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.
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Conservative
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Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
But are you saying that maybe every vote should be this way?
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Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
I'm not saying it should be. I'm just saying that we have that ability right now.
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Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
If five members don't stand for a recorded vote, it would just proceed on division. That's what would effectively happen, which is the state of the committee of the whole, where we just do “on division” on everything and then proceed to the next stage of the bill.
Some bills have passed without a recorded vote. I think M-47 passed by a unanimous agreement of the House. As I mentioned before, the standing order allows people to co-second. I know that Mr. Arnold Viersen, Peace River—Westlock, passed motion 47 as a rookie member with the unanimous consent of the House and with co-seconders from every single political party. It can be done, even by those of us who are rookies.
I don't understand why we can't get agreement on this motion that we could proceed to look at the rules within the confines laid out in Mr. Simms' motion. For the three study areas here, the overarching themes, I think you'll have to sit evenings and maybe into the wee hours of the morning, until 3 a.m. every day, seven days a week, until June 2. Maybe on June 1 you can write the report. I think you have so much material to go on here that there is just not enough time to do this job of reviewing the Standing Orders that this place and Parliament deserve, that parliamentarians deserve, and that future parliamentarians deserve.
I'm almost done. I want to reference just a few more articles.
I'm done with going through congressional procedures. I just wanted to make the point that I think the reference to the House of Representatives is not the right type of reference. We are far more like the Senate.
Any government legislative agenda is constrained, not by the opposition but by the “anticipated opposition” from other parties. The government should anticipate that the opposition will oppose. It should not just table a bill and then expect it to somehow make it through this place without substantive debate. If they were to consult more openly with parliamentarians, I'm sure they could achieve their goal—sometimes they do and sometimes they don't.
There is an article I want to reference. It's “Obstruction in Ontario and the House of Commons” by Chris Charlton. Chris Charlton was a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Toronto. This is from page 21 of the Canadian Parliamentary Review, in the issue of autumn 1997.
She talks about this anticipated obstruction and makes what I believe is a pretty interesting argument that a government should anticipate opposition. That should be part and parcel of the deliberative process of Parliament. It prevents any government from getting too ideological and ensures they respect the role of the opposition. We can differ as to whether there is sufficient or insufficient respect for all parliamentarians, and whether the government is too ideological. They can also go completely the other way and not be ideological enough, not stand for anything, and veer in all types of directions. Many governments lose when they do that.
Thus, the opposition has a significant impact on directing government legislative policy and tactics. The government obviously reacts to how the opposition behaves. I think the 1990s are an excellent example of that. The opposition was an active participant in the proceedings of the House and in the agenda of the government when the Reform Party and the Bloc Québécois were in many ways setting the agenda. Their response was resetting the agenda of the government, such as the 1995 referendum and the drive towards eliminating the deficit as a priority.
I'll mention that the first Reform Party finance critic made the point in his memoirs—I can't remember the name right now, which is terrible—that oftentimes he would have private conversations with Paul Martin, the finance minister at the time, and Mr. Martin would tell him, “I can't have you agreeing with me too often. I can't achieve the goals that I have in mind too often. I need you to go hard.” He would, and that's part of the parliamentary process.
I think the Reform Party did its due diligence and compelled the government to follow through on its promise to balance the budget. Some of it was downloaded to the provinces. There were program cuts and program reviews that the Reform Party was demanding on behalf of the people who voted for them. They wanted to see them through. Vice versa, the Bloc Québécois, which was the official opposition at the time, also had primary goals and objectives that it wanted to reach.
I've read Martine Tremblay's book on the history of the Bloc. It was a very interesting read. They did not feel it was their job to grind this place to a halt, and they could have done so pretty easily. They still wanted to be responsible, as the official opposition. Their goal was to achieve independence, but they were still knowledgeable about the fact that they had to prove they could be a responsible opposition.
I think we're trying to prove to you that we're trying to be a responsible opposition, which is why we haven't walked away from the table. We haven't just walked away from the committee. I haven't gone to pick up the mace in the House. I haven't taken the gavel. I'm still trying to prove to you that I want to be responsible.
I could do those things, but I won't. I don't want to.
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Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
I remember. I believe he was the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, Keith Martin.
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An hon. member
How did it end?
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Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
I believe he was ejected from the House for several days.
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Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Yes. He had to apologize in Parliament, and the Liberals eventually lost the seat. Now we have Mr. Garrison here, much to his delight, I'm sure.
I think that's an important consideration. We are integral to this process. There's not just the government caucus. There's not just the executive with an agenda. We exist here too, and we're trying to offer you solutions to your problems, criticisms to your objectives, in a responsible way. We could have brawls on the floor of the House. We came close to a brawl on the floor of the House and we avoided it. Since then, I think we've rebuilt the trust we had amongst ourselves. That was a very tough week.
We could do more to obstruct you, far more, but we're choosing not to. We still think that this amendment is reasonable and that you will see the light at the end of the tunnel. As Polish people like to say, and as my father used to like to say, you'd better hope that the light at the end of the tunnel isn't an armoured train.
