Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 21st, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

We're resuming meeting number 55 once again.

We will continue with our learned lecture from Mr. John Nater.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's good to be back. It's nice to see so many people come back to learn a little more about the Manual of Official Procedure of the Government of Canada from 1968.

As I was hinting before I got into this discussion, this was published by Lester B. Pearson, the then prime minister. I find it interesting that from time to time on social media and in different venues, we see letters by people to their former selves, letters to themselves when they were in high school. I think it's actually a fascinating process to tell your past self what you wish you had known then.

In this case, it's really a letter to the future. It's an opportunity taken by an outgoing prime minister to provide ideas and guidance to his successors. That's exactly what the purpose of this manual is. Again, this is from Lester B. Pearson, the Liberal prime minister from 1963 to 1968.

I know that Mr. Simms yesterday mentioned that he still has a grudge against Mr. Diefenbaker. As a bit of a spoiler alert, I will have some comments from the Chief later on, but hopefully Mr. Simms will stay tuned for those comments—

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Order, please. We can't hear the speaker. We're getting some good history lessons here.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

It's a very important speech.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I suspect the background noise is from the excitement of this discussion.

As an interesting note, what I have here is an autographed copy of Diefenbaker's memoirs, given to me by a constituent, a gentleman by the name of Lloyd Walkom. He said it was originally his father's, and his father used $50 bills as bookmarks. Unfortunately, I haven't come across any yet, but it was an interesting little anecdote that he told me about his late father.

However, I'll come back to where we are, to the manual on government procedure. This is Lester Pearson's legacy to his successors on the operation of government and the ideas, the concepts, of how you go about it. I want to quote from his letter of introduction at the beginning:

The Manual of Official Procedure of the Government of Canada has been prepared to fill a long-recognized need for quick and thorough guidance on the many constitutional and procedural issues on which the Prime Minister, individual ministers or the Government must from time to time exercise discretion and judgement.

I think judgment is an important concept there. He continued:

The Manual examines the principal elements of government, states the legal position in given situations, and identifies the considerations relevant to decision and discretion in particular circumstances. Precedents are described and evolution outlined. Administrative procedures are defined and representative documents are included as sources or examples. The Manual is designed to be expanded to cover additional areas of interest and new practices arising from changes in law or custom.

The Manual was prepared in the Privy Council Office and is the work of its Special Advisor, Mr. Henry F. Davis, assisted by Mr. André Millar, who are responsible for its form as well as its content.

I do not believe that a guide to procedure of this nature has been produced elsewhere and I am confident that it will be of valuable assistance to my successors in the office of Prime Minister and to all those directly responsible for the process of government in Canada.

It's signed “L. B. Pearson, Prime Minister; Ottawa, 1968”.

Members will see the extent of this manual. It's an extensive document, and this is only the main part of it. It has an almost equal amount of appendices as well, which provide some of the documents, some of the issues.

The manual deals with a whole suite of issues that a prime minister or government will deal with from time to time in the execution of the details involved, whether its the appointment of a cabinet, elections, or funerals and memorial services. It contains the protocol on the passing of an individual, depending whether they were a cabinet minister who was in office or a past minister of the crown, someone who was a member of the Privy Council. There is an entire section on dealing with issues surrounding the sovereign—in this case, the Queen, but any future sovereign as well—the Governor General, different honours and awards, things such that, as well as extensive discussion on Parliament, on both the House and the Senate.

I think it's instructive as we undertake this debate here in this place, which is also being undertaken down the way in the other place. Unfortunately, it seems to be that in the other place they're doing it in a similar forced discussion. I think this is unfortunate for both Houses of Parliament, when we're forced into making decisions, debating, and having things forced upon us. That's one thing.

I want to go back to the motion at hand. The motion, despite what laudable goals there may be, is nonetheless a motion with a guillotine of June 2. We can work with this. We can work with an amendment that provides for a consensus of the committee. That's the issue we have right now: how can we get to the point where we accept this amendment and go forward with the discussion? That is often being discussed.

I want to bring the attention of the committee to the discussion in the manual on the House of Commons itself, how it's dealt with from a government perspective. We have to recognize as well that the House of Commons is part of the legislative branch of government. We do operate in a system quite unlike a congressional system or a presidential system where there's a more clear division between the executive and the legislative branches. Certainly we've seen many situations in which a legislative member, a senator or a member of the House of Representatives in the United States, is appointed to the cabinet by the President. They are immediately required to give up their seat in the legislative branch because you cannot hold a seat in both branches of government at the same time.

In the Canadian example, we don't have that. We have a fused legislature. If we want to go back to Walter Bagehot—and I think most members would probably recognize the name of this British thinker, this British political philosopher—he refers to the cabinet as the “hyphen”, the link between the legislative and executive branches. They sit in both, but they're nonetheless still separated, separated by a hyphen. I think that's something we need to bear in mind when we're dealing with these issues.

When we're talking about the Standing Orders of the House of Commons, we are dealing with the legislative branch. I want to quote from the manual, because I think this is instructive of where we're going with this motion and the need for the amendment to ensure that we have a consensus report.

Point one, page 263, first position—that's how it's labelled:

The House of Commons is master of its own rules of procedure which are set out in the Standing Orders.

