Debates of March 17th, 2010

Bruce Hyer Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON

Mr. Speaker, I would like to present a petition on behalf of Canadians in support of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. This foundation has promoted reconciliation and healing for aboriginal survivors in the aftermath of the Indian residential school system.

Funding for that foundation is set to expire at the end of March, meaning that 139 key projects will be closing across Canada. These projects include things such as Nishnawbe Aski Nation and Gull Bay First Nation, from Lake Superior to Hudson Bay. Cancellation of these projects is not in the spirit of the Prime Minister's apology nor the government's commitment to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The petitioners ask the government commit to an extension of funding.

Tom Lukiwski Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

The Speaker Peter Milliken

Is that agreed?

Tom Lukiwski Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all notices of motions for the production of papers be allowed to stand.

The Speaker Peter Milliken

Is that agreed?

Jay Hill Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Mr. Speaker, I will be addressing this motion shortly, so I will not belabour many of the points that I will be raising at that time.

I would ask the hon. leader of the New Democratic Party one very simple question. He knows full well that prorogation is used in every legislature across the land. Although thankfully, and I mean that very sincerely, we have never been faced with a New Democratic government at the federal level, there have been a number of NDP governments at the provincial level across Canada at different times.

The documentation of this is very clear. NDP governments have used prorogation at the provincial level much more often than it has been used at the federal level. In fact, there are some legislatures where there were New Democratic governments in office that used them five or six times in one legislature, the equivalent of one Parliament, not once or twice as is often the case at the federal level.

I would ask my learned colleague from the NDP whether he is also suggesting that that somehow is an affront to democracy when his colleagues in British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario also use prorogation much more often than has been used at the federal level?

Jack Layton Toronto—Danforth, ON

Mr. Speaker, what we are speaking about here is the abuse of the power of prorogation.

I appreciate the government House leader's comment. However, I did note that he did not particularly suggest that there had been any abuse in the circumstances that he raised.

I submit that there is very clear abuse by his government of the power of prorogation. It was very specifically used, in both cases, to avoid accountability.

In one case, it was to avoid a motion of non-confidence that the Prime Minister had told Canadians would take place on a certain date, and then sure enough he headed off to the Governor General in order to avoid that fundamental definition of accountability.

Second and most recently, there were questions about these allegations of transfer of prisoners into situations where they could face torture. These questions were going to be coming up again when the House came back, and the Prime Minister simply did not want to face them. So he shut down Parliament.

That is wrong. It is an abuse of power. What we are proposing is something very simple. That the abuse of power be constricted, restrained, so that prorogations could not take place for more than seven days without coming to the place that is being prorogued and ask whether members want to have the locks put on their doors or whether they want to continue to do their work.

Derek Lee Scarborough—Rouge River, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure I would agree that frequency of use of prorogation is the issue here.

I would ask the leader of the New Democratic Party, is not the real issue the reason for the prorogation, given that Parliament's purpose is to hold the government to account and given that our Constitution takes this so seriously that it even has a provision that says Parliament must be called at least once in a year?

This is very important to the people of Canada. Would the member not agree that it is the purpose of the prorogation, and in this case the purpose of the prorogation seemed to be so conspicuously for the purpose of shutting down Parliament and avoiding that accountability?

Jack Layton Toronto—Danforth, ON

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Scarborough—Rouge River for his question and for the very important point that he is making. In fact, the motion that we have constructed here would not affect frequency of prorogations at all. Those who are raising this particular dimension of it missed the point.

The point is precisely the one that the hon. member has just made in his intervention, and I thank him for it. The real reason that we are bringing this forward has to do entirely with accountability. It is fundamental that there be accountability between the executive and those who have been elected into our Parliament.

What our Prime Minister has been doing is escaping that fundamental accountability mechanism by putting a lock on the door. That may be something that was appropriate for kings, but it is not appropriate for prime ministers when it comes to our democratic institutions. It is time the Prime Minister understood that.

David Christopherson Hamilton Centre, ON

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to our motion.

The most pivotal word in the motion is “abuse”. We are not talking about denying a prime minister the right to prorogue. As my leader has pointed out, we accept that it is an important part of parliamentary democracy and it is used quite often in appropriate ways. In fact, in my own home province of Ontario there recently was a prorogation. I suspect there was a plan for a little longer one earlier and it was changed but I am no longer in the Ontario legislature and I do not want to inject myself into its politics. However, my point is that it was a four day prorogation, which is consistent with what we are talking about.

I did not hear a single constituent or anyone else where I went complaining about what happened at Queen's Park. There were the usual gripes. People were mad at the government for doing this, that and the other, but there was not a peep about it being unfair, undemocratic or unacceptable.

