Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 21st, 2017

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Isn't that clever?

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

I thought it was extremely clever. Well done, Scott.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Actually, I think that's a really good way to describe it. The British term “guillotine” says it all. We cut off debate, whether or not that will have catastrophic results. I think that is very imprudent, so that's an issue. I just can't see how we would deal with this.

I want to cite some of the things that this reminds me of, and then I will turn to some other issues.

There are three items this reminds me of. The first and perhaps the most obvious is government motion number six from May of last year. Government motion number six would have...on a temporary basis. I believe it was for one year, if memory serves.

Actually, I could check that. I have a copy of motion number six here. It was going to impose certain limits on the ability of opposition parties to do their work. It was going to limit their ability to use the procedures of the House to slow down and sometimes, procedurally, to stop government business until some form of compromise is achieved. The motion would have remained in effect, as I understand it, for a year.

It was met with astonishment by the other parties. It was presented in a very interesting way. At the time, I was deputy opposition House leader, a position which, both on the opposition and government sides, I had had in one form or another for a decade. Motion number six was the first occasion where I had seen a motion presented in this manner without first being vetted and discussed. It was only a temporary suspension of the rules, but it was nevertheless a change to the rules without consensus and without consent. It was met with very considerable anger.

At first, the government was going to tough its way through. The opposition to doing things this way included efforts on the part of the opposition parties to slow things down. The New Democrats took their time taking their seats in the House of Commons, and as we all recall, the Prime Minister, angered by this, thrust his way across the floor of the House of Commons and grabbed the opposition whip, my colleague, Gord Brown, by the lapels, and dragged him through some New Democrat MPs, elbowing one of them as he went through. This led to the the name “Elbowgate” as the description for this event.

That was all caused by the resistance that the opposition was trying to put up within what is permitted under the rules, in order not to see the government engage in a further suspension of opposition powers and the opposition's ability to do its job. That unfortunate episode led—wisely, I think—to the then government House leader, Dominic LeBlanc withdrawing the motion. I'm afraid I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but what he said at the time was that the government had heard the concerns of the opposition parties and was withdrawing the motion in favour of looking for a more consensual approach.

By the way, I think I should tell you that I had the impression from the start that motion number six was not Dominic LeBlanc's own initiative, though as House leader he introduced it. Everybody knows he's a pretty easygoing guy, and that kind of draconian thing is just not, in my view, something he would have designed independently in any way. No House leader designs the rules to change the House without getting the approval of the Prime Minister.

I don't think I have to demonstrate my case for that, but Mr. Christopherson was in government at one time and he may have seen his House leader act without telling Premier Rae—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

No, otherwise he would be a former House leader.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

You wouldn't get it through the House, believe me, if the Prime Minister or premier were caught off guard. This was Justin Trudeau doing this. Also, now Bardish Chagger has taken over as House leader, and in general terms, I think, has—and I've told her this personally but I don't mind saying it publicly—done a remarkably good job for someone who was thrust in with so little experience. That is not an easy role for anybody, let alone someone who is new to the game.

I don't think this new motion is her production, either. I think the same brain trust that produced the last one has produced this one. Rather than trying to push it through as a government motion in the House, they're trying a different mechanism, a discussion paper followed by an omnibus motion presented ostensibly by a private member who just wants to get on with business.

I think all that gives some explanation as to the parallel with motion number six.

I do want to mention that the whole thing that led.... Motion number six may have been in the works for a long time; I actually don't know. When it was presented, though, Dominic said something that I thought was really extraordinary. He came in, threw it down at a House leader's meeting, and said that this was their response to the shenanigans that were being carried on the previous week. The shenanigans he was talking about were that a vote that was called at the instigation of the opposition—as the rules permit—which the government came close to losing. It was called at the instigation of the New Democrats. I can't remember the specific thing it was over—and perhaps Mr. Christopherson recalls—but we came within a vote or two of the government losing on some measure. That's not a shenanigan, Mr. Chair. That's using the rules the way the rules are written.

Faced with a near defeat on one motion or vote out of goodness knows how many, the appropriate response is not to.... If people vote against you following an election, the appropriate response is not to take the hand that cast the ballot and cut it off; it's to accept the fact that this is the way the rules work.

