Thanks, Larry.
Welcome to everyone here.
Larry was right. For nine and a half years I was a member of this committee. One of the things we did in the last Parliament was to do quite an extensive review of the Standing Orders. To give you a sense of history, as Larry has quite correctly noted, each Parliament is required within, I think, 80 or 90 days of the new Parliament being convened to do a review and report back to Parliament on any potential standing order changes.
Many times that wasn't the case. Many times, if it gave any kind of a review at all, Parliament gave a review that was cursory in nature, but sometimes it didn't even do a review.
In the last Parliament, I had suggested to then prime minister Harper that we do a fairly extensive review, because I felt there were many standing orders that could be revised. Many of them were very outdated and arcane, and I felt they could be dispensed with. Other changes would be perhaps more substantive, for example, if we wanted to take a look at changing the timing of question period, or if we wanted to look at substantive changes in other areas of how committees operated.
However, the one thing I insisted upon after I formed an all-party committee to do this review—and that all-party committee was only the three recognized parties: ourselves, the Liberals, and the NDP—was that if any member of a party brought forward to our little subcommittee a proposed change to a standing order, it had to receive unanimous consent or else it was not even considered. I pointed out that the Standing Orders affect all parliamentarians, and it would be patently unfair, in my opinion, even though we were in a majority situation, to try to change the Standing Orders with the tyranny of the majority. That approach worked out very well.
There were a number of suggestions made by all three parties that were not unanimously agreed upon. Once we found that out, they were off the table with absolutely no discussion. There was no debate. We didn't try to convince others to change their opinion. It simply was taken off the table.
At the end, we did change a number of standing orders. We deleted many of them, primarily because they were outdated, but it was because we had unanimous consent for all of them. Still to this day I feel quite strongly about that. If any Parliament wants to change standing orders, whether they be minor changes or substantive changes, it should, at least morally, get the unanimous consent of Parliament to do so. We don't need it, but I suggest it would be the proper thing to do, once again, only because these are the rules that guide us all. They affect us all. I don't believe in one party using its majority to try to change rules that affect all parliamentarians because it might just be convenient for them or it might benefit them somewhat politically.
That was how we approached things. It was a fascinating exercise to go through and to actually learn more about the Standing Orders. I thought I knew a little bit about procedure before I went into this exercise, but I found I knew nothing. I'm quite a bit more knowledgeable now than I was before.
I understand this committee is looking at the standing order changes now, and that's great, but I would offer up from my experience my thoughts that if you're going to make any changes, I would strongly suggest you try to get unanimous consent before you do so.
Thanks, Chair.