Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 21st, 2017

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

If he did that for everything, he wouldn't stop talking.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

That might become an issue if we had to yield the floor to him then, which we will not do just yet.

Silence means something, and when you don't speak up on behalf of Parliament as a parliamentarian, you will find, maybe not in this Parliament, but maybe in the next or the one thereafter, that you will regret it. You will say that you wish you had spoken up and stopped this from going off into a bad structure that led to the rules being changed in a way that has now hurt your ability to represent your constituents and your ability to leave Parliament in a better place than when you took it on as a parliamentarian.

You become a steward the day you take your seat, not the day you are elected. The day you take your seat, you became a steward of Parliament. Your job is not to steward the government. The government has the executive council. Every minister is there to steward the Government of Canada, to leave it in a better place than it was before.

As a Conservative, I would think they should spend less money. That would be my great hope. Hope springs eternal, and I'll always believe that. However, for Parliament to function well, we have to be the defenders of the Standing Orders, the rules of the House that protect us as members. We cannot allow a government document....

I find one of these things galling, to the point I made very early on about this concept of the board. The Parliament of Canada, the Senate and the House of Commons together, are not the Government of Canada. We are like the board of directors of an extremely important organization. We tell them what to do; they don't tell us what to do.

When I worked for the Human Resources Institute of Alberta, I would never have produced a document like this, telling my board everything I thought they should do and where they should change, unless they had given me direction and told me to do it and had told me what format to use, and never would I have ordered it done by June 2, 2017. It's such a short timeline. It took us well over a year just to get to the point where we were ready to accept a new standards of practice and a code of ethical conduct that I helped to write, but it was the members who proceeded to write it.

The board of directors of an organization—a corporation or a not-for-profit corporation—is just the same as every single parliamentarian in Parliament, whether in the Senate or the House of Commons. It's not a perfect comparison, but it's pretty close. We have an executive team and we have an executive, and that's where it kind of gets convoluted sometimes.

However, this document is written by the Government of Canada, by the leader of the Government in the House of Commons, and there's a little flag on the top left side. I'm looking at the French here. It's the same thing. It's on the Government of Canada's website. I have a real problem with the Government of Canada telling us to change our rules so they can get their business done more efficiently, by which they mean faster, not more efficiently.

They really believe that this place is adversarial in nature, that we're adversaries. You heard Mr. Genuis say this, and I'll say it too, because I agree with him on this point: we're not in a sports competition. It's not me against you. It's not me against the government caucus. It's not us against the world. We're a deliberative body. We debate, and debate takes a long time, because we're trying to achieve consensus and co-operate on ideas. We're trying to find where we agree, and because the issues are so important and because the stakes are so high, it could take hours of time.

We've already spent, I think, four days debating this, Mr. Chair. Is it four days?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

It's something like that.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

It's something like that. Three days? We're at this point and we still have not found consensus. I would say that trust has gone down as time has gone on.

I would also say that consensus is more elusive now than it was before, but we're still trying to find a way to co-operate, despite that. We take opportunities to suspend the meeting. We take opportunities to talk outside this room, offline, to try to find a way to proceed, but for us on the opposition side—Mr. Christopherson can back me up on this—this amendment to the motion is critical. We have to do this in this manner. I cannot see a way around changing the rules in such a way because the executive team of the board has told us we need to change or redo things because we're too slow.

I didn't realize that slowness was a vice that Parliament needed to fix. Government is slow. Government still hasn't fixed the Phoenix pay system fiasco, which I find ridiculous. Payroll would be the most basic thing to get right in human resources. Paying your employees on time should be the most basic thing any organization can do.

I see that Mr. Cuzner is joining us, which is good, because we need another experienced member at the table.

“Modernization”, as used in this government document, is also another euphemism for telling us that we're old and we don't work well, which I think is also false. That starts from a false premise, so how can we proceed, then, without this unanimous agreement to implement something in this document?

Why should we allow the executive team to tell the board of directors about all these deficiencies and then tell them to fix it themselves? The executive team wasn't picked by the membership, or in this case, by the electors; we parliamentarians were picked by the electors. Then the majority, the government caucus side, decided that the Prime Minister and his team would make the best executive. They chose them, and then they have executive staff who write these types of documents.

It shouldn't be up to them to then turn around and tell us what to do.

I would have been fine with it if the committee had done a study over maybe two to three years and had looked at all the issues, maybe broken down into different themes such as private members' business and programming—different things to look at over time—and then, only by unanimous agreement, had moved forward with proposing it to the House. We could have let the government draw up some rules that could then come back here, but that is not how this went.