It's a single sentence, but I think it carries an exceptionally high weight. The House of Commons is its own master. We often say that committees are their own masters, and that's quite correct, and the House of Commons is its own master as well. We do have the situation, in a Westminster-style parliament, where the executive branch also sits as members of the legislature, but the executive is not the masters of the legislative branch.

This is what troubles me so much about the discussion paper. It has not been tabled, as far as I know. This discussion paper has never been tabled in the House of Commons. That's a troubling concept, as a legislative branch, that a document purporting to create a conversation on the Standing Orders hasn't actually been tabled in the House of Commons, the body that will have to, at some point, make a decision on changes to the Standing Orders. It has not been tabled in the House of Commons. I think that's unfortunate, and maybe that will be remedied before too long, but it hasn't been tabled.

Whether that is inadvertent or not, I think it's a slight to us as parliamentarians and to us as legislators that the document was emailed out and posted online but wasn't tabled in Parliament. I know that sometimes some of these procedural things, like tabling a document, might seem like undue process or something that doesn't have to be done in a modern society where we have access to email, but they are symbolic, and I think they are a testament to the value that ought to be placed on the House of Commons and the other place as well—but that's beyond the scope of this discussion.

The leader of the government in the House created a document. We'll have disagreements on that document, as is the case in many issues, but the fact is that there wasn't the courtesy of tabled it in Parliament, the place in which rests the ultimate decision-making on this matter.

I want to go back to this, that the House of Commons is the master of its rules of procedures, not the government. I want to take this one step further, because, again, this document is instructive in how we go about making these changes. I want to quote from the second part of the House of Commons section, subtitled, “Procedure in the House of Commons”, and labelled as point II, “Background”:

Although the Government may have a special interest in the rules of the House and a special responsibility as the major party the decision is of concern to the entire House. Preliminary agreement to any proposed changes is desirable to prevent opposition parties from blocking their adoption.

Again, this goes very much to the heart of our amendment, the heart of the discussion at hand. A motion has been tabled by Mr. Simms, as is his right, and an amendment has been made by this side.

What we're asking here is that we have this discussion without the guillotine of an end date of June 2, without the government party ramming it down our throats. Again, it goes back to what I mentioned when I introduced this document. This is a letter from a prime minister who served in troubling times—certainly difficult times—in minority governments, but prior to that, as a foreign minister as well. I always feel a little challenged when I try to heap praise on a Liberal prime minister, but I think we can learn from our predecessors in this place. Certainly, Lester B. Pearson is one of those great parliamentarians, equally with his counterpart at the time, Mr. Diefenbaker, as well.

Again, if we think of this as a letter of advice to his successors, this document is a treasure trove of advice and of opportunities to really lay the groundwork of how we ought to be proceeding, and that is by a consensual approach, by the ability of all parties to discuss it in a meaningful way, without the threat of a unilateral action. Certainly, this is the advice prime minister Pearson offered, and I think certainly in the vein of what Mr. Reid's amendment would have proposed on this issue.

I want to go a bit further into the second point on this same page, because it plays a little into what was presented yesterday by the opposition House leaders, both the House leader of the official opposition as well as the third party, the New Democrats. That is the idea of a Chrétien style of committee made up of representatives from the major parties, chaired by the deputy speaker.

This is actually what's proposed, in some manner, by the government procedure manual. Point 2, again on page 264, states:

Proposed changes in the rules of the House are examined by a committee set up by the House, usually on a Government motion. Action is taken to amend the rules on the basis of the report of the committee.

This is suggesting a separate committee. It doesn't talk about its composition, which is something that has been recommended in the House leader's document. That would allow the different parties to have the opportunity to have a discussion, have a meaningful opportunity to move forward and to develop proposals from a consensual standpoint. I think it's unfortunate that, to date, the government hasn't accepted that opportunity to go in that direction, but I'm hoping that, as we continue with this discussion tonight and in the weeks and, potentially, months to come, we might have that opportunity to have that.

I will be returning to this document a little later in my comments.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

I can't wait.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

You'll have to wait with bated breath until a little later.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Oh, what a shame.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I don't want us to get too far ahead of ourselves.

Past examples of changes to the Standing Orders have been mentioned more than once in this committee by different members from all sides. I think those discussions are instructive. Certainly the McGrath report is one document that I have a keen interest in. As a graduate student, I wrote a research paper on the McGrath report. It was titled “McGrath at 25”. It was a 25-year retrospective of the McGrath report: where it had come in those 25 years, what had changed, what had not changed, which changes had been beneficial, and which had not been. Perhaps, if I have an opportunity, I may come back to the McGrath report, because there is a lot that's instructive in that report.

I want to go a bit more to the heart of where we're at. That is the fact that there has been a discussion paper presented by the government, as is their right. Any member of Parliament can present a discussion paper, and I think that's a great opportunity. I know Ms. May has done so. It certainly has some fascinating comments in it. Some would create major changes. Some would be at the margins, but that's like any discussion paper, and that's the opportunity to really have that discussion.

That's why, for the next bit of time—I know there are other colleagues who may want to take the floor at some point tonight, so I'm going to be cognizant of that—I want to go back to a past example of a discussion paper and the way in which that discussion paper aligned more properly with the common practice of the House of Commons. I would draw the attention of the committee to this document. It's titled “Position Paper: The Reform of Parliament”. It was tabled in the House of Commons by the Hon. Walter Baker, a PC MP, in November 1979. At the time, he was the leader of the House. He was also the President of the Privy Council, a title that still exists, though it is not commonly used.