I hope there is no armoured train at the end of this. If and when this does come to a head, and the government calls for a vote on this at some point, once substantive debate has happened, with full deliberation....
Prayer is a good idea, yes, Mr. Simms.
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Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
If our amendment doesn't pass, the great risk we have here is that parliamentarians and the government caucus will take this as an opportunity to eliminate all the tools we have and the opportunities we have to be heard. We could wind up in a situation where we could not be heard. Then we will have few choices, few avenues, to stand up for our constituents and for our rights as parliamentarians to use the Standing Orders to make a point.
I want to put this into context and read the following from the review:
...41 additional bills would have been introduced, had the government not felt constrained by the opposition’s ability to manipulate available House time. Indirectly, therefore, the opposition did have a significant impact on constraining the government’s legislative agenda, although this fact could not have been gleaned from a simple analysis of the number of bills passed as a percentage of those introduced.
This was a reference to how much legislation had been passed by the government.
I don't think the House Leader has said this directly, but I think it's been an undercurrent of commentary that our legislative process is very slow and we're not getting legislation passed as fast as we would like to. I don't think that's a good enough argument to change the Standing Orders of the House, that the rules we have currently are insufficient because they're not fast. I've mentioned before that efficiency is not the goal of this place.
This article has a table in it, entitled “Table 1: Federal Government Legislation 1974-1993”. I would encourage all members to find this article. It contains a whole list of where bills were after nine hours of debate and with less than two hours of debate, and the percentage of House time spent on second reading of individual bills. It just cumulates them over time.
This type of statistical breakdown stops at the 34th Parliament. It would be interesting to see it broken down along these lines, to then have a comparison, but this is not something you can get done within the 45 days afforded by—
March 23rd, 2017 / 7:50 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
It's an autumn 1997 Canadian Parliamentary Review. The title is “Obstruction in Ontario and the House of Commons”, by Chris Charlton. It reviews the Ontario legislature and it reviews Parliament, five or six Parliaments, and the work they did on behalf of constituents. I think it is important to use that type of data. One data point is one data point; as I used to tell my staff at both the HR Institute and the chamber of commerce, it is interesting but it doesn't really tell any story. A trend tells you a story, because it can tell you if the rules or procedures or ideas you have are up or down, and whether they are declining or rising. Having multiple data points is how we will get to whether or not we need to change anything.
I haven't seen anything, because there are really no numbers in the government's proposal. There are only areas of study that they proposed—that Mr. Simms moved through his motion—which is why we have moved this amendment.
I want to reference another member of Parliament, Reg Stackhouse, who was a member of Parliament for Scarborough West. This is from a revised submission to the task force on reform of the House of Commons of March 1985. I don't know whether all of his ideas were included in the final report. This is in the Canadian Parliamentary Review, summer 1985, and I have only one point to make from this article:
Debate is the esse of Parliament, and debating is therefore essential to a member's fulfilling his role. The legislator is not intended to be primarily one who gets things done, but one who uses debate to assess, criticize, amend, resist as well as to promote, advocate, motivate and advance ideas.
This is a member of Parliament saying this, so at the end of the day, the result is what you make of it. I know that for the government, the result it is looking for is for its legislative agenda to pass, but we're not here to pass its agenda. We're here to pass Parliament's agenda, and we decide which bills should be taken up. The government can direct us that this bill should be debated today, but it should not be able to tell the committees that it will have six days, nine days, or 10 days, or that Parliament must pass this in 15 days.
That is what we saw with the national energy program when it used time allocation and got it passed within 15 days. What a disaster that was politically for members on the Liberal caucus side. It also had a profound impact on the political culture of Alberta. Up until this very recent election, there were no members of Parliament elected from the Liberal Party of Canada. There are some now, but the impact on the culture and the beliefs and the ethos and the myths surrounding the national energy program are still there. It has had a very profound impact on constituents back home, and on all parliamentarians back home.
I think this is worth reviewing by all members here. It's called “Reforming The House” by Reg Stackhouse, member of Parliament, in the Canadian Parliamentary Review from the summer of 1985.
Now I want to reference an Ontario MPP. I found the most material, surprisingly, from Ontario. It was the easiest to find, I think, because many members have written. A lot of members have also moved on to serve in the Parliament of Canada, so they offer the opportunity to compare the two. This is from Sam L. Cureatz, MPP, who was a member of the Ontario Legislative Assembly for Durham East. He had been deputy speaker since 1981, at the time of this writing in the Canadian Parliamentary Review in the summer of 1983, so he had at least two years as deputy speaker in the Ontario Legislative Assembly, which brings valuable experience. The Speakers are there to enforce the Standing Orders of the House, so obviously they have a better feel for what the Standing Orders mean.
The title of the article is “Some Thoughts on Parliamentary Debate in Ontario”.
In Ontario, when the Minister of Revenue attempted to introduce legislation in connection with the May 1982 provincial budget, a vote on first reading was requested.
I've never seen a vote at first reading in this Parliament. I don't think it would add anything.
The official opposition left the Chamber, and the bells range for two and a half days until their return.
