Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 21st, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

You can read them into the record.

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

I am somewhat less familiar with these than I am with the Canadian ones, but let me see if I can find it quickly.

It seems I neglected to print off the table of contents, which seemed like a minor oversight in 112 pages of Standing Orders.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

It appears, from the clerk, that it might be a convention.

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

Oh, it's a convention, so it's not even in the Standing Orders then.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Can I borrow those while you're talking?

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

Yes, absolutely.

I presume that in the British system there are times when the prime minister has to miss prime minister's questions. Perhaps they postpone them, or perhaps there's another minister who stands in and answers those questions for him. I think I have seen instances where there was a minister taking all the questions in a similar fashion to the way the prime minister normally does, so perhaps that does indicate that there are times when the prime minister cannot be present. Of course, that's part of the reality of the job in the U.K., here, and certainly anywhere else, but we have these conventions about who answers questions and how those questions are answered, and it might be that over time this prime minister will answer all of the questions most Wednesdays, and then we evolve the convention to the point where perhaps there is an expectation in subsequent governments that the convention continue, and after it's been done by a number of successive governments, then it gets to the point where, after a while, we forget whether or not it's actually prescribed in the rules or by convention. We just accept that is part of the environment in which we find ourselves.

It is not the kind of thing that would strike me as normal for the Standing Orders to rule on. Nonetheless, it seems that the Prime Minister, recognizing the reality I just described, has embarked upon the creation of a convention in a legitimate way by choosing to stand up after every question the opposition poses on Wednesdays. The one exception was, the first time he intended to do this, there was a question to a vice-chair of a committee, which was responded to by an NDP member—

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

—a vice-chair—

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

—who was the vice-chair of the committee, and that can happen, of course.

I was struck listening to the words of the Prime Minister in the House of Commons today by the total absence of response. He was asked a number of very direct questions on matters of ethics, for example, and his typical response on these questions on ethics is to say “Well, I'm going to answer questions from the ethics commissioner”, which is effectively saying, “Sorry, guys. I don't want to answer your questions.” That is the only possible conclusion to draw when the Prime Minister of Canada stands up and says he would be happy to answer somebody else's questions implicitly, but not yours.

Well, this is why we have question period. We're supposed to have it so that members can pose questions to the Prime Minister and, hopefully, in most cases, he actually feels somewhat bound to make an attempt at answering the question rather than saying, “I'll just go answer someone else's questions, but not yours”.

We had a direct question—it might have been Mr. MacGregor who posed this question—about whether or not the Prime Minister thinks he should have a criminal record for his past marijuana use. That's a legitimate question. The Prime Minister has said on the record that he smoked marijuana while being an elected member of Parliament while, in fact, voting for tougher sentences for those who use marijuana. Of course we know why he wouldn't want to answer the question. He wouldn't want to tell the House of Commons that he should have a criminal record, but he wouldn't want, on the other hand, to say that people shouldn't have a criminal record for using marijuana, given that it is currently the practice of his government to have in place that criminal charges can be laid against those who use marijuana. These were reasonable, simple, direct questions that were posed to the Prime Minister, and he didn't answer.

Some have proposed reforms to question period that would actually require answers to questions, which would involve the Speaker policing the quality of responses and not just general order and decorum. That would be the sort of thing that would clearly require changes to the Standing Orders, so we can talk about that. If we move forward in a way that reflects a consensus decision-making process, sure, definitely, we can talk about that.

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

Yes, definitely.

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

We can talk about having the Speaker stand up and say to the Prime Minister, “Sorry, Mr. MacGregor asked you a clear question about whether or not you should have a criminal record for your marijuana use. Now answer his question.”

Now that would be a real change if the Speaker could do that. Alternatively, we could have a system in which, if the speaker didn't do that, it would be legitimate to raise a point of order in response to that after question period. Right now, though, if you raise a point of order and say that someone didn't answer a question, or that someone presented factually inaccurate information, the Speaker will quite rightly, according to our present rules, say that this is a point of debate and that you can't raise points of debate. You can raise points of debate as debate, but you cannot raise points of debate as points of order.

We could envision changes to the Standing Orders. There are pros and cons to this, but we could envision changes that would seek to require responses to questions and have some process by which these matters were adjudicated. Of course, that's not in the discussion paper. Why? Because it's a discussion paper that comes from the government House leader, and it would be a little bit hypocritical if the government House leader proposed requiring people to actually answer questions in question period.

