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.
A video is available from Parliament.
9:45 p.m.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Okay. Let the record show that the opposition House leader just brought in salad and that I will be eating some of that salad.
9:45 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
9:45 p.m.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Now, for those who wanted to get home, yes, salad....
9:45 p.m.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Yes. It's vegetable salad, not word salad. That would be welcome progress for this committee.
Thank you, Ms. Tassi, for your intervention on the question of privilege. I maintain my view that the approach taken by the government on this was without precedent, it was not appropriate, and it was a demonstration of bad faith by those who moved this motion in the House to adjourn the debate, bad faith with respect to the opposition. Essentially, none of the arguments that have been made have addressed that aspect of it. It is perfectly allowable for members of the government to vote against the question of privilege, which is perhaps something that they don't want to do, because it sounds like there's some acknowledgement of the importance of it.
The amendments are just that. They're amendments. The government members are welcome to vote against the amendments while still supporting the privilege motion. In particular, the amendments that were mentioned were separate amendments. The amendment asking for precedence to be taken over other matters and the amendment to set a timeline were separate amendments. One could conceivably support one and not the other, or neither, but still support the main motion, or support both and the main motion, or some other combination thereof.
If the issues with the way in which this process was unfolding were purely with the amendments proposed, and not with the motion itself and not with discussion of the issue, then that could have been brought up. What the government didn't do, of course, was to bring in closure on these questions and then proceed to votes on the amendments, or to just allow the debate on the privilege question to unfold—which would probably have been the proper thing to do—and then collapse, and then follow it up with votes on the privilege motion. Then, depending on what is passed in the House, PROC would proceed accordingly.
That's not what happened. The government moved to adjourn the debate without having that vote take place. That was really the crux of the issue, right? That was the whole point of this example of the total loss of faith on the part of the opposition in terms of the government's willingness to play fair and respect the institution. It was the fact that they sought to adjourn the debate. It wasn't that they opposed the amendment. If they had wanted to oppose the amendment, that would have been fine, although I think that would have been the wrong decision to make and I would have argued against it. But if they had opposed the amendment, that would have been the reality. They didn't do that. Instead, they tried to adjourn the debate, and then, I think quite rightly, that was addressed in a response by the Speaker.
Now, my colleague points out that a motion was moved here at PROC. This is important. This is not the process by which privilege questions are adjudicated. The process, which is fundamental to the way privilege questions are adjudicated, is this: a member raises the issue in the House; there is a finding of a prima facie case—or not—by the Speaker; there is a debate in the House; and, then there is a vote on the question of privilege, which sends it to PROC for study. That's how privilege questions are adjudicated.
Of course, yes, I could move a study at the library committee on an issue of privilege. I could do that. If the library committee wanted to study it, they could study it, but that would not replace the process that exists for questions of privilege. That committee study, while important for the process of privilege, does not in any way negate the importance of also having the debate take place in the House and of having a vote in the House. The House is supposed to consider and vote on the question and then send it to PROC and say that this is something they want studied, yes, that it's important, and that they have a concern. The committee then needs to proceed with it.
That's how that question is adjudicated. None of the points that Ms. Tassi made change the fact that the government tried to adjourn and therefore end the debate in the House on this question of privilege and prevent a vote. The fact of a separate proposal for a study of that question of privilege in no way replaced or changed what happened in the House, which further establishes that, in the present climate, the opposition cannot trust the good faith of the leadership team on the government side with respect to matters of procedure. It's what makes the passage of this amendment so important. It is the insurance that we need in the absence.... It probably would be good insurance to have in any event, quite frankly, because any time someone says that they don't need to pass that but they'll do it anyway, you might say, “Wait a minute: why don't you just pass it?” Especially in the current climate, it is important that we pass the amendment because of these things that have happened in the House.
Further to Ms. Tassi's points, she talked about the proper way in which the House does or does not or can or cannot instruct committees. Now, in this Parliament alone, many motions have been dealt with that deal with instructions to a committee. The most obvious example, I think, is actually the first NDP opposition day motion, which was to create a pay equity committee and instruct it to do a study of a particular issue. If I remember it right, that opposition day motion did include a specific time as well, so not only was it giving an instruction with a timeline to a committee, but it was creating a committee for the purpose of doing a specific study with a specific timeline.