They were calling the members to vote, and the members chose to show their displeasure and unhappiness. They did return eventually, because the opposition also has a certain amount of responsibility. If we just stop coming here and all return to our constituencies, or we sit outside on the lawn of Parliament, I think a great number of Canadians would find that type of activity reprehensible. They would say, “Go back to work. Cobble together a solution”, which is why we're still here at this table trying to find that common ground. That's the point I've been trying to make.
Filibusters or delay is a long-standing democratic practice. Lots of different assemblies use it. It's a common practice, but it has to be used judiciously and wisely. I don't believe we have overreacted and I don't believe we have gone out of our way to obstruct. We are simply trying to make our points.
We come back. Every time, Mr. Chair, that you suspend the meeting and return us, we return. We return to continue the debate. We return to continue making points, and substantive ones as well. I hope I have been substantive in my commentary and that I have made a contribution because I feel that this amendment that we have proposed to the motion is reasonable. It would ensure that all of the opposition members who are here, including my friends in the New Democratic Party, will have an opportunity to be heard.
On these changes to the special orders, the temporary standing orders that could be introduced, our concern is that a report could be produced by June 2 that will be voted on by the majority. We will lose our opportunity to be heard and then, simply, the process will continue and there will be no opportunity for us to get involved.
My last example is actually a Nova Scotia House of Assembly procedural change brought in by the government of John Buchanan, which proposed substantive procedural changes. In 1978 it was a Conservative government. The Liberal official opposition of the day and the New Democratic Party protested, and the government proposed and subsequently set up an all-party working committee to reach consensus. They admitted that they needed to reach consensus.
The government then presented its proposal for these new rules. While these proposals contained only minor modifications of the proposals made by the select committee, they immediately encountered strenuous objection from the Liberal opposition and from the New Democrats. A two-thirds majority was required to enact the new rules, and government supporters in the House were not that numerous. The government therefore decided not to proceed with its resolution. Instead, it proposed to set up an all-party committee to narrow the areas of disagreement.
That's what we're trying to do.
Nova Scotia has an example that we could use. If you pass this amendment, we could narrow down the areas of disagreement. There are things we simply will not agree to. We will not accept to have our voices silenced at committee. We will not accept to have our privileges of debate further restricted. It's not something that we can accept.
The reason they set up this all-party committee, a working committee, and they admit this, was to try to narrow the areas of disagreement. I am sure that during those in camera deliberations or public sessions that they held they found things they simply could not agree on and they removed them. They took them off the table. Perhaps they went through a document like this that was produced upon the advice of the Legislative Assembly of Nova Scotia and they said, “On these three items perhaps we can find agreement, but this one most definitely we cannot” and they simply moved on and found a way around it.
They found a way 35 years ago to reach a solution to the impasse, so why can't we do it here? This is why I'm still speaking to this amendment to the motion because I think we can find agreement and then find a way to work together. I don't think it's unreasonable. This is just an amendment that would protect the opposition from the majority. As many members have said before, this is a protective measure for us to ensure that we are heard, that we do have a role to play here.
On the actual proposals, just so I can make some final points on this, in this document in the introduction.... I've already mentioned my problems about adversarial and my problems about modernization. There is a section that says, “Societal changes have also brought about the need to ensure greater predictability in the House for at least two important reasons”.
There are two important reasons in here to seek more “predictability” in the House. I would substitute “predictability” with the word “efficiency”. I think that's what they mean. One reason is “to ensure Members have a better balance”. It doesn't say “work-life balance”, it just says “better balance”. Another reason is “to encourage under-represented segments of society to seek elected office”. You've heard me talk about this. Nobody reads the Standing Orders before coming here. I think it's a great shock to them how many rules there are.
It says in here as well, “Technological changes should also be considered as we look to ways to make the House more efficient.” Absolutely, and we have had technological changes. We have the ability to look up the Notice Paper, Order Paper, and pieces of legislation online. I read them mostly on an iPad, although I still like the feel of paper, which is why I'm holding this paper. I'm reading from it because I can go back and forth on it, something I can't do very easily on an iPad.
I think those are two bad reasons to go ahead and change the Standing Orders. Those are two very bad reasons to proceed. There would have to be something more substantive than simply saying we need a “better balance”. A better balance of what—between the opposition and the government? You already hold all the cards. You set the agenda. You can use time allocation. You have more members, so you can outvote us. All we ask is for the opportunity to be heard. Don't propose to somehow change the rules without explaining to us where you want to go. As parliamentarians, not as the executive or the cabinet, where do you want to go with these changes?
I would feel far more comfortable if I saw more experienced veteran members, potentially returning members as well—members who were not there in 2011 but who were there before and then returned—providing us their insight and their feedback on the changes being put forward by the government, not by parliamentarians.
Under “Theme 1: Management of the House”, again, you can disagree with me, but I feel that Canadians work five days a week, and some work more than five days a week, so we should too. I know that members say that we work in constituency offices as well, that we travel to our constituencies on weekends and we do substantive work, but constituents expect us to be here and to work on their behalf here. I honestly don't mind if Friday becomes a full day, the way Mr. Simms has proposed, but I also don't believe that 45 days is sufficient time to consider that type of change. I don't want to use the word “radical”. That may be going too far. I need a synonym for it.
