Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-26, a bill to enhance the Canada pension plan.

I want to start by lamenting, as I did this morning, time allocation, which is bringing this debate to a premature end. I think this is one of those times, particularly with the degree of controversy about the drop-out provisions in the bill and how they will unequally impact women in this country, when we really should have more time for debate and more time to ensure that we have all the facts.

I want to take a moment to say that if there is anything sadder than watching Liberals fall short of their promises, it is the Conservatives jumping on them for doing about one-tenth of what the Conservatives did when they had power. The use of time allocation was constant in the 41st Parliament.

Mr. Speaker, I know that many who are currently heckling me were not here in the 41st Parliament, but I can assure them that we had no time to turn around before there was yet another time allocation motion. The Conservatives broke through all historical records. However, this does not excuse the Liberals for doing the same thing.

I would urge members on both sides of the House to consider what we really want in terms of parliamentary decorum and in terms of being able to address bills and get them through the House in an expeditious way while also ensuring that we do not trample on the rights of each of us here as members of Parliament to do the work we were elected to do, which is to study the legislation, provide suggestions, work together, and produce what the people of Canada want. They want parliamentarians who see the big picture and are prepared to put their heads together to come up with better legislation by taking the time that is needed.

Tme allocation is in no one’s interest here. I very much regret that the current government has brought it in now, for the ninth time. Again, for those who live in glass houses, I will remind them that it was 100 times that time allocation was brought in during the 41st Parliament.

I urge the Liberals in this place to consider what the threshold is against which they strive to achieve their goals. I would urge them not to think that their goal is to be better on any issue—the environment, climate, the treatment of veterans, criminal justice, Bill C-51, parliamentary decorum, the use of time allocation—than what Prime Minister Harper did. I want to set a really ambitious goal for them: Do better than what Prime Minister Mulroney did.

Obviously, I did not agree with everything done by the Progressive Conservative majority back in the 1980s, but I think if members go back and look at the use of time allocation, the number of whipped votes, and the treatment of issues and use that as a benchmark, they will find that they have to set their sights a good deal higher than trying to do better than the prime minister in the 41st Parliament.

Turning to the specifics of Bill C-26, I wish it did include—

I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, but I am having trouble speaking through the noise.

I wish that Bill C-26 dealt with another pension issue. There is an omission, and I hope that the Minister of Finance will get back to it in the spring budget. It is an egregious situation that affects a minority of pensioners for sure, but they are the very people we should do the most to honour. These are people receiving pensions who, through the Superannuation Act, are deprived of spousal benefits if they are veterans, retired service persons, retired RCMP members, and other retired categories of public servants and have remarried over the age of 60. They are deprived of spousal benefits on their death.

This is a terrible injustice to a lot of constituents in my community of Saanich—Gulf Islands. I know that a lot of other members of Parliament are aware of this. It is due to the most anachronistic of all pension rules. It goes back to the Boer War. It was called the “gold-digger” clause.

I do not mind saying that I am 62. I do not feel that I am so far along with one foot in the grave that the gold-digger clause makes sense. The gold-digger clause in the Boer War was that if a soldier came back from the Boer War and remarried over the age of 60, the only possible reason anyone would have married one of these soldiers would have been to get their hands on their benefits when they passed away.

Times have changed. Very healthy, vigorous adults who have a lot of life left get married over the age of 60. I have one such serviceman in my riding who received the highest medals of honour, including the Legion of Honour from the French government, for his service in the Second World War. He is now over 90, and every day I see him, he reminds me to please do something about this terrible injustice. He does not want to leave his wife destitute. Therefore, I flag that again for the Minister of Finance.

Overall, the Green Party supports the bill. We support the fact that it is expanding the most reliable and consistent way in which we can ensure that seniors in Canada have adequate savings for retirement. The Canada pension plan is the most reliable and the most sustainable of what is available.

RRSPs, for example, are a good program. I know many of us will pay into it, but the registered retirement savings plan appeals primarily to those Canadians who already have discretionary income to put into an RRSP. That taxable benefit to higher wage earners costs the tax system quite a lot of money. If we look at it as a public policy question, we see it is not clear that the RRSPs make sense.

The Canada pension plan makes abundant sense, and we know right now that two-thirds of Canadians no longer have any workplace pension. Workplace pensions are disappearing. More and more Canadians have inadequate savings for retirement, so the workplace pension plans are shrinking at the same time as we have what is sometimes called the grey tsunami. We know we have a demographic with many more people about to enter retirement.

By the way, I commend the government for returning the retirement age to 65; that is commendable. However, we do need to enhance CPP benefits. There is no question that overall the bill is going in the right direction. We know that right now the median value of retirement assets for Canadians between age 55 and 64, with no accrued employer pension benefit, is under $4,000. We know we need to augment the CPP. Only one in five Canadians have adequately saved for their retirement.

It is all well and good for some members of this place to say that Canadians should plan ahead and it is their responsibility to figure out how to save for their retirement. This is a very small cost of a public program, with the cost split between the employer and the employee, to make sure that people have adequate savings for retirement. The reason people do not put aside money for retirement is generally that they lack disposable income because the other costs of daily life eclipse their ability to set aside money for retirement.

