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

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

Mr. Reid, I think you've raised a very good point.

I think the first half of question period you leave to the parties and the party whip. That unfolds as it does now. You have the leader of the official opposition, the leader of the Bloc Québécois, the leader of the New Democrats, and then their designates in the second and third rounds. You'd leave that as it is.

In the second half of question period, you go to the random selection by the Speaker. Now, you ensure that in the second half it's still allocated by party. So there'd be party slots for the second half, as there are now, except the slots would not be filled in by the parties; it would be up to the Speaker. I think the whip would be ineffective, because the Speaker chooses who to recognize.

It would be odd, I would think, and I think the Speaker would rightfully make a point of it during question period, if only one member rose during that second half for each party. The Speaker would right away clue in that a member's right to ask a question was being infringed upon and could rightfully make the comment, “I'd like to remind members of the House that it is a right, as Speaker Jerome said, for members to ask questions. I see only one member rising per party on backbench questions, and I think parties should remind themselves of the fact that it is a right.”

The minute you get two or three rising, it is up to the Speaker to pick. Once you set that practice in place for a week or two, it becomes set. I think we're then well on our way to affording that right back to members.

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

Looks like I'm out of time here. I have some more stuff, but I think I'm going to have to let it go. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You have about 30 seconds.

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

I will try one thing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

A 15-second question and a 15-second answer.

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

Very briefly, there are many other countries, not just the mother of Parliaments in the U.K. Are there any salutary practices elsewhere in the Commonwealth that you think are worth drawing to our particular attention?

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

Australia is interesting. I was talking to the high commissioner of Australia to Canada, who told me that the Australian Parliament is taking a look at discussing some of the proposals in my motion and taking a look at implementing some of them over there, as well. That's something interesting for us to note.

To answer your question, the member for Brandon—Souris, Mr. Tweed, recently went to New Zealand's legislature and told me that there were a number of practices there we could take a look at. One of them made its way into my proposal, which is to examine the requirement that ministers respond to questions directed at them. He said the speaker there has the power to compel a minister, even the prime minister, to re-answer the question if he feels it wasn't properly answered.

There are some other practices elsewhere that we could look at, as well.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Before we go to Monsieur Paquette, that is fantastic, Mr. Chong. I'm sure the chair would travel to New Zealand to check that at the direction of the committee.

Monsieur Paquette, you're up.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

First of all, thank you for appearing before the committee. As you know, we voted against your motion and are still opposed to most of the motions you have introduced.

With respecting to elevating decorum and fortifying the use of discipline, we are in favour of that. We also talk about that every week at the meeting of house leaders. Yesterday, however, it was the government house leader who sparked a confrontation by virtually accusing one of our members of being a member of the FLQ. So it's all well and good to change the form of the questions, but if there is no political will on the part of each party to discipline itself, I don't think the format will change the result in any way whatever.

Second, we had the member for Lévis—Bellechasse who came and said that one of our members was financing cocktail parties with Islamists. So I'm in favour of decorum, and perhaps the Speaker can be more severe. For example, I move that the groups that loudly applaud every time one of their ministers rises—I must say it is often the Conservatives—should lose their right to ask questions. They don't have the chance to ask many, three in fact. So the Speaker could rule that any group that delays oral questions through somewhat excessive expressions of enthusiasm should be penalized. I have no problem with that, but I would be quite surprised if the format of oral questions changed anything whatever.

As for lengthening the amount of time given to questions and answers, my party and I are prepared to examine that option. That time is indeed relatively short. Furthermore, as you mentioned, the Assemblée nationale has another way of operating. It seems to produce results, but it clearly reduces the number of questions.

Reviewing the convention whereby the minister questioned is not required to answer could also be a good suggestion.

Where the matter becomes complicated is when it is suggested that half of the questions every day should be allocated for members whose names and order of recognition are randomly selected. I did understand that the first half of oral questions would remain as it currently is. The purpose of question period is normally to be accountable to Parliament. In that context, members are entitled to ask the government questions, even government members, in which case, generally speaking, these are planted questions, that is questions designed to put forward what their government considers is one or another of the good aspects of its policies. The fact nevertheless remains that, in general, it is the opposition parties that ask the government to explain a situation or a policy. It is very rare for government members to take a critical look at their own government.