9:50 p.m.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Yes. That's a very good point. A similar process happened.
You see, the NDP is all about creating new committees, right? They want to make government as big as possible. They're all about creating new committees. Electoral reform was one of them, and the pay equity one was another.
I'm not exactly sure, Ms. Tassi, of how you voted on those, but I don't think there were any government members who voted against it, so you either voted in favour or abstained. I presume you voted in favour.
Another example is a private member's motion that came from a government member, motion 103, which was much discussed, so I've heard. It instructed—directed—a committee to do a study and prescribed a certain number of calendar days by which it had to report back. It's actually striking that they were calendar days as opposed to sitting days, because if those calendar days include the summer and so forth it could mean a fairly limited number of sitting days being available to that committee, and of course the heritage committee has other business going on.
When that instruction is given by the House.... Ultimately, committees have delegated authority from the House of Commons, so of course we should be masters of our own domain. I am especially concerned about cases where you have the executive improperly trying to direct parliamentary committees. Parliamentary committees are ultimately creations of the House. Their authority is delegated from the House, and the way in which they exercise that authority is by bringing up questions, tabling reports in the House, and receiving legislation from the House, which they then send back to the House.
These are examples of things that have happened. Again, for motion 103, every government member who voted on it voted in favour of it.
We had a motion.... Oh, my salad is here. Okay—
9:50 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
9:50 p.m.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
We had a motion put forward by my colleague Arnold Viersen that was asking the health committee to do a study on the impact of violent sexual images on children. I believe there was a timeline associated with it. That was a motion that passed on a voice vote. There was no standing vote, but it passed on a voice vote with the support of all parties. Again, that's another example of an instruction given to a committee by the House.
I don't think it's been voted on yet, but another Liberal member, David McGuinty, proposed a motion for a study involving the Ottawa River. I spoke on it.
Again, these are different studies that members can propose in the House to have sent to committee, and of course a member can sub in at a committee and propose that the committee do that study at the committee, but there is a precedent—it's legitimate, and common, in fact—for the House to give some kind of instruction to members as well.
It is just not consistent with what I believe to be the voting record of Ms. Tassi. I assume you voted in favour of motion 103, in favour of the pay equity committee, and in favour of the electoral reform committee—or at least in favour some of them, because those were positions that all voting members of the government voted in favour of—which gave instructions to committees and had associated timelines. Other ones I've mentioned had the support of government members or, in other cases, such as Mr. McGuinty's motion, they've come from government members.
It's interesting to try to square that with the argument that we don't want the House to be too directive for committees when we see this happening elsewhere. At the end of the day, I think the crucial point in response is that if you don't like the amendment, that's fine: vote against the amendment. Instead, what happened was this abusive process, this effort to adjourn debate in the middle of a privilege question, something that is entirely unprecedented in our history.
Now, there are some other points that I want to talk about—
9:55 p.m.
Conservative
9:55 p.m.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Maybe I'll keep talking for a few minutes. I have to make sure that I get through this before this discussion wraps up.
9:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Mr. Genuis, on that privilege motion, how long into the debate were they when they...? Could they have voted? Was there a request to have a vote? Or did they just adjourn? Roughly how far into the debate was it? Because we were in committee here, so....
9:55 p.m.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Okay. I don't know precisely, but it was relatively early in the discussion. I think there had been a couple or a handful of speeches given on it, but the discussion had been relatively short to that point.
There wasn't an immediate call to a vote. My understanding is that there were still members interested in speaking on the question of privilege, but the government, of course, has the ability to propose closure on a question of privilege. Then the question of closure goes to a vote. Subsequent to that, there is a vote on the main motion. Yes. Of course, I can't guarantee that we would have applauded the government if they'd brought in closure. I think it would have been premature to bring in closure because there were still members who wanted to speak to this important question of privilege that needed to be debated in the House.
