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Results: 91 - 105 of 185
View Pierre Paul-Hus Profile
CPC (QC)
Mr. Speaker, I was simply trying to point out that we very much understand how difficult this is, since we are working both in person and online.
The parliamentary secretary is participating virtually today. Can he explain how he will campaign virtually? How will he meet constituents and explain why the Liberals are better than us? How can we run an election campaign right now, when all members are not even able to be present in the House?
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
Lib. (MB)
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
2021-05-13 13:24 [p.7177]
Mr. Speaker, this is something I would like to emphasize. The Conservative Party will play games on the issue of an election. It has no problem at all moving motions of non-confidence and voting en masse for it. Every time it does that, it is rolling the dice. It cannot guarantee an election would not happen as a result of that.
In fact, I suspect that on maybe a dozen occasions we have seen the Conservative Party play that game. I do not know the actual numbers, but I suspect it would be double digits. I think the responsible thing to do is ensure we have some legislation in place that will enhance Elections Canada's abilities. We have already seen elections take place in Canada.
View Heather McPherson Profile
NDP (AB)
View Heather McPherson Profile
2021-05-13 13:25 [p.7178]
Mr. Speaker, this member started his discussion today by talking about being crystal clear. He then went on and talked about how the committee can do this work, even though the Liberals are filibustering it. I have a very simple question for this member. Yes or no: Will he very clearly commit, 100%, that the Liberal Party will not trigger an election unless it loses a confidence vote? It is very simple.
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
Lib. (MB)
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
2021-05-13 13:26 [p.7178]
Mr. Speaker, I would commit, as much as possible, to ensuring that Bill C-19 ultimately gets through and passed because I believe it is in the best interests of all Canadians to see it passed. To that extent, I would encourage members of the PROC committee to deal with it as soon as possible.
View Mark Gerretsen Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, going back to the last question from the NDP, the member might want to talk to the member for Elmwood—Transcona, who specifically took a shot at me, saying—
View Garnett Genuis Profile
CPC (AB)
Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I want to comment on the earlier point of order with respect to the comments from my colleague for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles. Although he referenced the number of people physically in the chamber, he did not refer to the presence or absence of members participating in the session in general, nor did he name the presence of specific members.
I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to review the question. To me, it seems that the rules would prohibit somebody from saying a certain member was present, or perhaps from saying there was a certain number of members present in general in the deliberations. However, as the member for Kingston and the Islands pointed out, the number of members physically in the House is not constitutive of the total number of members participating in the session, so I do not know that his comments could be construed as actually referencing the presence or absence of a certain number of members in total.
View Mark Gerretsen Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, my question is for the parliamentary secretary. Time and again, when there are opportunities to bring forward opposition motions for the betterment of Canadians, to deliver better services to them, to improve government programs and to make policy in this place that will benefit the lives of Canadians, why do the opposition parties resort to motions like this instead of looking toward making the lives of Canadians better?
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
Lib. (MB)
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
2021-05-13 13:30 [p.7178]
Mr. Speaker, as I indicated yesterday, I was surprised by the manner in which this particular motion was decided, only because it seems to be completely at odds with, and 180° from, where the Bloc members were not that long ago. It concerns me in terms of where they might be tomorrow, which highlights the fact that at any given time there could be an election based on what we see taking place in the House of Commons. There have been 13, 14, or 15 motions of confidence. Any one of those, if we lose a vote, would precipitate an election, so I would encourage members, as I say, to pass—
View Yves Perron Profile
BQ (QC)
View Yves Perron Profile
2021-05-13 13:30 [p.7178]
Mr. Speaker, it is really mind-blowing to listen to these speeches describing some kind of parallel universe. There have been several questions about the Bloc Québécois, and I will try to answer them quickly.
The first question was what the Bloc Québécois is doing here. My answer is that we are standing up for Quebeckers on issues like aluminum and language. Our party is making proposals. It proposed a wage subsidy, it proposed that the Canada emergency response benefit incentivize work, and it is asking that our seniors be treated fairly. I could go on.
The second question that the hon. parliamentary secretary asked was what the Bloc Québécois wants. I will say to him that we want the democratic rules to be changed by consensus, as parliamentary tradition requires and dictates. That is what we want. We also want a government that honours the mandate that the people gave it, which is a minority mandate that requires it to compromise. We would also like a government that cares about what the Ethics Commissioner says about its leader once in a while.
