Elizabeth May
Saanich—Gulf Islands, British Columbia · Green Party · Canada
“It is easy to roll out solar panels, except that our provincial utilities get in the way. In any case, the cheapest source of electricity, reducing the cost for everyone, would come from focusing on renewable electricity. I do think there is some promise, although it needs a lot of work.”
“We are the only party in the House that does not receive a penny of support from the parliamentary budget, being both unrecognized and unfavoured. I am glad my colleagues from the NDP received funding to make up for what they lost when they ceased to be a recognized party. I have less money, but I am here, and I am not alone.”
“When it became clear that children were dying of Reye syndrome in New Brunswick because of forest aerial spraying by the forest industry. He stated, “I don't like to see people dying. This is one of the things I really wouldn't like to see.”
“That is not the only thing I want to concentrate on, although I will take most of the time, and I am grateful for the chance to speak to this bill now, finally, in this place. Regarding the removal of the excise tax, I have asked before about this in question period.”
“There is not even a link in the language used within the spring economic statement, the budget itself or Bill C-30, but it clearly, by inference, rests on this assumption: More pesticides are going to reduce food prices and help the economy. That is a leap. Let us say that is wrong, based on the evidence, in two ways.”
“Mr. Speaker, the hon. parliamentary secretary is a friend, so when I say a friend, it is not just rhetoric, but I am disappointed. When Bill C-30 was first tabled, I asked the hon.”
The complete record
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“At page 348 of the November 2025 budget there was a commitment that investment tax credits would apply for carbon capture, utilization and storage “but not [for] enhanced oil recovery”. In this spring economic update, we finally find out, because it was very clear that the commitment made to Danielle Smith in the November 27 MOU with Alberta very specifically said that there would be investment tax credits available for enhanced oil recovery. This is a little tricky, and I will try to get through it quickly. We had to ask a lot of questions in our off-the-record lock-up with the Department of Finance Canada officials, because I just found it too perplexing for words to hear that now the Liberals were going to admit that, as of today, there will be investment tax credits available for enhanced oil recovery.”
“Actually, it is striking to me that the Green Party, with our rather abysmal lack of resources compared to the Government of Canada's resources, did a better job pointing out how we could protect our economy, protect our natural resources, avoid Trump's tariffs and have better economic sovereignty than the Government of Canada has done to date. Members can please check if they do not believe me. We actually brought the deficit down more as a party than did any other party, not by cutting, but by generating new revenue for the Government of Canada. The government claims that there is revenue. It is a shocking claim in the spring economic update that there is more revenue by expanding a subsidy. This goes back to one of the main reasons that the former minister of the environment resigned over last year's budget.”
“The government could find out how to generate $50 billion in revenue from wealth taxes or how to use financial transaction taxes at basically 20¢ for every $100 in stock market transactions, and how that would create new sources of government revenue to afford the things we need. We need to address rapidly what is happening with youth unemployment. We need to address what is happening in the affordability crisis. Yes, we should have excess profit taxes on the grocery chains and, yes, excess profit taxes on oil and gas companies and wealth taxes on the very wealthiest people, not affecting most Canadians. These are things we could do. By asking the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer to cost them out, we have proven they can be done.”
“We actually had the Parliamentary Budget Office include reasonable estimates for what it would cost to store the potash until we wanted to sell it to someone. There would be a guaranteed return on investment to individual Canadians of 5%. Therefore, I recommend to the Minister of Finance that he have a look. I have already mentioned this to the Prime Minister . On the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer's website is the research that was done, because once the PBO does research for a political party, it does not belong just to the political party for which it did the research. It is publicly available information.”
“Just as advice to the government, I will say that it might be useful to figure out how to do this, because the Green Party already did the research. We asked the Parliamentary Budget Office to figure out how we could have funding for Canadians and for our own resources, and create it based on the concept of Canada savings bonds. We called them “saving Canada bonds”, and we had the Parliamentary Budget Office cost this out for us. If we have strategic reserves of our resources, to avoid having them shipped to the U.S. and tariffed or whatever, we could, for instance, buy up all of Canada's potash at the price that potash producers want to receive, at market prices, and we could store it.”
“The spring economic statement has no details on how this is going to work. (1845) We do know that we have created a new entity once again. It is very common in the current government for all kinds of new offices to open, and the Canada Strong fund now would have a Canada Strong fund transition office. The Canada Strong fund transition office, once established, and of course it does not exist now, would consult widely and then tell us how the Canada Strong fund would work. If it is not ready to be announced, the Liberals could wait until they had answers before announcing things, but that is just me. I would like to know the details about something that is basically the top-line headline for the spring economic update: that we have a new, first time ever, Canadian sovereign wealth fund.”