I urge my friends on the other side of the House to embrace expansion of CPP. I agree with the analysis of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons. It does really good work on public policy and commends the bill as well.

That brings me to the point where I wish we had time in this place and I wish the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development could have provided, at committee, by accepting amendments, a fix to what looked initially like an oversight, and that is the dropout provisions for disability and child rearing to ensure gender parity. Both ministers have said that they can fix this problem by renegotiating terms with the provinces. I wish they had fixed it while they had the chance at committee. They still have the opportunity to fix it, if they are willing to accept amendments when we get through this process. However, at this point there has been no sign of a willingness to accept amendments, and we are left hoping for public pressure to continue what both ministers say they are willing to do by changing the terminology in the negotiated agreements with the provinces.

It is very hard to understand how this oversight has not been fixed already. The conclusion that my friends in the NDP have reached appears an inescapable conclusion. On the evidence we have before us, it appears that the bill will disadvantage women for no apparent reason other than an oversight. I did have a brief moment to discuss this with the Minister of Finance earlier this morning, and his position is that to do what the NDP asks now would result in a transfer of wealth from poorer women to wealthier women because of the way the calculation works. Unfortunately, I do not have the full facts on this. I had a 30-second conversation with the Minister of Finance, which is what happens when there is time allocation and inadequate time for debate.

I am left with the dreadful conclusion that, with the chance to bring in a really strong bill that would have no negatives attached to it, which is what Bill C-26 was when I first read it, it needs to be fixed. The NDP spotted this problem. I commend the NDP for spotting it. With that, I will close.

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The right to speak on behalf of my constituents is something I asserted from my first day in the House. As each leader stood to welcome the new Speaker, I stood and was recognized. It is not for the major parties to decide who gets to speak. It is the Speaker who makes that decision – a point made clearly when Conservative MP Mark Warawa complained that his party whip had denied him his right to speak, infringing on his privileges. Speaker Andrew Scheer neatly side-stepped the abuse of power by that party whip, by pointing out that Mr. Warawa should have stood and tried to catch the speaker’s eye. Failing to have done that, the Speaker ruled, he had not actually lost the right to speak because he had not tried hard enough. No one could ever accuse me of insufficient effort. I have been recognized to speak in the House more often than any other member.

On some occasions, it is not solely up to the Speaker. Following statements by ministers, unanimous consent is required. But even there, after a few missteps, such as when I was denied the right to honour our veterans in November, 2011, it has become a customary courtesy to allow me to speak. I am respectful to my colleagues. I never heckle and I do not speak over-long on such occasions, recognizing that the consent that has been granted should not repaid with a long or partisan speech.

I was given the floor on Oct. 3, 2014, following the Prime Minister, Tom Mulcair, and Justin Trudeau, when Stephen Harper first unveiled the “limited” six-month mission against Islamic State. I had every expectation that I would be allowed to respond on Tuesday of this week. As the Speaker reacted to a few “no’s” among the positive chorus, more members shouted “yes!” even more loudly. It became clear that Peter Van Loan was nodding yes, yet a handful of Conservatives in the back rows were yelling “no.” The Speaker ruled there was no consent.

I was shocked.

The debate about extending the military mission in Iraq by 12 months and starting bombing against Syrian targets as well is a solemn and sober one. All voices and viewpoints in the House should be heard and respected. I can only imagine that the excessive hyper-partisanship as an election approaches explains the actions of Conservative members. That and the Prime Minister’s effort at a joke in replying to Tom Mulcair on Wednesday does not bode well for an informed and reasoned discussion.

Originally published in the Globe and Mail.

The post By denying my right to speak, our Parliament is weakened appeared first on Elizabeth May.

May 30, 2013

Dear Mr. Speaker,

I am writing this letter to provide you with supplementary explanation as to the admissibility of my motions to amend Bill C-60, An Act to Implement Certain Provisions of the Budget Tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2013 and other measures. In addition to the points raised during my Point of Order in the House of Commons following Routine Proceedings today (appended to this letter), I trust that this cursory overview of my rationale in submitting these amendments for debate at report stage will assist you in your decisions regarding selection for report stage.

I have tabled three kinds of motions to amend Bill C-60 at report stage, and will provide you with my rationale as to why I ask that you select each of these for debate at report stage.

First, I have submitted four motions to delete four separate clauses of Bill C-60. In keeping with established Parliamentary practice and procedure, motions to delete are always found to be admissible and are selected at report stage.

Second, I have submitted ten substantive motions to amend Bill C-60 that were previously submitted to the Standing Committee on Finance during its clause-by-clause review of this legislation. As I described in the Point of Order I raised this morning, on May 7, 2013, the Finance Committee adopted a motion to “invite” Members of Parliament who were not members of the committee to submit amendments to be considered during the clause-by-clause review. Despite making a good-faith effort to engage with this process, I prefaced my submission of amendments to the committee with a statement that doing so would in no way prejudice my ability to make recourse to my rights as a non-member of that committee to submit amendments at report stage. I did so on the basis that the “opportunity” being offered was in no way a sufficient or satisfactory replacement for the rights and privileges I enjoy at report stage: the right to move, withdraw, defend, or vote on my motions to amend legislation that is before the House.

