Western Standard - April 29, 2026


Brock accuses Liberals of ‘dominating’ committees, calls Gladu a ‘sellout’


Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

151.32

Word count

722

Sentence count

31

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we discuss the newly appointed Justice Committee, the new committee chair, and what it means for the future of Bill C-16. We also discuss the decision by the Speaker of the House of Commons, Peter Demers, to cross the floor and vote in favour of floor crossing.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
00:00:00.000 So what do you make of the new Justice Committee formation, specifically referring to the fact that you have a former colleague who aided the majority government formation, Marilyn Gladue, who will be on that committee as well?
00:00:11.000 Well, the first comment I would make, and this is what we debated in the House when the motion was first introduced, I believe on Monday, was that it does not represent the number of seats that they have in the House.
00:00:27.000 So if you look at percentages, they're just slightly above 50%.
00:00:31.620 To give them a majority, all they had to do was add one seat, okay, to six.
00:00:37.980 They didn't do that.
00:00:38.920 They added seven because they wanted to dominate the committees,
00:00:43.120 basically shut down the opposition,
00:00:45.580 shut down our ability to examine the important issues that are plaguing Canadians.
00:00:52.300 Particularly on the justice front,
00:00:54.260 there are a number of bills that purportedly address the ongoing crime levels in this country
00:01:01.780 and you know it remains to be seen how effective now opposition is going to be
00:01:08.020 in terms of advancing various amendments common sense amendments to improve the bill so we start
00:01:15.360 clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-16 today. So given that we have since learned about
00:01:25.440 additional Liberal members, one being a former Conservative member who voted very strongly
00:01:34.160 against the government's approach to crime and justice issues, who wanted to improve
00:01:41.200 C-14, much beyond what we were actually able to get. She was very critical of components of Bill
00:01:49.200 C-16. So I'm going to be very curious to see, A, is she going to weigh in on certain amendments?
00:01:56.960 Is she going to now be a hypocrite in terms of the positions that she has previously taken 0.86
00:02:03.200 on government bills, particularly Bill C-16? Or is she simply going to be a parrot now for the 0.98
00:02:09.440 the Liberal Party and espouse their views. She said this morning and she was just walking by
00:02:15.000 she said that she's happy to be on the Justice Committee today and do you think that she wanted
00:02:19.120 that appointment specifically that she have an agenda here? Well she has no justice background
00:02:23.700 she may have sat on justice well for as long as I've been the vice chair I know she participated 0.76
00:02:30.500 a couple of occasions as backfill for some members I know she participated in the debate
00:02:36.620 on C9 with respect to the Liberals supporting the removal of the religious defense.
00:02:43.080 She was very critical of that long before she crossed, obviously, the floor.
00:02:49.060 But what else is she going to say?
00:02:51.700 Of course, she's going to say that she's happy wherever they placed her, right?
00:02:55.580 But it's going to remain to be seen whether or not she holds true to her convictions
00:03:01.640 that she shared with Canadians, that she shared with constituents,
00:03:06.620 that she shared with her former colleagues on the deficiencies of government bills.
00:03:11.300 Well, she even spoke before she crossed in January that she would oppose
00:03:15.720 or support a by-election mechanism when it comes to floor crossing as well.
00:03:21.060 Perhaps she has a different view today. Maybe she has a different view.
00:03:24.580 I guess it applies to everybody else except her.
00:03:27.120 Well, regardless, she mentioned to me and I spoke to her
00:03:29.920 that she cited some differences with the leadership of the party
00:03:33.960 as to why she crossed the floor.
00:03:35.340 And of course, other MPs who crossed the floor as well
00:03:37.300 said that you didn't support Pierre Polyev in the beginning.
00:03:39.940 Listen, she ran under the Conservative banner in 25.
00:03:45.880 She ran under the leadership of Pierre Polyev.
00:03:49.540 She proudly espoused all of our party platforms
00:03:54.300 and policy ideas moving forward,
00:03:57.060 bringing a different vision to Canadians
00:03:59.380 for the 2025 election.
00:04:01.160 You don't abandon all of that literally overnight because you have a particular problem with a member of our party.
00:04:10.000 She's a sellout.
00:04:11.880 She basically betrayed the confidence that her voters, her constituents gave her. 0.92
00:04:18.260 It's no small wonder that she's completely absent now in her writing. 0.91
00:04:22.400 She doesn't even open up her office.
00:04:24.560 Okay, you've got a number of constituents who are writing on social media.
00:04:29.060 They've got legitimate concerns with respect to various services that members of parliament routinely help constituents with.
00:04:38.480 She's not serving anybody in that community. 1.00
00:04:41.880 She's serving her own selfish best interests.
00:04:45.640 Thank you.