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.