We see this a lot. It's ironic that this government ran on the slogan of “real change”, because there never was change that was more unreal—and not unreal in the good sense—than the way in which they talk about changes and their supposed desires to reform our institutions. You can say they're “real changes”, but they're not real changes in the direction that most Canadians envision them happening, and they're not real changes in line with what the discussion paper refers to.
There are some points I would like to address with respect to the management of the time of the House. The discussion paper draws a comparison between different legislatures as I think a basis for implying that they would like to get rid of Friday sittings. They note that many provincial legislatures do things differently. They don't have five sitting days a week.
There is an exception, that being the United Kingdom.
Of course, it needs to be mentioned and actually is noted later in the discussion paper that we have far more members than any provincial legislature. This reflects the fact that we are a large, geographically dispersed country.
The discussion paper notes an exception, that being the United Kingdom, which does sit on some Fridays, and I don't think it's a coincidence that the United Kingdom's is also a very large legislature. When you have more members of Parliament—as Mr. Chan mentions, yes, the United Kingdom is twice our size—when you have larger legislatures, in the case of Canada or in the case of the U.K., I think it is sensible that we acknowledge that, yes, there is a different set of operating procedures that would make sense in that context to ensure that all members of Parliament can be heard.
In my home province of Alberta, there are 87 MLAs, and so the kinds of rules that would require that all 87 MLAs have an opportunity to speak on behalf of their constituents might naturally be different from the kind of rules we require here to ensure that all 338 sitting members of Parliament have an opportunity to speak on behalf of their constituents. That is fairly intuitive, and so when the government tries to create this justification, this basis for unilaterally moving in this direction by making comparisons with other legislatures, they do so without meaningfully acknowledging that different legislatures operate under different realities, and one clear difference in the realities under which they operate is the number of members of Parliament who are there.
There are some other differences with the British parliament that I want to speak about later on in the context of the way in which the House manages its schedule.
I did my master's degree in the United Kingdom, so I have a bit of a sense of our having similar institutions in a general sense while also having very different political cultures. When the government tries to justify unilaterally moving in a certain direction simply to reflect procedures that have been undertaken in the U.K., we should stop and acknowledge the different bases for the different standing orders that exist because of the important and very real differences in our political cultures, differences that are evident to members who have spent substantial amounts of time in the U.K.
The discussion of the management of time in this paper goes on to speak about how the House of Commons sits many more days and hours each year than provincial and territorial legislatures. That is true, of course, but it reflects the reality that we have more members of Parliament.
The other issue about the way this deals with Friday sittings is the tone and attitude that this discussion paper takes—and this is striking to me—with respect to the way we govern private members' business. The alternative being proposed with respect to Fridays is that, while it could be turned into a sitting day like any other, having two hours of private members' business at the end of the day could allow some members to leave early to travel to their ridings. I don't know if this was intentionally said in that way, but it's a clear expression of the government House leader, it seems to me, that somehow private members' business is less important than government orders, and that of course members might be much more willing to leave early to go home to their ridings if it were just private members' business at the end of the day.
Private members' business is critically important. A private member's bill could certainly become law, and we have private members' bills that make very dramatic changes to our national life, with much more limited debate. The Standing Orders we have prescribe only two hours of debate at second reading before the first vote occurs. It would be very rare that government legislation would move forward with the same limited debate, and there is no provision for questions and comments during private members' business except for the mover of the motion.
The government wants, to judge by the way they are proceeding and their rejection of our amendment, to unilaterally make changes that already clearly reflect a certain attitude toward private members' business. They want to do it in a way that would allow them to change the rules of private members' business. That is something we should find very concerning, especially because of the precedent it sets. When we speak about private members' business, we can refer to all kinds of rules in the Standing Orders that clearly prescribe the structure of private members' business. The intent is to protect private members from the games that a government might want to play, which negatively impact their privileges as members of Parliament to bring forward legislation that is important to them and reflects the priorities of their communities.
I think members will be familiar with these rules. The ability to bring forward a private member's bill is based on a random draw, not by party. The order that unfolds for the proposing of private members' bills is based on a random draw. There's a provision for members to trade these spots among themselves, but members can put forward those bills. They are allocated on the basis of a draw. These come to a vote. If these bills pass second reading and are referred to committee but are not considered by that committee in a certain period of time—I can't remember off the top of my head exactly what that period of time is—there is provision for their automatic referral back to the House.
Now, these Standing Orders were developed I think in the collective wisdom of the House to protect that important role that private members have, to ensure they are meaningfully able to bring forward legislation in a way that doesn't involve game playing. You could imagine that in the absence of the automatic referral provision, if the government didn't like a private member's bill, they would stack the committee with those who were like-minded with respect to that private member's bill, and then the committee would simply fail to consider that bill. Again, in their wisdom, the Standing Orders, reflecting the collective wisdom of our history in the development of them and of our institutions, insulate against that fact.
I would not want to set a precedent that the government can unilaterally, without achieving the kind of unanimous support that our amendment speaks of, change the process of private members' bills, because this would be the thin edge of the wedge. First they're saying, okay, well, we are changing it so that we have private members' bills at the end of the day on Friday so people can go home. That's the tone of the discussion here. But if we establish a precedent, if we undo what to this point has been a convention, which is for the broader engagement of members of Parliament in considerations about these kinds of things, then it becomes much easier for the government to go the next step.
