Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 21st, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

I just wanted to say to Elizabeth May, you can't take advantage of not being an official party by being able to leave before midnight.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

I got permission from my whip. She's really mean most of the time, but yes.

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

Going back to this issue, the title of the article is “The Opportunities and Frustrations of Backbenchers”. What I find somewhat interesting about this article is that although it's written by Mr. Stanfield, he never actually served as a backbencher. In his 30 years of service, he was never a backbencher. He was a premier for many years, and he was also a party leader. He never actually served as a backbencher. Yet, being in the leadership position, he nonetheless presented a great opportunity to hear the concerns of backbenchers. On page 6 of the Canadian Parliamentary Review, he writes:

During my thirty years in politics I was on the receiving end of many complaints from unhappy backbenchers but perhaps never as many as during the early sixties when we held all but four seats in the Nova Scotia legislature. In such circumstances it is very difficult to convince backbenchers on the government side that they are of the slightest importance to the government or to the legislature. It was practically a fulltime job!

That's an interesting commentary. Sometimes the larger the minority, the more concerns you have with your own party. One of the great advantages that a party leader has is the ability to dole out great rewards, but there can only be so many cabinet ministers. There can only be so many parliamentary secretaries, and when those—

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Do you have any comments on when Frank McKenna had an entire legislature of Liberal members, every single member?

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

That was exceptionally efficient, but I don't think we should be striving for efficiency. In government we can always be more efficient in a lot of ways, but not having—

Is there a commentary?

[An hon. member]

[Inaudible--Editor]

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

Oh.

Just very briefly, I want to finish my thought on this. A functioning legislature, a functioning house of Parliament, needs an opposition. It is one of the four functions that I referenced at the beginning. Not having an opposition is sure going to be exceptionally efficient, but it also moves the discussion out of the public. When you have a large majority or an ultimate majority, in that case, the debate no longer happens in the House or in the legislature, but it happens in the caucus meetings. It happens behind closed doors, and so you're really taking the visible element of debate and putting it inside.

We have seen that in other circumstances, Alberta, for example, with large majorities. There actually have been public comments from different people who have said—tongue in cheek, I hope—that maybe those types of government should just do all of their work in caucus and avoid the publicity. I'm hoping that was somewhat tongue in cheek, but that impression can happen. If you don't have an opposition, you can pass legislation at the drop of a dime, rather than having the opposition. I mean at the drop of a hat—I keep mixing my metaphors.

There was a comment. I'm happy to....

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Nater.

In previous editions of this filibuster, we've heard people talk about some of the procedural aspects. It's great to hear the different members actually engaging tonight in many of the different aspects brought up in the discussion paper itself, particularly around how the House might operate better; whether the power should reside with the House leaders or whether there should be backbencher powers; and how and why Fridays are good or bad.

I think this is important, but Mr. Nater had made a comment when I waved for your attention, Mr. Chair. He was talking about the roles and allocations of baubles by the House leaders. I am interested to hear how he feels about how procedural matters, allocation of debating rights, and matters relating to allocation of committee representation could be handled in a reformed parliament.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Go ahead, Mr. Nater.

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

Sure.

Thank you, Chair, and I appreciate the question because it's an interesting commentary. My initial comment actually referred to the party leadership in the sense of parliamentary secretary positions and cabinet positions, the exclusive purview of the party leader, the Prime Minister. That was where my initial comments were.

I'm happy to expand on that a little. First, I would say that allocation of those positions is the undeniable right of the Prime Minister, without question, to have an effective, functioning parliament.

I'm not sure where I put my Eugene Forsey book, regarding the confidence convention. There's no question that we cannot change collective and individual ministerial responsibility, from that standpoint.

But to discuss further the questions of committee membership and speaking times in the House of Commons, we have to remember that so much of this is done by convention. It's done by the usual channels. It's not written down in our Standing Orders that speaking times will be done by a roster.

I know, Ms. May, who has now left—actually, I shouldn't have said that, because you can't recognize that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

It's okay in committee.

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

Oh, it's okay in committee. I'm learning something new.

I had a commentary about—

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I'm just curious about something. I was just wondering if you can call people a liar in committee too.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Well, you already have.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I have? When did I do that? Was that in one of the emails I read? That was somebody else who said that and I was just reading it, I guess.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Okay, I guess.

