Earlier today from Nathan Cullen, NDP House Leader:
(from MaCleans.ca: C-38: 'Mr. Speaker, let us do the right thing')
Earlier today, NDP House leader Nathan Cullen stood in the House to respond to Elizabeth May’s
point of order.
Marc Garneau, for the Liberals, and
Peter Van Loan, for the Conservatives, responded yesterday. The Speaker says he will get back to the House in “due course.”
Below, the text of Mr. Cullen’s remarks.
Nathan Cullen: Mr. Speaker, I rise today with
respect to the point of order that was raised by the member for
Saanich—Gulf Islands a number of days ago. We have now heard from the
Liberal Party and the government and New Democrats want to add our voice
to the conversation in, hopefully, a timely and somewhat brief manner.
I rise in support of the motion by the member for Saanich—Gulf
Islands with respect to her concerns and the concerns shared by many of
us in this place about the manner in which the government as moved Bill
C-38, the omnibus budget implementation act. There are a number of
points that my friend made, some of them, we would suggest, stronger
than others for your purview, Mr. Speaker, but on the central theme we
find ourselves in agreement.
On many of the concerns that were raised, you have heard from the
official opposition New Democrats in many forms throughout question
period, public commentary and in conversations in the House with you,
Mr. Speaker, on the nature and form of the bill and the concerns we have
and that we share with Canadians of its effect on members of Parliament
to do our jobs. This is why I appeal to you directly, Mr. Speaker, in
the decision that you have to make because, ultimately, it is your
choice in the way we conduct ourselves as members of Parliament and the
House conducts itself.
Let me take care of one point right away that the government has
raised as a measure of defence of the process that we are engaged in
with this more than 400-page budget implementation act, extending over
more than 700 clauses, affecting as many as 70 acts of Parliament,
either revoking them entirely or modifying them significantly. We have
never seen the scale and scope of a bill like this before in
parliamentary history, from our purview and the purview of experts who
have watched this place over many years. Therefore, let us do away with
the idea that the government believes that having a number of hours of
debate either here or in committee has somehow satisfied the test that
Canadians and parliamentarians understand what is in this act. That is,
frankly, not the case. It is also the case that it is almost impossible
to understand all of the implications that have been brought in this act
because the government is withholding certain pieces of information,
which we will bring to your attention in days to come.
The first point that the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands raised was
around the fact that there is no central theme to the bill, thereby
making it admissible or detrimental to Parliament and parliamentary
democracy. The second point raised was that there was little or no link
between the budget itself and what the government has called the budget
implementation act. In passing conversation with somebody not as
familiar with this place as members are, a Canadian would assume that a
budget implementation act would be explicitly linked to the budget by
its name and form and yet we find within the budget implementation act
many pieces of government policy that are never mentioned at all. One
example is the removal of Canada from the Kyoto protocol. There is no
mention of this in the budget whatsoever, no mention of any aspects of
climate change policy or anything to do with that particular act of
Parliament, and yet in the budget implementation act there are a couple
of lines that remove Canada from that international treaty.
Aside from concerns about whether one agrees or disagrees with the
government’s intentions with respect to climate change and its lack of
actions, the point has to be made that if a government is introducing a
budget implementation act with all sorts of measures that have nothing
to do with the budget itself, it becomes a budget act in name only, but
in the actual function, the government is piling in a number of
initiatives, policies and new directions for the government that should,
in their proper stand, be alone and independent for discussion for MPs
and the Canadian public.
The intervention by my friend in the corner is to simply suggest that
for members of Parliament to be able to do our jobs, we need to be
able, in good conscience, to hold government to account. Her third point
was that the bill is not ready and imperfect and she made a number of
interventions on that, which I will not touch on too much.
To your role in this, Mr. Speaker, ultimately you are the arbitrator
of this place and the defender of our privileges and efforts as members
of Parliament to do what Canadians send us to Parliament to do, which is
to hold government to account. That is not simply the role of
opposition members. So too is it the role of government members in this
place. They too are encumbered with the effort to hold government to
account at all times.
If we remember parliamentary history, there was a time in this
country that when an MP was elected and then needed to be placed in
cabinet, they actually had to run in a byelection because their role had
fundamentally changed from one in which they were defending the
government’s policy, that is in cabinet, as opposed to sitting as a
member of Parliament regardless of party affiliation. That role is
fundamentally different.
The concern that we have is twofold. We have seen a trending of
increasing cynicism from Canadians towards politics in general and
towards this—
Bob Zimmer: NDP not Conservatives.
Nathan Cullen: —place in particular. I thank my friend from Prince George—Peace River for his intervention, but it was most unhelpful.
In the growing cynicism that Canadians feel towards our politics, it is—
Bob Zimmer: You are welcome. You are welcome.
The Speaker: Order. I will just ask the member for
Prince George—Peace River to let the opposition House leader make his
point, and then we can move on orders of the day.