This would impact members like you, Mr. Chair, who has to travel to the Yukon. I think you'd be able to spend maybe a few hours at the airport before you had to turn back. It would not achieve the goal it was meant to do.
There may be changes to the House calendar that could be done to offer members more opportunities to have back-to-back weeks in their constituencies. Perhaps we could avoid doing what we've done now, which is that we have one week here, one week off, one week here, one week off. It breaks up the legislative process too much. I still believe it's worthy to have five days, and we should keep it the way it is. Again, that is my personal preference.
In terms of alternating days, sitting days on Fridays, and having more private members' time on Fridays, again, reapportioning hours would not be family friendly in any way. A previous report unanimously agreed not to do away with this. I believe PROC was the one that said not to proceed with changes to Fridays. I could be corrected on that. There are members who sit on the committee on a full-time basis who may have different viewpoints on this.
I mentioned electronic voting before, and my thoughts on this. As I think I mentioned very early this morning, Bill S-201 is a perfect example of when “on division” should have been accepted by the government side, and the cabinet rose to force a recorded vote.
We have a lot of recorded votes. They do serve a purpose. Mr. Simms raised the point that they do serve the purpose of accountability on individual members. I agree with him on that, but I don't think every single measure needs a recorded vote. We have to police ourselves. Is the right number of members five? I don't know. I would say that 25 is not the right number. Let's not get excessive here, but maybe there's a way to change that to something more reasonable. Again, that would have to be considered in a substantive debate, but we can't agree to that debate if you don't approve this amendment. You could change it to 99 or 100, in which case we would not be able to get a recorded vote on our side. I would hope you would not do something so drastic, so radical. I'll use the word “drastic” from now on, not “radical”.
It's mentioned here, under “House Calendar”, that “The number of sittings could be based on the demands to sit.” Who will set and determine who demands to sit? Parliament should determine when it sits. The government should have to bend to the will of Parliament, not the other way around.
I know there is prorogation, which is a method used for.... It's mentioned in here too: “where Governments have prorogued early in the session to avoid politically difficult situations.” It makes a reference to “governments” that have prorogued, but my understanding is that the Governor General prorogues upon the advice of the Prime Minister. Maybe that's just nitpicking but the more we confuse these fine lines between the different functions in the different places, the more we lump it all together so that the executive, the cabinet, the parliamentary secretaries, the government caucus....
People start saying, “You're in the government”. I have constituents who tell me that I'm in the government, “You work for the government”. I reply, “I don't work for the government. I work for you. You pay me indirectly through your taxes, but I am an opposition member.” When I bring greetings to an event I don't say it is on behalf of the Government of Canada. I say it's on behalf of the Parliament of Canada because I am not a member of the government. In schools I go to, I make a point to explain to them that I am not there on behalf of the government; I am there on behalf of Parliament.
It is perhaps not as glorious or as edifying to say that, but it's drawing a line of distinction that we should all be responsible for as parliamentarians who should love this Parliament the way Mr. Diefenbaker did.
Just a little more on prorogation, there are some ideas in here that are worth studying. Some of the reasons for prorogation should perhaps be set out in the Standing Orders, which should perhaps constrain the ability of the executive to seek prorogation, or perhaps there should be debate on it before it happens. I'm sure that could be studied. It could be considered. That could be an entire study on its own, prorogation in Australia and in the Westminster Parliament as well.
Private members' business is where I find the most interest, honestly, because I think there are more opportunities there, as parliamentarians, to do the work we were sent here to do and to actually legislate and to act on behalf of our constituents. If we have more opportunities to propose private member's bills, I think it would be better. I have two private member's motions that I have tabled. I know members who have already passed their private member's bills, but I also know members—Mr. Chan was mentioning it—who may never get the opportunity to table a bill or a motion that could be debated in the House.
It is one of those things members actually look forward to, and it is a question I have heard at the debates I have been to in communities. Many members have told me the same thing. They get asked the question, “What is the first private member's bill you intend to table?” It has become a question the public now asks us: “What is the idea you are running on? What is the one thing you want to do here?” If we could find more opportunities to do that, it would be an interesting idea to pursue.
Our worry is that if you pass this motion the way it is written now, you—the government caucus, the executive, whoever is going to make the final decision—could choose to take away our private members' business time. We have that time on Fridays right now, but we also have extra time on Mondays for it, or you could move it around during the day. We don't know. Maybe there could be Q and A during private members' business for every single speech, which would require more time.
Regarding “Theme 2: Management of Debate”, as I mentioned before in a reference to the House of Representatives, programming was talked about on an experimental basis. It was introduced in 1998 in the United Kingdom. It was made permanent in 2004. It took six years before they made it permanent. They considered for six years whether to keep it or not.
