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.
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Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
I'm probably helping you guys out right now, so I'm not even retaliating. What I'm doing is probably helping with your filibuster and giving you some time to think and debate—
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
—but retaliation, Jamie, is a very interesting word that you're using here. It's exactly the point I'm trying to make that right now we're in a place where you put forward an idea and we'll oppose it. That's where we are.
Conservative
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
That's what's going to happen. That's the trust that I've lost even going into maybe a fulsome discussion about this study, that if the idea is brought forward by a government member, the attitude has probably become that we will oppose that idea because it comes from that member.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
That's not true. We've had a number of unanimous consent bills.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
In terms of having a discussion, what has happened is that Mr. Simms has brought a motion that, based on this discussion paper, this committee engage in a study. Wow, that's mind-blowing.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
You can't do that with a gun to our head.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
That's the work that committees do. We engage in studies every day. All the committees that we have in Parliament engage in those discussions, but what we do here is call for votes. I get that it's a tactic. That's fine. Go ahead. Continue doing that. You have every right and no one is saying that will be taken away by having this discussion either.
However, I think most reasonable people who are watching, coming into this House would think, “Wow, if I called a motion, that I really wanted a vote on something, at least I should stand up and vote for that motion that I proposed.” What happened is that the Conservatives are proposing these motions and then voting against their very own motions. Does that seem reasonable? I think not. I think most Canadians would not see that as reasonable.
I understand that you might not want to see things change in certain areas. That's understandable. We can talk about that. The opposition needs to have some tools in their belt in order to feel as though they also have a valid place in this Parliament and they're able to make an impact. I understand that, but no one is talking about taking away every tool that they have. We've obviously seen parliaments from Scotland and Austria that don't allow for filibusters to go on endlessly. Maybe we could still allow for filibusters to happen, but we can still amend the rules. These are talks we can get into.
There are a lot of things that can happen but don't have to happen if you don't want them to happen in that way, but we can still talk about them. That's the thing. We are being stopped from even engaging in a substantive conversation about these things. Let's not just talk about them with each other; let's have expert people, expert witnesses come in and give us their feedback on what should be done and what doesn't work. I'm sure we're going to be able to find lots of experts who can talk about the role of oppositions and the crucial job they have, to have that input. We can bring people in to talk about that and how we need to maintain the integrity of the role of the opposition. Let's bring those people in and let's talk about that and figure out where we can find some changes yet make sure that we can still keep every member's role an important one in this House.
That's all I'd like to say for today. I think I've said more than I should and have taken more time than I should have taken, but I think it's important to put my feelings on the record as well.
I don't want to see this as being a retaliatory Parliament, where someone proposes and all the others oppose, but that we can work together. We've done it on some private members' bills and I think that's a good thing. I know sometimes, even in regard to that, some members will say that's not a good thing. I think it's a good thing. It shows that regardless what side of the aisle we're on, we're here to serve our constituents, listen to them, and convey their ideas in the House. However, we're also government members. I'm a government member on this side and I ran on a platform. I ran on many things and I'd like to see most of those happen so that I may run again one day. I know it's not your job to help me achieve those things, but as parliamentarians, it is our job to help this place work and function for Canadians. I believe that is what we're trying to do and we can better do that.
Thank you.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
Are we following the Simms model, or no?
Conservative
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
Can we have a vote to make the Simms model something that continues on forever? I think that's just amazing.
Liberal
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
If we have a discussion, perhaps we can put that in the discussion. I think it would be very useful.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
It was. I think so. I'll do that when my time's up. I'll talk about the Simms model.
Mr. Chair, I have a quick comment for Ms. Sahota through you. I think we have said on this side of the table a million times that we are willing to have that discussion. Even Mr. Reid today in his remarks said that there are items that you—you, being the government side—have brought forward in your discussion paper that we could probably agree on. We could probably move forward, as you're saying it, but we are not going to take a walk down that path when we know there is danger ahead giving the government complete authority to move forward and have that veto.