This is an example of a document, a discussion paper, that really got at the heart of the back-and-forth, of the actual, meaningful opportunity to debate and discuss among multiple entitles: government, opposition, and further opposition parties. Certainly, those in the Ottawa area are familiar with the gentleman who developed this paper, Walter Baker. He was an MP from the Ottawa region. He passed away in 1983, I believe, at a relatively young age.

Walter Baker was probably, and still is, best remembered as the House leader at the time of the collapse of the Joe Clark government on the budget. He took a great deal of the blame for that defeat. As all current members know, often blame is assigned where it ought not to be, and he probably shouldn't have had all the blame. It was probably slightly more of a whip's responsibility at the time. Certainly, he was a distinguished parliamentarian with a distinguished career, as a member but also as a government House leader. He served in this place from 1972 until his death in 1983.

I think the tributes that were offered to Walter Baker upon his death are informative when we look at his work on the reform of Parliament, the suggestions he brought forward, why he brought those suggestions forward, the manner in which he brought the discussion forward, and the way in which they really go to the heart of our current discussion.

I want to quote from Hansard. This is from Debates, Monday, November 14, 1983, page 28,819, “Tributes to former member”. The leader of the opposition at the time was Mr. Brian Mulroney, who, I might add, was on the Hill today advising on NAFTA, which is certainly an issue far outside the scope of this committee, but I suspect our colleagues in other committees will be dealing with it.

Mr. Mulroney began his comments by expressing sadness at the loss of Walter Baker, and he stated:

With Walter's death yesterday, Canada has lost a gifted leader and a distinguished parliamentarian and all of us who knew him have lost a warm and a generous friend. While new to this House, I am not insensitive to its traditions. During the short time that I have been here, I have seen that one of the noblest traditions seems to be the friendship that emerges from the forge of partisan battle. Such friendships, Mr. Speaker, tempered as they often are in the cauldron of debate, are both genuine and durable because, irrespective of Party, they are born in the deep respect that comes from true accomplishment on behalf of Canada.

That is a really meaningful comment by the then-opposition leader on a former colleague.

He went on to say—this is again Mr. Mulroney:

During one of my first conversations with Walter after my election as leader, he spoke movingly of his recent visits with the honourable member for Winnipeg North Centre....

This was a gentleman by the name of Mr. Knowles from the New Democrats, who still has an office named after him upstairs. Mr. Mulroney continued:

Walter told me of the Hon. Member's great contribution to Parliament and to Canada over three decades and how much he would be missed should he decide not to run again. I found it both poignant and elevating, Mr. Speaker, that Walter would speak with such obvious affection for someone of another political Party. I knew that a man capable of such discernment loved people, revered Parliament and ennobled it by his presence.

I read these comments about Mr. Baker, who passed away before I was even born, so I never knew the gentleman personally, but the respect in which he was held by his parliamentary colleagues from all parties—and for those who are interested, you can read the entire series of tributes to him from Liberals, New Democrats, and Progressive Conservatives, including the prime minister at the time, Joe Clark, as well.

The important thing to recognize with these comments about Mr. Baker and his service to Parliament is his ability to work across party lines, referencing Stanley Knowles, a New Democrat, and it feeds into his work as a parliamentarian on this discussion paper and the way in which this is presented in order for them to move forward at the time.

Certainly at the time that was a short-lived Parliament, so much of what was proposed in here was not acted upon at the time it was brought forward, but it nonetheless provided the basis for many discussions in the years following. And as we work through this document, we will find the ways in which a consensus approach can develop to the better functioning of Parliament.

I would point out as well that, whenever someone has a discussion paper, if it's one-sided, it loses credibility right at the start. If it's one-sided in the sense that it's only empowering the government or it's only providing opportunities for the opposition parties to undertake their methods to delay and obstruct, it loses credibility. Going back to what Walter Baker represented in 1979, you see right at the top how a gentleman of his standing in Parliament, working across party lines, can present a document that can really do it.

I have a suspicion that perhaps the current House leader hasn't had an opportunity to review this document. The last time it was withdrawn from the Library of Parliament was July 13, 2005, by Mr. Pat Martin, MP, who is no longer with us in this place but certainly was a long-time member of this place.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Do you think we will finish this debate in time for you to get it back before it's overdue?

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I hope so. It is due on April 17, 2017. I don't know what the renewal privileges are with the Library of Parliament, so I may have to return it for a day and sign it out again. It does have the old school tie.

I'm a big fan of libraries. If people have seen my Facebook page, whenever possible I try to go to local libraries and look at the opportunities there.

As a bit of a side note, Mr. Chair—I'll be very brief—libraries typically only allow you to have a library card if you're a resident within that jurisdiction. Living in Perth County on the Perth side, my library did entitle me to a Wellington County library card, which has several more branches than the four in Perth County. Thankfully, the good people at the Wellington County library did me a great service. They gave me a Wellington County library card, so I can now use their resources as well, which include virtual reality machines with green screens and a number of different services that the library offers there. I just wanted to do a quick plug for the good folks at the Wellington County library.

I want to discuss a little bit this document that was brought forward. It effectively lays out the challenges that face us as parliamentarians in discussing proposed changes to the Standing Orders by the executive branch of a government party. It asks about the proper role of Parliament and the proper role of the House of Commons.