I think we are moving too fast with this. I am sure they did not reach that point without consent, broad-based consent, among the different parties. If we guard our privileges jealously, parliamentarians in the United Kingdom guard them even more jealously. They have brought down prime ministers because they have disagreed with the way a prime minister, an executive, was leading the country. Voters brought down David Cameron's government on a referendum, but it was also a referendum imposed upon him by his backbenchers, who demanded it on behalf of their constituents. Right or wrong, they got what they wanted, and Mr. Cameron eventually resigned after losing what is now called the Brexit referendum.
Those are important points. Members there guard their freedoms jealously, and we should guard ours too against an executive that has gotten larger, more powerful, and more able to offer us incentives and opportunities that we may not have otherwise. I came here to be a parliamentarian, not to be a cabinet minister. Obviously I ran as a Conservative too, so that probably simplifies things as well. I am not working hard to join the cabinet. I am working hard on behalf of my constituents.
If I should find myself on the government caucus side, I would hope I would not be punished with an executive position in cabinet. That would be a punishment for my wife and my family. I think they do extraordinary work, with those extra hours. I don't agree with very many of them and the policy objectives they have, but I respect them. I would hope they would extend the same respect to us, on the opposition side, because we're not here to obstruct without a purpose. We have a purpose, and it's to be part of the proceedings of Parliament. We're trying to maintain that, which is why we've proposed this very reasonable motion.
Don't exclude us. Don't cut us out.
I've said this before, but we just don't have that trust right now. We don't trust you to follow through with that—“you” being the executive and some of the government caucus members who may be active on behalf of or in conjunction with. I don't want to cast aspersions unnecessarily.
Continuing on lower down here, it does mention that “New Zealand and the U.S. House of Representatives also have measures to plan the business of the House that are similar in principle to programming.” I have just shown you, using a congressional procedures book, that the Senate is far more similar to who we are, as parliamentarians here, than who the House of Representatives is when this programming subject is....
I think just this one section here could be its own individual study. It could be its own separate study, but this motion says that you may do this by June 2. That is a quick pace to introduce such a measure as took six years for the United Kingdom Parliament, the mother Parliament, to say it was going to take this on and it was going to accept it.
We don't even know what your goals are at the end. You may produce a report with recommendations that will go to the House, and then you will claim, as Mr. Christopherson said when he was here before, that you have a majority decision from this committee, PROC, saying that we should proceed with the following changes and we, on the opposition side, will obviously disagree and we'll have a debate in the House of Commons that I fear will be just as divisive as the 1991 debates, just as divisive as the 1969 debates, and will not build long-term trust. That is my great fear.
I think the government, when it pushed forward on electoral reform, bent in certain ways and made an agreement with some other opposition parties to have a multi-party committee to consider the issue. In the end, the executive chose not to proceed with electoral reform. I think that was the right call, personally. I know my constituents think that way. I know that, because I surveyed all of them and I got almost 2,000 responses.
I see Madam Mendès also shaking her head. A great number of Canadians got engaged in something that would be considered “inside baseball”. With regard to the Standing Orders, if there is inside baseball, I think we're in the dugout with this stuff. The vast majority of Canadians—
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Conservative
7:50 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Yes. Mr. Sopuck is the third-base coach.
This is material that most people will not want to watch, but I think one of my colleagues told me that she has had a million views for her video that she made on just this subject. Also, it's astounding how many Canadians have sent me comments. I already have a hundred comments on one of my videos that I made earlier today. We had people watching at 3 a.m. when we finished on that first night. Twelve people with insomnia back home were still watching us. I was getting text messages from a former member of Parliament who was asking me what was going on and responding to my tweets.
I'm surprised by how many people have taken an interest in this, but perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. People have become more astute. They know where to find information, and it's easier to find now than it was before. Also, they're interested in this because they understand the value of an independent, autonomous opposition that is able to oppose and obstruct, but loyally, so that's not to go and take your gavel, Mr. Chair, so that you cannot suspend the meeting and we can continue ad infinitum to debate. I promise not to do that at this time.
On question period, questions, and written questions—I see that the chair is now hiding the gavel—we've talked a lot about question period, but not enough, I think, about written questions in the House. I'm one who submits quite a few written questions to help me do my committee work. I don't think that any of the changes proposed here will help in any way to get better written question responses from the government.
In fact, as a rookie member, I have risen in the House to complain, not about the quality of the answer—this was on Order Paper Question No. 510—but about the contents, the non-response I received. The Speaker reminded me in his ruling that the Speaker plays no role in adjudicating whether I have even received a response. The format of the response indicated quite clearly that they had not responded to every single point I had been asking questions about. If ministers don't respond to questions orally and they don't respond to questions in writing all the time—I'll say here that I have received responses that were complete and fulsome—this will not help.
I would say, let's change that to do something more, and in this case I do mean radically. Let's look at all the written questions submitted over the past three Parliaments, let's say. The most common questions that are submitted—the themes, the types of questions—should simply be information that is made available online automatically by the government for public consumption.
The government should not be forced to produce the information for parliamentarians when they request it if they can expect that they'll be asked this question all the time anyway. Why not look at the Order Paper question system that we have right now and say that, at the end of every Parliament, the clerk shall be instructed to review all the OPQs, and the 10 most common OPQs will be then perhaps automatically requested from the government? It will simply be information that's automatically requested in every Parliament, or at a certain tempo at a certain time.
