mr. Speaker, Canadians working in the world of finance and mortgages are worried. Alternative mortgage lender Home Capital Group saw its shares plummet over the past few days because of an investigation into its operations. This is causing concern in Canada's finance sector, which is losing confidence in the company.In these types of situations, it is the duty and responsibility of the Minister of Finance to reassure Canadians and set the record straight.Therefore, could the Minister of Finance tell the House when he found out about this situation, what he knows about how this financial tragedy started, and what he intends to do to ensure that this situation does not—

Mr. Speaker, we do reference this place as Parliament, a place in which we speak, but it is tricky when we all do it at the same time. It is more akin to question period.I use the word “privilege” in terms of speaking on behalf of the good people of northwestern British Columbia, because it is in fact exactly that. To be able to rise in this place and speak in our best efforts on behalf of those we represent is an honour that only a few of us get to hold over the many years that this country has existed.It believe it is also right at the heart of the issue we are talking about today. This is called a question of privilege. For a lot of Canadians, it is very old language, a question of privilege. Privilege sounds like something very shiny and potentially valuable in wealth, which one is afforded. We all know “I am entitled to my entitlements” and all that sort of thing that has gone on in the past.However, the privilege we speak about today is simply the privilege to speak. In this motion it is about access of members of Parliament to come and vote on behalf of their constituents, which is of course at the very most sacred core of our democracy. We elect people, and we put them forward to represent us. They speak on our behalf, but they also cast votes on our behalf.The incident that happened most recently with my friend the member for Milton and others was that they were physically prevented from getting into the House of Commons, which unfortunately seems to happen once every four or five years. MPs are trying to get up on the Hill and, because of some security measure or some other thing, they cannot get in.Some in the public may say, “Big deal; the vote passed by 20 or 15 that night.” However, I have witnessed votes in this House that have been tied. I have witnessed votes of confidence over whether a government would stand or fall being supported by one extra member, keeping us from an election at one point. To say that it does not matter in the small example is missing the entire point of the larger example, which is that we all need free and fair access to this place to simply do our jobs.Part of our job is voting. A second part of our job is the ability to hold government to account. The only members in this whole place who sit in government are the Prime Minister and the cabinet that the Prime Minister chooses.The role of all the other MPs in this place, including government members who sit in the so-called backbench, is to hold government to account on two fundamental things: spending and laws; to look at the proposals that come forward from government, see if its spending is accurate and true to the nature of the promises made, and to see that legislation that passes before this place, whether it comes from an individual member or from the government itself, is of the best quality, using the best information.The context in which we are debating this is important, not only the context of the Liberal government's recent pattern of becoming more and more forceful, more and more pushing its agenda onto an increasingly unwilling opposition, but also the context in which the government was elected into office. I would argue that the slogan of hope and hard work that the Prime Minister used to talk about was one that had a certain resonance and meaning for Canadians.Clearly, the Liberals won the last election. Canadians were looking for something that was more hopeful, I would argue, more respectful of the conversation—not only the one that happens out in the larger public, true consultation, meaningful consultation around what it is that government wants to do, but also more respect for this place that is Parliament.We saw the Harper government use the very powerful tool of prorogation, and a lot of Canadians did not even know what that word meant until the Prime Minister shut down Parliament entirely to avoid a vote of confidence at one point. The previous prime minister got into the routine and habit of just not liking a debate going on too long, and he would just shut down debate. There would be a quick vote, and 30 minutes later the debate was over and the bill was moving on. The former government got so addicted to these tools that it would actually invoke shutting down debate as it introduced legislation. The debate would be 20 minutes old, and the government would bring in a motion to say that in another 30 minutes it would be over. Some of these bills were of enormous consequence to the lives of Canadians. That is a problem.We can see how in government there is a certain intolerance that seems to grow, a resistance to scrutiny, particularly when a government gets into a bit of trouble or just starts to get tired of this whole procedure of Parliament that we have concocted over many centuries. That is too bad.We also can recognize a majority government, and in this case, as in most majority governments in Canada, it is a false majority. A little less than 40% of Canadians who voted, voted to support the government. Liberals used to talk about that as a false majority and one of the reasons that we ought to change our voting system, as much of the world has. It is also known that a majority government in Canada has inordinate power to see its agenda through. It is not as if debate takes an extra hour or two, or a day or two and the government is going to lose that vote if it is whipping the vote on its side, which governments often do. It is all a question of timing and sequence, and can we simply hold the government to account. Sometimes that means holding the government to some pause. As it wants to ram its agenda through, as it wants to get a bill through or a budget through, it feels that sense of urgency, but it maybe has not done all the scrutiny, has not looked at it from all sides, which is kind of the point. Some of these laws do not get changed for 40 or 50 years and if they are badly done, it takes things like Supreme Court challenges to fix them, which are incredibly expensive. Rather than get them right and take the time to do it, governments sometimes want to rush things.We see this pattern creeping out, not just into the House of Commons but into the committee. We saw this at the procedure and House affairs committee earlier today where, suddenly, the chair woke up, decided he wanted the meeting to be over, smashed the gavel, and then suddenly it was over.This is clearly the opposite of the promise the Prime Minister brought in. If we ask Canadians the question, aside from being a prime minister, what did Prime Ministers Chrétien, Mulroney, Harper, Martin, and Pierre Elliott Trudeau all have in common? A lot of Canadians would say not much. What did Harper have in common with Chrétien and Chrétien with Mulroney? They had one thing common. They believed in the tradition of this place. If we were going to change the rules, if we were going to change the way we interacted with one another, if we were going to change the balance of power between the government, which we recognized is subsequent, and the power of the opposition, then we clearly needed to have all the parties in the conversation, not at the end of a barrel of a gun, saying that if we did not agree the government would do it anyway. That is not a conversation. That is not a consultation. That is a farce. The long-standing and important tradition is that we do not change the rules without the support of others. That seems to me beyond just tradition. It is just basic common sense because, lo and behold, governments change from time to time. The powers that a current Liberal government wishes for itself, because they are Liberals, they are benevolent, they are nice guys and would never abuse these powers, and that is not true, transfer to the next government, whichever one Canadians choose that to be. Then Liberals will be saying that the government is abusing its power now. They then will have to ask themselves, as Liberals, who gave it those extraordinary powers, and maybe the Liberals should have thought twice about that.Looking at changing fundamental ways in which we dialogue on behalf of Canadians, in which we fight on behalf of Canadians, does not belong to the Liberal government. The money does not belong to the Liberal government; it belongs to all Canadians when they pass budgets. The laws do not belong to the Liberals government; they belong to all Canadians when we pass new laws.The role and representation we have in this place, as my friend from the Conservatives says, sometimes hangs by a thread. The ability for people to have faith and trust in what we do and to continue to participate in our civic conversation relies on the quality of the effort we bring to this place, the respect we have for each other, and the respect we have for Parliament. This does not break down to right versus left. This comes to down to what is right and what is wrong. The Liberals I have spoken to quietly, as we have gone around this place, are sometimes scratching their heads, wondering what they are doing as a Liberal government. They are wondering why a massively long filibuster is taking place at procedure and House affairs. They are wondering why we doing this and why we are we doing that.This is pattern language. However, patterns can change. It seems to be difficult to put this pattern change onto the current government. We need to talk to Canadians about this. We need to talk to Liberal colleagues about this, and to the people who support them. This is not what they voted for. They hoped for something a lot better. They expect and deserve a lot better. We need to reverse this pattern of trying to impose will on Canada's Parliament. It only belongs to the Canadian people.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by thanking the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are keeping the democratic reform dream alive. He has done exceptional work.We are here today to talk about unfettered access to the House for voting and also how the House operates. I want to go back to the orientation session that we all had about 18 months ago, when 200 of us were new members of Parliament. I was so excited in that orientation by the conversations I had with new members of Parliament from every party. We all said the same thing: that we were all here to work together collaboratively to make a better Canada. That is why we were here. During that orientation session, the Prime Minister made a cameo appearance and said that the role of the opposition is to make government better. I wrote that down, being a new member sitting in opposition. However, in order for that to happen, government has to listen to some of the things that the opposition has to offer. Then I took my seat in the House, as did all members. There are probably very few things as special as the first time we take our seats in the House and look around this building and think about the history that was made here, the traditions that came from the House, the fact that this is the home of democracy for Canada, the House of democracy, and that we need to set a shining example for how democracy is supposed to work for the rest of Canada. Certainly that was the expectation of the 107,589 constituents from Kootenay—Columbia who sent me here. It was to build Canada and to build democracy.Therefore, it is somewhat unfortunate that we end up having to talk about unfettered access to Parliament and the lack of democracy that appears to be becoming more and more evident in the House. Quite frankly, in terms of access to Parliament, the debate should continue until all members are heard and debate collapses, rather than ending through the imposition of closure, which we are facing today. What happened? I will go back to the situation that came up on March 22, 2017. The MPs from Milton and Beauce were prevented from getting to Centre Block to vote on the budget—which is a very important vote—because the RCMP stopped parliamentary buses from picking them up in order to allow an empty Prime Minister's motorcade to leave the Hill. After the vote, the MP for Milton got up on a question of privilege, and the Speaker later ruled that indeed her privileges had been breached. Debate began immediately on the question of privilege. Not too long after that the Liberals, in a move deemed unprecedented by the Speaker, used their majority to shut down debate. The Conservatives then got up on another question of privilege to argue that the Liberal move denied the MP for Milton the opportunity to have her question of privilege properly heard. The Speaker ruled in their favour, which of course leads to where we are today.We are keeping this debate going because we oppose what happened to the member and also oppose what is becoming a very heavy-handed approach by the Liberal government to changing the Standing Orders. Now they have given notice of closure on this current question of privilege, which highlights yet again an undemocratic approach to dealing with accountability in Parliament. I find this quite disappointing, but it is not my first disappointment in my 18 months here in the House. Motion No. 6 was introduced around May 17 of last year. It was almost a year ago today that we were dealing with Motion No. 6, which was brought forward by the Liberal government and attempted to set in place a temporary set of Standing Orders to control what the House was going to be doing for at least the next two months. It proposed that the House would not have an adjournment time on Monday to Thursday, when debates would continue; that there would be no automatic adjournment for summer; that only the government could move motions to adjourn the House or have debates; and that there would be no need to consult with the opposition about when to adjourn for summer. The government could do it at any time. This ended up being withdrawn by the Liberal government after what was a really dark day, quite frankly, here in the life of this Parliament, and after the Prime Minister apologized and the Liberal government withdrew Motion No. 6.Democratic reform was another disappointment. I really felt betrayed when it came to democratic reform. I went around my riding of Kootenay—Columbia, I visited 14 communities, and I started every discussion this way: we are not here to discuss if democratic reform is coming; we are here to talk about the preferred approach to democratic reform and proportional representation. Every discussion I started was that this was not a discussion of if we were moving to democratic reform or proportional representation; it was how we were going to get there. I and hundreds of thousands of Canadians were really disappointed to see democratic reform, which was one of the primary focuses of the Liberal campaign, all of a sudden disappear almost overnight.With Bill C-7, the RCMP are looking to have a collective voice across Canada. Bill C-7 came through the House over a year ago. It went to the Senate and came back to the Liberal government in June 2016, and we have heard nothing since then. The RCMP still does not have a national voice, which they very much need, to deal with a number of issues they have. The Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security recently decided it was not going to deal with Bill C-51. In my riding of Kootenay—Columbia that was one of the major election issues in 2015, and it contributed to my riding for the first time in 21 years no longer having a Conservative member of Parliament. That is how important this issue was. There were rallies held across my riding opposed to Bill C-51, and nothing has happened with that so far.Yesterday we saw what many who have spent much longer in Parliament than I considered a real disrespect to the leader of the NDP, who asked questions that were not answered by the Prime Minister, even though the Prime Minister was here in the room. That is a lack of respect for our leader.For the past few weeks, I have sat here and heard the Liberals claim that they just wanted to have a discussion on how Parliament works, and now they are unilaterally forcing through changes. These changes will not make Parliament better and do not have the unanimous consent of the House, which is tradition. It is really quite fair that Canadians are asking whether these are being imposed just to make life better for Liberals and the Prime Minister, and if not, then why not negotiate and get consensus from all parties in the House in terms of how we are going to work here in the House on behalf of our constituents? Any time a government becomes less accountable, it is the citizens who suffer.We are here in Canada's house of democracy, and I go back to where I started in terms of the orientation session when everyone I talked to from every party said they were here to work together collaboratively to make a better Canada in what truly should be a shining example for democracy. It has been quite disappointing to sit through the last seven days and see what has happened here in the House. I truly believe the Liberal government needs to do better going forward. We need to respect democracy. We need to work together collaboratively here in the House. I look forward hopefully to seeing that happen.

Mr. Speaker, last year the health and justice ministers commissioned the Council of Canadian Academies to conduct independent studies on the eligibility criteria under the new law on medical assistance in dying.Dr. Harvey Schipper is a vocal opponent of that law, yet he has now been made chair of a committee under it. This raises serious doubts about the impartiality of the entire process. How can Canadians have any confidence that the working group will examine the issue fairly, when its chair opposes medical assistance in dying?

Mr. Speaker, we have a better chance of getting an answer from you.The minister of defence unduly took credit for the success of an important mission in Afghanistan. He broke the cardinal rule of showing respect for his fellow soldiers. It is a serious disservice to his rank, his role, and especially his fellow soldiers. I have a simple question: was the Minister of National Defence the architect of Operation Medusa or not?

Mr. Speaker, the minister has repeatedly confirmed that he has no information on the file. As to the issue, the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner has repeatedly said that she is satisfied and is closing the file.

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague gave a very intelligent discourse on this issue.One of the words that comes to mind is “privilege”. As I have experienced an incident in which I was not allowed to get into the House in the past term, I understand what that privilege means.One thing outside of our House, for people to better understand this, is that we all understand that doctors have privileges, for example, to work in health facilities. If that privilege were stopped, the outcry from the public if doctors were not allowed to get to an emergency department to see their patients would be huge.I would like to ask my colleague if he could expound further on what this discussion we are having here means to our citizens, and how critically important it is to us.

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my good friend from Kootenay—Columbia.It is indeed a privilege to rise today and speak in my best efforts on behalf of the people of Skeena—Bulkley Valley, the beautiful northwest of this great country. I use the word “privilege” very specifically. I wonder if some of my Liberal colleagues might take their conversations elsewhere. It is a little distracting.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. We agree on one thing: the question of privilege is a very serious matter and we must investigate it thoroughly.Over the past few months, I have been a member of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. We have had the opportunity at that committee to study questions of privilege. This is the seventh day that we are debating this question in the House of Commons.Does my colleague not think that it would be better to study this question of privilege at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs instead of in the House of Commons? We could finally make progress on bills and things that affect Canadians every day.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for accurately portraying our position. We are working with all those across the country who have an interest in this file. Together we are focusing in on the short-term realities of the possibility of layoffs and job losses in Quebec and elsewhere. We are talking about transition in the industry. We are talking about the expansion of export markets. We are taking it seriously, across the country, to do whatever we possibly can to soften the blow of these punitive and unwelcome tariffs.

Mr. Speaker, the National Assembly unanimously adopted Martine Ouellet's motion to remind the federal government that supporting agriculture, including Quebec's dairy industry and our family farm system, means maintaining supply management. The National Assembly's motion also calls on the Government of Canada to maintain supply management, which must be non-negotiable should NAFTA be reopened.Will the government make a solemn promise to maintain supply management as it currently stands before and during negotiations with the Americans?

Mr. Speaker, the minister spoke directly with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner on this file. She is satisfied and she has closed this file.

Mr. Speaker, I find the comments on that side of the House very interesting. In light of the current history of this Liberal government in trying to change the Standing Orders, shutting down debate, invoking closure, today's events at the procedures and House affairs committee, and removing opposition day motions, I wonder if my colleague could comment on how much confidence he feels that these issues, which are so important, will be dealt with at the PROC committee.

Mr. Speaker, when we took office we actually increased the effectiveness of Canada's role against Daesh by doing what we do best. We were on the ground, training and supporting local troops as they took the fight directly to Daesh. That is something that we as a country have always excelled at. We demonstrated our capacity to do that in Afghanistan. We continue to understand that giving the proper tools and funding to the Canadian military to be able to accomplish the goals that we set for them here in the House is extremely important. I am proud of this government's record.

Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege of serving as the Minister of National Defence. I want to make sure that our government provides all the necessary tools and that is exactly what we are doing with our defence policy review. We are making sure that we have done a thorough analysis and making sure that they have all the right tools and the right funding and, most important, the right care so that they can carry out their missions both at home and abroad.

It just came to me.

Mr. Speaker, this government has made it clear that it takes an evidence-based approach in its decision-making. This is important to maximize efficiency and potential across Canada. Our transportation network is no exception. We need to be able to evaluate performance and make targeted investments.Would the parliamentary secretary inform Canadians on how they intend to make our transportation network even more efficient with the new innovative elements contained within budget 2017?

Mr. Speaker, the Council of Canadian Academies uses a totally independent process when naming individuals to this panel.I found out at the same time as the public found out the names of the individuals. Individuals are named to the panel to debate the evidence before them and not to debate their personal views. While each panellist may approach the topic from a particular standpoint, the entire panel comes together to assess the evidence.The panel has 43 people on it, who undoubtedly have varying personal views. We expect them to work with diligence and to examine the evidence appropriately.

Mr. Speaker, Stéphane Dion is a great Canadian public servant, statesman, and, above all, patriot, who did tremendous work to keep our country together. I am confident that Stéphane Dion will do an equally outstanding job representing our country in Europe. I must say I have heard personally from Europeans, including Chancellor Merkel, including Federica Mogherini, how delighted they are to have Stéphane Dion there. For me, it is an honour to work with him.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up on a theme that was raised by the hon. member across the floor, and that is acting responsibly and respectfully. What is the responsibility of the Liberal government to act responsibly and respectably in the House, and what needs to change to get us there?

Mr. Speaker, I am proud of the service of the Minister of National Defence, whether it was as a police officer, whether it was as a decorated member of the Canadian Armed Forces, or whether it is as our Minister of National Defence. The work that he and this government are doing every day to support the men and women of the Canadian Forces to have a positive impact in the world, whether it is in the fight against Daesh, in promoting regional stability in eastern Europe, or through leading a framework nation in Latvia, this is the work that Canadians know needs to be done, and I am proud of the work that the Minister of National Defence has been doing.

Mr. Speaker, I would never detract from the great work of our men and women in uniform. Our government is focused on making sure that we provide the right care for our troops. That is why the Prime Minister mandated me to conduct a thorough defence policy review to make sure we do a thorough assessment so that our troops can have all the right tools so they can carry out their missions. That is exactly what we are doing.

Mr. Speaker, again I go back to the fact that I came here, as did all members, at least initially, to work together collaboratively to make a better Canada here in what should be a shining example for democracy.We have strayed way off track from that over the last little while. We need to get back to working together collaboratively. We need to get back to making sure that this House is a shining example for democracy in Canada. That means that before the government changes the rules in the House, it is done collaboratively and through consensus. That is how we move democracy forward.

Mr. Speaker, again, I am very pleased to answer this question. In fact, yes, we have a housing system in this country that works very effectively. We have an insurance system that helps to ensure that people's housing is safe, and it is working. We will continue to remain vigilant around this system to make sure we are considering how risk is best shared between those insurers and the federal government, through the CMHC and to participants in the market.We have said that we will look at that risk sharing in order to make sure it continues to appropriately deal with market challenges, and that is what we are engaged in doing.

Mr. Speaker, as the member and all members of the House will know, this issue is all about unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct. It is not the first time this has happened. In fact, it has happened a few times.I sat on PROC on a couple of occasions and had to deal with the issue. We all understand and appreciate PROC is where the issue is best dealt with. The last time it was dealt with in the House was on May 12, 2015. The total number of speakers was five, representing the parties. They stood in their place and explained why it was so important that PROC deal with the issue.As of right now when the member sat down, we have had 49 members speak to this issue. A number of members said that they were speaking because it is a filibuster on a privilege issue. What are the options? If we were not debating this issue, we would actually be debating the national budget and the budget implementation bill.Does the member believe his constituents would rather we were debating the budget, the priorities of government, and the priorities of opposition parties, or would they rather we continue what can easily be justified, from my perspective, as an opposition filibuster on an issue that should in fact be dealt with by PROC?We in the Liberal caucus have made it very clear that we want the issue to go to PROC. We want to ensure that every member of this House has unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct.

Mr. Speaker, while Quebec is creating a committee of experts and hopes to broaden eligibility for medical assistance in dying, we have just learned that the minister has accepted the appointment to the position of chair of the working group on advance requests of Dr. Harvey Schipper, who opposes medical assistance in dying and advance requests. Several stakeholders have criticized this appointment, and rightly so. How can Canadians have confidence in this committee and believe that this working group will truly be objective and impartial when they know that its chair is one of the most strident opponents of medical assistance in dying and advance requests?

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the former general for his service to this country.I will continue to work hard and our government will continue to work hard to make sure our men and women in uniform have the right tools. Every single day we will make sure that they have the right care and the right tools. We have conducted a thorough analysis on our defence policy review and it will do just that.

Mr. Speaker, the 2017 budget includes funding to implement energy efficiency and clean energy technologies, to retrofit federal buildings, and to reduce or eliminate emissions from vehicle fleets.Can the Minister of Natural Resources tell the House how the government is supporting electric vehicles and alternative fuel infrastructure as tools for the transition to low-carbon transportation options?

Mr. Speaker, I had in mind a longer question, but given your injunction, I am wondering if the hon. member for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston has had any opportunity to look at the proposals I have made for changing our standing rules and if he sees merit in any of them.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this second opportunity.This government has made it clear that it takes an evidence-based approach in its decision-making process. This is important to maximize efficiency and potential across this great nation of Canada. Our transportation network is no exception, and we need to be able to evaluate performance and make targeted investments. Could the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport inform all Canadians on how the government intends to make our transportation network more efficient, with new innovative ideas and elements contained within budget 2017?

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question.This question of privilege, which is on something as fundamental as physical access to the House, is a question that affects us all, each and every one of us. The question truly needs to be debated somewhere other than in a committee. It needs to be debated in the House.We must not lose sight of the context in which we are discussing this question of privilege. We are discussing it in what I consider a context of repeated attacks against our institution, the institution that is the house of all citizens, the institution that represents those citizens. The government is trying to change our rules and various problems have been raised. It is a question that is debated in a much broader context and it is important that all members are able to take part in this discussion.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak with any officer of Parliament. I have spoken to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner on this subject. She is satisfied with that and she considers this matter closed.

Mr. Speaker, in the House yesterday, the hon. Minister of Natural Resources said, first of all, that he disagrees with the decision to impose unfair and punitive tariffs on softwood lumber; second, that he has created a federal-provincial task force, and I want to emphasize this, to support the forestry industry; and third, that he supports forestry workers. That is all great. In that case, why is his government being so inconsistent and refusing what, first of all, Quebec, second, the forestry industy, and third, the forestry workers themselves are asking for in terms of support, that is, loan guarantees?

Mr. Speaker, the government has been working for months, not only with the Government of Canada, but right across the country with all of our provincial counterparts. We know that we need both in the short term and in the long term a plan for the forestry sector. In the short term, it is essential that we look after workers and producers. We will use every instrument available to us, looking at the long term, to make sure there is an expansion of export markets, that we support the transition of the industry. We know how important the forestry sector is for Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

Mr. Speaker, I completely agree with what my colleague just said. The government side seems to be saying that talking about this prevents us from doing our job. It is really the opposite. We are talking about the fundamentals that allow us to do our job. The rights and privileges of parliamentarians are not perks. They underpin this institution, they are the foundation of our democracy, and they allow us to represent the people who elected us.Therefore, this is a very fundamental issue, and I completely agree with my colleague. This is so fundamental and such an important part of our work that all members who wish to speak should be allowed to do so.

Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, we are giving the parliamentary budget officer more resources and greater independence.That is exactly what we promised because we knew that, after many long years under the Stephen Harper government, we needed tools to ensure government transparency. That is precisely why we are strengthening the parliamentary budget officer's powers.

Mr. Speaker, high-quality accessible data and high-quality analysis are key in order to make smart decisions as a government. I am proud to say that our government has committed $50 million in budget 2017 to launch a new and innovative trade and transportation information system. This will help us make the targeted investments in transportation corridors that will foster growth and create good, well-paying jobs for Canada's middle class.

Mr. Speaker, again, I am happy to address this issue. It is true that we are facing some pockets of risk in our housing markets in Vancouver and Toronto. Certainly, it is true that there was a challenge with this particular company. We do not see those two things as linked.Importantly, what happened in this situation was that there was a flight of depositors from the company in question. We listened, we heard, we stayed very engaged. The market also was engaged. We were pleased to see that there was a market-based solution to dealing with this challenge in our financial markets. That is exactly the way the system should work.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel for his excellent question. The transportation sector accounts for nearly 25% of greenhouse gas emissions. Our budget continues to support green infrastructure with a $120-million investment to deploy infrastructure for electric vehicle charging and refuelling stations for alternative fuels, such as natural gas.

Mr. Speaker, when most people get insurance, they pay a premium. If they have a claim, they pay a deductible. However, CMHC offers banks full insurance against losses. While homebuyers pay the premium and taxpayers pay the deductible, the banks pay neither. Hundreds of billions of dollars are at risk as a result.Has the government calculated how much taxpayers could lose if a market correction causes home prices to go down, or higher interest rates cause mortgage defaults to go up?

Mr. Speaker, the exemplary and extraordinary service that has characterized the life of the Minister of National Defence is one that we can all be proud of, as he stands up every day for the men and women of the Canadian Forces, focusing on giving them the tools and the opportunity to serve and lead the way we know they can on the world stage, the way the world needs Canada to show leadership. This is something that we are tremendously proud of as a government, and we continue to look for more opportunities to lead and serve around the world.

Mr. Speaker, our government was elected on a platform to build sustainable communities from coast to coast to coast. Clean, safe drinking water is one of the most important ways that we can ensure our communities are thriving.Will the minister tell the House how the government is supporting vital water infrastructure?

Mr. Speaker, I have shared information with regard to the government's approach to respond and to really be able to deliver on the commitments we made to Canadians. In the campaign, we made commitments to modernize the way this place works. In the letter that I provided to opposition House leaders, I actually shared direct quotes from the platform so that they could see where those ideas were coming from. I was actually hoping to have an even larger conversation with new ideas. Unfortunately, there was an unwillingness from the opposition side to have that conversation. I welcome the continuation of sharing ideas and really bringing this place into the 21st century.

Mr. Speaker, following a response to a question from a colleague opposite, I learned that the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons was offended by something I said this morning. I went to meet with her to offer my sincere apologies, and I also want to apologize here right now.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the length of the debate that we have had with regard to this issue. We have now had 10 times as many people speak on the issue of unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct, which is a record number, given the topic. I am glad to see that it looks as if it is coming to an end, because we want to get on to other matters, such as the budget debate, and I understand a private member's hour will be coming up shortly. I will leave an open-ended question for the member across the way in regard to how important it is that both the opposition and the government recognize PROC and wish it well in trying to resolve the issue of unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct.

Mr. Speaker, we are working very closely with all our provincial counterparts, including those in the Government of Quebec.We realize that our main responsibility is do to everything we can to help the producers, workers, and communities affected by these punitive and, in our opinion, inappropriate, tariffs.We will continue to work with our partners because we believe that, together, we will find the solution that best serves the interests of workers and communities—

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the speech by my colleague and friend from Mégantic—L'Érable. He spoke for about twenty minutes, but I heard him say little about the actual subject, which is the lack of access to the House of Commons in order to vote. This is a very important matter that we must consider, a problem that we must solve. This happens in almost every Parliament.I would like to know whether my colleague wishes to send this matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs as quickly as possible to study this problem in order to find a solution and ensure that it never happens again. Or does he want to continue speaking in this place for a very long time and prevent us from working on solving the problem?

Mr. Speaker, consultations among parties have taken place, and if you seek it I believe that you will find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move: That, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, in relation to the Question of Privilege (denial of access of Members to the Parliamentary Precinct raised on March 22, 2017), at 5:30 p.m. today or when no member rises to speak, the questions on the sub-amendment and the amendment be deemed adopted and the question on the motion as amended be deemed put, a recorded division deemed requested and deferred until immediately before the time provided for Private Members' Business on Wednesday, May 3, 2017.

Mr. Speaker, the member mentioned right and wrong. This is day seven. We have been discussing this for seven days in the House and essentially we have agreement. I know on the Liberal side all Liberal caucus members agree and I think all members in the House agree that unfettered access for MPs is extremely important. Second, we all agree that this matter is to go to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. That is the normal procedure. Everybody is in agreement with that, because we know this is an important matter. As has been mentioned, this is not the first time this has happened. We need to hear witnesses and look at this in more depth so we can come up with solutions to make our best effort to correct this situation so that MPs have access to this place.In light of that, we have spent seven days on something that we all agree on. We are all in agreement. Some members have even said every MP should have the opportunity to speak, which, in effect, would be five and a half weeks of speaking about something that we all agree on, but right now the reality is seven days. We are talking about something that we all agree on. Is that right? Is that a respectful use of the House's time? Is that a respectful use of taxpayers' dollars? They are paying our salaries to be here. We are all in agreement on something and all we are trying to do is send it to PROC. We have spent seven days on this and opposition members are upset because they think we should spend more days on something we all agree with that has the same end result.I would like to hear what my colleague has to say.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.We know that many communities in Quebec and across Canada are having a hard time this flood season. My colleague, the Minister of International Trade, talked to me again today about the specific situation in Yamachiche. We recognize the importance of safe and environmentally sound navigation. When the incident was reported, the Coast Guard, at the behest of Transport Canada, issued a notice to shipping requesting a reduction in speed. We are investigating the situation, and we are going to take the necessary steps to address this problem.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence has an exemplary record of service to this country, whether it is as a decorated police officer, as a decorated military officer, or as Minister of National Defence.The work we are doing to demonstrate our support for the Canadian Forces and giving them the tools and the opportunities they need to demonstrate leadership and bring Canada's positive impact to the world is extremely important to this government and will continue.

Mr. Speaker, as I said, this group was asked to find individuals to do this work.They have chosen 43 individuals. These are esteemed academics. They were chosen by an independent process by the Council of Canadian Academies. They did so in order to examine these issues, and we expect them to do so with the utmost integrity.

