Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the committee for inviting the three of us here to go through a little bit of the history of why that committee was struck in the first place back in 1992.
What happened then was that a number of particularly nasty and vicious racist and sexist remarks had been hurled around in the House of Commons. My colleague Howard McCurdy, a black member of Parliament, was told to “Shut up, Sambo” in the House. Some of the women had been called the very demeaning “bitch”, and there were other sexist slurs.
The Speaker came to all of the parties represented in the House at that time and asked them to participate in an advisory committee to the Speaker. Each of the parties did put people forward to sit on that committee. Andrée and I were just trying to remember how many meetings we had, but I think it was four or five.
Every party was represented--the Conservatives, the Liberals, the NDP, the Bloc, and the Reform Party. The Minister of Status of Women participated in the committee. The committee was assisted by the Deputy Clerk of the House and also by the House of Commons human resources director. So there was some expert help to the committee members as well.
Each of you has seen the report and the recommendations, but since 1992, when that report was tabled to the Speaker, the Standing Orders have changed. I know they have changed over the years, and they have been amended in other ways. However, I believe the report is still relevant. We've had a number of incidents in the House of inappropriate gestures and sexist comments.
Amendments to the Standing Orders could be made quite easily I think to implement some kind of change that would help the Speaker. I think you're all aware that Speaker Milliken has asked members of Parliament, asked the House, to make things better for him and to give him the tools that would help him maintain decorum and order in the House.
In this original report that was done, a number of recommendations were made and changes were agreed to. One was that the Speaker could name a member and also suspend a member. There was a progressive measure of discipline, if you like, much like many of the large corporations or institutions in Canada have today in terms of human rights and anti-discrimination procedures and policies. Progressive measures of suspension or discipline were called for. The first was suspension for a day. If no apology came or there was no change in behaviour, there would be a suspension for five days, up to and including, finally, a suspension for 20 days.
We also talked a lot during those meetings about whether or not there should be a financial penalty. There was heated discussion around that, as I recall. In the end, we agreed that there should be, that for some people perhaps only a financial penalty would help them mend their ways.
The report adds a prohibition against racist, sexist, and homophobic language, which has not been in the Standing Orders.
I think we really need to move in some way. Whether it's this report or whether it's parts of this report incorporated into some changes to the Standing Orders isn't really that important; I just think it's very important that we do address this issue. Parliament is very negatively affected each time one of these incidents happens and is reported across the country. I believe very strongly that we as parliamentarians have a real responsibility to address this, to address the lack of decorum, to take some really effective action on changes that would increase the decorum in the House and give the Speaker the tools he says he needs.
In 1992 we had five parties in the House, and it wasn't particularly easy to get all-party agreement, but we did. I think this Parliament again could come to an agreement on ways to effectively improve the decorum in the House of Commons through the Standing Orders.
Thanks very much.