Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 28th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I call the meeting to order, please.

This is the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, meeting 28. Our orders of the day today are pursuant to the order of reference of Wednesday, October 6, 2010: study of conventions concerning question period in the House of Commons raised by motion number M-517 by the Honourable Michael Chong, Wellington--Halton Hills.

Mr. Chong, it's very good to have you here today. We'll let you give us an opening statement. I think you know how all the gadgets work at that end. As I say to each of the witnesses, we're not trying to be rude, but some members will eat while you're giving your speech. It's not because you've increased their appetite; it's their only chance to take in sustenance at this time of the day. Some will be on their BlackBerrys, and I bet you know what that's like too.

Please go ahead and take what you need to give us an opening statement, and then members will ask questions.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for inviting me here today to discuss oral questions.

More than four in 10 Canadians refused to vote in the last election, and that's a sign that our Parliament needs reform.

Question period has become an attempt to score easy political points rather than to focus on issues that are really of concern to Canadians.

I think it's clear that many people would like to see the behaviour in question period changed. That's evidenced in a recent Nanos policy options poll. In the last election more than four out of ten Canadians refused to vote, which is a record low voter turnout since Confederation. I think both these facts--the polling data and election turnout--are evidence of a growing gap between Canadians and their Parliament.

I think this growing gap undermines the relevance of Parliament to many Canadians and is forcing a lot of the public policy debate into other fora, such as the courts, the Internet, and civil society. While these fora are important, they cannot represent the democratic will of the Canadian people. Only the 308 members of Parliament elected by their constituents can do that. And if Parliament becomes increasingly irrelevant as a forum for debate, then public policy will be determined, certainly, but not in a democratic fashion.

How can we restore Parliament's relevancy to Canadians? I think a first small but important step is to take a look at reforming question period.

If there's one thing we as members around the table have all heard over the last number of years--it may not be the most intense thing we hear, but we hear it consistently during election campaigns and between elections when we go to public schools--it's that many disapprove of the way question period is conducted. So I think there is a growing divide between a body politic that is becoming increasingly apolitical and a Parliament that is becoming more and more partisan.

So what really is the problem with question period? I think the general perception in the public and among Parliament watchers is that the behaviour is terrible, it lacks substance, and is overly rhetorical. While all these are undoubtedly true, they are simply symptoms of a much deeper underlying problem. I think the real problem with question period is that members of Parliament have been stripped of the right to ask questions of the government, with the result that the vast majority of members in the House during question period are no longer true participants in question period, but mere spectators.

Let me pause here to make three very quick points. First, this is not about the current class of elected officials. I don't think that in this Parliament we have a class of elected officials who are somehow less capable and less talented than at any other time in Canadian history. I don't think the behaviour is because somehow they're a lesser group of Canadians. In fact, many have argued—and Ned Franks is one of them—that there were times in our nation's past when elected officials acted in a manner far worse than today, especially before the advent of television cameras. In my view, if you put any group of 308 Canadians in that room, within six months it would descend into the same sort of system you see today. I think the problem with question period is fundamentally its format, and the format drives the behaviour.

The second quick point I want to make concerns the decline in decorum. Some believe that decorum has really declined in recent years; others dispute that fact. People like Professor Ned Franks at Queen's University have said that there was never a golden age of Parliament.

Regardless of which point of view is correct, something has changed today. Because of modern technology like the Internet, iPads, and smart phones, what was once unseen and not televised is now not only beamed directly through television, but also beamed directly through the new media instantaneously into the cars, meeting rooms, board rooms, kitchen tables, and dining rooms of the nation. As a result, Canadians now see what was once unseen, and what they see is not something they approve of.

The third quick point I want to make is that this is not about turning question period into afternoon tea with crumpets. This is not about removing the intensity, passion, and debate from the House. It is not about making this a big round-table session where we all hold hands and hug. It's not about removing heckling. It's about fixing some of the more dysfunctional aspects of question period and making it more relevant.