Therefore, I am resubmitting to report stage the amendments that I submitted to the Standing Committee on Finance, with the hope that your consideration of the process that was on offer in the committee, represented a sufficiently drastic curtailment of my rights so as not to prejudice my ability to engage meaningfully in the legislative process at report stage. I put to you that in ruling on the admissibility of these amendments, and deciding to select them for debate at report stage, you will be fulfilling your stated role as guardian of the rights and privileges of all Members of the House of Commons, and continuing to permit me to engage meaningfully in the legislative process. However, I believe it important to note that your selection of these amendments for report stage debate would not pre-empt any future arrangement that could allow for the meaningful engagement of non-committee Members in the committee process. While this particular experiment fell well short of my rights and privileges, I remain fully committed to exploring any options that could be found “to the satisfaction of all Members.”

The third set of substantive motions to amend that I have submitted for debate at report stage of Bill C-60 are three amendments in the alternative to motions submitted to the Finance Committee. As all amendments that I proposed to the committee were voted down, I submit these amendments in an effort to arrive at changes to the legislation that may garner the support of all Members of this House. These amendments represent sound legislative proposals, but could not be submitted to the committee as they pertain to clauses that other of my motions had already attempted to amend.

In keeping with my rights as a non-member of the Finance Committee, and with an acknowledgement that the “invitation” provided to submit motions to the Finance Committee did not constitute a meaningful opportunity to engage in the legislative process on par with the rights and privileges afforded to me at report stage under Standing Order 76(5), I submit these three motions in the alternative for report stage and ask that you select them for debate.

Elizabeth E. May, O.C.
Member of Parliament
Saanich-Gulf Islands

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As you might imagine, Mr. Speaker, I have been in a quandary, unable to imagine exactly how I would put to you the various ways in which I feel my rights are being infringed upon by this turn of events with the finance committee. I would like to reserve the ability to work to put my arguments together for you to present them tomorrow.

I turn to you, Mr. Speaker, as, in your own words in your ruling in April on the matter raised by the member of Parliament for Langley, it is “the unquestionable duty of the Speaker to act as the guardian of the rights and privileges of members and of the House as an institution”. I turn to you as the guardian of my rights and ask that I be allowed the right to present my response tomorrow to the excellent point of order of the House leader of the official opposition.

The post Points of Order – Standing Committee on Finance appeared first on Elizabeth May.

As some context for those Canadians who are not familiar with Bill C-60, this is another piece of omnibus legislation. We rose earlier on similar points of order with respect to how the bill was handled.

In its nature, being an omnibus bill under the current government’s watch, with the expansion of omnibus legislation to include so many different matters, the government has faced a difficulty of its own making in that it is not purely a financial bill and it is not simply a bill to implement the budget; it would do much more. While it has an anti-democratic nature and tone for us, in various ways we have struggled with the ability for members of Parliament to properly study and amend legislation that is so broad.

I wish that you would review the motion adopted by the standing committee on May 7, as well as the proceedings that resulted from this specific motion, and that you rule to determine whether these proceedings were in order or not and whether the committee overstepped its authority when adopting this particular motion. I will refer in detail to what the motion accomplished and how it fell outside of the mandate of the committee.

We raised a very similar point of order, if you will remember, around Bill C-45. That was the second omnibus bill that followed on Bill C-38. We had deep concerns about the fact that the Standing Committee on Finance, during its consideration of that massive omnibus bill, went beyond its mandate and usurped the authority of the House when it invited other standing committees to study particular sections of Bill C-45. On their own mandate they started to carve the bill up and send it out. It then allowed these committees that were studying the bill to move amendments and then saw it as if those amendments had been moved by members of the finance committee.

We argued at the time that this went beyond the mandate and the reference from the House, from you as the Speaker.

A similar argument could be made about Bill C-60. It was introduced on April 29.

On May 7, after the government used time allocation to shut down the debate once again on discussions at second reading, it ended with the passage of the following motion, which stated:

 …that Bill C-60, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2013 and other measures, be read the second time and referred to [the Standing Committee on Finance].

Hansard on that day of May 7 specifically quotes you as saying:

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Finance.

It is pro forma and it is how bills are referred to the committee.

The committee acted outside of its powers and authority, those powers conferred on it by this House, when it adopted a motion on that very same day asking other committees to study sections of the bill, namely the standing committees on industry, science and technology; veterans affairs; human resources, skills and development; the status of persons with disabilities; citizenship and immigration; as well as foreign affairs and international development. That is where the government sought to parse out the bill.

It is very difficult to deal with omnibus legislation that is so obviously varied that it implicates so many different committees. The government has pushed, and I would argue broken the democratic limits of our legislature, by packing so much into these individual bills. In essence it is hiding from Canadians what its agenda is as these bills then come back to the House for one single vote on so many matters. This was something that the Conservatives concerned themselves with greatly when they were in opposition. You have heard me mention many of the quotes from the Prime Minister and various ministers in his cabinet on how much they disliked this tactic when the Liberals used it. It is now a tactic that the Conservatives seem to enjoy using with much relish.