Mr. Speaker, major flooding is having a huge impact on many municipalities in Berthier—Maskinongé and across Quebec, including Yamachiche. I have two questions today.First, what does the federal government plan to do to help these people and municipalities?Second, can the Minister of Transport confirm today that the investigation in Yamachiche has begun and can he tell us when that information will be made public?

Mr. Speaker, the United States is our neighbour and our most important trading partner. Agricultural trade between Canada and the United States is worth $47 billion a year, and we are well aware of how important this relationship is to Canadian agriculture. The minister is looking forward to speaking with the new agriculture secretary once he is confirmed about the mutual benefits of our agricultural trade relationship. Our government will continue to protect and defend farmers and supply management.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to update the House in this situation. We have been very closely monitoring the situation as soon as we understood that there was a challenge with the company in question. We were pleased that there was a market-based solution that was found in order to resolve the situation of the company in question. We believe that our financial system is strong and resilient, and this is evidence that we are able to find market-based solutions to challenges. That is a strength of our economy.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I am shocked and appalled to discover that member introducing electoral reform into one of his comments.

Mr. Speaker, being sorry does not cut it once the confidence of our men and women in uniform is lost. Soldiers who pad their CVs may be court-martialled and face serious consequences.Now that the Minister of National Defence is seated at the cabinet table, does he think he deserves to be treated differently than the troops with whom he served his country?

Mr. Speaker, the defence minister refuses to provide any explanation as to why he, on at least two occasions, misled Canadians about the role he played in Afghanistan, fabricating that he was the architect of the largest battle Canadians fought in, but he was not. This is not one of those things where saying sorry is going to be enough. He should be moved out. If the Prime Minister refuses to see the damage that this is doing, why should Canadians have confidence in him?

Mr. Speaker, the use of “alternative facts” damaged the reputation of the Minister of National Defence so badly that he has lost all credibility. He has lost the confidence of our troops, he is an embarrassment to veterans, and Canadians no longer believe him. He is a laughing stock and none of our allies will take him seriously.The Prime Minister lacks judgment because he refuses to dismiss his defence minister. As a veteran, I am asking the Minister of National Defence, who is a veteran, to step down if he has any honour left.

Mr. Speaker, Canadians working in the world of finance and mortgages are worried. Alternative mortgage lender Home Capital Group saw its shares plummet over the past few days because of an investigation into its operations. This is causing concern in Canada's finance sector, which is losing confidence in the company.In these types of situations, it is the duty and responsibility of the Minister of Finance to reassure Canadians and set the record straight.Therefore, could the Minister of Finance tell the House when he found out about this situation, what he knows about how this financial tragedy started, and what he intends to do to ensure that this situation does not—

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence refuses to explain why, on at least two occasions, he misled Canadians about the role that he played in Afghanistan. Simply saying that he has no excuse is not good enough. He has lost the confidence of our men and women in uniform. If the Prime Minister refuses to see the damage that this is doing, why should Canadians trust this government?

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to trade with the Liberals, secrecy appears to be the name of the game. Last week it was revealed that the government secretly walked away from a potential softwood lumber agreement with Obama. Thanks to Japanese news reports last week, we learned that TPP negotiations are back on and are happening today in a secret location in Toronto. The Liberals in opposition criticized the Conservatives for negotiating major trade deals in secret and promised to do better. The TPP was a bad deal. Will the Liberals come clean with Canadians on why they are now leading the charge for TPP 2.0?

Mr. Speaker, consultations among parties have taken place, and if you seek it I believe that you will find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move: That, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, in relation to the Question of Privilege (denial of access of Members to the Parliamentary Precinct raised on March 22, 2017), at 5:30 p.m. today or when no member rises to speak, the questions on the sub-amendment and the amendment be deemed adopted and the question on the motion as amended be deemed put, a recorded division deemed requested and deferred until immediately before the time provided for Private Members' Business on Wednesday, May 3, 2017.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals failed to negotiate a softwood lumber agreement. They also failed to come up with a plan to deal with the crisis, which is now very real. Countervailing duties are already affecting sawmill production. The government needs to understand that these countervailing duties are affecting thousands of jobs and that thousands of families are going to suffer as a result. How is it possible that the Minister of Natural Resources still has not presented any immediate measures to deal with the crisis? How much longer is he going to drag his feet on the softwood lumber file?

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. We agree on one thing: the question of privilege is a very serious matter and we must investigate it thoroughly.Over the past few months, I have been a member of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. We have had the opportunity at that committee to study questions of privilege. This is the seventh day that we are debating this question in the House of Commons.Does my colleague not think that it would be better to study this question of privilege at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs instead of in the House of Commons? We could finally make progress on bills and things that affect Canadians every day.

Mr. Speaker, in fact what the Ethics Commissioner said was that the defence minister told her he played absolutely no role. He gave the Sergeant Schultz “I know nothing” answer. The problem is that he then went on to claim to be an architect, and senior military officials described him as playing a key intelligence role. Does the Prime Minister actually believe his Minister of National Defence when he says he knows nothing about what went on with the Afghan detainees when we know he played an—

Mr. Speaker, no one has questioned the bravery of the Minister of National Defence when he was a soldier, but there are two documented cases of the Minister of National Defence taking credit for the hard work and bravery of others, vastly exaggerating his role in a military operation. This is a serious issue and it has deeply offended those who were actually on the battlefield. He said these things as far back as 2015 when he was campaigning as a Liberal candidate in the last election.My question for the Prime Minister is this. Did he know, was he aware, about these fabrications before he appointed the Minister of National Defence?

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Over the 11-plus years I have been in this House, I have witnessed all kinds of heckling from all corners of the House, and depending on the subject, some with more volume and some with less. I would hazard to say that if everyone looked in the mirror, members would see that they are guilty on a continuum in some way, shape, or form. Certainly one of the people who has been the least guilty of that has been the member for Thornhill. In fact, the only thing I can remember is that the member for Thornhill was the victim of one of the most egregious heckles, calling him a piece of waste, from the other side of the chamber. Therefore, I would ask you to maybe reassess that judgment with respect to taking a question from the fine member for Thornhill.

Mr. Speaker, we were here today because of the issue of unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct. This is not the first time. In fact, in recent years I have had to deal with it at the procedures and House affairs committee. Prior to going to PROC, it justifies a few hours of debate; then there is a vote, and it goes to committee.Now, on the other hand, there is a hidden agenda coming from the Conservative Party on this issue. The member actually made reference to it, and I applaud him for doing so, but other members of the Conservative Party have also made reference to it, and for them, it is all about filibustering. They are filibustering on a matter of privilege, the issue of access, which every member of the House takes very seriously, with the exception, it would appear, of some from the Conservative benches, who want to manipulate this issue in a very irresponsible fashion. That is what we see when opposition members admit this is a filibuster. They are debating it today because they want to have a filibuster on the very important issue of unfettered access. I know the constituents I represent would like to see a modernized Parliament. They would like to ensure that all members have unfettered access to the chamber. I believe they would be disappointed in the irresponsible behaviour of the Conservatives, because there is a responsibility for the official opposition to also be responsible inside the House. Today we have not witnessed responsible opposition.

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister keeps telling us that Canadians expect people to apologize when they have made a mistake, but actually, Canadians also expect people to do the right thing when they have done something wrong. The right thing for the minister to do is step aside. On two occasions, he made a political calculation that, by exaggerating his military resumé, somehow this would get him further ahead in politics. That might be something that he did as a Liberal politician, but it is wrong for a minister who represents our men and women in uniform.Will the Prime Minister do the right thing and move him away from the defence portfolio?

Mr. Speaker, how does the minister explain making what he calls a mistake? Standing in this House and saying he owns a mistake without any explanation as to why he made it is not contrition; it is deflection. No one disputes the minister's service, but why did he feel justified in so blatantly exaggerating his record? Our troops need a minister who has their back, not someone so eager to pat himself on his. Will the minister stop with the Prime Minister's talking points and explain to Canadians why he fabricated the story?

Mr. Speaker, it is such a remarkable moment to hear the Liberals talk about taking too much time to respect Parliament. That is a bit of a contradiction of things as Liberals are going through the process of disrespecting Parliament, as Liberals are going through the process of saying they want to change the rules that guide all parliamentary debates, that they want to change the rules by forcing bills to only have a certain amount of time for debate at their discretion and nobody else's, to not even have a vote on it, and that it should be built into all legislation so that they can curtail Parliament and shut down discussions so there will be less scrutiny over what it is they are doing. They want to be able to stand and say that omnibus bills are bad in a campaign and the Prime Minister says that he will not use them, which, by the way, is a quote, and then the government introduces an omnibus bill that does exactly what the Prime Minister said he would not do.Governments need to be held to account. Governments from time to time, as shocking as this might be for some of my Liberal colleagues to hear, need to be corrected and their power needs to be checked. The last I checked, in the last election, less than 40% of voting Canadians voted for that party. That means there is a majority of Canadians who did not. That means their voices need to be heard and their opinions need to be respected. That is the job of the opposition and that is what we will continue to do, despite these trickeries by the government.

Mr. Speaker, in response to the question, or perhaps statement, of the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, I am a little taken aback that he would have the audacity to talk about this question of privilege going to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. That is precisely what the government tried to prevent from happening. The government tried to shut down an opportunity for the committee on procedure and House affairs to get to the bottom of this issue.It is the government that tried to do so. The only reason it backed down, although it never really did back down, was the hon. member for Perth—Wellington stood and said that it did not have a right to do it, and the Speaker agreed with him.We are going to continue to fight against the effort on the part of the government to roll back the rights and privileges of hon. members. It is unbelievable the member would talk about the procedure and House affairs committee, because it was exactly that, as I said, the government tried to prevent from getting to the bottom of this issue.

Mr. Speaker, my question has to do with my colleague's speech.Does he know what drove the Liberals' 180 on this issue? They first time the question of privilege came up, they totally shut down debate instead of taking the stance that a committee should look at the issue, which is what they are saying now. After a few hours, they decided that was enough, they did not want to hear another word about it, and they would not send it to committee. Now they are telling us this issue has to go to committee as quickly as possible and the debate has to end.Can the member tell me why the Liberals reversed their stance on referring this issue to committee? The first time we talked about this, they said it was out of the question and shut down debate. Now they are saying we need to expedite things and send the question to committee immediately.

Mr. Speaker, when they were in opposition, the Liberals called for a public inquiry into the shameful Afghan detainee scandal. Why did the Prime Minister tell his defence minister to block just such an inquiry?

Mr. Speaker, I think the Prime Minister missed the question.The defence minister is on record as saying that it was the Prime Minister's Office that decided there would be no inquiry. We are asking the Prime Minister to explain now why there will be no inquiry into the shameful Afghan detainee scandal. He was in favour of it in opposition. Why did he tell his minister to block it now? That is the question. Why does he want to block an inquiry into the Afghan detainee scandal?

Mr. Speaker, next, the PBO plays a crucial role in holding a government to account, and that is what the Liberals used to believe when the Conservatives were in power. If the Prime Minister's changes had occurred under the last government, we would not have known about the F-35 costs, for example.The Prime Minister said that the PBO must be “truly independent”, so the question is, why is he muzzling it?Why is the Prime Minister attacking the parliamentary budget officer?

Mr. Speaker, as I said, this group was asked to find individuals to do this work.They have chosen 43 individuals. These are esteemed academics. They were chosen by an independent process by the Council of Canadian Academies. They did so in order to examine these issues, and we expect them to do so with the utmost integrity.

Mr. Speaker, when the member himself changed the Standing Orders for the election of the Speaker, for which we used to have a runoff ballot, he brought in a ranked ballot system. Forty per cent of the members of the House actually opposed that. Why the double standard? Why did the member not seek unanimous consent when he wanted to change the rules?

It just came to me.

Mr. Speaker, I had in mind a longer question, but given your injunction, I am wondering if the hon. member for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston has had any opportunity to look at the proposals I have made for changing our standing rules and if he sees merit in any of them.

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader stated numerous times today that the opposition is being irresponsible in wanting to continue debate on the question of privilege. I want to get the member's comments on that.

Mr. Speaker, the answer is in the question.The fact that this type of question even needs to be asked in the House shows that there is a problem. We have noticed that there is a problem that affects every member on this side of the House. This problem also exists for the members across the way, but it especially affects the backbench Liberal MPs who are also getting tired of this procedural wrangling. There is a simple solution. All the government has to do is get rid of the threat hanging over the opposition that our rules are going to be changed without consensus or unanimous consent, and then everything will be just fine.

Mr. Speaker, it seems as though Liberal promises are hard to keep, even within the party. To thank Stéphane Dion for his years of service, or perhaps it was to push him aside and free up a seat in Montreal, the Prime Minister appointed him ambassador to Germany and ambassador to the European Union. However, in a dramatic turn of events, the European Union refused to play along with the Prime Minister.Can the Prime Minister now tell us why the European Union refused his appointment? Why did it insist that he be a special envoy rather than an ambassador?

Mr. Speaker, we have a better chance of getting an answer from you.The minister of defence unduly took credit for the success of an important mission in Afghanistan. He broke the cardinal rule of showing respect for his fellow soldiers. It is a serious disservice to his rank, his role, and especially his fellow soldiers. I have a simple question: was the Minister of National Defence the architect of Operation Medusa or not?

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the speech by my colleague and friend from Mégantic—L'Érable. He spoke for about twenty minutes, but I heard him say little about the actual subject, which is the lack of access to the House of Commons in order to vote. This is a very important matter that we must consider, a problem that we must solve. This happens in almost every Parliament.I would like to know whether my colleague wishes to send this matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs as quickly as possible to study this problem in order to find a solution and ensure that it never happens again. Or does he want to continue speaking in this place for a very long time and prevent us from working on solving the problem?

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence has a huge credibility problem and every time he stands up, he digs himself deeper into the credibility hole. He is tarnishing the reputation of the Prime Minister. He is tarnishing the reputation of the government abroad. Worse, he is tarnishing the reputation of our military. Nobody questions this man's honour and what he did when he served this country in the military. We are questioning his judgment and his honour today. Will he do the right thing for our men and women in uniform and step aside?

It is the obvious analogy, Mr. Speaker. There is one distinction between the electoral reform promise that the government gave and the promise it gave here, which is that the electoral reform promise was dramatic in terms of timing. The promise was that this would be the last first-past-the-post election. It was not clear what the government was going to replace it with. When we proposed on the electoral reform committee to give the government free rein to choose any system that it saw fit as long as it then introduced that system to the Canadian public in a referendum vote and as long as that system was five or less on the Gallagher index, which means highly proportional, it was at that point that the Prime Minister fessed up and said he was only ever willing to consider preferential voting. That was good to learn. It would have been nice to have known that in 2015. I suspect that a number of ridings might have gone NDP but for the fact that some of their swing voters went Liberal. We might now have NDP members there had this promise been clarified at that time, as opposed to after the fact.The member asked if the ship can be turned around. I would suggest that the House is doing the work of turning it around. On the electoral reform issue, it is unfortunate that the whole shebang ground to a halt. Should it arise in the future, the nature of that debate will be very different as a result of the clarification that we collectively brought to that discussion.Here too we see that a number of the items that were on the Liberal agenda, such as programming motions, which was the most devastatingly bad of all the ideas the Liberals had, are off the agenda. Here the idea was essentially to do what they were going to do on procedure and House affairs, which is shut down debate and make it impossible to move forward, but we have now come to a resolution. I think those are off the agenda. The governmentt House leader said in her letter that they are off the agenda, and on this one I take her at her word. That is progress, but it is unfortunate that we have to achieve progress in this way. However, that is the idea of the Westminster system. The government's feet are actually held to the fire. It is not a very pleasant process for the government and it may not be a pretty process from the point of view of the Canadian public, but I am not sure we are after a system that is pretty. We are after a system that in the long run delivers incrementally better and better government, and on this matter, despite other philosophical differences between me and my colleague, we are 100% in accord.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for accurately portraying our position. We are working with all those across the country who have an interest in this file. Together we are focusing in on the short-term realities of the possibility of layoffs and job losses in Quebec and elsewhere. We are talking about transition in the industry. We are talking about the expansion of export markets. We are taking it seriously, across the country, to do whatever we possibly can to soften the blow of these punitive and unwelcome tariffs.

Mr. Speaker, the government could start by respecting the ability and right of hon. members to debate this question of privilege by backing down on trying to shut down debate. A second thing the government could do is respect the fact that before it changes the rules of the House, in order to do so, there must be consensus. That has been the tradition. I know the government House leader has backed down somewhat on the government's intent to change the Standing Orders, but she has not committed to doing so on the basis of consensus. That would be a second major thing the government could do to show it finally does have respect for this place and for members of Parliament. However, I do not have a lot of confidence in the government when it comes to doing that. We see no indication that it is prepared to do that. For the government, it really comes down to how far it can go and get away with it. We saw that last spring when the government introduced Motion No. 6 to literally try to take away every tool that was available to opposition members to do their jobs to hold the government to account. It only backed down after that unfortunate incident involving the Prime Minister. Then we saw the government try to prevent a vote in the House on the ability of members to defend the privileges of members. The government was stopped as a result of my hon. colleague, the member for Perth—Wellington, raising a new question of privilege and the Speaker ruling on it. Now we see that the government has sort of backed down on changes to the Standing Orders, but only partly. It would not surprise me, given the arrogance and attitude of the government, that before much longer we will see another effort to try to do what it has not been able to get away with yet. Canadians should be very concerned.

Mr. Speaker, the real question Canadians have is how we got to this point in the House, and how the Liberals put us in this situation where we are sitting today.The Liberals put us in this situation by shutting down debate prior to sending the issue to PROC. You tried to shut down debate last time prior to sending it to PROC, and the Speaker overruled what you wanted to do. Now we are facing that same situation, where once again you are shutting down debate on a really important question of unfettered access to Parliament.That is the real question Canadians want an answer to. Why has the Liberal government put this House in that position?

Mr. Speaker, I do not hear much sincerity from the defence minister today and no apology for his remarks and exaggerations. The military's feelings toward our defence minister have gone from disappointment to outrage. Former air force commander General Bill Carr wrote that our defence minister's image is “at best, one of an insecure veteran in a field he professes to know. For the good of the Canadian Forces, his departure would be a relief. He has no alternative but to step down.”Does the defence minister have any honour, integrity, or humility left? Will he do the honourable thing and step down?

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin this debate by reading from one of our national newspapers some words of Chantal Hébert: [The Prime Minister] does not much like the House of Commons and the feeling is mutual....[The Prime Minister] rarely engages with the opposition in a meaningful way. For the most part he speaks past his critics’ arguments. The attentive hearing he affords those who challenge him in town halls does not extend to opposition parliamentarians. When not on his feet, [the Prime Minister] can be the picture of adolescent boredom....All of which brings one to the wide-ranging House reforms the Liberals have recently brought forward under the guise of what they call a discussion paper. For the four opposition parties the proposals add up to a heavy-handed bid to erode their already limited capacity to hold a majority government to account. This resonated with me and it resonated with my very Liberal father, who was embarrassed to see a journalist he admired speaking in such a way of the party he used to support.The reason we are in this debate today is that on March 22, two members of Parliament were blocked from accessing the House of Commons by the Prime Minister's motorcade. That is quite an emblem, the privilege of being in the Prime Minister's limousine blocking those of use who come to work using the parliamentary public transit. These members of Parliament were unable to fulfill their principal role as parliamentarians, which was to come to the House to represent their constituents in a vote of this Parliament.When the member for Milton raised this question of privilege in the House, the government made the decision to end debate, to shut it down, and the Speaker of the House ruled this decision to be “unprecedented”. The Speaker of the House ruled that no other government, Liberal or Conservative, had gone so far as to end debate in this fashion on a reasonable question of privilege.The actions of the government members on March 22 to me speak volumes about their level of disrespect for members of Parliament and for the work we do in Parliament. By shutting down debate in the way they did, the government acted in blatant disregard for the way some members were treated, that they were prevented from getting here by the physical transportation logistics outside, and that then the government did not want to debate the fact that they were unable to do the very thing they were elected to do in the House.The government's so-called modernization of the House has proved to be much more of a power consolidation process, drastically reducing the resources available to the opposition to hold it to account. I am very much reminded of the Prime Minister's invitation and welcome to new parliamentarians, and 215 of us in the House are new parliamentarians. My colleague, the member of Parliament for Kootenay—Columbia, reminded us of that invitation, that reminder from the Prime Minister to new parliamentarians that the opposition's job was to hold the government to account. For the government to now have tried, I believe, three times to remove those tools from the opposition is in stark contrast to the Prime Minister's sunny ways message to us just a year and a half ago.I am afraid these government actions set precedent, whether they are refusing to allow debate on a question of privilege or whether the government is unilaterally pushing through changes to the Standing Orders, thereby changing the very process for establishing these rules. This long-standing convention of securing all-party approval before overhauling the Standing Orders of the House of Commons must be preserved. That all-party consensus is the tradition that includes Harper and Chrétien.Consensus is something we have talked about quite a bit in the House on other matters, and it is confusing for all of us. The government says that consensus is not needed to change the House rules, although that has been the parliamentary tradition. The government says, though, that consensus was needed in order to change the voting system, although the promise the Liberals made to Canadians was to make every vote count, which in every case is interpreted as proportional representation, if we follow Fair Vote and some of the other NGOs that have been holding this light up for so long to bring democratic reform to Canadians.There was nothing in the Liberal platform that said we needed a consensus of parliamentarians. This was a solemn promise, repeated more than 1,000 times, apparently, by the Prime Minister to change the voting system. However, once he got here and did not like the way the committee recommendation was going and the consensus of Canadians, he said we needed consensus in this House.We do not need consensus to change the Standing Rules of the House, but we did need consensus to change the voting system.Then consensus was, again, not needed when it came to approving the Kinder Morgan pipeline and its associated oil tanker traffic. The government's campaign platform was that the pipeline approval would not be forced through without revamping and redoing the regulatory process that had been so undermined by the Harper Conservative government. That was a solemn promise again, with hand on heart, that they would change the regulatory review process before pushing through the pipeline, but then, in the end, consensus was not needed, although we will find virtually every coastal community, especially around the hub of transportation, having opposed the pipeline; municipal government bodies like the Union of BC Municipalities, and a significant number of first nations opposed the pipeline approval, particularly in my area, coastal British Columbia, where our $8-billion maritime marine industry is threatened by the potential of an oil spill.Again, no consensus was needed there, and that very much feels like a broken promise, I must say. Women rely on public transit, such as buses, to get to and from work. If they do not have access to that public transit, their employment is put in jeopardy. Not only that, but tragedies like the Highway of Tears show that women's safety is put at risk when they do not have access to proper transportation. We are hearing about this right now at the status of women committee. Jane Stinson, who is a research associate with the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, said: If you think about it, it's particularly people who have lower incomes who use public transit, because they can't afford their own cars. Women have lower incomes, so it's not surprising.... [Public transportation] is a big issue, for some of the reasons that you mentioned.... ...the absence of public transit in northern communities is a major problem. It puts women at risk, as you mentioned. The Highway of Tears is perhaps the most shocking example, but I'm sure it's not alone; it's just better known. In lots of cases in the north women have to hitchhike, as do others, to get around. In urban locations, our research in Ottawa showed that it was very serious. It was accessibility, and that meant cost—the cost was too high for people—and also lack of schedules, and sometimes where the routes went. Again, there's a responsibility with the federal government, even in local transportation. It's a question of transfers. We also heard testimony from United Steelworkers. Meg Gingrich said: We call on the government to invest in social infrastructure, such as affordable housing and public transportation, and...for procurement provisions and policies that meet gender and equity standards with clear enforcement mechanisms and that do not simply continue occupational segregation. I am hearing this in my own riding, as well. Lack of public transit, again and again, is a barrier to women accepting jobs and being able to carry out their responsibilities.Disappointments about implementation of such promises are epitomized by the government's current approach. Sunny ways and hope and hard work seem to be election promises that have now been abandoned. We have had time allocation imposed in the midst of very emotional, vital debates, such as physician-assisted dying. Three times, I was ready to give my speech, trying to convey constituent concerns. Three times, I was unable to deliver it. I never could stand to debate that vital issue for Canada because of time allocation imposed by the government. Motion No. 6 last year seemed designed to neuter the opposition, and so did the so-called discussion paper that we have been debating these last few weeks.Again, it is so out of step with the promise of the present government. I ask the government, in every way, to return to being co-operative, collegial, recognizing it can use its majority, recognizing the opposition has a job to do as well.

Mr. Speaker, criticism was swift and consistent in response to the dual appointments of Stéphane Dion as ambassador to both the European Union and Germany. Each is a crucial and critical portfolio to manage. Now the European Union has rejected Stéphane Dion as ambassador.Can the Prime Minister explain why he would insult two of our strongest and closest allies by suggesting that Canada's relationship with each of them is a part-time job?

Mr. Speaker, I am having a hard time understanding why the Liberals have been asking us all day why we do not just send this to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs as quickly as possible. Now, it is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance who is asking us that question. Earlier, it was the member for Winnipeg North. We are in this situation because the Liberals refused to do just that when this issue was raised in the House the first time. The question of privilege was simply swept under the rug. The Liberals killed it. They did not want to hear about it. At that time, some Liberal members even gave speeches about why the matter did not need to be sent to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. That is why they killed the debate. I am therefore wondering why they are asking us this question today. We are in this situation because they refused to send this matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs when it was first raised.I do not understand the Liberals' definition of filibustering. Members are in the House to debate issues. Why should members who want to speak be prevented from doing so? That is not what I would call filibustering. Members rise on behalf of their constituents and speak in the House. Whether there are 39 or 49 members, they are rising because they want to speak and share their opinions on this issue.Does the member agree with the definition of filibustering used by the Liberals, who believe that if many members want to speak about an issue, this automatically constitutes filibustering and we are trying to delay the whole process?

Mr. Speaker, again I go back to the fact that I came here, as did all members, at least initially, to work together collaboratively to make a better Canada here in what should be a shining example for democracy.We have strayed way off track from that over the last little while. We need to get back to working together collaboratively. We need to get back to making sure that this House is a shining example for democracy in Canada. That means that before the government changes the rules in the House, it is done collaboratively and through consensus. That is how we move democracy forward.

Mr. Speaker, last year the health and justice ministers commissioned the Council of Canadian Academies to conduct independent studies on the eligibility criteria under the new law on medical assistance in dying.Dr. Harvey Schipper is a vocal opponent of that law, yet he has now been made chair of a committee under it. This raises serious doubts about the impartiality of the entire process. How can Canadians have any confidence that the working group will examine the issue fairly, when its chair opposes medical assistance in dying?

Mr. Speaker, Ubique Quo Fas et Gloria Ducunt. “Whither right and glory lead” is the motto of the 6th Field Artillery Regiment, where I had the honour of completing my formal military service. Non-commissioned members like myself follow orders not because we fear officers, but because these orders ensure the protection of the federation and the honour of our homeland.The Minister of National Defence has breached that trust. Since his moral authority is gone, will he do the right thing and step down?