The central point I want to make today is if there is one thing I would focus on out of all the six proposals in the motion, it's the fact that members have been relegated to the role of mere spectators and not participants in question period.

About 30 years ago, Speaker Jeanne Sauvé introduced changes that stripped members of the right to spontaneously rise in the House and catch the eye of the Speaker to be recognized for a question. These changes that Speaker Sauvé introduced mean that unless a member gets on the party list and has their question vetted beforehand, they cannot ask a question. The Speaker recognizes only those people on the four party lists that he or she receives each day. As a result, most members—I'd say 250, 260, 270 out of the 308 members of Parliament—are relegated to the role of spectators, since most rarely get on these lists. Rather than being attentive and potential participants in question period, members behave accordingly, as any spectator would in any forum.

I'd like to remind members that up to the 1980s, members of Parliament had the right—as Speaker Jerome called it, the right, not the privilege—to rise in the House, catch the eye of the Speaker, and ask questions of the government that were often driven by the concerns that members had heard from the previous weekend when they had returned home to their ridings. That no longer is the case. I believe this is one reason for the growing disconnect between the people we represent and the topics being debated in the House.

The party lists also weaken the authority and discipline of the Speaker. If a member misbehaves in question period one day and the next day appears on the party list, the Speaker has no authority to not recognize that member. Up to the 1980s, if a member was misbehaving the Speaker would refuse to recognize them for days, if not weeks. At some point the member realized that if he or she was going to be able to represent their constituents, they would have to be on better behaviour in order to be recognized by the Speaker.

I think the party lists are another big reason for the dysfunction we often see in question period.

My motion has proposed six areas of reform; I'm not wedded to each and every one of them. This Parliament is made up of 308 members. It's the wisdom of the 12 members on this committee to decide which of the six, or other proposals, to proceed with, and it's up to the House as a whole to concur in that report.

If I were to pick one of the six proposals, it would be the fourth proposal that is the most important, which is to allocate a portion of the questions each day for backbench members.

The committee has up to six months to consider the various proposals, and other ones. It may decide to reject, amend, or adopt the six proposals I've made. It may decide to add additional proposals for change.

I think the motion provides some viable and reasonable proposals for reform, and I hope the committee will be able to report back to the House by April 6, 2011.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Chong.

This committee will endeavour to do exactly what you've asked.

We're going to start off with seven-minute rounds of questioning. I'm trying to give everybody a chance to ask questions because it is a topic everybody has a bit of thought on.

We'll start with a seven-minute round; we'll get into a five-minute round, and then I may cross-table a bit to try to give everybody a chance to talk.

Ms. Foote, you're first today.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Thank you.

And thank you to Mr. Chong for being here as a witness today. I think you're right when you say that Canadians want to see a change in the House of Commons, particularly during question period.

I think all parties have endeavoured to do something about the decorum in the House, and I think we all need to be recognized for that. That's not to say that there still aren't improvements that can be made.

I accept your motion, of course, which passed in the House. I want the opportunity now to ask questions about some of the elements of your motion. I guess I'll start with the first one, where you talk about “elevating decorum and fortifying the use of discipline by the Speaker, to strengthen the dignity and authority of the House”.

My understanding is that the Speaker has all the authority he needs at this point to exercise discipline. You seem to think otherwise. Do you want to elaborate on that?

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

It's the paradox of the Speaker. This Speaker and previous Speakers have traditionally interpreted the enforcement of the rules at the level they believe the House will accept. I believe the Speaker's current enforcement of the rules is the one that he believes the House wants as a whole.

Now, if the committee reports back, and the House concurs in the report, that the rules should be more vigorously interpreted, the Speaker would more rigorously enforce the rules.

This is an opportunity, through this report and the concurrence in that report by the House, to strengthen the Speaker's authority.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

But at this point in time you would agree that the Speaker has the authority; he's just using it in whatever way he thinks is acceptable to the House.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Yes. He believes he's enforcing the rules at the level the House wants, and any stricter enforcement of the rules would bring about a challenge on the part of members of the House that he's not being fair.

