Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 21st, 2017

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

If you want to make a comment, I don't mind.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Yes, for just two minutes back in time. You have a salad, and the salad will be cold.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

You must eat it now.

This whole debate about time is great.

Let us go back to July 25, 1969, for the benefit of those preparing the record of these proceedings. That was when a certain prime minister, the Right Honourable Pierre Elliott Trudeau, made some rather interesting remarks on how he perceived the opposition of the day, during a heated debate in the House. I'm going to quickly read two of his juicier comments. Here is the first:

I think we should encourage members of the opposition to leave. Every time they do, the I.Q. of this house rises considerably.

I am not so sure that the Speaker would be too thrilled to hear us talk like that in the House today, or that he would even allow it.

Back to the committee and the matter at hand. The Right Honourable Pierre Elliott Trudeau was on quite a roll in his praise—shall we call it—for the opposition. I think the opposition members will really appreciate this next tidbit, because to know where you're going, you have to know where you've been. Here it is:

The opposition seems to think it has nothing else to do but talk. They say: if there is a problem, we will talk. If there is a difficulty, we will talk about it. If the government is going too slowly, we will talk about it. If there is a real problem in some part of Canada, we will talk about it. That is all they have to do. They do not have to govern, they have only to talk. The best place in which to talk, if they want a forum, is, of course, parliament. When they get home, when they get out of parliament, when they are 50 yards from Parliament Hill, they are no longer hon. members—they are just nobodies, Mr. Speaker.

I thought the comments fitting given what we've heard here today about our role and how certain prime ministers might view the role of the opposition in Parliament. It's quite a simplistic view. When I read this, I thought maybe a mid-life crisis was to blame. Mr. Trudeau was 49 at the time, and our current prime minister is around 45, I think. When you're going through a mid-life crisis, I think you start to detest the opposition.

The reason I brought it up was to give my friend a chance to finish his salad; it was not in reference to his fine remarks.

At the end of the day, I think being prime minister can be annoying, as we saw today at the end of question period. The Prime Minister answered all of the members' questions without having to change the Standing Orders. It is worth pointing out because he spent nearly an hour answering members' questions.

I say “answering” facetiously. What he really did was read his talking points for 45 minutes. He did that without having to change the Standing Orders. Fortunately, he is still able to be in the House of Commons four other days a week, because right now, he does not have the moral authority to not show up those four days. We have seen, then, that he does not need to change the rules.

Although the opposition can come across as annoying and disruptive to a government that is trying to push through its agenda, the role of the opposition is precisely to bring the prime minister to heel and to reign in the arrogant attitude that comes with power. Power breeds arrogance because it allows you to do all kinds of things. If no one is keeping an eye on you, you might abuse that power. That is where the opposition comes in. That is why we are here this evening. That is why Mr. Genuis and my fellow members on the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs are, one after the other and hour after hour, driving home the fact that the opposition has a role to play.

The current rules allow the opposition to perform its role, and, as my colleague in the NDP said earlier, we will fight to the death. We will not give up.

What's more, one day, the Liberals will be out of power and in the opposition.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Hear, hear!

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

I have no doubt that, once they are back in the opposition—which I hope will be very soon and they hope will be a very long time from now—the Liberals will be the first to thank us for waging this battle today and standing up for their rights.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you, Mr. Berthold.

Mr. Genuis, have you finished your supper?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Berthold.

My salad was excellent.

Thank you for preventing it from getting cold by allowing that.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

It was thoughtful of you.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Your salad was getting cold?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

That was the joke, yes. Salads do get cold as well.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Yes....

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Moving right along, Mr. Chair, I would like to come back to this point on modernization, but I'll pick up on the point that my colleague made about a prime minister answering questions in question period.

I spoke about this in the context of going through the discussion paper, but the ground is somewhat different, insofar as before I made my initial comments on it, the Prime Minister had not yet stood up after each question was posed by the opposition. I don't know...to say “responded” may even be too generous.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Yes.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

He did stand up after every question was posed by the opposition today. This is something that the Liberals had promised in their—

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Chair, I'm sorry to interrupt my friend. I want to make the point that the Prime Minister seems to be able to do this without a single change to the Standing Orders. Isn't that remarkable?

