Evidence of meeting #55 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 opposition.
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Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
David, I just have to interrupt for a second, so the pizza doesn't get cold. The members, if they want some, should probably get some before everyone else in the room eats it all.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Really, Chair, we've reduced you to that? Did we do that to you?
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
After the pizza suspension, we're back to Mr. Christopherson, who is speaking on Mr. Reid's amendment.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thanks, Chair.
I'll pick up where I think I left off.
I think I was just starting to read the beginning of the second paragraph, which says:
Between December 1984 and June 1985 we heard 50 witnesses and, in reply to a call for submissions published in newspapers, received 185 briefs or letters. It has not been possible to address all the suggestions and proposals made by the various submissions. However, these documents are on file in the Committees Branch and constitute a valuable resource for future committees or individuals interested in parliamentary reform.
What I find particularly interesting, Chair, is that the next paragraph says:
During visits to—
—wait for it—
—Washington (February 12-15), Bonn (May 13-15), Paris (May 16-17), and London (May 20-23), the committee had an opportunity to compare procedures through discussions with legislators and staff in these countries.
Wow.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
That was from the McGrath report.
Then what happens is that it flips back and forth in my head: which one am I trying to remember and which one am I trying to forget? We'll see.
My point, though, is that the timeline that we've been given by the generous Mr. Simms is, at two and a half months, really short. Had we started right away, it would be March 21 to June 2, two and a half months to do what the report that the member who is moving the original motion held out as an example of great work and wants us to match, I suspect, by raising it, and wants us to do it in two and a half months. Not only that, but they took it so seriously that they went to those major capitals so they could look for the best, to find out what procedures would work for everyone.
Where are we? We're filibustering to save filibustering, fighting to maintain the modest rights that, as the minority, we have.
One was a great lofty ideal of making our Parliament as uniquely Canadian and democratic as possible, and the other one is about how many of the minority members' rights we can take away with our massive majority.
Again, how does that hold up to sunny ways, and transparency, and accountability? How? It doesn't, and that's why I think the government, at the end of the day—and I'm going to be bold here and say that at the end of the day the government is going to blink on this, because it has to, because the only way we get to this the way the government wants to do it is if the opposition blinks, and let me tell you, we ain't blinking.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I got an echo from my troops. So, there you go, and that's without even trying.
Liberal
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Well I may have to do that, too. You never know, Scotty.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
We laugh, and that's good. It's good that we can do that, because it replaces how they settled these things a few centuries ago, which would be blood on the floor. All we have is political blood, and it can be ugly, but it's not nearly as bad.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
At two sword lengths, and keep the points away from everybody.
On the same page, let me jump.... I'm going to leave that. I have a little more stuff I wanted to do on that, but I'm anxious to get to my next point in this. It is this, Chair. This is in the beginning, the preface. The seventh paragraph and the eighth, which are the two concluding paragraphs of the preface, are the personal words of Mr. McGrath, the chair. He says:
I wish to thank my six colleagues on the committee for their patience and support.
Please pay particular attention to this. Continuing, he said:
That we were able to operate by consensus without once voting on an issue is a testament to their selfless dedication to reform.
Hear, hear!
It is to their credit, and it's a testament to their selfless dedication to reform.
Now, take that marker and look at the marker that we've got going on today, and ask yourself: is this an improvement? In the next paragraph, Chair, to conclude the preface by Mr. McGrath, he says the following:
Parliamentary reform is an ongoing process. Others in the future...
That would be us. This is the past talking to the future, and we are the recipients of that message. He continues:
Others in the future will continue and improve upon the work of this committee. From this evolutionary process, however, there is emerging a Parliament that is uniquely Canadian—attempting to meet the challenges and expectations of Canadians.
Now, consensus is a very Canadian kind of trait. It speaks to who we are and how we do things that they took the time to put this message.... That was when I first ran, so it's 32 or 33 years ago. They were looking to the future in the hope that we would build on the groundwork that they laid, and by that they don't mean how many rights can the majority government of the day take away from the minority. That's not what is meant by the future that this committee in the past looked to.
