Mr. Speaker, I guess this is nothing new. Here we are on another day of the legislative session when the government is attempting to get legislation through, legislation that really matters to Canadians, and once again we are witnessing the Conservative Party, in a determined way, wanting to prevent government legislation of all forms from being able to pass.
I am going to get into that shortly, but before I do, I want to recognize the significance of the legislation members are prepared to debate here. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs was chatting with me just prior, regarding Bill S-9, which is legislation that has come through the Senate. It was very well received, and it appeared that it would be passing through. From what I understand, everyone is supporting Bill S-9. It is not going to have a problem even getting through the Senate.
Bill S-9 is about amending the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act. The convention has 190 parties that have signed onto it, and it updates the list of chemicals. It is relatively uncontroversial yet very important legislation. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs was saying to me that he was anticipating that the legislation would pass with all-party support.
There is a sense of disappointment. There is no reason we could not have debated it and allowed the debate to come forward. I do not know, and I guess we would have to ask the parliamentary library or someone to find out, the number of times now that the Conservative Party has brought in a concurrence report during government business in order to prevent government legislation from being debated. This is an ongoing destructive force that the Conservative Party wants to use. Today, the Conservatives brought up a report dealing with the environment. We have been talking a lot about the environment in the last few days. I have a lot of thoughts I would like to share with members about the environment. We had two opposition days, both of which were dealing with the environment.
Today was supposed to be a government day when we would be dealing with the chemical weapons convention, but the Conservatives want to talk about a report. When they started talking about the report, what were they emphasizing? It was not necessarily the report itself. There is a lot of latitude given, just like the Speaker gave me latitude to be able to express my thoughts, but what they were more concerned about was incorporating the word “corrupt” as much as they could and trying to portray something that is just not there. They try to create a false narrative on this issue, like a million other issues, because they have been engaging in character assassination since before the Prime Minister was even the Prime Minister. In this case, they are trying to make the Prime Minister look bad in the eyes of Canadians, and they are using this particular report to try to amplify that.
They are also talking about transparency and accountability. I was in the position of being in a third party on the opposition benches when the current Prime Minister became the leader of the Liberal Party. One of the very first actions that he took was around the issue of proactive disclosure, indicating that we wanted to be able to share in a very transparent way that ensured accountability for how individual members of Parliament were spending money. When the government of Stephen Harper and the official opposition at the time opposed it, the leader of the Liberal Party, today's Prime Minister, imposed it on the Liberal caucus members.
Virtually from day one, since becoming the leader of the party, not to mention the Prime Minister of Canada, the leader has been a strong advocate for accountability and transparency. I can say to go back and read some of the S. O. 31s and look at some of the actions that were taken back then. We can fast-forward to virtually day one, when we took power back in 2015; what members will find is that the Conservative Party, in particular, was more focused on trying to make Canadians feel bad about the personalities within the government. That is my nice way of saying that the Conservatives' focus was on character assassination. Nothing has changed. For eight years, I have witnessed that first-hand.
Today, not only do the Conservatives want to filibuster legislation, but they also want to continue the line of anything and everything that they can point a finger at and say it is corrupt, bad and so forth. If they can factor in character assassination, they do.
In terms of the environment and what the government has been able to accomplish, I should probably go over the last couple of days. Maybe a couple of weeks back, the Conservative Party members brought up the issue of the Canada Infrastructure Bank. We will see the relevance of that here, because the Conservative Party of Canada opposes the Canada Infrastructure Bank. When the Conservatives talk about the environment and look at this report they say it is a slush fund. That is the way the Conservative Party looks at it. The Conservatives are saying that if they were in government, they would get rid of the Canada Infrastructure Bank.
They can look at the results and the things that are coming out of the Canada Infrastructure Bank. I think a progressive, and I underline the word “progressive”, Conservative government would have been very supportive of today's Canada Infrastructure Bank. However, that is not the case with the far-right, reckless and risky Conservative Party. Some people laughed when a question was posed today in question period referring to the Conservative Party and, in particular, the leader of the Conservative Party being a junior Donald Trump. The idea is that the Conservative Party today is so far to the right that the members of the party do not even recognize good public policy.
When I had talked about the Infrastructure Bank, I talked about bringing back the Homer Simpson award that I used to give out when I was an MLA, a number of years back, for dumb ideas. We can think about the Conservatives' position on the Infrastructure Bank and its impact on Canadians, the economy and our environment. Someone told me it was actually 48 projects, but I know it is at least 46 projects, with $9.7 billion being supported through the government. Through that, there is close to an additional $20 billion, because of other sources of funding.
There are transit projects, in the double-digits, out there. Gas buses are being converted into electric buses. I know that my colleague from Brampton North, a very strong advocate for the entire community of Brampton, is a big fan of the electrification of public transit. Through the Canada Infrastructure Bank, we are now seeing that conversion taking place.
It is better for the environment. Ultimately, there would be cost savings on that. That is one of the biggest investments we are seeing from the Canada Infrastructure Bank. That is not to mention school buses in different regions of the country that are also being converted into electric school buses.
We talk a lot about rural Internet. In fact, earlier today we had a vote on spectrum. The Conservative Party was talking about rural Internet connectivity. The Canada Infrastructure Bank is investing in Manitoba fibre Internet. That is going to benefit rural Manitoba, and that is not the only fibre it is actually investing in.
It is supporting our communities, yet the Conservative Party would say that the Canada Infrastructure Bank is a boondoggle or a slush fund. These are the actual words that Conservatives use to describe it. One member across the aisle is heckling that it is a waste of money.
The Conservative Party of today does not appreciate, nor does it value, the role that government can play in ensuring that we have a cleaner, healthier, stronger environment.