Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 22nd, 2013

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

It's just going to give you more time to think on it.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I know and I appreciate that very much. That's more who you are, sir, rather than this nonsense. That's who you are. That intervention is very much you, your humour. That's why people like working with you, and that's why we're so surprised that of all six of you, I have to say you are the last one I would have thought....

Tom's the loyal soldier. Tom's the general out on the field.

Mr. MacKenzie has the place of pride as the lead chair.

I could have expected to make other arguments about why I might think it would be Brad, Blake, or Ted, but I have to tell you if I were betting on this, I'd have lost my shirt, because that's the last person on that side of the House, arguably on that whole side of the House, never mind that side of the committee room, who would do something like this.

Mr. Reid, in my opinion, sir—and I say this with the greatest of respect, Chair—I think you are going to have the greatest difficulty explaining to the media why someone who as my House leader has pointed out is known for wanting to do the right thing.... You are always a team player at the end of the day, but I've been through—and we all went through—the whole election rules and procedures thing and that was all pretty tense. You are not one to jump in front of the microphone, but when you say something, people listen because it's valid. It's not just partisan talking points or just some petty, goofy, stupid thing that doesn't contribute. There's none of that. It's quite the opposite. Yet here we are.

Here we are at the committee called the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, and the procedure being suggested has negative implications for the way we make laws in Canada. The government has decided that they don't need to wait the two days the clerk said she needs in order to give us the answers to the pertinent question that Mr. Julian placed.

To paraphrase that question, it was what are the consequences? What are the unintended consequences, or in this case maybe planned consequences? But what are they?

If it weren't a valid question and it was just the official opposition playing games then the government would have jumped in really quickly and said they could provide that answer and there's absolutely nothing for the member to be concerned about. Did that happen? No. No, they were dead quiet as they are now, just sitting there.

It would seem that if we give up talking and give up the floor they are prepared to ram this through. So we are rapidly getting into a crisis—and I hate to use the term but it is true—a gridlock, in terms of the business of just getting our committees set up.

All the government had to do, Chair, was to agree to table this and we would have passed the routine motions; we would have been out of here by noon, and all of our committees would have been given the green light to start their procedure. That's what could have happened today.

Then on Thursday we would have returned to this and had a grown-up, intelligent discussion about whether or not this is a positive change to the way we make laws.

[An hon. member]

Let's do that.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You know it sounds a bit radical but that's where we are. We could still be there if Mr. Lukiwski would suggest that he is prepared to table—

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

But I'm just not.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

—then we could still get the rest of the business done. We still have time. This can be pulled out of the fire.

We're here until 1 o'clock. I guarantee you, unless there's a change, we are here until 1 o'clock. This is just me, and there are more of us. So the government either gives its head a shake and somebody up in the PMO realizes that this is a disaster in the making and that they had better find a way in the next 36 minutes to stand down, or, if they have to, just crassly step down and consider it a bit of a hit and move on. If they don't do that, we're going to walk out of here at 1 o'clock and only two things will have happened: one, nothing, and two, there will be the evidence that the government is prepared to ram through changes to the way we make laws because they believe doing so gives them a partisan benefit. How disgraceful is that? How disgraceful is it to make a change in the way we make laws so you can have a partisan benefit?

At the end of the day, Chair, the government has the right to do that because it does have a majority. We are not suggesting it does not have the right to govern; it does, but there are ways that we govern with rules and procedures and checks and balances. That is the reason we have something called the official opposition, the loyal opposition, to hold the government to account but is loyal to the country and to the Constitution—

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You're interrupting Mr. Christopherson, but I believe it's probably good.

Go ahead.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm listening with a great deal of interest to Mr. Christopherson, but I'm hearing a lot of noise from the government side. I would just appreciate, Mr. Chair, if you could stop those satellite conversations. Perhaps those individuals could step outside the room.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you for that. It is not a point of order, but Mr. Christopherson, please go ahead.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I heard Mr. Richards say he had problems because of the volume. I can assure him that this could stop immediately if the government would come to its senses and just say, “Hey, we get it. Sorry, we didn't know what we were thinking there. Sorry about that, and yes, of course, we'll table this for two days. We'll get the information. We'll get onto the business”. Then Mr. Richards wouldn't have to listen to me any more.

Am I seeing that or not, Chair? I'm not. I'm not seeing any government members saying, “Oh, no, we're prepared to stay”.

What I don't get is this: they can't win it. The politics of this are stupid too. This is what really gets me. Who thought this up? Did the government really think we were just going to sit back and allow it to change the way we make laws in Canada when we can't get an answer to the very first question we had, which is what are the unintended consequences, or at least what are the consequences of doing this vis-à-vis other procedures and the rights of members in the House—in this case, potentially Ms. May and others. But it's not about her individually. It's about the rights of Parliament, and it's the right of Canadians to have a Parliament that functions in a democratic way, and there's nothing democratic about ramming through a motion that changes the way we make laws without even having the information about what those changes will ultimately be.

[An hon. member]

Hear, hear!

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's the substantive part of it. The politics of it is that the government is holding up every committee in the House, all of the work of Parliament outside of question period and the debates in the House, which is relatively slow moving stuff. Other than that, everything is frozen. Nothing is going to get done. Why? It's because the government has decided that it is going to make this change, and it is going to ram it through no matter what the cost.

Where the government has miscalculated is believing that we, in the opposition, would just roll over. That's not going to happen. The government will win at the end of the day.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Maybe.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

My House leader says “Maybe”, so there you are. As a House leader, he certainly knows things that I wouldn't, in terms of tricks up his sleeve, but the fact remains that we do respect those to whom Canadians have given enough seats to form a government. We get all of that, but the opposition has rights, and many times the rights of the opposition are actually the rights of Canadians, because when the party in power has all the power, it controls the House, the Senate, and all the major appointments.