There is a precedent for this. There was an attempt in the 1960s, I believe it was, by Speaker Lamoureux--or maybe it was Speaker Jerome--to more rigorously enforce the rules as they were written, and there was a backlash in the House because it was seen as a Speaker overstepping his bounds. I think Speaker Milliken feels the same way, that he's enforcing at the level the members want.

But if the committee reports back to the House, and the report is concurred in, that the Speaker should more rigorously enforce the existing rules, he will do so.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Let's move on to your second point: lengthening the amount of time given for each question and each answer.

To do one or both you'd have to either lengthen question period or have fewer questions. What are you proposing? It has to be one or the other to do what you're suggesting in number two.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

It used to be the case, up until 1997, that members had up to a minute, sometimes a minute and a half, to ask a question and to answer a question. I'm proposing that we put more flexibility in the length of time given to ask and answer a question.

There are two things I would note that are interesting. The first is that the other Parliaments in Canada have longer times to ask and answer questions. Many provincial legislatures, the Assemblée nationale, and Queen's Park I believe have up to a minute to ask and answer a question. In the Westminster Parliament in the United Kingdom they also have up to a minute, a minute and a half, to ask and answer questions.

What's interesting in both cases is that members often ask much shorter questions of 10 or 15 seconds and often receive very substantive and direct answers of 10 to 15 seconds.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Some would say that's better.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

That's the first point I'd make: because the length of time has been maximized to a minute or a minute and a half, it doesn't necessarily mean we will have fewer questions. Members may choose the rhetorical device of asking direct and simple questions and ministers may decide to provide direct and simple answers.

Today we are on this clockwork, mechanical type of system whereby everybody asks a 35-second question and everybody provides a 35-second answer.

The second quick point I'll make is that the Bloc has raised some legitimate concerns, I believe, about the very question you've asked. One potential solution is to allow the Speaker the power of reciprocity between the length of the answer given and the length of the question asked so there's some relationship between the two. If somebody asks a quick 15-second question, the minister cannot rag the puck to provide a minute and a half answer to try to chew up the House's time.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

I think you would have to agree that if you're going to have longer answers then we're going to end up with fewer questions, which would not be in the best interest of an opposition.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

That's right, provided the Speaker doesn't have the power of reciprocity. If we were to give the Speaker the power of reciprocity and tell the Speaker that the minimum length of time any member has to ask and answer questions is 35 seconds and the maximum is, say, a minute, but there has to be reciprocity between the length of the answer and the length of the question, that would address your concern.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Your fifth point: dedicating Wednesday exclusively for questions to the Prime Minister. Are you suggesting the Prime Minister would only be in the House on Wednesday, or would it be that all the questions on that day would be put to the Prime Minister?

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

I'm suggesting both. I'm suggesting that, if it's the wish of the committee, I think the best system would be to go to a rotational schedule for ministers where they would appear twice a week on a pre-agreed schedule and that the Prime Minister would appear once a week.

Currently the Prime Minister answers about ten minutes of questions four days a week in each of the four question periods of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

You do know that questions aren't always prepared in advance, that issues happen throughout the week. When you have an opportunity to put questions to the Prime Minister or to a minister on any day of the week, then it works in the opposition's best interest if you're trying to get an answer to a particular issue.

If you're going to have the Prime Minister there only one day of the week, or you're going to have ministers there on particular days of the week, is that not impacting on accountability somewhat in terms of being able to get a response from the government to issues that are in the news, or issues that have arisen on any particular day?

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

I think it would lead to better accountability. I believe it would afford the opposition parties much more time to prepare the research and the detail they need to ask tougher questions.

I know how question period works. I've been in opposition, and I can tell you exactly how it works. You get up in the morning, the office of the leader of the opposition reads the National Post, the Toronto Star, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, The Globe and Mail, La Presse, Le Soleil, Le Devoir, and says what the issue of the day is. We'll pick a couple of questions that the front pages of the newspapers are leading with, and those become the questions of the day, because the opposition is stretched for resources and doesn't have the resources to do the research.