Although I believe the Standing Committee on Finance went beyond its mandate to ask these five other committees to study the bill, this is not the principal concern that I want to raise with you today.

The committee went even further this time in going beyond its mandate, by adopting a motion to allow members of Parliament who are not members of a caucus represented on the committee to file amendments to the bill. It went further by directing that any amendments suggested to the committee would be deemed to be proposed during the clause-by-clause consideration on Bill C-60, even if the member who presented the amendment was not present.

Let us take a moment with this. Out of some seeking of convenience, the committee members passed the motion at their own discretion, not by any power given to them by the House, to allow amendments that came from people who do not sit on the committee, who are not recognized parties in the House. They allowed amendments to suddenly appear and be presented as if they came from somebody on committee. This goes against three fundamental principles that we hold dear in the House.

Only the House can appoint committee members. This is well known. It is done at the beginning of every session when we constitute our committees. No committee can self-appoint members.

It has to come from an order in the House.

Only committee members who have been appointed by the House can move a motion. In order to move a motion, a member must be present at the time the motion is moved. We just dealt with a piece of private member’s legislation before my point of order. A seconder was missing from her particular seat. The House properly waited until that member took her seat so that she was present. Motions cannot be moved if people are not here.

The rules of committee as established by the House specifically prescribe that members of a committee are designated by the House and cannot include members of a non-recognized party.

This is a practice and a procedure we have used for many years. The rules established by the House also specifically prescribe that only a member of a committee can move a motion.

According to O’Brien and Bosc’s House of Commons Procedure and Practice:

Only a member of the committee, or his or her designated substitute, may move an amendment or vote on an amendment.

Standing Order No. 119 stipulates that:

Any member of the House who is not a member of a standing, special or legislative committee, may, unless the House or the committee concerned otherwise orders, take part in the public proceedings of the committee, but may not vote or move any motion, nor be part of any quorum.

The O’Brien and Bosc text, on page 1019, states:

It is the House, and the House alone, that appoints the members and associate members of its committees, as well as the members who will represent it on joint committees.

The status of member of a committee is accorded to Members of the House of Commons who belong officially to that committee. This status allows them to participate fully in their committee’s proceedings: members may move motions, vote and be counted for purposes of a quorum.

The Speaker has ruled that this is a fundamental right of the House. It cannot be taken away. A committee simply cannot move a motion to take such a power away from the House. I am quoting now:

The committees themselves have no powers at all in this regard.

I would like at this point to mention your ruling, Mr. Speaker, from last December. You will recall that at the time, we moved our point of order regarding the last omnibus bill, Bill C-45, specifically with respect to the role and rights of independent members in the context of report stage.

The government House leader argued that the current process by which independent members are not allowed to present motions at committee means that at report stage of bills, a single independent member has the ability, in his words, “to hold the House hostage in a voting marathon”, as if voting were somehow connected to a hostage-taking, by submitting numerous report stage amendments.

In response, Mr. Speaker, you suggested that members may try to find ways to accommodate independent members at committee in order to allow them to present motions. You said the following:

Were a satisfactory mechanism found that would afford independent members an opportunity to move motions to move bills in committee, the Chair has no doubt that its report stage selection process would adapt to the new reality.

I understand that the motion adopted for Bill C-60 at committee was somehow a response to this ruling and an attempt by the Conservative Party to cut short the proceedings at report stage. However, I believe that the Conservatives fundamentally misinterpreted your ruling to in fact allow independent members to move motions to amend bills at committees. The Conservatives should have, and must have, sought agreement of the House to allow the members to sit on that committee. That is a power they cannot take away simply by a motion at committee.

Indeed, it is from the House that committees derive this power. Committees on their own do not have absolute powers.

While committees are often quoted as being masters of their own fate, I will cite from O’Brien and Bosc at page 1047:

The concept refers to the freedom committees normally have to organize their work as they see fit and the option they have of defining, on their own, certain rules of procedure that facilitate their proceedings.

A second quote, on page 1048 of O’Brien and Bosc, states:

These freedoms are not, however, total or absolute…. committees are creatures of the House. This means that they have no independent existence and are not permitted to take action unless they have been authorized/empowered to do so by the House.

A second quote on that same page states:

…committees are free to organize their proceedings as they see fit…. committees may adopt procedural rules to govern…but only to the extent the House does not prescribe anything specific.

Members of a committee, and only members of a committee, as well as associate members when they replace those members, are able to attend the committee and thus move a motion at committee.

O’Brien and Bosc further tells us that:

Standing Orders specifically exclude a non-member from voting, moving motions or being counted for purposes of quorum. 

The rules also clearly state that a member must be present for the motion. This is a fact. We have never moved away from this fact or this rule or procedure. To suddenly invent a process by which a motion can be moved but the member may be absent contravenes the basic tenets of democracy and representation. We could suddenly have votes where people just call in and speak their intentions rather than be here themselves.

