Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 3rd, 2014

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the presentation, Mr. Reid.

Ultimately, the goal is to try to remove partisanship, as you have stated, to get that sense of independence. That's what you're hoping to achieve. I think a vast majority, if not all, parliamentarians respect that and would want to see that.

I come from a system at the provincial level where we've had Speakers, and I've witnessed Speakers who were appointed by the premier directly. That system evolved into the election of Speakers. You can see the difference. There was far more partisanship in the 1990s, for example, and when we did get our first elected Speaker, it made a significant difference in terms of the relationships between the MLAs and the Speaker.

I say that because I agree with you. You made reference to the fact that this is something that's evolving. What you're suggesting is that we look at ways in which we can enhance the way a Speaker could get elected and, hopefully, add a higher sense of non-partisanship and that sense of independence we referred to.

The question I have for you is, election aside, are there not some other ideas you want to share with us as to what you think would enable that higher sense of independence? For example, a Speaker still has to get a nomination. I think that would likely do far more in terms of achieving some of your goals. Are there some other examples you think would enable future Speakers to become more independent or less partisan in their thinking?

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

The most obvious one is the one you mentioned. I'm glad you mentioned it. I was trying to find some way of fitting it into my remarks and you provided me with the opening.

In the United Kingdom, the Speaker of the House of Lords never has to face a free election. You're appointed for life or, in some cases, you're born into the job, depending on who you are and how you got there. But you don't face a free election in the same way from your party.

In the House of Commons, the tradition has evolved. Of course their House of Commons goes back before the advent of parties. The tradition has evolved that the Speaker, when he or she seeks re-election, will run uncontested. That is to say the other parties will not put up candidates.

I don't know how the process works for internal party nominations. My guess is that the party also agrees not to run candidates there. The person abandons party membership and becomes.... The understanding is that when you become Speaker you will not be returning to your party ever. At the end of your career in the House of Commons, when you no longer wish to seek free election, you may be appointed to the House of Lords. The expectation there is that you will sit as an independent or what they call a crossbencher. The abrogation of party links is final. It's for life.

Nonetheless, there have been contested elections. It's considered bad form but it has occurred. To deal with this, in the 1930s the House of Commons formed a committee headed by Lloyd George, a former prime minister. It looked at whether or not Speakers should face a certainty of re-election by establishing a special electoral district, a special riding, in which only the Speaker would run. They decided against that because they said, in essence, “This person no longer is a member of Parliament. They are some other creature. They are not elected in the normal manner, and we think the convention that nobody runs against this person is better than a fixed rule.”

This is a good example of the kind of thing I was talking about in my response to Madam Latendresse earlier.

There was an attempt to introduce the same system in Canada. Speaker Lamoureux, in 1968, announced that he would not be running. He had run as a Liberal, been elected, became a speaker and then said, “I will not be running as a Liberal. I will be running as an independent.” He asked that the other parties not run candidates against him. The Conservatives chose not to run a candidate against him. The NDP chose to run a candidate against him. As a result, that practice has not been followed up on. After that, Speakers went back to contesting elections as members of a given party. He did get re-elected, by the way, notwithstanding that challenge.

It points to, I think, an important point. If there is a desire for a shift to this aspect of the system used in the United Kingdom—this could happen whether we have the preferential ballot or the current system—there may very well be merit to the parties talking among themselves starting at the House level. Ultimately, you would need the party machineries from each party involved, as well, to see whether we could agree that we would adopt this system.

The upside is obvious: less partisanship. The downside is that there is an expectation—it's not mandatory but it becomes a very strong expectation—that the person elected as Speaker in this Parliament will also, should he or she seek re-election, be the Speaker of the next Parliament. You might not want to make that concession.

If we decided to go that way, then this committee could look at that. It would be useful to have some information on that to present but the decision-makers would be outside of this committee. It would be the House leaders of the parties that would do that.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

For me it's the broader issue in terms of what it is that we can do as a committee to ensure there's a more non-partisanship label affiliated with the Speaker's office.

The last thought I want to share with you is in regard to the first-past-the-post system by which we elect the Speaker. I was an election observer in Ukraine. In Ukraine they indicate that you have to have the majority. If you don't get the 50% plus one, then there is a following election—in this case, it would be a following ballot—but all the names would be dropped except for the top two.

How firm are you in your thinking in terms of the preferential ballot? Do you think this has to be the way, or are there other possible scenarios?