If you do it once a week for 45 minutes it's slightly more time for the Prime Minister. And as the British model shows, it is more accountable, because it becomes the focal point of the week. Everybody saves up their questions for the week and the Prime Minister is on the hot seat for a full 45 minutes. He cannot avoid the questions; he cannot defer those questions to other ministers. He has to answer for a full 45 minutes.

I think you'll get more accountability out of the system while at the same time providing a better use of resources on the part of ministers and the Prime Minister.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you very much. The chair got caught being a spectator there and was enthralled and we went well over time, so let's see if he can get back on topic.

Mr. Reid, you're next.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chong, for being here. I agree with you, by the way, about the inherent shallowness of question period by virtue of the fact that it's driven by the day's headlines. That was certainly my experience when I was helping to coordinate it back in the days when the Reform Party was the opposition. We were actually the third party in those days, but I remember it was a lot shallower than we thought it was going to be when we imagined ourselves coming to Ottawa to bring depth to the process and then realized the process is inherently shallow.

Having said that, I want to ask you about questions. I think there are two ways of asking questions, and we use both of them and aren't even aware of it. In the House of Commons, like the 35-second question, you as the minister have a 35-second answer. If I go to the late show, we change the timeframes, but it's the same thing: I get a four-minute question; you get a four-minute answer, followed by a one-minute question and a one-minute answer. So the idea is just a lock-in proportionality.

We come here and we have seven minutes. I can ask you a question that lasts one minute and you can take six minutes answering it. Or I can ask you a one-minute question and you can take however long it takes to answer and I can ask another one. We have seven minutes for our exchange. Does anybody use that kind of model used in committee in question period? Is that part of what you're contemplating? Or is that, in your opinion, unlikely to work, where we get a kind of dialogue going between us?

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

I think that model would be difficult to work with in question period because of the set-up of the debate, and I also think the opposition has raised some legitimate concerns about the government trying to use up as much time as possible in order to avoid additional questions. So I think whatever system's in place has to ensure that there's some sort of reciprocity between the amount of time for a question and the amount of time the Speaker gives for the answer, so that you don't get this situation where the government is just dragging out the answers in order to chew up time.

In terms of the more informal dialogue, I think you would get more substantive questions in the system that I'm proposing, because if you allow backbench members the opportunity to ask questions driven by the concerns they have from their constituents without having to petition their respective party to ask that question, you're going to get a very different style of question that's driven by a very different concern. So I think that will change the tone of the place.

Besides, in addition, I should add, if the backbench members are afforded that right in the second half of question period, they will be a lot more attentive in the first half, because if they act out of hand in the first half, Speaker Milliken is not going to recognize them in the second half. So there's a bit of a carrot there for members to be attentive and to pay attention because they know at around 2:40 or 2:45 they have a chance to ask a question. If they've been acting unruly, the Speaker won't recognize them.

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

The open system of question period, where you get this kind of random selection--that survived in the U.K., is that right?

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

I believe in the U.K. members can put their questions on the order paper and the ministers then have an opportunity to prepare, and where the uncertainty comes in is in the supplementaries. I believe that's how their system works.

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

The other distinction, of course, in the U.K. is there's no assigned seating, so it makes it inherently difficult to look out and recognize the member from wherever. They have 500 or 600 members, or whatever it is over there, sitting more or less randomly. The ability to corral people is more difficult.

By the same token, I am a bit worried that we would be unsuccessful in our ability to “uncorral”, to free people from the party whips. It is, after all, an informal system that is imposed effectively by the consent of all. What I'm thinking of here is that I assume that due to an open system or a random system, as you've put it, we have to have some kind of ongoing respect for party proportionality. In theory, we in our party have the right to ask questions freely within our selection, but in practice the hand of the whip comes down and says you'll be asking a question on the following--

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

Get your hand off me.

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

--and you won't be saying anything until your turn comes. Right? That kind of discipline is very hard to overcome, and we've seen that happen with SO 31s. They were meant to be free, but they're largely controlled by the party whips.

Do you have any means of getting around that?