Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 21st, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Maybe you could tell us their names so they know that....

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Sure, yes, anything for you, Mr. Chair.

My daughter, Gianna, is four, and my son, Judah, is one and a half. My daughter knows more parliamentary procedure, I think, than some members do. She follows it very, very closely. It's great. I guess it's fairly normal that kids get engaged with whatever it is their parents are doing, at least at a young age. Her knowledge and ability to retain information about the minute aspects of this place are quite fascinating.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

You have permission to say hi to them now because we're family friendly.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Okay. Hi, kids.

[An hon. member]

Be good for your mom.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

That's right. Yes.

There are a few points I want to pick up on about how we proceed in this House, things that were said at the very end last night, or things that happened this morning.

Today is the day when, apparently, we're going to have an announcement about the legalization of marijuana, cannabis. It's like modernization versus changing them. This is telling. We talked about modernization and how the government chooses their words very carefully. “Supervised injection sites” became “safe consumption sites”. The language which the health minister uses is “safe consumption sites”. This constant redefinition of words is very interesting.

Probably when they announce their intent to legalize marijuana, or cannabis.... I don't know that cannabis is necessarily a more communications-friendly word than marijuana. I guess you don't want to call it legalizing doobies or something, right? You want to have something that sounds....

We already have a proposal for a standing order change that comes out of this. I don't know how formal, but I got an email this morning from the Trost campaign, asking if Trudeau will institute mandatory drug tests for all members of Parliament. I'm sure this will have a very high open rate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Is there some relevance, please?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

It does have a relationship to the possible changes that may come to the Standing Orders as a result of things that are happening.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair. I'm sorry, Mr. Genuis.

If I can get everybody's permission....

You weren't joking. Is that true?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I did receive that email. I don't know if it's—

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

There is a meta-question. Was he joking? Was the Trost campaign joking?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Yes, exactly. That's what I'm asking. So that is legit—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Maybe we can invite Mr. Trost here as a witness when the study proceeds, and you can get clarification on how that would be operationalized.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Sure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

We have a lot of work to do.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Let me get back to a couple of comments with respect to the ongoing....

There are other issues around the Standing Orders that have been proposed by other people. Mr. Graham mentioned, just as we were wrapping up, the issue of cameras in the House of Commons. This was a so-called modernization initiative that had been put forward. Mr. Graham was saying that he wants to have those red dots on the camera so that—

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

That has actually been a problem over the years, and the committee has often discussed it. Have you ever been to the control room? It's totally worth checking out. The guys at the multimedia desk would find it helpful. It would help them set up the shots if you know which camera to look at and which camera to place for. It would be technologically advantageous.

Anyway, carry on.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

This is interesting.

The way in which Mr. Graham has described this proposal would be to render the House of Commons even more like a television studio than it already is. The idea would be that there are red dots and you look at this camera or that camera. Of course, that's not really the tradition or the convention. You would normally be looking at other members and engaging them in conversation, or looking at the person to whom you're speaking.

The introduction of cameras was about showing the public what was going on in the House. One of the things people didn't necessarily expect was how much the presence of cameras would change the way in which debates unfolded. It was this deliberative body which was open to the public. The written records were obviously published. Journalists would attend the sessions and write about them. Members of the general public would attend as well. With the introduction of cameras, it has become one in which members are sensitive to always being on camera, and there is a greater emphasis on look, presentation, and form as opposed to substance.

This is a good example of how, when you talk about modernization and change, the kinds of things you might think are just part of the modern world, they actually can have distorting effects on the way in which that institution works. To quote Kevin Lamoureux, “distortative effects” result from those changes.

Mr. Graham's proposal is interesting, but I worry about the impact of this additional initiative that would further change the way in which the House of Commons works in terms of the extent to which it's a television studio versus effectively a deliberative body. I don't think it's realistic or desirable to go back and remove the cameras, but I think we should be sensitive to changes that may have an effect and may not be the ones we are going for. It speaks to the need for that wider engagement of members of Parliament from all parties in the discussion. There may be things that are not even of a partisan or strategic nature, which members of the opposition, members who are more experienced, perhaps, or not, may be aware of which may not necessarily reflect the concerns of members of the government.

One of the problems with having decisions made unilaterally, especially by a new government of predominantly brand new MPs, is that you don't draw into that experience that comes from a larger number of veteran members in other parties. I think it's still the case that the longest serving current member of Parliament is a member of an unrecognized party, a member of the Bloc. It is generally going to be the case that there will be more veterans on the opposition benches than on the government benches. If you have a party that was recently in power and then has gone to the opposition, you are going to have some new members, but you're likely to have a lot of returning members. Whereas, when a party substantially grows its caucus, as has happened with this government—this government was in a third party position, and it went from being the third party to being government—a vast majority of members of Parliament on the government side, and I think the vast majority of ministers, certainly the government House leader, are new members of Parliament.

