Evidence of meeting #60 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was leader.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
No. Of course not. I seem to be invisible most of the time.
We'll go to Mr. Reid, please, for four minutes.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
Thank you.
I'm going to be direct in my question to our former Speaker, Mr. Milliken.
Mr. Milliken, I wore a bow tie in your honour today and I'm alarmed to see that you have appeared to have gone over to the dark side. You're wearing a long tie today.
11:45 a.m.
Former Speaker of the House of Commons, As an Individual
Well, it's a House of Commons tie.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
A House of Commons tie...all right.
I wanted to just go back actually to what Mr. Simms was raising.
He raised the example of a candidate who had been opposed to official bilingualism and while he was doing his comments, I looked up the actual history on Wikipedia and the candidate was Leonard Jones, who was in 1974 nominated to the Progressive Conservative party. He was disallowed by Robert Stanfield. It says, “After Jones won the nomination, party leader Robert Stanfield refused to sign Jones' nomination papers, citing his opposition to the party's policy of bilingualism. Jones ran instead as an independent candidate, and won with 46 percent of the vote. He decided not to run for a second term.” That's the history there.
It raises a question that I'd intended to ask anyway. I was thinking of a different set of examples. I thought of the boll weevil Democrats in the United States who in the middle of the 20th century were opposed to their party's position on civil liberties. I thought of David Duke, who won his party's primary for, I can't remember now if it was for senator or governor for Louisiana. Ultimately he lost the election, but he did not reflect the Republican Party's views on civil rights, either. For those who don't remember, he was the former grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.
What I'm getting at here is, if you remove all limitations of who can run for party then I think you have to accept that you're adopting a version of the American primary system. You're going to get people who are fundamentally opposed to the views that a party holds and ultimately they may actually be people who are electable by the standards of their local constituents. I'm not sure whether that's good or bad, although none of the examples I said are terribly positive. But I throw it in your lap to see whether you think that's something our system is able to handle.
11:45 a.m.
Former Speaker of the House of Commons, As an Individual
Yes, I think it did handle it for a very long time. I don't know why the shift has occurred. Fortunately, the control that leaders exert has not been very dramatic until recently. There is this one in the 1970s, but you don't hear many others from the 1970s or 1980s.
It's only in the last decade that we've had much more control exerted in this area and that's what concerns me. That's why I think the proposed changes are helpful. I'm not sure it's going to solve the problem in the current drafting, but still I think it's very important that the parties be able to attract candidates and you don't have to sign up to every single item that the party has on its platform and say I agree with everything and will vote for everything or else. I don't think it should be that rigorous.
I think that we should be encouraging people to get in and have debates about what things are good and what are not. Some of the things in the platform can be enacted exactly as worded and others you might make some shifts and modify them somewhat to get them to appeal to a greater percentage of the population that's reflected in the caucus. Some of the members there are going to have different points of view.
We have this on a regional basis in our country and have had it since Confederation. Members from the prairie provinces sometimes have different views on certain issues from members in Ontario and Quebec. There's nothing new in that, not at all. I think it's a natural thing given the different demographics and geographics in which we live.
That's bound to reflect itself in the way the parties agree on proceeding on issues. There may be a difference between the parties, but there may be differences within the party too that result in shifts in the way the party goes and the way legislation gets drafted on a cooperative basis, even in the House.
For that reason, I think it's important that the member be chosen locally as the representative for that area, because his or her views are ones that appeal to people that sign up for the party and make the choices as to who the candidate will be in each one of the small demographic sections of our country—although some of them are quite large—on the constituency basis.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
11:50 a.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you all for being here.
I'd just like to follow up a little on Mr. Reid's thought. I guess the question becomes: should there be some kind of safety net, if you will, something that would catch the extremes?
I would ask you this. We are in a climate right now, if you think about some of the recent campaigns—I can think of certain party examples—such that things have happened during the course of a campaign or things have become known in the course of a campaign, and the first thing the national media does in the middle of that national campaign is swing over and ask the leader, “How about this?”
If they have no say at all, is what we would expect them to say to the country, “I don't like their position on things either, but I didn't pick them.” That's a bit of a tough one.
Just to take it to its extreme to make the point, I would ask you how you see us handling that part of it, because we would shift some aspects of what the leader can do, but we haven't changed the national view of what it is that leaders are supposed to do. That is, when a riding picks a candidate who is against a lot of the policies of the party and something comes up and they swing to the leader to ask “What do you think?”, where are we at that point? Where does that leave us?
11:50 a.m.
Former Speaker of the House of Commons, As an Individual
I think the leader can say that we welcome diversity of opinion within the party, that we'll have a debate about it and the member can raise the issue if he or she wins the election, but that our party position was adopted at a party conference and this is the position that was agreed on, so it will take some persuading to shift our position on this issue.