Your House leader said the government would have that veto. I liken it to taking my dog to the vet to be neutered. He'll jump in the car. We'll take the trip down the road. When we get to the parking lot, he knows something's up and does not want to go in. I liken this to your wanting us to take that ride, but there are problems at the end of that ride. We refuse to do that, and we are united. We will have the conversation. We'll approve Scott Simms' motion. We'll move forward, and we'll start that conversation right away. Do you not see an issue with that?
Would you be in the same position if you were on this side? That's my question. Would you be so agreeable if we were on that side, or if the NDP asked you, “Come on. Let's go. We'll have a discussion, but we're going to have the final say.”
Liberal
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
I know. That's what this has become.
Well, as I said about private members' bills, we've had private members' bills on the Standing Orders before. Perhaps I would have been one of the members standing up in the House and voting for those private members' bills in the past. Everything is situational when you're there in the moment and depends on what feedback you're getting. Those were not passed unanimously. I don't think all the good things we do in the House are always passed unanimously.
An interesting thing, sitting on the electoral reform committee, with the words “unanimous” and “consensus”, there are such good feelings around the word “consensus”.
I thought, when we went to Iqaluit, that we were going to learn a lot from them and their territorial government about their consensus model and their approach. I thought I was going to hear such wonderful things about how we can improve our Parliament at the federal level based on what they have learned from their legislative assembly.
We had territorial representatives come before the electoral reform committee, and they surprised me as to what their testimony was. Guess what it was. They did not like their consensus approach to government. They wanted reform. They wanted to move to a majoritarian system because they felt they did not accomplish much, and through their term, they could not achieve most of the things on their platform, if even a small percentage of them. They were constantly going back, term after term, not having achieved much, not having moved the needle a whole lot. They hadn't progressed in the areas that the citizens of Nunavut want to see progress in.
That was a very good lesson for me. A lot of times I hear those words, and probably before that testimony I would have thought, as I did that very day, “This is going to be great. We're going to learn so much from these guys. They're so much wiser than we are.”
That's what I learned. That's what I took away from that. It was very different testimony from what we had in other areas where people didn't have those types of models. They had an ideology of a model like that, how it would work, and how great it would be, but that's not how it worked in practicality.
My worry is that we may lock ourselves into something and not achieve anything, not even move that needle at all. That's what we did with the interim report we had earlier on in this committee on modernizing Parliament and making it more family-friendly.
It was a long title. I can't remember the whole thing, because we couldn't decide on the title. Our title was 10 words long because we couldn't decide. At that time, we had decided that we were going to approach....
There was no uproar on this committee that we were not going to engage in that study or talk about these issues unless up front we had it written in stone that every recommendation out of this committee had to be one that was unanimous. That was never, ever agreed to, but once we started the study, all of the permanent members of this committee decided that, just as we are doing with the Chief Electoral Officer's report, we would talk about the easy stuff and get through it.
We had a lot of witnesses come before us. There were some things we couldn't agree on, so we said, “Let's put out an interim report, and let's put out the things that we do agree on.” It turns out the things that people were willing to agree on—and I say, “willing to agree on” because I don't know if deep down in their hearts they.... I think a lot of them did agree on some of those things, but they had to take them back to others to see what their thoughts were on the issues, and whether they could agree or not was not the issue.
A lot of people behind closed doors sometimes say, “I can agree on it, and most of the party wants this change, but we don't want to be the face of this change. We don't want to wear this change. You put through this change and you wear it. We'll be happy to have all the wonderful changes that come about, and they will serve us better as parliamentarians, across all party lines.” I hear that. I hear that in the hallways from people of all parties.
That's where I'm coming from. I don't want another watered-down report that does nothing. We'll spend months on end talking about great ideas, and then put our name to nothing at the end.
That, I think, will be a great learning experience for all of us who will be sitting around this committee table. Boy, we'll definitely know how to make Parliament function better, but will we do it? We probably won't.
Conservative
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
Through you, Chair, to Ms. Sahota, I have two quick questions.
The first is whether she believes that Parliament is supreme or whether she believes that Parliament should report or be a servant to the government.
Second, in your discussion paper, you assume that the Liberals know best and that there might not be a difference of opinion, that it's just one thought on this.
That's two questions. You can answer them in whatever order you want to.