I'll let my honourable friend continue.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Remarkable, and there's an interesting thing about our Standing Orders with respect to answering questions—and I've only read them half a dozen times or so—in that it's my sense of the Standing Orders that there's no reference as to who ought to answer particular questions. It is presumed that the government speaks as a whole.

With the exception of questions that can be asked of committee chairs—that is, the exception where people who are not members of the government, and who could even be members of the opposition, respond to questions—when the opposition poses a question to the government, the government responds. You could ask a question about defence spending and have the parliamentary secretary for sport answer it. You might ask why that is happening, but in the context of question period, it is presumed that this person is speaking on behalf of the government. That's why the Standing Orders have not traditionally prescribed a particular day or particular persons to be responding to particular questions.

In fact, this week, I think, we had an important question posed to the justice minister. The justice minister may not have been mentioned in the asking of the question, but it was a question about judicial appointments and the crisis we have in terms of appointments. Partway through that round of questions, I saw the government House leader lean over and make some kind of signal, and then the industry minister stood up and answered a question about appointments.

I thought that was a bit strange. The industry minister is also responsible for economic development in Quebec and in other regions of the country. He's fairly busy. I didn't know that appointing judges was part of his job as well, but he was called upon to answer the question, which illustrates that in terms of our Standing Orders, maybe for reasons of strategy or for reasons that are hard to comprehend, some members of the government answer questions when you don't expect them to. I know that Minister MacAulay was eagerly trying to answer questions that others were answering. Members know how much we appreciate hearing the interventions of Minister MacAulay.

There's nothing to prevent the Prime Minister from standing up and answering every question. What's interesting, by the way, as he mentioned during the brief introduction of our guest speaker today, is that he is also the minister for youth, yet he doesn't answer questions for the minister for youth. The Prime Minister chooses to answer questions when he wishes and not to answer questions when he wishes, even when they are posed directly to him, whether or not he is present.... Well, I suppose he doesn't answer questions when he's not present in the House, obviously, but when he's there, he chooses to answer questions or not, whether or not they are posed to him.

The idea that somehow.... This is one of I think only two changes to the Standing Orders that were mentioned in the Liberal platform, but the idea that this is even an idea for the Standing Orders is a little strange. The idea that the Standing Orders would prescribe that on a given day every week the Prime Minister would answer questions strikes me as odd, because we do accept that there are going to be certain times when the Prime Minister might have to be gone for the entire week because of international travel, for important meetings happening abroad or whatever the case may be. Perhaps he's on an island somewhere and just can't get back because there's no available commercial travel. That could be a situation that could prevent the Prime Minister from being here.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

It happens.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

That was funny.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Oh, but then there might actually be commercial travel available, right?

The point is, we would accept that, yes, there are going to be some weeks when a prime minister can't be there for the entire week. If you put it in the Standing Orders that a prime minister must be present in the House of Commons every Wednesday to answer all of the questions, well, that would create some problems on the other hand. We expect the Prime Minister to be in question period more than he is, quite frankly. We would like him to be there more often than he is, but the schedule of a prime minister can fluctuate and has to be responsive to all kinds of different things. That's why the Standing Orders don't prescribe who has to be there to answer which questions and at which times.

That's what's sort of strange about this whole discussion even, in the context of a debate about the Standing Orders. What we've said all along is that if the Prime Minister wants to answer questions, he can go ahead and do that. He doesn't have to force this through the committee in this sort of aggressive way without the engagement of the opposition, which he seems to be intent on doing. He can just get up and answer questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

I have a quick question. I wonder if you know, in the British system where they have that prime minister's question period, whether it is a convention or whether it is in the Standing Orders.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

That I don't know, but I have a copy of the Standing Orders from the British House of Commons with me.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Please read it.