Evidence of meeting #133 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was commissioner.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Calgary Midnapore, CPC
What was I talking about? It was the math of the two. That's right, I was talking about the will of Canadians. It sounds like they did their due diligence in terms of consultation, at least from what we heard this morning. I just hope that the Canadian public was paid more respect than we were in regard to being completely left out of the nomination process.
You know what, Chair? I might be wrapping up here. I had a lot to express today.
It is the Grey Cup this weekend. I'm pretty excited, with the Calgary Stampeders in it.
Calgary Midnapore, CPC
I'm just saying I want to be part of the solution.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Thank you, Ms. Kusie.
Now we'll go on to Mr. Nater. I just want to let you know that we have three people on the list.
Conservative
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
First of all, one government never stays in power forever. I think that's a given. We've enjoyed the wins and we've enjoyed the defeats of forming government and losing government, as all parties do.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
Mr. Christopherson has experience provincially on that end.
It always begs the question, “What about the next appointment?” I don't think anyone has any qualms about David Johnston—he's an exceptional human being and an exceptional Canadian—but what about next time? Will the Liberals appoint Madeleine Meilleur next time, as they tried to do with the official languages commissioner? That's a legitimate question. If the Conservatives were in office, would the opposition have a concern with us appointing someone to fill that position unilaterally? I think that's the concern. Were we to appoint Stockwell Day as the debates commissioner, there might be some concerns around the table outside of our party. That's a challenge and a concern that we have when one party appoints a person to a position, regardless of how exceptional that person is. That's why this isn't about the person. It's about the process, which is why I think this motion is worthwhile.
The second point I want to make is about the order in council appointment. It's a concerning concept from the independent side of things. I want to read very briefly from an order in council appointment on a different subject. It says that pursuant to paragraph 127.1(1)(c) of the Public Service Employment Act, the government appoints someone by the name of “J. Allan Shaw of Bloomfield, Prince Edward Island, to be a special adviser to the Prime Minister, to serve as an ad hoc provincial member of the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments”.
I have not yet seen the order in council appointing Mr. Johnston as the debates commissioner, but under all enabling legislation, the only way this can be done is through an order in council making him a “special adviser to the Prime Minister”. That's concerning. I do not want to see this tarnished in such a way when it ought to be—and must be—based on this process, yet is done as a special adviser to the Prime Minister. Despite the words of protestation to the contrary, that's effectively what will happen.
The third point is—
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
I raised the point with her but I didn't get a clear answer on that. Based on the Public Service Employment Act, that would be the only logical way that one could be appointed to a position that doesn't exist by legislative means.
The third and final point—and it's based on the motion itself—is the timing of this report. It says “in a timely fashion”. We have six meetings remaining before Christmas. I think all of us would like to see this report done in a timely fashion, and to put words to “timely fashion”, let's get this done before Christmas. I have no reason to expect that we can't do that.
If we wanted to gum up this committee, we could gum up this committee. We're not doing that. We want to have a short, timely report on this matter. It can be tabled before Christmas. Mr. Christopherson has joked before that it takes him four hours to clear his throat. We're not doing that. We want to have this report done quickly, analyzed and have the opportunity for meaningful input and meaningful review of this process. That hasn't happened.
I'll leave it there, Chair. Thank you for your indulgence.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
I have two people on the list, Ruby and Mr. Christopherson.
Do you want to go first, or do you want Mr. Christopherson to go first?
Hamilton Centre, NDP
Thank you, Ruby.
Thank you, Chair.
I'll be very brief because this is not a filibuster. There was no intent to try to do that. I hope colleagues will appreciate that my remarks are made far more in sorrow than in anger. I'm just so heartbroken that something so important has, as Mr. Nater just described, been tarnished. That's a shame, and it needn't be.
Again, the democratic reform ministry has become the file from hell. This was one of the signature pieces for this government, and this is the file—one of them—where they have failed the most spectacularly and, unfortunately, in ways that are important. That's where the sorrow comes from. This didn't need to be.