Where a notice of motion has been given, the Speaker will first ensure that the Member wishes to proceed with the moving of the motion. If the sponsor of a motion chooses not to proceed (either by not being present or by being present but declining to move the motion), then the motion is not proceeded with….

This has happened many times in the House. We have seen private member’s bills that members chose not to move. They either made themselves absent from the House or they remained in their seats and the motion was not moved forward. Nobody else can do it on their behalf. No one can simply come in and say, “The member intended to be here, but is not. Please allow the member’s private member’s bill or motion to be considered”.

There is a precedent for a Speaker overruling a committee matter, because sometimes Speakers, often, and I think for good reason, have been loath to involve themselves in committee business.

I quote from O’Brien and Bosc, page 775:

Since a committee may appeal the decision of its Chair and reverse that decision, it may happen that a committee will report a bill with amendments that were initially ruled out of order by the Chair. The admissibility of those amendments, and of any other amendments made by a committee, may therefore be challenged on procedural grounds when the House resumes its consideration of the bill at report stage. The admissibility of the amendments is then determined by the Speaker of the House, whether in response to a point of order or on his or her own initiative.

Amendments were moved with no member present who was actually intent on moving that motion. People were made members of the committee, one assumes, by a motion the committee did not have the power to designate.

For the House to now consider, at report stage, Bill C-60, with these amendments in place, is strictly out of order. It is the proper role of the Speaker of the House to intervene to say that things were done improperly and have to be done right.

In 2007, a point of order was raised in the House dealing with the admissibility of three amendments contained in a bill at report stage from the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

Speaker Milliken ruled two of the amendments out of order, finding that they imported into the bill concepts and terms not present in the bill and were therefore beyond the scope of the bill.

I quote from Speaker Milliken’s ruling on February 27, 2007:

…the Speaker does not intervene on matters upon which committees are competent to take decisions. However, in cases where a committee has exceeded its authority, particularly in relation to bills, the Speaker has been called upon to deal with such matters after a report has been presented to the House.

That has happened here today.

In terms of amendments adopted by committees on bills, if they were judged to be inadmissible by the Speaker, those amendments would be struck from the bill as amended because the committee did not have the authority to adopt such provisions.

This means there exists a precedent for the Speaker rejecting amendments to a bill and the process by which it was there.

Mr. Speaker, I ask you to rule and review the motion adopted by the standing committee on May 7, 2013, as well as the proceedings that resulted from that motion, and that you rule to determine whether these proceedings were in order and whether the committee overstepped its authority when it adopted the motion.

The House of Commons and Parliament, and democracy in general, have suffered much abuse under this tactic and use of omnibus legislation. We have presented ourselves many times in defence of the institution and the right of members to speak and the people we represent to clearly understand the legislation the government is attempting to move.

The abuse of omnibus legislation has been a decision by the government. The difficulty it is having in the way amendments are moved and the process by which a bill goes through are of its own making, and it has only itself to blame.

A committee cannot take powers the House did not give it. Simply accepting motions from members who are not part of a committee and are not present to move the motion, contravenes the basic tenets of this place. The presence and acknowledged presence of a standing member of any of these committees is required—it is a basic, fundamental requirement—for a motion to proceed. These motions were considered improperly. We ask that you rule in this matter.

Kevin Lamoureux: Mr. Speaker, this is the first time I have had the opportunity to go over some of the things that took place in committee, and we should be concerned.

When the government House leader talks about the evolution of process, what we have witnessed is an evolution that takes away the ability of individual members to perform their duties on numerous occasions.

For example, the government House leader could argue that the usage of time allocation is an evolution of process. That evolution that the government has adopted works against, what we would argue, the best interests of Canadians in limiting the opportunity for individuals to express themselves on a wide variety of bills, including Bill C-60.

Let us take a look at what the government has now proposed to do.

The Conservatives are saying that inside the committee they now want to mandate all members of the House, whether they are part of an officially recognized party or not, to bring forward their amendments to the committee well in advance. However, as one can easily imagine by the way the government has managed this evolution of process, the Conservatives are really trying to prevent independent members who are not part of a recognized political party the opportunity to present their amendments at report stage. This raises a whole spectrum of issues that really needs to be addressed.

I am concerned that if the government were trying to demonstrate good will based on a Speaker’s ruling, with all due respect, then this should have been was raised at one of the House leader’s meetings and received a consensus of support. We have to be very careful when we look at changing rules, which is ultimately what the government House leader has proposed to do. We have to be very careful that there is a consensus from all political entities inside the House to do that. If we take a look at what took place at the committee, members will find that there was not unanimous consent in passing the motion in question, which is important to recognize.

The second issue I would like to raise is the letter that I understand the leader of the Green Party received. Imagine receiving a letter which gives a very clear indication that one has x amount of time to get all of one’s information gathered and amendments in place. The letter suggests that must be done by Monday, May 27, at nine o’clock in the morning. Again, I call into question the legitimacy of this.