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

There aren't that many different electoral systems that work when you have a single post to fill. There's an ongoing interest in Canada in the multi-member proportional representation system, but obviously, as its name suggests, it involves multiple candidates operating under a party label. Proportional representation assumes more than one office to be filled.

Really, I think the options we have here are actually the exhaustive ballot in some form or another, or some form of preferential ballot.

You can do somewhat different things with regard to preferential ballot. The particular form of preferential I favour is one that, if there are 10 candidates running, lets you mark down candidate one, candidate two, candidate three, and then leave the rest of the ballot blank. If you just don't know, that should be fine. That's the system that is used in elections in Tasmania, for example.

In Australian federal elections, which also have preferential ballots, they have the requirement that you list all the candidates. You must list every single one, and if you don't, your ballot is spoiled. I don't think that's legitimate. I should be careful what I say here. I love the Australians. I used to live there, and I respect their system. But I don't think it's as good a system as the one that has been employed in some Australian states and territories, which allows for you to say you feel confident in your knowledge up to a certain point, and after that you don't have views that, in your view, are greater than the wisdom of the whole of the electorate, so you prefer just to indicate one, two, and three, or even just one.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Butt, for four minutes, please.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mr. Reid.

One of my first experiences since having been elected here in 2011 was that marathon process of electing our Speaker through multiple ballots. It is a good opportunity to converse with new colleagues and get to know people better, but it was extremely time-consuming. It took the entire day. I'm wondering if that was the main motivation behind your proposal, just to speed up the process of choosing the Speaker so that it's not taking hours and hours, albeit the fun and frivolity that's involved in that. Is it really just an issue of speeding the process up so we get the Speaker elected as quickly as possible?

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

That's not the main motivation, but that is potentially a benefit.

In my concluding speech, my five-minute response at the end of the debate on this motion, I did a little math, and let me just repeat what I said. Following up on my colleague the parliamentary secretary's comments about the length of balloting, I took a moment to do a little math. He pointed out that, on average, seven hours had been consumed electing a Speaker in each of the Parliaments since the procedure was introduced back in the eighties. Seven hours times 308 members equals 2,156 hours. In case members are wondering, a person working 40 hours a week all year long, with no holidays, would work fewer hours than that. Essentially this is an entire year of work gone. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that we return to the worst-case scenario, 12 hours of voting—because that's what it was in 1986—in the next Parliament, when there will be 338 members, math dictates that we would spend 4,056 hours doing this, which is about two years' work.

You get an idea. There is a real cost there. On the other hand, there is a benefit as well; we do get to know each other.

My primary motivation here is to try to reduce the partisanship. Maybe a better way of putting it, because I think our last two Speakers have been excellent in this regard, is to preclude the possibility of partisanship re-emerging at any point. I think this system would tend to lead to, if you like, an inexorable cycle because it would be reinforced by the conventions, the widespread approval of the House, and therefore, it would become part of our culture that we expect the candidates to be those who are the least partisan individuals, the most scholarly in their approach to the rules, and have the kinds of qualifications one would expect in a person whose primary role is adjudication.

I must add something else. We've done well in this regard with our last two Speakers, so perhaps I'm undercutting myself, but someone who has a bit of a sense of humour helps a lot.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Just as a follow-up to that, the primary motivation wasn't necessary to reduce the number of hours of MPs' time being taken up as well as the overall costs. If we're all sitting here for seven hours, the clerks and other staff have to be here, and if it goes into overtime, then it takes more time. You talked about one that was 13 hours long in another jurisdiction. It's not really the primary motivating factor, but it is a serious consideration in the grand scheme of things.

One of the things I'm a little concerned about—although I'm quite in favour of what you're proposing—is that we know what happens when there are seven or eight candidates on the first ballot. If you do a preferential ballot, you don't get to see how things are moving, regardless of where your first-choice candidate placed. You may want to make several changes based on who is still on the second ballot or the third ballot. As an MP, based on what you know about the candidates' qualifications, if your first-place person isn't there, you may have thought your second choice was the next person. Now in the scheme of things as to who's left, you may have decided that there's a different candidate. This process obviously isn't going to allow you to go back and redo that and make a change if you saw the dynamics of the Speaker's race changing in a way that maybe you didn't think was necessarily going to happen. Once you have voted, that's it; there's no changing it, and there's no way of looking at that fluidity of how the actual election is taking place.

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

That's right. You wouldn't know that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Just give a quick answer, please.