Mr. Speaker, I am very glad indeed to participate in this debate. I want to address the problem that faces us as we decide on this matter of privilege to face the fact that we are going to be sending this question of privilege to a committee which has itself largely broken down. It is a committee in which the spirit has been adopted by the current government of running roughshod over the traditional rights and privileges of the opposition. These are privileges that are the practical basis on which the opposition can carry out its job of ensuring proper scrutiny of what the government does, ensuring that government business can be slowed down and examined at sufficient length so that if there is a problem with it, it can then be brought to the attention of the Canadian public. This would allow the Canadian public to then say they expect changes, thereby pressuring the government, which after all wants to win the next election, into respecting the wishes of the people and changing its policy. That is what the opposition does under our system. It is what the opposition has always done under our system. It is a good way of organizing things. That is why these rules have evolved over time, over centuries. It is why they have been maintained over the decades of the past century. It is why we have, among other things, concluded as a parliamentary community that we ought not to change the Standing Orders without the consent of all parties. That, of course, is the approach that all the opposition parties want to take right now. It is the approach that was taken under the Harper government and under the Chrétien government. There have been very few occasions on which changes to the Standing Orders have been pushed through without the consent of the opposition, and that is a very good thing. Those changes that have been pushed through without consent are almost invariably, but they are invariably, changes that have had the effect of stripping the opposition of its ability to do its job on behalf of Canadians, and therefore of destroying, in part, the constitutional apparatus. When I say constitutional I mean that in the traditional British sense of how we conduct legislation in a Westminster system in Canada. The practices on the committee that have veered so far from what is acceptable need to be enumerated here, and I propose to do that today. At the committee on March 21, a motion was introduced at an in camera session, and in all fairness, it was a session that started off in camera and then went public. A Liberal member of Parliament proposed that all changes to the Standing Orders would be implemented and a report submitted to the House of Commons by June 2. This was effectively a way of ensuring that a single report containing all the necessary provisions, everything the Liberals wanted, would be produced. There could be a dissenting report, I guess, but there would be no option of trying to place limits on what gets agreed to by saying that no, the opposition does not support this or that particular change to the Standing Orders, including ones that had never been contemplated in the Liberal election platform or discussed with the Canadian public. All of these could be pushed through at the government's discretion. Lest anyone suffer from the illusion that we had any idea of which policy option would be preferred, we have a government discussion paper which includes a whole range of topics, some of which contradict each other. We would either sit on Fridays and make them full days or not sit on any Fridays. Numerous other options were put out there which could not be compatible with each other. New items could be added in and the government would not indicate it. At no point between that day and this day would the Liberals ever indicate which of these items were the ones that were their bottom line, so we never knew. We had no security at all. We were told to have a discussion and the Liberals would not provide us with any details; we would get to find out once we had consented to allow them to move forward with the motion. Of course, we opposed that.I proposed an amendment to this motion in that committee which said that we would still maintain the June 2 deadline, but we would only have such changes to the Standing Orders as had the unanimous consent of all members of that committee. This followed the practice established in the past and actually spelled out in the House orders during the last Parliament in which Jean Chrétien was our prime minister. That is what we proposed. For the intervening period between March 21 and today, that is all we discussed, endlessly.The first big surprise and the first deviation from appropriate practices came immediately after I proposed that amendment. This would have been on March 21 at the end of the normally scheduled meeting. We started the meeting at 11 a.m., as the procedure and House affairs committee always does. We were getting close to one o'clock, which is our normal time for adjournment. I proposed my amendment, expecting that we would come back if we stayed on this topic and deal with it at our next meeting, which would have taken place two days later, on March 23, but the chair at the appointed time for adjournment said, effectively—I do not have his exact words in front of me, but they are in the committee Hansard—that we were not going to adjourn because the chair may not adjourn without the consent of the majority of committee members; it is not in the power of the chair to adjourn, and the Liberal members indicated they did not want to adjourn. The purpose of this quite clearly was to keep the debate going until the opposition ran out of steam and then the government would simply push through its motion in that committee and that would result in the Standing Orders being unilaterally changed in a way that could not be controlled or modified in any way by the opposition in that committee.At that time, I argued that the chair was misinterpreting the practices of the House. There is no standing order that says the chair cannot adjourn the committee without the expressed consent of the majority of the committee at the time when the committee normally adjourns. However, the chair argued back that no, he cannot adjourn. He went on at some length that he could not do this, and so in the end we had no choice. We could hardly stand up and walk out of the committee. That would result in the Liberals getting what they wanted, and subverting all of our rules, all of our protections, so we had no choice but to talk and talk. We started a filibuster, which has become the longest filibuster, to the best of my knowledge, in the history of this country. Until it was adjourned this morning, in that committee it was still March 21. Instead of being adjourned, the meetings would be suspended, and we would come back sometimes after a break of a day or two days and on one occasion most recently after a break of two weeks, but always to the fiction that it was still March 21. It is one thing for us all to see the clock as a certain time in order to wrap up the proceedings of a committee or of the House early, or to do the opposite and see the clock as being a little earlier than it actually is to allow the committee to go on a bit longer. I used to do this all the time when I chaired the Subcommittee on International Human Rights. I would say to the committee members, and members can examine the committee Hansard to see this, “I see the clock as not yet being 2 p.m.” When we looked at the clock it was clearly 2 p.m., which was when we adjourned, but as long as no other member disagreed, that allowed us to maintain the official fiction that it was prior to 2 p.m., so that we could continue hearing witness testimony. We would hear heartbreaking stories about people who had been tortured and murdered in other countries. It was our job to listen to this testimony and then make use of it in preparing our reports. I always sought the consent of the committee in that matter, but I understood that a meeting ends at the time it is scheduled to end. The chair took a different position. Then today he came to our meeting. We met at 9:02 a.m. The chair said, “It being 9:02 on May 5”, not maintaining this fiction that it is March 21, “good morning. Welcome back to the 55th meeting of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. This meeting is being televised. Prior to our suspension on April 13, the committee was debating” the member for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston's “amendment to [the] motion. Also, I'll bring to your attention the two excellent papers we asked for, done by our researcher, one on the standing orders in Quebec's National Assembly dealing with omnibus bills, and the other one on the historical contents of budget implementation bills.”Referring to the debate that is happening right now, he said, “It is my understanding that all parties have signalled their intention to support the subamendment and amendment on the question of privilege currently being debated in the House. As members know, when this question comes to a vote it means that ultimately this committee will be seized with the matter of access of members to the parliamentary precinct. Given this information, I'm happy to say that this 55th meeting finally stands adjourned.”He then gavelled us out.There are two problems with this procedurally. This is the same chair who said that a meeting cannot be adjourned without the consent of the members of the committee. Now he said that he was adjourning it. He made no effort to even look up from his papers. He adjourned the meeting of the committee without the consent of the members. Unlike the previous occasion, when we actually had arrived at the pre-scheduled end time of the meeting, this was in the middle of the meeting. This was clearly in violation of the traditional practice in this House that the chair cannot adjourn a meeting. It is not a standing order. It is a practice to ensure that chairs cannot adjourn meetings in the middle of a meeting, in the middle of a proceeding, to prevent some item of business from being dealt with or to prevent discussion. Our name is Parliament. Parlement. Medieval French is where this came from. It is a place to speak. Our default setting is to be able to continue debate, and he shut that down in a way that violated the practice of this place, as stated on page 1087 of O'Brien and Bosc: The committee Chair cannot adjourn the meeting without the consent of a majority of the members, unless the Chair decides that a case of disorder or misconduct is so serious as to prevent the committee from continuing its work. That is something that would only occur in the middle of a meeting, not when we have arrived at the end and are past our time. The chair has violated this rule twice. Once was by misusing it to justify keeping a meeting going indefinitely. That particular meeting started at 11 a.m. and concluded at 3 a.m. and then was picked up after a suspension the next day and the next. The second was by actually overtly and egregiously adjourning the meeting a minute into a meeting that was expected to be several hours long, and, I might add, in the midst of me attempting to raise a point of order on this very point. I stated, “point of order.” He heard me and chose to ignore me. That was an egregious, deliberate, and overt abuse not of the practices but of the Standing Orders. This is the committee to which we propose to send items of privilege, a committee chaired by someone willing to violate the practices and the Standing Orders of this place.That is one problem. Let me talk about something else that was wrong in the way this was done. It was with respect to the suspension of the committee. What the chair did at the end of the first meeting, the first sitting of this committee, which started on March 21 at 11 a.m. and carried on until 3 a.m. the next morning, was suspend, suddenly and without warning, and we came back the next day, I believe at noon. After that, the tendency was to suspend at midnight and come back later on. Let me give members an idea of just what I am talking about. They will see the importance of this in a second. We started on March 21 at 11:05 a.m. There were a number of brief suspensions for votes during the day. We then suspended at 3 a.m. There is an oddity here. It says we suspended on March 21 officially, but it was really March 22, until noon the next day. On March 22, we then suspended until March 23 at 10:30 a.m. We then suspended and recommenced on March 24 and then again on March 25. On March 25, there was a suspension during a break week. We suspended on March 25 at 11 a.m., and we returned on April 3 at noon. We suspended on April 3, coming back on April 5. We suspended on April 5 and came back on April 6. On April 6, we suspended and came back on April 7. On April 7, we suspended and came back on April 11. On April 11, we suspended and came back on April 12. On April 12, we suspended until April 13. On April 13, we suspended and came back on May 2, today, and we had this adjournment.I want to talk about what O'Brien and Bosc say about suspensions. They say: Committees frequently suspend their meetings for various reasons, with the intention to resume later in the day. Suspensions may last a few seconds, or several hours, depending on the circumstances, and a meeting may be suspended more than once. So far, so good: The committee Chair must clearly announce the suspension, so that transcription ceases until the meeting resumes. Meetings are suspended, for example, to change from public to in camera mode, or the reverse, to enable witnesses to be seated or to hear witnesses by video conference, to put an end to disorder, to resolve a problem with the simultaneous interpretation system, or to move from one item on the agenda to the next. It also notes: Speaker Milliken expressed reservations about the power of a committee to suspend proceedings to the next day.... This is not something that is an approved practice. I then looked up Speaker Milliken's ruling, delivered on June 3, 2003. He stated that it was inappropriate. It was not a breach of the rules or the Standing Orders but a breach of precedence for the chair of the Standing Committee on Transportation to suspend a meeting on May 28 and resume it on May 29. He said: Your Speaker is...somewhat troubled by the notion of an overnight suspension of proceedings. As hon. members know, if the Speaker's attention is drawn to a lack of quorum and no quorum is found, the House must adjourn forthwith. While it may be argued that no such obligation exists for committees, I would not consider the unorthodox actions of the transport committee in this particular instance to be a precedent in committee practice. This is a quorum issue that caused them to suspend. In other words, their suspension to be back the next day was not a precedent that says that this is acceptable. This is not an acceptable practice, and that was a situation in which a committee suspended once for 24 hours.Here is a situation where the committee suspended 10 times for breaks ranging from 24 hours to two weeks. This was not a suspension. This was adjournment and reconvening of the committee. To this chair's credit, when I asked him, he started to let us know what the next time we would be coming back would be, and he started to let us know when our next suspension would be so we could at least plan.However, initially, in this particular situation, the government members apparently knew when the suspension would be, but the rest of us, who had to keep the debate going, were hamstrung. These are all examples of an absolutely egregious abuse of the way in which this place works.I intend, now that I have seen how these particular practices have been abused, to come back with proposals to change the Standing Orders to make sure that suspensions are used as suspensions, not as adjournments, and to make sure that the rule, the practice on adjournment, is actually put down as a Standing Order. We cannot adjourn a meeting as the chair in the middle of a meeting, but at the end of a meeting, we cannot keep the meeting going unless we have the consent of the majority of the committee. Hopefully that will remove some of the abuses that have gone on in this committee.Let me just say this. There is a pattern here, not just in this committee but in the government, of absolutely having no regard for the traditional way we have done things. This is a majority government. It has enormous power. The powers of a Canadian prime minister far exceed those of an American president, far exceed them, domestically speaking, but they are not the powers of a dictator. The rules that keep them from being the powers of a dictator are the ones that are incorporated in our Standing Orders and in the respect we all have, until recently all had, for the practices of this place. These are slender threads that preserve our liberties, but they are vital. We should not sweep them aside, and I encourage all members to take great caution not to allow this practice on this committee to become the practice of the House or of the committees in the future.

Mr. Speaker, a meaningful apology must be followed by changed behaviour, transparency, and accountability, and that is just not what we are getting from the minister.The defence minister told the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner that he knew nothing about the transfer of Afghan detainees to face torture. However, both he and his supervisor in Afghanistan have said that he played a key role in intelligence liaison with local Afghan forces. Can the Minister of National Defence tell us how he can simultaneously have known nothing about prisoner transfers to local Afghan authorities and at the same time have been Canada's key liaison person with these same forces?

Mr. Speaker, we have asked many times for an explanation of the bizarre double ambassadorial appointments of Stéphane Dion after he was shuffled out of cabinet, appointments publicly ridiculed by former Canadian diplomats, as well as more quietly among current foreign affairs professionals, and which did offend the EU.Today Mr. Dion finally came clean before the foreign affairs committee. His bizarre twofer appointment, he said, was the Prime Minister's decision and the PM's alone.Will the Prime Minister finally take responsibility for his spectacularly bad decision?

Mr. Speaker, the Council of Canadian Academies uses a totally independent process when naming individuals to this panel.I found out at the same time as the public found out the names of the individuals. Individuals are named to the panel to debate the evidence before them and not to debate their personal views. While each panellist may approach the topic from a particular standpoint, the entire panel comes together to assess the evidence.The panel has 43 people on it, who undoubtedly have varying personal views. We expect them to work with diligence and to examine the evidence appropriately.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal House leader claims she is having discussions with all MPs about substantive changes to our democracy. What she is actually doing is ramming through a motion to make the Liberals less accountable to Canadians.The Liberal member for Malpeque thinks there should be all-party consensus. Even the Liberal platform itself says so: We will look at...ways to make Question Period more relevant...and will work with all parties to recommend and bring about these changes. Did she actually read their platform, or is she taking communications lessons from the defence minister?

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to pick up where I left off before question period, in order to discuss this important question of privilege. I must digress a little first, however.In their responses today, the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Defence repeated the same talking points, regardless of the question. After hearing the Prime Minister give the same answers in the same way to every question he was asked, I have to wonder why this government wants to give the Prime Minister a full question period to answer the opposition's questions. I think he would be able to give identical answers to everything in three minutes and we would see right away that it would always be the same. To come back to my speech, we can all agree that as representatives, we are all entitled to the same parliamentary courtesies and privileges regardless of our political affiliation. Whether we are on the government benches, on the opposition, or independent MPs, we all have the right to the same consideration when it comes to accessing the House of Commons. Preventing a parliamentarian from exercising his or her right to vote, regardless of the reason, is unacceptable. The Liberal government was elected on promises of transparency. It referred to sunny ways. It also promised the following on page 29 of the Liberal platform: For Parliament to work best, its members must be free to do what they have been elected to do: represent their communities and hold the government to account. That is exactly what we are doing, and it is exactly what the Liberals are trying to do with the proposed changes to our rules, to our Standing Orders, our bylaws, and how our House operates. In light of what has gone on in the past few weeks, it is clear that this promise from the Liberal platform is unfortunately not one that the Liberals will keep, just like the promise they made to have only a small deficit.The deficit is currently quite enormous and the books will not be balanced before 2055. It is the Minister of Finance himself, not the opposition, who is saying this. If the opposition had not done its job and raised the issue, we would never have found out because the minister kept this tidbit of information to himself. He made it public a few days before Christmas and most Canadians would not have learned this important information. It is not surprising, coming from a political party that mastered the art of making promises during the election and doing the opposite once elected.The government says that it is honouring its promise to improve and modernize Parliament. On page 30 of the Liberals' platform, we read: “We will not resort to legislative tricks to avoid scrutiny.” That really takes the cake, because it is exactly what the Liberals did.First there was a discussion paper containing a threat regarding the adoption of a report before a certain date. If that is not a trick, I do not know what is. The Liberals realized that it did not work, so they backed down on their discussion paper and took away the committee's right to do its work. Then they brought the matter back to the House, where they have a majority and where they could be sure to have more control over the opposition members. The government had to back down because of a public outcry. The government now says that it is backing down and that it wants to go ahead with just what it promised during the election campaign. However, as I just clearly and explicitly demonstrated, not only is the government not keeping all of its promises, but it is cherry-picking the ones it wants to keep. That is a trick.It still wants to make changes without assuring us parliamentarians that it will not impose any changes without the unanimous consent of all parties of the House. This is a power grab. How else can we describe what this government wants to do?I would like to quote a few articles. I especially liked one that was in Le Devoir this morning and was entitled “Liberal Doublespeak”. I will not read the whole article, because that would take too long.However, there are certain passages that warrant our attention. The title of the article is “Liberal Doublespeak”. I will read a few passages. The parliamentary process has its faults, but that is the price we pay to keep tabs on our governments....In trying to escape that scrutiny, the Prime Minister's Liberals are only making things worse and casting some serious doubt on their promise to respect Parliament. Since March, work in the House of Commons has been slowed by the opposition's stalling tactics, brought about by an argument largely provoked by the government, its parliamentary leader, and their proposals to make changes to the rules of Parliament. Were it just a matter of making changes, there would be no problem, but the government insisted on a tight deadline and stubbornly refused to commit to not act unilaterally in the event of a stalemate.... The opposition is furious, and rightly so, because, according to the conventions of the House, consensus must prevail, promise or no promise. I think that is fairly clear. It is not the opposition that is saying it. Anyone who has seen what has been happening here over the past few weeks knows that the opposition is just doing its job. The opposition is defending the right to speak of Canadians who are represented by the MPs they duly elected. That is what we are doing, and the media is starting to pick up on it. Surprise. Now the Liberals are trying to take a small but strategic step backwards. Unfortunately, as we can see from the editorial in this morning's edition of Le Devoir, journalists and Canadians can see right through those tactics.The article goes on as follows: This backtracking is welcome, but the Leader of the Government is using it as a pretext to issue a warning. Did I understand the meaning of the new proposal correctly? The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons is giving us a warning. She wrote, “under the circumstances, the government will need to use time allocation more often in order to implement” its legislative agenda. One would think she was a Conservative minister. When the Liberals were on this side of the House, they sang a different tune. They promised sunny ways, a new way of doing things, and so, so much respect. Now it looks like they have opted to stick with the tradition of government acting in accordance with rules approved by consensus. That is what we did when we were in power. That is what they should keep doing if they want to restore respect and balance to the House.The editorial writer went on to say this: Nothing justifies this threat. After a year and a half in power, the government's legislative agenda is pretty thin. Even so, it has used time allocation to expedite the study of 11 bills. [The Liberals] say they want to consult and talk, but attacking the Conservatives, insisting on taking unilateral action, and threatening closure sends quite a different message to the other parties. The reason their legislative agenda is being obstructed, as it was last year, is that they are no better now than they were then at resisting the temptation to manoeuver in a bid to take greater control over Parliament. Their appetite for power not only hinders their ability to keep their promises, it is inconsistent with those promises. Those excerpts were from an editorial by Manon Cornellier in today's edition of Le Devoir.Mr. Speaker, I believe that if you seek it, you will find the unanimous consent of the members of the House for me to table this article so that everyone can read it.

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister refuses to acknowledge the severity of this and the damage it has done. That, more than anything else, tells us where his priorities are, and they are not with the military. He pulled our fighter jets out of the fight against ISIS when our allies asked us to stay. He cut $12 billion in funding to the defence department. Now he is refusing to remove a defence minister who has twice misled Canadians about his role in a military mission.Does the Prime Minister understand that his first step in changing course from the damage that he is doing to the military is to remove the defence minister?

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by thanking the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are keeping the democratic reform dream alive. He has done exceptional work.We are here today to talk about unfettered access to the House for voting and also how the House operates. I want to go back to the orientation session that we all had about 18 months ago, when 200 of us were new members of Parliament. I was so excited in that orientation by the conversations I had with new members of Parliament from every party. We all said the same thing: that we were all here to work together collaboratively to make a better Canada. That is why we were here. During that orientation session, the Prime Minister made a cameo appearance and said that the role of the opposition is to make government better. I wrote that down, being a new member sitting in opposition. However, in order for that to happen, government has to listen to some of the things that the opposition has to offer. Then I took my seat in the House, as did all members. There are probably very few things as special as the first time we take our seats in the House and look around this building and think about the history that was made here, the traditions that came from the House, the fact that this is the home of democracy for Canada, the House of democracy, and that we need to set a shining example for how democracy is supposed to work for the rest of Canada. Certainly that was the expectation of the 107,589 constituents from Kootenay—Columbia who sent me here. It was to build Canada and to build democracy.Therefore, it is somewhat unfortunate that we end up having to talk about unfettered access to Parliament and the lack of democracy that appears to be becoming more and more evident in the House. Quite frankly, in terms of access to Parliament, the debate should continue until all members are heard and debate collapses, rather than ending through the imposition of closure, which we are facing today. What happened? I will go back to the situation that came up on March 22, 2017. The MPs from Milton and Beauce were prevented from getting to Centre Block to vote on the budget—which is a very important vote—because the RCMP stopped parliamentary buses from picking them up in order to allow an empty Prime Minister's motorcade to leave the Hill. After the vote, the MP for Milton got up on a question of privilege, and the Speaker later ruled that indeed her privileges had been breached. Debate began immediately on the question of privilege. Not too long after that the Liberals, in a move deemed unprecedented by the Speaker, used their majority to shut down debate. The Conservatives then got up on another question of privilege to argue that the Liberal move denied the MP for Milton the opportunity to have her question of privilege properly heard. The Speaker ruled in their favour, which of course leads to where we are today.We are keeping this debate going because we oppose what happened to the member and also oppose what is becoming a very heavy-handed approach by the Liberal government to changing the Standing Orders. Now they have given notice of closure on this current question of privilege, which highlights yet again an undemocratic approach to dealing with accountability in Parliament. I find this quite disappointing, but it is not my first disappointment in my 18 months here in the House. Motion No. 6 was introduced around May 17 of last year. It was almost a year ago today that we were dealing with Motion No. 6, which was brought forward by the Liberal government and attempted to set in place a temporary set of Standing Orders to control what the House was going to be doing for at least the next two months. It proposed that the House would not have an adjournment time on Monday to Thursday, when debates would continue; that there would be no automatic adjournment for summer; that only the government could move motions to adjourn the House or have debates; and that there would be no need to consult with the opposition about when to adjourn for summer. The government could do it at any time. This ended up being withdrawn by the Liberal government after what was a really dark day, quite frankly, here in the life of this Parliament, and after the Prime Minister apologized and the Liberal government withdrew Motion No. 6.Democratic reform was another disappointment. I really felt betrayed when it came to democratic reform. I went around my riding of Kootenay—Columbia, I visited 14 communities, and I started every discussion this way: we are not here to discuss if democratic reform is coming; we are here to talk about the preferred approach to democratic reform and proportional representation. Every discussion I started was that this was not a discussion of if we were moving to democratic reform or proportional representation; it was how we were going to get there. I and hundreds of thousands of Canadians were really disappointed to see democratic reform, which was one of the primary focuses of the Liberal campaign, all of a sudden disappear almost overnight.With Bill C-7, the RCMP are looking to have a collective voice across Canada. Bill C-7 came through the House over a year ago. It went to the Senate and came back to the Liberal government in June 2016, and we have heard nothing since then. The RCMP still does not have a national voice, which they very much need, to deal with a number of issues they have. The Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security recently decided it was not going to deal with Bill C-51. In my riding of Kootenay—Columbia that was one of the major election issues in 2015, and it contributed to my riding for the first time in 21 years no longer having a Conservative member of Parliament. That is how important this issue was. There were rallies held across my riding opposed to Bill C-51, and nothing has happened with that so far.Yesterday we saw what many who have spent much longer in Parliament than I considered a real disrespect to the leader of the NDP, who asked questions that were not answered by the Prime Minister, even though the Prime Minister was here in the room. That is a lack of respect for our leader.For the past few weeks, I have sat here and heard the Liberals claim that they just wanted to have a discussion on how Parliament works, and now they are unilaterally forcing through changes. These changes will not make Parliament better and do not have the unanimous consent of the House, which is tradition. It is really quite fair that Canadians are asking whether these are being imposed just to make life better for Liberals and the Prime Minister, and if not, then why not negotiate and get consensus from all parties in the House in terms of how we are going to work here in the House on behalf of our constituents? Any time a government becomes less accountable, it is the citizens who suffer.We are here in Canada's house of democracy, and I go back to where I started in terms of the orientation session when everyone I talked to from every party said they were here to work together collaboratively to make a better Canada in what truly should be a shining example for democracy. It has been quite disappointing to sit through the last seven days and see what has happened here in the House. I truly believe the Liberal government needs to do better going forward. We need to respect democracy. We need to work together collaboratively here in the House. I look forward hopefully to seeing that happen.

Mr. Speaker, I hope you will not object if I take a moment to give context to the comments of my hon. colleague from Winnipeg North. In the last Parliament, I proposed a motion to amend the Standing Orders and when that motion came before the House, it was voted on in a free vote. All members of the Liberal Party, with one exception, voted in favour of it. About two-thirds of Conservatives voted in favour of it, and about 20 NDP members voted in favour of it. The member's point is that we do not have unanimous consent and, therefore, it would be hypocritical for me to be advocating unanimous consent for changes to the Standing Orders, which was not the matter I was addressing. I was addressing abuses on the procedure and House affairs committee. However, let me deal with this.What happened was that proposal to change the Standing Orders went to the House, it was then sent to the procedure and House affairs committee. The procedure and House affairs committee made a unanimous recommendation that the matter be referred back to the House of Commons without a recommendation in favour of or against, and that all parties consider the possibility of engaging in a free vote on the matter, which was done. If we follow, there was all-party consent on this matter at committee, which is what I have been arguing all along. If the member goes back and examines the record, he will see that I have always said that we need all-party consent. In the context of the procedure and House affairs committee, that means unanimous consent. It does not mean I am trying to suggest that if we change things here, we should give any one member of Parliament the ability to stop the change from going forward. I am saying all-party consent, and that practice existed in the past. That was the practice, for example, in the committee I mentioned under the Chrétien government, where all party House leaders were members of a committee. It was the committee that had to approve changes, not a member of the House of Commons but every member of that committee, every party, in other words. That practice was followed with the changes that I proposed and that were eventually adopted with regard to the election of the Speaker. They are the practices that should be maintained for all future standing order changes.

Mr. Speaker, in the House yesterday, the hon. Minister of Natural Resources said, first of all, that he disagrees with the decision to impose unfair and punitive tariffs on softwood lumber; second, that he has created a federal-provincial task force, and I want to emphasize this, to support the forestry industry; and third, that he supports forestry workers. That is all great. In that case, why is his government being so inconsistent and refusing what, first of all, Quebec, second, the forestry industy, and third, the forestry workers themselves are asking for in terms of support, that is, loan guarantees?

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about openness and transparency. I have been transparent and I know that some of my colleagues who do not speak French would have been able learn about this great editorial had I been able to table the document.Yesterday, I also had the opportunity to participate in a scrum where the opposition was commenting on the new discussion paper. We should really be calling it a new attempt by the Liberals to grab power and absolute control over the House of Commons. A journalist asked me if I could explain to Madame Brossard from Brossard why I do not agree with the changes proposed by the Liberals. I would say this to Madame Brossard from Brossard: my role is to stand up for her when the government forgets about her. Today, the government wants to muzzle her because it does not want to hear what she has to say when she disagrees with the government. I am standing up for Madame Brossard from Brossard against the arrogance and absolute power of this government.That is what Madame Brossard from Brossard has to understand. In the heat of the moment at the press conference, I was unable to think of the right words. I was not sure how to respond to Madame Brossard. However, what Madame Brossard needs to know is that the official opposition, the second opposition party, and the independent members of this House all have a role to play in representing their constituents.When MPs are prevented from playing their role, when they are prevented from coming here to express themselves and share their constituents' thoughts, when they are prevented from voting, it is all the same thing. Those members are being prevented from playing their role properly. It is your duty, Mr. Speaker, to ensure that all of these rules are followed. I am very grateful that you agreed to allow us to discuss this question of privilege. The number of people who have spoken about it shows that this is a very sensitive issue and that you were right in allowing us to discuss it so that you could hear what all of our colleagues had to say. I am convinced that their comments will be very useful to you in the future.The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons turned a deaf ear. She never wanted to reassure us despite our repeated requests not to make any changes unilaterally. My colleague the House leader of the official opposition co-signed a letter with her colleague the leader of the second opposition party. They sent that letter to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons more than three weeks ago. We finally received a response this past weekend, or three weeks later. When two people are talking and they ask a question, but the answer arrives three weeks later, I do not call that a discussion. It would take quite some time if we had to wait three weeks for an answer every time we discussed something. I do not call that a discussion. I call that a dialogue of the deaf.Unfortunately, this answer came quite late. It is true that it came, but it was also released to all the media without allowing for a real discussion, without allowing the leaders to play their role, in other words to talk together to find a way to manage the situation. What about the mutual respect that we should have in this House? If this is transparency, if this is sunny ways, then we will seriously take a pass.The dictionary definition of arrogant is, “unduly appropriating authority or importance”. What better way to describe this government?In closing, the government needs to see reason. It needs to take measures to ensure that no member is ever prevented from doing their work. It needs to drop its idea of changing parliamentary procedural rules without the unanimous consent of the members of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I am only smiling a little, because that speech could have been given by Conservatives in the last Parliament when we in the opposition were trying to hold up some of their worst agenda. The history of this is important. The member would do well to remember that her own government tried to kill this motion by punting it into non-existence. She can wave away, but it was only the intervention of the Speaker which overruled the Liberals' attempt to kill this motion in the first place that allowed us to talk about it at all. She can be as sanctimonious as she likes about respecting taxpayers. Respect? My goodness, the Speaker of the House of Commons had to intervene with the Liberal government and say, “Whoa. Access to Parliament is incredibly important.” The Liberal Party tried to kill that motion in Parliament because it was interfering with the Liberals' machinations at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. What is going on there? Let us talk about respect. The Liberals are trying to ram their changes to Parliament through without all-party agreement. If they want to stop the filibuster, if they want to stop the mess that is going on in the House, they should respect the traditions of Parliament, which prime ministers Pierre Trudeau, Chrétien, Mulroney, even Harper, respected. The Liberals came in saying that they were going to do better than even Stephen Harper. They should at least abide by that tradition. If we are going to change the rules of the House, we have to do it together, because it is just too easy to break that tradition and then have majority governments force their will on Parliament. That is exactly what the Liberal Party is trying to do while it pretends that they are discussion papers and open conversations, and yet the Liberals will never at any point agree to one simple principle: that when we change this place, we should only do it together. That is a good principle that should be respected.

Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege of serving our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces as the Minister of National Defence. Every single day I will work hard, as I have always done, to make sure that they have all the right tools, the right funding, and care for them to carry out their missions. I will do that every single day.