Part of the importance of engaging the opposition, and you see it in the example of cameras and what their effect would be, is actually tapping into the experience and institutional knowledge that exist in this place. If the House leader were effectively allowed to make these changes unilaterally, it would be the government but with the ability of the leadership team to add and remove members to and from the committee at will. That process, as we see with this discussion paper, would be highly directed by the House leader. Effectively, you have someone who has, to this point, been a member of Parliament for less than two years, who wants to fundamentally dictate the terms of the so-called modernization, the changes, perhaps the revolution, that they wish to see to the Standing Orders. That's quite a striking point that we would see that level, that type, and that magnitude of change undertaken without engaging the experience that exists in all parts of the House.

I don't mean to suggest that new members can't have valid points about the Standing Orders. I'm a new member myself, obviously. I've been a member for as long as the government House leader has been. New members may see things from a different perspective and be willing to put forward ideas for certain kinds of changes that maybe those who have been here for a very long time are less likely to see as necessary.

There is a balance that needs to be struck between hearing the voices of new members and hearing the voices of members who have been here for a longer period of time and who have a level of context and experience that informs the approach that they take. It's that balance that is achieved by this amendment. It is an amendment that speaks to the question of balance between government and opposition, but I would argue to a range of different kinds of balances that need to exist in the deliberative process that's unfolding. It's a balance between government and opposition, between major parties and minor parties, between recognized and unrecognized parties, between those on the front bench and those who are not part of the front bench, whether in government or in general throughout the House. This would be a balance between newer members and experienced members, members who have different kinds of experience.

Of course, some of the members here look at the Standing Orders from the experience of having been former political staff. I was a political staffer at one time, and you do see the Standing Orders in a bit of a different way when you are navigating them. In my case, I was involved in a number of different positions with different aspects of the Standing Orders. In one case it was question period preparation, and in another case it was working with parliamentary committees.

There are obviously things about the mechanisms of this House that staff experience which may be less part of the reality of members of Parliament. This is because we often rely on our staff to support us when we have specific questions to ask, or when there are specific kinds of motions that might need to be brought forward in that context.

It's about the multiplicity of voices that we can ensure are engaged if we have the widest number of voices included with different kinds of experience. We have members who have been former political staffers. We have members who look at this place with a relatively fresh set of eyes. You might have people who look at the Standing Orders from the perspective of operating procedures that they've seen in private sector work places, in terms of processes that we follow, hours, sitting processes, and balance of work, how this place squares with the way things operate in the private sector.

We have members, and Mr. Christopherson is one of them, who came to this place from other legislatures, and who have experience at the provincial level. In some cases we have people who have been involved at the municipal level. The kind of perspective they bring to a discussion of the Standing Orders is going to be different still. It's going to be informed by the experience they had as part of a different legislature. It's all these different perspectives, these variations and experience, that inform the way members think about the kinds of questions that are in front of us. It's important that we listen and engage those voices.

I don't know if we have any members of Parliament who were former senators. We have senators who were former members of Parliament. I know we've had people who have stepped back from the Senate to run to be members of Parliament, but I don't know if we've ever had someone who has gone that way. That's another set of experiences that you draw on when you have the full range of voices involved.

The kind of study we could do at this committee on the basis of the amendment would be one in which we are assured that not only are all of these different voices heard formally, that we have lots of people who are able to speak, but then the discussion that members of Parliament have after that is one that incorporates those voices in a substantive way. If you have members from different parties who are part of that discussion and are represented in it, you necessarily will achieve a better outcome given the diversity that would come to the fore.

One issue the discussion paper addresses and one which I mentioned before but in a different context, because this was before the government's introduction of the budget implementation bill, is the issue of omnibus bills. I have a hard time understanding what the government's position is on omnibus bills. The Prime Minister in question period yesterday was trying to carve out this distinction between good omnibus bills and bad omnibus bills. A good omnibus bill, it seems, in the eyes of the Prime Minister, is one proposed by a Liberal government; a bad one is one proposed by a Conservative government. We would understand that he would have that perspective, of course. We all tend to prefer legislation proposed by our own side, but the question of the degree of “omnibus-ness”—I don't know if that is a word—is not dependent on the party that brings it forward. To me, some of the discussion in the discussion paper suggests that there is a binary.... It's either an omnibus bill or it's not an omnibus bill.

The reality is we see many different kinds of bills that come before the House that deal with different kinds of provisions that do not necessarily have to be included in the same bill but have some common thread to them. Those are bills that maybe move a step in the direction of being an omnibus bill but don't go all the way.

One bill we dealt with was on the response to the opioid crisis in Canada. This wasn't an issue on which we agreed with the NDP, but in the Conservative caucus we felt that this bill combined certain kinds of provisions that shouldn't have been combined. There were many provisions in that bill that we were very supportive of, that dealt with things like more effective enforcement, addressing pill presses. These kinds of things we thought were not only good measures but needed to be expedited. However, the legislation also included provisions that dealt with the community consultation process around putting in place what we call supervised injection sites, and what the government increasingly likes to call safe consumption sites, which is a little misleading as far as the terminology goes.

In any event, the legislation, in addition to those positive things we all agreed on, dealt with the government's proposal to remove most of the requirements around engaging with communities before constructing a supervised injection site. We looked at the bill and said there were some things in it that were not only worth supporting but were important and required the fastest possible movement through the House, but there was another part of the bill that we were totally opposed to.