My only point there was that it was an option available to the government that was, I think, under the circumstances, at that juncture inappropriate, but it was much preferable in principle to what they did, which was to end the debate without a vote, by having instead a vote on a different question, which was on proceeding to the orders of the day.
Having I think responded to that point, I now want to talk about this issue of modernization. My colleague from Saskatchewan who was speaking before me, Mr. Lukiwski, a very experienced member, talked about how it's not up to the government to modernize Parliament—Parliament must modernize itself.
As well, when we see a discussion paper and a proposal for unilateral modernization, we need to get into what is meant by the word “modernization”. It obviously is the kind of word that has a positive connotation in our language. Nobody would say, “I am against modernization”, at least not without qualification. It has the kind of connotation that we're moving in a good direction, that we're moving forward. It's the same with language around “reform”. “Modernization”, “reform”, “bringing the House into the 21st century”.... This last is a favourite phrase of the House leader, who says that they're going to bring the House of Commons into the 21st century. We know that words are being selected with an eye...the 20th century—
10 p.m.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Here's one of my favourite moments. This is a bit of an aside, but I think members will enjoy it. Michael Chong, who sat beside me in a previous configuration, had these beautifully technical heckles, such as “What about section 52 of the Parliament of Canada Act?” or something like that. Also, when the then Minister of Democratic Institutions at one point said that we need to move forward from an electoral system that was designed in the “19th century”, he said, “Actually, it was designed in the 18th century.” I think it's important to be precise, regardless of the point we are trying to make.
In any event, I think the House leader's language is to move it into the 21st century, not the 20th century. Actually, the point of the distinction is that we are not entirely clear on what either of them means. What would be the difference between moving it into the 20th century or into the 21st century? Why don't we just skip a step and move it into the 22nd century? It's about as clear, right? It's about as meaningful when you say that.
What we know is that the government is wishing to rhetorically associate positive feelings with the changes they want to make. In reality, though, a lot of proposals for modernization, for reform, and for moving into the 21st century can actually move in the opposite direction. What is modernization for one person might be pulling an institution in the opposite direction from what for someone else would be modernization.
This speaks to a more fundamental problem in the way that perhaps some Liberals in general see the world, which is that the future is inevitably better than the past, so when they talk about moving into the future and about modernization, inevitably what we're going to be doing in the future is better than what we were doing in the past, and what we're doing now is better than what we used to do. I think a more constructive notion of reform would say that we look at ideas on their merits, whether they are intellectual products of this century, of the last century, or of an entirely different time and place.
I think the progressive tendency is to always presume that change is good and that the future is better than the past, whereas perhaps the Conservative tendency is to say this: let's recognize the wisdom of the past and make reforms as necessary, but with deference to the institutions as they have existed in the past, and let's make sure that we understand very carefully what we are changing. Maybe a good way of describing this tendency is what someone said to me once. If you buy a new house and you see a wall, and you don't know what the wall is for—you don't know if it's holding up anything more important—your first instinct should not be to knock down that wall. At the very least, you should know what it is there for before you knock it down.
10:05 p.m.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
There is nothing wrong with making changes, but you had better have an understanding of what the original things were there for before you change them, right? Very clearly, in the language of the government, we see this progressivist fallacy, which is that the future is always better than the present, and the present is always better than past, so modernization and change are always going to be good.
I have to ask, though, in looking at some of these recent events, is a situation in which members can't make it to a vote really moving the House of Commons into the 21st century? I would argue that if we have a situation where it's harder for members to get to vote, that is a worse situation, not a better situation. If we have a situation in which government can limit debate by setting times in advance and saying that you can only talk for so long in the House and in committees, I would argue that it is a negative change. You might say that's moving us backwards. That's far from a modernization. That's a retreat, in a sense, from where we are now, if you're using that kind of progressivist language where you associate the trajectory of time always necessarily with improvement.
The kinds of changes that people have called “reform” in different times have pulled in different directions. We know roughly the history of this place, which is that at one time the emphasis on reform—originally, parliamentary reform modernization—was about strengthening the power of Parliament relative to the monarchy. That was a process of reform.