Ramming something through using power and force and majority is not the way Canadians do it. That's the way of a lot of other countries...and we can point around the world at those who have to live in that kind of circumstance. We don't. We are uniquely Canadian, obviously, but unique in how we approach these things that help us define what it is to be Canadian. This government, the one that wraps itself in the flag like no government since I've been here, has taken that whole thing and just thrown it overboard. None of that matters. The only thing that matters is that “we get what we want, because we're the majority and might makes right”.
Yes, with the swagger like that too, Ruby, yes. You've got to throw that in. That's absolutely right. That's the way it feels. I bring this back so that it's not just my words in some flowery rhetorical speech. This is the past talking to us about what they hoped for the future.
Who would have thought that it would be this government, really, under this Prime Minister, that would attempt to be so undemocratic in how they approach this? Again, this is not repetition; it's the point.
We're not talking about any old government bill. These are the rules by which we live here, the rules by which we make laws, the rules by which we collectively come together as 338 Canadians to reach agreement on laws.
The past is telling us, “Hey, we're really proud of what we're doing here. We think what we're doing is so good and so Canadian that we're asking the future to follow in our footsteps. You pick up that mantle, and you do your part in your time, and build an even stronger Canada.”
How sadly this government has let our predecessors down. That it has come to this, that a government is prepared to use it majority to ram through...I don't think has probably ever been done before. I do know there are individual motions and changes to Standing Orders that have been done with the support of only the government, but to the best of the research that I can come up with, they were one-offs. When they were looking at an overview of the rules that we have, nobody in the history of Canada took this kind of an approach.
Mr. McGrath was very proud of the fact that they were able to operate by consensus without once voting on an issue. Do you think they were any less divided than we are? Do you think their points of view were less disparate than ours, or somehow that the country wasn't as big and the differences weren't as vast?
They came up with a report that was so influential that 30 years later the government of the day is holding it up and saying that we need to do more things like this. We have to do some reform, except we're not going to include the best Canadian parts, like respecting each other and trying to work together. Again, is it so much to ask that there be some cooperation on our rules—not your rules? It's not your House and it's not your Parliament. You're the government and you're the executive, but we have rights too, just as every one of you do.
Mr. Simms, you're the only one right now who was in the last Parliament in opposition and you were just as valuable a parliamentarian as you are now, sitting at the head of your delegation here at PROC today.
However, we're not being treated with the same respect they showed their colleagues 30 years ago. Why? The vision of our predecessors was that the Canada they saw 30 years hence was stronger, better, more proud, than even they were. That's what they asked of us. It's hard to live up to. This government didn't even try. You're not even in the same ballpark as the McGrath work. You should almost be embarrassed to hold it up and say that somehow what you're doing holds any semblance to what they did.
I doubt we have the time, but I would be curious to know if anyone ever, during that review, even once contemplated the idea that you would remove the one, singular tool that opposition members have at committee to get the serious attention of government, the right to filibuster.
I've been here 13 years now come June.
Scotty, we've been here 13 years, is it?
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
It's 14 years—it's getting late, and math was never my best subject—and I like to talk, people know that, and I can talk. I can talk a lot, as everybody who knows me knows. I think I probably threatened filibusters—oh, I don't know—20 or 30 times. But the threat was enough that the government of the day gave a little, recognized that it really didn't want to get into that whole big deal: “Listen to him again? Good Lord, we've got to find some way to avoid that”, and we did.
I stand to be corrected, but other than a couple of times...even all participation. I don't think there were more than four, or maybe two, that I played a significant role in, and a couple of others where I went to committee and helped out as a caucus member. That's it. Four times in 14 years, two that I was leading, and I like doing this stuff when I have to do it.
It's kind of hard to make the case that there's abuse, but I could make a great case that having the ability to say—and I have, and you've all been around, in private and in public—“Settle in, folks, because if you're not going to get reasonable we're going to be here a while”. That's when it's like, “Oh no, we don't want to listen, no, especially not to him”, and it worked. It's the same as a strike. You threaten that you're going to have a strike and you've got the attention of the employers, particularly if they've got five brand new contracts that they want to make sure they can fulfill. The idea that there could be a work stoppage is the worst thing, so that provides the motivation, and you get an agreement. Over 90% of the time, they get an agreement. I would say, what, 96% of the time, myself engaged, I found a way to agree, or at the very least I could live with the decision because I deemed the process to be at least as fair as it was going to get.
