moved:

That, notwithstanding any standing order or usual practice of the House, for the duration of the session,

(a)

(i) a minister of the Crown may, with the agreement of the House leader of another recognized party, at any time during a sitting, but no later than 6:30 p.m., request that the ordinary hour of daily adjournment for a subsequent sitting be 12:00 a.m., provided that it be 10:00 p.m. on a day when a debate pursuant to Standing Order 52 or 53.1 is to take place, and that such a request shall be deemed adopted,

(ii) a minister of the Crown may request, at any time during a sitting, that a decision to extend a subsequent sitting, made pursuant to subparagraph (a)(i), be rescinded and such request shall be deemed adopted;

(b) on a sitting day extended pursuant to subparagraph (a)(i),

(i) proceedings on any opposition motion pursuant to Standing Order 81(16) shall conclude no later than 5:30 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday, 6:30 p.m. on a Monday or 1:30 p.m. on a Friday, on an allotted day for the business of supply, except pursuant to Standing Order 81(18)(c),

(ii) after 6:30 p.m., the Speaker shall not receive any quorum calls or dilatory motions, and shall only accept a request for unanimous consent after receiving a notice from the House leaders or whips of all recognized parties stating that they are in agreement with such a request,

(iii) motions to proceed to the orders of the day, and to adjourn the debate or the House may be moved after 6:30 p.m. by a minister of the Crown, including on a point of order, and such motions be deemed adopted,

(iv) the time provided for Government Orders shall not be extended pursuant to Standing Orders 33(2), 45(9) or 67.1(2);

(c) during consideration of the estimates on the last allotted day of each supply period, pursuant to Standing Orders 81(17) and 81(18),

(i) when the Speaker interrupts the proceedings for the purpose of putting forthwith all questions necessary to dispose of the estimates, all remaining motions to concur in the votes for which a notice of opposition was filed shall be deemed to have been moved and seconded, the questions deemed put and recorded divisions deemed requested,

(ii) when a supply bill is considered in a committee of the whole, if a recorded division is requested to any bill elements or motions required to dispose of that stage of the said bill, the results of the vote shall apply to the remaining bill elements and motions required to dispose of that stage and report the bill to the House;

(d) a motion for third reading of a government bill may be made in the same sitting during which the said bill has been concurred in at report stage;

(e) on the last three sitting days set forth in the House of Commons Calendar for the periods ending in June, as well as the last two sitting days of the periods ending in December, a minister of the Crown may move, without notice, a motion to adjourn the House, provided that,

(i) the said motion shall be decided immediately without debate or amendment, and that the House shall be deemed adjourned pursuant to Standing Order 28,

(ii) notwithstanding Standing Order 45, no recorded division requested between 2 p.m. on the third to last scheduled sitting day and the adjournment on the last scheduled sitting day of the periods ending in June, respectively, and between 2 p.m. on the second to last scheduled sitting day and the adjournment on the last scheduled sitting day of the periods ending in December shall be deferred, except for any recorded division requested in regard to a Private Member's Business item, for which the provisions of Standing Orders 93 and 98 shall continue to apply; and

(f) on any day, at midnight or thereafter, if the House has not completed a series of recorded divisions related to the business of supply or on any bill, a minister of the Crown may move, at any time, the suspension of the sitting of the House, which shall be deemed adopted, and the sitting of the House shall be suspended until 9:00 a.m., later that calendar day.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss a motion being put forward by our government to improve the work of the House.

We are at an important point in this parliamentary session. Our government has an ambitious agenda to improve the lives of Canadians.

This means working hard here in the House of Commons to advance legislation for the people we represent. It means working with all parties in the House to get things done co-operatively, without partisanship or political games.

Members from all parties in this minority government are here to represent their constituents and to get things done on behalf of the people they represent. Unfortunately, one party is preventing that from happening.

The Conservatives, led by the Leader of the Opposition have been behaving irresponsibly. They oppose for the sake of opposing, and they fail to propose responsible solutions. They are obstructing the work of every member of the House, all its committees, bodies and parties, solely for their own partisan interests. They are using political delay tactics to prevent a number of bills from being voted on. We are all witnesses to this, even when it comes to bills they actually support. They impose all-night voting marathons and, in the process, vote against the very investments Canadians are counting on.

That is the agenda of the leader of the official opposition of the Conservative Party of Canada for the House. It is to delay, obstruct and create chaos. By doing so, he hopes that Canadians will tune all of this out and not become invested in the work that we do here, the work that has positive impacts on Canadians every day. I will get to that in a moment.

Before that, I would like to talk about how the Conservatives have prevented the House of Commons from doing its work and how their leader will never admit to Canadians what he and his MPs are doing. All his claims about who he is working for are nothing but a ruse. The leader of the official opposition is working for himself, for no one else, and the House of Commons is paying the price.

The motion we are debating today is designed to address the unfortunate place we now find ourselves because of the Conservatives' political agenda of chaos and obstruction. The motion is designed to allow the House to do its work. It is designed to provide extensive time to debate bills in the chamber, something that the Conservatives claim they want. It is designed to turn this place into a healthier workplace. No one, whether one is a member of Parliament or an employee working in the House of Commons, should be forced to work throughout the night simply because the Leader of the Opposition wants to bully others into participating in his political games.

Indeed, this motion reflects our government's view of what we should all want Parliament to be, which is a place for constructive debate, testing ideas, and reasoned and civil discussions. It should be a place where things get done. Simply put, it should be a place that Canadians are proud of, not a place that Canadians look at and recoil in horror because of the games played, through the night, by the official opposition. Unfortunately, the Conservative leader wants to prevent all of this from happening. He wants to turn the House into a place of dysfunction.

On our side of the aisle, and I believe this is true for other MPs in the chamber, we have a different view. We have a much greater respect for this place, for Parliament. We are here every day, working hard to help Canadians in a wide range of areas that touch their lives—

Steven MacKinnon

$477,330.00