It's instructive. In the introduction, what Walter Baker lays out is a challenge and this is important. He started out by saying:

The House of Commons does not govern. It is not the purpose of this position paper to suggest that it should. But what precise role should the House of Commons play?

I think it is important right at the start to recognize what I've gone back to before, which is the separation between the executive and the legislative branches. It is very true that the legislative branch, as the name implies, legislates, but it does fall to the executive to govern. This is the dilemma that Walter Baker faced in this discussion paper. What role should the legislative branch play and what role should the House of Commons play in undertaking its duties?

He went on to say:

It is possible, consistent with the basic forms of the Constitution, to reduce its role to one of expressing formal confidence in the program of the government, and semi-automatically approving subsequent requests for legislative, taxing, and spending authority. Only in a minority House would such approval be open to genuine negotiation.

As a starting point, he presents the extreme. He presents the proposal or the opportunity in which the House of Commons would effectively become simply a formal expression of the confidence of the House of Commons.

If we want to go into a little more depth about the confidence convention, we could go back to the McGrath report. However, I think the late Senator Forsey's discussion on the confidence convention is far more instructive. Perhaps we could discuss that a little further, but at this point in time, it's not relevant to the specific point at hand.

Walter Baker presents the extreme example of how Parliament and the House of Commons could proceed if a government so chose. I'm not saying that's specifically where the government intends to go. I will give them the benefit of the doubt on that. There are some proposals in the discussion paper that could be seen as going in that direction, but that's not exactly it either.

I want to go back to the other side of that. He's presented the one side of the extreme, but let's go a little further on, where he stated:

In keeping with the basic principles of parliamentary government, it is also possible to see in the House of Commons a more aggressive representative of Canadian voters. The House would assume a role which would make it worthy, more than the cynical clichés—“rubber stamp”, “flock of sheep”, “trained seals”—which have dogged its deliberations for decades if not centuries. No, the House of Commons should not govern, but it should poke and pry without hindrance into the activities of those who do. If the House of Commons exists to represent the people of Canada, and to legitimize the rule of the executive, it must receive the necessary tools to pursue that mandate.

I think this is important. Here's a government House leader—in a minority parliament, nonetheless, and as we find out shortly after this, a very precarious minority parliament at that—saying, “Yes, we could go to the extreme and basically neuter the opposition, turn the opposition into a rubber stamp of simply a formal expression of confidence, but we're not going that direction. We're actually proposing a discussion in which we could give the opposition and all parliamentarians, all members of the House of Commons, the tools they need to preserve that mandate, to “poke and pry without hindrance into the activities of those who do [govern].”

Again, I think this is instructive for where we go. I'm not saying that this document is all sunshine and lollipops, because it's not. There are examples in here where the government proposes to make things a little more efficient, in terms of the operation of government. There are also concessions, as well, to private members, to individual parliamentarians in the government caucus, in the official opposition, and in the third and fourth parties at the time as well. It really is a discussion.

Baker went on to say:

Under existing rules, the House is much more than a rubber stamp, but it is much less than it could be. A common cliché is, “The executive proposes, and Parliament disposes”. That is too narrow a conception for a modern democracy. The House of Commons should not be restricted to answering “yes” or “no” to government proposals. Parliamentarians should be able to effectively put the questions “Why?” and “Why not?” The proposed changes in the House of Commons procedures are intended to encourage Members of Parliament to put those questions, and others necessary to judge the competence of the government of the day.

Again, this is a government House leader, the gentleman who is instructed and mandated to carry through government orders, to carry through government legislation—in a minority context, I might add. Here he is saying that we need to give more tools to individual parliamentarians, that we want to encourage them to ask the probing questions to get to the heart of the matters that are before them.

Frankly, there are some ideas in here that would have been terribly controversial and probably opposed by many of Mr. Baker's colleagues within cabinet in having to navigate in this type of system.

Again, I go back to who Mr. Baker was. He was a parliamentarian at heart. He was truly a gentleman, an individual, a public servant in the truest sense of the word, who saw the opportunity to make a better Parliament, to make a better House of Commons.

He continued:

It is sometimes suggested that proponents of parliamentary reform wish to curtail partisan confrontation in the House and its committees, and produce a form of collegial government. That is not the purpose of the reforms suggested below. It is hoped that some of the more sterile manifestations of party competition will fade away, but the real purpose of reform is to sharpen the focus of partisanship, not displace it. Party government is an essential part of parliamentary government.

I think this is really important for us, as parliamentarians, to understand. I'm a partisan. I think we're all partisans. We all run under political banners. We all run as political animals, if you will. But that doesn't mean that we can't be collegial, that we can't show a degree of comradeship, because after all, we are all members of the same House of Commons.

It is often said that we should eliminate partisanship, and I think the other place is going to find the unique challenges of an other place that doesn't have party affiliations. They'll have to have that discussion in their place.

What Baker really highlights here is that you're not going to get rid of partisanship. Indeed, when I used to teach at King's University College, I often said to students that if there was no partisanship in a legislature or in the House of Commons, it would develop naturally. Groupings would form. There would be some form of grouping to replace a non-partisan House. There are some examples—but they are few—of situations in which parties do not exist. From a Canadian perspective, that would be Nunavut, where there are no parties. The executive is chosen from among the elected MLAs, and then the premier, executive members, and speaker are chosen from them. However, in a sense there is still the adversarial set-up of those systems, because you do end up in a situation where there is a government, as executive, and an opposition as well. The opposition effectively becomes those who do not sit in the government benches, once they've been assigned by the House itself.