I have a lot to say. As for my colleague, is he not concerned about democracy? Is he not interested in the consensus being proposed?
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
Lib. (MB)
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
2021-05-13 13:32 [p.7178]
Mr. Speaker, I am very interested in what takes place in all regions of our country, and I am very proud of the government's Quebec caucus and the advocacy that the members display for the Province of Quebec and all Canadians through the development of the very programs the member just cited. We understand. We are the government that put in place, after listening to and working with Canadians in all regions of our country, programs that were there to support them, and we will continue to be there for seniors, youth, small businesses and those individuals who need us to have their backs through this very difficult time.
View Garnett Genuis Profile
CPC (AB)
Mr. Speaker, the position of the parliamentary secretary seems to be that he says the Liberals are not focused on an election, but that we should also please quickly pass the bill that would allow us to have a pandemic election. He also says that the Liberals cannot predict when an election would occur, because the government could lose a confidence vote at any time, but then he simultaneously says that even if they do not lose a confidence motion, they are still retaining the option of calling an election.
How is it that the parliamentary secretary is so confused here, and will he acknowledge that the government has failed to answer the basic question about whether it would go to the governor general to call an election, even if it had not lost a confidence vote?
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
Lib. (MB)
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
2021-05-13 13:33 [p.7179]
Mr. Speaker, I will be very clear on at least one of the points the member raises.
If the opposition is going to continue to vote non-confidence in the government, it would be irresponsible for them not to have measures in place to protect Canadians. Bill C-19 is necessary, because of, in good part, the behaviour of opposition members and the potential real threat of an election. It is not this Prime Minister or this government that has been talking about an election. It has been opposition parties doing that. We continue, day in and day out, to ensure that Canadians' backs are being covered and taken care of during this pandemic.
View Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Profile
BQ (QC)
Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to speak today to this proposal by the Bloc Québécois on this, our opposition day.
This is a proposal that goes to what may be the very heart of our political commitment, that is, the expression of democracy itself. There are several components and several things to say about this proposal. There would also be several things to say about Bill C-19.
Today, it has come down to us making a common sense proposal that no election be held while the pandemic is at its peak, which has yet to be confirmed. By definition, we never know what the future holds. The first wave was strong, the second was even stronger, and the third is bringing particularly harmful variants that are more dangerous and more contagious. With each wave, we told ourselves that it could not be worse than what we had just come through, but unfortunately we were wrong. Such are the vagaries of public health and the life we have been living for a year now.
I feel it is a shame to present a motion on something that is just plain common sense. This motion is not even binding. If the situation changes and the need for an election becomes palpable, it will still be legal to hold one. That is not the issue. This motion is really an affirmation of good old common sense: we all understand, collectively, as a political class, that the priority is not to hold elections. It seems to me that should be obvious.
However, evidence of the government's desire to trigger an election is piling up. Unfortunately for the Liberals, they are always forced to put it off. If it were not for this third wave today, which is especially bad in Ontario, a province we know will be hotly contested, we would not be here right now. We would all be in our ridings, campaigning. There is not a shadow of a doubt about that.
In January, when the House resumed after the holiday recess, several newspapers reported that the government had asked its party and its riding associations to be at the ready and to prepare for an imminent campaign. It was not the Bloc Québécois saying it, but some very serious newspapers.
I feel it is a shame that, because we are raising this issue, the government has nothing better to do than to pass the buck to us, saying that it is the Bloc Québécois that often votes against the government. I have news for the government: as my colleague from Berthier—Maskinongé said earlier, this is a minority government. It is the government that often decides that a given matter will be a confidence vote. That is called blackmail.
I will take the example of the Bloc Québécois's amendment to the amendment to the budget bill. As a reminder, we proposed an increase in the pension for seniors and an increase in health transfers, and the government told us that it would make it a confidence matter. Here is a minority government that says it does not want an election, that criticizes us for voting against it when there are confidence votes, but that itself turns important votes into confidence votes.