The government House leader in her discussion paper talks about an omnibus bill being one where members might want to vote for a part of it but not for another part of it. That's the reality of almost all legislation that comes before the House. Someone somewhere is going to agree with part of it but not another part of it. Unless you only have legislation that has one provision in it, that makes one specific change in one clause, which would be pretty unrealistic in terms of the efficiency of the House, any time you have legislation that makes multiple policy changes, you're going to have members who will like some parts of it and not other parts of it.

Yesterday I talked about the debate around Bill C-14, the government's euthanasia legislation. Aside from the fact that there were a whole host of different provisions in this legislation, there were two very distinct issues that needed to be adjudicated. Unfortunately, they were often mixed up in the public conversation. There was a question of the eligibility criteria, who was eligible to seek euthanasia, and there was a question on the safeguards, the administrative requirements that had to be met before someone could seek euthanasia. The point is these were two different questions. Someone could conceivably believe in more open eligibility criteria and fewer safeguards, but someone could also believe, let's say, in a more open, more liberal eligibility criteria while also having more safeguards in place. You have these different kinds of philosophical questions and different kinds of provisions that are wrapped up in the same piece of legislation.

Of course, in a formal sense, no one would say that Bill C-14 was an omnibus bill. It was a bill that set the terms for the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide. In that sense, we could accept, relatively speaking, that it was on one thing, but it was a step in the omnibus direction, at least according to the way in which omnibus bills are defined by the government's discussion paper. The government's discussion paper suggests that an omnibus bill is one in which some members might like some provisions and not others.

What happened with the legislation around the opioid crisis—I can't remember the number of the bill offhand—was that a point of order was raised seeking unanimous consent to split the bill. This was proposed by the Conservative caucus, I think by Mr. Colin Carrie, our health critic. It would have created two separate bills. One of those bills would have dealt with the provisions we all agreed on, and that bill would have moved along immediately. It may well have moved along to the end of third reading right at that point. Certainly, it would have gone all the way to committee. It would have separated off the controversial provisions.

The benefit of that approach, actually, is that it would not have slowed anything down, but would have sped up the process. It would have allowed for the immediate passage of the provisions on which we all agreed. Those provisions could have started doing their work and having a positive impact, whereas the controversial provisions could have continued to be debated.

This is particularly sensible when you consider the way in which the House and the Senate interact. If you have two separate bills that both go to the Senate, and the Senate amends one of them and not the other, then only the bill that was amended has to come back to the House, while the other, if it passes in the Senate in the same form it did in the House, goes on from there to receive royal assent. If all of those provisions are wrapped up in the same bill, then all of those provisions have to come back to the House again.

In cases where the opposition is prepared to expedite certain provisions...and as we saw with this particular bill there was a substantial public interest in the government supporting the splitting of that bill, yet they didn't. Unanimous consent was denied for that proposal.

This is telling of the government's actual views on bills that, although they may not be omnibus bills in the full sense, have a component of “omnibus-ness” to them. The government, in a reasonable case like that, was not willing to allow the splitting of a bill in a way that would have very much reflected the public interest with the timeline the public wanted to see. That did not happen because of a refusal of the request for unanimous consent. That refusal, of course, came from the government side. This is telling about the approach being taken for omnibus bills already.

I think we now have examples from this government of actual full-blown omnibus legislation. You would be very hard-pressed to identify a single, credible, philosophical distinction in terms of the degree of “omnibus-ness”, let's say, between the kinds of omnibus bills that the previous government brought in and the kinds of omnibus bills that this government is bringing in.

We have a budget implementation bill—I have my notes here on it—that changes over 20 statutes and runs to over 300 pages. The Prime Minister's defence of that is identical to what was said, I think quite correctly, about the budget implementation bills that were brought forward by the previous government. When you have a whole bunch of measures that are related to the budget, the implementation of the government's fiscal plan, then there is a common thread. These are not entirely unrelated elements. They deal with the economic plan of the government.

That's fair enough, but of course almost anything in terms of government policy has some relationship to the economy. It likely relates to questions of social values as well, but almost anything has some relationship to the economy. Immigration has an impact on the economy. Social policy, drug policy, criminal justice, all of these things have some impact on the economy, or at the very least they involve questions of government expenditure.

That is true of every policy area. The government said in the election that they were opposed to omnibus bills, and now they are redefining their opposition to say that the omnibus bills they are opposed to are only those that have provisions that have absolutely no plausible relationship to each other. That is a pretty substantial stretch in terms of what we were actually talking about with omnibus bills.

We should, in good faith, look for ways to divide bills when we can, especially if there is a willingness of the opposition to expedite certain aspects of the bill that they agree with, but it's never going to be—and I think the government realizes this by now, if they didn't already—an exact science in terms of what does or does not constitute an omnibus bill. This is what raises some questions in terms of the proposal in the discussion paper for the Speaker to split the bill, because if you ask the Speaker to do something, the Speaker being a non-partisan person within the House in the context of that function, you have to give them some criteria. On what basis would they decide to split a bill or not to split a bill? If we can't even arrive, through discussion here, at clarity about what is a bad kind or an acceptable kind of omnibus bill, then we are effectively putting the Speaker in an almost impossible position.

