That's what I'm banking on. There are no secrets over here. This is it, man. There are no big secrets.
I was just in the midst of reading a very important letter into the record, Chair, which I mentioned to you just briefly and was issued publicly. It's signed by Candice Bergen, the official opposition House leader, and Murray Rankin , the NDP House leader. It is addressed to Madam Chagger in her capacity as the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons. It reads as follows:
Dear Minister:
With the Procedure and House Affairs committee set to resume its tainted and unproductive meeting to deal with the government's plan to unilaterally re-write the rules of Parliament, we, the Opposition House Leaders, are reaching out to offer a reasonable alternative to the current fruitless standoff.
We remain committed to the Canadian parliamentary tradition—dating back to the original drafting of our Standing Orders in 1867—of having all-party support for overhauling the rules of the House. Without your clear commitment to respect that tradition, a good-faith study is impossible. As an alternative, we would like to propose the model used by the Chretien Government.
Mr. Chretien's government created the Special Committee on the Modernization and Improvement of the Procedures of the House of Commons that sat from 2001—2003. The motion that established that committee is attached.
Lest the government be worried, I will of course be reading that too. To pick up again from the letter:
The membership of the committee was made up of the Deputy Speaker and one member from each of the recognized parties. The committee operated by all-party consensus and managed to present six reports to the House.
Six reports: a previous Liberal government did that. What headway are we making here? None. Why? Because of the government's power grab.
To pick up again:
We are always open to thoughtful discussions about improving the way the House of Commons operates. That being said, we also recognize the strong historical precedent that has been established for making significant changes to the Standing Orders. As you know, history has demonstrated that the overwhelming majority of substantial Standing Order changes only occurred after receiving consent from all parties.
We believe that a consensus-based approach to modernizing the House of Commons, along the lines of the Chretien model, would respect the time honoured tradition of this Parliament, and be more fruitful and productive.
Your attention to this matter is appreciated.
Again, it is signed “Sincerely”, by Madam Bergen and Mr. Rankin.
Now, the motion referenced in the letter is attached to the letter and forms a part of it. It's headed “2001 Motion to Create the Special Committee on the Modernization and Improvement of the Procedures of the House of Commons”.
It's not that long, Chair. It's in bullet point form and states:
That a special committee of the House be appointed to consider and make recommendations on the modernization and improvement of the procedures of the House of Commons;
That the Members of the committee shall be the Deputy Speaker and the House Leaders of each of the officially recognized parties, provided that substitutions may be made from time to time, if required, in the manner provided for in Standing Order 114(2);
That, notwithstanding any Standing Order, the Chair of the committee shall be the Deputy Speaker and the Vice-Chairs shall be the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and the House Leader of the Official Opposition;
That the committee shall have all of the powers granted to standing committees in Standing Order 108....
If I may, Mr. Chair, do you see how important it is that the Standing Orders are referenced? Whenever we're taking action, it's the Standing Orders that provide the process we would follow. That's why you're seeing here these references to Standing Orders, and that's why this whole battle and war is under way: because the government wants the right to change these Standing Orders using their majority vote only.
This is why it's so important to us that it not happen. It's not just one ideological principle of whether as the opposition we agree with the government or not on a particular point. It's talking about how we make laws. When there's a reference here to Standing Order 108, there's usually an impression that the Standing Orders are something we all agree on. Why? Because we all had input and agreed that they would become the Standing Orders.
It's when we take certain Standing Orders and make them the domain of the majority government that we see the House starting to come loose. The foundations that hold us together are these Standing Orders, so that every time we want to do anything at all, how it's done in a way that we all accept as fair is nice and easily referenced by saying, “So we'll do that, Chair, in the same way that we do it in Standing Order 108.” The assumption is that when you look at it, whatever Standing Order 108 is, it's something we all agree on and it provides the detail we all agree on. Otherwise, you'd have to go through each of those details on each of these points and decide whether or not we agree on—wait for it—the rules of engagement.
From the fact that I'm making references to Standing Orders consistently as we are passing a motion of action to create an entity that's going to do something, you can see that the importance of all of us having faith and of standing by the fairness of the Standing Orders is crucial. Otherwise, we'd never get anywhere.
I will not repeat myself but I will make reference to the fact that I talked about how as kids we played pick-up games of scrub in the alleyway—at least in my own case—and we would end up spending more than half the time fighting about what the rules were going to be than we did actually playing the game. But even as kids we knew that you have to decide what the rules are and everybody has to agree. Otherwise, what happens is that you don't play.