Again, going back to the issue at hand here—

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Sorry, just to add to that, it's the same in the Northwest Territories.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Very good. The Northwest Territories is one of the places in Canada I have not yet had the privilege of visiting, unfortunately. I have not yet gone to the Northwest Territories and Yukon. Perhaps, Mr. Chair, we could arrange a visit sometime to your beautiful part of the country. Certainly, together with Ms. Sahota, I was pleased to travel to some of the country with the Special Committee on Electoral Reform, and we did have the opportunity to go to Nunavut. I wasn't part of the travel to the two other territories.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

There's a motion.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

There are these examples where parties don't exist, but where government and opposition nonetheless come to fruition and come to play a role.

Baker goes on. I'm not going to read it in depth. He goes on to present the proposals, how this document is structured. But I want to read this line, because I think it's pertinent to the discussion that we're having today, and perhaps it would be wise for the government House leader to take this under advisement in her pursuit of the proposals at hand. Again, Baker wrote:

While the balance of these proposals tends to be to the inconvenience of the government of the day, there are some changes in procedure which have long been accepted on all sides as necessary to ensure the efficient consideration of government business. A number are included in these proposals.

So again, Baker acknowledged in his introductory paragraphs that these are going to be a bit of an inconvenience to his government. Increasing the role of backbenchers and increasing the role of individual parliamentarians from both sides of the House, isn't going to be easy for the government. Giving individual MPs like me and like all members more power within the House of Commons is going to be a hindrance. It's going to cause challenges. It's going to result in issues that will have to be dealt with. But at the same time, he also said there was a growing acceptance among different parties that there were ways to make the House of Commons operate better, so it's a give and take, it's a negotiation, it's a discussion. That's why I like to refer to this document as a discussion paper in the real sense, for parliamentarians to come together and have a discussion.

I mentioned at the outset that this discussion paper was one that the government laid before Parliament. It did it as a reference to the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization, the predecessor to our committee. There was also the opportunity to simply present changes to the Standing Orders. It did not do that in this case. It didn't change the Standing Orders because that would have hindered the discussion the government could have had. Instead, the government of the day placed this before Parliament. It put the position paper for the consideration of the standing committee in order to draw from its expertise of that of many numbers of other different groups. But this document then works through the different proposals, and as we work through these proposals, we'll find that many of them have been adopted, and I think most of us would agree that some of these proposals have over time been of great benefit to all of us.

This first proposal for us today probably seems fairly mundane, but at the time it wasn't. The proposal was to deal with the sessional calendar, to deal with when parliamentarians are here. The proposal was that there should be fixed adjournment times set aside for Christmas, Easter, and the end of June:

Before the time set an adjournment motion would automatically appear on the Order Paper. If the motion were not called by two sitting days beyond the time set for adjournment at Christmas and Easter, and 5 days beyond the time set for adjournment at the end of June, the motion to be put called for two hours and the question put.

So it gave a great deal of predictability to parliamentarians, the opportunity to know when the House of Commons would be sitting, when they would be expected to be in Ottawa, and when they might expect to return to their ridings at the key moments in the calendar: Christmas, Easter, and the summer recess as well. Again, today that's a given. We know that typically in any given year the timelines we'll be in Ottawa when the House is sitting; it typically works out to 26 weeks of the year. We know we'll have time in our ridings throughout the year in constituency weeks, over the Christmas break, and certainly over the summer months. But that wasn't always as structurally created as it is now.

There is always going to be some discussion around the House calendar, whether there's a constituency week that aligns with a certain school holiday or not, and those discussions are dealt with through the usual channels. I'm not talking about that back and forth—which I think is rightfully in the hands of discussions of House leaders—but having a basic structure on which to draw as we work on this.

I often reflect and, as much as possible, try to receive guidance from parliamentarians who went before me, whether local MPs or from neighbouring ridings. I'm reminded of a situation in the 1980s, shortly after the 1988 election. My predecessor was a gentleman by the name of Dr. Harry Brightwell. He was the MP for Perth-Wilmot, which later became Perth-Wellington-Waterloo and eventually merged years later to become Perth-Wellington.

Dr. Brightwell was explaining the story of the 1988 election, which was of course followed by the free trade discussion and debate in Parliament. At that time, they were debating and voting, and they did not leave Ottawa until Christmas Eve night, after midnight.

It wasn't until that point that the real discussion on changes to the Standing Orders to allow more predictability in the House of Commons calendar was really brought home for many people. They realized that there were parliamentarians from across Canada who were in Ottawa at midnight on Christmas Eve, finalizing the votes on the free trade agreement with the United States, an agreement that incidentally had just been run on in the election campaign.

It was that point that really brought that discussion to a head, and now it's seen as a given that we'll be home in our ridings well before the Christmas holidays and celebrate Christmas with our family. I would point out, as well, that at that point Dr. Brightwell told me that because they arrived so late at the airport—I believe it was in London—everything had been shut down. There was no way to actually physically leave the airport, because the doors had all been locked. They eventually had to find a security guard to let them out.

This document goes on.... I am going to leave the sessional calendar, because I think we all recognize the importance of that calendar and where it's provided for MPs to give us a degree of certainty.