What is clear with respect to omnibus legislation is that the government is breaking a promise here. The government said that they would get rid of omnibus legislation, but they are moving forward with something that is clearly quite similar, not in substance, of course, but in form, to what we saw from successive governments over our recent history.

It's an important question how we should handle the issue of budgets and budget implementation bills, because they are always going to deal with a variety of measures. They're going to have to. If we want the government to bring forward a budget every year, and it should, then there will be lots of different policy areas covered in that budget. You couldn't have a budget that talked only about some things and not others. It would have to cover all the things that are within the ambit of the activities of the federal government.

When it comes to omnibus legislation and questions of reform, we can look at other kinds of potential reforms that would provide the kind of scrutiny of those documents that the public and many members want to see, without being unrealistic about what a budget has to be. It's interesting that the only substantive kind of legislation on which a number of days is prescribed for debate in the Standing Orders is the budget itself. It's either four or five days for the budget to be debated, and after that it's the end of the budget debate. That is automatically put in place.

If you think about the breadth of measures that are covered in a budget, and the number of statutes the government is going to change over the course of a year, it's likely, it seems, with the projector that we have in place here.... Sorry, I lost my train of thought.

With the number of days we have, and with the record of this government with respect to the Standing Orders and how they've unfolded, we are likely to see more changes to statutes made through the omnibus budget implementation bill than changes to statutes in all the rest of the bills that the government brings forward. It's interesting to think just how important that process is, and yet we limit it to a relatively small number of days—I can't remember exactly whether it's four or five days—and we are discussing changes to statutes that outweigh all the changes to statutes that may well happen for the rest of the year.

Maybe one change to the Standing Orders we need to look at is allocating more days to the discussion of the budget. Maybe that would address some of the concerns that members have around ensuring that there is proper scrutiny relative to the relatively long budget documents that we're seeing. That would be one possible change.

Another change we might want to consider, and one which I think would be worthwhile for all members from all parties to deliberate and pronounce on, would be a process by which all committees, or at least a larger number of committees, studied the budget. Right now, the process is that the finance committee does pre-budget consultations. The finance committee looks at the budget implementation bill. We don't have a provision for the same bill being referred to multiple committees. What if we had all of the committees of the House, or at least most of the committees, do some degree of study—

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Whalen.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Sorry, Mr. Chair.

I believe the Speaker has the ability to bifurcate or trifurcate bills, and send different aspects of bills to different committees if the Speaker so chooses. While it might not be something that's codified as a process per se, it is a right that the Speaker has, in my understanding. Although Mr. Genuis might be right that the Standing Orders don't specifically point out a process, that option is actually available. Bills can be bifurcated and sent to different committees.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you for that comment.

Mr. Genuis.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Whalen, I don't think that's true, incidentally.

I know that the Standing Orders propose to give the Speaker the power to split bills, but it's not in our present rules that the Speaker would split bills or decide which committee they're sent to. The decision to refer to a particular committee is actually made by the House in the context of a vote. It is moved and voted on that a particular bill be read a second time and referred to the standing committee on x, y, or z. Then it is reported by that particular standing committee back to the House for further consideration. That is the process by which these things unfold.

There's a proposal in the government House leader's discussion paper to change that process. My concern with the proposed changes is that, if you give the authority to the Speaker, you have to give the Speaker some degree of clarity about the criteria on which that division takes place. That might be clearer in terms of splitting a bill if we had governments that, outside of the budget process, just decided to propose an omnibus bill that deals with immigration, health, public safety, and something else all in one bill. If we had that happen outside of the budget process, I think there would be much more of a response from members and from the public asking, “Why are you doing this? These are clearly disparate policy areas.” Actually, the discussion around omnibus bills has always focused on budgets and the budget implementation bill, which, by their nature, have to make a lot of different changes. So, asking the Speaker to make that call about what the split would be raises some real questions.

Given that we know the issue isn't typically with omnibus bills being proposed outside of that process, I don't think we've really seen that, other than the sort of semi-omnibus bills from the government that I've talked about that deal with somewhat different issues at the same time. Generally, the bigger bills that we're talking about are those budget bills, so we could build something into our process. The Standing Orders already have specific provisions around the way in which budget debates unfold. We could have specific provisions around referring.... Every budget would go to every committee, or a certain number of committees, which would then be charged with studying the aspects of the budget that are relevant to those committees.

Given the importance of the budget, it's not unreasonable that every committee would take three or four meetings. The health committee would look at what's in the budget for health and the significance of that. The immigration committee would look at what's in the budget with respect to immigration. The justice committee would do the same, as would the foreign affairs committee, and of course the finance committee as well.

Perhaps you would require that the formal process of reporting back to the House and so forth would occur through the finance committee, but that these other committees would be required to have a certain number of meetings and to report back within a certain number of sitting days after the passage of the budget bill at second reading and be required to submit a report to the House with respect to the findings of that committee on the budget provisions. That could happen outside of the formal process for legislative debate around the budget. I think that would be one very effective way. It would not be a panacea, a sort of catch-all, final solution in terms of the question of omnibus bills, but it would be one way of ensuring that budgets, given their importance and the number of statutes they change, had the relative degree of consideration that we would want to see. I think it would go a long way to actually addressing some of the concerns around this type of legislation.

