They're still on the ceiling. Okay.
I want to continue, in the context of this discussion paper from the government House leader, by speaking to the second point that was given in terms of rationale for the changes that the House leader wants to bring forward, and that is, she spoke about this issue of encouraging unrepresented segments of society to seek elected office.
It is not at all clear to me how the efforts of the government to effectively neuter the opposition, to turn the opposition into more of an audience than a part of the process, would somehow encourage under-represented segments of society to seek elected office. I think what people look for when they consider whether or not to seek a career in public office is the opposite. What they look for is a sense that they will be able to meaningfully contribute to the process, regardless of what part of the House of Commons they're in. I think it would probably be harder to recruit someone to run for public office if you had to tell them, “Well, if you're in the opposition, the government is basically going to do whatever they want, and you don't have any tools at your disposal.” I think that might be the sort of thing that would discourage people from running for public office if they had to grapple with the fact that our rules had been changed unilaterally in a way that did not actually allow for the meaningful engagement of the opposition in the ongoing process. That's my general view about how the proposed changes by the government would impact this question of under-represented segments of society seeking elected office.
However, it's striking that despite making that assertion—as is typical of the government's rhetorical style of throwing out these concepts without actually ever explaining their relationship to the fundamental objectives, which is to weaken the role of members of Parliament and strengthen the power of the Prime Minister's Office and the House leader and the cabinet—they make absolutely no attempt to explain the relationship between that reference to under-represented segments of society seeking elected office and what they're actually in a substantive way trying to do through the way they proceed.
Moving on from that, there's further discussion of what constitutes modernization. The discussion report says:
Modernization of the rules of the House also includes ways to improve the functioning of committees. It has been frequently noted that it is in committees that the substantive work of Parliament is done, and where a significant share of a Member’s parliamentary work takes place. While committees continue to function effectively, there are merits to examining ways to improve not only their effectiveness, but also their inclusivity.
That again speaks to the dissonance in some of the government's rhetorical tone in the context of this discussion paper and the reality of what they are trying to do. They are not creating more inclusive committees. What they are seeking to do through this process, in the absence of the amendment, is to create the context in which the government can unilaterally impose things on the opposition with respect to the kinds of decisions that are made, and to do so without, then, opposition members having the normal processes that are available to them such as being able to talk about their concerns.
How is it more inclusive for the kinds of interventions and the length of interventions members could make, especially when the government House leader explicitly acknowledges in her comments on these remarks that committee members generally develop a significant degree of expertise in the topics before them? The proposed time limits for committee are actually 10 minutes, which is less than.... Well, of course, the time limits in the House vary, depending on the type of measure before the House, but every bill has a period of time for 20-minute speeches.
There's actually a provision in the House for unlimited time on certain kinds of measures. I can't quite remember exactly, but I believe that the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, in certain situations if not in every situation, but certainly the mover of a government motion and certainly the person who immediately responds to the government motion has unlimited time. Unilaterally, this government wants to make changes to the Standing Orders that would place greater restrictions on the ability of members of Parliament to make long interventions in committee than in the chamber of the House of Commons. One of the things this suggests to me is that, in the process of moving unilaterally, the government is doing it rather sloppily. They haven't even reflected upon the fact there is this dissonance with the existing Standing Orders, which do permit 20-minute speeches in certain cases and unlimited time in certain cases, while they would propose to severely limit the time available for discussion at committee.
How in the world would that make committees function more effectively? In what world does that increase effectiveness or inclusivity? Certainly if the government's goal, as it seems to be with respect to the amendment and the motion, is to just get through committee work as quickly as possible, to transform committees from meaningful, deliberative bodies into rubber stamps, if that's their metric of effectiveness, then we can see where they're going. Of course, effectiveness is a concept that can be very much in the eye of the beholder. It seems that every time the government talks about effectiveness, they don't mean effectiveness from the perspective of the health and vitality of the institution; they mean effectiveness from the perspective of the interests of one particular set of actors, not even being the entire government caucus but being those on the front bench, the Prime Minister, the government House leader, and their fellow travellers.
A less slippery term than “effectiveness”, though, is “inclusivity”. Transparently, what the government is talking about doing is not enhancing inclusivity with respect to committees. Although they have contemplated a provision with respect to independence, they've applied the same point to parliamentary secretaries with respect to committees. This raises some real and obvious problems, where on the one hand the government takes this holier-than-thou stand of saying they're not going to place parliamentary secretaries on committees, but then afterwards says they're going to create a defined role for parliamentary secretaries, in addition to that of the members they already have there.
There's a legitimate debate about what role parliamentary secretaries should have on committees. I know that it was the practice of the previous government to have parliamentary secretaries as members of committees, but I think what those who objected to that practice were objecting to was not the fact that the parliamentary secretary had a vote, but the fact that the parliamentary secretary was, from their perspective, in some way impeding, as a spokesman of the government, the independent functioning of the committee. Yet when you reinsert the parliamentary secretary into the committee as an additional member doing everything short of voting, all you've done is add an additional non-voting member to the committee. The principal power of the parliamentary secretary at a committee isn't the fact that they can cast a vote; it is the ability that they might have to influence other members on behalf of the government.