That means that, regardless whether the government is a minority or majority government, many questions will be asked by government members. You mentioned that that would change the nature of oral questions. I understand that. That will indeed be the case. It will penalize the opposition parties, particularly the smallest ones, hence my surprise that the NDP is supporting this motion, unless it is doing so opportunistically. Ultimately, however, this is still an open question. In short, this may not be acceptable to us since, as you know, we will always be in opposition.

Then it is suggested that Wednesday should be exclusively dedicated for questions to the Prime Minister. We might be able to consider if there wasn't this idea of exclusivity. However, I went to Westminster with Speaker Milliken this summer. During question periods other than those in which the Prime Minister answers questions—he does that in the second part of the question period on Wednesday—not only are there no journalists, there are also no members. The chamber fills only when the Prime Minister is there, unless of course a terrible tainted blood scandal has broken the day before and the health minister's turn comes round that day. Otherwise, there are no journalists or members in the House of Commons. Once again, I believe there is an advantage from the standpoint of accountability if the opposition parties are able to question the government immediately, depending on current events.

I'll give you an example. We've just learned that the UN representative believes that Canada has made a mistake in deciding not to consider Omar Khadr a child soldier. That's what I want to question the Minister of Foreign Affairs about today, not next week, whereas that won't at all be the case given current events.

In our view, these two questions, rotation and the order of recognition being randomly determined, are measures that give the government an advantage, not the opposition, and therefore not Parliament. That somewhat explains our opposition.

However, thank you for your effort. Like you, I am in favour of decorum. As you can see, I'm hardly shouting at all. In any case, I'm not shouting "Get out."

Thank you for listening to my comments.

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

Thank you, sir. Perhaps I can respond to the issues you've raised.

First, the issue of the Prime Minister appearing on the Wednesday of every week. The major problem now is that every minister uses four hours of his time every day to prepare for question period. However, only eight or 10 ministers answer questions during every question period. In other words, after using up four hours of their time every time, 30 ministers of the Crown attend oral questions every day but to do nothing. That's a major problem for their ministers.

For the vast majority of backbench members it's the same thing. I've been going to question period for six years, and it's a two-hour part of time out of my day, and I often wonder how effective it is for the 260 members who are there in the House. We are all very busy with committee work and answering the concerns of our constituents, and we often don't have enough hours in the day to keep up, and yet we have to sit through question period and not play any meaningful role at all.

The other thing I've noticed is that I think it's very important for the Bloc to have the same amount of time in the House to ask questions as they do now.

You're an elected member. We live in a democracy, and it is therefore very important for the members of the Bloc Québécois, including yourself, to have the same time to answer questions as is currently the case.

So I'm in favour of making sure they have the same amount of time they have now. This is not to diminish the amount of time given to the opposition parties to ask questions.

The problem of oral questions in the House of Commons is not a matter of decorum. The fundamental problem is the rules. If we change the rules, we'll change decorum.

So I think previous attempts to change decorum in the House have focused on the symptoms of the problem rather than the underlying problem, which is the format. The format drives the behaviour, so I think we need to change the format in order to address decorum.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Great.

You're well over seven minutes there, and the rules and orders make it that I'm going to go to Mr. Christopherson next.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

I just wanted to say that I'm surprised that it takes them four hours not to answer our questions

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Christopherson, you are there.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair. I appreciate it.

Mr. Chong, thank you again for the work you've done. It is very interesting.

Like you, I have a lot of concerns about the way we do things. I got into politics, as most of us did, to change things that we didn't agree with, but I have to say that my experience has tempered that a bit, in terms of change for the sake of change isn't always the way to go. You have to make sense, particularly when we're dealing with the traditions of Parliament, and we need to walk carefully.

Like some members here, I have a fair bit of experience in these areas, having served on city and regional councils and then in the Ontario legislature, where I both asked questions and answered questions as a minister, and I've done the process of preparing for question period. I've also been a house leader and a deputy speaker, and there are my six years plus here. I have some idea of these issues in other arenas too.