I've indicated to the government, to the minister—I've made no bones about it—my willingness, the willingness of my caucus, to do major reform, especially to undo the damage that the previous government did with Bill C-23. We gave them every political opportunity. Most governments would be drooling at what they were offered in terms of the political coverage of having two of the three parties on democratic reform.
It used to be it had to be unanimous. We seem to have lost that. The best we can get right now is at least a majority of recognized parties in the House, and I know Ms. May doesn't like that, but that's how we work things—at least a majority, two out of three of the parties. I've consistently offered that to the government to let them know that if they do the right thing, they're going to have the political support of the NDP to give them the legitimacy to make the changes, expecting that the authors of the changes in Bill C-23 might be defending them going forward, which they have done.
Parenthetically, and we're starting to get close to going, I just want to thank the previous government members on this file. They could have easily made every single change a hill to die on politically, and justified it to their base. I just want to say that they didn't do that. Where some of us were taking shots at them, deserved in my opinion, obviously, for the most part, they just absorbed the hit, because there was a decision made by the Canadian people in the last election that there were some things they didn't like. I like to think that some of those anti-democratic moves were part of it. I just want to say that I've been impressed with the grown-up approach of the Conservative members, with the way they've conducted themselves when we're dealing with some of their legacy pieces. It has been very classy and very helpful, and Canadians need to know that.
I'll just end by saying my motion is not a “gotcha” by any stretch, and that's why I worded it the way I did. You can see there are no traps in there. Very sincerely, Chair, I think certainly my motivation, and I'm hearing from the Conservatives that it's their approach too.... Again I'll give them their due. They didn't vote for the package, yet when we were working on it they still participated in a lot of areas to help us make that report as strong as we could. Again, the Conservative colleagues on this file, given the history, have been very productive, and it's worth noting. I want to thank them for that.
The purpose of the motion is to try to add some legitimacy, because I don't know where this is going to end up. I don't know if there's going to be a party that balks on participating and claiming lack of legitimacy as their reason, in which case, thank you, Liberals, you completely screwed up on an important file, and it didn't need to be. That's what really gets me. It's the mismanagement of this file, of this ministry. I don't believe it's the fault of the two ministers who have been in those positions. Those decisions were made from on high, that's pretty clear, and it's also clear how bad those decisions were and how bad those directions were.
In an attempt, sincerely, Chair, to give some legitimacy, to make it more difficult for anybody to wiggle out of participating, let's at least try to add some legitimacy from this committee onto this process, because the government has no legitimacy. Therefore, by extension, the commission at least, and again to use Mr. Nater's word, is tarnished. That's not a good way to start your election, and it didn't need to be.
Let us, since we didn't make these decisions, and we know this issue and we've already worked through it, take ownership again and do the best we can to give some legitimacy to this important component of our precious election system.
Thank you, Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Thank you, Mr. Christopherson. You were very eloquent as always.
The last speaker on this motion is Ms. Ruby Sahota.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
I'll just take a quick minute to say that hopefully we can move forward and vote on this motion that we've been debating. I had something that I was really wanting to say earlier, but now I am rethinking a bit of it. We do just need to move forward. We all do recognize that the person who is potentially going to be the commissioner is highly qualified. For the sake of consensus, sometimes there are a lot of games played as well, and we never get somebody in place.
All other commissioners and people appointed by government are highly scrutinized by Parliament, and we've seen that in the past. When bad decisions have been made, they have been brought forward in Parliament and the government of the time has been shamed for making a bad decision for an appointment, one that would be seen as inappropriate or biased or whatnot. I think that will continue to happen going forward. The criteria that have been set in place have been set in place in such a way that the broadest and the greatest number of parties would be able to participate, those that would have some shot at forming government or electing a lot of members.
I think it's in the best interests of our democracy to make sure that we have steady debates going forward. Therefore, I think we should vote on this motion and move forward.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
Could we have a recorded vote?
(Motion negatived: nays 5; yeas 4)
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
The motion is defeated. On Tuesday we'll go back to where we were, giving directions on the motion of privilege.
Thank you all.
The meeting is adjourned.