That's the other thing. It's not just that we expect to win and get what we want. Of course, we haven't put anything on the table yet, because it's all the government's doing so far. We haven't asked for anything, but it's coming. The price of poker keeps going up, the longer this goes on.
I can only hope that the government recognizes that all we want is fairness. If ever there were a word that Canadians were proud to use to identify us—and there are many—one of the things we pride ourselves on is that we're fair-minded people and reasonable. There is nothing reasonable about bringing this in here and denying us the chance to take it to our damn caucus tomorrow. Where's “reasonable” in that? It just piles up one after another after another on this alone. Think about it.
What time was it when we were doing that? I don't know, maybe it was around noon or one o'clock when we were suggesting that, hey, one way we could get past this is at the very least would be to get it to our caucus so we could get a mandate and talk intelligently and have the support of our caucus that what we say would be backed up by our caucus and by our leaders.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
It seems like an incredibly long time ago, David. In fact, I think the offer to try to allow that to be facilitated has been repeated numerous times, which seems like an entirely reasonable—
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Really, all we asked was this. You gave us a discussion paper from your House leader. Obviously, that's important. Your House leader is important. What the House leader does is important. When the House leader tables a document and says these are some of the things we're looking at doing, that's important. That's not white noise. That is about as real as it gets: the parliamentary leader of the government in the House tabling something. And then a member of this committee a couple of hours later tables a motion. Okay. Before I even get into the details, let's just say that it was not what it is here, but something else. It was a discussion paper followed by a notice of motion coming to the committee, which tells you that it means it's probably going to be debated fairly soon, otherwise why go to the trouble of doing a notice of motion now. Instead, you'd wait till it's closer to when you're going to do it. All we asked earlier today was could we please just not have this discussion until after we've had a chance to take it to our caucus? Could we do that? No, no, no was the response. I still haven't heard a good explanation why the government thinks it's okay to force members to take positions on motions and policy, and deny us the opportunity to consult with our own caucus first. You can't defend that. You can't defend that on any subject matter, let alone the rules of engagement.
So right from the get-go to the current moment, to the time we took about an hour or so ago, we keep trying to find some way to get some kind of fairness here. The only thing, Chair, that's giving us some hope that we're going to get our say is that we've got the right to filibuster when we have to. Does that mean that we can stop the government? No. At the end of the day, they're going to win. Every vote we have, they win, 10 times out of 10, so the most we can do is to delay things long enough to try to get the attention of the public and say, folks, notwithstanding the usual when we're raising flags you ought to pay attention to, this is really, really serious, and we're prepared to run the risk of being accused of being obstructionists to give you the opportunity to see what's going on. And then when you look at it, make your judgment. If they think we're being obstructionist, then I'm going to get the emails. I'm going to hear from them. I have a hunch that's not what's going to come in the next few days and weeks as this plays itself out. Why? Because the unfairness is so blatant. The heavy-handedness is so blatant, the ham-fisted nature of it.
So here we are, it's close to 10:30 at night, and we have wasted I can't imagine how much money supporting this. It takes a lot of people and a lot of labour to keep a committee like this going, from our own staff, our personal staff, to the committee staff, to the support staff, to the technicians, to our interpreters, to our security people, to the buses that have to keep running. All these things are happening because the government has decided that the opposition has too much power around here, and that we're going to fix that. That's why we're here. I'm sitting here doing the best I can to represent my caucus without even being given and afforded the opportunity to talk to them, and it's tomorrow morning.
Believe me, anybody looking at this, a reasonable person looking at this, would say, at the very least, why couldn't they take it to their colleagues again and ask what they think about it? What was the reason for that again? And so far the only answer I've heard—and I invite the government to jump in if it has have a really good answer, because I'd love to hear it—is that the government is wedded to June 2 as its deadline. Well, la-di-da, what the hell does that mean to us?
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
You've had no discussion with us. We don't know what June 2 is. Is it somebody's birthday? Is there a special cake coming, a big money cake we're all going to share, whose candles we are going to blow out? I don't know.
What's so special about June 2?
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Is that your birthday, Mr. Chair?
It's in December. Okay. So it's not the chair's birthday.
