Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 21st, 2017

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

If David wants to go, I was going to—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Sure. Thank you.

I was just going to say, Arnold, I think that's excellent, and it would be helpful, because you hear me trying to.... We do need a good fact base that we all agree on.

Could I ask, though, that we also have them reflect on any comments that any of the reports make about unanimity and whether they achieved it or not?

I could tell you that there are some reports that say they didn't find unanimity on everything, so I'm not trying to stack the argument. If we could get what process was used, and any time they made a reference—“they” meaning predecessors of ours—to their process about voting or unanimity and all-party agreement, if you could put that in there too, that body of information would help reflect the jurisprudence of Parliament.

Thank you.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Just to return...where was I? I can just start from the beginning again, but no, I won't do that.

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

You can. That would be great.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I can, but I won't, because I don't want to repeat myself.

I don't think we should look to past instances where the process hasn't been run the way it should have been in principle, to find excuses in history or something that you should not do. Just as the rules of the House say you cannot do the following things, let's try not to find ways around it by finding past mistakes and then claiming some type of moral equivalency to actions of today. Let's not do that. That doesn't build trust. That was my next point, in bold letters: trust.

This place runs on trust. You trust your staff, and I trust my staff with doing things and posting things for me sometimes, with my approval, and doing my financials as well. Trust is fundamental to any organization, even places like Parliament. It's fundamental to how we do work. You would sorely reduce trust if you were to use the assets this committee has in terms of the analysts and the clerks to find excuses for why you think this amendment is unreasonable and the motion is perfect the way it is, with the contents reforming the Standing Orders of the House of Commons and, as good as it is, they should just rush it through in June.

Consensus is built with trust over time. There's no way around it. Finding that consensus may take you weeks. It may take you months. It may take you a year. As a parallel, to go back to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, we have been working for a year on the report, reviewing government legislation. We were in no rush to complete it. We wanted to get it right. That might not be the most efficient way to do it, but it's the right way to do it. It's the right way because no members on the committee can then claim that their views were not heard or that they did not have an opportunity to have their viewpoints reflected in the debates, in the questioning, and in inviting the witnesses to committee.

In fact, I would even point out that the main motion that you find here says there are only seven calendar days following the adoption of the motion to produce a list of witnesses. You know that has been a standard practice of this committee. I would just say that our practice in our committee—and again this is the foreign affairs committee—is that you can introduce new witnesses at any moment. The chair and others and opposition members have been willing to accept witnesses on short notice who are not on the list, and have them included as part of the study on different policy issues and on the legislative reviews we've been responsible for. I think that is because of the trust we've built, the trust and the consensus around the table that we don't have a fixed goal. Our goal is to do the best deliberative job we can at committee to produce the best report we possibly can at the end, with the best recommendations for the government to hopefully take up once it's tabled in the House. That is our goal and has been our goal from the beginning, and that trust and consensus have built the co-operation that we need amongst each other.

I know that the members across the table in the government caucus are not out to prove a political point, are not out to extract out of me and my colleagues some type of gain by injecting a certain witness into a committee study or by producing a very specific paragraph somewhere in the report that will embarrass us on our side and say that we agree with the government on a particular issue. We're co-operating on the report that we're hoping will reflect the views of the committee members, which then can be taken up by Parliament. That is our goal. There is no other goal. It's to edify and to raise the quality of our work to such a level that Parliament will then take it up. Perhaps it will finish as just another report on a bookshelf somewhere. We are producing extra reports, so hopefully it won't be that way.

There's always an opportunity to do better, and that's something I've heard even the House leader on the government caucus side say repeatedly: we can do better, so do better. I would almost insist on it: do better. Don't go back in history to find an optimal situation where there were members who disagreed.

In the debates in 1991 I spoke about, those were in the House of Commons, not committee transcripts. I've gone through committee transcripts of some really obscure committees, and I mean obscure. I've read the notes of the architect who put up the Peace Tower. They are obscure, but you find interesting tidbits that you will not find unless you do some of this homework.

In those it was mentioned that a West Block tower had once fallen over, and—this was during the debates on how high the Peace Tower should rise—the architects believed.... Members of Parliament who were around the table were saying, “Just keep building until you run out of money, as high as it will go.” Then there were members saying, “Well, wait; in our experience.... Don't you remember that time a West Block tower fell over?” I would never have found such things if I hadn't taken the time to appreciate both the institution and where the institution is housed and how it functions.

I will go back to that, because it's a good segue into past comments and the resignation speech of a former mentor and still current mentor, Jason Kenney, the former member for Calgary Midnapore, whom I had the distinct privilege to work for as well.

[An hon. member]

He's now the leader of your party in Alberta.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

That's the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta, a different party.

He quoted Edmund Burke. This is a quote I would not be able to find myself, but he speaks about Parliament. Jason Kenney says:

One of the great parliamentarians of the 18th century, Edmund Burke, said this:

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.

I think that's important to remember.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

He also lost the election.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I was about to say that. He also lost the election, which is why many of us Conservatives think he is a very principled man, but maybe not the best politician.

Still, he raises a good point. I sit here as a member for Calgary Shepard, but I am a member of Parliament first; that comes after. I'm not here to advocate for concessions from the Government of Canada for my riding.