Let me say at the outset, for the 26 years plus that I've been in elected office, in every arena I've been in, there has always been an issue that the current clowns in place are worse than the previous clowns, and decorum is always the issue. On the Hamilton city council, when you're having fist fights in the back parking lot, there might be some justification, but for the most part it's always thus and everybody is always better.

We've had them. It's true. There are those of you who know.

I want to be specific. I'm just going to throw some thoughts out to you, in no particular order, Michael, and get your feedback.

On increasing the time of the question, I was one of those who had to learn to go from one minute to 35 seconds, and being somebody who is long-winded to start with, this was a major challenge. But I have to tell you, in terms of the quality of the responses, I'm not yet convinced they're either any better or worse. For the person asking the question it was often better because you had a little more time to lay out the issue, to put things in context for anybody watching who didn't know the issue. And most people don't know the particular issue, especially if it's local or a very detailed one within a portfolio. Ministers can use the one minute usually to get up, as they do now only for twice as long, to brag about what's great about their ministry and their government and their leader, etc.

I have to say also that this occurred to me, and again, this is the benefit of being on all sides of the House: there are times when the answer to a question is no, and to have the Speaker say they took 45 seconds to ask the question and he wants you to take 45 seconds to answer it, well, no, no, no.... That could become a joke too. I'm just not sure that alone nails it.

I don't have a lot of time, so I'm just going to jump around. I'm going to jump to the end so I get this in. I do believe, however, that the absolute key to everything you've raised for the most part comes down to Parliament telling the Speaker to increase the level of discipline through the rules. I've seen deputy speakers, who don't have the same relationship with Parliament that the Speaker himself, in this case, has. But Speakers are sovereign. Whatever they rule, that's it. There is no appeal. There's nowhere to go. And I have seen Speakers stand up and just by standing the place goes dead quiet. If you're heckling, you're watching the Speaker because they're one of those who don't let you get away with it.

Chris Stockwell, if anybody knows Chris Stockwell, was one of the best speakers I've ever served under, and it was partly because he was really tough on the rules, but he was really fair. He was always fair-minded about things. So I'll get that out there.

Having the Prime Minister on one day is probably one of the ones I'm most interested in, simply because most of us don't get an answer from the Prime Minister. Most of us can stand up and ask the Prime Minister a question in our third, fourth, fifth question slot. The Prime Minister normally doesn't respond, throws it over to another minister or the House leader. The only time the Prime Minister.... And this was true of the premiers in my day: they would only answer questions from the leaders. They felt obliged to do that to show the respect for another leader who could theoretically become Prime Minister, so they would give them the respect of standing up. Sometimes they'd look at them, sometimes they didn't, depending on the relationship, but they did stand up and address the questions that came from the leaders. Beyond that, they'd toss it to somebody else.

The idea of an ordinary backbencher getting a shot at the Prime Minister has some real merit. And in terms of looking at this in a non-partisan way, the notion of freeing up the Prime Minister of the day--not the other ministers, I'm not as keen on that at all, and I'll explain why if I have time--to spend more time doing the Prime Minister's job has some merit. It's a complex country, a complex world, so I'm a bit open to that.

I'm not so open to scheduling the ministers. I understand what you're saying about the wasted time. I went through that--the butterflies in the stomach every day when you have a front-page issue and you're getting ready for question period and you know you're about to be drilled and so much is riding on it. But on the other hand, the ministers also don't know what you're going to ask on any given day, and that forces a good minister to stay on top of all their files. A bad minister, quite frankly, can keep an eye on three or four files or be prepared for a day or two. But on any given day, someone could stand up and ask you anything in your portfolio, and you had better know your major files; you had better know the procedures that are involved; you had better know where things are, and if you don't, it's going to show very quickly.

The other thing on that is that as tough as it is and with the time that's wasted, the most wonderful sound in the world when you're a minister is “this House now stands adjourned”, because then there's no more question period, and you're in control of everything. Life as a minister when the House isn't sitting is really good. When the House is sitting, it's really good, but it's really tougher.

So in my view there's a balance there. I have some other thoughts, but I'll give you a chance to respond, if I've left any time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You have forty-five seconds to do your best.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's not bad. I could ask a question in that time.

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

Thank you, Mr. Christopherson, Mr. Chair.

