Evidence of meeting #55 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was opposition.
A video is available from Parliament.
NDP
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
I think there's some negotiation. I think his original intent was to suspend.
Liberal
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Thank you.
My point is that in one paragraph of the government House leader's paper, you have to deal with conventional arrangements, dealing with the House leaders' meetings, that have been in existence for a long time and that have done a great deal to keep the sand out of the ears around this place. You have the problem of the impartiality of the Speaker, who I think wants to go to great lengths to keep it as impartial as possible. Any sane Speaker does.
Again, maybe there's a way around this that I can't think of. We would want to go and speak to actual Speakers who've dealt with this sort of thing before.
Mr. Chair, you weren't here in the last Parliament.
Who was here in the last Parliament?
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Yes, you were.
Blake was here.
Is that it?
Arnold, you were here at the end of the last Parliament. You got elected in a by-election partway through, so you were also here.
I proposed an amendment to the Standing Orders toward the end of the last Parliament that was actually adopted. It was an amendment to change the way in which the Speaker was elected from the former runoff system to a preferential system.
Notwithstanding my reputation for not liking preferential voting, I just want to be on the record as saying that for certain situations it's actually the right system.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Yes, for this sort of thing it is. It also works well for electing party leaders.
Conservative
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
I do not agree with that. I do not enjoy those: all day.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I'm still trying to meet all the people I would have met that day.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
It speeds things up considerably.
We'll see how much fun you think this is and we'll be here until three in the morning.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
That has actually happened with the election of the Speaker. I think it went on for 13 hours.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
In my research, I looked it up. They had almost as many candidates for Speaker, I think in 1988, as we have for leader of the Conservative Party right now with a version of the same problem. We actually have a problem where we can only get 10 names on the voting machines, but not on the ballot, because they just assume you'd never get more than 10 candidates, and we have 14.
I think they had 11 candidates and it took about an hour or an hour and a half to go through.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
I have completely lost my train of thought. Help me out here someone.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
Do you want to go back to cruise ships?
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
No, I do not. I have avoided cruise ships my entire life.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
Well, we've got to get you started on that. I think that's the way to go.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
I have a niece who works on a cruise ship. I promised myself I would actually talk about things that were relevant here, so I'm trying to get back to that because I was on a relevant theme that I lost.