This issue came up through a point of order by the New Democratic opposition House leader, and there is great merit for that. We will take a look at this matter in more detail and we might want to add further comment on the issue as time progresses.

However, I want to emphasize how important it is when the government House leader makes reference to the evolution of process or rules. Whenever he starts to fantasize or talk about it, in the past, it has not been a positive thing in democracy in the House of Commons.

I raise this issue as a red flag. We need to tread very carefully before making any sort of ruling on that which seeks to deprive individual members, or collective members, the opportunity to do something they have done in the past because the government deems it as not as clean or quick as it would like to see things take place. The Conservatives are bringing in these draconian-type changes or proposals, which are not healthy for democracy in the House of Commons.

André Bellavance: Mr. Speaker, since the point of order raised by the House leader of the official opposition concerns the non-recognized parties, it is appropriate for us to have our say today. I will reserve the right to add more arguments later because we were not aware that this point of order would be raised today.

With great respect, Mr. Speaker, the ruling you made in December 2012 reminds me of what happened in 2001 when your predecessor, Speaker Milliken, also made a ruling that restricted the use of report stage amendments. Between 1968 and 2001, successive Speakers were rather flexible with regard to report stage amendments.

In your ruling, you asked the government to show some openness to participation by members from non-recognized parties or independent members in certain committees, enabling them to propose amendments in committee. There is an important distinction, Mr. Speaker, and you are well placed to be aware of it. The Conservatives also know this, because in 1993 they were a non-recognized party. The NDP knows it too, because the NDP was also a non-recognized party in 1993.

The problem is that the members of this House fall into two categories. In the House we have an opportunity to ask questions and make speeches. We even have some speaking rights, which unfortunately we can no longer exercise because the government has been imposing time allocation motions on nearly all bills. Still, we feel we have proportional equality with our counterparts in the other parties. It is natural that we will be allocated fewer minutes because we have fewer members.

In committee, on the other hand, it is not the same as in the Quebec National Assembly, where the other parties have given the non-recognized parties—such as Québec solidaire and Action démocratique before it—the right to sit on committees, speak at committee meetings and even vote. Here, none of that is possible. I do not want the non-recognized parties to be treated like a ping pong ball in this dispute between the government and the recognized parties in this House. I think we have something to say on the subject.

The existence of the report stage simply allows us to propose the amendments we were unable to propose in committee, the amendments we have not had an opportunity to discuss. It is the only right we have left, Mr. Speaker, and I would like you to preserve it. We must be careful. The government says this is an invitation, but no party in the House has given us anything since May 2, 2011, and we are not asking for any gifts. We do not want additional privileges; we simply want our rights to be respected.

In committee, however, as happened in the committee studying Bill C-60, the only committee where we have been able to propose amendments, we had a few short minutes to do so, but no opportunity to speak at all. We were not allowed to ask questions of the public servants who were present or vote on the amendments we were proposing. If the government thinks it was giving us a gift, it is mistaken.

We want to preserve our rights. Therefore, we must be able to propose an amendment, discuss it, debate it and vote on it, and be aware of all committee activities, as it is possible to do in the House at report stage.

My first request, Mr. Speaker, is that you ensure that the rights of all members of the House are preserved, especially those who are less numerous, like the members of non-recognized parties.

Nathan Cullen: Mr. Speaker, I have two very small points. I appreciate the new-found passion that the Conservatives have for independent members, because we can recall that when an independent member’s bill was at committee, the Conservatives were gutting that very same legislation and denied her the ability to even address her own piece of legislation, claiming the very rules  that we are talking about here today.

My specific point, and I am not sure if my hon. colleague was present for the entire citation that I used, is that the main argument that we used is if this is the remedy by which the government seeks to satisfy the involvement of independent members at the committee stage, that is a remedy that can be sought, but the power rests here with the House of Commons. It simply does not rest with the committee to invent the power to appoint or adopt motions from members who are not part of a committee. That is a fact.

The committee itself is a creation of the House of Commons. The members who are involved in that committee and any standing members who may be a part of it come from here, not come from any chair or from any motion that has passed.

In his response—and I know he is going to come back and deliberate further on the points that we raised—my hon. colleague needs to address this specific point, because it is the argument that we are making to you, Mr. Speaker. The argument is that the committee has the powers that are vested to it from the House of Commons. It is exclusive of that power to just invent who gets to sit on that committee. To suddenly invite amendments from members who are not there is also exclusive of that power. We cannot move motions of people who are not present.

That is a fact. It is true here and it is true at committee.

I do not see why the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons has such a problem understanding that, other than that he has found some convenient article. If the government chooses to do it this way, it can, but it has to come from here. For goodness’ sake, let us protect some of the privileges and powers of the House of Commons.

The instruction from the House of Commons did not allow the committee to do that. It did not. I read out the citation and reference to the committee. It did not say that the committee chair can suddenly appoint whomever they like and take whatever amendments they like. It did not. It is in black and white. If my hon. colleague across the way would like me to read it to him, I can.

The fact of the matter is that the power rests with you, Mr. Speaker, as you refer a bill, and it rests with the House in designating which committees are instructed to study the bill, and how. How the committee does everything beyond that is its business, and we respect that right, of course.