That's all you need to say.
11:50 a.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
11:50 a.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Think of the example that happened with the NDP, when the thing exploded and they pivoted over to the leader and asked, “What are you going to do about this?” Where does that leave you?
Professor Franks, do you have any thoughts?
11:50 a.m.
Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Studies, Queen's University, As an Individual
Oh, up the creek....
11:50 a.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
11:50 a.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Fair enough. I wish I had teachers like you when I was in school.
11:50 a.m.
Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Studies, Queen's University, As an Individual
I'm a canoeist, you see.
11:50 a.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
11:50 a.m.
Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Studies, Queen's University, As an Individual
It's a good place to be.
11:50 a.m.
Campaigns Director, Leadnow.ca
I think democracy can be messy sometimes, and I don't think it's necessarily such a bad thing if those issues have to come out. It's clear that there needs to be debate about important issues within our parties, rather than constantly having to provide a united front with the same talking points all the time. I don't think that would be entirely unhealthy. I think it would be hard. I think it would be a shift for Canadians to get used to, but I think ultimately it would better serve the functioning of our democracy.
11:50 a.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Yes, it's almost as though we can't have one without the other.
You can't give the independence to the local constituency and then still have the override. But that means the politics will have to change too, that leaders are cut some slack in terms of who the candidates are and whether they fit nicely into every slot that the party has on a given position.
Are any of you aware of other examples in the Westminster model in which we have this dynamic?
11:55 a.m.
Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Studies, Queen's University, As an Individual
My impression is that we in Canada are more centred around the authority of the central party organization than most Westminster democracies, more centred on party structure.
In my view, it is not a criticism of party leaders for being hogs for power over the years, but a reality that our parties, with rare exceptions, are focused around the parliamentary leadership and relatively few people outside, and don't have a broad membership that influences the party leadership. A lot of what we see going on in representation reflects the almost amorphous nature of the support for parties and candidates in constituencies—and across the country, of course.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you, David.
We'll go to Mr. Richards for four minutes, please.
December 2nd, 2014 / 11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Wild Rose, AB
Thank you.
I want to revisit an area that has been visited a couple of times by a couple of my colleagues. My question will be for you, Professor Turnbull. One of my concerns about the bill, as it was originally drafted, was the idea...and Professor Franks actually said it very well when he talked about his concerns about Parliament prescribing to political parties or to caucuses how they govern themselves.
I had that same concern. Some of the amendments that we've heard publicly seem to certainly address this by enabling caucuses to choose whether they opt into the provisions, and these kinds of things. It at least gives that caucus the ability to make some decisions. I think, therefore, in some ways, it gives the party members some decisions through those members in some ways, so I think the amendments that are being suggested certainly would strengthen the bill.
I wanted specifically to come to the part about the leaders because I think that's one part where, as I said, it has been addressed a little bit before. But the leader of the party is the leader of the political party and also the leader of the caucus. The changes being suggested here obviously would change the balance in terms of who has the right to make a decision about who that leader is, because obviously you have the party members on one hand choosing the leader, and on the other hand you have the caucus having the ability to remove the leader.
I know in response to a previous question you mentioned they would only be able to remove, but that the membership would still be able to choose who the new leader would be. However, when there are competing interests there, I'm concerned as to whether you see any concerns about that reducing the say of party members because they can choose someone, but then the caucus can remove them.
Do you have concerns that this might remove some of that ability from party members to be able to really have a say in who their leader is?
11:55 a.m.
Associate Professor, Carleton University, As an Individual
Yes, because as Mr. Milliken previously talked about, there has been a transformation of how parties choose their leaders. We used to have a more delegated convention model that was seen as the norm, and now we've graduated toward this more inclusive model where everybody in the party gets a say on some level. Some parties do it a bit differently, where the voters and the party members might choose delegates to go to a conference and it's like a hybrid model, but everybody gets some sort of input.
I think that's generally seen as a positive thing, that parties are democratizing. They're becoming more inclusive. They're giving members something to do. I think that a lot of party members probably really value their role in helping to select a party leader who they think is right.
So, yes, I think that party members at large would probably feel as though there's a bit of a power struggle now between them and the 40-some people or 140-some people who have to be caucus members. They might say, “Well, why do the caucus members get to remove our choice? Why do they get a veto over who our choice for leader is and then we have to choose someone else?”
Mr. Scott has pointed out that if a caucus strikes down one leader, there would be two leaders at one time. That is inadvisable. That's just bad. I don't know how that would be resolved or how any party would deal with that, but yes, this is definitely a serious issue.
Then you would have to think too about how leadership campaigns would be affected by this idea in the back of your mind that some day the caucus might remove me if I'm no longer of appeal to them, but the larger party has chosen me.