It's worth noting that the government's justification for wanting to make these changes unilaterally without the engagement of the opposition is that they made a commitment in the context of the election to do certain things. What in fact is the case is that the specific commitments that were made by the Liberal Party to Canadians during the election with respect to the Standing Orders dealt with the prime minister's questions and with omnibus bills. Those are changes that are entirely within the power of the government. They don't even require changes to the Standing Orders, as colleagues of mine have mentioned.

They also are things where there's a bit of a dissonance between what is being said and what the government has done. The Prime Minister started standing up after questions were asked, after every question. I think it was last week he did that for the first time, but this is a year and a half into his mandate as Prime Minister. The Prime Minister could have started answering questions, implemented that commitment right away, had he been so inclined. It did not require changes to the Standing Orders.

On the omnibus issue, of course, we are seeing omnibus bills from the government. That, of course, happens in the context of a discussion of the budget, and there is a need that budgets address multiple issues. There's a dissonance between the tone and implication of the discussion paper and the reality we're seeing on the ground. What we would be concerned about is if this were window dressing to say, “Well, we created provisions through which omnibus bills can be split”, but it's done in such an ambiguous way that those provisions are actually never used. That would certainly not be a serious good faith implementation of what was an election commitment.

People did ask me about the question of omnibus bills. I was always very clear that there is a legitimate case in which you have different kinds of provisions in the same bill, if they relate to the theme, if they're part of a budget, and so forth, but there's also an illegitimate use of that procedure. Obviously, in an environment where we all have an interest in describing what we're doing as legitimate and what others are doing as not legitimate, it is difficult to come up with that objective test of what should be happening and what shouldn't happen in this respect.

Having a provision for a study at a broader number of committees with respect to the budget would address some of those concerns. Of course, that would also have to happen in a context in which you didn't have time limits at committee or programming of committees. If you had programming of committees, even in interaction with this proposed new procedure for handling budget or omnibus types of initiatives, that would really undercut what was supposed to be the intent of these provisions, which is to allow for meaningful study at committees. As much as possible it's so important that we preserve the ability of committees to be the masters of their own domain, and yes, perhaps in response to direction of the House, to take a certain amount of time studying measures coming out of the budget, but also to do further study, to go deeper into aspects of those provisions if they need to.

I suspect that if, after the budget implementation bill, the motion were to be moved—I'll pick a hypothetical example—at the health committee, saying that there should be a study on the health implications of the budget measures, the government would use their majority on that committee to say, “We don't need to study this here because it's being studied at the finance committee.”

Of course, it's not practical or realistic for the finance committee to study all aspects of a budget. The budget itself is fairly long. I'm still not finished reading it fully but I'm working my way through it. The budget implementation bill is very long, and it deals with many different kinds of statutes. It is an omnibus bill by any definition. It's just a question of whether it's a legitimate use of omnibus bills.

Did you have something on procedure, Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

I just have some information on the point that Mr. Whalen raised on whether the Speaker can split a bill. On page 725 of O'Brien and Bosc, the last sentence says:

However, on the question of whether the Chair can be persuaded to divide a bill simply because it is complex or composite in nature, there are many precedents from which it can be concluded that Canadian practice does not permit this.

Mr. Genuis.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think that's a good clarification in terms of what the rules say and what the changes are that are proposed in the context of the proposals that are coming from the government House leader. The government House leader is looking for potential changes in terms of the degree to which the Speaker would be engaged. As you pointed out, Mr. Chair, it would be a pretty substantial change to the way we conceive of the role of the Speaker.

Up until now in our tradition, the Speaker has not been someone to police aspects of content. That includes answers to questions and questions of accuracy. It's not a point of order if someone said something that isn't true; that's seen as a point of debate. The same is true with regard to omnibus bills. It is not the way we generally conceive of the role of the Speaker: to be evaluating and saying, “Substantively I think this is part of one theme and this is part of another theme.” That would involve the Speaker taking a few additional steps down a road which, thus far, the Speaker has not gone down at all: into adjudicating the kind of content that is in front of him or her. That said, I'd like to touch on a number of other different themes.

Part of the question that we need to consider in the context of this amendment is the way the time of this committee is managed and the kinds of other questions that have to come before this committee. This is an extremely important committee, obviously. It's the committee that studies all those kinds of procedural and mechanical aspects of what's happening in the House. The challenge for this committee can be, of course, that sometimes there are a lot of those different issues that are coming forward at the same time. It creates a circumstance in which there is a need for some conversation on multiple different issues. The committee has to grapple with what terms of study, what schedule of study, etc., allow for the committee to grapple with those different issues in the most effective way. These are the kinds of considerations that we have to think about in the context of this study and this amendment.

I don't need to tell anybody this, but we're having a fairly lengthy discussion of committee business in the lead-up to a prospective study. It's important that we have this lengthy discussion because, in the context of that, we in the opposition, all opposition parties, including unrecognized parties, feel that we are fighting for the basic integrity of our democratic system. We are fighting for the fact that changes to the basic rules of how Parliament works should not be made unilaterally. That's what we're fighting for, and it's important that we do. We are going to continue to do so until there is a change in disposition from the government on these issues.