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

What a revolution.

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

If she believed in answering questions, that's something she could implement herself unilaterally, and we wouldn't mind in that particular case. The issue is that, again, we see this discussion paper focusing on issues that are, in some cases, not even best adjudicated in the context of the Standing Orders. Certainly, however, these are questions that we would expect to be raised by somebody who is focused on the interests of the government in the context of that discussion, in the context of that interaction.

I think this is the reality coming out of our experience with two “Prime Minister's question times” that have unfolded before our eyes. Actually, the fact that this has happened clearly makes the opposition's point—namely, that the Prime Minister can do this without changes to the Standing Orders. According to our conventions, the Standing Orders don't police who does and does not answer questions in general. Clearly, the principal concern of opposition members is the quality of the responses.

If I were asking a question, a substantive policy question, and the Prime Minister was simply going to throw out the kinds of non-answers we got today, I would probably say I'd rather hear from the parliamentary secretary on that issue, assuming the parliamentary secretary knows the file and can answer the question. The Prime Minister should know these files and should be able to answer these questions.

There was a justice issue, and I believe it had to do with Wynn's law, although I could be wrong. There was a justice issue that the Prime Minister was asked about in a town hall. He basically said he didn't know the position himself, but he trusted the justice minister. Well, what's the point of having Prime Minister's question times if the Prime Minister is going to say that? He hasn't said it in the House, but he said it in a town hall. He said he didn't really know why he took that position, but he trusted his minister in the matter. It's all well and good for the Prime Minister to trust his ministers, but he should be able to give a reasonable public account of the positions that his government has taken on issues, especially if they're positions that have, presumably, gone through some kind of a cabinet discussion process. Yet this was a very important issue that was sloughed off on the basis of his trust in his minister

We have to be legitimately concerned about the quality of responses. My perception so far, not that I was overly enamoured by the quality of responses we were receiving initially, is that the quality of responses we received in these Prime Minister's question times were actually much lower. It's much more narrowed to a small set of talking points. We have the flagrant refusal to answer questions, for example, in the case of the ethics issues raised.

I'm not naive enough to think that these are problems we could solve through the Standing Orders. We cannot fully prescribe in the Standing Orders the degree of substantiveness we would like to see from ministers in responses to questions. Ultimately, it's up to the people of Canada to consider and evaluate the quality of the responses given by the government and to take that information into consideration when they decide whom to support in the next election.

If we're talking about changes to the Standing Orders, the kinds of changes, the direction of changes we're talking about, is striking. That brings me back to the point I was making before Mr. MacGregor jumped in, and that is this issue of modernization. What does “modernization” mean? If it means fewer answers, then I'm against it. If it means more power to the government and less power, or no power, for the opposition to hold them accountable, I'm against it. If modernization means the opposition doesn't have the ability to be involved in decisions about changes to the Standing Orders, then I'm against modernization.

I'm for modernization, however, if it means passing this amendment and having a constructive conversation, a conversation based on established ground rules, a conversation among members of Parliament to come to a conclusion we can all get behind, a conclusion that moves the Standing Orders in ways we all agree on. I guess I'm using some of that progressivist language with a view to moving this forward, but I'm doing so in the interest of making improvements to the Standing Orders.

That's the kind of modernization that I'm in favour of, modernization that empowers individual members of Parliament, modernization that gives us a greater ability to bring forward private members' bills and see them debated and voted on. Right now it's a relatively small number of members of Parliament, even in a four-year Parliament, who actually have a chance to bring a private member's bill to a vote. If we're talking about changes that make it possible for more members of Parliament to do that, then that is the kind of modernization that I'm in favour of. But I don't think anybody here on either side of these questions could say, just based on the word, if they are for or against modernization.

As we try to come to constructive conclusions here, we should rightly be suspicious of the kind of wording that's used if it doesn't actually mean anything. We should use words that are clearly defined that mean something in the context of our discourse. That is a pretty fundamental thing for us to ask for when we're hearing proposals from the government House leader.

One other thing that I don't think has been discussed thus far by anyone at this committee is the relationship between Standing Orders' changes in the House of Commons. and the way in which those are done, and the Senate, and the relative power and influence of the House of Commons and the Senate. It is interesting in the present time we're seeing proposals for very dramatic changes to the way the House of Commons works and to the way the Senate works, both in the name of modernization. What's striking to me, though, is how those changes actually move in opposite directions.