If you want to change the rules, you have to give a reason why. Maybe that rule is unreasonable. Maybe it could be adjusted slightly. Governments in the past, even when they are capable of using the rules to their advantage, have sometimes recognized that it's inappropriate to do so. I've admired that.

Let me give an example that comes from a Liberal government to show that this is not simply self-praise I'm engaging in here. When I was serving for my first time in opposition to a majority government, when Jean Chrétien was prime minister, it sometimes occurred that a committee would be meeting at the same time the bells were ringing for a vote in the House.

Of course, that still happens. What happens now is that, as soon as we hear the bells ringing—and every committee room is wired so that we can hear the bells ringing—we stop and have to find out if there is unanimous consent to consider continuing the meeting. That is done to make sure members can return to the House without changing the structure of the committee and allowing something to be pushed through, something which can only be taken advantage of by a majority government. Minority governments can't do this because they don't have the majority on committee. Opposition parties can't do this. Only a majority government can take advantage of that. This led to MPs being forced to stay in committee to prevent these such things from happening, essentially filibustering right through a vote in the House, not appearing there.

Recognizing that the absence of a way of dealing with this had led to mischief, even though it was to his own government's benefit, the House leader of the day, at the initiative of James Rajotte, a Conservative MP who had this problem with the finance committee, with the co-operative work of the Liberal House leader Don Boudria—an outstanding House leader, by the way, which is something I've said on numerous occasions and still believe today—and with the co-operation of their House leaders, they agreed to look at changing the rules. A rule change was adopted, just the one standing order, but a standing order that put in place the rule we have today.

There you go. That illustrates how something can be initiated and change the Standing Orders piecemeal. It also shows how a majority government can, when it takes democracy seriously.... I don't think Jean Chrétien is the greatest democrat in our history, from either of the two governing parties, let alone the other parties. Nonetheless, he took democracy more seriously, I would say, than the current Prime Minister does in allowing that to be passed. Of course, that rule change also would not have gone through without the Prime Minister's consent. That is how things ought to be done.

All right. I discussed motion number six and some parallels. Some of the subject matter here is very different from what was in motion six. Some of it deals with things that were not dealt with in motion six, such as removing Friday sittings, creating a special Prime Minister's question time, and so on. But the basic theme will put in rules that deprive the opposition of its ability to prolong and delay debates, to slow things down to give it effectively what would be known, if we were talking about constitutional law rather than the internal laws contained in our Standing Orders, as a suspensive veto.

A suspensive veto is what, for example, our Senate has over constitutional amendments. It can veto a law. If the Senate doesn't pass it, a law doesn't go through on amendment, they can suspend it for six months. That is what oppositions have, to varying degrees. They have a real veto when there's a minority government. I know this by having served in a minority government, both on the government side and on the opposition benches.

All these rule changes, by the way, that I'm concerned about would be much less powerful in the context of a minority government, but with a majority government, you already have, my goodness, all the levers of power in your hands. This takes away the suspensive veto, or it makes the suspension so cursory as to be meaningless. That, I think, is both regrettable and, let me suggest, it is also a straw in the wind indicating a lack of respect for democracy, a lack of desire for democracy, and here I'm talking about the Prime Minister himself, not about the Liberal Party in general. A frustration, I think, with the fact that a democracy, in the procedural sense, democracy as a process, keeps him from getting his way....

I think the Prime Minister sees himself as having a great vision for the country and sees mediating institutions as being problems in achieving that great vision. He cannot take Canadians and make us better people than we are right now prepared to be, thrust us beyond what our own expectations of ourselves are, unless he takes away our ability, built up over centuries, to limit his power.

We see, for example, the really quite extraordinary display that took place over electoral reform.

I see my colleague Ms. May was here. Has she left the room?

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Yes, she has.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

She saw she may not get the floor so she....

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

That's fair. I did not realize she was seeking the floor, but anyway, she was on that committee with me.

Mr. Christopherson was intimately involved in this, as was Mr. Richards, who travelled around the country with me and with Ms. May. For that matter, Ms. Sahota travelled with us as well. I thought we formed a special bond doing that. I thought Blake formed a particularly special bond with Elizabeth—

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

What's he trying to say here?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I just noticed the way she sought you out as her dinner companion every night no matter where we were across the country.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I'm a popular guy. What can I say?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

What happened there was the Prime Minister indicated an openness until the whole process was over, and then he said no.

