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

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

Look, heckling is part of parliamentary debate. I think the occasional heckle is a good thing. But I would say that the problem isn't with the heckling, the problem is with the screaming, the fact that we need to use earpieces turned up on full volume.

I can tell you I think I've suffered some hearing loss in the last six years—and this is no joke, and my wife often says to me that I'm speaking too loudly—as a result of the fact that the noise levels in the House are often so loud. Now, they haven't been recently, but often in the last year they've been so loud that you couldn't hear the person next to you speaking, even with your earpiece turned on full.

One of the solutions the committee might recommend is for the House technicians to turn the maximum volume down by half. When the volume's turned down by half, the House will automatically quieten, because in order to hear what the question or the answer is, you'll need to have a degree of quiet in the House.

Quickly, to answer your other questions, I'm not proposing to lengthen the amount of time for question period from 45 minutes.

And in terms of what happens when the Prime Minister is missing on a Wednesday, in the British Parliament the Deputy Prime Minister steps up to the plate and answers the questions for the full 45 minutes. The British Parliament used to have two separate 15-minute question times per week for the Prime Minister; they've combined it to one. I think this is something we should take a look at too.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Chong.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Am I done?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You certainly are.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Are you sure?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I know, we were all enjoying it, but you are finished.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

I didn't heckle, I counter-challenged.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I will counter-challenge several times during question period today.

Mr. Albrecht.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you, Mr. Chong, for being here today.

I want to agree with my colleagues who applaud you for the spirit behind the initiative you're bringing forward here, the way you've done it. I think you've brought it forward in a very good way.

I think we all agree that we'd like to see the decorum in the House of Commons improved. Mr. Paquette referred earlier to what he called “an inflammatory comment”. All of us around this table could give evidence of what we consider to be inflammatory comments by others. I think, to be fair, it's human nature for us, and probably even our duty, to in some way respond to a comment that we feel is either blatantly false or is simply made to inflame, and I think we will continue to heckle.

You made the point that the issue isn't about removing heckling, but it is about removing some of the volume of that. Otherwise, why would the students who have come here be so disappointed in what they see? I don't imagine they're disappointed that they have a 35-second question when there's a 35-second answer; they're disappointed in the volume that's going on back and forth.

So we could say it's juvenile to heckle, but sometimes the questions themselves may indicate the need for that kind of response.

I have just two quick questions, two points. One is the discipline that you're calling on the Speaker to enforce. You mentioned the possibility of ignoring the member. That would be one form of discipline. Do you have other ideas as to how the Speaker could be more effective in bringing the discipline you're calling for?

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

Yes. I think restoring the right of the Speaker to recognize members is also about restoring the Speaker's right not to recognize members. I think that's an important part of discipline.

What other ideas would there be? The Speaker is reluctant to expel members from the House, and many members have told me they're reluctant about it too, because they believe it just gives more incentive for members to act out of hand. I think there's a simple solution: dock the member a week's pay. If a member feels so strongly about a particular issue on which the member is representing constituents and is acting out of hand and the Speaker expels that member, money shouldn't be the issue. We're not here to make money; we're here to represent Canadians and to fight for the things we believe in.

So I think there's a simple solution to reinforcing the rules around expulsion from the House. If you're expelled you get docked a week's salary. I would fully support that measure. I think it would be an excellent way for the Speaker to enforce discipline, and it also allows members to make their point. Clearly, if they feel strongly about something, it shouldn't be an issue if they're docked a week's salary.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

On the suggestion to require ministers to answer the questions asked of them, we've all seen examples where a particular opposition member will ask a question and name a minister who clearly is not in charge of that portfolio, simply to make a point.

So would there be an exception, and would the Speaker have the discretion to say, “Look, that question doesn't apply to minister X but applies to minister Y. We ask minister Y to answer it”?

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

Yes, I put that in my proposal because there is some sort of practice like it in the New Zealand Parliament. But I don't have exact ideas on how it would be enforced. I'm simply suggesting that if we're going to go to a rotational schedule for the Prime Minister and other ministers to answer the questions directed at them, if the Minister of Finance, for example, is to appear on Tuesdays and Thursdays to answer questions about his portfolio, another minister will not be put there in his stead as a way to avoid answering questions.