“The sovereign wealth fund has allowed individual Norwegians to have millions of dollars of assets in a sovereign wealth fund built on North Sea oil. Ironically, that Norwegian sovereign wealth fund was developed based on what Peter Lougheed was doing in Alberta, which was then cancelled by Ralph Klein. It is interesting how leaders of the same party can follow such radically different approaches. In any case, Norway's sovereign wealth fund was built on oil taxation with revenues for the benefit of all. What is the Canada Strong fund going to be? We do not know yet. We do know that it is not based on revenues from taxation of oil wealth. It is, rather, the opposite. It is based on borrowing $25 billion, again public borrowing and debt, to call it a sovereign wealth fund. We do not have any details in today's document.”
“We were told that there would be details in the spring economic statement of how this was going to work. The Prime Minister said yesterday that the sovereign wealth fund was also going to give individual Canadians a chance to invest, and that was going to be part of this. The sovereign wealth fund would allow individual Canadians to be part of putting together the investment dollars that we need for a sovereign wealth fund. First of all, let us compare it to Norway. Norway's sovereign wealth fund was built on taxation of oil revenues. Ironically, it was the Norwegian experts who came to Alberta who understood the rules of Peter Lougheed, who was a visionary, for developing the oil sands: “act like an owner” and “don't live on oil rents but set them to the side”.”
“We need to do more than have a discussion paper about a key piece of infrastructure that has been promised over and over again without details, and now, after all of that, what we get in today's spring economic update is the promise of a discussion paper to be released soon. The ways in which this disappoints are quite numerous, and I know I have enough speaking time to get to some of them, but not all of them. Let us look again at what was one of the big-ticket items announced yesterday. Before we got the spring economic statement, we were told that Canada is unveiling a new Canadian sovereign wealth fund. It sounds wonderful. It sounds very patriotic. It sounds like a new idea. Of course, it immediately brought to light and raised comparisons with Norway's sovereign wealth fund.”
“The November 4, 2025, budget, said, at page 19, that one of the great building Canada strong kinds of projects would be “building clean power grids for a sustainable future”. We have been waiting for announcements for a green electricity grid for some time. The Prime Minister has hinted at it at various points at press conferences. He said we would see this commitment to a green electricity grid strategy very soon. In this spring economic statement, it is mentioned, all right, that something we are looking at is building “a stronger grid” for Canada, but what we get is not a commitment to fund it, build it or put it on the major projects list. What we get is that very soon we will see a discussion paper. That is not just underwhelming; it is appallingly negligent.”
“(1840) We are looking at what it means for Canada's economy, not just our survival, as if our survival as a human civilization is a small thing, to hard-wire itself to fossil fuels when we know what we know about the transition that is happening globally based on price alone. Price point alone is moving investment dollars away from fossil fuels and rapidly to renewable energy, to solar, wind and geothermal, but particularly solar because solar electricity is now cheaper than coal. It is astonishing that in the spring economic statement, renewable energy is not mentioned or increased. There is no commitment to expand it. We do have a commitment here that we have been waiting for, for some time.”
“That is a tipping point in global climate science, but here, we have the head of the International Energy Agency saying we have basically hit a tipping point due to geopolitical instability, and that economies around the world are not going to want fossil fuels because of the instability and because they are inevitably and inextricably tied to wars and instability. This spring economic update is tone-deaf to even the possibility that Canada's future economic stability is not tied to boosting fossil fuels. We have new subsidies for LNG and new announcements for pipelines, and there is practically a hallelujah chorus for this, but not from the Green Party.”
“We are at the point where global scientists are saying we are perilously close to where it becomes inevitable that the AMOC is going to stall or collapse. This is not just startling or alarming, it is terrifying. The scientists who have done this work say they now see that the chances are not less than 5% as previously thought, but are approaching fifty-fifty. That is a global tipping point in climate science, which should be moving us off fossil fuels quite rapidly and toward tree planting and anything we can do to avoid, as the lead scientist on this report said, the collapse of the AMOC. We must avoid its collapse “at all costs” because the impact of this would be a rapid climatic shift that is planetary and would soon become inevitable and unstoppable.”
