Madam Speaker, in my riding of Spadina—Fort York, the intersection of Spadina and Dundas is the scene of virtually a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week protest of this very single issue. During the last campaign, as I do my work out of my constituency office, which is located at Spadina and Dundas, the people who protest this issue talked to the public and talked to me. They saw my face and my name on the billboard at the office building where their protests are staged, and they asked me a question in the last Parliament. They said they knew how I voted on this issue but asked why I did not speak to it. Clearly, the people leading the campaign to prevent this horrendous practice want people to not only support their cause, but advocate for it. They want to see how and why that advocacy will be effective and where and how that advocacy will be used to advance the issue they are speaking to.

If I were to go back to the protesters and organizations leading this debate and say that I just decided to vote but not speak to it and not honour my commitment to speak to it, I would disappoint them. I am thankful that a number of members of the House have created this debate and this space to forward the work that was started by my cherished colleague Irwin Cotler, and then Borys Wrzesnewskyj, because not all of us get the opportunity, due to our parliamentary duties, to speak to every issue that comes in front of the House. If we did, every debate would take days and days and weeks and weeks.

We try to prioritize, but in this situation I made a commitment to the residents I represent, and in particular the organizers and protesters who stand guard on this issue, that I would speak to this issue. I thank my colleagues for affording me this opportunity, and I hope members opposite understand that for those of us who represent communities where this issue is most poignant, affording us a chance to speak to it is part of our responsibility and duty to this House, but also to the people we represent. I hope it is not seen in any other light.

There are a number of different dynamics that drive this issue, but there is also great disappointment in the inability of our Houses of Parliament, both the other place and the House of Commons, to get this legislation through in the last term. We know why that happened. It did not happen because this bill was filibustered; it happened because several other critically important bills were filibustered, including the work on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It was in fact that filibuster in the House that prevented the Senate from getting to this bill. Thankfully, all sides now seem to have seen a way forward on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and hopefully that bill will get royal assent on Monday.

It is a little rich for the sort of back-and-forth that we are filibustering to be raised in this context, when the parties opposite, in particular the Conservatives, know that the Conservatives filibustered this one in the last Parliament. They are suddenly now demanding immediate action on this file, when they could have achieved immediate action on this file years ago if they had co-operated. They take no responsibility or accountability for that, but their obstruction, even in the majority Parliament, had an impact on the legislation that was proposed and that we are talking about here today.

Let us not talk about the strategies and the inside baseball of House affairs and the various tactics that various House leaders use to try to achieve progress on parts of the agenda that are a priority to their party. That is politics. That is the House, and that is what happens in Parliament, but to pretend that there is some sort of ideological purity on that or partisanship that is independent of ulterior motives is a little rich, especially coming from a party that has been filibustering, in particular, the legislation on conversion therapy, which impacts Canadians' civil liberties and Canadians' human rights now, as we speak. For the Conservatives, in particular, to stand on a high horse on this one only makes me wonder if they have ever actually seen a horse—

Adam Vaughan

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