The government is telling us that, if a majority of the members of the House impose a policy that the Liberals do not want, it will not respect democracy or the constitution of this democratically elected Parliament that, in the current context of a minority government, gives the upper hand to the opposition, which has a majority. The government tells us that there will be an election, and then blames certain opposition parties for wanting to trigger the election. This is rather odd and ethically dubious.
There are more and more signs, and I think there is no doubt that the government wants to call an election. Let me give Bill C-216 as an example that is very important, particularly for my colleague from Berthier—Maskinongé. I raised a point of order on it a few days ago.
The government agreed to vote in favour of the bill to embarrass the official opposition. Since then, however, it has done everything it can to ensure that, contrary to custom, the bill does not receive priority consideration at the Standing Committee on International Trade, on which I sit.
The government expressed circumstantial, partisan and temporary support for this bill, figuring that if it delayed the study of the bill as much as possible, it would not make it back to the House before the next election. The government thinks that it will win a majority in the next election and that this will all be ancient history, but that it will not have come off looking all that bad in the meantime.
We have seen it before. We were not born yesterday. This shell game is quite elaborate, but we know exactly where the government is going with this.
I want to get back to the gag order that was imposed on a debate about an act that is fundamental to our democracy, the act that sets out the rules by which Quebeckers and Canadians choose their elected officials.
Questions about holding an election in this particular context will obviously come up, since the current Liberal government has a minority. If the government had a majority, we can assume that this pandemic would have ended before the next fixed election date. Since the government has a minority, however, an election could be called at any time. As I was saying, there would be an election right now. If not for the third wave, we would not be in the House because Parliament would have been dissolved.
We have no problem with an election being held before the health situation improves. We said as much last fall. We said that we needed to put rules in place and we invited the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, or CEO, to come up with a formula. We were the first to say it. Elections must obviously be held as safely as possible. That is not the issue. Democracy should not be suspended because of the health crisis.
Nevertheless, I want to point out that Bill C-19, regarding potential elections during a pandemic, was introduced last December and completely ignored the study previously done on this issue by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. It even ignored the CEO's recommendations from November 2020. The government only brought the bill back up for debate in the House on March 8. Five months have passed since the bill was introduced, and barely four hours have been allocated for debate in the House. I repeat, only four hours to review the Canada Elections Act.
Suddenly, last Friday, we got a surprise. The issue just so happened to become a national emergency, to the point where a gag order was imposed with support from the NDP to limit debate and speed up passage of the bill. In the end, we spent as much time debating time allocation as we did debating the bill. It is outrageous when I think about it.
This bill would make fundamental changes, including giving the Chief Electoral Officer additional powers and replacing election day with three polling days. That means voting day would stretch out to three days.
Notwithstanding the merits of the various measures in this bill, such changes to such a fundamental act must not be made under time allocation. We are talking about changing the rules governing the expression of democracy. This should not be done under time allocation, which is a procedure used exceptionally to limit democratic debate.
In any case, everyone is saying that they do not want an election, so there is no point. What is the rush? Where is the emergency? We would like to understand.
Considering the examples I gave earlier, no one believes that the Liberal Party does not want an election. I want to reiterate that we are calling for all the parties to meet up, to replace the gag order with an amicable agreement to reach a consensus on election laws. Let us not waste our time. Let us acknowledge today that we have more important things to do than to call a snap election.
View Jack Harris Profile
NDP (NL)
View Jack Harris Profile
2021-05-13 13:44 [p.7180]
Mr. Speaker, I read carefully the Bloc opposition day motion, and I do not find any tricks in it. It seems to be pretty straightforward in suggesting that there not be an election during the pandemic.
Would the member agree that the Bloc is inviting the government to vote in support of the motion and that it in fact be a commitment not to call an election during the pandemic unless there is, of course, a loss of confidence in the House? Would he agree that would be the case and that the failure of the Liberals to support the motion would indicate otherwise?
View Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Profile
BQ (QC)
Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question.
There are no tricks here. Everything is written in black and white. There is no ambiguity. There is nothing wrong with the motion. It is simply a statement of good faith, and I think it would reassure Quebeckers and Canadians. It just makes sense.
Of course we encourage the government to support this statement. If the Liberals vote against it, that would mean they do not agree with it and an election could very well happen in the midst of a pandemic.
Results: 91 - 105 of 185 | Page: 7 of 13

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