The one other point I would mention—and this is a discussion that will be held in future years—is that in this coming year, in November 2017, there's a constituency week after Remembrance Day. For many of us in rural communities, most of our commemorative activities for Remembrance Day take place prior to Remembrance Day, so the fact that Remembrance Day falls on a Saturday this coming year means that most of those activities will take place in the week prior. However, we'll be sitting in Ottawa that week, rather than the week after. That's a discussion that hopefully will be attended to in future years by our House leadership.

I want to move on to some of the other proposals by Mr. Baker, under the rubric of daily proceedings. Again, they show some of the things that we now take as a given, some of the common-sense approaches that we now have. Proposal number two deals with question period. Again, the calling of the House is at two o'clock: “the House [should] be called to order promptly at [two o'clock].”

We now know that we are certainly called to order far before that, but the other point—again, the Standing Order numbers have changed, so don't pay too much attention to the actual Standing Order numbers—is that “Standing Order [43] should be eliminated, and the entire hour from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. (11:00 a.m. to noon on Fridays) [should be] devoted to oral questions.”

Again, this is something that today, in 2017, we accept as the normal practice of the House of Commons—that at two o'clock on a Monday through Thursday, we have question period, and at 11 a.m. on a Friday, we have question period. It's now standard practice. It's now enshrined in our Standing Orders, but prior to that, that wasn't the case.

The interesting thing—and we've noticed this happening all the time—is that things happen in question period. They are things that we would ideally like to raise as points of order—sometimes questions of privilege, but more often than not points of order—during question period, but we will find as parliamentarians that we do not raise those points of order at that point in time. We wait until after the time for question period has expired. At that point, we raise the point of order, or we raise the question of privilege.

What I found interesting was that the authority for that was a temporary standing order, which had long expired by the time this paper had been presented. It was proposed that this should be a practice of the House of Commons and written within the Standing Orders.

The proposal that was presented by Mr. Baker was point number four: “By Standing Order, all Points of Order and Questions of Privilege should, at the discretion of the Speaker, be deferred until after the oral question period.”

Again, it's a common-sense approach. It allows question period to function without hindrance. It allows question period to go through, and any necessary points of order or questions of privilege arising from question period are dealt with immediately following it.

I think it's important to note sometimes the common practice or common courtesy that often occurs in the House. In the event that a member is planning to raise a point of order, where time and opportunity presents, the member provides the Speaker with a heads-up, with notice that you would be rising on a point of order immediately following question period, so that he or she is prepared to dispose of that or to deal with that immediately afterwards. Often in the heat of a moment that courtesy may not alway be extended; it's certainly not required. But often the Speaker will say that he has notice of a point of order or a question of privilege by the member for such and such a riding.

It's an important thing. Again, before a point in time, it was simply a temporary standing order. It wasn't placed there to any great extent. But then, again, eventually, because it was a common practice, a common-sense approach, it was enshrined within our Standing Orders.

Now, I want to move on a bit to a couple of other points. This one has to do with quorum. Our House of Commons actually has an extremely low quorum of 20 members, and that includes the Speaker or deputy speaker, whoever is the presiding officer at the time, so meaning only 19 members out of 338 have to be physically present in the House at any one time.

Anecdotally, there are other legislatures significantly smaller than ours that have a similar number. I'm not from Alberta, but I'm told that Alberta's quorum is also 20 members. Given their significantly smaller legislature, it's intriguing that ours is so low. Despite that fact, I'm sure that many of us have sat in the House of Commons at certain points, perhaps towards the end of the day, during private members' hour, or often over the lunch hour when some of us like to duck out and grab a bite to eat, when quorum in the House of Commons can often get perilously close to that number of 20, and could cause some challenges.

But going back to past Parliaments, it was a real challenge that Parliament would just adjourn at that point, and that was the case: when quorum was lost Parliament would simply adjourn. Despite it being a relatively low quorum, we still see situations in which quorum is lost. It's not always called to the attention of the Speaker. But if it were, and there were simply an adjournment, it would cause real problems for Parliament and the government—and the opposition, for that matter, just because there are days where the opposition has control, if you will, of the House calendar, including for supply day motions, designated days.

But the proposal put forward by Walter Baker, which was eventually adopted, stated that “There should be a quorum bell, allowing MPs ten minutes to reach the Chamber. Hours should be extended to compensate for any time consumed by this procedure.” It was a common-sense approach: if you lose quorum, ring the bells, get the members there, so you can carry on with the day. It was eventually adopted. It's now in our Standing Orders. I can't quote the exact number of the current Standing Order, but I know I have referred to it from time to time out of curiosity's sake. It's common courtesy, typically, in the House. It's rare for someone to call quorum when there is a good faith effort to engage in debate in the House of Commons.

This example allows for members to return to the House quickly if there is a case where quorum is lost, and typically it wouldn't be hard to find 20 members within a very short radius of the House. It would also allow a member, with some of the games that would have been played at the time, to quickly duck out, allow quorum to be lost, and see an adjournment of the House. In this case it allows that frivolous adjournment, if you will, to be dealt with in that way, and it also prevents the Sergeant-at-Arms from having to go from room to room to personally haul out the members, which could be the case in some of our present partner or cousin parliaments overseas.

As I mentioned, toward the outset of this paper there are some common-sense proposals, things that make sense, things that really would have had support from all parties. These are some of the ones I have touched on. There are also some that would help the government, and I'll touch on those a little later.