Nathan Cullen: Mr. Speaker, I think confirming my
concerns about the cynicism growing towards politics is that when
attempting to make a point in Parliament that is both sound and
reasoned, it is difficult to do it without being heckled from the
government side.
My point is this, that all members of Parliament have a duty to the
people we seek to represent as well as we can to hold the government of
the day to account. This bill encumbers that ability. It makes it
difficult, if not outright impossible, for members to do our job.
This, Mr. Speaker, is your role. I do not for a moment suggest that
this is an easy role for you to perform on a daily basis, not just in
question period as we attempt to have some sort of civility and decorum,
but also throughout Parliament’s deliberations over important pieces of
legislation.
It cannot be understated how critical this legislation is, how
wide-sweeping and profoundly impactful this bill will be on the lives of
Canadians, from taking $12,000 away from seniors as they attempt to
retire after long service to this country and building our economy, to
removing and fundamentally altering environmental legislation and
gutting the protections, taking environmental assessments of major
industrial projects from between 4,000 and 6,000 assessments a year to
perhaps as few as 20 and 30 a year.
The role of MPs is to hold the government to account. The role of the
Speaker is to defend this place and defend this institution.
Our point is that if there is no, or little, link between the budget
and the budget implementation act, we continue and actually aid that
cynical trend Canadians feel towards their politics and their
politicians, that the break between who we represent and their hopes and
visions for the future is more profound when governments enact bills
like this.
What signal do we send to them if we say that an omnibus bill of this
wide a scope and scale is permissible, acceptable and even favoured?
Can we not imagine a day, and I think of Speaker Lamoureux’s point in
1971, if we want to go back, where there is no point of return, when
governments now seek, through omnibus bills, through Trojan horse bills,
to move one, two acts of Parliament a year and put absolutely
everything into those acts, that Parliament can sit for 20 days, get
through 2 bills and that is it. Accountability is impossible under such a
scenario, reforms to immigration, reforms to the oversight of the
Auditor General, transparency and accountability.
For a Parliament to sit through two omnibus bills a year is perhaps
what the government may be seeking, but is fundamentally against the
spirit and nature of this place in which we come together to discuss
bills before the House and try to seek to improve them, amend them.
Know this, the government is suggesting that in those 400-plus pages
the bill is perfect incarnate and not a comma, not a period needs to be
altered. At three various times, just in this Parliament, the government
has had to modify or completely scrap their own legislation when it
faced evidence and pressure from Canadians. So three times on separate
stand-alone bills, the government has had to fundamentally alter
themselves.
Last night we had our 25th vote on closure in this place since the
government was elected to its majority. We now have the largest and most
complex omnibus bill in Canadian history, and the lack of
accountability in this is breathtaking.
We believe that there is a pattern of language in this and a very
dangerous one. We believe that from the beginning of this process, the
official opposition has attempted to work with the government to break
this bill into its component parts to allow Canadians to see the aspects
of the bill and understand what the implications would be, because that
is our job.
From the beginning we have reached out to government and said “Do the
right thing. Split this into bills.” We have quoted, and you have heard
me, Mr. Speaker, quote back to the Conservative Party their own
principles with respect to omnibus bills, to closure motions, to Trojan
horse legislation, that when they held the seats of opposition, they
strongly stood for the principle that this place should be accountable
to Canadians, that governments should be accountable to Canadians.
We have used their own arguments and words, not our own. We do not
expect the government to be swayed by what I say here today, but we
thought, we assumed that the words and principles of the Prime Minister,
the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism and the
Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages would mean
something powerful enough to them that they would actually pause and be
swayed by their own arguments and principles.
What happened to those principles? There is a certain seeking of
convenience from the government, that it finds this whole process
difficult or annoying.
This process that we engage in as parliamentarians is critical and essential, not an inconvenience.
We feel no remorse for the government, that it will now face as many
as 500 to 1,000 amendments on this piece of legislation in the days to
come. It built a piece of legislation that now allows this to take
place. We warned the government of this from day one and gave it an
alternative.
We now see the motion from the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands that
says this bill has serious flaws and contentions and in, fact,
undermines what this place is about. We find that she has sound
reasoning in this and that as Speaker and in your role as an impartial
observer and arbitrator of this place that we must have pause. We must
send signals to the government from time to time that, yes, while it has
the votes to do this, it does not have the moral superiority and the
grounds on which to stand on because Canadians did not give the current
government, or any government, a mandate to do this kind of thing.
Canadians never vote a government in to say that, “You will govern by
fiat. You will disregard the democratic process and the open and
transparent need for conversation.” Because, ultimately, that is what
Canadians are about: seeking consensus; seeking the middle ground;
seeking some sort of way to live together as we have, harmoniously, for
so many years.
Mr. Speaker, let us do the right thing. Let us make this thing a proper piece of legislation.