I think if we're going to re-examine the entire system whereby ministers appear every day and replace it with a rotational system, then we also need to make sure that the opposition has an opportunity to ask questions of particular ministers.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Albrecht.

Madame DeBellefeuille.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for appearing here this morning, Mr. Chong.

I listened to your responses to the various colleagues around this table, and what surprised me is that you suggested that the ministers who are not likely to be asked questions during oral questions are wasting their time, in the same way as backbench members who don't have the opportunity to ask questions. I'm a whip, and I don't have the opportunity to ask a lot of questions, but I believe that question period, for me, is an exciting and formative time in shaping my knowledge. I like to hear the questions from the other parties, and I like to hear the answers from your ministers—when they give any. It's also important for me to hear the answers and not just to ask questions. I'm very much insulted when I see a minister, for example, who knows the subject does not concern him, reading his newspaper or Maclean's magazine without paying attention to the questions of the other parties or to his colleagues' answers. I believe it is part of our job to ask questions, but also to listen to what the others say. That enables us to open our minds.

Decorum is a lively topic of discussion for us, as Mr. Paquette said earlier, particularly since the start of the session. I believe that the problem is not the way question period is conducted, but rather decorum. Decorum is based on one thing, the willingness of the Speaker, leaders and whips to enforce the rules already in place. If the Speaker were more respectful of the rules and enforced them more, if the House leaders of each party set the example and the whips enforced the rules, quite sincerely we would not be here around this table discussing a reform of oral questions.

The proof of that is that significant efforts have been made in the past few weeks. As a result, for example, the Bloc Québécois has often been allowed the seventh question. Consequently, there are more questions, more decorum, more respect, less racket and more exchanges between the opposition and government parties.

We agree about the lack of decorum, Mr. Chong, but we don't agree on the nature of the problem. I would say to you that, even if we change the container, the content will still be the same; we won't be changing much or improving much.

Don't you think that the role of the opposition is to ask the government the best questions, the most embarrassing questions possible, until it proves to us that we are wrong and it is right? In that way, democracy is practised in a much fairer manner. If government backbenchers ask questions only to promote the actions of their government, I don't believe we're doing citizens a service in the discovery of reality. In other words, don't you think that question period will lack appeal if all we do half the time is promote what the government is putting forward rather than raise questions the government will have to answer?

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

Thank you, sir.

I agree. I think government members should ask questions that come from their fellow citizens, not questions prepared by the government. The big problem with decorum is that most members, from all parties, are spectators. They aren't participants because they don't have the power to ask questions without the party's support. In my opinion, we must have a different question period; half the time should be allocated to the four parties and the other half to backbench members. I think that would change the atmosphere and decorum in the House of Commons.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Chong, I don't know, but if a backbench member from the party in power has questions to ask on behalf of his fellow citizens, he can go and see the minister; he has inside access. Why should the question become a topic of debate if, in any case, it's possible for him to get an answer?

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

Yes, the subjects being asked about and answered would be far more diverse than today, but that's democracy. That's the nature of democracy. Ministers are going to get these obscure questions.

In speaking to Don Mazankowski, who was a 25-year member from Alberta in the House of Commons, he told me that for 15 of those years he sat as an opposition member. He also told me recently in Calgary that he gave his questions to the minister ahead of time to allow the minister to prepare an answer. I've heard that from other members as well who used to serve in the House of Commons in the 1970s and even the 1980s. In fact I was speaking two weeks ago with somebody who worked for Monsieur Chrétien.

He was the assistant to Mr. Chrétien. He told me that, during the war between Iraq and Kuwait, the first Gulf War, before oral questions, Mr. Chrétien submitted to Mr. Mulroney—the Prime Minister in 1990—the question he wanted to ask him because it was an important question for Mr. Chrétien and he wanted a real answer.