More important, there are also ones that help individual parliamentarians. In many cases it would more be opposition MPs, but a government MP certainly would be entitled and able to exercise many of these things as well.

One of the important ones is the concept of private members' business. Again, sometimes a good idea isn't seen as a good idea until many years later, and some of the ideas presented in here could still be good ideas. They weren't entirely adopted by our predecessor parliaments but nonetheless did provide a fascinating ability to discuss things.

One of the first proposals was that there should be designated cycles for private members' business and the ability to debate it. The proposal they made would be that on Wednesdays there would first be private members' bills considered. On Thursdays there would be private members' motions considered, and once those had been dealt with on a Thursday evening, there would then be a grievance procedure for challenges MPs might have had with rulings on their private members' bills. Whether they had been disallowed, whether they had been ruled out of order, it provided that procedure within the House.

There would then be a second cycle, in which another round of private members' bills would be discussed on Thursdays, then a second round of concurrence motions, followed by another round of private members' bills, and this would alternate throughout the process. Again, we haven't entirely followed this exact practice, but nonetheless it was a proposal to allow MPs to have a set schedule of how to undertake this.

Now in the current system—it's not a bad system, but there are opportunities to improve it—we don't make distinctions between bills and motions, and perhaps we should. However, as it is currently, that is not the case.

Another proposal I find interesting would be to use a suggestion from the U.K. Parliament, which is actually similar to the case now, though not entirely. It suggests that a bill should be debated for about two and a half hours and then should be disposed of—put to a vote—and if it weren't, then it would lose precedence. The way we deal with it now is that it automatically drops to the bottom of the Order Paper and then it works its way back up for the second hour. Here it is actually suggested that we have, in this case, two and a half hours and then it's disposed of shortly afterward or it drops off.

In the U.K. they have a similar way in which this happens, but in reality they don't have the same timeframe, I believe, so they actually just talk out the clock, and if you go to a certain point in time it then drops off. So parliamentarians need to be on guard and be ready to move a motion to deal with it and ensure they have a vote, and a minimum number of votes as well because it's often on a Friday, so they have to make sure there are enough people in town to actually deal with that motion.

Here is another thing I find interesting. Again, no one party has a monopoly on good ideas. It's on page 12, point 16(iii): The proposal was made that “A motion by the Government House Leader to transfer the bill to Government Orders is carried, with a guarantee that the bill will receive at least five hours further debating time under Government Orders within fifteen sitting days.”

I find this to be a fascinating idea. Then again, it hasn't been adopted. That doesn't mean it can't be adopted at some future point in time, but it allows the government to pick up a private member's bill as a government bill. We can think of examples of private members' bills coming through the House in this Parliament and the previous Parliament that were good ideas and that had the general support of Parliament. When they are unfortunately structured to a short period of time for debate, that doesn't always provide the fullness of a debate that you would have for a government bill, so by having this opportunity, a good idea brought forward by a private member could become a government order and there could be a more fulsome debate to undertake that. I think that would be a discussion worth having. It may not occur on a regular basis when we're dealing with an opposition private member's bill, but certainly it would allow an individual government MP that opportunity as well.

There is one proposal in this report—and I think, again, the general consensus on this is that it is now very much supported by all parties—proposal 21, that names of members rather than bills or motions should be entered into the private members' draw. The original case was that the actual bill number would be in the draw to determine the time of debate. Of course, now we do it by members' names. I believe I'm number 255, so I'll be a very old man by the time I get to debate my motion, but that is the luck of the draw. There's no perfect system, but I think the draw is certainly one of the fairest systems that could be undertaken, and in this case, the use of names rather than bills certainly provides some flexibility to an individual member to decide which bill or motion they may choose to bring forward. It doesn't restrict them, either, to making those changes as things change, as situations change, and as events happen, as they often do.

Those are some proposals that Walter Baker presented on private members' bills. Again, generally speaking, these were ways that could improve the opportunity for private members' bills to become law. Certainly I wasn't paying a lot of attention to private members' business in the 1980s. I was probably much more concerned with watching cartoons at the time, but in talking to colleagues who served in those Parliaments, I do recognize the extreme hardship and challenges of attempting to get private members' bills passed.

I think of my colleague Rob Nicholson from Niagara Falls. He has only just now, in this Parliament, passed his first ever private member's bill, calling for a national framework on Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. He certainly never had the opportunity to propose private members' bills for many years because he was a cabinet minister throughout the last decade or so. As well, through the 1980s and early 1990s, when he was a member of the governments at that time, there were simply not the meaningful procedures and opportunities to undertake those debates.

Now, I want to discuss the next point, as well, and just as a bit of a heads-up, I'm going to speak for a little bit about committees. I know that my friend and colleague Mr. Lukiwski is just chomping at the bit to make a contribution to this debate.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Yes.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I know he has another engagement later this evening, so I will yield the floor at some point to allow him to have that opportunity. However, before I do that, I do want to briefly talk a little bit about Walter Baker's proposals for committees. Specifically, he opened the discussion with this:

It should be noted that the committee's role is expanded to improve the accountability of government, not to give to committees executive functions. Committees may hold serious investigations against the will of the Government, which is not presently possible, and pursue that investigation through to a report to the House, and even concurrence by the House. But concurrence would not be, in constitutional terms, a binding direction to the Government. Clearly a government which ignored the opinion of the House in such a matter would invite political problems, and perhaps a specific motion of non-confidence. However, to view concurrence in a committee report as a binding direction on the executive would be to invite the destruction of the responsible Cabinet government. The significance of such a concurrence would be, in other words, political, not procedural.