I'm sorry, I've lost my.... This is not a delay tactic. I've simply lost my train of thought.

[An hon. member]

Was it an omnibus train of thought?

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Yes, very appropriately it has been. That's right. I've moved on from the Pears soap to the Bovril soup cubes.

The other thing we saw was that, after it was over, the Prime Minister said he was actually never willing to consider proportional representation in the first place. First past the post was unacceptable for reasons he went on at great length about at one point; we would be seeing the last election ever under first past the post. However, when proportionality was presented as an alternative.... As you know, the majority of the committee, the consensus of the committee, everybody except the Liberals, was in favour of a referendum on a version of PR to be chosen and designed by the government, which was to be subject to certain parameters—it being five or less on the Gallagher index—versus the status quo, or first past the post.

When PR was presented as an alternative, the Prime Minister said that he didn't want that. He had his Minister of Democratic Institutions say that her mandate letter said, “I am not to pursue this”. Then the Prime Minister came out and explained himself. He was quite specific about this, saying that he was not one to consider PR, “it's divisive”—I'll let him speak for himself on that—and “I was never willing to consider it. I've been quite consistent. Look, here's what I was saying back in 2012.”

It was extraordinary, a bit like—and I'm showing my age—that entire season of Dallas that turned out to be a dream that Pam Ewing had.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

It had all not actually happened.

I think the reason it hadn't happened was because it was not the outcome the Prime Minister was willing to consider. That happened to be the outcome that guaranteed he would get a majority of the seats with as little as 32% or 33% of the vote, a system which, thanks to an excellent research study that was mentioned in our report, indicated that in every one of the elections of the past 20 years, the Liberals would have won a greater number of seats than they would have under the current system. In fact, based on the excellence that was provided to that committee by Professor Byron Weber Becker of the University of Waterloo, it is the only system that produces better results than first past the post, literally the only system you can devise that produces better results for the Liberals than the current system. That was the only one he was going to consider from the start.

Here's your parallel: “We are in favour of democracy, electoral democracy, electoral reform to create a better electoral system. There's only one outcome, and I'll give the impression that I'm willing to consider multiple options until such time as they are taken seriously. At that point, given that I was unable to nurse you into the appropriate decision, I'm now reneging on that decision.”

This is one of those premises that was not unambiguous. The fact that it was repeated.... Some heroic person in the New Democrats figured out how many times it was repeated. I'm told it was repeated 852 times, or something like that, by various Liberal speakers in the House of Commons. It would have led a casual observer to think that they were more serious about this than they turned out to be.

But there you go. If hey don't get what they want, which just happens to give the Prime Minister more power, then they're not willing to move.

On motion number six, you saw the same thing. They were going to push that through come hell or high water. They hadn't anticipated the very unexpected phenomenon of the huge backlash following the equally unexpected phenomenon of the Prime Minister manhandling Ruth Ellen Brosseau in the House of Commons, a matter which, as you know, came before this very committee as a matter or privilege. They had to back down in the face of that crisis.

That was extraordinary. I've been here for 17 years, and that is the only time in the House or in committee—or actually in a number of sports bars where some of us may not have been completely sober—that I've ever seen a member of Parliament manhandle anybody else, except for the time that Jean Chrétien grabbed Bill Clennett, the protester, by the ears.

[An hon. member]

[Inaudible—Editor]

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I'm sorry. What was that? It was the throat. I stand corrected.

At any rate, it was—

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

You should come and watch me play hockey sometime, Scott, and you will see a member of Parliament manhandle all kinds of people.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Fair enough, I take your point.

Certainly, it wasn't the only time that had happened. It used to happen all the time in the 18th and 19th centuries, but it doesn't happen now. The king used to also enter the House of Commons with armed men and seize members who were going to vote the wrong way and lock them up until they decided to change their minds, but we don't do that either, all, by the way, as a result of making small changes rather than omnibus changes to the Standing Orders, one of which is that the king can't enter the House of Commons.

All right. I was saying that there were three things this reminded me of. Government motion number 6 was the first. The second one was electoral reform. The third was the assisted dying bill. Here, there's a parallel between the process behind the assisted dying bill, the process for considering electoral reform, and the process for dealing with the Standing Orders.