I don't know that anybody has dug into this or commented on this, but it was something that was obvious to me right away as a member of Parliament because I was very involved in the debates around Bill C-14, the government's euthanasia legislation. Right from the start, that process involved both the House of Commons and the Senate; and given the government's desire to move this forward quite quickly, the work with the Senate was quite important. A joint committee of the House and the Senate did an initial study on the question of euthanasia and reported back to both Houses in a report. There was a dissenting report. Then following on that there was legislation brought forward.

The process was that legislation was brought forward in the House of Commons. It was debated. Eventually the government invoked time allocation. Then there was a vote on time allocation, a vote on the motion. It went to committee. There was a whole host of amendments proposed at committee. I proposed 13 amendments, three of which passed, the rest of which were rejected. The changes that were accepted were fairly minor and didn't save the bill, not by a long shot from my perspective.

I was able to propose four report stage amendments in the House and they were all defeated. In and of itself, that was relatively rare. The Standing Orders provide for report stage amendments only in very rare cases, but because of the exceptional importance of this issue, the sensitivity of it as well as the differences of opinion within different parties, I made a case to the Speaker. Other members made a case to the Speaker, and he ruled yes, you could have report stage amendments.

There were report stage amendments. There was a vote on those, and I was up all night sending emails to other members, trying to encourage them to vote in favour of my amendments. A few members of the government did vote in favour of my amendments, but at most there were five or six votes on the government side for any of the amendment proposals that I put forward. All of the opposition amendments on the floor of the House were defeated.

The amendments were passed. Bill C-14 was then passed at third reading, and this is the important point of contrast. Then Bill C-14 was sent to the Senate, and there were a substantial number of amendments to Bill C-14 that were passed in the Senate, one of which was very similar to an amendment that I had moved at report stage in the House that was defeated. The amendment dealt with people receiving information about palliative care options as part of the process leading up to their receiving euthanasia.

The bill went through the House of Commons. There were a number of amendments, one of which was very substantial and would have very dramatically liberalized the eligibility criteria. Although I felt the eligibility criteria were quite ambiguous in any event, and it wasn't clear that there was actually that much substantive difference from the liberalization advocated by the Senate and the original version, nonetheless the perception was, and certainly linguistically, there was a significant liberalization of that process. Then this went back to the House. There was a motion in the House to support some of the Senate amendments but not others.

What was striking right at that point was the government did not want to bring in some of those Senate amendments, in particular that dramatic, more liberalizing one, but they agreed to support some of the Senate amendments including, in particular, the one that I had moved. It wasn't the same but it was a similar one to the one I had moved and it had been voted against at report stage. The government understood that they wanted to get this legislation through the Senate and it wouldn't have been that strategic for them to just reject all the Senate amendments. They wanted to reject some, but not all.

This came back to the House. The government proposed this motion to support some of the Senate amendments, not others, and then send the bill back, in a somewhat amended form, to the Senate. That all happened on one day. I think it was a Thursday, right before the session was ending in June. That motion passed.

At the time, if I remember right, all of the government members, perhaps with the exception of a small handful, voted in favour of that government motion to support some of those Senate amendments, even though those same members had voted against one of those amendments when it came from me at report stage. Then the revised version of Bill C-14 went back to the Senate, and there was a proposal to re-amend it. That proposal was defeated, and then the bill was passed as it was, as it had been received from the House. Bill C-14 was passed and it went for royal assent, and it became law. That's what happened.

What is striking about that process is the fact that I, as an elected member of Parliament, had effectively much less leverage in that legislative process than a senator who moved that same amendment. I think it's very clear, given that the government would not accept the amendment when it came from a member in the House but did accept it, ultimately, when it came through the Senate, that government members, generally speaking, within the House vote together. There is an effort, further even from where we were at the time of the Bill C-14 debate—and it's represented in this discussion paper—to strengthen the centralization of the structure in the House of Commons to make it that much easier for the government to push through legislation without having the opportunity for extended interventions at committee. It will allow the government to do programming, and so on and so forth.