In the meantime, there is a range of other questions of pressing importance that need to be studied by this committee. There is a debate, I presume, going on as we speak—okay, not quite; it's about to start in the House again—with respect to a question of privilege. It's a major question of privilege. As members have pointed out, it has happened a number of times that members of Parliament have been prevented from coming in to vote. It's so important that we get that right, because members are supposed to have unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct. Members didn't have, in certain cases, unfettered access to the parliamentary precinct and were denied their right to vote as a result of it. That was an important question of privilege that was brought forward, and it's being debated in the House right now.

Actually, right now in the House, we're debating a secondary question of privilege and an amendment to that, which deals with both the original privilege issue and also the legitimacy of the government having adjourned the debate on a question of privilege without a vote.

These are critical issues because they deal with the basic rights of members of Parliament to be present, to vote, and to represent their constituents. These are rights that they need to have, and because of an error that took place in whatever form, they have not always had them. That's a potential problem, and this committee needs to study that question.

The motion put forward in the House with respect to that study was to ask that this be made a priority in terms of the committee study. Why is that important?

As members of Parliament, we do lots of different things. We give speeches. We participate in studies. We consult with our constituents. We write letters. But the core of the job of a member of Parliament, the most important thing we can do, which people who are not members of Parliament cannot do, is vote in the House of Commons. That is the core of the job.

When you have an question of privilege where members are prevented from voting in the House of Commons, that is the kind of issue that should be a fundamental point of priority in terms of the discussion that happens at this committee, because it's up to this committee, PROC, to evaluate those questions and to adjudicate upon them.

Yet this whole resistance by the government to move forward on the amendment has created the conditions under which we have less effective work in the House because of a lack of co-operation from the government side with the opposition, and therefore a lack of co-operation all around. That's part of the issue. There is also the issue of the vital work this committee needs to be getting on with, especially those privilege issues.

We have a motion from a member of this committee to do a study of the question of privilege here at this committee. It's fair for members to bring forward motions at this committee, but the process that needs to be followed is for that question of privilege to be voted on in the House. It is of course up to members to vote for or against amendments in a way that one hopes reflects their individual conscience but which is, in any event, how they see fit to vote.

If it is approved in the House, as amended or not, the motion will either be sent here to PROC or not. If and when it comes here, it will then be discussed, considered, and so forth.

In the absence of the amendment, it may be that, regardless of what happens in the House, we continue to delay in terms of our ability to have a discussion on that vital privilege issue. We're really missing the necessary opportunity to do the job that this committee is supposed to be doing in that respect, if we don't come to a consensus that allows us to move forward. The way of having that consensus in place, I think, is to have the passage of the amendment which says that all parties will be engaged. It achieves the objective that some members of the government have said they actually wanted all along. They want to have unanimity on a report, but for whatever reason, they are just not interested in passing the amendment. Well, if you want to have collaboration, if you want to have all voices represented in the process of that discussion, then just pass the amendment. In part it's the right way of dealing with the Standing Orders, but it also allows the committee to undertake and respond to these vital questions of privilege.

The other thing that needs to be acknowledged about changes to the Standing Orders is—and someone here is advocating a public referendum on the Standing Orders—that there is not the same breakneck timeline with respect to these changes. We could well agree to a framework by which a study would take place, one that includes unanimity, and also agree that the study could take place in the fall. In the meantime, we could take this opportunity to move forward on these questions of privilege which the House is obviously very much seized with.

I haven't heard anybody say that these questions of privilege aren't important. Members of the government have criticized the opposition, sort of strangely, for making this political, as if they've forgotten where we are, but there's been no denial of the fact that, yes, these are critically important questions that are dealt with in the context of a discussion of privilege. Since there's that recognition, I think we should move forward on this particular motion by supporting the amendment in a way that reflects that recognition, but then we should also move forward with those other studies that are critically needed.

The other issue this committee could be studying is the prospective issues around the Canada Elections Act. There are others who know the details on this better than I do. My understanding is that this committee was asked and agreed to undertake a study this spring on the Elections Act to contribute in a substantive way to what's happening to the Elections Act.

The failure to do that involves multiple problems of unilateral action. There's the question of the unilateral action of the government with respect to the Standing Orders. Then, in the absence of a committee study, which is now prevented by the insistence on a unilateral approach on the Standing Orders, there's a concern of what happens in terms of the process with respect to the Elections Act. It is important for members of Parliament to be engaged in that discussion. There just doesn't seem to be an interest or willingness to establish an agreement that would allow us to move forward.

We hear a lot of talk about conversations from the government House leader. It's often hard to understand in that context what's meant by “have a conversation”. The point of having a conversation should be to come to some form of consensus that allows for action. Generally speaking, a conversation is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. A conversation is a way in which particular goods ought to be realized, which are, generally speaking, goods external to, as opposed to internal to, the process of conversing. In this case, the goods to be achieved through the conversation would be changes to the Standing Orders that reflect the wisdom of the entire House, not just of one or a few people or of one party, but also to allow this committee to operate in a constructive way that then moves on to some of these critical issues that have not been considered yet and very much need to be considered as we go forward with respect to what's happening on the Standing Orders.