This is the important thing to consider about private member's business, about every aspect of our institutions. Even with good intentions perhaps, when we undo conventions of the way in which decisions are made, we have to think not only about whether this is something we want to do right now for our immediate purposes; we have to think about the implications more broadly, more long term, for the health of those institutions. What will the likely impact of that be over time if a future government—or if later on this same government—tries to do what they perceive as further modernization, as further steps, that have the effect of further undermining and showing further disrespect for the important role that members are supposed to have in the context of private members' business? That's something that concerns me when I see the kind of language being used with respect to this whole issue.
Now, further in the discussion paper, I do want to reflect on a separate point about this issue of the way in which votes take place. I shared some thoughts last night about the broader questions of electronic voting. I am not saying I'm opposed to electronic voting, but that we need to have a discussion on its implications and to ensure that those discussions unfold in a framework in which we cannot have the government moving unilaterally. That is because if, in the context of that discussion, we discover that electronic voting reduces the willingness of members of Parliament to vote differently from the government because they feel they can simply follow the government in a relatively more anonymous way—I'm not saying that would be our conclusion, but if that were our conclusion—then the government might say, “Hey, that's a great idea; let's proceed with it then”, even if other members were saying, “No, that's not what we want to have happen at all”. If we go down the road of doing further study on an issue, I think we need to have a bit of a sense of what the implications of that would be, and we're not seeing that clarity here at all.
In terms of the time of votes, it says:
Ringing of the bells and the taking of recorded divisions is a time-consuming exercise. Electronic voting would permit each Member to record their vote and then resume other political and constituency work.
What's striking to me about this is that there are many aspects of our responsibilities that consume time, but it's not a sufficient basis to critique a practice by saying that it is consuming time. More importantly, a practice should only be critiqued if it is consuming time unnecessarily or improperly.
I see a great deal of value in the way in which we do recorded divisions. Of course, I'm open to a discussion about how these might be done differently, but the way in which we vote is an important way that members of Parliament stand up publicly and are counted clearly and visibly. With Canadians increasingly watching what we do on social media and participating in those conversations online, I think that is something that is much more immediate and practical to them. Certainly, I have shared video of members of Parliament voting, and I know other members have too. Just from tracking the response that those things get on social media, there does seem to be a real level of engagement and interest.
Indeed, there is a transparency to the kind of public approach we take with respect to recorded divisions. There is a transparency to that, which certainly still exists in a certain sense around electronic voting, but not in the same clearly identifiable and visible way. This is something that requires discussion and is a legitimate thing for us to study as a committee, but we need to make sure, if we go down that road of studying it, that ultimately the conclusion about how we proceed will be made on the basis of the public interest, not on the basis of the interests of one particular player within the process. That is the difference here. That is what should be happening, and that is not what will happen unless the amendment that has been put forward is supported and endorsed.
Again, I see the value of this discussion of the Standing Orders, but it has to be done in a context that respects the integrity of those institutions and the integrity of the processes by which those institutions have traditionally developed and evolved and changed over time.
The question of the House calendar is another issue that will be a part of this study and is, therefore, informed by the amendment and the process of study envisioned here. This is a matter that I did not have a chance to discuss yesterday. This House calendar section seems to envision expanding the number of weeks in which the House sits.
It speaks of having the House sit earlier in January, later in June, and earlier in September. There is no mention here of sitting in July and August, but there is mention of expanding the sittings in three months of the year: January, June, and September. In the case of January, we have almost no sittings—I guess sometimes we sit on the 31st—and in the case of the other months, they are less than the full month.
What we have is the government proposing, on the one hand, that we reduce the number of days we sit, and on the other hand that we expand the number of weeks we sit. It would probably be appropriate to reflect a bit on the implication that the change they are advocating would have for the carbon footprint of members of Parliament. What presently happens, with the House sitting five days a week, is that members can come here and stay for a longer period of time at once, and then those who live outside of driving distance would fly home. What the government is envisioning doing here is creating a dynamic in which members of Parliament sit for shorter weeks at a time but a larger number of shorter weeks, so there is a lot more flying back and forth involved. I do enjoy those red-eye flights, Mr. Chair, but we need to acknowledge the impacts they would have on our environment, something that seemed to be important, at least verbally, in terms of the comments of government members.
Also, there is the impact on the effectiveness of our work, when we have more starting and stopping as opposed to the continuation of the work of the House for a certain time.
I think we could continue with our current system for Friday and other sittings. When members of Parliament are coming all the way from British Columbia, Alberta, and the Maritimes, as well as from places that are relatively close but still not that close, they are staying here for a longer period of time to do their work, rather than coming for shorter periods of time but more often. That's potentially a sensible way to proceed.
The way in which we traditionally approach the House calendar—as far as I recall the Standing Orders, and I could be wrong on this—I don't think there is anything to preclude sittings at some of the times that have been mentioned: earlier in September, later in June, and a different time in January. The sense is that the way it happens now is through conversation among the House leaders. Perhaps the whips are involved as well, but there are conversations among representatives of parties, sometimes also involving those who are not members of recognized parties, and then the presentation of a House calendar that reflects the agreement, the considered judgment of the people who represent all of the caucuses. That's the kind of unfolding of the development of the House calendar that normally occurs.
Again, this is a unilaterally introduced document, which, in the context of the motion and in the absence of—