“What the International Energy Agency is saying is that the days of fossil fuels are now very limited and it is not just by the climate crisis. We should have said the days of fossil fuels are limited some time ago, the days are drawing to a close. Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did say that at one point, that we know that we are moving away from fossil fuels. However, this is interesting. We are at a tipping point in terms of climate science and we are at risk. Global scientists are saying we are at a significant risk of hitting a tipping point. There is a whole system called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, AMOC. The Gulf Stream is part of it. It is basically a vast conveyor belt of ocean currents in the Atlantic Ocean.”
“There is much discussion in the spring economic update of how the Middle East uncertainty, the illegal war against Iran launched by the United States and Israel, is going to affect Canada's future. In reading the spring economic update, it is as though the most we can say about it is that it has been some kind of blip and that we can almost say we are going to be past it soon. That is completely contradicted by the opinion of experts. I am saddened by the fact that there is no mention in the spring economic update of the conclusion of one of the world's leading energy economists and experts, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol. He has said very clearly that the oil crisis triggered by the Iran war has changed the fossil fuel industry for ever.”
“We are mutually dependent on each other's exports and imports. We do want trade diversification; Greens do as well. Again, the tone of the spring economic update is remarkably sanguine. There is a comment on page 27 that suggests that longer-term oil price expectations are now more firmly anchored. I am baffled by that. Certainly, global energy economists do not share that sense of assurance that we now have more firmly anchored oil price expectations. On the contrary, around the world, energy economists are saying that it is extremely volatile, that it does not seem to be settling down and that there is no way we would possibly know that. Given that, the appropriate things to do are not necessarily where the government is heading.”
“Even in examining the pictures that are in the budget and looking at the graphs, there are claims that we have done a great job of expanding markets outside of the United States for our fossil fuel exports. It is suggested in graphs and bar charts. To the casual observer, it might seem that we had made a major difference in how much of our fossil fuel exports do not go to the United States anymore. Those bar charts are misleading. They say there has been a big increase in non-U.S. exports. Yeah, from 3% to 10%, and when we present percentages in bar charts, we can make that look like a lot, but the reality is still the same. About 90% of our fossil fuel exports go to the United States. (1835) It is the same thing for exports of our other products. Our economies are still very interlocked.”
“There is no question that there are challenges for any finance department or any central bank anywhere in the world in trying to project and predict what the world holds, what the economy is going to be like even six months from now, much less on a usual budgetary horizon of budgeting out and forecasting four years' worth of spending. Still, despite those challenges, I am surprised at this spring economic statement's overall tone. It is remarkably sanguine, as if we do know what is ahead and can confidently predict that the government has done a great job already. For instance, there are numerous graphs and charts throughout this spring economic statement that present a picture that is not real.”
“I agree with my colleague from the New Democrat Party, and it needs to be acknowledged every time we talk about the impacts of the war in Iran, that it is an illegal war. It did not have even the minimal justifications under international law of necessity for a war. It is a war of choice. It was reckless. Much of the spring economic statement talks about the economic uncertainty created by what is now happening, the disruption of the war against Iran and how it spread with Israel's attacks on Lebanon and Iran's retaliation against numerous gulf states.”
“It is clear that the Prime Minister and the Liberal majority government are facing major challenges related to global events beyond their control. [ English ] It is very clear, and I do not want to suggest that the situation would be easy if I were in the Prime Minister 's chair. It would not be easy for any government to deal with the fact that our greatest ally and trading partner, our neighbour to the south, is no longer a reliable ally, which is a gross understatement. We are not just dealing with our regional relationships, as neighbours here on Turtle Island, between the United States and Canada. We are dealing with much more than that. What Donald Trump represents to the world is the source of geopolitical instability. The United States and Israel together launched a war on Iran.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise at this later hour, having had some hours pass since the Minister of Finance tabled the spring economic update. [ Translation ] It is always an honour to rise in the House as leader of the Green Party of Canada. It is a great honour for me. I did not have high expectations or much hope for the 2026 spring economic update—it is not a budget—but still, I am disappointed. No explanation was provided concerning the measures we were expecting. The government promised to provide details on measures it had already announced. They are not in this update. I want to explain the things that are most important to the Green Party, including the challenges facing Canada right now.”
“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from Vancouver Kingsway, the parliamentary leader for the New Democratic Party. I agreed with every single thing he said, right up until when he said the NDP was the only party in this place to stand up for universal pharmacare. We will continue to agree with him that the current Liberal government has abandoned it by not concluding agreements with every province. We are the only country that has universal public health care but does not have complete coverage for prescription drugs. I would like to ask the hon. member if he would like to expand on and explain how universal pharmacare would bring down health care costs across Canada.”
