Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 1st, 2007

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Are the people surrounding you normally in need of supervision while they're there?

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Well, specifically Marlene Jennings.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I would turn it over to Mr. Owen for any additional comments.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair and colleagues, I don't have much to add—

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Order, please.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

—other than a reflection.

First of all, thanks to Mr. Godin for bringing this up again, because I think we need it to be given constant attention.

I've probably been in the House less time than anybody here, but it is so curious to me, given the degree of antipathy towards politicians in this country from the general public, that during question period, when most of this misbehaviour occurs, the one time that the public actually has a view of our behaviour is the one time that we behave in the way that the public least respects. It's doubly curious because not only does it give a very bad impression, but it's generally a false impression, because it's acting, a lot of the time. So it's self-inflicted disrespect from the public that we're inviting.

I think Mr. Godin's recommendation—and I don't know that this takes a formal motion—that the whips meet with the Speaker on a weekly basis, or on a regular basis at least, is a very good idea. I've only had exposure to one Speaker and I can't compare him to others, but I certainly have the impression, with the greatest respect to someone who's doing a very difficult job, that there is very little control exercised by the Speaker. I haven't witnessed one person sanctioned in the six years that I've been here. So I think those meetings are important.

Without, as well, as Mr. Hill...exposing caucus confidences any further than Jane Taber seems to report on weekly anyway, it is curious that just after we have our national caucus meetings, when our whips...and certainly Ms. Redman has very sternly warned us to improve our behaviour, Wednesday afternoon should be the worst. So I don't know, there seems to be a perverse relationship here.

I think it is a problem that we should take very seriously, and I'm grateful that Mr. Godin brings it to our attention again, because it does affect our legitimacy as political leaders in this country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Colleagues, I'm still going around offering folks the opportunity to add to this discussion.

On my list is Mr. Godin, and then Mr. Proulx and Mr. Guimond.

If anybody else wants to add to the debate, I'll be watching for hands.

Mr. Godin, please.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Concerning what Mr. Owen said, if we look at the image we have, I have to agree with him, we are lower than car salesmen. We are at the bottom of the list. And yet today I hear it's going well.

I have to agree that the image we have in the House of Commons is not good. We just cannot close our eyes to that.

If we make the rules tough, that might send a message to the members that this is what could happen. If the noise the Speaker is talking about starts and you hear more from the front, maybe when he stops the noise in the front he will get to the back. When nobody makes a noise, they will pick up the back too. It's just like a zoo. That's what it is. It's like a zoo. It doesn't make sense.

The thing about having the whips meet every week as suggested, it could be when needed, on the request of a party for the whips to meet with the Speaker. That is no problem, but the Speaker himself told this group he didn't have the power to take a question off the list for a party. That's what I'm talking about. He has the power and he has done it in the past. If you get out of order, he goes to the next party. Another power is to skip a party when the behaviour is not adequate. I hope we never have to use it.

Our whole job and responsibility here is to make laws for people who don't behave, and we hope they behave well. We hope people drive 100 kilometres per hour and not 160 kilometres per hour. We come out with laws to stop the people who don't behave, and here, as lawmakers, we are worried about making laws against ourselves when we are the lowest ones in the country as recognized by our behaviour and things we do. That's what I wanted to say.

The other thing is, we had Robert Marleau here and he said in the U.K. they have these rules that you are removed from the premises and from your office. If they have those types of rules, then maybe we should check the behaviour in the U.K. and hope they never have to use them and we never have to use them, but we just want to close our eyes to a problem that a report was accepted here by all parties in 1992. It was recognized. The people who come to Parliament are people from our regions coming to Parliament. Teachers are saying they don't want to bring students any more, and we want to close our eyes to a problem we have in the House of Commons. It is a shame.

It is not going well, and the Speaker should not worry about us giving him power to make decisions in the House of Commons. I'm hoping that he never has to use them, but I think we should show an example.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you.

Monsieur Proulx, and then Monsieur Guimond.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will use my very humble experience as one of the chair's occupants. If you recall, I questioned Mr. Marleau in that sense. The Speaker has all the tools he needs to quieten everything down. You all know, of course, that as soon as the Speaker stands up from his chair, all the microphones are shut down. All the Speaker has to do is stand up. He has different orders to keep...I won't call it “peace” again, because Mr. Guimond would like it, but he has all the powers to keep everybody civilized.