There was a period in the mid-20th century when reform, modernization, and improvement were seen as the process of making the House of Commons more efficient for the passage of legislation. This was at a time when there was a dramatic growth in what government did, in the scope of activities that were covered by the government. There was this concern among people in terms of whether or not legislatures, which had been essentially designed in a different time, could keep pace with modern government and could pass the number of laws that were necessary in light of the changing way in which government was involved in people's lives. Government was more involved, so the perception was that more laws needed to be passed. Again, flowing from that was the sense that institutions needed to be modernized so that more laws could be passed. That was perceived as reform, as improvement, and as modernization, but those were changes that enhanced the power of the executive and enhanced the speed with which legislation could flow.
Subsequent to that, there was another phase of discussion around reform. In this later phase, suddenly there was this emerging concern about the role of members of Parliament and the ability of members of Parliament to be involved in discussion. New ideas were proposed that weakened the executive, relatively, and strengthened the role of individual members of Parliament in legislation, which gave them more opportunities to check the government, to challenge legislation, to slow it down, and to influence the direction of the policy process. This was the next phase of reform.
In all cases, in the midst of the times and the circumstances in which those discussions were taking place, they were understood and presented as modernization, or as reform, but what should be very clear, of course, is that they represent opposite impulses, both in some sense legitimate, but opposite. The one impulse called “reform”, to make it easier for governments to pass legislation in keeping with the way in which the involvement of government in people's lives had changed from a earlier time, was about increasing the efficiency of the legislative process with the goal of passing more legislation and making it possible for the government to pass legislation. The other kind of change—or reform or modernization—was about giving ordinary members of Parliament more power and influence and therefore the ability to stand in the breach and say no when efforts were being made to pass legislation.
It doesn't really make sense to talk about this gradual progress in our institutions when there was a push and a pull on both sides of it. Both the push and the pull were called “reform” and “modernization” and were advanced in a way that was designed to reflect emerging realities and concerns, so maybe it doesn't actually make sense to speak of modernization. Maybe we should simply speak of ideas and about whether those ideas are good ideas or bad ideas. Maybe we should debate the merits of those ideas without trying to arbitrarily attach these labels. On the other hand, in politics, we can accept, perhaps, that people are going to try to associate positive-sounding terms such as “reform” or “modernization” with their proposals.
Actually, in the midst of the electoral reform conversation, as it's come to be known, I preferred to refer to it as “discussions about possible changes to our electoral system”, which I think was a neutral way of describing it. “Electoral reform” implies that we have these terrible retrograde institutions that desperately need to be fixed. Maybe that's the view of some people around the table about our first-past-the-post system, but my preference in terms of describing the discussion was “possible changes to our electoral system”.
Let's at least recognize that if we're not going to agree tonight, because we probably won't, we should jettison these terms like “modernization” and “reform”; I might even use them subsequently in debates when it's advantageous to my cause. Let's at least agree in principle that these are not value-neutral terms. When the government House leader says they're trying to modernize the House of Commons, that doesn't actually explain to us whether her vision of modernization is of the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s way of thinking about modernization, versus the 1990s and early 2000s way of thinking about modernization and reform.
When she doesn't tell us what kind of modernization and reform we're talking about, it contributes to our perception on this side of the House that most of what we hear from the government on these issues—at least in the context of forums like question period—is something resembling a word salad, because we don't actually know what she means by “modernization”. Although I could say, looking at the discussion paper, that it looks like what she means by modernization is a dramatic weakening of the opposition and of private members. That's how it seems to me.
Let's call it that. Let's be more blunt about what that is. Let's not paper over it in the name of bringing the House of Commons into the 21st century. Let's be clear. We're already here, right? It's 2017, as the Prime Minister is fond of saying. Well, I guess it was 2015 when he said that, but it's the current year, as we've been told, which is in the 21st century—
10:10 p.m.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Yes, in the world of this committee, I suppose it isn't the current day, but it is the current year at least—
10:10 p.m.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Yes, for now. When I'm done these remarks, it may not be the current year, right?
10:10 p.m.
Liberal
10:10 p.m.
Conservative
10:10 p.m.
Conservative