However, to ignore the central point of our argument today in this point of order means either there is no counter-argument or they are going to search around for one for a couple of days. Obviously the decision rests with you, Mr. Speaker, and I appreciate the comments from my colleague for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

Kevin Lamoureux: Mr. Speaker, this is just a very quick point. The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons tried to give a false impression. The Liberal Party voted against the motion. I do not want to take words out of context, but we voted against the motion in committee. That is an important point.

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In point of fact I have not been allowed to give an actual speech. I have only been allowed to ask a question. In the use of that question, I was able to signal that I had come to the conclusion that I would support the bill.

However, all of these closures mean that members in my position are never able to speak on the substance of the bill for more than 30 seconds.

Hon. James Moore: Mr. Speaker, it turns out the same way for me, I suppose, in this moment.

I understand the member’s frustration. Members of Parliament should be able to speak more frequently on legislation. It is great, for example, that in these coming few weeks Parliament sits until midnight., and I see nothing wrong with that.

I would like to see the House sit more often so more members of Parliament could express their views, raise their grievances, vent their frustrations, speak their hopes and represent their constituents. It would be good thing. I agree with my colleague on the ability of MPs to speak more frequently on legislation.

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Mr. Nathan Cullen: Mr. Speaker, this is an interesting and maybe fruitful exercise. We could start to look at the way the Conservative government spends its money, which is badly, on gazebos and F-35s. There is $3 billion it cannot actually account for, which I believe was meant for anti-terrorism measures, and $100-plus million for ads Canadians are annoyed by. Those all seem like good places to start to look for the money we need to allow Parliament to function. I think Canadians could actually get behind the idea of allowing democracy to go ahead of all of these wasteful, ridiculous expenditures of the Conservatives, who were supposed to be conservative with taxpayer dollars and have turned out to be anything but. Those would all be great sources.

I would like to suggest to my friend down the way that the Senate would be the New Democrats’ preferred place to start. Not only are we losing money in the proposition and getting nothing for it, we are probably being defrauded right now. I do not want to pay for Conservative senators to run around raising money for Conservative MPs and the party itself. That is one of the worst uses of taxpayer money I have ever seen.

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The problem with most of the questions is that they start a bit later in the scenario than they should.

First up, was Mike Duffy promised a Senate seat if he worked really hard to sabotage the Liberals in the 2008 election?

I had been interviewed by Mike Duffy and known him for years.  I was fond of him.  I never thought he was biased one way or the other – until his coverage of the 2008 campaign.  Some may recall me taking him on in a live interview when his introductory set up for Peter MacKay (interviewed just ahead of me) was so outrageous that I accused him of a lapse in journalistic ethics.  When the interview was over, I remember thinking, “Well, I will never be on Mike Duffy Live ever again.”  And when he was appointed to the Senate right after the election, I knew I was right as the show ceased to exist.  His lapse of ethics was more spectacularly evident in broadcasting out-takes from the Atlantic bureau’s interview with Stéphane Dion.  Opportunities to do “re-asks” are not uncommon and they are never broadcast.  Doing so, when Dion’s team had been told they could ask the questions over again, was outrageous.  It clearly impacted the election results.

The other questions also matter.  Did the Prime Minister promise Duffy he would fix the financial and legal mess created by false claims for a housing allowance?  Why would the Prime Minister do such a thing?  Does Duffy have anything he can hold over the PM, such as proof of the Senate seat for journalistic shilling in an election campaign?  Did the Prime Minister ask his Chief of Staff to write the cheque?  Frankly, I can see no other reason why a smart person like Nigel Wright would do something so obviously wrong, unless he was directed to do so by the Prime Minister.

Normal people are asking questions like “who has $90,000 in their chequing accounts?  Who has $90,000 in their chequing account and they have it to spare in case someone needs it?”

None of these questions matter as much as why is it that no reporter has been able to get a response from anyone in Harper’s administration about the chemistry of the atmosphere now being dangerously altered.  The news that we have hit 400 ppm of carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere makes Mike Duffy’s expense account scandal look like the petty criminality it likely is.  And, of course, there are approximately 1% as many words in our press about the 400 ppm news as there is about the Mike Duffy scandal.

The big crime continues to hide in plain sight while Stephen Harper continues his looting of our children’s future.

UPDATE: Just received news that Nigel Wright has fallen on his sword for the PM and become the literal fall guy. All questions still stand.

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Here’s the text of the motion:

That this House:

1. agree with many Canadians and the International Energy Agency that there is grave concern with the impacts of a 2 degree rise in global average temperatures;
2. condemn the lack of effective action by successive federal governments since 1998 to address emissions and meet our Kyoto commitments; and
3. call on the government to immediately table its federal climate change adaptation plan.

There are three clauses and I have trouble with each one of them. Before parsing the motion to explain the difficulties with all three clauses, let me point out the overwhelming problem: the motion does not call on Stephen Harper’s administration to do anything about the threat of rising greenhouse gases.