My impression is that our present Speaker does not want to be more strict. He does not want to penalize people. He sees himself—and I think he's right 99.9% of the time—as a facilitator for all the MPs to express themselves in the House.

If you were to compare...and we have members here who have had experiences elsewhere, Madame Robillard has been in the National Assembly in Quebec, some of you gentlemen have been in provincial legislatures—speakers have powers. They have the tools to keep everybody quiet to a certain level. My main concern is that the Speaker currently hesitates to use some of his powers because he sees himself, as I was saying, as a facilitator. If we give him powers that will be even more “damaging”, let me say, to the reputations of MPs, he won't use them. He will stay away from them even more than he does now.

So it is all a question of attitude. It's a question of us asking the Speaker to please use his powers, and for us, as parties, to discipline our people within our own ranks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Colleagues, I have three more names on the list--I'm still watching for hands--and then I think we're pretty much ready to wrap this up.

Monsieur Guimond is next, and then Mr. Hill, and then Mr. Lukiwski.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

I would like to make a suggestion to committee members. I do not know whether my colleagues would agree with asking Mr. Walsh, the House law clerk and parliamentary counsel, to give us a brief legal opinion about the Speaker's authority to prevent a member who has been expelled from the House from having access to the parliamentary precinct. I do not know whether that violates any rules.

Mr. Godin remembers that Mr. Marleau said that this was done in London. Let us assume that a member of Parliament did something that meant he could not sit in the House for the rest of the day. The member must continue to do his or her work as an elected representative from his or her office on Parliament Hill.

I would like the law clerk and parliamentary counsel to give us an opinion on this matter. He doesn't need to write a book on it, because we will not have time to read it. He could simply tell us whether changing the Standing Orders would violate a member's privilege. I would like his opinion on the matter, despite the fact that this is the practice in England. If he wants to check on the reasons why this is done in England, he could do so. That is my first suggestion.

I would also like to inform my colleagues that when we do study the report, we should talk about decorum, something some parties use more than others. I don't want us to get into a game where people say things like “my dad is stronger than your dad” or “I am a nice guy and you are not”. I don't want to get into games of that type.

As you know, in the past I compiled some statistics. I stopped doing that, because with my colleague, the deputy whip, I found I was getting in too bad a mood, and that my blood pressure was rising. I kept some statistics on members of Parliament who stood to applaud a minister's answer or a member's question. This meant the House wasted 8, 10, 12 or even 20 seconds.

I would like to tell my colleagues, the other whips, who are present here that I have doubts about our real desire to regulate ourselves, because when I raised this issue, it led to a rather heated exchange with Mr. Hill. We said we would raise the issue with the members of our caucus. But what happened was that after question period, after the caucus meetings that morning, when I had raised the issue the Tuesday before, the Conservatives stood to applaud eight times and the Liberals six times. That was a Guinness record for this nonsensical practice of standing to applaud. People laugh at us for doing this. The Minister of the Environment yaps and his colleagues stand and applaud him for putting down the questioner. The questioner who was put down, fires the question back at him, and once again the colleagues rise to applaud the effort. We look ridiculous, this becomes a real circus.

In the report, I hope there would be reference to having the Speaker use his discretion to cut off planted questions from Conservatives. I said this to Mr. Hill, who said to me, quite honestly, right in my face: “Michel, I don't give a damn whether he cuts off planted questions. Let them be penalized for the planted questions.”

A member who planned to ask planted questions of a minister and who has informed his local media and community to watch because he would be asking a question about the Pont de Québec in Quebec City the next day might not find it amusing to have the Speaker prevent him from asking his question.

Under this government, the only things that can be cut off are not ministers' answers, but rather the three planted questions. If we in the other parties—the Liberals, the New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois—are too demonstrative, the Speaker cuts off one of the questions scheduled on the list.

According to my statistics, the two parties that were penalized—and this is why Mr. Godin is angry and why I am starting to get hot under the collar—that had questions taken away, were the Bloc Québécois and the NDP.