We see this very often as we go about our functions as parliamentarians as we discuss committee work. The role of all committees of the House, whether it's the procedure and House affairs committee, the official languages committee, which I sit on, or the fisheries and oceans committee, is to hold the government accountable. Committees have a number of functions and ways in which they can do that, whether it's via review of the legislation that is specifically sent to them, or the studies they undertake within their mandate. Committees have an important role.

We'll notice that committees are not populated by the government; they are populated by members of Parliament. They are not creatures of a cabinet minister; they are the creatures of their own creation. That is exceptionally important in terms of where we go.

I'm going to get into some of the specific proposals, but at this point I'm going to yield the floor.

I would ask, Mr. Chair, could I be put back on the speakers list?

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

Can't Tom just say “point of order”, and seek unanimous consent to interject and go back and forth? What do we call that again?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

The Simms feature.

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

I was just asking.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Do you want to do that? Will you go on the Simms protocol, and then we'll go back to Mr. Nater?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

That's fine. Everyone is fairly in tune with what's going on here, and everybody is fairly accommodating, so it doesn't really matter as long as John is recognized as having the floor. He has ceded some time to me, and when I conclude my remarks, John will have the floor again. If we can all agree to that, then I don't think we need to do much more.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes, we're agreed. Go ahead.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Thank you very much, John; and thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for recognizing me. It's good to be back at the procedures committee. As most of you know—at least I've mentioned it on a few occasions when I've substituted at this committee—I spent nine years while we were in government as a member of this procedure and House affairs committee. I was the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, and in fact, I was the only parliamentary secretary that our government had. I think I had five different House leaders; I was the parliamentary secretary to each one. I appreciated the fact that I learned a lot on the job. Obviously I learned a lot about procedures and House management. That was just something that I had to learn because of the nature of my job.

I want to talk a bit about my time on the procedure and House affairs committee and about my role as parliamentary secretary only in order to give some context to my remarks. I'm certainly not going to be saying anything that cannot be substantiated. I'm certainly not going to be saying anything that is either outright incorrect or even considered disingenuous, but I am going to be making some remarks clearly that will be critical of the government because I believe that the subject material that we're discussing right now is extremely important.

Anytime a committee or a group of individuals starts to discuss changing the Standing Orders, it is something that has to be taken with a great deal of serious and sober thought and discussed with a great deal of respect for the Standing Orders. As a matter of fact, I know that one of the most learned procedural minds I have ever met, whom my colleague John referenced early in his presentation, Mr. John Holtby, quite frankly is not in favour of anyone tinkering with the Standing Orders. I recall that, in the last Parliament, I was the chair of an all-party committee tasked with the responsibility of suggesting some potential changes to the Standing Orders, and Mr. Holtby and I had a disagreement on many occasions because I felt that there needed to be some changes. I felt that we could clean up the Standing Orders and make it perhaps more efficient, both from a procedural standpoint and from a cost standpoint to the taxpayers. However, John again was able to point out on several occasions why we shouldn't really make any massive changes, and at best, we should look at tweaking and perhaps allowing some of the more arcane and obscure standing orders to meet their fate by removal from the Standing Orders.

I would also point out that one of the other very learned minds on procedure, who is no longer with us, worked for the Liberal Party for many years; that was Mr. Jerry Yanover. I think if Jerry were here today, frankly, he would be having quite a bit to say about what we are discussing and whether it is the democratic way to move forward, with a government having the final and almost unilateral right to change the Standing Orders.

I should point out to those people who perhaps are watching—those people maybe who have to get themselves a life and have nothing better to do than watch CPAC and proceedings—that the government has an option. The government doesn't have to change or make recommendation to change the Standing Orders through the procedure and House affairs committee—not at all. Although that has been an accepted convention for the majority of the last 40 or 50 years, there have been times when governments of the day with majorities have been able to change the Standing Orders unilaterally. The current government obviously has a majority and quite as obviously could change any standing orders that it wished right now without any agreement from any other political party. All that would need to be done is for a member of the government's party to make a motion in the House to change various standing orders and then it would come to a vote. If the vote is in favour, those standing orders are changed and changed immediately. Knowing that, why then would the government take the route it has taken?

We have a filibuster going on, and, frankly, I believe it will go on for as long as the government wants to maintain their position of forcing standing orders upon the opposition.

In my view, the reason the government wants to go this route is that they believe that if they made these changes unilaterally in the House, they would be viewed as being somewhat dictatorial. In other words, they want the political cover of a standing committee making recommendations back to the House so that they will be able to say, “A standing committee made these recommendations, and we're merely adopting the considered opinion of the standing committee.”

The reality, of course, is that since the government has the majority of the membership on this committee, they can make whatever changes they want over and above the opposition's complaints, with the same effect as unilaterally changing the Standing Orders by simply moving a motion in the House. They're looking for political cover, and that is something we simply cannot abide.

I want to point out as well that when I was on the procedure and House affairs for those nine years, generally speaking, I had a pretty good relationship.

Mr. Chair, is there any significance to the bells?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

The House has just adjourned.