Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 16th, 2015

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, David.

Alexandrine is back, and then I get the last microphone.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

I did mention in my farewell speech last week how much I enjoyed working on this committee. I was lucky enough to be named on the procedure and house affairs committee a few weeks after I was elected for the first time. I was lucky enough to spend my whole mandate here. It's truly an honour, because when I hear some of my colleagues talking about their committees and how it's difficult sometimes and how sometimes they just don't like it or something, I think I'm so lucky to have you as my chair, and all of my colleagues. Really, it was so interesting, and it was always one of my favourite parts of the week, coming here and being able to do some really good work with all of you.

I really hope I'm able to work with you again later. It was really wonderful. I want to thank the clerk and the researcher too, because I don't think this committee could work as well as it does if it weren't for you all.

Thank you.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you all for the kind words.

I'm the same way. I remember the day Jay Hill called me and told me that I was going to the procedure and House affairs committee to sit as a member. I went, what the hell did I do wrong?

The only other committee I sat on before that was in opposition, and it was the government operations committee. It was a shit show, pardon my language, but it truly was. It was one of those committees that I said I would avoid at all costs.

And so I recognize, as Tom said, that we went through some very partisan times in the procedure and House affairs committee when I first came here—and I mean over the top partisan times. We voted out the chair and elected Joe, whether or not he was screaming, “I don't want the job”. It didn't matter. All the way through the contempt of Parliament hearings at the end of whatever Parliament that was, which I was chairing, it was a very hard time.

Nonetheless, it's always been a bit enjoyable. Certainly I think this chair is the best chair to hold in the House, if it weren't for the Speaker's chair. That's the best role there is, getting a group of people to go in one direction. Even though they want to hit each other with the oars, they start pulling them in the right direction.

David, you're right that it was always a failure if we couldn't come up with consensus, because that's what we're supposed to do when we're sent here.

I said it at the dinner for retiring members that 308 men and women—soon to be 338—come to this place, all for the same reason, all for altruistic reasons. We all come here saying we're going to make our little area of Canada better. And we all do. We do it in drastically different ways. And we do it with drastically different political principles or philosophies. But that doesn't make one right and the other wrong; it simply makes them our own, and that's what makes this place work.

So I thank you all for all of that. And it works really well.

To the help, to the researchers, and especially to Marie-France, I had a few other committee clerks, you'll all remember. We had some other committee clerks who weren't nearly as good. They could look themselves up.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I loved what I've had in this last House. I often get this thing heading toward the ditch in a pretty good way, but you don't know it. Occasionally my arm is grabbed in panic: where the hell are you taking this? Just let it go. We'll get there, right? If we go right into the ditch, I've got a great clerk. She'll get us out of there.

The whole answer was—horse people will tell you this—give some reins, and the horse will straighten itself out. If you try to harness it too much, and I see committee chairs try to do that too, it just doesn't....

I've had great members on this committee who are willing to go the extra mile, say the extra thing to come to a conclusion, rather than to antagonize each other.

So to Marie-France, a clerk who let me chair in a way.... I'm not a procedures guy, I've never been, I never will be. And maybe that's who needs to be in these chairs more. The Speaker shouldn't be a procedures guy, and the chair in procedure and House affairs shouldn't be a procedures guy, because it's about the concept of getting it right and making this place run better. Sometimes softening the rules is better than hardening the rules.

I thank you all. It's been great.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We are adjourned.