We said that we were not in a church or at a wake. It is true that people get carried away at the caucus meeting on Wednesday morning and arrive all pumped up for question period. That is human nature, but there must be consequences for certain behaviours. The amount of time for question period is limited: it is from 2:25 to 3:00 p.m. from Monday to Thursday. If in the end we were to decide to give the Speaker the discretion to extend question period until 3:10 or 3:15 p.m., then I will no longer have any problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Hill, please, and then Mr. Lukiwski. Then I think we'll wrap this up.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I really don't want to prolong this too much, but I do want to correct the record on a couple of issues.

First of all, when Mr. Godin says some people here are saying that it's good, I never said that. I think if you check the transcript, I never said that things were good. I said that from time to time we see improvements. I'm not trying to indicate that the whips can take any credit for that. It would be nice if we could think that all our words to our caucus colleagues weren't falling on deaf ears, but I certainly didn't want to leave the impression that I or anyone else around this table would suggest that decorum in the House is good.

I will say—and this came up as well, because we've aired this pretty extensively over the last while—having looked around the world at other parliaments, I would far sooner that MPs vent their frustrations by raising their voices than by using their fists. During the last 13 years in which I have had the privilege of being a member of Parliament, I have seen newscasts from time to time about Korea, Japan, Italy, and, I believe, India, showing full-blown melees in the middle of their parliamentary floor.

Why is that? I mean, are they more hot-blooded than we are? Perhaps, or perhaps it's that they don't feel they have the ability to vent their frustrations. I say that whether you're in opposition or whether you're in government, we all suffer frustrations. We all believe that, from time to time, someone on the other side has said something that is unfair, or unkind, or unjust, and so we react, and normally we react with our voices.

So I'm not suggesting for a moment that it's good. I'm not suggesting for a moment that it can't be improved. As I've said, as long as I continue to be whip of any party, I will continue to do what I can in terms of suggestions.

In fairness, sometimes I'm a culprit on given days--and Mr. Godin, through the chair to you, I suggest that some days you as well get a little hot under the collar.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Yes, but during my questions.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Exactly.

I'm convinced that Mr. Godin has never heckled in his entire career. We've just had his word on that, of course.

No, what I'm suggesting is that we're all aware of the problem. If we can work together to find ways to improve it, so much the better.

The other issue that I just want to quickly address is this whole business about.... Mr. Godin again leaves the impression that there at two parties that are penalized. We went through all of that. We had the statistics compiled. The Speaker addressed the point that it is on very rare occasions that he does not get through the entire set list.

So what we're talking about here is whether, when there are standing ovations, or when he has to stand to try to restore order and it takes some time—anywhere from a few seconds to potentially a minute or two—we lose extra questions at the end. We all agree that's the case. But I think it is erroneous to suggest that there are two parties penalized, that somehow the Bloc and the NDP are losing questions, because we agreed before Parliament started that there was going to be a certain round of questions. We can go back and check it again, but I think most days we get through the entire list of designated questions, or whatever you call them. I pay attention to that myself, and I think everyone else does, in particular the whips.

I just wanted to potentially correct those suggestions, that's all.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you, Mr. Hill.

Mr. Lukiwski, please.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

Quickly, I just want to lend my support to Monsieur Proulx, and Karen, and Jay, and everyone who says...that I think that the current situation as it stands now is sufficient. What we have to do--and I totally agree with Mr. Proulx--is to ensure that the Speaker uses the levers at his disposal. I think that's where some of the problems are. If he were able to discipline members more effectively...or perhaps “effectively” in not the right word, but more frequently, then I think a lot of these situations might disappear.

With all due respect to Monsieur Godin, the problems I see in his recommendations are threefold. And the Speaker when he appeared before us illuminated some of these potential problems. First, and we all know this, in all our parties we have what I would suggest are chronic offenders who are the...without naming names. But the problem is that if we put in a procedure in which the Speaker could expel someone, I think it would almost increase the problems, because some people would want to be expelled so they could get the media attention. So the chronic offenders would see this as an opportunity rather than as a penalty, and I don't think that's a good thing.

Secondly, the problem is that, again, if they're expelled from the parliamentary precinct, what happens in times of votes? I know that Monsieur Godin and others here have been desperately trying to say we have to increase everyone's ability to be represented. What would happen if somebody were to be expelled from the parliamentary precinct? Would you put a special exemption in so that they could come back for a vote? I think that's a bit of a problem.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

They have to be able to get back within half an hour. So if you could have them expelled but stay within a half an hour of the....

Actually, it's quite complicated.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Yes, get off the precincts but be close.