Now I will say that every opportunity—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Well, I am.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

We should talk offline about that.

Every opportunity I get when I see Minister Amarjeet Sohi, I talk about the Green Line LRT in my riding that I want to see built, which would double the number of kilometres of line when done, but that is not my main purpose.

My main purpose here is to work on behalf of my constituents within the context of Parliament and to do the best work I can as a member of Parliament. We're all equal members of Parliament; even the ministers have the same rights and privileges. They have additional duties that they are assigned by the Governor General upon the advice of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister doesn't appoint; he makes recommendations to appoint. I know that's a distinction that over the years gets thinner and thinner, but I think it is an important one to remember.

I should mention that I didn't grow up in Alberta. I grew up in Quebec, where my entire education was done in French and where that distinction was almost zero, but it's an important one to remember, because it speaks to the customs and traditions of this House that we are here as parliamentarians.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

You're from where in Quebec?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

It was Montreal South Shore, in Brossard.

[An hon. member]

So you're bilingual?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Un peu, oui, c'est vrai, but I won't use French now, because then I'll slow down.

I know they need to change it up. If I start speaking in French, this will all slow down and I won't be able to get through all the pages and books and everything else I need to speak of.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You can take more time. One thing you have now is time.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Christopherson, I'm just worried that you won't get an opportunity today.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's okay; I want to hear from you. You're doing a fine job. They've all heard from me.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

The next point is that you all have this equal power as parliamentarians to show us that you want to live up to these high-minded principles, which you all ran on as members of your political party, your political movement, so you shouldn't look to the past to make an excuse for something you can't do today.

You could then use the same argument that just because we did something before in a certain way under the rules and procedures of the House doesn't mean we should keep doing it the same way. Why have only one hour of private members' business per day? Why not have two hours, four hours, six hours, or eight hours? Why not have zero PMB hours? Why not just prohibit members from being able to slow down the government? Why not have all government orders all the time and never move away from them? We could be the most efficient place if we just ceased debating.

If you think about it, the ultimate end of the argument that efficiency should drive this whole thing is that if we stop debating, it will be very efficient. The Speaker would call for debate, there would be no member rising, and then we'd proceed. Maybe it would be with unanimous consent, or maybe the consent rules in existence wouldn't be needed and they could move on to first, second, and third readings, with report stage in between second and third readings. We could pass all bills quickly and the opposition would be an audience, which is what this motion would do. If this motion proceeds without the amendment, my great fear is that we will wind up being an audience—a loud audience, possibly heckling a lot more, and I don't think that edifies this place.

This place started out as what Diefenbaker called the “cathedral”, the cathedral that Parliament is. Again I'll quote Jason Kenney quoting Diefenbaker:

One moment [Parliament] is a cathedral, at another time...it ceases...to have any regard for the proprieties that constitute not only Parliament, but its tradition. I've seen it in all its greatness. I have inwardly wept...when it is degraded.

If you don't give the opposition an opportunity to oppose, to render the place less efficient at passing government legislation and getting its business done, you will degrade it. You will have more instances when you, on the government caucus side, will find the behaviour of the opposition less than proper, acceptable, or edifying.

Members in different Westminister parliaments have been heckling each other for far longer than any of us have been here on this earth, and I hope that in the future they will be there too, contributing to the debates, because members want to be heard. I've always thought that members who heckle in the House of Commons do so because they have something to contribute to the debate, except when it is personal and unacceptable. Vicious commentary about another member should never be accepted in the House, but a smart heckle about a policy issue has brought the House to laughter, or to tears.

I'll be the first to say that the President of the Treasury Board, Mr. Brison, is probably one of the great gentlemen in the House. He is interesting to listen to and at almost every opportunity he brings us to laughter—

[An hon. member]

On division.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

—on division, as the honourable member says, but that edifies the place. We don't necessarily speak out of turn in the House of Commons because we are looking to be disruptive but because we want to contribute to the debate. That's done in the House of Commons. If you change the rules on how committees work and you don't allow us an opportunity to contribute to the work of this place, you will disenchant us with the proceedings of the House and how we go forward as parliamentarians to work together.

It is up to the government to set the agenda. The government decides what is debated, what the issues of the day are. It's not necessarily up to each one of the parliamentarians to do that. Private members' business is supposed to be our time, when our ideas and our specific voices are heard on specific issues that matter to us, to our constituencies, and to the groups that we are attempting to represent, which is unlike the House of Representatives in the United States.

I have much more to say about the Congressional procedures and the policy process in the United States, because I know it's raised here in terms of programming. There was a reference that the United Kingdom does it and that programming is done in the House of Representatives, but the problem is that there is no government in the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives' majority leader manages the House.

There is no government business of the day. All the members propose all types of legislation at all times, large volumes of legislation. If you go on their website, you will see that almost every single member has proposed five, six pieces of legislation at any time. However, they're re-elected every two years. I think the great wisdom of our Parliament is that our Parliaments last no longer than five. I cannot imagine having to seek re-election every two years.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Under the Constitution we'd never do that.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I mentioned the Constitution. Five is just fine. It's the Constitution first. I am a Conservative.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

But you have the four-year limit.