I don't think that adds extra work. If a public servant who's producing this information today could have the certainty that he or she will be asked the exact same Order Paper question at a future point, then it really doesn't matter if they have 45 days or 65 days to answer, because they could just cut across all of that and produce a recurring document that could be tabled in the House or publicly posted on opendata.gc.ca—hopefully, it's still called that.
We parliamentarians ask questions in written form because they're more technical, so why not simply produce the information automatically if it's a common, recurring question? A lot of them are about ministerial expenses: sedans, per diems charged, and private flights. I table a recurring question about my constituency in terms of how much government money has been spent in my constituency, and for all contracts over $25,000, and for whom. It's a very common question. I've seen many New Democrats table such questions, so I've started doing it too because it's actually quite interesting. I get to track government money as it is being spent.
Why isn't that done automatically on a government website? The difference between 45 and 65 days is small. The complaint here—and it is a complaint—is this. “However, written questions have increasingly become more complex and voluminous over the past 10 years.” Really? So has government. It's a $300-billion operation. We as parliamentarians, all 338 of us, have a responsibility to ensure that money is spent wisely.
The only way I can do that is to ask these written questions. How else am I going to get the information? The proposed changes here will just delay further down the road and potentially limit how many written questions I can have. I can have only four at a time tabled before the House. Four is not an unreasonable number. Four questions over a 45-day period is not unreasonable. I should be able to ask four written questions.
I think the government could save itself a lot of time by being proactive, and that is not in here. All I see here are ways to avoid doing things and to give themselves more time. If you want to expedite the answer, look at the top 10 or top 25 most common OPQs and simply produce the information automatically. You don't need to change the Access to Information Act. You could do it by order in council. The executive can do it today. There is really no reason not to go ahead with that.
The omnibus section talks about omnibus legislation and the government's concern about it. Their proposal, though, is to inject the Speaker into the legislative process. The Speaker does his or her best to avoid injecting himself or herself into question period and determining whether a member has a written question response that is accurate or fulsome. Why should we inject the Speaker into determining whether government legislation is omnibus or not, or what the themes are? I think it's placing the Speaker in an extremely difficult situation. If you were to make these changes, the Speaker would have that type of power and would be expected, then, to rule. I think that's a problem.
It's not to say that I believe the Speaker would not be neutral in the processing and the activities they undertake in their role, but I would like it if all of us could agree on what the Speaker does. Now I fear that you may change the rules over what the Speaker can and cannot do. Just by having that section in here, I am worried about what the Speaker's role could be changed to. The Speaker works for us, as parliamentarians, to enforce the Standing Orders of the House on our behalf. He admonishes us in different ways. He can do it more publicly, more directly, but he can also do it more kindly and privately.
I know that I have complained to the Speaker many times about a lack of decorum in the House, either directly or in person, but I've also used the Speaker to ask questions and to clarify how things work in order to get to an understanding of how I should be behaving in my job. If the Speaker's role changes fundamentally to more of a referee, where the Speaker is a referee between the Liberals, the Conservatives, non-aligned members who are independent, and New Democrats, then the Speaker becomes a referee. Just like a referee in hockey, I'm afraid the Speaker could perhaps have collisions on the ice. Perhaps an elbow would go too high and take out a Speaker.
I'm worried about injecting the Speaker into the proceedings of the House. That is not the role that was intended. The intended role was to provide bad news to the crown. Some poor soul would be directed to go to the King or Queen to give them the news they did not want to hear, which was that the House had not approved the spending the crown had wanted. A few Speakers did not survive the experience of giving bad news.
I don't think we should be expanding the role of the Speaker to do these things. I think it would be a great mistake. But now I don't know whether the unwillingness of the government caucus to vote in agreement with this amendment is because they have other intentions for the Speaker.
Mr. Simms perhaps will speak to that later, when eventually I do yield the floor. I am running low on material. I'm sure he's delighted by that.
7:50 p.m.
Liberal
7:50 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
You're enjoying it. Excellent.
I'll move on to “Theme 3: Management of Committees”. Then I can move on to The Canadian Regime, the book here.
The management of committees has been a major part of my disagreement with how we've been proceeding here, because I'm worried there will be even more control over committee work than there is now by our House leadership on behalf of the executive. I also don't think that parliamentary secretaries should be involved in the business of the committee. That is simply my viewpoint. The government has committed to ensuring that parliamentary secretaries indeed are not voting members of committees, but regarding their role—and, as I've shown, in 1991 there was the same concern—it says here, “Parliamentary Secretaries could be given the same rights on committees as is proposed for independent members.”
They would have the opportunity to question witnesses, but this is the problem I have. In a two-hour meeting, we have only so much time to question a witness, and in the questioning of a witness, I'm always thinking about what the report will say, what kinds of recommendations we will have at the end. That's how I look at it. There is a finite amount of time. There have been committee meetings at which I haven't had the opportunity to actually ask questions, because once we came around, I no longer had a chance.