Finally, Mr. Chair, I would just suggest that if we take Mr. Godin's recommendations as such, as I mentioned earlier, it could be creating more problems than we currently have. I like the suggestion that the whips, on a fairly regular basis, meet with the Speaker. If we're all concerned that the Speaker is not disciplining members frequently enough, or effectively enough, or stringently enough, then I think that's something the whips should be dealing with at the Speaker level to maybe ensure that the Speaker does his or her job.

Finally, and I don't think the situation would ever come to force but there is a potential, if we take the recommendations of Monsieur Godin and allow the Speaker then to start expelling members, somewhere down the line, since we elect Speakers, you might have a Machiavellian, or conspiratorial, attempt where the plan will be, let's elect a Speaker who will purposely eject someone to make sure that party is short one vote at confidence time. I would like to think that no one would do this, but it's a possibility and I don't think that is in the best interest of anyone, certainly not Canadians.

So for all those reasons, I would suggest that we stick with the current system but make sure that the whips communicate to the Speaker if we collectively feel that he's not enforcing the laws stringently enough, and that they do this on a more frequent basis. We should just leave the situation where it is now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

All right. We have heard from just about everybody.

Mr. Godin has raised his hand. Since this is his time here, and it's his report, although I did just say that we would wrap this up, I'm going to allow Mr. Godin to have the final word.

Mr. Godin, could you clarify for the chair if this is just a letter of recommendation or a motion you've put on the floor that the committee will then have to vote on or defer? If you could clarify that in your comments, I would appreciate it.

Thank you.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

First of all, I want to say that if Mr. Lukiwski is worried about the vote, a member who has broken the rules of the House of Commons will apologize on the floor of the House. Normally the Speaker of the House doesn't throw somebody out of the House when he recognizes the mistake he made.

When we come to the noise in the House, recognizing that when the level of the noise is high and the other party loses questions, we're saying that because he said he cannot skip the vote lists, we'll give him the power to do it.

He's the one who said he cannot skip it. He said parties come in with a list and he cannot deviate from it. If a member is out of order, the only thing he can do is say he'll switch to another one. He's using that power already. One thing that he's not doing is taking a question away.

To answer Mr. Hill, yes, it's true, I think we have 20 or 21 questions plus subs. But if you look at the record, where we're losing is at the other end, which was a bonus in that we could ask some questions. You can check the record.

It happened before, when I had to go and see the Speaker, and I think Monsieur Guimond did too, to say, look, it's not fair. Even on our third question, when we'd have a question and a sub, he would cut us on the question and not give us the sub. I said, well, they're the ones making the noise, just keep it going, and get us to raise the sub question. I think maybe he has done that lately, when we look at the log. It's a power he has.

Mr. Chair, it's not a motion I've put here but a public recommendation. I'm telling you I'm very serious about it. Our party is very serious about it. When we write the report, we'll see how the report is. I will reserve having a dissenting report going to Parliament.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much, Monsieur Godin. I appreciate your work on this file.

Colleagues, to summarize the discussion I'm hearing, we have a suggestion from Monsieur Guimond to ask for a legal opinion on this issue. I don't remember the specifics of the request, but we did take notes.

I suggest we write a letter to Mr. Walsh and ask him to offer a legal opinion. Following our getting that opinion, perhaps we could bring this up again.

I am also hearing from members that the report you have before you is the 19th report. We would probably redraft the report to reflect some of the discussion we've had here today, as well as Mr. Walsh's opinion when that comes in.

Then perhaps, Mr. Godin, we can bring the issue back and can deal with it--as I've said three or four times--one last time. It's fair, and it's absolutely your right.

I do have my own concerns, based on my experiences in my riding of Cambridge. I will take this moment to brag about the good work I do, most of which never ends up in the newspapers; I'm sure that's the experience of all colleagues. However, a member in a different level of government did get thrown out of Parliament, and that was on the front page of the newspaper. That certainly caused me to reflect that maybe it's the way to get on the front page of the newspapers. However, as you well know, I have not taken that approach, although I have tried....

No, just kidding.

If that's acceptable to the committee, then I suggest we proceed that way. We'll get the legal opinion from Mr. Walsh, redraft the report reflecting some of the discussion here today, and bring it back at some point in the near future.

Is that acceptable to the members?