It has all the power in the world—except this is a democracy, and not just any old democracy. It is one of the best, if not the best damned, democracies in the world. We're looked at as a model of democracy. There are other countries that would give anything to have the rights that our Parliament has. They already have the other side, the accumulated power in one place.

I've been to Africa many times as a vice-chair of the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association. I've been to many countries where you know power is concentrated; it's very clear where it is, and it's all inclusive. What they are missing is an effective check and balance, a loyal opposition that has the ability to hold the power to account, not to deny them their legitimate right to that power but to hold them to account as to how they're exercising it and what the implications of exercising that power are.

Here we are. This is not the transportation committee talking about a subclause 7 of a bill that basically is not that controversial but over which they have gotten themselves into a bit of a twist. This is huge in terms of the substantive arguments at stake. What is at stake is the process we use to make laws.

I'm sure there are bigger things, but they just don't come to my mind right away. This has got to be in the top three—the process by which the Canadian Parliament passes laws and the checks and balances on a majority government. Remember, there are presidents of the United States who have said they would give anything to have the power a majority government Prime Minister in Canada has in terms of the unilateral power under the way our system has evolved.

By the way, we've already evolved a long way from the kind of democracy that we originally were. Mr. Reid will know this better than I, being an historian, but here in my home province of Ontario back in the day, in the 1800s—again, Mr. Reid can provide much more than I can, and I apologize, sir, if I get some of this wrong—if you were elected as a member of Parliament and you were invited to join the executive council to be a cabinet minister, you actually had to go into a byelection, go back to your constituents, and get permission from them to sit with the government.

Why? Because Parliament was all-powerful. As it is now under our structure on a flow chart, Parliament is all-powerful. If you leave Parliament—where the power is—as you're representing your constituents and you join the government, you've removed yourself, and you're playing a very different role. Back in the day, you actually had to go back to your constituents in the riding and have a vote, whereby they agreed that you could continue to be their member and, yes, assume a position on the executive council. How far have we come from that?

We've come to the point where that kind of power that individual members have...and I'm sitting here looking at six members who are saying absolutely nothing as democracy is steamrollered, and they think that's just fine. Somehow they think, within the confines and the safety and comfort of this room, that they're going to walk out that door and maintain that kind of comfort.

Good luck. Seriously, good luck. I'll be watching with bated breath to see how these scrums go as you answer to Canadians through the media to why you couldn't wait two days to get vital information on changing the way we make laws, since not one member.... My challenge still remains. It's on the floor. It's in front of you. I challenge any member over there to take up what my House leader has said and tell us what are the dire implications of not dealing with this today. What part of the sky falls in between Tuesday and Thursday if we don't pass this motion?

They're not even looking up, Mr. Chair, let alone taking the floor and giving me an answer.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

They're ashamed.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes. They're all thinking: “I hope Tom's doing this one. I hope Tom's going to do the scrum, because as the media gathers around him, I will exit stage left.” Or right, in their case.

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

Thank you.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's all right.

Tom, listen, “you're the man”. You're the man: I know where the power is. That's why I keep looking to you for some sanity over there. There has to be a piece of this that I don't get.

That's what I'm thinking, Mr. Julian: somehow in here there's a piece that I'm missing. They're going to walk out there and that piece is going to become self-evident, and all of a sudden we're going to look foolish for what we did and they're going to look brilliant. I don't know what that is. Even after close to 30 years in elected office, I still learn. I'd love to know what piece of this I've missed.

But from everything I can see, what is at stake is, first of all, the right of the official opposition to at least get answers from our clerk to serious questions on the implications of changing the way we make laws, given the complexities. Remember, we didn't get an answer to any questions. That was just Mr. Julian's first question. We don't know what other questions there may be or what questions there will be as a follow-up to that.

Normally that wouldn't be a big deal, you know: we'd table the motion, get the information, and talk it through. But that doesn't seem to be at all what the government is interested in. They're not interested in any kind of fairness here. They don't seem, Chair, to even be interested in good law-making.

The very first question that Mr. Julian asked was, what are the implications for other procedures we have for law-making in Canada? That doesn't sound like an obstructionist question. That doesn't sound like somebody who doesn't want to deal with an issue. It doesn't sound like somebody who doesn't understand the issue.

It sounds to me like a serious parliamentarian took seriously a motion put by a highly respected member of Parliament and asked the first question that came to all our minds on this side of the committee room: What are the implications?

This motion speaks to one piece of the process, but it clearly has an implication for another process that happens in the House. While it may be amendments from members who don't have a prayer of getting them passed if the government doesn't want them, that's not at all the point. The point is that this committee is expected and needs to know what the implications are of changes that are made.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

On a point of order, Mr. Cullen.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Forgive me, I don't know the procedure or process on this, but clearly we have an impasse.

A suggestion was made by my colleague, Mr. Christopherson, to determine whether there was any openness, particularly on the government side, to seeking a 48-hour delay until the next committee meeting so that we could actually have evidence brought before the vote takes place. There are other implications for committees beyond ours to our not getting through what we were meant to do here today, and that is concerning to all of us.

Again, I don't know the process or procedure on this. Mr. Christopherson has asked for a nod or an indication, and I don't know if there's any [Inaudible--Editor] without interrupting what Mr. Christopherson is talking about, to have some indication from the government if it is willing to do that, because it would allow us both to set this motion aside and allow the evidence to come forward from the clerk. It would also allow us to get through some of the other business that we're obligated to do.

Do you follow me, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Officially, Mr. Cullen, I don't know of an official way to do what you're trying to accomplish.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Nor do I.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

It's usually handled on the sidelines.

Next on our speakers list is someone from the government, but Mr. Christopherson still has the floor.