“Mr. Speaker, as far as we know, there has never been an effort to recruit MPs to shift from a minority government situation to a majority. As I mentioned, it is not unusual to see members cross the floor. Again, there is nothing particularly against our principles, but I think it does tend to, increasingly out there in the hustings, feel a bit fishy.”
“Mr. Speaker, here is my advice. If they want to make a difference for their grandchildren, then the members need to immediately reject the opinion of their party whip. They need to show moral courage for the sake of our grandchildren and our county. To make a difference, it is vital that every member is able to exercise their rights in the name of democracy, not merely for the sake of the leader's power.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is true. It is almost the anniversary of the election and there are several members for whom this is their first year in the House. I very much regret that they have not had the experience I had. I worked for the Progressive Conservative government. I was not a party member, but I worked for Mr. Mulroney's majority government. There was more democracy back then. There was more commitment to the environment and to human rights. I am disappointed. We must establish systems that work for humanity and for the planet. We must not give in to the current power of a government that has a Prime Minister who is very popular, but not very democratic.”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank my esteemed Bloc Québécois colleague. I think he is right. To answer his question, I think that the current government is on the wrong track. The government has done away with programs aimed at addressing the climate crisis. It has passed bills that violate the rights of refugees, for example. The government has lost sight of several priorities. I used to think that the Liberal Party shared these priorities, but not anymore.”
“Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from Winnipeg North will recall that nowhere in my speech did I draw attention to any difficulties myself, as three of my private member's bills have become law. I think that exceeds the batting average for most. What I am pointing out is that members of committees should have been considered from more than just the three recognized parties. With only three recognized parties, power has shifted even more into a centralized role. I agree that this motion does not change my rights, but it does give me an opportunity to point out that the recognized party rules are misinterpreted and misunderstood, and I am not an independent member. I am a member here on behalf of the Green Party of Canada.”
“I do not want to use my full time allotted, because I think my points have been made pretty clearly at this point. I would ask, and I hope, that when we look at this again, PROC will be engaged to study committee membership. I hope we will actually have a proper study and discussion of why we have misinterpreted the recognized party rules to such an extent that there are two tiers. It does get very Orwellian. All MPs are equal, but some are more equal than others. With that, I urge this place to defeat the motion before us and attempt, if we possibly can, not to build this place on “might makes right” or “numbers rule all”, but get to a place where we have real conversations and real study and respect democracy and the people who sent us here.”
“I have experienced, just for the record, more bulldozing since the April 28 general election in this place as a member of Parliament for the Green Party. I feel sort of more physical pain from the bulldozing that took place to get through Bill C-5 very quickly, with full Conservative Party support, no obstruction and no interfering with the Liberal government's agenda. Things were moving with a lot of co-operation, except for those of us who objected, and those of us who are not in recognized parties, as I said, have fewer rights today than I had when I was elected in 2011, because I can no longer stand with four other members of Parliament and insist on a recorded vote, which I was able to do from 2011 until the COVID outbreak. I know that the debate is going to come to an end very shortly.”
“All of us who were serving at that time will remember it as sort of a long and painful version of Groundhog Day, where every day we debated the same thing, and every time the Conservatives amended their own motion, they reset the clock and every Conservative member could speak to the same thing again and again. Therefore, the filibustering of one's own motion is not unheard of. Filibustering in committee, even for one's own bill, is not unheard of. Committees need to function well, and for them to function well, there needs to be a basis of trust and respect in this place. Since I was first elected, I have seen it deteriorate. One thing that deteriorates trust and respect in this place is when members of Parliament are bulldozed by the party with more power.”
“She did some research and presented evidence showing that committees do not have a strong track record when it comes to creating barriers. [ English ] The member for Saint-Jean pointed out with evidence that in the last number of years, parliamentary committees have not been blocking government legislation. Sometimes it has actually been Liberals in control of Parliament who have filibustered their own legislation. In fact, right before the last election, we had a long period of time when the whole House of Commons was caught up in a Conservative motion on a matter of privilege before committee.”
“We are elected in our ridings by our constituents, and the only place we can find a job description for what we are supposed to do as members of Parliament, because there is not a very handy job description, is in our Constitution. All it says is that members of Parliament represent constituencies. Back to Motion No. 9, what we are doing here is not a big surprise, but I do think there have been cogent arguments made by a number of opposition members as to why this is not a good idea and would create a precedent that the Liberals today may regret having put in place for a future occasion. I found particularly compelling the argument from the member for Saint-Jean . (1655) [ Translation ] The member for Saint-Jean contributed additional data to today's debate.”