As to other governments, I was part of one too that prorogued for an awfully long time. However, under our change here, there should at the very least have been a motion on the floor. We should not kid ourselves. A majority government will win a vote 10 times out of 10. It would really be a pro forma matter in terms of informing the public through bringing it to the House by a majority government.

More important, at a time like this, when the Prime Minister has a minority government and has considerably less than 40% of the support of Canadian people, he feels that he is entitled to wield 100% of the power 100% of the time. That is not on.

We would not have prevented the Prime Minister from exercising his prerogative under the Constitution. I would liken this to an idea the government itself has been floating around for some time in terms of the Senate. I am not saying that this plan would work but it is what the government has been looking at and talking about. Rather than changing the Constitution, which we know would be all but impossible, the attempt was to change the rules underneath, what happens prior to the Prime Minister going to the Governor General.

Right now the Prime Minister can consult with whomever he wants or no one. He is not required to consult with anyone. The Prime Minister gives his Senate suggestions to the Governor General and asks for them to be considered in the polite fashion that we do around here. What the Prime Minister wants the Prime Minister gets.

We are talking about the same thing when it comes to prorogation. Prior to the prime minister of the day going to the Governor General, if it is going to be more than seven calendar days, we in this House who run our own House on behalf of the people, the supreme House with supreme power, would have an opportunity to deliberate. In a minority, a government might win but in a majority it would always win.

This does not affect the Constitution because the Constitution kicks in when we talk about the prime minister's prerogative to visit the Governor General and give whatever advice he or she wishes. What happens before then is pretty much silent. We are saying that we must build the silence because we have an abusive situation. If anyone doubts whether it was abusive or what the purpose was, we should remember what Mr. Tom Flanagan, a close confidant to the Prime Minister, said:

I think his problem is that the government's talking points really don't have much credibility. Everybody knows that Parliament was prorogued in order to shut down the Afghan inquiry and the trouble is that the government doesn't want to explain why that was necessary.

To be fair to Mr. Flanagan, he did go on to say that he thought it was defensible, but publicly he said that the reason for the prorogation was “to shut down the Afghan inquiry”. That is exactly the allegation that our leader has made from day one when prorogation was announced, which is that the government was hiding from Parliament and hiding from the Canadian people. Did the people respond?

We held a rally in Gore Park in my hometown of Hamilton and it was packed. What was really instructional was the number of young people who got this in one. They were not going to accept that this was some kind of parliamentary nicety or that they should mind their business and not worry because the Prime Minister and his folks would take care of everything. No, the young people understood that the government was running away and that it was abusing power, particularly in a minority situation.

All we are saying, which is totally non-radical, is that a prorogation should be no longer than seven calendar days. If it were, as Premier McGuinty did, a legitimate prorogation to shut down the House for a few days to provide a gap between the original session and the new one and to tee things up for a throne speech, that would make perfect sense. Nothing would encumber the prime minister of the day from continuing to do exactly that. The only difference would be that if it were to be more than seven days, it would need to be brought to the House, and, as my leader has pointed out, the House would decide whether that door gets padlocked, not one person unilaterally who does not even have a majority mandate.

We have not heard from the other opposition parties in terms of their positions. I know they had some other thinking about flipping it around and saying that the prime minister must come to the House under certain circumstances. However, that gets awfully convoluted and detailed and sets itself up for further loopholes and abuse down the road, which is why we have gone about it this way.

We are not trying to take away the prime minister's power or to change the Constitution through the back door. All we are trying to do is to ensure this House gets its rightful role in a decision that is so imperative, because, quite frankly, if the House is not sitting, then the people's representatives are not doing the job that they were elected to do, which is to meet as a House of Commons to consider the people's business.

When we know, as we do from Mr. Flanagan and others, that the government was just running and hiding, then we need to do something. We need to put in place a rule that makes it very clear that if it is more than one calendar week, it needs to come back to the House. We must remember that the government played games with this around a year ago.

Under our system, the people do not directly elect the prime minister or the government. They elect their representative in their riding. When we all meet, we decide by a confidence vote who the prime minister will be and, once that person has achieved the confidence of the House, then he or she can act as the prime minister. However, that authority did not directly come from the ballot box. The authority to set up house at 24 Sussex is decided by the MPs in the House.

The reason we do not see that so often is that when we are in a majority, it is a given who will win every vote, so there is no big buildup to the confidence question. It looks as if there was a direct election of the executive council but there was not.

This House is supreme and we are asking all members, but particularly our opposition colleagues, to join with us in making a significant but relatively simple change that would bring democracy to this place that the Canadian people demand. That is why we have this motion here and hopefully it will carry.

Tom Lukiwski Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague's histrionics and rants but I have a couple of comments.

First, I would point out that in his home province, a former NDP premier prorogued three times in three years. In fact, on the NDP side of the ledger, the NDP premiers, since the early 1970s, have prorogued close to eight years worth of parliamentary time in their own province.

However, my one question is--