The parallel is this. In each case, the government has, at stage one, announced some kind of apparently consensual goal that's likely to have broad-based support—in all fairness, the assisted dying bill isn't really about government powers—but does not extend its power or reach and does not diminish the well-being and liberty of others. Then it engages in a very long, amorphous consultation period, which is different in kind and certainly in order from the way in which we normally would deal with bills or legislation. Then it creates a panic and a rush to get things done in a great hurry and suggests we should do whatever it takes—throw on extra meetings, meet late into the night, be in on weekends—to get things done by a very tight and artificial deadline.

At about that point, it became clear that their agenda was actually entirely different. It was to increase their own powers, and they hoped that the process of spinning their wheels and creating an artificial crisis would accomplish their goal.

This happened with the assisted dying bill, where they delayed things so long through the committee hearings, which should have taken place after the government had produced its bill but instead took place beforehand as an information-gathering exercise.... They were up against a deadline. Now, in all fairness, the government had sought an extension from the Supreme Court, which refused an extension, but we know that the deadline, which we wound up missing, in June of last year.... June 23, I think it was. Forgive me. I can't remember, but it was a day in June—

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

I can't remember, but it was in June, yes.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

That would not have led to the nightmare scenario that the government was fearmongering about, where doctors would be running around with poison-filled syringes in their hands, euthanizing people merrily in the streets lest we pass a bill to restrain them. Au contraire, had we done nothing, which actually was my preferred course of action, the common law would have guided us towards a sensible way of dealing with the vexed and difficult question of the right to die, or the right not to be impeded in providing for your future—however you wish to describe it. I'm trying to avoid the value-laden language that was used by various sides at that time.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I'm really enjoying the remarks from Mr. Reid, and I can tell he's just getting started. I can even see he has a lot of notes here that he hasn't been able to get to yet, so he obviously has a lot more to say and I think we're all very interested. I know that in fact there was so much excitement for some of the members—the parliamentary secretary and Ms. May, who were here—that they just couldn't contain themselves any longer and they had to leave the room because it was just too much for them to take. There was so much excitement about what Mr. Reid had to say here.

I notice that Kady O'Malley is still here but it was, again, too much excitement even for a number of members of the media who were here, and they couldn't contain themselves any longer.

I know Mr. Reid does have a lot more to say, and we look forward to hearing it because I can see he has lots of points to make, and so far it's been quite entertaining and informative, no question. I also notice that many people have tried to get up more than once to sustain themselves with more nourishment, for example, because of the fact that it's so entertaining, but my suspicion is that he may even have so much to say that maybe he will need most of the time until we end at one o'clock today or maybe even all of it. I don't know.

I know there are other people on the speakers list so I'm just kind of curious, Mr. Chair, if maybe the Liberal members want to give any indication if their intention would be then to bring this forward again, because obviously our agenda would be that Thursday would be with Elections Canada officials again. I wonder if they might give us some indication as to whether they intend to bring this motion forward should it go to the end of the day, and it certainly looks to me as if it will go to the end of the meeting today, in terms of the debate about this motion.

Would they be intending to bring this forward again on Thursday? I just wonder if there is anyone who would give us some indication of that, first of all, and then maybe I would have a follow-up question to that. Could someone maybe give us an indication there?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

In response to that, I put a motion forward that I feel is very important, for reasons that I've outlined earlier, and I'd like to have a vote on this. I'd like for us to get started on this because I think after years of talking about this....

My colleague Mr. Christopherson talks about how, in the past, the House leaders would have a discussion about this, but our House leaders have been having a discussion about this for decades, or even longer.

I like to think that we can do some serious stuff here by action. All the things that you've incorporated in your speeches, including the history of the guillotine, which I hate.... Don't get me wrong; I'm not correcting you. You said the guillotine was used for closure, but it was actually used for allocation of time. Now, one may say that it's six of one and half a dozen of the other, but you are a man of detail and I just want to point out that it was done in 1887 on the guillotine motion and it's been used several times since then in various forms, in various amendments, and so on and so forth.

I, personally, am not a fan of the guillotine, and I will tell you why. When we say yes—