I can't tell you that I know much about the replacement of the British practice there. I've read only minimal amounts about it, and I didn't know that was the thrust of what I was coming to address tonight. So I'm not an expert on that at all and I won't make much more comment.
I have to say that, in my view, the Board of Internal Economy has done a wonderful job as the governing body of the financial side of the House of Commons. I say that having been a member, obviously, since I was Speaker. I don't think I was on the board before—to the best of my recollection, I don't think I was—so I had no familiarity directly with the way it worked. But certainly watching it function, as chair, for the 10 years or so that I was there, I thought it worked really well.
The strengths were that because the meetings were in camera, you had almost no partisan fights, public ones, in the meeting that you would have had if the meetings had been open. Members didn't bother drawing on partisan differences. They said, “We have to fix problems that arise here between parties or with members and the board”, in terms of compliance with the rules that the board issued. And the rules were in the manual, very specific bylaws and all that stuff, that the board passed, so members were expected to comply with those—not just expected, it was demanded. The board officials who did the work reviewing members' claims were very thorough, in my view, in examining those claims and making sure there was no issue or problem in terms of compliance with the rules and bylaws of the board set out in the manual.
Then the claims were paid. Members could appeal to the board if they felt they had been unfairly treated, and did, and we would listen to the arguments or review the letter, at least, the member sent, or whatever, and then look at the decision that had been made and see whether we supported it or not. Generally, there was unanimity in most cases, I think. Consensus was standard at all meetings. There were hardly ever votes while I was chair—maybe twice or three times. There were very, very few. It was almost always a consensus deal, and the decision was made on a whole host of issues.
There was lots of criticism from the media that we weren't having our meetings in public. The minutes were always tabled in the House later. They didn't like that because they were too scanty in terms of detail. But the decisions of the board were in the minutes.
Given the nature of the discussion, on mostly financial issues—the big thing the board is dealing with is money—you wouldn't expect that kind of discussion to take place in public, given the claims or sought-after allowances or exceptions to the rules or whatever that were sought by anybody on any issue that had come up. It wouldn't be something that should be advertised, in my view, in public. It wouldn't be in any corporation, that's for sure, so why would it be here?
In the end, I thought the board functioned really well as a board of directors, if I can call it that, or a governing body for the House, in part because of the rules that applied to it in terms of having its meetings in camera, in terms of the appointments to the board, the people who were working there, and the fact that it was charged with responsibility for, in effect, financial oversight of the House. It did its work, in my view, very effectively.
I don't know why there's a sudden press to change it. I'm kind of surprised at this because there hasn't been a scandal involving House expenditures on anything the way there has been in the other place. I don't mean to dump criticism on the other place, but I think our system has worked really well, and I think our rules have been very precise and quite specific. For that reason, I don't think we've had a problem with members misspending or getting away with something very often. It has hardly ever happened.