In this one I should say that as I tried to make clear earlier, and having consulted Mr. Chong, this is not one that he particularly feels all that strongly about because he's had lots of back and forth with the government and has not prevailed when the government inserted the clause that says, “The outcome of each vote is binding on the caucus until the next dissolution of Parliament.” So, he supports the fact that we're moving this but it's not one that he finds crucial. I want to be up front about that.
What we would like to do is, instead of saying the outcome of each vote is binding on the caucus until the next dissolution of Parliament, we would want to say, “Each caucus shall decide whether the outcome of each vote is binding on caucus until the next dissolution of Parliament”. There are provisions here to indicate that whatever that decision is also has to be communicated to the Speaker. There are a couple of reasons for this.
One reason is pure consistency. The government is kind of going to the wall here on this being a completely optional process where Parliament is not reaching inside parties and telling them what to do, and yet this clause tells each caucus what to do. It basically means that a caucus is prohibited from revisiting its own rules. I see that as completely inconsistent with the government's position.
For example, what if the Conservative caucus voted and all the MPs come back and a whole number of them are at sea because they've just been elected and they go with the flow and agree to continue with the rule that the leader of the party can appoint the chair, but a year later, they realize it might be better to elect a chair. This precludes that. I don't see it as keeping in the spirit of either Mr. Chong's bill or the government's philosophy that we should not be mandating what parties do.
