Mr. Speaker, I am rising to challenge the notice that was given by the government House leader of a closure motion concerning government Motion No. 22. It is my view that her notice was premature and therefore is out of order.
I raised a point of order earlier today disputing the correctness of House records concerning debate on government Motion No. 22, and we are still awaiting a ruling on that point of order.
Standing Order 57, which governs closure, reads, in part:
Immediately before the Order of the Day for resuming an adjourned debate is called, or if the House be in Committee of the Whole, any Minister of the Crown who, standing in his or her place, shall have given notice at a previous sitting of his or her intention so to do, may move that the debate shall not be further adjourned....
Page 663 of Bosc and Gagnon puts this into plain English. It states:
Regardless, debate on the item which is the subject of the notice must have begun before notice of closure may be given.
The related footnote points to a ruling by Speaker Fraser in December 1988 during debate on the Canada-United States free trade agreement. Members with a passion for politics will recall that this was the immediate wake of that autumn's general election, sparked by the resistance of Liberal senators to a previous Conservative government's free trade agreement with the U.S. After the election, Parliament met quickly in order to pass the free trade agreement before a New Year's Eve deadline.
To aid the bill's passage, the government proposed a series of temporary procedural rules, not unlike the intention of government Motion No. 22. When the 1988 procedural motion was called, Liberals and New Democrats rose to challenge every fibre of it, because at that point they were still fighting against the free trade agreement with the United States. To make a long story short, those procedural arguments continued throughout the day.
In any event, the then government House leader gave notice of a closure motion. That notice, too, was challenged, which brings me back to Speaker Fraser's ruling. On December 15, 1988, at page 78 of Debates, the Chair said:
From a careful reading of this Standing Order, it is clear that the closure motion may only be moved “immediately before the Order of the Day for resuming an adjourned debate is called”.
In addition, this may only be done if notice of the intention to move closure has been given orally in the House by a Minister of the Crown at a previous sitting. While the Standing Orders specify when the motion can be moved, and how notice is to be given, they are silent on when notice may be given.
The Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier argued yesterday that notice could only be given after debate had begun. Standing Order 57 does not specify this. However, a search of numerous previous instances where notice of closure was given—going back to 1913 when the rule was first introduced—has failed to reveal an occurrence where notice was given prior to debate having begun.
It can be argued that merely because this has not happened previously that does not prevent it from being allowed in this instance; that the Standing Order does not specifically prohibit this and therefore it should be allowed.
After a very careful consideration of this point, I am more persuaded by the weight of precedent and practice. Taking into consideration the gravity of the measure to be invoked and the necessity of protecting the rights of the minority, it is my feeling and decision that the intention of the Standing Order as drafted and as it has been applied is to allow a majority to impose closure only after debate on the question has begun. This is to ensure that such debate is not unfairly or prematurely curtailed. In this instance, debate on the motion had clearly not begun when the Hon. Minister served notice.
In resumé therefore I find that the motion standing on the Order Paper in the name of the Hon. Minister of State is in order and may be moved and debated. However, I cannot accept the notice of closure on that motion as proposed by the same Hon. Minister yesterday. Such notice can only be given once debate on the motion has commenced.
Next, let me anticipate a counter-argument from the government pointing to time allocation proceedings concerning report stage consideration of Bill C-62, the GST bill, in April 1990. It is critical to distinguish between the two rules that govern time allocation and closure.
Earlier, I quoted Standing Order 57 with its reference to an adjourned debate. Time allocation, on the other hand, is regulated by Standing Order 78. Section 3 of that Standing Order, which applies to most time allocation motions, reads:
A Minister of the Crown who from his or her place in the House, at a previous sitting, has stated that an agreement could not be reached under the provisions of sections (1) or (2) of this Standing Order in respect of proceedings at the stage at which a public bill was then under consideration....
We have a critical difference here between “adjourned debate” for closure, and “under consideration” for time allocation.
Because a lengthy and complex ruling on the grouping and voting of report stage motions on the GST bill had been delivered and the various motions themselves had been proposed from the Chair, it could be clearly said that Bill C-62 had been under consideration when notice was given of a time allocation motion.
A critical maxim, applied judicially in statutory interpretation cases would be instructive here. It is that "Parliament does not speak in vain". That touchstone is elaborated upon in various entries in Sullivan on the Construction of Statutes, the leading Canadian authority on the interpretation of laws. I will simply offer two short quotes from the sixth edition. First is paragraph 8.14, which says:
Although ordinary speakers or writers require much co-operative guesswork from their audience, a legislature is an idealized speaker. Unlike the rest of us, legislatures are presumed to always say what they mean and mean what they say. They do not make mistakes.
Then there is paragraph 8.32, which reads:
It is presumed that the legislature uses language carefully and consistently so that within a statute or other legislative instrument the same words have the same meaning and different words have different meanings. Another way of understanding this presumption is to say that the legislature is presumed to avoid stylistic variation. Once a particular way of expressing a meaning has been adopted, it is used each time that meaning is intended. Given this practice, it follows that where a different form of expression is used, a different meaning is intended.
In summary, “adjourned debate” and “under consideration” are two different expressions and, as a result, carry different meanings. The use of closure requires an item to have been debated, not simply to have been proposed or otherwise placed under consideration. Government Motion No. 22 has not been debated and, therefore, closure on Government Motion No. 22 is premature and out of order.