You have all these things that the government is doing, which have a centralizing effect in the context of the House of Commons. At the same time, the discussion in the context of the Senate is the opposite. The government doesn't even have a government leader in the Senate. They have a government representative who, to be fair, is for all intents and purposes likely the same thing. I'm not an expert on the Senate, but it's clear that the emphasis with the Senate is on empowering individual senators to act more independently, in a non-partisan manner, and to be able to deviate from what would be the direction of their party. You have all these different groups in the Senate. We still have a Conservative caucus in the Senate, but then you have these Senate Liberals, who are supposedly independent—depends on the day— and then you have the independent Independents group. Then you have people who are independent of the Senate, independent Senate Liberals and the independent Independent caucus.

It's confusing, obviously, but it is the kind of environment in which individual members, in a House of 100 members, can actually exert a lot of leverage. If a member can, on an individual basis, persuade their colleagues to support something, then it can pass in the Senate. Then it puts a lot of pressure on the government to adopt all or some of those changes, as we saw happen with Bill C-14. But if an individual member of the House of Commons puts forward an idea, an amendment to legislation, very likely the way things operate is that members will vote along party lines and that proposal will be shut down.

We should be concerned about the roles of individual members of Parliament, but I think we should be particularly concerned if by these two forces of reform or modernization, which are actually opposite forces—the empowering of individuals within the Senate and the strengthening of efficiency of the centre in the House of Commons—we're actually increasing that disparity in power and influence over the legislative process between members of the Senate and members of the House of Commons.

I think the Senate is important. The Senate has an important job to do. It was striking to me as a new member of Parliament, right away being involved in that Bill C-14 debate and finding that appointed senators—people who were put there by a prime minister, who did not have to win an election and in many cases had never sought election—actually had more influence over what kind of legislation ultimately became law. That was clear in the instances of the amendments we dealt with on Bill C-14. There was a greater influence there from the Senate members than from the House of Commons.

When we look at Standing Orders changes, how we make those changes, and who's involved in making those changes, we have to be particularly sensitive to the kinds of changes that are happening in the Senate if we want to ensure that we have an environment in which the elected House of Commons is the most important House. In principle, we would all accept the idea that the House of Commons—the elected House, and not just the House as a whole over the Senate but individual members of the House—should have more of an influence than individual members of the Senate.

Of course, some members have advocated the abolition of the Senate; others might favour moving to an elected Senate. Those are larger debates that require changes to the Constitution. What we do in the Standing Orders has an impact on the relative influence of the House and the Senate, and we need to be cognizant of that in the discussion here.

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

Chair, could I just interject for a minute? I feel it's important.

I don't have the privilege of being at this committee a lot, and I've really appreciated this evening just being able to listen to the discussion and see everybody around the table putting in a lot of time and effort. I know this has gone on for a while. You, Chair, have put in a lot of time.

In my intervention a few hours ago I talked about the genesis of this and how I'd heard from the House leader. Ms. Chagger called me and told me that she was going to be introducing this discussion paper.

One thing I didn't get a chance to talk about was what has happened since then. Murray Rankin, the NDP House leader, and I, together with our colleagues, realized that the government was in a bit of a difficult position. We understood it wasn't easy for them to say, “We're just going to back away from this motion”, or “We'll accept your amendment.” We were thinking of a way we could offer an olive branch or a solution, so that it was a win-win where we felt we were being consulted and there would be some consensus, but the government could also say, “Okay, that's a good alternative.”

We looked. Some of the information we had was from some things that your clerks produced, which were really good, and then some of it was just our own research. We offered.... I know now we have, what do you call it here, the Simms point of order?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

The Simms procedure.

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

Simms procedure, okay.

We offered the Jean Chrétien model. I was just looking, and it was under the House leadership of Don Boudria. He was the House leader from 1997 to 2002. Now we know from when we were in government that House leader for the government can be a very tough job, kind of thankless, and a lot of people are looking around you saying, “You know what? I could do a much better job. It's just a fact.” For Don Boudria to be able to be House leader during the time of the Jean Chrétien model of dealing with Standing Orders is a real testament to what Liberals could do a very good job of, and that is sometimes being in that middle ground. Jean Chrétien had made a number of promises for changes to the Standing Orders, and once he was elected, he decided this was the best model. We thought this would be a good idea to offer to Ms. Chagger and to the Liberals.

Just so you know, we have not heard anything back from her. We did send a letter out, obviously publicly, because we do want the public to know. They're watching what's going on in the House of Commons, and they're seeing votes being triggered. They're seeing debates. The ones on privilege are very important ones, but they might see “that a member now be heard”. What's that about? We felt it was really important that the public know we are offering a sincere and very credible option. We're not trying to say that we just want to see the Liberals burn no matter what. We want to actually come out of this with the House—there have been so many good arguments—and democracy protected, and Standing Orders, if they are changed, changed in the way that has been done—again using the report from your clerks—over 80% of the time. You can take those changes out, major changes versus more minor changes, and that percentage would go up.