So there has been a tradition of giving ministers a heads-up. I'm not suggesting that we do that, but if you're a backbench MP who has a question that a mayor or a group of constituents has sincerely asked you about, you might rise in the House three or four days before you get recognized. Maybe on the fourth or fifth day you get recognized. Before you get recognized, you give the minister the question and say, “Here's the question. I'm just going to ask it. Maybe you don't have an answer but I want to be on the record with my constituents, in a public forum, in the interests of transparency, that I'm representing them and their concerns to Parliament.” Then I can go back and say, “Mr. Speaker, I have a mayor who's voiced concerns about an infrastructure project that may not be completed by March 31 of next year. Could the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities tell this House what the government will do if particular infrastructure projects are not completed?” I then can go back to that mayor and say, “I've asked the question on your behalf. The minister said they'll take it under consideration.”

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you. We're well over time on that one.

Mr. Christopherson, again, in the interests of trying to get everybody in today, try to do your best to shorten this.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I will, thanks.

Just on that last point, I've done that both ways. On a local issue, it does make sense. If you want a positive answer on a local project and you give the minister a heads-up, you stand a better chance than catching them off guard and their answering with a place-setting negative, because they can always change the answer to positive much more easily than saying yes initially and then trying to say no later.

Conversely, I've had people come to me and do the same thing when I was a minister and say, “This is what I'm looking to do and here's the question I'm going to ask you. I'm hoping we can advance this. I'm not looking for conflict.”

It doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it can be effective. I don't know that we need to change the rules for that. Maybe we just need to enlighten members that there are different ways of approaching Parliament, rather than just putting on our body armour and heading in.

The point I want to make is that in my experience the behaviour you refer to affects the format. I'm looking at this and thinking that the dynamics around behaviour are going to be the same, although they're going to be applied in a different format. So many of the things we're concerned about—control, authority, and all of those things—are going to evolve quickly back into the same dynamics because of behaviour. The format may give a different end result, but the input is still going to be the same, if you know what I'm saying.

I'm very keen on the suggestion you're making about half the question period being the set format we have now and the other half being opened up. You said that if one person stands up, the Speaker could say, “Hey, something's going on, there's only one”, because someone's not using their right. But within a caucus, the dynamics could evolve very, very quickly, so that everybody will soon tacitly agree, in the interest of the caucus and furthering their agenda, on who will stand up. Where you'll have an exception is somebody in caucus who says “I'm not agreeing with that and I'm going to stand up anyway”. So really, all we would have done is potentially allowing, if you will, those who are out of step with their caucus an opportunity to create a little bit of grief for their caucus, which makes for some entertaining politics, but I'm not sure it actually furthers the cause.

Or, if I'm with my colleagues and we're fighting for attention in our relatively small caucus, we might cut a deal that nobody gets up on Monday so that Harry can get his question. Nobody gets up on Tuesday, so Sue can get her question. Again that's why I said the dynamics around behaviour will still come into play.

So help me understand how that would work, because I'm open to it, I like it, but I'm just not sure how it will work.

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

I think Mr. Reid raised this concern earlier as well, and I share your concern.

Here's an option for the committee to consider. We could go, in the second half of question period, to the same kind of lottery system allocated on the same party lines as today for private members to ask a question. So if the system isn't going to work because the parties are starting to reach their tentacles into the right of private members to ask questions, then one of the options is for the Speaker to establish a type of lottery system, like we have today, for private members' business whereby two or three weeks ahead of time, the Speaker would draw names out of a hat and would say, “Mr. Albrecht, you have a question slot two weeks from now on the Thursday. You're number three in the lineup in the second half of question period.” That is a way to address the problem.

There are different ways to address this problem.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Of course, then they're going to have a less likely chance of being able to get into the main questions because they know they've got that spot. That's why I keep referring to the dynamics at play.

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

Yes, but I do think--and your earlier point too is something that's very important--I think the format fundamentally drives behaviour. Look at this committee.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm disagreeing with you on that, because the behaviour dynamics will be the same no matter what the format.

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

I don't agree with that. Sorry, I misinterpreted what you said. I think the format fundamentally drives behaviour. Look at this committee. We're not behaving the same way in this committee as we do in the House. Why is that? It's a different format. The format fundamentally drives the behaviour.