My favourite standing order is Standing Order 11, so much so that when I was a young graduate student at Western University, the first academic conference I attended was actually here on Parliament Hill. It was in 2011. It was hosted by the Bell Chair at Carleton University, named after Dick and Ruth Bell, two prominent Ottawans. Dick Bell was a government minister under John Diefenbaker and he passed away several years ago, in the 1980s. Ruth Bell was a prominent women's rights advocate. Her memoir was Be a “Nice” Girl! in reference to a situation where she was asked to sign over her voting rights to a bank chair at an annual meeting. So she made a significant contribution.
The Bell family endowed a chair at Carleton University on the study of parliamentary democracy in Canada. In 2011 they hosted a conference entitled “Democracy at a Crossroads?” It was hosted both here at Parliament Hill, next door in the Commonwealth Room where I delivered a paper, and at Carleton University.
At the time, I had this interest in Standing Order 11, and I decided to put pen to paper. It wasn't actually pen to paper, it was fingers to a keyboard, and I typed away on Standing Order 11.
I'm going to read Standing Order 11 into the record. Paragraph 11(1)(a) states:
The Speaker shall be vested with the authority to maintain order by naming individual Members for disregarding the authority of the Chair and, without resort to motion, ordering their withdrawal for the remainder of that sitting, notwithstanding Standing Order 15.
It goes on to say this in paragraph 11(1)(b):
In the event of a Member disregarding an order of the Chair made pursuant to paragraph (a) of this section, the Speaker shall order the Sergeant-at-Arms to remove the Member.
The second part of Standing Order 11, paragraph 11(2), is the order against irrelevance or repetition:
The Speaker or the Chair of Committees of the Whole, after having called the attention to the House, or of the Committee, to the conduct of a Member who persists in irrelevance, or repetition, may direct the Member to discontinue his or her speech, and if then the Member still continues to speak, the Speaker shall name the Member or, if in Committee of the Whole, the Chair shall report the Member to the House.
Irrelevance or repetition is a side issue. My interest is in the naming side of things. Those who follow the Ontario legislature from time to time will know that naming is a fairly common occurrence in that legislature. Just last week, a member from Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, Bill Walker, a fairly mild-mannered member, was removed from the Ontario legislature for disregarding the authority of the chair for not withdrawing comments he made in relation to school closures directed at the Minister of Education. The Speaker saw the wisdom, as is his right, to remove the member for the remainder of the sitting day.
Members may recall that a few years ago two members of the Ontario legislature were asked to be removed but did not willingly leave the legislature. That was Bill Murdoch, a fairly unique character who was certainly well known in Ontario; and Randy Hillier, another MP. They refused to leave the legislature. It was almost a filibuster but without spoken words; they simply sat there. For as long as they sat there, they remained in the legislature—