“I never said a single mean or nasty thing about her. Her reasons were her own. Under our system of Westminster parliamentary democracy, we do not put forward candidates to act as cardboard cutouts, as proxy representatives of the leader who cannot be present everywhere, with a recorder button that we can push to hear the voice on some kind of cassette tape. I am using a very old-fashioned reference. I am sure that, with all the social media and AI that we have, we could get a hologram leader of a party to travel around with every candidate and actually seem to be speaking to their constituents. However, the point is that we run as individuals.”
“He was elected as a Liberal, and when former prime minister Stephen Harper swore in his new cabinet, there were jaws dropping all over the place as the limos pulled up in front of Rideau Hall and famous Liberal David Emerson got out to be sworn in as a member of Stephen Harper's cabinet. This is a perpetual problem in Parliament. It is really awkward, because most people have short memories and forget they are living in a glass house. When someone lives in a glass house, it is not a good idea to throw stones. We can say many things about floor crossing, but it is not against our rules, and it is certainly not a surprise, depending on who has just gained the person who crossed the floor. I lost a dear friend. She is still a friend, but I lost a friend when the member for Fredericton , elected as a Green, went and sat with the Liberals.”
“[ English ] When I speak to the motion, it actually is important and directly on point to point out that the recognized party law has been misunderstood for many decades now, and it would be a good time, when we are in this unprecedented transition, to go back to what our House of Commons stands for. That is the reason that it is not an offence under parliamentary rules for someone elected as a Conservative to decide to go sit with the Liberal Party, any more than it was for a Liberal member of Parliament from Paul Martin's immediately deceased cabinet. David Emerson comes to mind.”
“As I said, I wrote the Prime Minister about the composition of committees at the very beginning of his mandate to suggest that we want committees to work and that experienced parliamentarians from any party should be considered for full membership because it offends no rule at all, and it reflects more of the principles on which we believe this place to be founded in a Westminster parliamentary democracy. [ Translation ] We are all equal, and each and every one of us has the same rights, the same powers and the same tools to find solutions for Canadians.”
“9 because it now has a majority of representation in this place, we want committees to actually reflect the way people voted, with the number of seats at committee reflecting the number of votes obtained in an election, to reflect the democracy of this House into each committee. I think it would have been worthwhile, although I note that it was not considered by the Liberal benches, to consider that proportionality would include the approximately or somewhat under 8% of Canadians who did not vote for any of the recognized parties. That would be some representation on committees, which the Liberals could still have considered when putting forward Motion No. 9, and I think they should have considered it.”
“Mr. Speaker, what I am putting forward is entirely on point with respect to the motion we have before us. The assumption that underlies what the government is doing with this motion is that it was beyond even consideration that there should be seats on the committee for members of the New Democratic Party or the Green Party or any members who happen to sit in this place as independents. There is no rule against it. I think most members of Parliament, if I gave a pop quiz, would be surprised to hear that we are the only Westminster parliamentary democracy that uses this concept of a recognized party at all. Beyond that, when we look at the results after an election, if we are looking at proportionality, which is at the essence of the government's position in Motion No.”
“However, that is a separate question. The money is the only thing the 1963 recognized party law is about. Rights to participate in committees are not a part of that, nor are rights in question period, etc. Then we go to this: How far and wide is this practice in Westminster parliamentary democracy? How much did this Canadian idea of recognized parties catch on? The answer is, not at all, not anywhere. We are the only Westminster parliamentary democracy that ever created the idea that there are two tiers, that larger party MPs or their parties get money—”
“It offends no rule. It offends no law. It just ignores a practice of long standing. However, it adheres far more closely to our beautiful fiction that all members of Parliament are equal to every other member of Parliament and that the Prime Minister is merely primus inter pares , first among equals. We know that when the recognized party rule was created, it created two tiers of MPs. One is those from larger, recognized parties. For citizens who may be watching this discussion, the minute we get 12 members of Parliament, we get about $1 million in extra resources from the parliamentary budget to support our parliamentary work. We have had cases, and I will not mention them, where parties have used the money they get for parliamentary work quite inappropriately, and I would say illegally, for partisan purposes.”