Mr. Speaker, we do reference this place as Parliament, a place in which we speak, but it is tricky when we all do it at the same time. It is more akin to question period.I use the word “privilege” in terms of speaking on behalf of the good people of northwestern British Columbia, because it is in fact exactly that. To be able to rise in this place and speak in our best efforts on behalf of those we represent is an honour that only a few of us get to hold over the many years that this country has existed.It believe it is also right at the heart of the issue we are talking about today. This is called a question of privilege. For a lot of Canadians, it is very old language, a question of privilege. Privilege sounds like something very shiny and potentially valuable in wealth, which one is afforded. We all know “I am entitled to my entitlements” and all that sort of thing that has gone on in the past.However, the privilege we speak about today is simply the privilege to speak. In this motion it is about access of members of Parliament to come and vote on behalf of their constituents, which is of course at the very most sacred core of our democracy. We elect people, and we put them forward to represent us. They speak on our behalf, but they also cast votes on our behalf.The incident that happened most recently with my friend the member for Milton and others was that they were physically prevented from getting into the House of Commons, which unfortunately seems to happen once every four or five years. MPs are trying to get up on the Hill and, because of some security measure or some other thing, they cannot get in.Some in the public may say, “Big deal; the vote passed by 20 or 15 that night.” However, I have witnessed votes in this House that have been tied. I have witnessed votes of confidence over whether a government would stand or fall being supported by one extra member, keeping us from an election at one point. To say that it does not matter in the small example is missing the entire point of the larger example, which is that we all need free and fair access to this place to simply do our jobs.Part of our job is voting. A second part of our job is the ability to hold government to account. The only members in this whole place who sit in government are the Prime Minister and the cabinet that the Prime Minister chooses.The role of all the other MPs in this place, including government members who sit in the so-called backbench, is to hold government to account on two fundamental things: spending and laws; to look at the proposals that come forward from government, see if its spending is accurate and true to the nature of the promises made, and to see that legislation that passes before this place, whether it comes from an individual member or from the government itself, is of the best quality, using the best information.The context in which we are debating this is important, not only the context of the Liberal government's recent pattern of becoming more and more forceful, more and more pushing its agenda onto an increasingly unwilling opposition, but also the context in which the government was elected into office. I would argue that the slogan of hope and hard work that the Prime Minister used to talk about was one that had a certain resonance and meaning for Canadians.Clearly, the Liberals won the last election. Canadians were looking for something that was more hopeful, I would argue, more respectful of the conversation—not only the one that happens out in the larger public, true consultation, meaningful consultation around what it is that government wants to do, but also more respect for this place that is Parliament.We saw the Harper government use the very powerful tool of prorogation, and a lot of Canadians did not even know what that word meant until the Prime Minister shut down Parliament entirely to avoid a vote of confidence at one point. The previous prime minister got into the routine and habit of just not liking a debate going on too long, and he would just shut down debate. There would be a quick vote, and 30 minutes later the debate was over and the bill was moving on. The former government got so addicted to these tools that it would actually invoke shutting down debate as it introduced legislation. The debate would be 20 minutes old, and the government would bring in a motion to say that in another 30 minutes it would be over. Some of these bills were of enormous consequence to the lives of Canadians. That is a problem.We can see how in government there is a certain intolerance that seems to grow, a resistance to scrutiny, particularly when a government gets into a bit of trouble or just starts to get tired of this whole procedure of Parliament that we have concocted over many centuries. That is too bad.We also can recognize a majority government, and in this case, as in most majority governments in Canada, it is a false majority. A little less than 40% of Canadians who voted, voted to support the government. Liberals used to talk about that as a false majority and one of the reasons that we ought to change our voting system, as much of the world has. It is also known that a majority government in Canada has inordinate power to see its agenda through. It is not as if debate takes an extra hour or two, or a day or two and the government is going to lose that vote if it is whipping the vote on its side, which governments often do. It is all a question of timing and sequence, and can we simply hold the government to account. Sometimes that means holding the government to some pause. As it wants to ram its agenda through, as it wants to get a bill through or a budget through, it feels that sense of urgency, but it maybe has not done all the scrutiny, has not looked at it from all sides, which is kind of the point. Some of these laws do not get changed for 40 or 50 years and if they are badly done, it takes things like Supreme Court challenges to fix them, which are incredibly expensive. Rather than get them right and take the time to do it, governments sometimes want to rush things.We see this pattern creeping out, not just into the House of Commons but into the committee. We saw this at the procedure and House affairs committee earlier today where, suddenly, the chair woke up, decided he wanted the meeting to be over, smashed the gavel, and then suddenly it was over.This is clearly the opposite of the promise the Prime Minister brought in. If we ask Canadians the question, aside from being a prime minister, what did Prime Ministers Chrétien, Mulroney, Harper, Martin, and Pierre Elliott Trudeau all have in common? A lot of Canadians would say not much. What did Harper have in common with Chrétien and Chrétien with Mulroney? They had one thing common. They believed in the tradition of this place. If we were going to change the rules, if we were going to change the way we interacted with one another, if we were going to change the balance of power between the government, which we recognized is subsequent, and the power of the opposition, then we clearly needed to have all the parties in the conversation, not at the end of a barrel of a gun, saying that if we did not agree the government would do it anyway. That is not a conversation. That is not a consultation. That is a farce. The long-standing and important tradition is that we do not change the rules without the support of others. That seems to me beyond just tradition. It is just basic common sense because, lo and behold, governments change from time to time. The powers that a current Liberal government wishes for itself, because they are Liberals, they are benevolent, they are nice guys and would never abuse these powers, and that is not true, transfer to the next government, whichever one Canadians choose that to be. Then Liberals will be saying that the government is abusing its power now. They then will have to ask themselves, as Liberals, who gave it those extraordinary powers, and maybe the Liberals should have thought twice about that.Looking at changing fundamental ways in which we dialogue on behalf of Canadians, in which we fight on behalf of Canadians, does not belong to the Liberal government. The money does not belong to the Liberal government; it belongs to all Canadians when they pass budgets. The laws do not belong to the Liberals government; they belong to all Canadians when we pass new laws.The role and representation we have in this place, as my friend from the Conservatives says, sometimes hangs by a thread. The ability for people to have faith and trust in what we do and to continue to participate in our civic conversation relies on the quality of the effort we bring to this place, the respect we have for each other, and the respect we have for Parliament. This does not break down to right versus left. This comes to down to what is right and what is wrong. The Liberals I have spoken to quietly, as we have gone around this place, are sometimes scratching their heads, wondering what they are doing as a Liberal government. They are wondering why a massively long filibuster is taking place at procedure and House affairs. They are wondering why we doing this and why we are we doing that.This is pattern language. However, patterns can change. It seems to be difficult to put this pattern change onto the current government. We need to talk to Canadians about this. We need to talk to Liberal colleagues about this, and to the people who support them. This is not what they voted for. They hoped for something a lot better. They expect and deserve a lot better. We need to reverse this pattern of trying to impose will on Canada's Parliament. It only belongs to the Canadian people.

Mr. Speaker, while Quebec is creating a committee of experts and hopes to broaden eligibility for medical assistance in dying, we have just learned that the minister has accepted the appointment to the position of chair of the working group on advance requests of Dr. Harvey Schipper, who opposes medical assistance in dying and advance requests. Several stakeholders have criticized this appointment, and rightly so. How can Canadians have confidence in this committee and believe that this working group will truly be objective and impartial when they know that its chair is one of the most strident opponents of medical assistance in dying and advance requests?

Mr. Speaker, I have shared information with regard to the government's approach to respond and to really be able to deliver on the commitments we made to Canadians. In the campaign, we made commitments to modernize the way this place works. In the letter that I provided to opposition House leaders, I actually shared direct quotes from the platform so that they could see where those ideas were coming from. I was actually hoping to have an even larger conversation with new ideas. Unfortunately, there was an unwillingness from the opposition side to have that conversation. I welcome the continuation of sharing ideas and really bringing this place into the 21st century.

Mr. Speaker, the National Assembly unanimously adopted Martine Ouellet's motion to remind the federal government that supporting agriculture, including Quebec's dairy industry and our family farm system, means maintaining supply management. The National Assembly's motion also calls on the Government of Canada to maintain supply management, which must be non-negotiable should NAFTA be reopened.Will the government make a solemn promise to maintain supply management as it currently stands before and during negotiations with the Americans?

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the former general for his service to this country.I will continue to work hard and our government will continue to work hard to make sure our men and women in uniform have the right tools. Every single day we will make sure that they have the right care and the right tools. We have conducted a thorough analysis on our defence policy review and it will do just that.

Mr. Speaker, today's debate is in fact about unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct.As I indicated before, this is not the first time we have had to deal with this issue. In fact, if we go back, May 12, 2015, was the most recent incident prior to this. During that debate, a total of five speakers—three New Democrats, one Liberal, and the Green Party representative—spoke to that matter of privilege.We have had 37 speakers, and that was even before we started today. We also know that members of the Conservative Party have said that this matter of privilege is all about a filibuster. There is a responsibility of the opposition, especially the official opposition, to behave in a more responsible fashion in dealing with the issue of unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct.I would suggest there are in fact some games being played, and it is not fair to point the finger in one direction. All parties need to take a look at what they are doing, especially on this issue with respect to the Conservative Party. Does the member believe there is a responsibility of the official opposition to behave in a responsible fashion when it comes to debate? If we had 338 members debate everything that came before the House, it would take over five weeks to do one measure, and we might have 100 more measures to do. Mathematically, it is just not possible, unless we have a Conservative opposition that has one purpose and one purpose alone, and that is try to demonstrate it is dysfunctional. If it is dysfunctional, it is because of an incompetent, unreasonable official opposition. It does not take much. Give me 12 members and I can cause havoc, too. It does not mean it is responsible. I am challenging the member across the way to acknowledge that there is an onus of responsibility for the official opposition to do the right thing. Maybe the member could tell us why the Conservatives have chosen to filibuster this matter of privilege, if it is so important.

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise this afternoon to participate in the debate on the question of privilege. For some Canadians, this debate may seem a bit antiquated, a bit technical. They may not fully understand what it is we are talking about. Notwithstanding that, let us make no mistake about it that the debate today is of high importance, because it goes to the foundations of our democracy. It goes to the heart of the ability of members of Parliament to perform their functions to collectively represent Canadians. Having regard for the importance of this debate on privilege, it is disappointing to see that the current Liberal government has responded by trying to shut down debate, by trying to silence members of Parliament by bringing forward time allocation. Canadians will remember that during the last election, the Prime Minister talked so much about sunny ways. He waxed and waned eloquently. He talked about how there would be sunlight brought into this place and how everything would be wonderful, that members would be able to speak and vote freely and that we would have a government that respected the will of Parliament, and he admonished the previous Conservative government for bringing in time allocation, which of course is perfectly within the rules. It is in the Standing Orders. That was fair. There were a lot of Canadians who accepted that, who said that perhaps Parliament could work better, and they entrusted the Prime Minister to deliver. What we have seen, like so much of what we see from the Prime Minister, is that the words that he espoused during the election campaign were nothing more than empty words, because on this issue he has tried to shut down debate. The government is trying to shut down debate, but it is not just on this issue. It is on multiple issues. The government has moved time allocation more than a dozen times already. What is even worse is that the government House leader has now indicated that the government will use this issue as a pretext to invoke time allocation on a regular basis, so we have now a complete 180° turnaround from the government. Eighteen or 19 months ago, the Liberals were admonishing the previous Conservative government for imposing time allocation, and today the government House leader is talking about bringing in time allocation all the time, regularly, and with enthusiasm. It really speaks to the lack of trust that Canadians should have in the current government. I think that every day more and more Canadians recognize that the current government simply cannot be trusted.To the substance of this important debate on this issue of privilege, it arose on the day of the budget when access by the hon. members for Beauce and Milton to the parliamentary precinct to be able to get into this chamber and vote was impeded. Their access was impeded when they tried to access a House of Commons bus to come to the chamber to vote, to do what hon. members should do. The bells were ringing. They waited. They saw a bus coming. The bus driver apparently saw them, but the bus could not get to them because the bus was stopped. It was blocked by either the Prime Minister's empty motorcade or a media bus or a combination of the two. Nonetheless, it was blocked, and it was blocked, according to the hon. member for Beauce, for some nine minutes. As a result, the hon. members for Milton and Beauce were unable to vote.Upon the conclusion of that vote, those hon. members rose in their places and immediately alerted this House that their access to this House had been impeded, that they had been prevented from doing the job that their constituents had sent them here to do and doing what their constituents expect them to do, which is to vote on matters before the House of Commons, and that consequently there had been a breach of their parliamentary privilege.Upon hearing the evidence from the hon. members for Beauce and Milton, Mr. Speaker, you ruled that there was indeed a prima facie breach of a member's privilege.What should have happened then, and what has always happened upon the Speaker's finding of a prima facie breach of privilege, was for a debate to take place in this chamber, for a vote to take place, and in the event that the members of this House affirmed the ruling of the Speaker in finding that there was in fact a breach of privilege, the matter would then be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs so that the issue of privilege could be studied and the committee could get to the bottom of exactly what happened.That is not what happened in this case. What should have happened did not happen because the government decided instead that it wanted to attack the rights of hon. members to defend and protect the privileges of this House. What the government did in that regard was to bring forward a motion to proceed to orders of the day. In so doing, what the government did was shut down the ability of hon. members to debate the issue of privilege, to vote on the issue of privilege, and to have the matter referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, where it would have received precedence at that committee, just as it receives precedence in this House upon the Speaker's finding.What the government did was unprecedented. No government before has done what the current government did. What the current government did was very serious. It was fundamentally an attack on this place. It was an attack on this institution and on all hon. members, because the ability to debate and vote on a question of privilege is no small matter. It is significant. It is fundamental. It is fundamental to the ability of members of Parliament to perform the functions of the member of Parliament. It is fundamental to the ability of members of Parliament to do their job. That is why privilege is not the property of the government; it is the property of this chamber and it is the property of all 338 members of Parliament.To understand the significance of what the government tried to do, it is perhaps important to have some understanding of the history of privilege, the foundation of privilege. Privilege goes back centuries. It goes back to the 14th and 15th centuries, to the United Kingdom, when the king would interfere, impede, obstruct, use force, and in some cases arrest hon. members of Parliament, attacking and impeding their ability to do their jobs.Sir Thomas More was one of the first speakers in the House of Commons who petitioned the king for the recognition of certain privileges of the House. Those privileges included the right to be free from interference, obstruction, and use of force by the king and his executive in the House of Lords. What privilege really is and what it turned out to be was a compromise among the king, the executive, and members of Parliament, that Parliament, the House of Commons, would be a place where members could speak freely, debate freely, criticize, and depose the government without interference from the executive.In Canada, privilege was imported from the United Kingdom. The type of force, arrests, and intimidation that British members of Parliament had endured in the 14th and 15th centuries had passed. By the time of Canada's Confederation, however, what had not passed was the significance of members' parliamentary privilege. That is why parliamentary privilege was enshrined in our Constitution. Section 18 of the Constitution Act of 1867, provides that the House may define members' privileges provided that those privileges do not exceed the privileges enjoyed by members of the British House of Commons at the time of Confederation in 1867. Indeed, the House, through the act of Parliament, adopted all those privileges. Among those privileges is freedom from obstruction and interference. That is precisely what this question of privilege relates to: the interference of the hon. members for Beauce and Milton's access to the chamber to perform the most important function of a member of Parliament, and that is to stand and vote on behalf of their constituents.When we are talking about the issue of privilege, we are talking about something that has been constitutionally protected. We are talking about something that has been protected by our courts. We are talking about something that has been protected by the common law. It is why what the government sought to do to prevent members of Parliament from having an opportunity to debate and vote on privilege is so significant.When the arguments were put forward to the government about the seriousness of what was happening and the consequences of what was happening, the response of the government was, more or less, that it did not care. Given some of the actions of the government, when it comes to the disrespect it has exhibited to this institution, perhaps we should not be surprised that this was its attitude. However, Canadians should be surprised that, one by one, Liberal MP after Liberal MP stood and voted in favour of the government's extinguishing the ability of members of Parliament to defend and protect their privileges.It seems a lot of members over there perhaps forgot, or maybe they do not care, that they are not members of the government, other than those Liberal MPs who are members of cabinet. Perhaps they lost sight of the fact that members' privileges are privileges that do not just protect opposition members and enable them to do their work on behalf of their constituents. Members' privileges protect all members of the House, including government backbench MPs so they can carry out their jobs as well.It is unfortunate that it took the hon. member for Perth—Wellington, my colleague, to stand and question whether the government could in fact shut down a debate on privilege without a vote. He argued that it was a violation of privilege. You, Mr. Speaker, agreed with the hon. member for Perth—Wellington. As a result of that ruling, we are having a debate on this question of privilege. It should not have happened that way. It need not have happened that way. However, it happened because of the arrogance of the government.It does raise a question as to how that happened and why it happened. Why was the government so determined to extinguish the rights of hon. members to defend members' privileges? The answer is that had the motion passed the House of Commons, it would have been referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, where it would have received precedence, just as it receives precedence in this chamber. That happened to be an inconvenience to the government because the government was simultaneously trying to ram through, at the procedure and House affairs committee, the rules of this place, the rules in terms of how Parliament functioned. The government was trying to strip the rights and abilities of hon. members of the House to hold the government to account, and so we got this mess.The government has backed off a little in terms of its efforts to ram through changes in the procedure and House affairs committee. However, while it backed off a little at the procedure and House affairs committee, it nonetheless remained intent on shutting down debate on a most important question of privilege.What the government has done, and is doing, is wrong. It is undemocratic. It is an attack on all members of Parliament and, as a result, it is an attack on all Canadians. When the abilities of members of Parliament to speak and represent their constituents is impeded upon, that impacts all Canadians who count on us to represent them here every day.My colleagues in the opposition will continue to do what is necessary to hold the government to account, to call on the government to respect the House, to respect this institution, to respect the ability of members of Parliament to stand and vote on behalf of their constituents, and to respect the privileges afforded to all hon. members in the House.

Mr. Speaker, as much as these Liberals claim to be consulting and listening, over at the finance committee, witness after witness, including the Liberals' own witnesses, told us they were not consulted before the Liberals forced their mortgage changes onto Canadians. Had the Liberals bothered to listen to the industry, they would know that the issues facing companies such as Home Capital are very serious.When will the finance minister start listening to the experts from the Canadian mortgage industry?

Mr. Speaker, I completely agree with what my colleague just said. The government side seems to be saying that talking about this prevents us from doing our job. It is really the opposite. We are talking about the fundamentals that allow us to do our job. The rights and privileges of parliamentarians are not perks. They underpin this institution, they are the foundation of our democracy, and they allow us to represent the people who elected us.Therefore, this is a very fundamental issue, and I completely agree with my colleague. This is so fundamental and such an important part of our work that all members who wish to speak should be allowed to do so.

Mr. Speaker, Canada is a steadfast friend and ally of Israel, as I was honoured to say at the World Jewish Congress in New York last week. I will be delighted to repeat that tomorrow at the Israeli embassy, where I will be the guest of honour at the Independence Day celebration.I believe the member opposite was speaking about the UNESCO action. I want to be clear that we object to any attempt to unfairly single out Israel for criticism, including in multilateral forums like UNESCO.

Mr. Speaker, he has already distracted from the good work that the men and women in uniform have done and are doing. That is done. He can now try to make it right by giving them their honour back. If our men and women in uniform try to steal valour and try to take credit for something that they did not do in the military, there is a consequence in terms of discipline, in terms of the trust that they will have lost with their colleagues. Does the Minister of National Defence not understand that he broke this code of conduct, that he broke trust? The only fix is for him to step aside and let our men and women in uniform have a leader who they can actually trust today.

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. The ability of an hon. member to access this House in order to vote on a matter before the House is of utmost importance. Indeed, there is nothing more important in terms of the function of a member of Parliament than to stand up and vote on matters before the House on behalf of their constituents. That is what our constituents elect us to do. Unfortunately, in the case of the hon. member for Milton and the hon. member for Beauce, that privilege was infringed upon when they were prevented from getting here. That is why this debate is so important. In terms of the consequences of what could have happened, one consequence was that two hon. members were not able to stand in their place on behalf of 100,000 or so constituents. That is a pretty significant consequence, but it could have been an even worse consequence if we had been talking about a vote of confidence. The inability of the members to access this House, to show up and vote, could have the consequence of literally resulting in a potential loss of confidence in the government. We are talking about very serious consequences that could flow from the privileges of members being infringed upon in terms of being able to access this place.

Mr. Speaker, I do not think Toronto is very secret, by the way. We all know that trade is good for our nation. Trade means growth and growth means jobs. What the member should understand is we want to be front and centre when it comes to engagement about principled, modern, and inclusive trade in the Asia-Pacific. That is why I offered to have the officials come to Toronto. Canadians expect that of us. The Prime Minister expects that of me. That is the smart thing to do for Canadians.

Mr. Speaker, the government has been working for months, not only with the Government of Canada, but right across the country with all of our provincial counterparts. We know that we need both in the short term and in the long term a plan for the forestry sector. In the short term, it is essential that we look after workers and producers. We will use every instrument available to us, looking at the long term, to make sure there is an expansion of export markets, that we support the transition of the industry. We know how important the forestry sector is for Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

Mr. Speaker, I would never detract from the accomplishments of our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces. Our government will always work hard to make sure that they are truly served.I am honoured to serve our men and women in uniform. I am going to continue to work hard for them every single day to make sure they have the right tools, the right capabilities, and the right care, so they can carry out their missions.

Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal of respect for my friend, as I do for a number of folks on all sides of the House, who deeply enrich themselves with the knowledge and history of this place. It is important that all sides have members who dedicate themselves to that conversation, because we all are actors passing across the stage. We are here for a time, we never how long, and yet we must maintain and, I would argue, improve the quality of what Parliament does on behalf of Canadians. The issue we are debating now is the ability of members just to get into the House to vote on behalf of their constituents, a motion which, by the way, the Liberals tried to kill at one point in these proceedings, which is ironic to a detrimental level. We have been talking about the rules that govern us as members of Parliament representing our constituents and that the long-standing tradition by prime ministers throughout history was to never change those rules unless all parties agreed, simply because it is a good test. Otherwise, one could imagine a government with a majority, a false majority, in this case, changing the rules to its own advantage over the opposition. We all recognize that a majority government has enormous strength and power to pass through its agenda, yet the role of the opposition to hold it to account is central to everything we do.The Liberals are using the line that they would not give a veto to the Conservatives over one of the Liberal election pledges. Ironically, that did not stop them from breaking their pledge on electoral reform. They themselves broke that with no help from anybody else. However, this notion that it went from an election pledge to somehow override the long-standing and important tradition that we as parliamentarians try to make the place better seems to me a distortion of the power of a promise ill-defined and badly made at some point by some political leader in the middle of a campaign versus the strength and integrity of the House of Commons.I have a frank question for my friend, which I might ask in private but am asking in public. He mentioned the pattern we were seeing from the government, which came in with great promise to make Parliament better, to be more open and transparent about the way to conduct ourselves, yet has demonstrated its tendency to want to override the will of Parliament, to distort the power that already exists in its favour. Can that pattern be broken or has this ship simply sailed too far away to get it back to some level of sanity and decency?

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.We know that many communities in Quebec and across Canada are having a hard time this flood season. My colleague, the Minister of International Trade, talked to me again today about the specific situation in Yamachiche. We recognize the importance of safe and environmentally sound navigation. When the incident was reported, the Coast Guard, at the behest of Transport Canada, issued a notice to shipping requesting a reduction in speed. We are investigating the situation, and we are going to take the necessary steps to address this problem.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question.This question of privilege, which is on something as fundamental as physical access to the House, is a question that affects us all, each and every one of us. The question truly needs to be debated somewhere other than in a committee. It needs to be debated in the House.We must not lose sight of the context in which we are discussing this question of privilege. We are discussing it in what I consider a context of repeated attacks against our institution, the institution that is the house of all citizens, the institution that represents those citizens. The government is trying to change our rules and various problems have been raised. It is a question that is debated in a much broader context and it is important that all members are able to take part in this discussion.

Mr. Speaker, the minister spoke directly with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner on this file. She is satisfied and she has closed this file.

Mr. Speaker, I think it was the last comment from my friend from Kootenay—Columbia that talked about how we got here. Canadians will wonder, and the government will hold itself up and ask why there is such discord, having this almost oblivious attitude toward its own actions in getting us here.If the government wants to see the House functioning well and if it wants to see committees functioning well, it should ask itself how it is unable to do that with the majority that it has been given by Canadians. The simple request from the opposition is that in order to change the rules that conduct us here in Parliament, we should respect the long-held tradition that all parties agree to those rule changes, so that the power and balance of power that goes on between opposition and government is maintained with some dignity.Ultimately, is that not at the heart of the problem, and why so many things have fallen off the rails, and why the government seems incapable of actually passing legislation? This is probably one of the lightest legislative agendas we have seen in 50 years. It is incredible how little the government has been able to get done, outside of selfies, of course, because it does a lot of those.

Mr. Speaker, earlier the Prime Minister refused to answer any questions, so I will try my luck directly with the Minister of National Defence. Why are the Liberals refusing to call a public inquiry into the Afghan detainee scandal? Why did the Minister of National Defence tell the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner that he knew nothing about this scandal because he was just a reservist?Would he be so kind as to tell the House specifically what role he played in Afghanistan? It is high time that Canadians knew the truth.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence has an exemplary record of service to this country, whether it is as a decorated police officer, as a decorated military officer, or as Minister of National Defence.The work we are doing to demonstrate our support for the Canadian Forces and giving them the tools and the opportunities they need to demonstrate leadership and bring Canada's positive impact to the world is extremely important to this government and will continue.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that observation, which is very relevant to this debate. Indeed, we have seen this government flip-flop more than once over the past few weeks.The government seems to flip-flop every day now, because it is reacting to the public service and to what the newspapers are saying. The government does not control Parliament, and that is what it wants. It is tyring to do so, but it is realizing that, fortunately, there are parliamentary rules and traditions that prevent it from doing whatever it wants. The reality has caught up with them. My hon. colleague saw it for himself, as the government tried to cut off the debate, which addresses a very important matter, a question of privilege. Certain impediments prevented some members from voting. Our rules and traditions are what protected them. That is precisely what we are standing up for, and that is precisely why we are here and why the government realized that it had to back down. It did a complete 180, and now it wants to send this question of privilege to committee.That is another trick. The government wants to do this because it wants to put an end to our filibuster. The government realized that we figured out what it is up to with the changes it is making to the rules and procedures of the House. It realized that changes like that could not be passed without unanimous consent. The government realized that the opposition would not stand for what it is doing. That is another reason why the government keeps flip-flopping. As the editorial writer said this morning, it is not necessary. The opposition has a role to play and it will continue to play that role.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the length of the debate that we have had with regard to this issue. We have now had 10 times as many people speak on the issue of unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct, which is a record number, given the topic. I am glad to see that it looks as if it is coming to an end, because we want to get on to other matters, such as the budget debate, and I understand a private member's hour will be coming up shortly. I will leave an open-ended question for the member across the way in regard to how important it is that both the opposition and the government recognize PROC and wish it well in trying to resolve the issue of unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak with any officer of Parliament. I have spoken to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner on this subject. She is satisfied with that and she considers this matter closed.

Mr. Speaker, as the member and all members of the House will know, this issue is all about unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct. It is not the first time this has happened. In fact, it has happened a few times.I sat on PROC on a couple of occasions and had to deal with the issue. We all understand and appreciate PROC is where the issue is best dealt with. The last time it was dealt with in the House was on May 12, 2015. The total number of speakers was five, representing the parties. They stood in their place and explained why it was so important that PROC deal with the issue.As of right now when the member sat down, we have had 49 members speak to this issue. A number of members said that they were speaking because it is a filibuster on a privilege issue. What are the options? If we were not debating this issue, we would actually be debating the national budget and the budget implementation bill.Does the member believe his constituents would rather we were debating the budget, the priorities of government, and the priorities of opposition parties, or would they rather we continue what can easily be justified, from my perspective, as an opposition filibuster on an issue that should in fact be dealt with by PROC?We in the Liberal caucus have made it very clear that we want the issue to go to PROC. We want to ensure that every member of this House has unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct.

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith. I am sure she will do an excellent job, as usual.I am honoured, and perhaps a little saddened, to rise in the House to speak to the privilege motion currently before us. I say it saddens me a little because it is unfortunate that we have to move privilege motions and hold a debate on this matter, rather than doing our usual, ongoing work. Nevertheless, this is a very important matter, and I will come back to it in more detail later. I think this question raises a much broader issue, that is, our ability to do our work in general. It is important because we are all here to represent our constituents and all Canadians. It is crucial that we be able to do so properly, because that is our most fundamental role.One of the opposition's key roles is holding the government to account. Although we often hold it to account on budget issues, I feel we should hold it to account for all of its decisions. To do that, we need to be able to have in-depth debates and move about freely on the Hill so that we can take part in those debates. During the election campaign, the Liberals said they wanted to work on creating a more collegial atmosphere and making it easier for us to do the job people elected us to do, but it really seems like things are going the other way and the Liberals are breaking their promises, just as they have done so many other times.We were promised sunny ways. We were told everything would be great and everyone would get along and work together. However, for the last little while, the government has been trying to change the system so it can get its hands on all the power. Initially, I thought its goal was to prevent the opposition from having a say, but that is not quite right. What the government is really trying to do is make it so that anything said in the House, any argument the opposition might make, is simply ignored or carries no real weight. For example, the government wants to change the rules of the House. I have no problem with discussing the rules of the House. However, what we are seeing now and what we saw last year during the debate around Motion No. 6 is the government's desire to foist its own vision of how the House should work on us, and that vision involves more power for the government.People keep saying there is going to be a conversation about this. I bet I am not the only member of the House who is starting to wonder if “conversation” is really the right word here.As we get to know this government better, we realize that having a conversation means that it will talk, it will listen, it will allow us to talk, but at the end of the day it is still going to do whatever it wants. The government wonders why the House is dysfunctional at times. The answer seems obvious when we look at what the government did with Motion No. 6 and what it is trying to do yet again to limit our powers.The government is not really leaving us the choice to rise or not rise on motions like this on a question of privilege. On behalf of the people we represent, we have to express our right and our privilege to truly be heard on these major issues.I was talking about the word “conversation”, but another way of saying it is “keep talking”. In other words, we can talk all we want, but at the end of the day, the government is going to do what it wants. Electoral reform is another fine example. The government promised to have a conversation and listen to what Canadians had to say about electoral reform. The government formed a committee that travelled across the country. It was all very nice. Almost 90% of the experts and Canadians who appeared before the committee were of the same opinion, agreeing that we should have a mixed member proportional system. The Liberals did not like it because, as we know, it would not necessarily give them the advantage. Suddenly, the conversation came to an abrupt end. The Liberals said that they had let the people speak, but now they would do what they wanted and break a promise that they repeated many times. This has happened in connection with several issues. There is the matter of House procedure. They are trying to limit the powers of the parliamentary budget officer. How will limiting these powers help transparency and accountability? They are also using closure. On this issue of privilege, it is quite interesting, given that our colleagues from Milton and Beauce were unable to vote because they did not have access to the House.When members raised this question of privilege, the Liberals' reaction was to use their majority to prevent the matter from being debated. Even the Speaker said that it was unprecedented, that a government had never before used its majority to prevent a debate on a question of privilege.In the end, they changed their minds, so we could discuss it here today, but now here we go again. The Liberals are imposing a gag order on this matter. In this context, we have to wonder what happened to all the lofty promises to be more collegial and work together. All this is coming from a government that promised transparency and openness.Everyone here today saw question period, for instance. So much for transparency and openness, when the Minister of National Defence speaks out of both sides of his mouth and the Prime Minister does not really answer any questions. I think that is why more and more people are saying that, in the end, the Prime Minister and his government are just like the Harper government, but with a grin. We are happy to see a smile, but we would like to see a little more in terms of fundamental changes.I would like to say a quick word about one of my memories of Jack Layton, from our first caucus meeting. We are not supposed to discuss caucus outside of caucus. He spoke to us at length about respect. That is what this is about, respect for members and for our institutions. I think that is what everyone here today is asking for.

Mr. Speaker, following a response to a question from a colleague opposite, I learned that the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons was offended by something I said this morning. I went to meet with her to offer my sincere apologies, and I also want to apologize here right now.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel for his excellent question. The transportation sector accounts for nearly 25% of greenhouse gas emissions. Our budget continues to support green infrastructure with a $120-million investment to deploy infrastructure for electric vehicle charging and refuelling stations for alternative fuels, such as natural gas.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing me to respond. Once a day is enough. I will answer the question.The hon. parliamentary secretary has a lot of experience in the House, but, unfortunately, he does not seem to have listened to my colleagues' speeches. I think that the parliamentary secretary is talking about tricks. He is talking about all of the tools that the opposition has at its disposal to make itself heard. However, we, the opposition, are not making our own voices heard. We are making the voices of Canadians heard. Canadians are saying, through us and all of the methods at our disposal, that this government is going too far. They are saying that this government is using tricks. We have been talking about a discussion paper. Let us look back at what has happened. The government presented a discussion paper. Discussion means that we talk but that no decisions are made. First development: the discussion paper was sent to committee and, all of a sudden, a decision has to be made and the government will impose it, if necessary.That is what happened. It was another trick. Fortunately opposition members saw through it. Fortunately, my colleagues saw through it. That is why it is important to remember that the rule for accessing Parliament is not the only important rule. All our rules are important. Some members, my colleagues, were prevented from coming to vote here and this government is trying to take away our right to speak. It is trying to take away our right to represent our constituents. That is what the parliamentary secretary, my hon. colleague, should have understood during our interventions. That is the truth.