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

Sure.

Under the current system you don't actually get complete information. You know who dropped off. You don't know how the others did. In the U.K., they actually will know how many votes each person got. It's very much like a leadership race under the old-fashioned convention system.

I personally think this is a virtue of the system. It prevents strategic voting. It more or less forces each person to rank the candidates based on their own assessment of the merits of each candidate, whatever those might be. That aspect is a feature rather than a failing of the system I'm proposing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Scott, you have four minutes.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Reid, for bringing this motion forward.

I have to say I'm kind of agnostic on the change, but I almost don't have a basis for comparing. I was elected in a byelection after the current Speaker was elected, so I didn't have time to experience the great collegiality and fellow feeling—

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

The joys—

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

—and the joys of the voting process that my colleague Mademoiselle Latendresse experienced. But I can well imagine—and don't think I'm all touchy-feely here—that there would be some kind of diffuse bonding process that must go on when you're electing a Speaker through the current process. When everybody is in the chamber, especially a lot of new MPs, it is kind of a chance to get a feel for the institution and a little bit for personalities.

If discussions go on across the aisle, surely all of those are to the good.

Also, would you concede that maybe there is something lost? If we measure only the time, I get your point. Should we at least recognize that there are other goods in the process we currently have that we would be losing?

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

I think getting to know each other is always a good thing.

The informal system used in the U.K., because there's no rule that says this, involves what they call a hustings, an all-candidates debate. It is an occasion to interact, and it provides some of that interaction.

There's something else that I think, though, is a negative element, which has entered into our elections for Speaker. The last two sets of speakership elections, 2008 and 2011, saw the introduction of hospitality suites to keep members occupied between votes. People would go off to member X's office where they would enjoy some hospitality. Depending on which suite it was, it ranged from scotch to ice cream. Although these things exist at party conventions, I actually think they are indecorous in an environment like this one, and I was sad to see them emerging. I should mention that the winning candidate did not participate in this process, so perhaps that in itself will kill the practice off in the future. It doesn't seem to be all that successful, but I did think it was very much in the wrong direction. We really should be deciding on the merits of each candidate based exclusively on the somewhat austere judgment we have rather than based on how hospitable they might be.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Great.

The other thing, in terms of the loss of time, and all the person-hours—you did an interesting calculation there, if you multiply the number of MPs by the time in the House—it's important to know that this occurs right at the very start of the Parliament, so we have to think realistically. There are no committees. People are, yes, settling in. We all have things we can always do, but are we overstating the loss of productivity on the first day of Parliament if we devote it to the current practice?

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

As you know, philosophically I'm a libertarian. We libertarians believe that if we could keep all legislators occupied in social activities to the neglect of their legislative duties, the world would be a better place. Perhaps I'm agreeing with you in a backhanded way.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

That doesn't extend to courtesy suites, hospitality suites.

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

No, it doesn't. I'm being a bit offhand when I say that. The hospitality suites were a serious issue. It wasn't devastating, but it didn't sit well with me. The issue of people getting drinks, I agree, I don't think you say.... We are all going to get paid anyway, whether we come here or not. The building still has to be heated. I can't recall whether the House provided any refreshments or not. Perhaps that explains the hospitality suites to some degree. But I don't think a vast new burden was imposed on the Canadian taxpayers by this process. Nonetheless I do think that a process that's a bit faster.... If we stick with the current system, I think we could at least speed up the counting process. In all honesty, it did seem awfully slow, but that's merely an observation that perhaps doesn't take into account some of the difficulties that are involved in actually doing the counting. I don't know if there were any counts that were won by a single ballot, for example, in which case, they would want to recount it. That's unknown to me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Okay, we're finished that round. I think we'll stop it right there.

Mr. Reid, do you have any suggestions for us on continuing this study, on witnesses this committee may look at, that type of thing?

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

Yes, I would suggest that we invite some of the participants in one or the other—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Are the bells ringing?

Go quickly, then. I think I hear bells.

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

Okay.

One or the other, or both, of the House of Lords elections in Britain...to deal with how that has worked out.... If I might suggest as well, I think in order to deal with the very important question that Madame Latendresse raised, we ought to invite somebody who has some familiarity with the British House of Commons election, which is our system, under a system where the votes are revealed. I think the questions to ask are about partisanship and also about the merits of secret versus open balloting, although you may have other things to add as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Okay, thank you very much.

The bells are ringing.