“It does not say anywhere that if they have fewer than 12 members, they have no right to be a full member of any standing committee. (1645) I double-checked with the clerk. I suggested to the clerk, and I hope the clerk does not mind me recounting the conversation, as I do not think it was terribly private, that this constitutes a really bad habit, this practice of saying that the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands cannot sit on any committee and would get one question once a week at the end of question period, etc. That is not part of the recognized party law. That is a bad habit. The clerk put it into more parliamentary language: It is a practice of long standing. In other words, I did not have it wrong. There is no law or rule that says members of Parliament from whatever size party cannot be full members of a standing committee.”
“Is it the case?” I just wanted to double-check that nothing has changed in our rules. In 1963, Parliament passed a law that created the concept of a recognized party. Without any self-interest, the members of the larger parties decided larger parties should by right have money in order to support their work in Parliament. Because larger parties have so much more work than smaller parties, goes the fiction, they need public funds to do the work of MPs in Parliament. That is the recognized party law from 1963. It has been unchanged. It says that if they have 12 members, they get money. That is all it says. It does not say anywhere that if the party has fewer than 12 members, they do not get as many questions in question period.”
“I had more rights in this place when I was first elected in May 2011 than I have today. As is always the case, larger and more powerful parties spend a great deal of effort to reduce the rights of smaller parties. Smaller parties and opposition parties spend a lot of effort trying to scupper what a larger party wants to do when it is in government. It is kind of an endless cycle and it is not really in the interest of democracy. It is also not what happens in other Westminster parliamentary systems around the world. I am going to spend a bit of time now going back through the recognized party rules. What does it mean to be a member of a recognized party? What are their rights in that situation? I double-checked with our Clerk before I wrote the letter to the Prime Minister , to say, “Am I right?”
“I am unfortunately in a position where I cannot say what the Prime Minister thought about my proposal because, although I put a lot of thought and effort into that letter, I did not get so much as a courtesy reply, “We have received your letter and we will get back to you at some point when we have absolutely nothing better to do and can consider it.” I went through the research to confirm what I understood to be the case, which is the status of every member of Parliament. I put it the other day to the hon. government House leader , who agreed with me. “Oh yes indeed, all members are equal in this place. Oh yes indeed, we all have equal rights,” said the hon. leader of the government in the House. Obviously, yes, that is our fiction, but our reality is somewhat different.”
“We have seen problems where committees can become overtaken by an effort to filibuster, but it is not always the case. Certainly, experienced MPs with committee experience are worth consideration to put on committees. That certainly is not immediately the issue at hand with the numbers and rejigging the numbers to ensure that there is a Liberal majority of members on those committees.”
“It gives me an opportunity to get to some of the basics that we very rarely get to talk about in this place, which is assumptions that are made about the nature of committees and the rights of individual members. Unquestioned, in the way this motion is put forward, is the notion I wrote to the Prime Minister about, after the election. I said, “Please do not forget to include, when they are considering committee makeup, the very respected and experienced parliamentarians who happen at the moment to be in an unrecognized party.” I was speaking not of myself and the Green Party, but of, at that point, seven New Democratic Party MPs who were experienced, thoughtful parliamentarians who all had good experience on committees. We knew we had a lot of new MPs.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak today. It is always an honour to rise in the House. I am speaking today as part of the debate on a key issue, specifically government Motion No. 9. The purpose of this motion is to introduce changes that could be described as innovative. These are unprecedented changes aimed at altering the composition of committees. [ English ] We know what the topic is before us. It is certainly unprecedented because the situation is unprecedented. We have never had in this place a change after an election where the composition of committees is to be changed because, according to the government, there are now more Liberal MPs than there were after the election. There is no question regarding the numbers: the result is that we have moved from a minority Parliament to a majority Parliament.”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Saint‑Jean for her excellent speech. I completely agree with her. She raised some points and shared new figures. Well, they were new to me, at least. The member showed that the committees are not an obstacle to progress here in the House. I thank her for that. Was there anything else my colleague wanted to add?”
“Mr. Speaker, this is the first time I have heard publicly that the member was specifically courted and that there was an attempt to recruit her to cross the floor. I wonder if she could expand on that and confirm whether it is true. It is the first time I have heard it, and it is indeed shocking because we have been assured by the government benches that they never tried to recruit anyone.”
“Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for St. Catharines says that it has been fundamental to parliamentary democracy. I wonder if he would agree with me that the process of parliamentary democracy in this place is continually, regardless of who is in power, to reduce the rights and powers of smaller parties in favour of their own rights and powers.”