Exactly. I got distracted by my dear colleagues.
There is an interesting thing about the concept of naming. We talked a little bit—and I appreciated the interventions from my colleagues—on how these types of things can be used in provincial legislatures to basically cause, if not a disruption, at least an awareness to an issue at hand. No one is going to disrupt the proceedings, disrupt the flow of the House of Commons for no purpose whatsoever. That doesn't benefit anyone. That doesn't benefit the perpetrator or the government; it's simply not the case. There's always a reason to do so, whether it's to delay legislation, or to bring the media awareness or the public awareness, which I think Mr. Blaikie noted very well there, as well.
One of the challenges I think with the specific issue of Standing Order 11, with the concept of naming and removing MPs from the House of Commons in the way it's evolved and developed, is that public awareness side of things. We talk a little bit about the relative disuse of this concept in the early part of Confederation. It peaked from time to time with some exciting process, but something happened in the 1970s that really caused this issue to spike. Between 1978 and 1986, a total of 23 members of Parliament were named during that eight-year period, a significant increase from all the years prior combined. A significant number of members were named, beginning in 1978. This then begged the question of, what was so significant about the late 1970s that all of a sudden we saw a significant change?
CPAC, the televising of Parliament, was happening around that exact time. One of those things, when you're making these changes, is the law of unintended consequences. This is one great example. Opening up the doors of Parliament and bringing in the cameras was not an uncontroversial thing at the time. It was a significant controversial issue. If we look to the other place, the other place still isn't televised, and here we are in 2017. It shows the controversy that can go with making changes to the way the government operates, the way the House of Commons operates. The change in the late 1970s to televise has certainly provided members of Parliament with the opportunity to get a bit of publicity, to get a bit of opportunity to make the local news that night, which is one of the reasons why we saw so many members in this eight-year period being named by the Speaker, being removed, forcing a vote and disrupting Parliament—it was good TV. If we look at regular debate on CPAC outside of the one hour period with S.O. 31s and question period, there's some interesting information being shared, but I suspect that CPAC's viewership is somewhat lower at all times outside that period. Don't take this as gospel, but I believe from a past committee appearance that CPAC has about 90,000 viewers during that one hour of question period, which is by far its highest viewership of the day. It does show that people are tuning in to a very specific aspect of parliamentary debate. If there's an opportunity to cause a bit of excitement, members will be inclined to do so. I think this is the case with that we saw beginning in 1978 to 1986; this was being used as a tool to draw attention and to draw a bit of publicity.
It's interesting how so many things that we discuss in this committee dovetail. This discussion of the concept of naming was then addressed by the McGrath report in 1985. The recommendation that it made was that the need for a vote, the need for a minister of the crown to move a motion, should be removed. That change was implemented initially on a temporary basis in the Standing Orders. We see this from time to time: a standing order is amended and given a sunset, given a temporary status, to see how a standing order works, to see how a change works. That was what happened with the naming, as recommended by the McGrath report. At that time—June 3, 1987—the changes were made to the current wording that we today have in the House of Commons.
In the temporary period, there was only one MP who was named at that time. We already started to see a bit of a decrease. Those changes were made in 1987. We're currently in 2017, 30 years later. There have only been 12 namings in that period of time, so they're relatively rare in that period.
Even more interesting is that, in that 30-year period, all the namings took place in less than 10 years, in a relatively short period from March 1993 to December 6, 2002. In each case, the reason for the naming was the same, and it would be the same in pretty much any case, and it was for defying the authority of the Speaker. We as parliamentarians elect our Speaker. Even before the Speakers were elected, when they were effectively appointed and then moved on a voice vote, the Speaker was the ultimate authority in the House of Commons.
Speakers are put there to maintain order, yes, but also to serve as the defender of the rights of parliamentarians. Sometimes I think the Speaker gets unfairly painted as a referee, and people in the public, people watching on TV, see the Speaker as a referee, as someone who is trying to maintain order in the House of Commons. Really, the Speaker's role is so much more than that. The Speaker's role is to defend each and every parliamentarian, defend our privileges as MPs in the ability to do our duty. We've seen that in the past when the Speaker has ruled, made comments on questions of privilege, even on points of order as well, his duty is in that exception.
When we put the Speaker into that position, we elect him or her—and we have had a female Speaker, Jeanne Sauvé. It would be nice to see more female chair occupants, in politics in general but in the House of Commons speakership position as well.
When we put the Speaker in there, we invest him or her with a certain degree of authority. When members defy that authority, it is a blight on members as a whole and on the entire House. When members defy the Speaker, as in the example cited in the naming convention, there has to be some form of issue to be had. That's what happened in this case. There were 12 different examples, and in each example, the member was named for defying the authority of the Speaker.
I always like numbers. I always like to point out party affiliations and where these MPs came from. There were 12 MPs. Half of them, six, were from one political party, the Bloc Québecois. Of the remaining six, four were from the Reform Party and the remaining two were from the New Democrats. It is an interesting distribution. At the time, they were all opposition MPs. There were never government MPs named. Again, that makes sense from a procedure standpoint.
Many of the specific issues don't really necessarily have defying the authority of the Speaker as a starting point. No one is going to get up and simply defy the Speaker without a reason to do so. Going back to some of this conversation of dilatory motions, about disrupting the flow of the House of Commons, we have a reason for it. In each of these cases it typically linked to unparliamentary language, but there's a reason for that unparliamentary language.
The first example in this 10-year period was on March 24, 1993, in the 34th Parliament under the speakership of John Fraser, who incidentally was the first elected Speaker in the House of Commons. He was fisheries minister beforehand. I wasn't around in 1986 when he was elected Speaker. There was an argument that he was elected Speaker because he was seen as one of the people least likely to be favourable to the government of the day. There is some gamesmanship that can happen from time to time.
What happened in the first example, under the current Standing Orders, was that an NDP MP by the name of David Barrett, whose riding was Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, was heckling. He was implying that the House leader of the day Harvie Andre had lied. He used unparliamentary language, and that's not a word that parliamentarians can use in a debate. He implied that the government House leader did so. That was uncalled for, and Speaker Fraser demanded that the word be withdrawn. Mr. Barrett, refused to do so, was named, and was suspended for the remainder of the sitting day.
The interesting thing is that it wasn't that he used words that were unparliamentary. From time to time we sometimes slip up, and we sometimes say things that we ought not to say, both in the House and outside of the House. Typically, if we do so, and we're called out on it, we apologize. We withdraw the comment. The question is, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you, in some of these cases, do that? Often there's a reason.
In this particular case, he was making a point regarding NAFTA. The House of Commons was debating, at the time, the ratification of NAFTA, the member was referring to guerrilla tactics regarding the legislation, and it was one particular way that he wasn't going to be able to stop the legislation from going through. The PC Party at the time had a majority. He was using the concept of naming, the concept of causing a disruption, to disrupt the flow. It's an example, again, of the unintended consequences of an effort to increase decorum, but at the same time it gives the opposition, any member of Parliament, the opportunity to make a point of something.
In 1993, of course, we had the famous election in October. I was in grade 3 at the time, but I remember that election well. That was the first election I remember watching on TV. I became interested in politics incidentally in June of '93 watching the PC leadership convention on TV, and watching Kim Campbell beat out Jean Charest as leader of the PC Party. That was my first hook into politics, and I have been interested in it ever since. That was in June. Later in October, being a young expert on politics, as I thought at the time, I watched the election results come in, and saw the PC Party be reduced to two seats, Elsie Wayne and Jean Charest, at the time. We recently lost Elsie Wayne; she passed away not too long ago.