Mr. Speaker, the defence minister has been telling so many fictional stories that he cannot keep his facts straight. For example, in 2015 the minister claimed that General Vance coined the term that he was the architect for his work back in 2006 on Operation Medusa, but that cannot be true because General Vance did not take command in Afghanistan until 2009. The minister's fabrication was no mistake. This was his personal choice. If the Prime Minister lacks the good judgment to fire the minister, will the defence minister do the honourable thing and resign?

Mr. Speaker, when most people get insurance, they pay a premium. If they have a claim, they pay a deductible. However, CMHC offers banks full insurance against losses. While homebuyers pay the premium and taxpayers pay the deductible, the banks pay neither. Hundreds of billions of dollars are at risk as a result.Has the government calculated how much taxpayers could lose if a market correction causes home prices to go down, or higher interest rates cause mortgage defaults to go up?

Mr. Speaker, I share the optimism of the member opposite about PROC being able to do its work. While I have the floor, I will remind the member that while in opposition he said: The government, by once again relying on a time allocation motion to get its agenda passed, speaks of incompetence. It speaks of a genuine lack of respect for parliamentary procedure and ultimately for Canadians. I would urge the member and his government to cease using time allocation to stifle debate in the House.

Mr. Speaker, the member mentioned right and wrong. This is day seven. We have been discussing this for seven days in the House and essentially we have agreement. I know on the Liberal side all Liberal caucus members agree and I think all members in the House agree that unfettered access for MPs is extremely important. Second, we all agree that this matter is to go to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. That is the normal procedure. Everybody is in agreement with that, because we know this is an important matter. As has been mentioned, this is not the first time this has happened. We need to hear witnesses and look at this in more depth so we can come up with solutions to make our best effort to correct this situation so that MPs have access to this place.In light of that, we have spent seven days on something that we all agree on. We are all in agreement. Some members have even said every MP should have the opportunity to speak, which, in effect, would be five and a half weeks of speaking about something that we all agree on, but right now the reality is seven days. We are talking about something that we all agree on. Is that right? Is that a respectful use of the House's time? Is that a respectful use of taxpayers' dollars? They are paying our salaries to be here. We are all in agreement on something and all we are trying to do is send it to PROC. We have spent seven days on this and opposition members are upset because they think we should spend more days on something we all agree with that has the same end result.I would like to hear what my colleague has to say.

Mr. Speaker, the 2017 budget includes funding to implement energy efficiency and clean energy technologies, to retrofit federal buildings, and to reduce or eliminate emissions from vehicle fleets.Can the Minister of Natural Resources tell the House how the government is supporting electric vehicles and alternative fuel infrastructure as tools for the transition to low-carbon transportation options?

Mr. Speaker, last month our government joined the Province of Manitoba and the Association of Manitoba Municipalities to announce 24 new water and waste-water projects with a combined investment of $34 million to upgrade, rehabilitate, and expand water and waste-water facilities. These investments will have a real and tangible impact on communities and families while ensuring they have safe and clean water to drink.

Mr. Speaker, major flooding is having a huge impact on many municipalities in Berthier—Maskinongé and across Quebec, including Yamachiche. I have two questions today.First, what does the federal government plan to do to help these people and municipalities?Second, can the Minister of Transport confirm today that the investigation in Yamachiche has begun and can he tell us when that information will be made public?

Mr. Speaker, I find the comments on that side of the House very interesting. In light of the current history of this Liberal government in trying to change the Standing Orders, shutting down debate, invoking closure, today's events at the procedures and House affairs committee, and removing opposition day motions, I wonder if my colleague could comment on how much confidence he feels that these issues, which are so important, will be dealt with at the PROC committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is rather ironic because there was a closure motion yesterday and another today. We are prepared to speak and to express our opinion. I believe that people expect us to talk about this question of privilege, and that is what I am doing. I know that my colleague was here for part of my speech and that he listened to what I had to say. However, he should have understood that my speech was about parliamentarians' privileges. These privileges give us the right to unfettered access to this place. These privileges give us the right to speak freely and to represent our constituents without any constraints. The opposition is fighting so that the government's backbenchers can enjoy these privileges and their power. That is what my honourable colleague should have understood and retained from my long 20-minute speech.

Mr. Speaker, on Sunday, my colleague from Jonquière and I joined thousands of people at a march in Dolbeau-Mistassini, which is in my region, to remind the Government of Canada how important the forestry industry is across the country, including in our region.When he got back from China, the Minister of International Trade told us it would be good for Canada to sell its wood elsewhere. We have been trying to do that for 20 years. We will keep trying, but that is not something we need to be told.What is your plan? Never mind what you say; what are you going to do to keep forestry workers employed?

Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up on a theme that was raised by the hon. member across the floor, and that is acting responsibly and respectfully. What is the responsibility of the Liberal government to act responsibly and respectably in the House, and what needs to change to get us there?

Mr. Speaker, as I already said, Stéphane Dion has always fought for a better country for all Canadians. Mr. Dion understands the transatlantic relationship that we have with our European allies and he will be able to advance our interests and our common values. It is a privilege for me to work with Mr. Dion, and I know that our European allies, like all Canadians, have the greatest respect for him.

Mr. Speaker, I understand that the member opposite has a job to do. As Minister of National Defence, I am making sure we have all the right tools. We work very closely with our coalition partners in making sure, as we have done as government, we are taking a leadership role at NATO, increasing our contribution to the Iraq mission, and making sure our men and women have all the necessary tools to carry out the missions at home and abroad, and we will do just that.

Mr. Speaker, when we took office we actually increased the effectiveness of Canada's role against Daesh by doing what we do best. We were on the ground, training and supporting local troops as they took the fight directly to Daesh. That is something that we as a country have always excelled at. We demonstrated our capacity to do that in Afghanistan. We continue to understand that giving the proper tools and funding to the Canadian military to be able to accomplish the goals that we set for them here in the House is extremely important. I am proud of this government's record.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot do justice to the hon. member's quite detailed and lengthy paper on changes to the Standing Orders. She came forward in good faith with a substantial number of proposals.Rather than dealing with any of the specifics, I will make this observation. What she has done—and this is the best practice for any of us here—is she has looked at best practices of other Westminster jurisdictions, of which there is a treasure trove, a cornucopia, and drawn upon some of those best practices. She has pointed in particular to themes of working consensually together. This is a theme that has animated the hon. member's work on electoral reform. It defines the kind of system she is working toward with electoral reform. She wants a system that makes us more consensual. The same general thesis animates her proposals for working in the House. That is not easy in a Westminster system. We all know the famous story of our being two swords' lengths apart. I assume the purpose was to prevent us from actually stabbing each other, but that is not to say that we have to keep on doing that into the future. We can work more consensually, and the theme that she is proposing is a profound one that I hope will be picked up by members in all parties in the remainder of this Parliament.

Mr. Speaker, as I stated, I would never want to detract any confidence from our Canadian Armed Forces. Our government is focused on making sure our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces have all the necessary tools to make sure that we are doing a good job, whether it is in domestic operations supporting Canadians, or whether it is in taking the increased leadership role in NATO, or whether it is in increasing the fight against Daesh. We are making sure that they all have the necessary tools. That is exactly what our government is going to do.

Mr. Speaker, we are focused on making sure that we provide all the necessary tools for our Canadian Armed Forces, to make sure that they have all the necessary tools when we as government send our folks on important missions. I have the privilege of serving as Minister of National Defence. I am honoured to serve our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces. I am honoured to be able to stand as a representative of this government and work through the defence policy to make sure that there are all the necessary tools and the care for the men and women who serve us.

Mr. Speaker, this government has made it clear that it takes an evidence-based approach in its decision-making. This is important to maximize efficiency and potential across Canada. Our transportation network is no exception. We need to be able to evaluate performance and make targeted investments.Would the parliamentary secretary inform Canadians on how they intend to make our transportation network even more efficient with the new innovative elements contained within budget 2017?

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague gave a very intelligent discourse on this issue.One of the words that comes to mind is “privilege”. As I have experienced an incident in which I was not allowed to get into the House in the past term, I understand what that privilege means.One thing outside of our House, for people to better understand this, is that we all understand that doctors have privileges, for example, to work in health facilities. If that privilege were stopped, the outcry from the public if doctors were not allowed to get to an emergency department to see their patients would be huge.I would like to ask my colleague if he could expound further on what this discussion we are having here means to our citizens, and how critically important it is to us.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this second opportunity.This government has made it clear that it takes an evidence-based approach in its decision-making process. This is important to maximize efficiency and potential across this great nation of Canada. Our transportation network is no exception, and we need to be able to evaluate performance and make targeted investments. Could the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport inform all Canadians on how the government intends to make our transportation network more efficient, with new innovative ideas and elements contained within budget 2017?

Mr. Speaker, again, I am happy to address this issue. It is true that we are facing some pockets of risk in our housing markets in Vancouver and Toronto. Certainly, it is true that there was a challenge with this particular company. We do not see those two things as linked.Importantly, what happened in this situation was that there was a flight of depositors from the company in question. We listened, we heard, we stayed very engaged. The market also was engaged. We were pleased to see that there was a market-based solution to dealing with this challenge in our financial markets. That is exactly the way the system should work.

Mr. Speaker, high-quality accessible data and high-quality analysis are key in order to make smart decisions as a government. I am proud to say that our government has committed $50 million in budget 2017 to launch a new and innovative trade and transportation information system. This will help us make the targeted investments in transportation corridors that will foster growth and create good, well-paying jobs for Canada's middle class.

Mr. Speaker, the United States is our neighbour and our most important trading partner. Agricultural trade between Canada and the United States is worth $47 billion a year, and we are well aware of how important this relationship is to Canadian agriculture. The minister is looking forward to speaking with the new agriculture secretary once he is confirmed about the mutual benefits of our agricultural trade relationship. Our government will continue to protect and defend farmers and supply management.

Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, we are giving the parliamentary budget officer more resources and greater independence.That is exactly what we promised because we knew that, after many long years under the Stephen Harper government, we needed tools to ensure government transparency. That is precisely why we are strengthening the parliamentary budget officer's powers.

Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege of serving as the Minister of National Defence. I want to make sure that our government provides all the necessary tools and that is exactly what we are doing with our defence policy review. We are making sure that we have done a thorough analysis and making sure that they have all the right tools and the right funding and, most important, the right care so that they can carry out their missions both at home and abroad.

Mr. Speaker, our government was elected on a platform to build sustainable communities from coast to coast to coast. Clean, safe drinking water is one of the most important ways that we can ensure our communities are thriving.Will the minister tell the House how the government is supporting vital water infrastructure?

Mr. Speaker, Stéphane Dion is a great Canadian public servant, statesman, and, above all, patriot, who did tremendous work to keep our country together. I am confident that Stéphane Dion will do an equally outstanding job representing our country in Europe. I must say I have heard personally from Europeans, including Chancellor Merkel, including Federica Mogherini, how delighted they are to have Stéphane Dion there. For me, it is an honour to work with him.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to update the House in this situation. We have been very closely monitoring the situation as soon as we understood that there was a challenge with the company in question. We were pleased that there was a market-based solution that was found in order to resolve the situation of the company in question. We believe that our financial system is strong and resilient, and this is evidence that we are able to find market-based solutions to challenges. That is a strength of our economy.

Mr. Speaker, the work the Minister of National Defence has done to serve his community, to serve his country, and continues to do is to the honour of all Canadians. The work we are doing internationally in the fight against Daesh, supporting our allies in NATO, and continuing to be strong leaders around the world, while we give the right tools and opportunities to show the leadership of the Canadian Armed Forces around the world, is something that is truly important to me. We stand by the Minister of National Defence and the great work he is doing.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals spend a lot of time and effort championing what many have argued to be one of the planet's organizations that spends the most time on anti-Israel motions, and that, of course, is the United Nations. Today, while Israel is celebrating its 69th anniversary of becoming a modern state, the UN passed yet another anti-Israel motion.Will the Prime Minister today stand up in this House and condemn the United Nations for its continuous attacks on Israel?

Mr. Speaker, I am proud of the work that our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces and our civilians conducted in Afghanistan. As I stated, I am pleased to speak with any officer of Parliament. I have spoken to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. She is satisfied with the answer and she considers the matter closed.

Mr. Speaker, I take every opportunity to make sure that we highlight the great work of our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces, such as by taking trips into Iraq and making sure they have the necessary tools. I recently was in Malaysia where we had two of our ships there highlighting the great work that they do in the Asia-Pacific. I will always highlight the great work of the men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces as I have always done.

Mr. Speaker, I would rather characterize the appointment of Stéphane Dion, an outstanding Canadian, to this essential role as a spectacularly good decision.Stéphane Dion has fulfilled, over many years, many roles in the service of Canadians with honour, dignity, and intelligence. He will do the same thing in Europe. We should all be proud that he will be there for us.

Mr. Speaker, I would never detract from the great work of our men and women in uniform. Our government is focused on making sure that we provide the right care for our troops. That is why the Prime Minister mandated me to conduct a thorough defence policy review to make sure we do a thorough assessment so that our troops can have all the right tools so they can carry out their missions. That is exactly what we are doing.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud of the service of our Minister of National Defence, whether it was as a police officer, as a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, or as our defence minister today. I am proud of the work we are doing to support our men and women of the armed forces, to fulfill our international commitments, and to contribute in a constructive and productive way to the fight against Daesh or with NATO to promote regional stability. We are always there, and we are always ready to serve Canadians.

Mr. Speaker, the minister has repeatedly confirmed that he has no information on the file. As to the issue, the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner has repeatedly said that she is satisfied and is closing the file.

Mr. Speaker, we are working very closely with all our provincial counterparts, including those in the Government of Quebec.We realize that our main responsibility is do to everything we can to help the producers, workers, and communities affected by these punitive and, in our opinion, inappropriate, tariffs.We will continue to work with our partners because we believe that, together, we will find the solution that best serves the interests of workers and communities—

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my good friend from Kootenay—Columbia.It is indeed a privilege to rise today and speak in my best efforts on behalf of the people of Skeena—Bulkley Valley, the beautiful northwest of this great country. I use the word “privilege” very specifically. I wonder if some of my Liberal colleagues might take their conversations elsewhere. It is a little distracting.

Mr. Speaker, the exemplary and extraordinary service that has characterized the life of the Minister of National Defence is one that we can all be proud of, as he stands up every day for the men and women of the Canadian Forces, focusing on giving them the tools and the opportunity to serve and lead the way we know they can on the world stage, the way the world needs Canada to show leadership. This is something that we are tremendously proud of as a government, and we continue to look for more opportunities to lead and serve around the world.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud of the service of the Minister of National Defence, whether it was as a police officer, whether it was as a decorated member of the Canadian Armed Forces, or whether it is as our Minister of National Defence. The work that he and this government are doing every day to support the men and women of the Canadian Forces to have a positive impact in the world, whether it is in the fight against Daesh, in promoting regional stability in eastern Europe, or through leading a framework nation in Latvia, this is the work that Canadians know needs to be done, and I am proud of the work that the Minister of National Defence has been doing.

Mr. Speaker, again, I am very pleased to answer this question. In fact, yes, we have a housing system in this country that works very effectively. We have an insurance system that helps to ensure that people's housing is safe, and it is working. We will continue to remain vigilant around this system to make sure we are considering how risk is best shared between those insurers and the federal government, through the CMHC and to participants in the market.We have said that we will look at that risk sharing in order to make sure it continues to appropriately deal with market challenges, and that is what we are engaged in doing.

Mr. Speaker, again, I am very pleased to answer this question. In fact, yes, we have a housing system in this country that works very effectively. We have an insurance system that helps to ensure that people's housing is safe, and it is working. We will continue to remain vigilant around this system to make sure we are considering how risk is best shared between those insurers and the federal government, through the CMHC and to participants in the market.We have said that we will look at that risk sharing in order to make sure it continues to appropriately deal with market challenges, and that is what we are engaged in doing.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud of the service of the Minister of National Defence, whether it was as a police officer, whether it was as a decorated member of the Canadian Armed Forces, or whether it is as our Minister of National Defence. The work that he and this government are doing every day to support the men and women of the Canadian Forces to have a positive impact in the world, whether it is in the fight against Daesh, in promoting regional stability in eastern Europe, or through leading a framework nation in Latvia, this is the work that Canadians know needs to be done, and I am proud of the work that the Minister of National Defence has been doing.

Mr. Speaker, the exemplary and extraordinary service that has characterized the life of the Minister of National Defence is one that we can all be proud of, as he stands up every day for the men and women of the Canadian Forces, focusing on giving them the tools and the opportunity to serve and lead the way we know they can on the world stage, the way the world needs Canada to show leadership. This is something that we are tremendously proud of as a government, and we continue to look for more opportunities to lead and serve around the world.

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my good friend from Kootenay—Columbia.It is indeed a privilege to rise today and speak in my best efforts on behalf of the people of Skeena—Bulkley Valley, the beautiful northwest of this great country. I use the word “privilege” very specifically. I wonder if some of my Liberal colleagues might take their conversations elsewhere. It is a little distracting.

Mr. Speaker, we are working very closely with all our provincial counterparts, including those in the Government of Quebec.We realize that our main responsibility is do to everything we can to help the producers, workers, and communities affected by these punitive and, in our opinion, inappropriate, tariffs.We will continue to work with our partners because we believe that, together, we will find the solution that best serves the interests of workers and communities—

Mr. Speaker, I am proud of the service of our Minister of National Defence, whether it was as a police officer, as a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, or as our defence minister today. I am proud of the work we are doing to support our men and women of the armed forces, to fulfill our international commitments, and to contribute in a constructive and productive way to the fight against Daesh or with NATO to promote regional stability. We are always there, and we are always ready to serve Canadians.

Mr. Speaker, the minister has repeatedly confirmed that he has no information on the file. As to the issue, the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner has repeatedly said that she is satisfied and is closing the file.

Mr. Speaker, I would never detract from the great work of our men and women in uniform. Our government is focused on making sure that we provide the right care for our troops. That is why the Prime Minister mandated me to conduct a thorough defence policy review to make sure we do a thorough assessment so that our troops can have all the right tools so they can carry out their missions. That is exactly what we are doing.

Mr. Speaker, I would rather characterize the appointment of Stéphane Dion, an outstanding Canadian, to this essential role as a spectacularly good decision.Stéphane Dion has fulfilled, over many years, many roles in the service of Canadians with honour, dignity, and intelligence. He will do the same thing in Europe. We should all be proud that he will be there for us.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud of the work that our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces and our civilians conducted in Afghanistan. As I stated, I am pleased to speak with any officer of Parliament. I have spoken to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. She is satisfied with the answer and she considers the matter closed.

Mr. Speaker, I take every opportunity to make sure that we highlight the great work of our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces, such as by taking trips into Iraq and making sure they have the necessary tools. I recently was in Malaysia where we had two of our ships there highlighting the great work that they do in the Asia-Pacific. I will always highlight the great work of the men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces as I have always done.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals spend a lot of time and effort championing what many have argued to be one of the planet's organizations that spends the most time on anti-Israel motions, and that, of course, is the United Nations. Today, while Israel is celebrating its 69th anniversary of becoming a modern state, the UN passed yet another anti-Israel motion.Will the Prime Minister today stand up in this House and condemn the United Nations for its continuous attacks on Israel?

Mr. Speaker, the work the Minister of National Defence has done to serve his community, to serve his country, and continues to do is to the honour of all Canadians. The work we are doing internationally in the fight against Daesh, supporting our allies in NATO, and continuing to be strong leaders around the world, while we give the right tools and opportunities to show the leadership of the Canadian Armed Forces around the world, is something that is truly important to me. We stand by the Minister of National Defence and the great work he is doing.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to update the House in this situation. We have been very closely monitoring the situation as soon as we understood that there was a challenge with the company in question. We were pleased that there was a market-based solution that was found in order to resolve the situation of the company in question. We believe that our financial system is strong and resilient, and this is evidence that we are able to find market-based solutions to challenges. That is a strength of our economy.

Mr. Speaker, Stéphane Dion is a great Canadian public servant, statesman, and, above all, patriot, who did tremendous work to keep our country together. I am confident that Stéphane Dion will do an equally outstanding job representing our country in Europe. I must say I have heard personally from Europeans, including Chancellor Merkel, including Federica Mogherini, how delighted they are to have Stéphane Dion there. For me, it is an honour to work with him.

Mr. Speaker, our government was elected on a platform to build sustainable communities from coast to coast to coast. Clean, safe drinking water is one of the most important ways that we can ensure our communities are thriving.Will the minister tell the House how the government is supporting vital water infrastructure?

Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege of serving as the Minister of National Defence. I want to make sure that our government provides all the necessary tools and that is exactly what we are doing with our defence policy review. We are making sure that we have done a thorough analysis and making sure that they have all the right tools and the right funding and, most important, the right care so that they can carry out their missions both at home and abroad.

Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, we are giving the parliamentary budget officer more resources and greater independence.That is exactly what we promised because we knew that, after many long years under the Stephen Harper government, we needed tools to ensure government transparency. That is precisely why we are strengthening the parliamentary budget officer's powers.

Mr. Speaker, the United States is our neighbour and our most important trading partner. Agricultural trade between Canada and the United States is worth $47 billion a year, and we are well aware of how important this relationship is to Canadian agriculture. The minister is looking forward to speaking with the new agriculture secretary once he is confirmed about the mutual benefits of our agricultural trade relationship. Our government will continue to protect and defend farmers and supply management.

Mr. Speaker, high-quality accessible data and high-quality analysis are key in order to make smart decisions as a government. I am proud to say that our government has committed $50 million in budget 2017 to launch a new and innovative trade and transportation information system. This will help us make the targeted investments in transportation corridors that will foster growth and create good, well-paying jobs for Canada's middle class.

Mr. Speaker, again, I am happy to address this issue. It is true that we are facing some pockets of risk in our housing markets in Vancouver and Toronto. Certainly, it is true that there was a challenge with this particular company. We do not see those two things as linked.Importantly, what happened in this situation was that there was a flight of depositors from the company in question. We listened, we heard, we stayed very engaged. The market also was engaged. We were pleased to see that there was a market-based solution to dealing with this challenge in our financial markets. That is exactly the way the system should work.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this second opportunity.This government has made it clear that it takes an evidence-based approach in its decision-making process. This is important to maximize efficiency and potential across this great nation of Canada. Our transportation network is no exception, and we need to be able to evaluate performance and make targeted investments. Could the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport inform all Canadians on how the government intends to make our transportation network more efficient, with new innovative ideas and elements contained within budget 2017?

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague gave a very intelligent discourse on this issue.One of the words that comes to mind is “privilege”. As I have experienced an incident in which I was not allowed to get into the House in the past term, I understand what that privilege means.One thing outside of our House, for people to better understand this, is that we all understand that doctors have privileges, for example, to work in health facilities. If that privilege were stopped, the outcry from the public if doctors were not allowed to get to an emergency department to see their patients would be huge.I would like to ask my colleague if he could expound further on what this discussion we are having here means to our citizens, and how critically important it is to us.

Mr. Speaker, this government has made it clear that it takes an evidence-based approach in its decision-making. This is important to maximize efficiency and potential across Canada. Our transportation network is no exception. We need to be able to evaluate performance and make targeted investments.Would the parliamentary secretary inform Canadians on how they intend to make our transportation network even more efficient with the new innovative elements contained within budget 2017?

Mr. Speaker, as I stated, I would never want to detract any confidence from our Canadian Armed Forces. Our government is focused on making sure our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces have all the necessary tools to make sure that we are doing a good job, whether it is in domestic operations supporting Canadians, or whether it is in taking the increased leadership role in NATO, or whether it is in increasing the fight against Daesh. We are making sure that they all have the necessary tools. That is exactly what our government is going to do.

Mr. Speaker, we are focused on making sure that we provide all the necessary tools for our Canadian Armed Forces, to make sure that they have all the necessary tools when we as government send our folks on important missions. I have the privilege of serving as Minister of National Defence. I am honoured to serve our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces. I am honoured to be able to stand as a representative of this government and work through the defence policy to make sure that there are all the necessary tools and the care for the men and women who serve us.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot do justice to the hon. member's quite detailed and lengthy paper on changes to the Standing Orders. She came forward in good faith with a substantial number of proposals.Rather than dealing with any of the specifics, I will make this observation. What she has done—and this is the best practice for any of us here—is she has looked at best practices of other Westminster jurisdictions, of which there is a treasure trove, a cornucopia, and drawn upon some of those best practices. She has pointed in particular to themes of working consensually together. This is a theme that has animated the hon. member's work on electoral reform. It defines the kind of system she is working toward with electoral reform. She wants a system that makes us more consensual. The same general thesis animates her proposals for working in the House. That is not easy in a Westminster system. We all know the famous story of our being two swords' lengths apart. I assume the purpose was to prevent us from actually stabbing each other, but that is not to say that we have to keep on doing that into the future. We can work more consensually, and the theme that she is proposing is a profound one that I hope will be picked up by members in all parties in the remainder of this Parliament.

Mr. Speaker, when we took office we actually increased the effectiveness of Canada's role against Daesh by doing what we do best. We were on the ground, training and supporting local troops as they took the fight directly to Daesh. That is something that we as a country have always excelled at. We demonstrated our capacity to do that in Afghanistan. We continue to understand that giving the proper tools and funding to the Canadian military to be able to accomplish the goals that we set for them here in the House is extremely important. I am proud of this government's record.

Mr. Speaker, I understand that the member opposite has a job to do. As Minister of National Defence, I am making sure we have all the right tools. We work very closely with our coalition partners in making sure, as we have done as government, we are taking a leadership role at NATO, increasing our contribution to the Iraq mission, and making sure our men and women have all the necessary tools to carry out the missions at home and abroad, and we will do just that.

Mr. Speaker, as I already said, Stéphane Dion has always fought for a better country for all Canadians. Mr. Dion understands the transatlantic relationship that we have with our European allies and he will be able to advance our interests and our common values. It is a privilege for me to work with Mr. Dion, and I know that our European allies, like all Canadians, have the greatest respect for him.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up on a theme that was raised by the hon. member across the floor, and that is acting responsibly and respectfully. What is the responsibility of the Liberal government to act responsibly and respectably in the House, and what needs to change to get us there?

Mr. Speaker, on Sunday, my colleague from Jonquière and I joined thousands of people at a march in Dolbeau-Mistassini, which is in my region, to remind the Government of Canada how important the forestry industry is across the country, including in our region.When he got back from China, the Minister of International Trade told us it would be good for Canada to sell its wood elsewhere. We have been trying to do that for 20 years. We will keep trying, but that is not something we need to be told.What is your plan? Never mind what you say; what are you going to do to keep forestry workers employed?

Mr. Speaker, it is rather ironic because there was a closure motion yesterday and another today. We are prepared to speak and to express our opinion. I believe that people expect us to talk about this question of privilege, and that is what I am doing. I know that my colleague was here for part of my speech and that he listened to what I had to say. However, he should have understood that my speech was about parliamentarians' privileges. These privileges give us the right to unfettered access to this place. These privileges give us the right to speak freely and to represent our constituents without any constraints. The opposition is fighting so that the government's backbenchers can enjoy these privileges and their power. That is what my honourable colleague should have understood and retained from my long 20-minute speech.

Mr. Speaker, I find the comments on that side of the House very interesting. In light of the current history of this Liberal government in trying to change the Standing Orders, shutting down debate, invoking closure, today's events at the procedures and House affairs committee, and removing opposition day motions, I wonder if my colleague could comment on how much confidence he feels that these issues, which are so important, will be dealt with at the PROC committee.

Mr. Speaker, major flooding is having a huge impact on many municipalities in Berthier—Maskinongé and across Quebec, including Yamachiche. I have two questions today.First, what does the federal government plan to do to help these people and municipalities?Second, can the Minister of Transport confirm today that the investigation in Yamachiche has begun and can he tell us when that information will be made public?

Mr. Speaker, last month our government joined the Province of Manitoba and the Association of Manitoba Municipalities to announce 24 new water and waste-water projects with a combined investment of $34 million to upgrade, rehabilitate, and expand water and waste-water facilities. These investments will have a real and tangible impact on communities and families while ensuring they have safe and clean water to drink.

Mr. Speaker, the 2017 budget includes funding to implement energy efficiency and clean energy technologies, to retrofit federal buildings, and to reduce or eliminate emissions from vehicle fleets.Can the Minister of Natural Resources tell the House how the government is supporting electric vehicles and alternative fuel infrastructure as tools for the transition to low-carbon transportation options?

Mr. Speaker, the member mentioned right and wrong. This is day seven. We have been discussing this for seven days in the House and essentially we have agreement. I know on the Liberal side all Liberal caucus members agree and I think all members in the House agree that unfettered access for MPs is extremely important. Second, we all agree that this matter is to go to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. That is the normal procedure. Everybody is in agreement with that, because we know this is an important matter. As has been mentioned, this is not the first time this has happened. We need to hear witnesses and look at this in more depth so we can come up with solutions to make our best effort to correct this situation so that MPs have access to this place.In light of that, we have spent seven days on something that we all agree on. We are all in agreement. Some members have even said every MP should have the opportunity to speak, which, in effect, would be five and a half weeks of speaking about something that we all agree on, but right now the reality is seven days. We are talking about something that we all agree on. Is that right? Is that a respectful use of the House's time? Is that a respectful use of taxpayers' dollars? They are paying our salaries to be here. We are all in agreement on something and all we are trying to do is send it to PROC. We have spent seven days on this and opposition members are upset because they think we should spend more days on something we all agree with that has the same end result.I would like to hear what my colleague has to say.

Mr. Speaker, I share the optimism of the member opposite about PROC being able to do its work. While I have the floor, I will remind the member that while in opposition he said: The government, by once again relying on a time allocation motion to get its agenda passed, speaks of incompetence. It speaks of a genuine lack of respect for parliamentary procedure and ultimately for Canadians. I would urge the member and his government to cease using time allocation to stifle debate in the House.

Mr. Speaker, when most people get insurance, they pay a premium. If they have a claim, they pay a deductible. However, CMHC offers banks full insurance against losses. While homebuyers pay the premium and taxpayers pay the deductible, the banks pay neither. Hundreds of billions of dollars are at risk as a result.Has the government calculated how much taxpayers could lose if a market correction causes home prices to go down, or higher interest rates cause mortgage defaults to go up?

