Can I just interject?
There's no question in my mind that one thing degrades the value of our question period. It wasn't the case when I first came here and worked as a member of the minister's staff for the minister of the environment in the 1980s, and I've mentioned this earlier. In that era of 1986 to 1988, when I worked here, questions were not read and answers were not scripted. You had the sense that people had certain points they wanted to put across. In the U.K. Parliament, they absolutely do not read questions, and they absolutely do not read answers. Part of the problem that I think has infected this place is the mania for what is called “QP prep”. I mentioned this in my Standing Orders proposal. I was horrified the first time I heard about it in the 41st Parliament.
We prepared the minister. I was senior policy adviser to the federal minister of the environment. We prepared him for question period. He had a big, fat binder full of things we thought might get asked, but he knew his brief and he could stand up on his own two feet and come up with a really good answer, actually germane to the point, and generally try to answer the question. If he had had to go through a preparatory practice, like a kid practising for a school play, and read out an answer, and do it within.... And I think the time limit of 30 seconds also isn't used in the U.K. question period. It's a more open process and nothing is scripted. It is actually still against the rules of our Parliament to read a question or read a speech or read an answer, but we've fallen into this trap, again, because of the political spin doctors, of pre-prepared questions. That also means that individual MPs don't have the latitude, because their party masters wouldn't like it if they did, to switch up a question because the question they just asked was asked 10 minutes before by a different member of Parliament and a different party. They slavishly read the identical question that the minister has already answered.
Then we have the worst. Another mania—forgive me for venting—is to ask a question in English, and then have a francophone member ask the same question in French to get the minister to answer it in English and in French. This is imbecilic behaviour that is imposed on bright, capable members of Parliament by their political party backrooms. If we could get to that in reforming.... We don't have to change the Standing Orders because there are no orders that require that kind of scripted, pre-planned, rehearsed behaviour.
You don't see that in the U.K. Parliament and that's one of the things that makes their exchanges more useful. They aren't striving for a “gotcha” moment for the evening news, and they're not striving for a political response to just bat the question away.
If you have any thoughts on how we can get rid of QP prep.... I don't want to take you off what you planned to say here, but I think QP prep is an abomination.