We are not being unreasonable. This is the point we've been trying to make. We're not being unreasonable with what we are asking for, so I want my Liberal colleagues to know that this is a valid option. It's a reasonable option. The Liberals would be seen, by even those who voted for you and who you believe have given you the mandate, as being reasonable. You probably would be able to come to an agreement on some changes. I'm confident we would be able to, and my point is—as I've said and I will say again—you are expending a lot of political capital, and when you expend that capital, you don't get that back. It doesn't just go into thin air so you can decide who's getting that capital when you give it up. You can deduce that. You're smart people. You know it is going somewhere, and somebody is taking that.

I'm pretty certain you're not getting a bunch of letters right now saying, “Boy, the top priority at my house is to change those Standing Orders”. It's like when we were in government, we changed the pension plan of MPs. It was something our Prime Minister felt was very important to do, MPs paying their fair share to pensions. Do you know what? I didn't get one “thank you” at any door. I don't think any of us did, but that's what he did.

I'm telling you, when you push this through, you're doing it at a huge cost. Certainly your Prime Minister has worked hard and he has gathered that capital for you, but you guys have worked very hard. You men and women have worked very hard to get that capital, so the point I want to make is that we are offering a real solution. We're even open to a counter-offer, if you don't want the Jean Chrétien model, but we haven't heard back. Just so you know, I haven't heard back on that, and Murray hasn't heard back either.

The second point I want to make is this. We're talking about being here in PROC, and PROC is being tied up, and we are here in this room putting in a lot of time, but the things that are happening in the House of Commons with the votes that are being triggered are not going to end. That's going to get more and more frustrating, but it literally is the only tool we have available, and when legislation is going through that you have a mandate to pass, we'll debate it. We'll put up a lot of speakers, but at the end of the day, your legislation passes. We don't obstruct it. We don't put frivolous motions or dilatory motions forward because you have a mandate to legislate.

We do oppose it in the way we can, but you don't have a mandate to change the Standing Orders and to change the rules. It is not going to get easier. We recognize that you have the majority and you have more people, but you have to make sure you always win votes. I remember a few years back when the opposition was not happy with what they considered a huge omnibus bill. I think it was about 400 pages, a little bigger than yours. I don't know if anyone has told you about this, but we had to vote for 26 hours in a row.

The difference was that we were in government, and we had to win every vote. The NDP and the Liberals didn't have to win every vote. We had to sit for 26 hours, and we had to have a system whereby every five hours there was a block of us—maybe 10 at a time—who could leave for a 30-minute block of time. That is not a lot of time when you've been literally sitting, can't leave, and have been voting for five hours. We could leave and have a half-hour break. The opposition, the NDP, would go and sleep for six hours because they just had to have enough in the House to stand five if needed. They didn't have to win the votes.

This is not going to get better. You will be spending your political capital, and you have a lot of it. Think about that. I know you are working hard for your team. I know you're doing what your leader and your leadership team has asked you to do, but there's a better way. We're open to a better way. Once that's done, we can go back to the way we've been doing things in the House where we have normal debates, normal opposition, normal votes, but this is not going to get better. As you said, we're ready to go to the wall for this, and we're doing it for all of us.

I wanted to thank you and get it on the record that we have put out a reasonable offer, but we haven't heard anything back. We would really like to resolve this, but we're not going to be giving up. It's too important.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you for that update.

Mr. Genuis. You don't have too much time left. You have a lot of points to get in.

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

I know.

I'm worried here. I've literally worked through half of two pages, and I have this whole stack over here.

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

Mr. Chair, what we could do is maybe make some kind of provision that we could allow Mr. Genuis to sit with a reduced quorum of just himself or something over the Easter weekend. He could make all the points he'd like to make. You'd be willing to stay for him, wouldn't you?

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

Would people agree to that?

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

David is definitely in.

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

I—

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

You appreciate the generous offer, but you'll have to decline?

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

If we could move immediately to a vote once everybody had left, I would be comfortable with that, too.

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

You gave away my secret, Garnett.

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

Okay. All right. Sure.

This is why we shouldn't make changes to the rules without thinking through all the possible implications, though.