I would not like to lose a chance to ask a pertinent question because we have allowed a parliamentary secretary to ask questions of a witness. Parliamentary secretaries are free to have the witnesses for coffee outside the chamber and to discuss with them. In fact, a great many people would be honoured to be invited by a parliamentary secretary to speak about government business, government policy, government agenda. Committees are an opportunity for us caucus members, members of our individual caucuses, parliamentarians, to ask questions of witnesses and to hear the witnesses' answers in whatever format we want, to allow them to speak their minds, to interrupt them, or to have a back-and-forth conversation.
My great concern is that we don't know what's going to happen, because we still haven't passed this reasonable amendment. I would like to proceed to more substantive discussions on some of the content that's been proposed here.
I should also mention that eventually, as in that saying “what goes around, comes around”, the treatment the opposition receives from the government caucus, from government members, will be returned in kind, and vice versa too. The experience you have with us, you will return upon us as well, I am sure. You won't be in government forever, and the measures you propose here could or will be used against you someday when you're in opposition, or the third party, which is an experience I guess I wouldn't wish upon anybody. My apologies to the New Democrats at the table.
7:50 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
You've been there, Mr. Simms.
Representatives of the government, or those who are spokespersons for the government, don't need additional time at committee. They have all the time in the world outside of the committee to meet with witnesses. The only reason to include that in this discussion document is to somehow be able to set the record straight, to change the line of questioning, to make a point at the expense of the other members here. I trust the government caucus members can make all of those same points, and the parliamentary secretary doesn't need to do that.
Whatever points a parliamentary secretary can make at committee can be equally made by a minister coming before the committee and stating their views. They could be made by a minister who sits through an entire debate on the subject matter affecting their ministry, which I have seen certain ministers do, and I feel it shows a profound respect for Parliament when they choose to sit through an opposition day on the subject of their ministry. I think it does, and I also think that, vice versa, it's profoundly disrespectful for a minister to choose not to sit through a debate day on a particular bill that affects their ministry.
A parliamentary secretary may stay behind. I know I've seen Mr. Lamoureux pinch-hit and be the standing voice of the government many times, and he serves that purpose well. He speaks on behalf of the government caucus very well, and he defends its position.
It says here, “Members are able to sow dysfunction in committees by filibustering proceedings either by refusing to yield the floor or by moving dilatory motions.”
It's not done on a regular basis. I cannot remember in this Parliament someone else having done so. The opposition is responsible. We would use this only in the most egregious of circumstances, like now. But by no means do I want to be here in two months still debating this. I don't want to do this at every single committee I go to, first, because I'd probably lose my voice, and second, because Mr. Genuis would probably lose his voice as well, because we would tag team until we got the job done.
We do not abuse that privilege we have. We do not abuse the Standing Orders that we have right now. We are worried that without unanimous agreement to proceed on this study, there could be a situation in which, at the end of this, the recommendation will be to take away all of those rights. The Standing Orders that enable the privileges and rights for us as members to be heard would be taken away. We on this side are truly concerned about that.
Being a good opposition member and being a reasonable opposition member are all about balance. We could obstruct the government at every step of the way, but we choose not to. We've done it now only because we're trying to make the point that we feel you are trying to do another motion number six. I don't want to overuse it as a euphemism in any way. I just want to reference it.
The last thing this document says is that, “The principle of deliberations in the House and in committees should be to engage in substantive debate on the merit of an issue, not to engage in tactics which seek only to undermine and devalue the important work of Parliament.” I agree. That portion of this statement I can agree with. If it's an important work of Parliament, then why are you trying to take away our ability to do important work in Parliament?
We can disagree. Mr. Simms and, I'm sure, others will say, “No, we're not trying to do that. You should trust us. We should proceed with the study as per the original motion.” Now, we could potentially proceed in the future without unanimous agreement, but that is cold comfort for opposition members who have no tools beyond this, because the other place we will then try to filibuster will be in the House, and the rules are already changed there so we will not be able to do it as efficiently as we might want to. We will not accept to have the rules changed on us so that we can't do anything and we would just become an audience. You've heard me mention that a few times. I don't want to become an audience member in a theatre. Parliament is not theatre. We are not passive participants in the proceedings of the House. We want to be active participants in the proceedings of the House and we will be. We will participate.
You've heard Mr. Christopherson speak with much passion about his mandate from his caucus. I believe that we on this side have a mandate from our caucus to represent our constituents, our caucus members, our supporters, and the people who believe Parliament is supreme, that we debate here as parliamentarians, that we respect each other, and that the standing rules exist in order to enable our privileges and our rights. We will not give those away. I refuse to give those away.
I simply don't know where the government intends to go. I don't know where the government caucus intends to go. This amendment to the motion would give me a lot of comfort in terms of knowing that if it were passed, we would be protected. There are tweaks to do. Multiple members have mentioned possible changes. Members who participated in the debate of October 6 mentioned possible changes to the Standing Orders. Those weren't rehearsed. Those weren't talking points. They were truthful and from-the-heart suggestions by individual members for our consideration.