Mr. Speaker, the defence minister has been telling so many fictional stories that he cannot keep his facts straight. For example, in 2015 the minister claimed that General Vance coined the term that he was the architect for his work back in 2006 on Operation Medusa, but that cannot be true because General Vance did not take command in Afghanistan until 2009. The minister's fabrication was no mistake. This was his personal choice. If the Prime Minister lacks the good judgment to fire the minister, will the defence minister do the honourable thing and resign?

Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing me to respond. Once a day is enough. I will answer the question.The hon. parliamentary secretary has a lot of experience in the House, but, unfortunately, he does not seem to have listened to my colleagues' speeches. I think that the parliamentary secretary is talking about tricks. He is talking about all of the tools that the opposition has at its disposal to make itself heard. However, we, the opposition, are not making our own voices heard. We are making the voices of Canadians heard. Canadians are saying, through us and all of the methods at our disposal, that this government is going too far. They are saying that this government is using tricks. We have been talking about a discussion paper. Let us look back at what has happened. The government presented a discussion paper. Discussion means that we talk but that no decisions are made. First development: the discussion paper was sent to committee and, all of a sudden, a decision has to be made and the government will impose it, if necessary.That is what happened. It was another trick. Fortunately opposition members saw through it. Fortunately, my colleagues saw through it. That is why it is important to remember that the rule for accessing Parliament is not the only important rule. All our rules are important. Some members, my colleagues, were prevented from coming to vote here and this government is trying to take away our right to speak. It is trying to take away our right to represent our constituents. That is what the parliamentary secretary, my hon. colleague, should have understood during our interventions. That is the truth.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel for his excellent question. The transportation sector accounts for nearly 25% of greenhouse gas emissions. Our budget continues to support green infrastructure with a $120-million investment to deploy infrastructure for electric vehicle charging and refuelling stations for alternative fuels, such as natural gas.

Mr. Speaker, following a response to a question from a colleague opposite, I learned that the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons was offended by something I said this morning. I went to meet with her to offer my sincere apologies, and I also want to apologize here right now.

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith. I am sure she will do an excellent job, as usual.I am honoured, and perhaps a little saddened, to rise in the House to speak to the privilege motion currently before us. I say it saddens me a little because it is unfortunate that we have to move privilege motions and hold a debate on this matter, rather than doing our usual, ongoing work. Nevertheless, this is a very important matter, and I will come back to it in more detail later. I think this question raises a much broader issue, that is, our ability to do our work in general. It is important because we are all here to represent our constituents and all Canadians. It is crucial that we be able to do so properly, because that is our most fundamental role.One of the opposition's key roles is holding the government to account. Although we often hold it to account on budget issues, I feel we should hold it to account for all of its decisions. To do that, we need to be able to have in-depth debates and move about freely on the Hill so that we can take part in those debates. During the election campaign, the Liberals said they wanted to work on creating a more collegial atmosphere and making it easier for us to do the job people elected us to do, but it really seems like things are going the other way and the Liberals are breaking their promises, just as they have done so many other times.We were promised sunny ways. We were told everything would be great and everyone would get along and work together. However, for the last little while, the government has been trying to change the system so it can get its hands on all the power. Initially, I thought its goal was to prevent the opposition from having a say, but that is not quite right. What the government is really trying to do is make it so that anything said in the House, any argument the opposition might make, is simply ignored or carries no real weight. For example, the government wants to change the rules of the House. I have no problem with discussing the rules of the House. However, what we are seeing now and what we saw last year during the debate around Motion No. 6 is the government's desire to foist its own vision of how the House should work on us, and that vision involves more power for the government.People keep saying there is going to be a conversation about this. I bet I am not the only member of the House who is starting to wonder if “conversation” is really the right word here.As we get to know this government better, we realize that having a conversation means that it will talk, it will listen, it will allow us to talk, but at the end of the day it is still going to do whatever it wants. The government wonders why the House is dysfunctional at times. The answer seems obvious when we look at what the government did with Motion No. 6 and what it is trying to do yet again to limit our powers.The government is not really leaving us the choice to rise or not rise on motions like this on a question of privilege. On behalf of the people we represent, we have to express our right and our privilege to truly be heard on these major issues.I was talking about the word “conversation”, but another way of saying it is “keep talking”. In other words, we can talk all we want, but at the end of the day, the government is going to do what it wants. Electoral reform is another fine example. The government promised to have a conversation and listen to what Canadians had to say about electoral reform. The government formed a committee that travelled across the country. It was all very nice. Almost 90% of the experts and Canadians who appeared before the committee were of the same opinion, agreeing that we should have a mixed member proportional system. The Liberals did not like it because, as we know, it would not necessarily give them the advantage. Suddenly, the conversation came to an abrupt end. The Liberals said that they had let the people speak, but now they would do what they wanted and break a promise that they repeated many times. This has happened in connection with several issues. There is the matter of House procedure. They are trying to limit the powers of the parliamentary budget officer. How will limiting these powers help transparency and accountability? They are also using closure. On this issue of privilege, it is quite interesting, given that our colleagues from Milton and Beauce were unable to vote because they did not have access to the House.When members raised this question of privilege, the Liberals' reaction was to use their majority to prevent the matter from being debated. Even the Speaker said that it was unprecedented, that a government had never before used its majority to prevent a debate on a question of privilege.In the end, they changed their minds, so we could discuss it here today, but now here we go again. The Liberals are imposing a gag order on this matter. In this context, we have to wonder what happened to all the lofty promises to be more collegial and work together. All this is coming from a government that promised transparency and openness.Everyone here today saw question period, for instance. So much for transparency and openness, when the Minister of National Defence speaks out of both sides of his mouth and the Prime Minister does not really answer any questions. I think that is why more and more people are saying that, in the end, the Prime Minister and his government are just like the Harper government, but with a grin. We are happy to see a smile, but we would like to see a little more in terms of fundamental changes.I would like to say a quick word about one of my memories of Jack Layton, from our first caucus meeting. We are not supposed to discuss caucus outside of caucus. He spoke to us at length about respect. That is what this is about, respect for members and for our institutions. I think that is what everyone here today is asking for.

Mr. Speaker, as the member and all members of the House will know, this issue is all about unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct. It is not the first time this has happened. In fact, it has happened a few times.I sat on PROC on a couple of occasions and had to deal with the issue. We all understand and appreciate PROC is where the issue is best dealt with. The last time it was dealt with in the House was on May 12, 2015. The total number of speakers was five, representing the parties. They stood in their place and explained why it was so important that PROC deal with the issue.As of right now when the member sat down, we have had 49 members speak to this issue. A number of members said that they were speaking because it is a filibuster on a privilege issue. What are the options? If we were not debating this issue, we would actually be debating the national budget and the budget implementation bill.Does the member believe his constituents would rather we were debating the budget, the priorities of government, and the priorities of opposition parties, or would they rather we continue what can easily be justified, from my perspective, as an opposition filibuster on an issue that should in fact be dealt with by PROC?We in the Liberal caucus have made it very clear that we want the issue to go to PROC. We want to ensure that every member of this House has unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak with any officer of Parliament. I have spoken to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner on this subject. She is satisfied with that and she considers this matter closed.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the length of the debate that we have had with regard to this issue. We have now had 10 times as many people speak on the issue of unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct, which is a record number, given the topic. I am glad to see that it looks as if it is coming to an end, because we want to get on to other matters, such as the budget debate, and I understand a private member's hour will be coming up shortly. I will leave an open-ended question for the member across the way in regard to how important it is that both the opposition and the government recognize PROC and wish it well in trying to resolve the issue of unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that observation, which is very relevant to this debate. Indeed, we have seen this government flip-flop more than once over the past few weeks.The government seems to flip-flop every day now, because it is reacting to the public service and to what the newspapers are saying. The government does not control Parliament, and that is what it wants. It is tyring to do so, but it is realizing that, fortunately, there are parliamentary rules and traditions that prevent it from doing whatever it wants. The reality has caught up with them. My hon. colleague saw it for himself, as the government tried to cut off the debate, which addresses a very important matter, a question of privilege. Certain impediments prevented some members from voting. Our rules and traditions are what protected them. That is precisely what we are standing up for, and that is precisely why we are here and why the government realized that it had to back down. It did a complete 180, and now it wants to send this question of privilege to committee.That is another trick. The government wants to do this because it wants to put an end to our filibuster. The government realized that we figured out what it is up to with the changes it is making to the rules and procedures of the House. It realized that changes like that could not be passed without unanimous consent. The government realized that the opposition would not stand for what it is doing. That is another reason why the government keeps flip-flopping. As the editorial writer said this morning, it is not necessary. The opposition has a role to play and it will continue to play that role.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence has an exemplary record of service to this country, whether it is as a decorated police officer, as a decorated military officer, or as Minister of National Defence.The work we are doing to demonstrate our support for the Canadian Forces and giving them the tools and the opportunities they need to demonstrate leadership and bring Canada's positive impact to the world is extremely important to this government and will continue.

Mr. Speaker, earlier the Prime Minister refused to answer any questions, so I will try my luck directly with the Minister of National Defence. Why are the Liberals refusing to call a public inquiry into the Afghan detainee scandal? Why did the Minister of National Defence tell the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner that he knew nothing about this scandal because he was just a reservist?Would he be so kind as to tell the House specifically what role he played in Afghanistan? It is high time that Canadians knew the truth.

Mr. Speaker, I think it was the last comment from my friend from Kootenay—Columbia that talked about how we got here. Canadians will wonder, and the government will hold itself up and ask why there is such discord, having this almost oblivious attitude toward its own actions in getting us here.If the government wants to see the House functioning well and if it wants to see committees functioning well, it should ask itself how it is unable to do that with the majority that it has been given by Canadians. The simple request from the opposition is that in order to change the rules that conduct us here in Parliament, we should respect the long-held tradition that all parties agree to those rule changes, so that the power and balance of power that goes on between opposition and government is maintained with some dignity.Ultimately, is that not at the heart of the problem, and why so many things have fallen off the rails, and why the government seems incapable of actually passing legislation? This is probably one of the lightest legislative agendas we have seen in 50 years. It is incredible how little the government has been able to get done, outside of selfies, of course, because it does a lot of those.

Mr. Speaker, the minister spoke directly with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner on this file. She is satisfied and she has closed this file.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question.This question of privilege, which is on something as fundamental as physical access to the House, is a question that affects us all, each and every one of us. The question truly needs to be debated somewhere other than in a committee. It needs to be debated in the House.We must not lose sight of the context in which we are discussing this question of privilege. We are discussing it in what I consider a context of repeated attacks against our institution, the institution that is the house of all citizens, the institution that represents those citizens. The government is trying to change our rules and various problems have been raised. It is a question that is debated in a much broader context and it is important that all members are able to take part in this discussion.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.We know that many communities in Quebec and across Canada are having a hard time this flood season. My colleague, the Minister of International Trade, talked to me again today about the specific situation in Yamachiche. We recognize the importance of safe and environmentally sound navigation. When the incident was reported, the Coast Guard, at the behest of Transport Canada, issued a notice to shipping requesting a reduction in speed. We are investigating the situation, and we are going to take the necessary steps to address this problem.

Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal of respect for my friend, as I do for a number of folks on all sides of the House, who deeply enrich themselves with the knowledge and history of this place. It is important that all sides have members who dedicate themselves to that conversation, because we all are actors passing across the stage. We are here for a time, we never how long, and yet we must maintain and, I would argue, improve the quality of what Parliament does on behalf of Canadians. The issue we are debating now is the ability of members just to get into the House to vote on behalf of their constituents, a motion which, by the way, the Liberals tried to kill at one point in these proceedings, which is ironic to a detrimental level. We have been talking about the rules that govern us as members of Parliament representing our constituents and that the long-standing tradition by prime ministers throughout history was to never change those rules unless all parties agreed, simply because it is a good test. Otherwise, one could imagine a government with a majority, a false majority, in this case, changing the rules to its own advantage over the opposition. We all recognize that a majority government has enormous strength and power to pass through its agenda, yet the role of the opposition to hold it to account is central to everything we do.The Liberals are using the line that they would not give a veto to the Conservatives over one of the Liberal election pledges. Ironically, that did not stop them from breaking their pledge on electoral reform. They themselves broke that with no help from anybody else. However, this notion that it went from an election pledge to somehow override the long-standing and important tradition that we as parliamentarians try to make the place better seems to me a distortion of the power of a promise ill-defined and badly made at some point by some political leader in the middle of a campaign versus the strength and integrity of the House of Commons.I have a frank question for my friend, which I might ask in private but am asking in public. He mentioned the pattern we were seeing from the government, which came in with great promise to make Parliament better, to be more open and transparent about the way to conduct ourselves, yet has demonstrated its tendency to want to override the will of Parliament, to distort the power that already exists in its favour. Can that pattern be broken or has this ship simply sailed too far away to get it back to some level of sanity and decency?

Mr. Speaker, I would never detract from the accomplishments of our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces. Our government will always work hard to make sure that they are truly served.I am honoured to serve our men and women in uniform. I am going to continue to work hard for them every single day to make sure they have the right tools, the right capabilities, and the right care, so they can carry out their missions.

Mr. Speaker, I do not think Toronto is very secret, by the way. We all know that trade is good for our nation. Trade means growth and growth means jobs. What the member should understand is we want to be front and centre when it comes to engagement about principled, modern, and inclusive trade in the Asia-Pacific. That is why I offered to have the officials come to Toronto. Canadians expect that of us. The Prime Minister expects that of me. That is the smart thing to do for Canadians.

Mr. Speaker, the government has been working for months, not only with the Government of Canada, but right across the country with all of our provincial counterparts. We know that we need both in the short term and in the long term a plan for the forestry sector. In the short term, it is essential that we look after workers and producers. We will use every instrument available to us, looking at the long term, to make sure there is an expansion of export markets, that we support the transition of the industry. We know how important the forestry sector is for Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. The ability of an hon. member to access this House in order to vote on a matter before the House is of utmost importance. Indeed, there is nothing more important in terms of the function of a member of Parliament than to stand up and vote on matters before the House on behalf of their constituents. That is what our constituents elect us to do. Unfortunately, in the case of the hon. member for Milton and the hon. member for Beauce, that privilege was infringed upon when they were prevented from getting here. That is why this debate is so important. In terms of the consequences of what could have happened, one consequence was that two hon. members were not able to stand in their place on behalf of 100,000 or so constituents. That is a pretty significant consequence, but it could have been an even worse consequence if we had been talking about a vote of confidence. The inability of the members to access this House, to show up and vote, could have the consequence of literally resulting in a potential loss of confidence in the government. We are talking about very serious consequences that could flow from the privileges of members being infringed upon in terms of being able to access this place.

Mr. Speaker, he has already distracted from the good work that the men and women in uniform have done and are doing. That is done. He can now try to make it right by giving them their honour back. If our men and women in uniform try to steal valour and try to take credit for something that they did not do in the military, there is a consequence in terms of discipline, in terms of the trust that they will have lost with their colleagues. Does the Minister of National Defence not understand that he broke this code of conduct, that he broke trust? The only fix is for him to step aside and let our men and women in uniform have a leader who they can actually trust today.

Mr. Speaker, Canada is a steadfast friend and ally of Israel, as I was honoured to say at the World Jewish Congress in New York last week. I will be delighted to repeat that tomorrow at the Israeli embassy, where I will be the guest of honour at the Independence Day celebration.I believe the member opposite was speaking about the UNESCO action. I want to be clear that we object to any attempt to unfairly single out Israel for criticism, including in multilateral forums like UNESCO.

Mr. Speaker, I completely agree with what my colleague just said. The government side seems to be saying that talking about this prevents us from doing our job. It is really the opposite. We are talking about the fundamentals that allow us to do our job. The rights and privileges of parliamentarians are not perks. They underpin this institution, they are the foundation of our democracy, and they allow us to represent the people who elected us.Therefore, this is a very fundamental issue, and I completely agree with my colleague. This is so fundamental and such an important part of our work that all members who wish to speak should be allowed to do so.

Mr. Speaker, as much as these Liberals claim to be consulting and listening, over at the finance committee, witness after witness, including the Liberals' own witnesses, told us they were not consulted before the Liberals forced their mortgage changes onto Canadians. Had the Liberals bothered to listen to the industry, they would know that the issues facing companies such as Home Capital are very serious.When will the finance minister start listening to the experts from the Canadian mortgage industry?

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise this afternoon to participate in the debate on the question of privilege. For some Canadians, this debate may seem a bit antiquated, a bit technical. They may not fully understand what it is we are talking about. Notwithstanding that, let us make no mistake about it that the debate today is of high importance, because it goes to the foundations of our democracy. It goes to the heart of the ability of members of Parliament to perform their functions to collectively represent Canadians. Having regard for the importance of this debate on privilege, it is disappointing to see that the current Liberal government has responded by trying to shut down debate, by trying to silence members of Parliament by bringing forward time allocation. Canadians will remember that during the last election, the Prime Minister talked so much about sunny ways. He waxed and waned eloquently. He talked about how there would be sunlight brought into this place and how everything would be wonderful, that members would be able to speak and vote freely and that we would have a government that respected the will of Parliament, and he admonished the previous Conservative government for bringing in time allocation, which of course is perfectly within the rules. It is in the Standing Orders. That was fair. There were a lot of Canadians who accepted that, who said that perhaps Parliament could work better, and they entrusted the Prime Minister to deliver. What we have seen, like so much of what we see from the Prime Minister, is that the words that he espoused during the election campaign were nothing more than empty words, because on this issue he has tried to shut down debate. The government is trying to shut down debate, but it is not just on this issue. It is on multiple issues. The government has moved time allocation more than a dozen times already. What is even worse is that the government House leader has now indicated that the government will use this issue as a pretext to invoke time allocation on a regular basis, so we have now a complete 180° turnaround from the government. Eighteen or 19 months ago, the Liberals were admonishing the previous Conservative government for imposing time allocation, and today the government House leader is talking about bringing in time allocation all the time, regularly, and with enthusiasm. It really speaks to the lack of trust that Canadians should have in the current government. I think that every day more and more Canadians recognize that the current government simply cannot be trusted.To the substance of this important debate on this issue of privilege, it arose on the day of the budget when access by the hon. members for Beauce and Milton to the parliamentary precinct to be able to get into this chamber and vote was impeded. Their access was impeded when they tried to access a House of Commons bus to come to the chamber to vote, to do what hon. members should do. The bells were ringing. They waited. They saw a bus coming. The bus driver apparently saw them, but the bus could not get to them because the bus was stopped. It was blocked by either the Prime Minister's empty motorcade or a media bus or a combination of the two. Nonetheless, it was blocked, and it was blocked, according to the hon. member for Beauce, for some nine minutes. As a result, the hon. members for Milton and Beauce were unable to vote.Upon the conclusion of that vote, those hon. members rose in their places and immediately alerted this House that their access to this House had been impeded, that they had been prevented from doing the job that their constituents had sent them here to do and doing what their constituents expect them to do, which is to vote on matters before the House of Commons, and that consequently there had been a breach of their parliamentary privilege.Upon hearing the evidence from the hon. members for Beauce and Milton, Mr. Speaker, you ruled that there was indeed a prima facie breach of a member's privilege.What should have happened then, and what has always happened upon the Speaker's finding of a prima facie breach of privilege, was for a debate to take place in this chamber, for a vote to take place, and in the event that the members of this House affirmed the ruling of the Speaker in finding that there was in fact a breach of privilege, the matter would then be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs so that the issue of privilege could be studied and the committee could get to the bottom of exactly what happened.That is not what happened in this case. What should have happened did not happen because the government decided instead that it wanted to attack the rights of hon. members to defend and protect the privileges of this House. What the government did in that regard was to bring forward a motion to proceed to orders of the day. In so doing, what the government did was shut down the ability of hon. members to debate the issue of privilege, to vote on the issue of privilege, and to have the matter referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, where it would have received precedence at that committee, just as it receives precedence in this House upon the Speaker's finding.What the government did was unprecedented. No government before has done what the current government did. What the current government did was very serious. It was fundamentally an attack on this place. It was an attack on this institution and on all hon. members, because the ability to debate and vote on a question of privilege is no small matter. It is significant. It is fundamental. It is fundamental to the ability of members of Parliament to perform the functions of the member of Parliament. It is fundamental to the ability of members of Parliament to do their job. That is why privilege is not the property of the government; it is the property of this chamber and it is the property of all 338 members of Parliament.To understand the significance of what the government tried to do, it is perhaps important to have some understanding of the history of privilege, the foundation of privilege. Privilege goes back centuries. It goes back to the 14th and 15th centuries, to the United Kingdom, when the king would interfere, impede, obstruct, use force, and in some cases arrest hon. members of Parliament, attacking and impeding their ability to do their jobs.Sir Thomas More was one of the first speakers in the House of Commons who petitioned the king for the recognition of certain privileges of the House. Those privileges included the right to be free from interference, obstruction, and use of force by the king and his executive in the House of Lords. What privilege really is and what it turned out to be was a compromise among the king, the executive, and members of Parliament, that Parliament, the House of Commons, would be a place where members could speak freely, debate freely, criticize, and depose the government without interference from the executive.In Canada, privilege was imported from the United Kingdom. The type of force, arrests, and intimidation that British members of Parliament had endured in the 14th and 15th centuries had passed. By the time of Canada's Confederation, however, what had not passed was the significance of members' parliamentary privilege. That is why parliamentary privilege was enshrined in our Constitution. Section 18 of the Constitution Act of 1867, provides that the House may define members' privileges provided that those privileges do not exceed the privileges enjoyed by members of the British House of Commons at the time of Confederation in 1867. Indeed, the House, through the act of Parliament, adopted all those privileges. Among those privileges is freedom from obstruction and interference. That is precisely what this question of privilege relates to: the interference of the hon. members for Beauce and Milton's access to the chamber to perform the most important function of a member of Parliament, and that is to stand and vote on behalf of their constituents.When we are talking about the issue of privilege, we are talking about something that has been constitutionally protected. We are talking about something that has been protected by our courts. We are talking about something that has been protected by the common law. It is why what the government sought to do to prevent members of Parliament from having an opportunity to debate and vote on privilege is so significant.When the arguments were put forward to the government about the seriousness of what was happening and the consequences of what was happening, the response of the government was, more or less, that it did not care. Given some of the actions of the government, when it comes to the disrespect it has exhibited to this institution, perhaps we should not be surprised that this was its attitude. However, Canadians should be surprised that, one by one, Liberal MP after Liberal MP stood and voted in favour of the government's extinguishing the ability of members of Parliament to defend and protect their privileges.It seems a lot of members over there perhaps forgot, or maybe they do not care, that they are not members of the government, other than those Liberal MPs who are members of cabinet. Perhaps they lost sight of the fact that members' privileges are privileges that do not just protect opposition members and enable them to do their work on behalf of their constituents. Members' privileges protect all members of the House, including government backbench MPs so they can carry out their jobs as well.It is unfortunate that it took the hon. member for Perth—Wellington, my colleague, to stand and question whether the government could in fact shut down a debate on privilege without a vote. He argued that it was a violation of privilege. You, Mr. Speaker, agreed with the hon. member for Perth—Wellington. As a result of that ruling, we are having a debate on this question of privilege. It should not have happened that way. It need not have happened that way. However, it happened because of the arrogance of the government.It does raise a question as to how that happened and why it happened. Why was the government so determined to extinguish the rights of hon. members to defend members' privileges? The answer is that had the motion passed the House of Commons, it would have been referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, where it would have received precedence, just as it receives precedence in this chamber. That happened to be an inconvenience to the government because the government was simultaneously trying to ram through, at the procedure and House affairs committee, the rules of this place, the rules in terms of how Parliament functioned. The government was trying to strip the rights and abilities of hon. members of the House to hold the government to account, and so we got this mess.The government has backed off a little in terms of its efforts to ram through changes in the procedure and House affairs committee. However, while it backed off a little at the procedure and House affairs committee, it nonetheless remained intent on shutting down debate on a most important question of privilege.What the government has done, and is doing, is wrong. It is undemocratic. It is an attack on all members of Parliament and, as a result, it is an attack on all Canadians. When the abilities of members of Parliament to speak and represent their constituents is impeded upon, that impacts all Canadians who count on us to represent them here every day.My colleagues in the opposition will continue to do what is necessary to hold the government to account, to call on the government to respect the House, to respect this institution, to respect the ability of members of Parliament to stand and vote on behalf of their constituents, and to respect the privileges afforded to all hon. members in the House.

Mr. Speaker, today's debate is in fact about unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct.As I indicated before, this is not the first time we have had to deal with this issue. In fact, if we go back, May 12, 2015, was the most recent incident prior to this. During that debate, a total of five speakers—three New Democrats, one Liberal, and the Green Party representative—spoke to that matter of privilege.We have had 37 speakers, and that was even before we started today. We also know that members of the Conservative Party have said that this matter of privilege is all about a filibuster. There is a responsibility of the opposition, especially the official opposition, to behave in a more responsible fashion in dealing with the issue of unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct.I would suggest there are in fact some games being played, and it is not fair to point the finger in one direction. All parties need to take a look at what they are doing, especially on this issue with respect to the Conservative Party. Does the member believe there is a responsibility of the official opposition to behave in a responsible fashion when it comes to debate? If we had 338 members debate everything that came before the House, it would take over five weeks to do one measure, and we might have 100 more measures to do. Mathematically, it is just not possible, unless we have a Conservative opposition that has one purpose and one purpose alone, and that is try to demonstrate it is dysfunctional. If it is dysfunctional, it is because of an incompetent, unreasonable official opposition. It does not take much. Give me 12 members and I can cause havoc, too. It does not mean it is responsible. I am challenging the member across the way to acknowledge that there is an onus of responsibility for the official opposition to do the right thing. Maybe the member could tell us why the Conservatives have chosen to filibuster this matter of privilege, if it is so important.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the former general for his service to this country.I will continue to work hard and our government will continue to work hard to make sure our men and women in uniform have the right tools. Every single day we will make sure that they have the right care and the right tools. We have conducted a thorough analysis on our defence policy review and it will do just that.

Mr. Speaker, the National Assembly unanimously adopted Martine Ouellet's motion to remind the federal government that supporting agriculture, including Quebec's dairy industry and our family farm system, means maintaining supply management. The National Assembly's motion also calls on the Government of Canada to maintain supply management, which must be non-negotiable should NAFTA be reopened.Will the government make a solemn promise to maintain supply management as it currently stands before and during negotiations with the Americans?

Mr. Speaker, I have shared information with regard to the government's approach to respond and to really be able to deliver on the commitments we made to Canadians. In the campaign, we made commitments to modernize the way this place works. In the letter that I provided to opposition House leaders, I actually shared direct quotes from the platform so that they could see where those ideas were coming from. I was actually hoping to have an even larger conversation with new ideas. Unfortunately, there was an unwillingness from the opposition side to have that conversation. I welcome the continuation of sharing ideas and really bringing this place into the 21st century.

Mr. Speaker, while Quebec is creating a committee of experts and hopes to broaden eligibility for medical assistance in dying, we have just learned that the minister has accepted the appointment to the position of chair of the working group on advance requests of Dr. Harvey Schipper, who opposes medical assistance in dying and advance requests. Several stakeholders have criticized this appointment, and rightly so. How can Canadians have confidence in this committee and believe that this working group will truly be objective and impartial when they know that its chair is one of the most strident opponents of medical assistance in dying and advance requests?