Having talked about other aspects of committee business, I want to return to the government House leader's discussion paper. I had an intervention on this a week and a half ago or so, and unfortunately, because of the limitations of time, I didn't have a chance to speak to all aspects of the discussion paper. I want to do that now. Then I want to talk about the Green Party's response, the Green Party's discussion paper on changes to the Standing Orders. I don't agree with all of it. I don't know if I even agree with most of it. I agree with some of it, but I think it's quite provocative.

I think it was Mr. Chan who praised Ms. May for bringing forward that discussion paper. I don't know, though, if the government would be praising it if they'd read it in detail, because it's very critical of the approach taken in the government discussion paper. In many ways it's much farther away from the government, even, than we are as an official opposition party. I don't know if Ms. May has had a chance yet at this committee to actually talk through that paper, but I think it's something that is going to contribute to the discussion around this.

If you look at the government's discussion paper and the Green Party's discussion paper, just as two examples of prospective proposals for changes to the Standing Orders, you see how “modernization” can mean dramatically different things. It can mean the kind of enhancement of the power of the executive to expedite legislation, that kind of so-called reform. It can also mean, on the other side of the spectrum, a change that reduces the power of the centre and strengthens the ability of members of Parliament to be involved in the process.

I should say that it's not as if these approaches are mutually exclusive. There would be proposals that could both strengthen members of Parliament and strengthen the efficiency of the legislative process. In the context of a study that would include the framework established by the amendment where there is a requirement that there be unanimity and involvement of all parties, we could look for those solutions that would actually achieve all of those objectives, that would increase efficiency without derogating from the important role of members of Parliament. It is, perhaps, hard to know exactly what those would be.

You would need to hear from experts about what the implications of different changes are. The government discussion paper may well point to some things that ultimately do achieve that objective of strengthening the role for members of Parliament and addressing the efficiency of the legislative process. However, in the absence of an agreement up front for how that would work, we can't be confident that the government would draw the right conclusions from the witnesses we hear.

If we go into a study without the amendment and the government hears witnesses who say that if we do x, y, and z, the government is going to increase its power, government members may think that's great and want to do x, y, and z, rather than drawing the right conclusion from that testimony. The right conclusion would be to hear all those concerns and say that we have to be cautious about doing something that increases the power of the government unless there is some compensatory change on the other side.

It might be that through unanimity you actually have some horse-trading with respect to the Standing Orders. You might have agreement to support some provisions that do concretely enhance the power of the government, while other measures concretely enhance the power of the opposition. Members might agree that those proposals kind of balance each other out and in the end are, in totality, beneficial for the entire institution.

That's the kind of discussion, the kind of framework, that is rendered possible in the event that we have a clear requirement up front to engage all voices on all parts of that conversation. That's something we'll be missing if we don't have the amendment. That's a bit of context for the next steps that I want to take in the context of this discussion.

For those following along at home, where I left off before was under theme three of the discussion paper where it speaks about the management of committees. It's interesting in terms of how it talks about the kinds of changes that could happen with respect to the structure of committees, and the relative balance between committees and the government and other actors within this institution. There are some important and interesting proposals for changes here, although I have some pretty substantive concerns about, especially in the discussion of committees, what I see as some sleight of hand, some arguments being made that suddenly go off in a different direction from the one expected.

Before I get into the management of committees, I should review the section on omnibus bills, so-called, because it's right before it. It's relatively short, and it speaks to what I was talking about before, especially in the context now of what is a very substantial omnibus bill that the government has put forward.

It says, “The Government committed to end the improper use of omnibus legislation.” I don't actually think that was what was in the Liberal platform. I think they said that they would get rid of omnibus legislation. Maybe there are members who can correct me on that, but we see these subtle shifts in language that are sort of the road to a broken promise. First, they're going to get rid of omnibus legislation. Then they're not getting rid of omnibus legislation; they're just getting rid of the “improper use of omnibus legislation”. It seems that, in their minds, when they say “improper use of omnibus legislation”, what they mean is the Conservative use of omnibus legislation. I would say that omnibus legislation should be used conservatively, in both senses of the word.

In any event, the section continues, “Omnibus bills can be defined as a bill that contains separate and unrelated themes packaged into one bill.” In reading that definition, “separate and unrelated themes packaged into one bill”, an omnibus bill could be any bill, because any bill contains distinct themes. Then, of course, if you consider the meaning of “unrelated”, there is no such thing as an omnibus bill if a bill contains unrelated themes, because all bills, all themes that we deal with in this place, can be seen as having some relationship to each other. Is there a relationship between immigration and health? Yes, of course there is. Is there a relationship between criminal justice and finance? Yes, of course there is. Even disparate policy areas have relationships between the two of them. This is a definition without a definition.

It essentially goes on, “Members are then forced to vote for or against a bill that could have elements that Members would support or oppose.” That happens all the time. Basically, the process that is normally followed is you would look at the principle of a bill at second reading, and you would maybe vote for a bill at second reading, even if you have substantial objections to certain parts of it, because you think that those sections could be removed at committee.