The action part of the motion calls for the government to “immediately” (that sounds good!) “table its federal climate change adaptation plan.”  (whoops, where did the action go?)

An “adaptation plan” is all about how to adapt to climate change.  I have long called, as has the Green Party, for a climate adaptation plan.  But I would never call for an adaptation plan with no parallel effort to reduce the climate change impacts to which we will have to adapt.  To do so is to announce we are throwing in the towel. We are abandoning efforts to reduce carbon pollution and will only do what we can to hold back rising seas, adjust to dropping water levels in the Great Lakes and Georgian Bay, plant drought resistant crops, brace ourselves for increased forest fires, loss of Arctic ice, permafrost melt, etc.

It is mind-boggling that the NDP motion failed to call for action.  Did they forget that part?  Were they worried a call for real action to fight global warming would create space for a public policy discussion about carbon pricing and a carbon tax?  Or did they think “adaptation plan” meant some kind of GHG reduction plan? If so, they are out of touch with the key concepts of climate policy in place since the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Back to the top.  The first clause is so sloppily worded it minimizes, rather than underscores, why 2 degrees global average temperature increase really matters.  Why start the sentence with something as weak as “agree with many Canadians and the International Energy Agency?” Why not mention “consensus of the world’s climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the commitment to avoid a global average temperature increase of 2 degrees C that Canada made in the Copenhagen Accord.”

Weak drafting is one thing, but the next part is much worse: “there is grave concern with the impacts of a 2 degrees rise in global average temperatures.”   There is grave concern? With the impacts?? That’s it?  How about an accurate statement, like this:

“Scientists have concluded that for human civilization to have reasonable odds of avoiding collapse due to the catastrophic impacts of runaway global warming, concentrations of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere must be held below those levels associated with a 2 degrees rise in global average temperature increase, as compared to pre-Industrialized levels.  In fact, in order to preserve Arctic ice, we should strive to keep global average temperature increases below a 1.5 degree rise.”

The way the NDP motion is worded it seems to assume we are going to have a 2 degree rise, and that there are grave concerns with impacts.  It fails to connect 2 degrees with the triggering of runaway global warming, which is a much bigger problem than the immediate impacts of 2 degrees on its own.

Then there’s the second clause.  This is a transparent attempt to wedge the Liberals on the issue.  That’s politics and I guess I should be used to it by now.  But when an issue is as important as whether our children have a liveable world, I am sick and tired of this petty garbage.  The Liberals have a lousy record on climate.  Chretien ratified Kyoto, full marks for that, but he did not put forward a plan. As Executive Director of Sierra Club of Canada, I spent years demanding action and criticizing the failure of the Liberals to act.  Then Paul Martin did act and his environment minister, Stephane Dion, put forward a credible plan in 2005.  And in 2006, Harper killed that plan.  That one phrase would not have caused me to vote against the motion, if there had been a call for real action to reduce GHG.  But predictably and tragically it reveals the real goal of the NDP opposition day motion: to make the Liberals look bad by writing a motion in a way the NDP knew the Liberals would vote against.

Why does that matter?  Well, it’s like this.  If you care about climate, you draft a motion in order to create the maximum possible opportunity for it to pass.  You don’t play stupid games.

The NDP did the same thing last week with the Canada-China Investment Treaty motion.  It rejected Liberal attempts to amend the motion such that the Liberals could vote with the NDP.  At least then, the motion was clear and I had no problem voting with the NDP, but I was furious that an issue as important as blocking ratification of the FIPA with China was sabotaged for the shortest term possible partisan gain. (And I was furious that the Liberals voted with the Conservatives… I was in a very “plague on both your Houses” mood.)

The climate crisis is a threat to our very survival.  It sickens me to see petty partisanship trump climate. For God’s sake, put forward motions that have a chance of passing and then twist arms in the Conservative caucus to get a motion that matters.

So that about covers why I couldn’t vote with the NDP.  I would have loved to have seen a unified group of MPs from all the Opposition Parties rise on principle and (hoping against hope) some of the Conservatives who understand the need for climate action might have voted with us to give the Parliamentary call for reductions in GHG a chance of passing.  But since tonight’s motion forgot to call for climate action, maybe we could take a run at a properly worded motion another day.

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“Although I voted for C-15 at Second Reading, and continue to support many of the core provisions of this Bill, including those to strengthen the tenure of our military judges, and those to provide our military judges with greater judicial discretion, I had hoped that the serious concerns raised by the Provost Marshall and others would be taken into consideration in Committee.

“Important safeguards were put in place to prevent political interference in Military Police investigations following the tragic incident in Somalia. But by allowing the Vice-Chief of Defence Staff to issue instructions regarding a specific ongoing investigation, Bill C-15 will create ample opportunity for such interference to again take place.

“Given that these concerns remained unaddressed, I tabled Report Stage amendments to C-15 which sought to defend the independence of our Military Police from political interference. While sadly I expected the Harper Conservatives to reject any amendment that protected an accountability body from political interference, I am disappointed that neither the Liberals or the NDP saw it fit to have a vote on something so critical to the proper functioning of our Canadian Forces.”

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