Mr. Speaker, we do reference this place as Parliament, a place in which we speak, but it is tricky when we all do it at the same time. It is more akin to question period.I use the word “privilege” in terms of speaking on behalf of the good people of northwestern British Columbia, because it is in fact exactly that. To be able to rise in this place and speak in our best efforts on behalf of those we represent is an honour that only a few of us get to hold over the many years that this country has existed.It believe it is also right at the heart of the issue we are talking about today. This is called a question of privilege. For a lot of Canadians, it is very old language, a question of privilege. Privilege sounds like something very shiny and potentially valuable in wealth, which one is afforded. We all know “I am entitled to my entitlements” and all that sort of thing that has gone on in the past.However, the privilege we speak about today is simply the privilege to speak. In this motion it is about access of members of Parliament to come and vote on behalf of their constituents, which is of course at the very most sacred core of our democracy. We elect people, and we put them forward to represent us. They speak on our behalf, but they also cast votes on our behalf.The incident that happened most recently with my friend the member for Milton and others was that they were physically prevented from getting into the House of Commons, which unfortunately seems to happen once every four or five years. MPs are trying to get up on the Hill and, because of some security measure or some other thing, they cannot get in.Some in the public may say, “Big deal; the vote passed by 20 or 15 that night.” However, I have witnessed votes in this House that have been tied. I have witnessed votes of confidence over whether a government would stand or fall being supported by one extra member, keeping us from an election at one point. To say that it does not matter in the small example is missing the entire point of the larger example, which is that we all need free and fair access to this place to simply do our jobs.Part of our job is voting. A second part of our job is the ability to hold government to account. The only members in this whole place who sit in government are the Prime Minister and the cabinet that the Prime Minister chooses.The role of all the other MPs in this place, including government members who sit in the so-called backbench, is to hold government to account on two fundamental things: spending and laws; to look at the proposals that come forward from government, see if its spending is accurate and true to the nature of the promises made, and to see that legislation that passes before this place, whether it comes from an individual member or from the government itself, is of the best quality, using the best information.The context in which we are debating this is important, not only the context of the Liberal government's recent pattern of becoming more and more forceful, more and more pushing its agenda onto an increasingly unwilling opposition, but also the context in which the government was elected into office. I would argue that the slogan of hope and hard work that the Prime Minister used to talk about was one that had a certain resonance and meaning for Canadians.Clearly, the Liberals won the last election. Canadians were looking for something that was more hopeful, I would argue, more respectful of the conversation—not only the one that happens out in the larger public, true consultation, meaningful consultation around what it is that government wants to do, but also more respect for this place that is Parliament.We saw the Harper government use the very powerful tool of prorogation, and a lot of Canadians did not even know what that word meant until the Prime Minister shut down Parliament entirely to avoid a vote of confidence at one point. The previous prime minister got into the routine and habit of just not liking a debate going on too long, and he would just shut down debate. There would be a quick vote, and 30 minutes later the debate was over and the bill was moving on. The former government got so addicted to these tools that it would actually invoke shutting down debate as it introduced legislation. The debate would be 20 minutes old, and the government would bring in a motion to say that in another 30 minutes it would be over. Some of these bills were of enormous consequence to the lives of Canadians. That is a problem.We can see how in government there is a certain intolerance that seems to grow, a resistance to scrutiny, particularly when a government gets into a bit of trouble or just starts to get tired of this whole procedure of Parliament that we have concocted over many centuries. That is too bad.We also can recognize a majority government, and in this case, as in most majority governments in Canada, it is a false majority. A little less than 40% of Canadians who voted, voted to support the government. Liberals used to talk about that as a false majority and one of the reasons that we ought to change our voting system, as much of the world has. It is also known that a majority government in Canada has inordinate power to see its agenda through. It is not as if debate takes an extra hour or two, or a day or two and the government is going to lose that vote if it is whipping the vote on its side, which governments often do. It is all a question of timing and sequence, and can we simply hold the government to account. Sometimes that means holding the government to some pause. As it wants to ram its agenda through, as it wants to get a bill through or a budget through, it feels that sense of urgency, but it maybe has not done all the scrutiny, has not looked at it from all sides, which is kind of the point. Some of these laws do not get changed for 40 or 50 years and if they are badly done, it takes things like Supreme Court challenges to fix them, which are incredibly expensive. Rather than get them right and take the time to do it, governments sometimes want to rush things.We see this pattern creeping out, not just into the House of Commons but into the committee. We saw this at the procedure and House affairs committee earlier today where, suddenly, the chair woke up, decided he wanted the meeting to be over, smashed the gavel, and then suddenly it was over.This is clearly the opposite of the promise the Prime Minister brought in. If we ask Canadians the question, aside from being a prime minister, what did Prime Ministers Chrétien, Mulroney, Harper, Martin, and Pierre Elliott Trudeau all have in common? A lot of Canadians would say not much. What did Harper have in common with Chrétien and Chrétien with Mulroney? They had one thing common. They believed in the tradition of this place. If we were going to change the rules, if we were going to change the way we interacted with one another, if we were going to change the balance of power between the government, which we recognized is subsequent, and the power of the opposition, then we clearly needed to have all the parties in the conversation, not at the end of a barrel of a gun, saying that if we did not agree the government would do it anyway. That is not a conversation. That is not a consultation. That is a farce. The long-standing and important tradition is that we do not change the rules without the support of others. That seems to me beyond just tradition. It is just basic common sense because, lo and behold, governments change from time to time. The powers that a current Liberal government wishes for itself, because they are Liberals, they are benevolent, they are nice guys and would never abuse these powers, and that is not true, transfer to the next government, whichever one Canadians choose that to be. Then Liberals will be saying that the government is abusing its power now. They then will have to ask themselves, as Liberals, who gave it those extraordinary powers, and maybe the Liberals should have thought twice about that.Looking at changing fundamental ways in which we dialogue on behalf of Canadians, in which we fight on behalf of Canadians, does not belong to the Liberal government. The money does not belong to the Liberal government; it belongs to all Canadians when they pass budgets. The laws do not belong to the Liberals government; they belong to all Canadians when we pass new laws.The role and representation we have in this place, as my friend from the Conservatives says, sometimes hangs by a thread. The ability for people to have faith and trust in what we do and to continue to participate in our civic conversation relies on the quality of the effort we bring to this place, the respect we have for each other, and the respect we have for Parliament. This does not break down to right versus left. This comes to down to what is right and what is wrong. The Liberals I have spoken to quietly, as we have gone around this place, are sometimes scratching their heads, wondering what they are doing as a Liberal government. They are wondering why a massively long filibuster is taking place at procedure and House affairs. They are wondering why we doing this and why we are we doing that.This is pattern language. However, patterns can change. It seems to be difficult to put this pattern change onto the current government. We need to talk to Canadians about this. We need to talk to Liberal colleagues about this, and to the people who support them. This is not what they voted for. They hoped for something a lot better. They expect and deserve a lot better. We need to reverse this pattern of trying to impose will on Canada's Parliament. It only belongs to the Canadian people.

Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege of serving our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces as the Minister of National Defence. Every single day I will work hard, as I have always done, to make sure that they have all the right tools, the right funding, and care for them to carry out their missions. I will do that every single day.

Mr. Speaker, I am only smiling a little, because that speech could have been given by Conservatives in the last Parliament when we in the opposition were trying to hold up some of their worst agenda. The history of this is important. The member would do well to remember that her own government tried to kill this motion by punting it into non-existence. She can wave away, but it was only the intervention of the Speaker which overruled the Liberals' attempt to kill this motion in the first place that allowed us to talk about it at all. She can be as sanctimonious as she likes about respecting taxpayers. Respect? My goodness, the Speaker of the House of Commons had to intervene with the Liberal government and say, “Whoa. Access to Parliament is incredibly important.” The Liberal Party tried to kill that motion in Parliament because it was interfering with the Liberals' machinations at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. What is going on there? Let us talk about respect. The Liberals are trying to ram their changes to Parliament through without all-party agreement. If they want to stop the filibuster, if they want to stop the mess that is going on in the House, they should respect the traditions of Parliament, which prime ministers Pierre Trudeau, Chrétien, Mulroney, even Harper, respected. The Liberals came in saying that they were going to do better than even Stephen Harper. They should at least abide by that tradition. If we are going to change the rules of the House, we have to do it together, because it is just too easy to break that tradition and then have majority governments force their will on Parliament. That is exactly what the Liberal Party is trying to do while it pretends that they are discussion papers and open conversations, and yet the Liberals will never at any point agree to one simple principle: that when we change this place, we should only do it together. That is a good principle that should be respected.

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about openness and transparency. I have been transparent and I know that some of my colleagues who do not speak French would have been able learn about this great editorial had I been able to table the document.Yesterday, I also had the opportunity to participate in a scrum where the opposition was commenting on the new discussion paper. We should really be calling it a new attempt by the Liberals to grab power and absolute control over the House of Commons. A journalist asked me if I could explain to Madame Brossard from Brossard why I do not agree with the changes proposed by the Liberals. I would say this to Madame Brossard from Brossard: my role is to stand up for her when the government forgets about her. Today, the government wants to muzzle her because it does not want to hear what she has to say when she disagrees with the government. I am standing up for Madame Brossard from Brossard against the arrogance and absolute power of this government.That is what Madame Brossard from Brossard has to understand. In the heat of the moment at the press conference, I was unable to think of the right words. I was not sure how to respond to Madame Brossard. However, what Madame Brossard needs to know is that the official opposition, the second opposition party, and the independent members of this House all have a role to play in representing their constituents.When MPs are prevented from playing their role, when they are prevented from coming here to express themselves and share their constituents' thoughts, when they are prevented from voting, it is all the same thing. Those members are being prevented from playing their role properly. It is your duty, Mr. Speaker, to ensure that all of these rules are followed. I am very grateful that you agreed to allow us to discuss this question of privilege. The number of people who have spoken about it shows that this is a very sensitive issue and that you were right in allowing us to discuss it so that you could hear what all of our colleagues had to say. I am convinced that their comments will be very useful to you in the future.The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons turned a deaf ear. She never wanted to reassure us despite our repeated requests not to make any changes unilaterally. My colleague the House leader of the official opposition co-signed a letter with her colleague the leader of the second opposition party. They sent that letter to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons more than three weeks ago. We finally received a response this past weekend, or three weeks later. When two people are talking and they ask a question, but the answer arrives three weeks later, I do not call that a discussion. It would take quite some time if we had to wait three weeks for an answer every time we discussed something. I do not call that a discussion. I call that a dialogue of the deaf.Unfortunately, this answer came quite late. It is true that it came, but it was also released to all the media without allowing for a real discussion, without allowing the leaders to play their role, in other words to talk together to find a way to manage the situation. What about the mutual respect that we should have in this House? If this is transparency, if this is sunny ways, then we will seriously take a pass.The dictionary definition of arrogant is, “unduly appropriating authority or importance”. What better way to describe this government?In closing, the government needs to see reason. It needs to take measures to ensure that no member is ever prevented from doing their work. It needs to drop its idea of changing parliamentary procedural rules without the unanimous consent of the members of the House.

Mr. Speaker, in the House yesterday, the hon. Minister of Natural Resources said, first of all, that he disagrees with the decision to impose unfair and punitive tariffs on softwood lumber; second, that he has created a federal-provincial task force, and I want to emphasize this, to support the forestry industry; and third, that he supports forestry workers. That is all great. In that case, why is his government being so inconsistent and refusing what, first of all, Quebec, second, the forestry industy, and third, the forestry workers themselves are asking for in terms of support, that is, loan guarantees?

Mr. Speaker, I hope you will not object if I take a moment to give context to the comments of my hon. colleague from Winnipeg North. In the last Parliament, I proposed a motion to amend the Standing Orders and when that motion came before the House, it was voted on in a free vote. All members of the Liberal Party, with one exception, voted in favour of it. About two-thirds of Conservatives voted in favour of it, and about 20 NDP members voted in favour of it. The member's point is that we do not have unanimous consent and, therefore, it would be hypocritical for me to be advocating unanimous consent for changes to the Standing Orders, which was not the matter I was addressing. I was addressing abuses on the procedure and House affairs committee. However, let me deal with this.What happened was that proposal to change the Standing Orders went to the House, it was then sent to the procedure and House affairs committee. The procedure and House affairs committee made a unanimous recommendation that the matter be referred back to the House of Commons without a recommendation in favour of or against, and that all parties consider the possibility of engaging in a free vote on the matter, which was done. If we follow, there was all-party consent on this matter at committee, which is what I have been arguing all along. If the member goes back and examines the record, he will see that I have always said that we need all-party consent. In the context of the procedure and House affairs committee, that means unanimous consent. It does not mean I am trying to suggest that if we change things here, we should give any one member of Parliament the ability to stop the change from going forward. I am saying all-party consent, and that practice existed in the past. That was the practice, for example, in the committee I mentioned under the Chrétien government, where all party House leaders were members of a committee. It was the committee that had to approve changes, not a member of the House of Commons but every member of that committee, every party, in other words. That practice was followed with the changes that I proposed and that were eventually adopted with regard to the election of the Speaker. They are the practices that should be maintained for all future standing order changes.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by thanking the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are keeping the democratic reform dream alive. He has done exceptional work.We are here today to talk about unfettered access to the House for voting and also how the House operates. I want to go back to the orientation session that we all had about 18 months ago, when 200 of us were new members of Parliament. I was so excited in that orientation by the conversations I had with new members of Parliament from every party. We all said the same thing: that we were all here to work together collaboratively to make a better Canada. That is why we were here. During that orientation session, the Prime Minister made a cameo appearance and said that the role of the opposition is to make government better. I wrote that down, being a new member sitting in opposition. However, in order for that to happen, government has to listen to some of the things that the opposition has to offer. Then I took my seat in the House, as did all members. There are probably very few things as special as the first time we take our seats in the House and look around this building and think about the history that was made here, the traditions that came from the House, the fact that this is the home of democracy for Canada, the House of democracy, and that we need to set a shining example for how democracy is supposed to work for the rest of Canada. Certainly that was the expectation of the 107,589 constituents from Kootenay—Columbia who sent me here. It was to build Canada and to build democracy.Therefore, it is somewhat unfortunate that we end up having to talk about unfettered access to Parliament and the lack of democracy that appears to be becoming more and more evident in the House. Quite frankly, in terms of access to Parliament, the debate should continue until all members are heard and debate collapses, rather than ending through the imposition of closure, which we are facing today. What happened? I will go back to the situation that came up on March 22, 2017. The MPs from Milton and Beauce were prevented from getting to Centre Block to vote on the budget—which is a very important vote—because the RCMP stopped parliamentary buses from picking them up in order to allow an empty Prime Minister's motorcade to leave the Hill. After the vote, the MP for Milton got up on a question of privilege, and the Speaker later ruled that indeed her privileges had been breached. Debate began immediately on the question of privilege. Not too long after that the Liberals, in a move deemed unprecedented by the Speaker, used their majority to shut down debate. The Conservatives then got up on another question of privilege to argue that the Liberal move denied the MP for Milton the opportunity to have her question of privilege properly heard. The Speaker ruled in their favour, which of course leads to where we are today.We are keeping this debate going because we oppose what happened to the member and also oppose what is becoming a very heavy-handed approach by the Liberal government to changing the Standing Orders. Now they have given notice of closure on this current question of privilege, which highlights yet again an undemocratic approach to dealing with accountability in Parliament. I find this quite disappointing, but it is not my first disappointment in my 18 months here in the House. Motion No. 6 was introduced around May 17 of last year. It was almost a year ago today that we were dealing with Motion No. 6, which was brought forward by the Liberal government and attempted to set in place a temporary set of Standing Orders to control what the House was going to be doing for at least the next two months. It proposed that the House would not have an adjournment time on Monday to Thursday, when debates would continue; that there would be no automatic adjournment for summer; that only the government could move motions to adjourn the House or have debates; and that there would be no need to consult with the opposition about when to adjourn for summer. The government could do it at any time. This ended up being withdrawn by the Liberal government after what was a really dark day, quite frankly, here in the life of this Parliament, and after the Prime Minister apologized and the Liberal government withdrew Motion No. 6.Democratic reform was another disappointment. I really felt betrayed when it came to democratic reform. I went around my riding of Kootenay—Columbia, I visited 14 communities, and I started every discussion this way: we are not here to discuss if democratic reform is coming; we are here to talk about the preferred approach to democratic reform and proportional representation. Every discussion I started was that this was not a discussion of if we were moving to democratic reform or proportional representation; it was how we were going to get there. I and hundreds of thousands of Canadians were really disappointed to see democratic reform, which was one of the primary focuses of the Liberal campaign, all of a sudden disappear almost overnight.With Bill C-7, the RCMP are looking to have a collective voice across Canada. Bill C-7 came through the House over a year ago. It went to the Senate and came back to the Liberal government in June 2016, and we have heard nothing since then. The RCMP still does not have a national voice, which they very much need, to deal with a number of issues they have. The Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security recently decided it was not going to deal with Bill C-51. In my riding of Kootenay—Columbia that was one of the major election issues in 2015, and it contributed to my riding for the first time in 21 years no longer having a Conservative member of Parliament. That is how important this issue was. There were rallies held across my riding opposed to Bill C-51, and nothing has happened with that so far.Yesterday we saw what many who have spent much longer in Parliament than I considered a real disrespect to the leader of the NDP, who asked questions that were not answered by the Prime Minister, even though the Prime Minister was here in the room. That is a lack of respect for our leader.For the past few weeks, I have sat here and heard the Liberals claim that they just wanted to have a discussion on how Parliament works, and now they are unilaterally forcing through changes. These changes will not make Parliament better and do not have the unanimous consent of the House, which is tradition. It is really quite fair that Canadians are asking whether these are being imposed just to make life better for Liberals and the Prime Minister, and if not, then why not negotiate and get consensus from all parties in the House in terms of how we are going to work here in the House on behalf of our constituents? Any time a government becomes less accountable, it is the citizens who suffer.We are here in Canada's house of democracy, and I go back to where I started in terms of the orientation session when everyone I talked to from every party said they were here to work together collaboratively to make a better Canada in what truly should be a shining example for democracy. It has been quite disappointing to sit through the last seven days and see what has happened here in the House. I truly believe the Liberal government needs to do better going forward. We need to respect democracy. We need to work together collaboratively here in the House. I look forward hopefully to seeing that happen.

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister refuses to acknowledge the severity of this and the damage it has done. That, more than anything else, tells us where his priorities are, and they are not with the military. He pulled our fighter jets out of the fight against ISIS when our allies asked us to stay. He cut $12 billion in funding to the defence department. Now he is refusing to remove a defence minister who has twice misled Canadians about his role in a military mission.Does the Prime Minister understand that his first step in changing course from the damage that he is doing to the military is to remove the defence minister?

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to pick up where I left off before question period, in order to discuss this important question of privilege. I must digress a little first, however.In their responses today, the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Defence repeated the same talking points, regardless of the question. After hearing the Prime Minister give the same answers in the same way to every question he was asked, I have to wonder why this government wants to give the Prime Minister a full question period to answer the opposition's questions. I think he would be able to give identical answers to everything in three minutes and we would see right away that it would always be the same. To come back to my speech, we can all agree that as representatives, we are all entitled to the same parliamentary courtesies and privileges regardless of our political affiliation. Whether we are on the government benches, on the opposition, or independent MPs, we all have the right to the same consideration when it comes to accessing the House of Commons. Preventing a parliamentarian from exercising his or her right to vote, regardless of the reason, is unacceptable. The Liberal government was elected on promises of transparency. It referred to sunny ways. It also promised the following on page 29 of the Liberal platform: For Parliament to work best, its members must be free to do what they have been elected to do: represent their communities and hold the government to account. That is exactly what we are doing, and it is exactly what the Liberals are trying to do with the proposed changes to our rules, to our Standing Orders, our bylaws, and how our House operates. In light of what has gone on in the past few weeks, it is clear that this promise from the Liberal platform is unfortunately not one that the Liberals will keep, just like the promise they made to have only a small deficit.The deficit is currently quite enormous and the books will not be balanced before 2055. It is the Minister of Finance himself, not the opposition, who is saying this. If the opposition had not done its job and raised the issue, we would never have found out because the minister kept this tidbit of information to himself. He made it public a few days before Christmas and most Canadians would not have learned this important information. It is not surprising, coming from a political party that mastered the art of making promises during the election and doing the opposite once elected.The government says that it is honouring its promise to improve and modernize Parliament. On page 30 of the Liberals' platform, we read: “We will not resort to legislative tricks to avoid scrutiny.” That really takes the cake, because it is exactly what the Liberals did.First there was a discussion paper containing a threat regarding the adoption of a report before a certain date. If that is not a trick, I do not know what is. The Liberals realized that it did not work, so they backed down on their discussion paper and took away the committee's right to do its work. Then they brought the matter back to the House, where they have a majority and where they could be sure to have more control over the opposition members. The government had to back down because of a public outcry. The government now says that it is backing down and that it wants to go ahead with just what it promised during the election campaign. However, as I just clearly and explicitly demonstrated, not only is the government not keeping all of its promises, but it is cherry-picking the ones it wants to keep. That is a trick.It still wants to make changes without assuring us parliamentarians that it will not impose any changes without the unanimous consent of all parties of the House. This is a power grab. How else can we describe what this government wants to do?I would like to quote a few articles. I especially liked one that was in Le Devoir this morning and was entitled “Liberal Doublespeak”. I will not read the whole article, because that would take too long.However, there are certain passages that warrant our attention. The title of the article is “Liberal Doublespeak”. I will read a few passages. The parliamentary process has its faults, but that is the price we pay to keep tabs on our governments....In trying to escape that scrutiny, the Prime Minister's Liberals are only making things worse and casting some serious doubt on their promise to respect Parliament. Since March, work in the House of Commons has been slowed by the opposition's stalling tactics, brought about by an argument largely provoked by the government, its parliamentary leader, and their proposals to make changes to the rules of Parliament. Were it just a matter of making changes, there would be no problem, but the government insisted on a tight deadline and stubbornly refused to commit to not act unilaterally in the event of a stalemate.... The opposition is furious, and rightly so, because, according to the conventions of the House, consensus must prevail, promise or no promise. I think that is fairly clear. It is not the opposition that is saying it. Anyone who has seen what has been happening here over the past few weeks knows that the opposition is just doing its job. The opposition is defending the right to speak of Canadians who are represented by the MPs they duly elected. That is what we are doing, and the media is starting to pick up on it. Surprise. Now the Liberals are trying to take a small but strategic step backwards. Unfortunately, as we can see from the editorial in this morning's edition of Le Devoir, journalists and Canadians can see right through those tactics.The article goes on as follows: This backtracking is welcome, but the Leader of the Government is using it as a pretext to issue a warning. Did I understand the meaning of the new proposal correctly? The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons is giving us a warning. She wrote, “under the circumstances, the government will need to use time allocation more often in order to implement” its legislative agenda. One would think she was a Conservative minister. When the Liberals were on this side of the House, they sang a different tune. They promised sunny ways, a new way of doing things, and so, so much respect. Now it looks like they have opted to stick with the tradition of government acting in accordance with rules approved by consensus. That is what we did when we were in power. That is what they should keep doing if they want to restore respect and balance to the House.The editorial writer went on to say this: Nothing justifies this threat. After a year and a half in power, the government's legislative agenda is pretty thin. Even so, it has used time allocation to expedite the study of 11 bills. [The Liberals] say they want to consult and talk, but attacking the Conservatives, insisting on taking unilateral action, and threatening closure sends quite a different message to the other parties. The reason their legislative agenda is being obstructed, as it was last year, is that they are no better now than they were then at resisting the temptation to manoeuver in a bid to take greater control over Parliament. Their appetite for power not only hinders their ability to keep their promises, it is inconsistent with those promises. Those excerpts were from an editorial by Manon Cornellier in today's edition of Le Devoir.Mr. Speaker, I believe that if you seek it, you will find the unanimous consent of the members of the House for me to table this article so that everyone can read it.

Mr. Speaker, the Council of Canadian Academies uses a totally independent process when naming individuals to this panel.I found out at the same time as the public found out the names of the individuals. Individuals are named to the panel to debate the evidence before them and not to debate their personal views. While each panellist may approach the topic from a particular standpoint, the entire panel comes together to assess the evidence.The panel has 43 people on it, who undoubtedly have varying personal views. We expect them to work with diligence and to examine the evidence appropriately.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal House leader claims she is having discussions with all MPs about substantive changes to our democracy. What she is actually doing is ramming through a motion to make the Liberals less accountable to Canadians.The Liberal member for Malpeque thinks there should be all-party consensus. Even the Liberal platform itself says so: We will look at...ways to make Question Period more relevant...and will work with all parties to recommend and bring about these changes. Did she actually read their platform, or is she taking communications lessons from the defence minister?

Mr. Speaker, we have asked many times for an explanation of the bizarre double ambassadorial appointments of Stéphane Dion after he was shuffled out of cabinet, appointments publicly ridiculed by former Canadian diplomats, as well as more quietly among current foreign affairs professionals, and which did offend the EU.Today Mr. Dion finally came clean before the foreign affairs committee. His bizarre twofer appointment, he said, was the Prime Minister's decision and the PM's alone.Will the Prime Minister finally take responsibility for his spectacularly bad decision?

Mr. Speaker, a meaningful apology must be followed by changed behaviour, transparency, and accountability, and that is just not what we are getting from the minister.The defence minister told the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner that he knew nothing about the transfer of Afghan detainees to face torture. However, both he and his supervisor in Afghanistan have said that he played a key role in intelligence liaison with local Afghan forces. Can the Minister of National Defence tell us how he can simultaneously have known nothing about prisoner transfers to local Afghan authorities and at the same time have been Canada's key liaison person with these same forces?

Mr. Speaker, I am very glad indeed to participate in this debate. I want to address the problem that faces us as we decide on this matter of privilege to face the fact that we are going to be sending this question of privilege to a committee which has itself largely broken down. It is a committee in which the spirit has been adopted by the current government of running roughshod over the traditional rights and privileges of the opposition. These are privileges that are the practical basis on which the opposition can carry out its job of ensuring proper scrutiny of what the government does, ensuring that government business can be slowed down and examined at sufficient length so that if there is a problem with it, it can then be brought to the attention of the Canadian public. This would allow the Canadian public to then say they expect changes, thereby pressuring the government, which after all wants to win the next election, into respecting the wishes of the people and changing its policy. That is what the opposition does under our system. It is what the opposition has always done under our system. It is a good way of organizing things. That is why these rules have evolved over time, over centuries. It is why they have been maintained over the decades of the past century. It is why we have, among other things, concluded as a parliamentary community that we ought not to change the Standing Orders without the consent of all parties. That, of course, is the approach that all the opposition parties want to take right now. It is the approach that was taken under the Harper government and under the Chrétien government. There have been very few occasions on which changes to the Standing Orders have been pushed through without the consent of the opposition, and that is a very good thing. Those changes that have been pushed through without consent are almost invariably, but they are invariably, changes that have had the effect of stripping the opposition of its ability to do its job on behalf of Canadians, and therefore of destroying, in part, the constitutional apparatus. When I say constitutional I mean that in the traditional British sense of how we conduct legislation in a Westminster system in Canada. The practices on the committee that have veered so far from what is acceptable need to be enumerated here, and I propose to do that today. At the committee on March 21, a motion was introduced at an in camera session, and in all fairness, it was a session that started off in camera and then went public. A Liberal member of Parliament proposed that all changes to the Standing Orders would be implemented and a report submitted to the House of Commons by June 2. This was effectively a way of ensuring that a single report containing all the necessary provisions, everything the Liberals wanted, would be produced. There could be a dissenting report, I guess, but there would be no option of trying to place limits on what gets agreed to by saying that no, the opposition does not support this or that particular change to the Standing Orders, including ones that had never been contemplated in the Liberal election platform or discussed with the Canadian public. All of these could be pushed through at the government's discretion. Lest anyone suffer from the illusion that we had any idea of which policy option would be preferred, we have a government discussion paper which includes a whole range of topics, some of which contradict each other. We would either sit on Fridays and make them full days or not sit on any Fridays. Numerous other options were put out there which could not be compatible with each other. New items could be added in and the government would not indicate it. At no point between that day and this day would the Liberals ever indicate which of these items were the ones that were their bottom line, so we never knew. We had no security at all. We were told to have a discussion and the Liberals would not provide us with any details; we would get to find out once we had consented to allow them to move forward with the motion. Of course, we opposed that.I proposed an amendment to this motion in that committee which said that we would still maintain the June 2 deadline, but we would only have such changes to the Standing Orders as had the unanimous consent of all members of that committee. This followed the practice established in the past and actually spelled out in the House orders during the last Parliament in which Jean Chrétien was our prime minister. That is what we proposed. For the intervening period between March 21 and today, that is all we discussed, endlessly.The first big surprise and the first deviation from appropriate practices came immediately after I proposed that amendment. This would have been on March 21 at the end of the normally scheduled meeting. We started the meeting at 11 a.m., as the procedure and House affairs committee always does. We were getting close to one o'clock, which is our normal time for adjournment. I proposed my amendment, expecting that we would come back if we stayed on this topic and deal with it at our next meeting, which would have taken place two days later, on March 23, but the chair at the appointed time for adjournment said, effectively—I do not have his exact words in front of me, but they are in the committee Hansard—that we were not going to adjourn because the chair may not adjourn without the consent of the majority of committee members; it is not in the power of the chair to adjourn, and the Liberal members indicated they did not want to adjourn. The purpose of this quite clearly was to keep the debate going until the opposition ran out of steam and then the government would simply push through its motion in that committee and that would result in the Standing Orders being unilaterally changed in a way that could not be controlled or modified in any way by the opposition in that committee.At that time, I argued that the chair was misinterpreting the practices of the House. There is no standing order that says the chair cannot adjourn the committee without the expressed consent of the majority of the committee at the time when the committee normally adjourns. However, the chair argued back that no, he cannot adjourn. He went on at some length that he could not do this, and so in the end we had no choice. We could hardly stand up and walk out of the committee. That would result in the Liberals getting what they wanted, and subverting all of our rules, all of our protections, so we had no choice but to talk and talk. We started a filibuster, which has become the longest filibuster, to the best of my knowledge, in the history of this country. Until it was adjourned this morning, in that committee it was still March 21. Instead of being adjourned, the meetings would be suspended, and we would come back sometimes after a break of a day or two days and on one occasion most recently after a break of two weeks, but always to the fiction that it was still March 21. It is one thing for us all to see the clock as a certain time in order to wrap up the proceedings of a committee or of the House early, or to do the opposite and see the clock as being a little earlier than it actually is to allow the committee to go on a bit longer. I used to do this all the time when I chaired the Subcommittee on International Human Rights. I would say to the committee members, and members can examine the committee Hansard to see this, “I see the clock as not yet being 2 p.m.” When we looked at the clock it was clearly 2 p.m., which was when we adjourned, but as long as no other member disagreed, that allowed us to maintain the official fiction that it was prior to 2 p.m., so that we could continue hearing witness testimony. We would hear heartbreaking stories about people who had been tortured and murdered in other countries. It was our job to listen to this testimony and then make use of it in preparing our reports. I always sought the consent of the committee in that matter, but I understood that a meeting ends at the time it is scheduled to end. The chair took a different position. Then today he came to our meeting. We met at 9:02 a.m. The chair said, “It being 9:02 on May 5”, not maintaining this fiction that it is March 21, “good morning. Welcome back to the 55th meeting of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. This meeting is being televised. Prior to our suspension on April 13, the committee was debating” the member for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston's “amendment to [the] motion. Also, I'll bring to your attention the two excellent papers we asked for, done by our researcher, one on the standing orders in Quebec's National Assembly dealing with omnibus bills, and the other one on the historical contents of budget implementation bills.”Referring to the debate that is happening right now, he said, “It is my understanding that all parties have signalled their intention to support the subamendment and amendment on the question of privilege currently being debated in the House. As members know, when this question comes to a vote it means that ultimately this committee will be seized with the matter of access of members to the parliamentary precinct. Given this information, I'm happy to say that this 55th meeting finally stands adjourned.”He then gavelled us out.There are two problems with this procedurally. This is the same chair who said that a meeting cannot be adjourned without the consent of the members of the committee. Now he said that he was adjourning it. He made no effort to even look up from his papers. He adjourned the meeting of the committee without the consent of the members. Unlike the previous occasion, when we actually had arrived at the pre-scheduled end time of the meeting, this was in the middle of the meeting. This was clearly in violation of the traditional practice in this House that the chair cannot adjourn a meeting. It is not a standing order. It is a practice to ensure that chairs cannot adjourn meetings in the middle of a meeting, in the middle of a proceeding, to prevent some item of business from being dealt with or to prevent discussion. Our name is Parliament. Parlement. Medieval French is where this came from. It is a place to speak. Our default setting is to be able to continue debate, and he shut that down in a way that violated the practice of this place, as stated on page 1087 of O'Brien and Bosc: The committee Chair cannot adjourn the meeting without the consent of a majority of the members, unless the Chair decides that a case of disorder or misconduct is so serious as to prevent the committee from continuing its work. That is something that would only occur in the middle of a meeting, not when we have arrived at the end and are past our time. The chair has violated this rule twice. Once was by misusing it to justify keeping a meeting going indefinitely. That particular meeting started at 11 a.m. and concluded at 3 a.m. and then was picked up after a suspension the next day and the next. The second was by actually overtly and egregiously adjourning the meeting a minute into a meeting that was expected to be several hours long, and, I might add, in the midst of me attempting to raise a point of order on this very point. I stated, “point of order.” He heard me and chose to ignore me. That was an egregious, deliberate, and overt abuse not of the practices but of the Standing Orders. This is the committee to which we propose to send items of privilege, a committee chaired by someone willing to violate the practices and the Standing Orders of this place.That is one problem. Let me talk about something else that was wrong in the way this was done. It was with respect to the suspension of the committee. What the chair did at the end of the first meeting, the first sitting of this committee, which started on March 21 at 11 a.m. and carried on until 3 a.m. the next morning, was suspend, suddenly and without warning, and we came back the next day, I believe at noon. After that, the tendency was to suspend at midnight and come back later on. Let me give members an idea of just what I am talking about. They will see the importance of this in a second. We started on March 21 at 11:05 a.m. There were a number of brief suspensions for votes during the day. We then suspended at 3 a.m. There is an oddity here. It says we suspended on March 21 officially, but it was really March 22, until noon the next day. On March 22, we then suspended until March 23 at 10:30 a.m. We then suspended and recommenced on March 24 and then again on March 25. On March 25, there was a suspension during a break week. We suspended on March 25 at 11 a.m., and we returned on April 3 at noon. We suspended on April 3, coming back on April 5. We suspended on April 5 and came back on April 6. On April 6, we suspended and came back on April 7. On April 7, we suspended and came back on April 11. On April 11, we suspended and came back on April 12. On April 12, we suspended until April 13. On April 13, we suspended and came back on May 2, today, and we had this adjournment.I want to talk about what O'Brien and Bosc say about suspensions. They say: Committees frequently suspend their meetings for various reasons, with the intention to resume later in the day. Suspensions may last a few seconds, or several hours, depending on the circumstances, and a meeting may be suspended more than once. So far, so good: The committee Chair must clearly announce the suspension, so that transcription ceases until the meeting resumes. Meetings are suspended, for example, to change from public to in camera mode, or the reverse, to enable witnesses to be seated or to hear witnesses by video conference, to put an end to disorder, to resolve a problem with the simultaneous interpretation system, or to move from one item on the agenda to the next. It also notes: Speaker Milliken expressed reservations about the power of a committee to suspend proceedings to the next day.... This is not something that is an approved practice. I then looked up Speaker Milliken's ruling, delivered on June 3, 2003. He stated that it was inappropriate. It was not a breach of the rules or the Standing Orders but a breach of precedence for the chair of the Standing Committee on Transportation to suspend a meeting on May 28 and resume it on May 29. He said: Your Speaker is...somewhat troubled by the notion of an overnight suspension of proceedings. As hon. members know, if the Speaker's attention is drawn to a lack of quorum and no quorum is found, the House must adjourn forthwith. While it may be argued that no such obligation exists for committees, I would not consider the unorthodox actions of the transport committee in this particular instance to be a precedent in committee practice. This is a quorum issue that caused them to suspend. In other words, their suspension to be back the next day was not a precedent that says that this is acceptable. This is not an acceptable practice, and that was a situation in which a committee suspended once for 24 hours.Here is a situation where the committee suspended 10 times for breaks ranging from 24 hours to two weeks. This was not a suspension. This was adjournment and reconvening of the committee. To this chair's credit, when I asked him, he started to let us know what the next time we would be coming back would be, and he started to let us know when our next suspension would be so we could at least plan.However, initially, in this particular situation, the government members apparently knew when the suspension would be, but the rest of us, who had to keep the debate going, were hamstrung. These are all examples of an absolutely egregious abuse of the way in which this place works.I intend, now that I have seen how these particular practices have been abused, to come back with proposals to change the Standing Orders to make sure that suspensions are used as suspensions, not as adjournments, and to make sure that the rule, the practice on adjournment, is actually put down as a Standing Order. We cannot adjourn a meeting as the chair in the middle of a meeting, but at the end of a meeting, we cannot keep the meeting going unless we have the consent of the majority of the committee. Hopefully that will remove some of the abuses that have gone on in this committee.Let me just say this. There is a pattern here, not just in this committee but in the government, of absolutely having no regard for the traditional way we have done things. This is a majority government. It has enormous power. The powers of a Canadian prime minister far exceed those of an American president, far exceed them, domestically speaking, but they are not the powers of a dictator. The rules that keep them from being the powers of a dictator are the ones that are incorporated in our Standing Orders and in the respect we all have, until recently all had, for the practices of this place. These are slender threads that preserve our liberties, but they are vital. We should not sweep them aside, and I encourage all members to take great caution not to allow this practice on this committee to become the practice of the House or of the committees in the future.