Mr. Blaney had a private member's bill that introduced higher mandatory minimums for drunk drivers and also introduced mandatory screening so that basically police could ask anybody for a Breathalyzer test as there's no requirement to establish probable cause. Those are two very different kinds of provisions contained within not just the same bill but actually contained within one private member's bill. I was very supportive of that bill and I encouraged members to vote for it. Even if you are against mandatory minimums but like mandatory screening, you should vote for the bill so that you can support mandatory screening. Even if you're for mandatory minimums but against mandatory screening, you should support the bill as a way of showing support for mandatory minimums. That makes sense at second reading, because then you're advancing that bill on to a committee study, and then it's up to the committee to wordsmith and decide which parts of the bill should move forward or not. Maybe that's a bill that could have been split, but of course given the limits with private members' business, it makes sense for individual members, who already have a very limited opportunity to bring forward legislation, to try to deal with different elements of legislation in a similar format.

My own private member's bill, Bill C-350, which I just had a chance to table this week in its entirety, is a bill that was put forward for first reading by Irwin Cotler, a Liberal MP in the last Parliament. It was seconded in this Parliament by Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, the member for Etobicoke Centre. It's good non-partisan legislation.

I wouldn't call that bill an omnibus bill, but it does include different elements within it, but all to deal with organ harvesting without consent. It deals with Canadians who might go abroad to try to get an organ and how they establish consent for that organ when they come back, but it also deals with the inadmissibility of people to Canada who are involved in this kind of organ-harvesting activity. It deals with immigration in terms of admissibility to Canada. It deals with health because it deals with the kinds of reporting structures that would be in place with respect to someone who is getting an organ. It deals with a question of criminal justice. It is fundamentally a justice bill because it deals with the criminal penalties that would be put in place for those who are involved in this terrible human rights violation involved in organ harvesting.

That's my bill, Bill C-350, and we already have, related to a similar theme, key elements of criminal justice, health, and immigration issues. It might well be that members say that they, for whatever reason, don't like the inadmissibility provisions of it, but they are supportive of the requirement that Canadians get consent when they get an organ. I think members should support my bill in its entirety because it's really a great bill, but it might be that members like some parts of it and not others. That doesn't make it an omnibus bill just because it deals with a number of different aspects of the same issue. Even the way in which omnibus bills are explained and described in this discussion paper is totally at odds with how they're usually described in the public debate.

By this definition, you could say that almost every bill is an omnibus bill. I mean, there are some bills like Wynn's law that really only changed one word in the Criminal Code. That bill is uncomplicated enough that you can very clearly say, “ Yes, that's one word”, and you're either for it or against it. There's not the complexity of, say, being for parts of it but against other parts of it. That bill was about whether certain evidence would be brought forward about someone's past convictions in the context of a bail hearing. The law now says that evidence may be brought forward. The new provision would say that evidence shall be brought forward. That's the kind of bill that, yes, on the surface, if you were to come up with a scale of “omnibus-ness”, a relative degree of “omnibus-ness” in a particular bill, it would be at the low end of the scale. Almost any other bill, including private members' bills, will touch on different elements.

Some members choose to vote against bills, even if they're fairly small or simple, on the basis of the whereas clauses. My approach is to vote on the basis of the substantive provisions, not the whereas clauses, but we've had members say, “I cannot support that bill, not because of what's in the bill itself, but because of the affirmations that are contained in the whereas clauses”, the perception being that, when you vote in favour of a bill that has certain whereas clauses, you're endorsing the ideas behind the whereas clauses. There are some members who take that approach. I don't, but even for very small, very simple legislation, if you are going to vote for or against it on the basis of the whereas clauses, then definitely you find yourself in a situation where members are forced to vote for or against a bill that could have elements the member would support or oppose.

The discussion paper goes on with respect to omnibus bills, “The only recourse for Members has been to seek to divide omnibus bills in committee, but these motions rarely come to a vote or are agreed to by way of unanimous consent.” That's true. It is quite rare that there is division of bills. There are potential issues with division of bills, obviously, in terms of efficiency and also in terms of private members' business. There are some bills that, even if they deal with different kinds of provisions, don't need to be divided. I don't think my bill needs to be divided into five or six bills just because it addresses a number of different aspects of the question of organ harvesting. I think it makes sense together thematically. It's still relatively short. It's a couple of pages, not 300 pages like the budget implementation bill, but it does deal with different areas of policy and the interaction and relationship among those areas of policy.

The proposal here is that, “Since the Clerk of the House has the power in Standing Order 39(2) to divide written questions, a similar approach could be used by the Speaker to divide omnibus bills.” I don't think this point has been made before, but it's quite a stretch to say that because you can divide written questions you can divide bills. Bills are not written questions. There are very substantial differences. Of course, yes, members have a limit on the number of questions they can have on the Order Paper, so having a division of written questions has some substantive effect. The substantive policy implications, the importance and potential controversy around a decision of a Speaker to divide a bill, far outweighs the kind of concern that might be associated with dividing an Order Paper question. The size and scale of that are very, very different. It's striking that there isn't an acknowledgement of that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Reid.