Exactly. I could go home right now and finish the last chapter or so of my dissertation. It's a good thought.
This brings me back to the concept of the Standing Orders and how they're seen, how they're developed, and how they were used over time. I always like to use examples. Standing Order 11, the concept of naming, is a good example of how we as parliamentarians can look at this practice and how it has changed over time.
First and foremost, we need to recognize what the purpose of naming is. It is to provide the Speaker with the power to bring decorum and order to the House of Commons. It would be, or should be seen as, a deterrent, ideally. The threat of being named, the threat of being called out in front of your colleagues ought to be seen as a deterrent, but at the same time, naming and being escorted out of the chamber could also be a punishment as well, so there are two sides to that.
The practice of actually escorting members out of the chamber was extremely common for a period of time, particularly in the 1970s, 1980s, and into the 1990s, but the last time a member was actually escorted out of the chamber was in 2002. Again, we've gone 15 years without a member actually being escorted out of the chamber. It's still nonetheless in our Standing Orders. It's still part of it, but it has really fallen into a practice of disuse, of non-use, by the Speaker. In a little bit I'll talk about why I think some of that might be.
When I was struck with this idea, I thought, you know, let's look at why, let's look at where this standing order developed and how it changed. In written form it was amended from time to time through the Standing Orders. It's important to note how that was amended in the Standing Orders. Then after those changes, post the official amendments, it changed from a practical standpoint again, going back to the usual practices of the House.
There are notes from O'Brien and Bosc on pages 642 to 643. They note that during the first period of Confederation, and they use the first 64 years of Confederation until the first change happened, it was a very rare occurrence. It was very rare for a member to be named and then escorted out, so much so that in that period of 64 years it only happened once. In that case, the member wasn't even escorted out of the chamber; they were simply named. He obviously came to order, and there was no longer an issue.
Even going further, when it was enshrined in the Standing Orders in 1927, it was still not a common occurrence. We can speculate on why that was. There could be a lot of reasons. Decorum may have been different. It may have been seen as an old boys' club, which it certainly was at the time. It very much was a male-dominated chamber, with some of the negative things that come with that. So it was very rare in the period from 1927 to 1964. There was only a practice of this happening in eight recorded instances in a significant period of time, so again, it was relatively rare but there was an added issue that went with it. That is, when a member was named, he or she—again, it was always male MPs at this time—wouldn't be immediately escorted out of the House of Commons. A minister of the crown—it had to be a minister of the crown—would move a motion that the member be suspended for the remainder of the sitting day. That would then be put to a vote, and the members would be called in to vote.
Again, there wasn't a great deal written on this at the time and it wasn't seen as a major issue. One speculation we can take from this period time is that from the hassle and the challenge of going through this process it was really curtailed. It put the Speaker in a tough position as well. We like to see the Speaker as a neutral officiant, as a neutral observer, as not being engaged directly in partisan politics on either side. In this set-up, in the way the standing order was designed at the time, it forced the Speaker to rely on a government minister to help in decorum. It meant that once the Speaker brought to order a member, named the member—a very serious offence—he then had to rely on the government to help further that decorum.
It makes the...prevents the challenge of a member from an opposition party or a government party being brought to order, whether a minister of the crown would be willing or unwilling to do that. It's a challenge, and it could point to one of the reasons we saw such a disuse.
Nonetheless, during this period, there were some significant instances of how this standing order was used by the Speaker to bring order, but also, at the same time, by the opposition as a tool to express their dissatisfaction with the government.
One particular instance was during the famous pipeline debate of 1956. For those who have read some of the history from that time period, it is sometimes cited that this pipeline debate may have been part of the reason for the St-Laurent government's eventual downfall the following year to the Diefenbaker government, that whole debate at the time.
In 1956 there was a member of Parliament, a Conservative MP by the name of Donald Fleming. At the time, he tried to raise a question of privilege related to the pipeline debate. He kept doing so, despite being told by the Speaker that he was out of order. He made numerous and multiple attempts to do so. The chairman—it was a committee of the whole at the time—ordered the MP to return to his seat. The MP simply would not return to his seat, refusing a direct order to do so.
What happened then is that, because it was a committee of the whole—a process that we, as parliamentarians, are aware of, though it doesn't happen as often as it did in the past—the chairman left the chair and related the incident to the Speaker. The Speaker retook the chair. The Speaker then cited historical precedent and ruled that, because he wasn't there, he had no choice but to accept what the chairman of the committee of the whole had done. He found that the member had directly disobeyed the chair. He named the member, and he sought to have a government minister withheld.
The challenge, though, is that when you are relying, as in this case, on a minister of the crown to move a motion, you may be a long time waiting for that motion. That's what happened in this case, because once the Speaker had made the ruling, the opposition leader—then a gentleman by the name of George Drew, who would've been very close to his final days as leader—appealed the Speaker's ruling and then forced a vote on the appeal of the Speaker's ruling. In a situation in which the Speaker—and in this case the chairman, as well—is trying to use naming to bring order and decorum to the House, the opposition is actually able to use this to cause additional disorder and force a vote, as well.
So it's a procedural tool for the benefit of the opposition, but also potentially an opportunity for the government and the Speaker to do that. As a follow-up to the outcome of that specific issue, once the Speaker's ruling was upheld by a motion from the House, the vote was held and the member was ordered removed. He willingly removed himself. The theatrics involved in it were certainly a fascinating opportunity.