Mr. Speaker, Ubique Quo Fas et Gloria Ducunt. “Whither right and glory lead” is the motto of the 6th Field Artillery Regiment, where I had the honour of completing my formal military service. Non-commissioned members like myself follow orders not because we fear officers, but because these orders ensure the protection of the federation and the honour of our homeland.The Minister of National Defence has breached that trust. Since his moral authority is gone, will he do the right thing and step down?

Mr. Speaker, last year the health and justice ministers commissioned the Council of Canadian Academies to conduct independent studies on the eligibility criteria under the new law on medical assistance in dying.Dr. Harvey Schipper is a vocal opponent of that law, yet he has now been made chair of a committee under it. This raises serious doubts about the impartiality of the entire process. How can Canadians have any confidence that the working group will examine the issue fairly, when its chair opposes medical assistance in dying?

Mr. Speaker, again I go back to the fact that I came here, as did all members, at least initially, to work together collaboratively to make a better Canada here in what should be a shining example for democracy.We have strayed way off track from that over the last little while. We need to get back to working together collaboratively. We need to get back to making sure that this House is a shining example for democracy in Canada. That means that before the government changes the rules in the House, it is done collaboratively and through consensus. That is how we move democracy forward.

Mr. Speaker, I am having a hard time understanding why the Liberals have been asking us all day why we do not just send this to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs as quickly as possible. Now, it is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance who is asking us that question. Earlier, it was the member for Winnipeg North. We are in this situation because the Liberals refused to do just that when this issue was raised in the House the first time. The question of privilege was simply swept under the rug. The Liberals killed it. They did not want to hear about it. At that time, some Liberal members even gave speeches about why the matter did not need to be sent to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. That is why they killed the debate. I am therefore wondering why they are asking us this question today. We are in this situation because they refused to send this matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs when it was first raised.I do not understand the Liberals' definition of filibustering. Members are in the House to debate issues. Why should members who want to speak be prevented from doing so? That is not what I would call filibustering. Members rise on behalf of their constituents and speak in the House. Whether there are 39 or 49 members, they are rising because they want to speak and share their opinions on this issue.Does the member agree with the definition of filibustering used by the Liberals, who believe that if many members want to speak about an issue, this automatically constitutes filibustering and we are trying to delay the whole process?

Mr. Speaker, criticism was swift and consistent in response to the dual appointments of Stéphane Dion as ambassador to both the European Union and Germany. Each is a crucial and critical portfolio to manage. Now the European Union has rejected Stéphane Dion as ambassador.Can the Prime Minister explain why he would insult two of our strongest and closest allies by suggesting that Canada's relationship with each of them is a part-time job?

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin this debate by reading from one of our national newspapers some words of Chantal Hébert: [The Prime Minister] does not much like the House of Commons and the feeling is mutual....[The Prime Minister] rarely engages with the opposition in a meaningful way. For the most part he speaks past his critics’ arguments. The attentive hearing he affords those who challenge him in town halls does not extend to opposition parliamentarians. When not on his feet, [the Prime Minister] can be the picture of adolescent boredom....All of which brings one to the wide-ranging House reforms the Liberals have recently brought forward under the guise of what they call a discussion paper. For the four opposition parties the proposals add up to a heavy-handed bid to erode their already limited capacity to hold a majority government to account. This resonated with me and it resonated with my very Liberal father, who was embarrassed to see a journalist he admired speaking in such a way of the party he used to support.The reason we are in this debate today is that on March 22, two members of Parliament were blocked from accessing the House of Commons by the Prime Minister's motorcade. That is quite an emblem, the privilege of being in the Prime Minister's limousine blocking those of use who come to work using the parliamentary public transit. These members of Parliament were unable to fulfill their principal role as parliamentarians, which was to come to the House to represent their constituents in a vote of this Parliament.When the member for Milton raised this question of privilege in the House, the government made the decision to end debate, to shut it down, and the Speaker of the House ruled this decision to be “unprecedented”. The Speaker of the House ruled that no other government, Liberal or Conservative, had gone so far as to end debate in this fashion on a reasonable question of privilege.The actions of the government members on March 22 to me speak volumes about their level of disrespect for members of Parliament and for the work we do in Parliament. By shutting down debate in the way they did, the government acted in blatant disregard for the way some members were treated, that they were prevented from getting here by the physical transportation logistics outside, and that then the government did not want to debate the fact that they were unable to do the very thing they were elected to do in the House.The government's so-called modernization of the House has proved to be much more of a power consolidation process, drastically reducing the resources available to the opposition to hold it to account. I am very much reminded of the Prime Minister's invitation and welcome to new parliamentarians, and 215 of us in the House are new parliamentarians. My colleague, the member of Parliament for Kootenay—Columbia, reminded us of that invitation, that reminder from the Prime Minister to new parliamentarians that the opposition's job was to hold the government to account. For the government to now have tried, I believe, three times to remove those tools from the opposition is in stark contrast to the Prime Minister's sunny ways message to us just a year and a half ago.I am afraid these government actions set precedent, whether they are refusing to allow debate on a question of privilege or whether the government is unilaterally pushing through changes to the Standing Orders, thereby changing the very process for establishing these rules. This long-standing convention of securing all-party approval before overhauling the Standing Orders of the House of Commons must be preserved. That all-party consensus is the tradition that includes Harper and Chrétien.Consensus is something we have talked about quite a bit in the House on other matters, and it is confusing for all of us. The government says that consensus is not needed to change the House rules, although that has been the parliamentary tradition. The government says, though, that consensus was needed in order to change the voting system, although the promise the Liberals made to Canadians was to make every vote count, which in every case is interpreted as proportional representation, if we follow Fair Vote and some of the other NGOs that have been holding this light up for so long to bring democratic reform to Canadians.There was nothing in the Liberal platform that said we needed a consensus of parliamentarians. This was a solemn promise, repeated more than 1,000 times, apparently, by the Prime Minister to change the voting system. However, once he got here and did not like the way the committee recommendation was going and the consensus of Canadians, he said we needed consensus in this House.We do not need consensus to change the Standing Rules of the House, but we did need consensus to change the voting system.Then consensus was, again, not needed when it came to approving the Kinder Morgan pipeline and its associated oil tanker traffic. The government's campaign platform was that the pipeline approval would not be forced through without revamping and redoing the regulatory process that had been so undermined by the Harper Conservative government. That was a solemn promise again, with hand on heart, that they would change the regulatory review process before pushing through the pipeline, but then, in the end, consensus was not needed, although we will find virtually every coastal community, especially around the hub of transportation, having opposed the pipeline; municipal government bodies like the Union of BC Municipalities, and a significant number of first nations opposed the pipeline approval, particularly in my area, coastal British Columbia, where our $8-billion maritime marine industry is threatened by the potential of an oil spill.Again, no consensus was needed there, and that very much feels like a broken promise, I must say. Women rely on public transit, such as buses, to get to and from work. If they do not have access to that public transit, their employment is put in jeopardy. Not only that, but tragedies like the Highway of Tears show that women's safety is put at risk when they do not have access to proper transportation. We are hearing about this right now at the status of women committee. Jane Stinson, who is a research associate with the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, said: If you think about it, it's particularly people who have lower incomes who use public transit, because they can't afford their own cars. Women have lower incomes, so it's not surprising.... [Public transportation] is a big issue, for some of the reasons that you mentioned.... ...the absence of public transit in northern communities is a major problem. It puts women at risk, as you mentioned. The Highway of Tears is perhaps the most shocking example, but I'm sure it's not alone; it's just better known. In lots of cases in the north women have to hitchhike, as do others, to get around. In urban locations, our research in Ottawa showed that it was very serious. It was accessibility, and that meant cost—the cost was too high for people—and also lack of schedules, and sometimes where the routes went. Again, there's a responsibility with the federal government, even in local transportation. It's a question of transfers. We also heard testimony from United Steelworkers. Meg Gingrich said: We call on the government to invest in social infrastructure, such as affordable housing and public transportation, and...for procurement provisions and policies that meet gender and equity standards with clear enforcement mechanisms and that do not simply continue occupational segregation. I am hearing this in my own riding, as well. Lack of public transit, again and again, is a barrier to women accepting jobs and being able to carry out their responsibilities.Disappointments about implementation of such promises are epitomized by the government's current approach. Sunny ways and hope and hard work seem to be election promises that have now been abandoned. We have had time allocation imposed in the midst of very emotional, vital debates, such as physician-assisted dying. Three times, I was ready to give my speech, trying to convey constituent concerns. Three times, I was unable to deliver it. I never could stand to debate that vital issue for Canada because of time allocation imposed by the government. Motion No. 6 last year seemed designed to neuter the opposition, and so did the so-called discussion paper that we have been debating these last few weeks.Again, it is so out of step with the promise of the present government. I ask the government, in every way, to return to being co-operative, collegial, recognizing it can use its majority, recognizing the opposition has a job to do as well.

Mr. Speaker, I do not hear much sincerity from the defence minister today and no apology for his remarks and exaggerations. The military's feelings toward our defence minister have gone from disappointment to outrage. Former air force commander General Bill Carr wrote that our defence minister's image is “at best, one of an insecure veteran in a field he professes to know. For the good of the Canadian Forces, his departure would be a relief. He has no alternative but to step down.”Does the defence minister have any honour, integrity, or humility left? Will he do the honourable thing and step down?

Mr. Speaker, the real question Canadians have is how we got to this point in the House, and how the Liberals put us in this situation where we are sitting today.The Liberals put us in this situation by shutting down debate prior to sending the issue to PROC. You tried to shut down debate last time prior to sending it to PROC, and the Speaker overruled what you wanted to do. Now we are facing that same situation, where once again you are shutting down debate on a really important question of unfettered access to Parliament.That is the real question Canadians want an answer to. Why has the Liberal government put this House in that position?

Mr. Speaker, the government could start by respecting the ability and right of hon. members to debate this question of privilege by backing down on trying to shut down debate. A second thing the government could do is respect the fact that before it changes the rules of the House, in order to do so, there must be consensus. That has been the tradition. I know the government House leader has backed down somewhat on the government's intent to change the Standing Orders, but she has not committed to doing so on the basis of consensus. That would be a second major thing the government could do to show it finally does have respect for this place and for members of Parliament. However, I do not have a lot of confidence in the government when it comes to doing that. We see no indication that it is prepared to do that. For the government, it really comes down to how far it can go and get away with it. We saw that last spring when the government introduced Motion No. 6 to literally try to take away every tool that was available to opposition members to do their jobs to hold the government to account. It only backed down after that unfortunate incident involving the Prime Minister. Then we saw the government try to prevent a vote in the House on the ability of members to defend the privileges of members. The government was stopped as a result of my hon. colleague, the member for Perth—Wellington, raising a new question of privilege and the Speaker ruling on it. Now we see that the government has sort of backed down on changes to the Standing Orders, but only partly. It would not surprise me, given the arrogance and attitude of the government, that before much longer we will see another effort to try to do what it has not been able to get away with yet. Canadians should be very concerned.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for accurately portraying our position. We are working with all those across the country who have an interest in this file. Together we are focusing in on the short-term realities of the possibility of layoffs and job losses in Quebec and elsewhere. We are talking about transition in the industry. We are talking about the expansion of export markets. We are taking it seriously, across the country, to do whatever we possibly can to soften the blow of these punitive and unwelcome tariffs.

It is the obvious analogy, Mr. Speaker. There is one distinction between the electoral reform promise that the government gave and the promise it gave here, which is that the electoral reform promise was dramatic in terms of timing. The promise was that this would be the last first-past-the-post election. It was not clear what the government was going to replace it with. When we proposed on the electoral reform committee to give the government free rein to choose any system that it saw fit as long as it then introduced that system to the Canadian public in a referendum vote and as long as that system was five or less on the Gallagher index, which means highly proportional, it was at that point that the Prime Minister fessed up and said he was only ever willing to consider preferential voting. That was good to learn. It would have been nice to have known that in 2015. I suspect that a number of ridings might have gone NDP but for the fact that some of their swing voters went Liberal. We might now have NDP members there had this promise been clarified at that time, as opposed to after the fact.The member asked if the ship can be turned around. I would suggest that the House is doing the work of turning it around. On the electoral reform issue, it is unfortunate that the whole shebang ground to a halt. Should it arise in the future, the nature of that debate will be very different as a result of the clarification that we collectively brought to that discussion.Here too we see that a number of the items that were on the Liberal agenda, such as programming motions, which was the most devastatingly bad of all the ideas the Liberals had, are off the agenda. Here the idea was essentially to do what they were going to do on procedure and House affairs, which is shut down debate and make it impossible to move forward, but we have now come to a resolution. I think those are off the agenda. The governmentt House leader said in her letter that they are off the agenda, and on this one I take her at her word. That is progress, but it is unfortunate that we have to achieve progress in this way. However, that is the idea of the Westminster system. The government's feet are actually held to the fire. It is not a very pleasant process for the government and it may not be a pretty process from the point of view of the Canadian public, but I am not sure we are after a system that is pretty. We are after a system that in the long run delivers incrementally better and better government, and on this matter, despite other philosophical differences between me and my colleague, we are 100% in accord.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence has a huge credibility problem and every time he stands up, he digs himself deeper into the credibility hole. He is tarnishing the reputation of the Prime Minister. He is tarnishing the reputation of the government abroad. Worse, he is tarnishing the reputation of our military. Nobody questions this man's honour and what he did when he served this country in the military. We are questioning his judgment and his honour today. Will he do the right thing for our men and women in uniform and step aside?

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the speech by my colleague and friend from Mégantic—L'Érable. He spoke for about twenty minutes, but I heard him say little about the actual subject, which is the lack of access to the House of Commons in order to vote. This is a very important matter that we must consider, a problem that we must solve. This happens in almost every Parliament.I would like to know whether my colleague wishes to send this matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs as quickly as possible to study this problem in order to find a solution and ensure that it never happens again. Or does he want to continue speaking in this place for a very long time and prevent us from working on solving the problem?

Mr. Speaker, we have a better chance of getting an answer from you.The minister of defence unduly took credit for the success of an important mission in Afghanistan. He broke the cardinal rule of showing respect for his fellow soldiers. It is a serious disservice to his rank, his role, and especially his fellow soldiers. I have a simple question: was the Minister of National Defence the architect of Operation Medusa or not?

Mr. Speaker, it seems as though Liberal promises are hard to keep, even within the party. To thank Stéphane Dion for his years of service, or perhaps it was to push him aside and free up a seat in Montreal, the Prime Minister appointed him ambassador to Germany and ambassador to the European Union. However, in a dramatic turn of events, the European Union refused to play along with the Prime Minister.Can the Prime Minister now tell us why the European Union refused his appointment? Why did it insist that he be a special envoy rather than an ambassador?

Mr. Speaker, the answer is in the question.The fact that this type of question even needs to be asked in the House shows that there is a problem. We have noticed that there is a problem that affects every member on this side of the House. This problem also exists for the members across the way, but it especially affects the backbench Liberal MPs who are also getting tired of this procedural wrangling. There is a simple solution. All the government has to do is get rid of the threat hanging over the opposition that our rules are going to be changed without consensus or unanimous consent, and then everything will be just fine.

Mr. Speaker, when they were in opposition, the Liberals called for a public inquiry into the shameful Afghan detainee scandal. Why did the Prime Minister tell his defence minister to block just such an inquiry?

Mr. Speaker, I think the Prime Minister missed the question.The defence minister is on record as saying that it was the Prime Minister's Office that decided there would be no inquiry. We are asking the Prime Minister to explain now why there will be no inquiry into the shameful Afghan detainee scandal. He was in favour of it in opposition. Why did he tell his minister to block it now? That is the question. Why does he want to block an inquiry into the Afghan detainee scandal?

Mr. Speaker, next, the PBO plays a crucial role in holding a government to account, and that is what the Liberals used to believe when the Conservatives were in power. If the Prime Minister's changes had occurred under the last government, we would not have known about the F-35 costs, for example.The Prime Minister said that the PBO must be “truly independent”, so the question is, why is he muzzling it?Why is the Prime Minister attacking the parliamentary budget officer?

Mr. Speaker, as I said, this group was asked to find individuals to do this work.They have chosen 43 individuals. These are esteemed academics. They were chosen by an independent process by the Council of Canadian Academies. They did so in order to examine these issues, and we expect them to do so with the utmost integrity.

Mr. Speaker, when the member himself changed the Standing Orders for the election of the Speaker, for which we used to have a runoff ballot, he brought in a ranked ballot system. Forty per cent of the members of the House actually opposed that. Why the double standard? Why did the member not seek unanimous consent when he wanted to change the rules?

It just came to me.

Mr. Speaker, I had in mind a longer question, but given your injunction, I am wondering if the hon. member for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston has had any opportunity to look at the proposals I have made for changing our standing rules and if he sees merit in any of them.

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader stated numerous times today that the opposition is being irresponsible in wanting to continue debate on the question of privilege. I want to get the member's comments on that.

Mr. Speaker, my question has to do with my colleague's speech.Does he know what drove the Liberals' 180 on this issue? They first time the question of privilege came up, they totally shut down debate instead of taking the stance that a committee should look at the issue, which is what they are saying now. After a few hours, they decided that was enough, they did not want to hear another word about it, and they would not send it to committee. Now they are telling us this issue has to go to committee as quickly as possible and the debate has to end.Can the member tell me why the Liberals reversed their stance on referring this issue to committee? The first time we talked about this, they said it was out of the question and shut down debate. Now they are saying we need to expedite things and send the question to committee immediately.

Mr. Speaker, in response to the question, or perhaps statement, of the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, I am a little taken aback that he would have the audacity to talk about this question of privilege going to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. That is precisely what the government tried to prevent from happening. The government tried to shut down an opportunity for the committee on procedure and House affairs to get to the bottom of this issue.It is the government that tried to do so. The only reason it backed down, although it never really did back down, was the hon. member for Perth—Wellington stood and said that it did not have a right to do it, and the Speaker agreed with him.We are going to continue to fight against the effort on the part of the government to roll back the rights and privileges of hon. members. It is unbelievable the member would talk about the procedure and House affairs committee, because it was exactly that, as I said, the government tried to prevent from getting to the bottom of this issue.

Mr. Speaker, it is such a remarkable moment to hear the Liberals talk about taking too much time to respect Parliament. That is a bit of a contradiction of things as Liberals are going through the process of disrespecting Parliament, as Liberals are going through the process of saying they want to change the rules that guide all parliamentary debates, that they want to change the rules by forcing bills to only have a certain amount of time for debate at their discretion and nobody else's, to not even have a vote on it, and that it should be built into all legislation so that they can curtail Parliament and shut down discussions so there will be less scrutiny over what it is they are doing. They want to be able to stand and say that omnibus bills are bad in a campaign and the Prime Minister says that he will not use them, which, by the way, is a quote, and then the government introduces an omnibus bill that does exactly what the Prime Minister said he would not do.Governments need to be held to account. Governments from time to time, as shocking as this might be for some of my Liberal colleagues to hear, need to be corrected and their power needs to be checked. The last I checked, in the last election, less than 40% of voting Canadians voted for that party. That means there is a majority of Canadians who did not. That means their voices need to be heard and their opinions need to be respected. That is the job of the opposition and that is what we will continue to do, despite these trickeries by the government.

Mr. Speaker, how does the minister explain making what he calls a mistake? Standing in this House and saying he owns a mistake without any explanation as to why he made it is not contrition; it is deflection. No one disputes the minister's service, but why did he feel justified in so blatantly exaggerating his record? Our troops need a minister who has their back, not someone so eager to pat himself on his. Will the minister stop with the Prime Minister's talking points and explain to Canadians why he fabricated the story?

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister keeps telling us that Canadians expect people to apologize when they have made a mistake, but actually, Canadians also expect people to do the right thing when they have done something wrong. The right thing for the minister to do is step aside. On two occasions, he made a political calculation that, by exaggerating his military resumé, somehow this would get him further ahead in politics. That might be something that he did as a Liberal politician, but it is wrong for a minister who represents our men and women in uniform.Will the Prime Minister do the right thing and move him away from the defence portfolio?

Mr. Speaker, we were here today because of the issue of unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct. This is not the first time. In fact, in recent years I have had to deal with it at the procedures and House affairs committee. Prior to going to PROC, it justifies a few hours of debate; then there is a vote, and it goes to committee.Now, on the other hand, there is a hidden agenda coming from the Conservative Party on this issue. The member actually made reference to it, and I applaud him for doing so, but other members of the Conservative Party have also made reference to it, and for them, it is all about filibustering. They are filibustering on a matter of privilege, the issue of access, which every member of the House takes very seriously, with the exception, it would appear, of some from the Conservative benches, who want to manipulate this issue in a very irresponsible fashion. That is what we see when opposition members admit this is a filibuster. They are debating it today because they want to have a filibuster on the very important issue of unfettered access. I know the constituents I represent would like to see a modernized Parliament. They would like to ensure that all members have unfettered access to the chamber. I believe they would be disappointed in the irresponsible behaviour of the Conservatives, because there is a responsibility for the official opposition to also be responsible inside the House. Today we have not witnessed responsible opposition.

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Over the 11-plus years I have been in this House, I have witnessed all kinds of heckling from all corners of the House, and depending on the subject, some with more volume and some with less. I would hazard to say that if everyone looked in the mirror, members would see that they are guilty on a continuum in some way, shape, or form. Certainly one of the people who has been the least guilty of that has been the member for Thornhill. In fact, the only thing I can remember is that the member for Thornhill was the victim of one of the most egregious heckles, calling him a piece of waste, from the other side of the chamber. Therefore, I would ask you to maybe reassess that judgment with respect to taking a question from the fine member for Thornhill.

Mr. Speaker, no one has questioned the bravery of the Minister of National Defence when he was a soldier, but there are two documented cases of the Minister of National Defence taking credit for the hard work and bravery of others, vastly exaggerating his role in a military operation. This is a serious issue and it has deeply offended those who were actually on the battlefield. He said these things as far back as 2015 when he was campaigning as a Liberal candidate in the last election.My question for the Prime Minister is this. Did he know, was he aware, about these fabrications before he appointed the Minister of National Defence?

Mr. Speaker, in fact what the Ethics Commissioner said was that the defence minister told her he played absolutely no role. He gave the Sergeant Schultz “I know nothing” answer. The problem is that he then went on to claim to be an architect, and senior military officials described him as playing a key intelligence role. Does the Prime Minister actually believe his Minister of National Defence when he says he knows nothing about what went on with the Afghan detainees when we know he played an—

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. We agree on one thing: the question of privilege is a very serious matter and we must investigate it thoroughly.Over the past few months, I have been a member of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. We have had the opportunity at that committee to study questions of privilege. This is the seventh day that we are debating this question in the House of Commons.Does my colleague not think that it would be better to study this question of privilege at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs instead of in the House of Commons? We could finally make progress on bills and things that affect Canadians every day.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals failed to negotiate a softwood lumber agreement. They also failed to come up with a plan to deal with the crisis, which is now very real. Countervailing duties are already affecting sawmill production. The government needs to understand that these countervailing duties are affecting thousands of jobs and that thousands of families are going to suffer as a result. How is it possible that the Minister of Natural Resources still has not presented any immediate measures to deal with the crisis? How much longer is he going to drag his feet on the softwood lumber file?

Mr. Speaker, consultations among parties have taken place, and if you seek it I believe that you will find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move: That, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, in relation to the Question of Privilege (denial of access of Members to the Parliamentary Precinct raised on March 22, 2017), at 5:30 p.m. today or when no member rises to speak, the questions on the sub-amendment and the amendment be deemed adopted and the question on the motion as amended be deemed put, a recorded division deemed requested and deferred until immediately before the time provided for Private Members' Business on Wednesday, May 3, 2017.

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to trade with the Liberals, secrecy appears to be the name of the game. Last week it was revealed that the government secretly walked away from a potential softwood lumber agreement with Obama. Thanks to Japanese news reports last week, we learned that TPP negotiations are back on and are happening today in a secret location in Toronto. The Liberals in opposition criticized the Conservatives for negotiating major trade deals in secret and promised to do better. The TPP was a bad deal. Will the Liberals come clean with Canadians on why they are now leading the charge for TPP 2.0?

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence refuses to explain why, on at least two occasions, he misled Canadians about the role that he played in Afghanistan. Simply saying that he has no excuse is not good enough. He has lost the confidence of our men and women in uniform. If the Prime Minister refuses to see the damage that this is doing, why should Canadians trust this government?

Mr. Speaker, Canadians working in the world of finance and mortgages are worried. Alternative mortgage lender Home Capital Group saw its shares plummet over the past few days because of an investigation into its operations. This is causing concern in Canada's finance sector, which is losing confidence in the company.In these types of situations, it is the duty and responsibility of the Minister of Finance to reassure Canadians and set the record straight.Therefore, could the Minister of Finance tell the House when he found out about this situation, what he knows about how this financial tragedy started, and what he intends to do to ensure that this situation does not—

Mr. Speaker, the use of “alternative facts” damaged the reputation of the Minister of National Defence so badly that he has lost all credibility. He has lost the confidence of our troops, he is an embarrassment to veterans, and Canadians no longer believe him. He is a laughing stock and none of our allies will take him seriously.The Prime Minister lacks judgment because he refuses to dismiss his defence minister. As a veteran, I am asking the Minister of National Defence, who is a veteran, to step down if he has any honour left.

Mr. Speaker, the defence minister refuses to provide any explanation as to why he, on at least two occasions, misled Canadians about the role he played in Afghanistan, fabricating that he was the architect of the largest battle Canadians fought in, but he was not. This is not one of those things where saying sorry is going to be enough. He should be moved out. If the Prime Minister refuses to see the damage that this is doing, why should Canadians have confidence in him?

Mr. Speaker, being sorry does not cut it once the confidence of our men and women in uniform is lost. Soldiers who pad their CVs may be court-martialled and face serious consequences.Now that the Minister of National Defence is seated at the cabinet table, does he think he deserves to be treated differently than the troops with whom he served his country?

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I am shocked and appalled to discover that member introducing electoral reform into one of his comments.