I think we're all concerned about any change to an old institution, but I think we know the consequences of some of the changes I've proposed, because some were past practice in the Canadian House of Commons for many decades. Arguably the question period we have now is an aberration. It's a question period with rules that were established only in the last 30 years. Question period started after Confederation under unwritten conventions, but nevertheless it existed for many decades before the more recent changes that were introduced in the last 30 years. We know the consequences of some of these changes, because they were past practices in the Canadian House of Commons.

We also know some of the consequences of the other changes I've proposed, because they're present practice in other Westminster-style parliaments. So we can look to those parliaments to see how question period functions in them.

The other thing I'd add about change is that we weren't cautious about the change in 1980 when we stripped members of the right to ask questions in the House. We weren't cautious in 1997 when we decided to go from minute-long questions and minute-long answers to 35-second questions and 35-second answers.

There seems to be a great deal of caution when we're trying to restore the right of members to represent their constituents to ask questions, but not a lot of caution when we need to further centralize power among the party leadership in all the parties.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Chong.

We're going to move to five-minute rounds. I thank you for being good with your questions and your answers today. I'm also quite disappointed that Mr. Chong did not suggest that I sit behind him during question period. I'm very studious and very well behaved during question period. I had to get that in myself, you'll notice, and you'll pay for that later.

Ms. Ratansi, we're on five-minute rounds. I'm going to try to get everybody in today, so if you don't have to use five minutes, please don't.

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

Are you kidding?

Mr. Chong, thank you very much for being here.

This is something that needs to be done, because students and other people come from my riding, and they see us, and they wonder. Knowing my professional vantage especially, people wonder how a person who used to do receivership can be in such a position where everybody is yelling. Everybody is supposed to be quiet--right?

I'll give you a few questions, and then you can take the time to answer them.

When you talk about elevating the decorum and fortifying the use of discipline by the Speaker, doing so is at the discretion of the Speaker. You stated there was a specific incident in which the Speaker enforced the true meaning of the rules, and there was a revolt. So the Speaker either has the power or doesn't have the power. Could you tell me what happened?

You are suggesting that he fortify it. How can he fortify it? If the weapon is available, why isn't he using it? I know Speaker Blaikie used to use them quite effectively.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We feared him.

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

Somehow we need to do that.

You talk about lengthening the amount of time given to each question and answer. Would you be suggesting that we lengthen the question period? Or would you be suggesting what they have in Britain, where the questions are all pre-submitted and the only spontaneity is during the supplemental questions, which are off the cuff? If ministers are required to respond, they do respond, and I'm sure my Bloc colleague was saying that, but how do you get substantive answers? Do you want to call it answer period instead of question period? Is that the way you want to change it? Perhaps we could do it.

You asked to allocate half the questions to backbenchers. That's something you want. Do you mean government backbenchers? Because if you look at the opposition, their backbenchers ask questions on a regular basis. So where is this coming from?

You want to dedicate Wednesday exclusively for the Prime Minister. I know that happens in Britain, but what happens if the Prime Minister is missing one Wednesday? Does he have to do two days the next week?

If you can answer those, then I'll see how much time I have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Well, you've used two minutes and 30 seconds, so I would think reciprocity settles it.

Mr. Chong.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Ratansi.

With respect to elevating decorum and the enforcement of the rules, successive Speakers since the 1960s have generally interpreted the rules in a way that they believe members have supported. To put it to you differently, Speakers prefer to have members self-enforce the rules and they feel it's really up to the House as a whole to regulate itself and to respect the rules during question period. That, I think, explains why most Speakers are reluctant, if not completely opposed, to imposing their will upon the House. This has been the trend for successive Speakers since the 1960s.

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

I'll counter-question you, then.

If the Speaker is going to enforce the rules and he thinks that members of Parliament have to do it, if he were in Taiwan he would be in real trouble, because they jump across and kill each other. There's the House leaders' meeting, which says to stop heckling, and you say heckling doesn't make Parliament dysfunctional. I think it does, because it's juvenile.

So if the Speaker were to say “No heckling, everybody behave yourself,” the person looking at you from home would say, “Why is this member heckling? What's the matter with him? Why is he shouting? If you did that in school you'd be in real trouble.”