This went the other way. The executive team told us that we're too slow and that we can't get their business done in our chamber, but as parliamentarians, it is our chamber. It doesn't belong to the Government of Canada. They're obliged to go through us in order to get their legislation passed. Is the Constitution too slow? Does it need modernizing?

I remember growing up when the constitutional debates were all you ever heard on the six o'clock news, and I would watch the six o'clock news because I was waiting to watch Star Trek at 7 p.m.

I see that Mr. Chan is a fan as well.

I have a real hang-up on that part of it, that this all went down.... I said in my outline that I would speak about this specific point, because I was a member of the executive team of the HR institute, and I would never do something like this without the board's consent and express direction.

We didn't get that here. They're telling us what to do. They're telling us we're too slow. If we're too slow, you could say that the Constitution is too slow, and there's nothing wrong with it. It works just fine.

We can all agree and unanimously consent to exceptions to the rules that will make this place function better, but we won't find that, Mr. Chair.

I see that the lights are going off.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

We're just going to check.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Okay. I'll keep talking, because I don't like dead air, just like on radio.

The freedom we have, which every single member of the government caucus has, is the freedom.... Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. Any one of you has the right to be wrong—

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

I'm sorry. We'll suspend. There's a vote. We'll be back after that.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I'm in the middle of my thought.

[An hon. member]

You were just getting started with that.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

We're back.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thanks, Chair. I seek your guidance.

So far, you have consistently refused to allow the committee to suspend for us to attend question period, supported by the majority government, and unless your intention is to do something different today, I would assume that once again we'll be denied the opportunity to participate in question period as we sit here.

My question, my query, is this. The rules provide, Chair, that whenever there is a vote, as soon as the bells start ringing no committee can continue to do their work unless there's an unanimous agreement to do so. Obviously we don't have that here, so every time there's a vote, the lights come on, you adjourn, we go upstairs, and we're allowed to exercise our right to vote.

[An hon. member]

Suspend.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Suspend—yes, I'm sorry.

Now, my understanding is that there are three votes after question period and no bells. If we are not allowed to participate in question period, how will we know when it's time to vote? How will I be able to vote if I'm expected to carry out my responsibilities here at PROC? I also have an obligation to my constituents to be in the House and casting my precious vote on the matter before us, but under the current regime that you have structured for us, I find myself at this point unable to fulfill one of those two obligations.

I seek your guidance on how you can help me recognize my rights, privileges, and obligations vis-à-vis the vote that's going to happen without bells.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes, the votes. That's a very good point.

Mr. Chan.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

If I may, I'll respond to the commentary from Mr. Christopherson.

Let me say that I am sympathetic to your position. The chair actually has no discretion. Standing Order 115(5) of course requires committees to suspend when the bells come on. For the purposes of today, the government will suspend in advance of question period, so that all members can attend and we can exercise our privilege to vote on the matters that will come immediately after question period.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes, I'll suspend at two o'clock so you can go to question period.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I want to thank Mr. Chan. I'm hoping that senior staffer isn't in the room and runs up and tells him once again that he can't do that, because the last time he tried to be reasonable, his senior staff wouldn't let him. I'm assuming that this time it will hold.

The only thing I would ask, then, Chair, is what your intention is in terms of reconvening. When would that be?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Ten minutes after the votes: is that good?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Sure. That's great. Thank you.

I thank Mr. Chan and you, Chair, for allowing us the chance to exercise our rights.

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

While we're on this point, Mr. Chair, I understand that's the intention for today, but based on the so-called conversation we had last night with the government House leader when we suspended our meeting, in which she continually referred to wanting to have a conversation, there was clearly no intention to actually have the conversation.

She told us to carry on, that they're not really too interested in trying to do anything to make sure the opposition has any kind of say. We expect this will go on for some time, unless she has a change of heart, because [Technical difficulty—Editor] if you're still undecided. She wants to continue to claim that she wants to have a conversation, but not really to have one, and therefore has no desire to let there be any opportunity for the opposition to hold the government accountable. We could very well be in a position where there could be several weeks of question period that members would be expected to miss.

As far as today goes, it's appreciated so that we don't miss our vote. Certainly, question period is an important part of the day for all members, and I wonder what your intentions are for future question periods.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

I'll take that under advisement and think about it. I hadn't really thought that far ahead. I'm hoping we can come to some solution.