Equally, for mine, I did not vet my suggestions through my whip's office or my House leader. This has been a freewheeling debate, an offer of my ideas. Consider them or not. If you so choose to, I hope you will give them more a substantive hearing, with debate and consideration, because I think they deserve it. I think they actually require it. I personally believe that the length for the study that the motion has right now—June 2, 2017—is too short, unless you're trying to do a historical echo back to what happened in the Ontario legislature. Then maybe there is some reason for that. I don't think that's a good enough reason to do so.
I want to reference The Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Parliamentary Government in Canada, third edition, by Patrick Malcolmson and Richard Myers. I can't even tell in what year this was done, but on pages 130 and 131, there is a section on House of Commons reform. Every single time there's a mention about the “possibility” of reform in the House of Commons, it says—this is a direct quotation—that it would be “to increase the power and independence of legislative committees and thus increase the power of the backbenchers who make up those committees”.
There is no mention of government efficiency and passing legislation more quickly through committees. There is none of that. There is no mention of programming, of telling us how much we may or may not debate. There is talk about making us more independent and making the committees more independent, but I don't see that in the very broad language used in the government's proposal. What I do see there is the great potential for the opposite.
We've already seen the government's attempts at using time allocation sometimes, which they admonished us for during the last election, and we on this side will continue to admonish the government to live up to the high-minded principles on which they ran. As I tell many members on the Liberal side, “You are well on your way to using it 100 times, so what comes around goes around.” You will wind up using it that often unless you introduce programming, and then you won't have to, because everything will be automatically time allocated. You'll have specific times: 15 days for this bill, or 15 days for that bill at such a stage. This won't exist anymore, and I don't think that's the right solution.
Also, I don't think you are giving yourselves enough time to consider the profound changes that will happen to the work you do. I also don't think you're giving yourselves the mandate within the committee if you don't approve this amendment to your motion, Mr. Simms.
The authors also say just a bit later about Paul Martin, the former prime minister:
A large part of what he meant by “democratic deficit” was the perceived lack of influence of backbench [members of Parliament].
It just so happens that a great many opposition members are backbenchers, and we have what we perceive to be very little influence, so why would you take away what little influence we have to move motions, for instance, or to debate a committee report by a committee that we don't usually participate in? Sometimes we're trying to just make a point. We have an idea, we want to raise a point, and we want to hear from others what they think as well. Some will consider it delay, while others will consider it a reasoned moment of reflection. Again, there is nothing wrong with a bit of reflection. Some people of faith do it during prayer.
The authors continue:
At [Mr.] Martin's suggestion, then, the rules surrounding questions of confidence [have been] changed to provide government MPs with greater independence from the party leadership.
The authors go on to say that “House of Commons votes are now divided into three categories”: the three-line votes, the two-line whips, and that concept that we all have to vote together. I think that has been beneficial for Parliament. We are more able to vote our conscience, the way our constituents want, and to differ, to disagree agreeably.
It has been a good change, because it also helps along the notion that the votes we have are truly free. They're all free. I did mention the consequences from all of our votes. I'm willing to live with the consequences of all of my votes, whether that is failing at re-election, being admonished by my supporters, being admonished by caucus colleagues, being admonished by others, or being praised by others. I hope some people will praise me for certain votes I've taken.
I think the most dangerous thing you'll see, from episodes of Yes Minister, is when a minister is told, “That was courageous: that was a courageous policy initiative.” That's when everybody recoils. I feel the same way sometimes about some of the votes that members of Parliament are expected to take. A courageous vote will cost you votes or it will win you votes, but the worst thing that can happen is that you vote a certain way, and then someday, when you are older and you are no longer here, you come to regret the way you voted.
The best piece of advice I ever got, from a now former member of Parliament, was to never vote against your conscience. If you don't feel it's the right thing, don't vote that way, because then you can't look yourself in the mirror for years afterwards. You will regret it, and it will hang on you. It will be there on your soul, and it will be a regret that you will always have: “I could have voted differently. I should have voted my conscience. I should have voted the way my constituents wanted.”
Every single member of the government caucus here is free to vote whichever way they want. You don't have to listen to the voice in your ears or on your shoulder, or to the other members. You can represent Parliament. You can join us in these proceedings, and through this amendment we can find the rules that we can agree on. You can vote with us and experience the consequences of your vote, which I don't believe will be anywhere as severe as this being done poorly. The process might be set up poorly.
As parliamentarians, it's not just for you that you do it. It's for the generations to come, for the people who will have your seat after you. I know that for many of you that means not the person who may defeat you in 2019—the great hope of many parliamentarians is to be re-elected—but you should think about that next person who will hold your seat, whatever political affiliation they will have.
I don't want to use this book too much, but I thought it was worth reflecting upon, because this is sometimes used as a textbook for students of parliamentary democracy. It's called The Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Parliamentary Government in Canada. I think it bears a lot of relevance. It's germane to exactly what we're talking about here, which is our role and what we're supposed to be doing.
I want to talk to you just briefly now, as I'm concluding....
I think it's the fifth time I've said that I'm concluding.
7:50 p.m.
Liberal