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

Actually, officially speaking, those who get to speak in the House of Commons are those catch the eye of the Speaker.

We do have from time to time debates in the House of Commons that are not regularly scheduled. We've seen this a couple of times with debates on questions of privilege, for example, when a motion of privilege is moved and there is no roster available. In those case the whips hadn't had an opportunity to.... So, I stand up and catch the Speaker's attention and I speak.

In questions and comments, for example, after a debate in the House of Commons, it's always whoever catches the eye of the Speaker. The Speaker has his or her discretion and I know our Speaker and deputy speakers try to follow some kind of pattern. Conservative Speakers typically go to a government MP or a third party MP, and so on and so forth. That structure is in place.

In terms of committee memberships and how they get allocated, I think most caucuses have a system in which members make requests as to what their preferred committee is. There has to be some kind of organization there for allocation. You can't have 30 members wanting to sit on the procedure and House affairs committee when there are only so many spots—or no members, for that matter. I would expect this is a very popular committee, if only to serve with you, Mr. Chair.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

I'm buttering up the chair, yes.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Oh, oh!

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

Thank you.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Don't you think he's had enough already?

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

I'm never going to catch up to Mr. Christopherson.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Can we just hold on for a second?

Ms. Kwan.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Again, thank you to the member for yielding the floor to me for a minute.

While we are discussing different ideas on reform, there's something that's not in the discussion paper that I'd like to throw out there for consideration. I'm a bit astounded. Actually there are many things I'm astounded about— I'm a new member after all here in this arena. We have these budgets in which governments spend significant amounts of money in certain departments, etc. The scrutiny of that is very limited. It gets referred to committee and then on a rotating basis, each of us gets seven minutes to ask the minister questions for one hour on that, and then for one hour with the officials. So it's two hours in total of scrutiny of millions or billions of dollars in spending.

You just have to wonder, what is wrong with that picture? I don't think Canadians necessarily know that's the level of scrutiny we're limited to. In my committee, in my area, which is immigration, refugees and citizenship, this year we had supplementary estimates. There was a cabinet shuffle. The minister rolled in the new mandate letter, the supplementary estimates, and the main estimates all into one session and came to committee for two hours. That was it. That's the level of scrutiny we're talking about. I just have to wonder. If we really want a functioning parliament, with vigorous debate and real accountability, shouldn't we be reforming that to allow for more scrutiny of budgets? Again, I come from the provincial arena in dealing with budget estimates, as we call them. We get to question ministers on their spending, mostly subject to the opposition's decision on which ministry they want to discuss and the length of time of debate. I have done an estimates debate with a minister of finance, meaning a ministry of finance, for one week—every day, for a full day—with questions that get to the bottom of things.

Here we have this strange system. We get seven minutes. It just blows my mind the lack of scrutiny of that. It's quite frightening. As long as we're talking about reform, let's throw that up for discussion, because I would love it if we could improve that system. I think it's better for every government, no matter who is there.

Mr. Chair, while we're having this discussion around this, I fail to understand why the House leader from the government side keeps talking about having a conversation. I don't think the issue is about having a conversation. I think the real issue is that the government wants to have the ability to say no. When you have one side who can say no, on behalf of everyone else, or one side who can say yes, on behalf of everyone else, you create an environment in which all sides are not working hard enough to find an agreement. This is where we have to get to, I think, that place where we can find agreement.

So, on the amendment that the Conservative member has tabled, if we really want to get something here, why can't we just agree? We can agree to say, “All right, nobody gets a veto per se; nobody gets to override another. We all have to work hard to get to an agreement and follow the tradition of all parties having to agree to substantive changes.” These are substantive changes, and agreeing to do what I just said would ensure that everybody worked hard. Compromise, giving something in order to adjust some proposal, to get to a place where we can all be in agreement, would be something new. That would be something to remember. That would be something that we could all be proud of when we bring forward the changes.

In that spirit, I'm hoping that maybe there can be real conversations, conversations on the topics that we can add to the discussion paper, and then we can agree to all work on it together, with agreement on what those final changes might look like.