Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 21st, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Kmiec.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I believe when I left off, I was about to refer to an article on government motion number six. It would have been a 2016 article published on “On Procedure and Politics”, which is available through thoughtundermined.com.

Instead, I want to refer to and begin with this article: “Evolution of the Ontario Standing Orders since 1985”, by Adam McDonald. Mr. McDonald was an Ontario legislative intern for 2004-05.

It says:

This is a revised version of a paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Canadian Political Science Association on June 4, 2005.

It goes on to say:

This author is grateful to present and former MPPs as well as to legislative staff interviewed in the preparation of this paper.

It bears some discussion here, because it talks directly about how the standing orders of the provincial Parliament in Ontario have been amended since 1985. I think it's relevant to the discussion we're having now, because we can see through this motion and the very reasonable amendment we've proposed to—

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

I'm sorry to do this so quickly to you, Mr. Kmiec. I think we're making a habit of this.

Before I get to it, I would just like to acknowledge and welcome Mr. Schiefke, the Prime Minister's parliamentary secretary. It's good to finally have some representation from the Prime Minister's team here. Maybe the PMO will have some words to say through Mr. Schiefke at some point, and maybe we can try to resolve this ability that we're trying to preserve for the opposition to hold the Prime Minister accountable more than one hour a week. Maybe we'll get some comment from Mr. Schiefke on behalf of the Prime Minister at some point about that. That would sure be helpful. Maybe the Prime Minister will choose to think the better of his ability to try preventing his being held accountable by the Canadian public.

What I actually wanted to raise is this. I want to confirm that the meeting is in fact being televised.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes.

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

My colleague Mr. Nater has been looking on ParlVu, and it doesn't seem to be coming up on it. We're just a bit concerned about whether it's actually being televised, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

We'll have the technicians check. We announced that it was televised.

You're suggesting that we announce new members who are here, so I'll say welcome to Alistair MacGregor, John Nater, and of course Tom Kmiec. Also, we have John Aldag, who just had an exciting vote; Michel Picard; and Peter Schiefke.

Welcome to everyone who is not normally on this committee. You'll find it very interesting and will hear some very educational speeches.

Carry on while we sort out the technology.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Do you want me to continue? Just let me know when it's televised.

For those members who don't know, I have a great love of Yiddish proverbs. Mr. Housefather was here earlier with us. I have one in mind now: “Words should be weighed, not counted.” It applies to Mr. Genuis, who spoke before me, and obviously to Mr. Lamoureux, and I know that David appreciates it. I hope my contribution thus far to the debate has been in weighty words. I've tried to reference as much parliamentary material as I can find, demonstrating that the amendment to the motion is very much reasonable.

I think the motion as it stands without this amendment is reckless because of the damage it could do to our institutions. I've mentioned why the institution of Parliament is so important: it's because you don't get a second chance. We have no other House of Commons that we can protect or use as a back-up. If a corporation or not-for-profit business collapses because of poor management, another one will arise to take its place and undertake the service and products they were doing. The service we render to the population of Canada through Parliament is to deliberate, unlike what the Government of Canada's document says, “Reforming the Standing Orders of the House of Commons”, which talks about the adversarial system that we have.

I've explained before that I think that is completely wrong. We are a deliberative body. We are not here to spit out laws at the end of the day and to produce legislation. We are here to deliberate on the matters and concerns that Canadians have shared with us through whatever medium that is.

Speaking to the article I mentioned, the article written by Mr. MacDonald, I'll just finish the citation. It's in the Autumn 2005 issue of Canadian Parliamentary Review. The abstract talks about the fact that Westminster-style governments and Parliaments are steeped in a “thousand year tradition”, and many of the processes originate in historical fights or reactions to external events rather than as conscious decision-making over time.

I don't think anybody thought, as I've demonstrated before, that time allocation and guillotine motions and closure would be used to such an extent. In fact, in the parliamentary debates in Canada, we have seen that initially ministers of the crown have said that, no, in fact it would be only on the off-chance that they might use it. We have seen the complete opposite on both the national energy program and on gun control, and successive governments, Liberal and Progressive Conservative, have done so, and then the Conservative governments that came after. It's not as if anybody is innocent here, and we're not laying blame on anyone. I'm just stating facts for the record.

The same applies to provincial legislatures. The one I want to talk about just a little bit, because it's germane to both the motion and the amendment, involves the way Ontario has changed the standing orders of Ontario's parliament since 1985 and the reaction to those changes, expressed both in the way members of that assembly have done their work and then in the way the government has reacted in producing legislation to move them forward.

This article really talks about Premier Peterson's activities and attempts to negotiate with opposition parties to make changes to the standing orders. In 1997 the Peterson government got a majority in the election and, according to the author, they started to act in whatever way they wanted. Of course, that judgment is subjective. In turn, the opposition parties became more disruptive.

I mentioned before the need to build trust over time, and consensus and co-operation that didn't exist in this case. Let's see where it leads in this particular case as an instructive scenario for the amendment here.

MPP Peter Kormos of the New Democratic Party accused Premier Peterson of lying to the House, a pretty serious charge even here. I have made it my mission never to accuse another member of lying, because it's a serious charge and then causes debate. I think no member purposely misleads the House or lies here, I would hope.

Mr. Kormos then refused to recant, and the Speaker named him. We know that naming used to be a pretty serious form of shaming. Nowadays, I'm not so sure. Maybe some members wear it as a badge of honour; it may be their opportunity to appear in Hansard. I would think not—not for me personally.

The New Democrat House leader challenged the Speaker's ruling on May 29, 1989. The opposition whip refused to join the other two whips to walk into the chamber to indicate that the MPPs were ready to vote and kept the bells running.

Then the Speaker suspended the sitting and deemed the bells to be continued as ringing until the sitting resumed on Friday, June 2, which it so happens, I believe, is the date this report would have to—

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

Maybe that's why that date was chosen. We've never had it explained to us.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Well, since nobody has explained to our side why it was June 2, it's quite possible, Mr. Richards. It may be for some historical allusion. I don't know. It would be interesting, almost—

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

It's the first explanation I've heard, so maybe that's it.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

It could possibly be. The bells were left ringing for what I see here would be almost three days, and maybe four days, if my math isn't wrong, but at any rate for a long time, and I think this is our third or fourth day of debate here.

When the Speaker resumed on Friday, June 2—I'm sorry: this continued until Thursday, June 6, thereafter—the opposition had succeeded in disrupting the House for a whole week. It's not an activity that any opposition would take on lightly, I would think.

Dave Cooke, then the New Democratic House leader, accused the government of having the attitude of: “To heck”—his word did start with “h”, but I've heard the Speaker tell members not to use that word in the House—“with the opposition. We'll get at the rules by imposing.” Sean Conway, then the government House leader, responded to the opposition's comments on his rule changes by saying that the government would get its business done and would do so without the continuous obstruction from the opposition.

In 1990 Bob Rae became premier and Mike Harris became the leader of the opposition. This obstruction continued, obviously, and many of the same people were returning, so that lack of trust continued into the next assembly. They had lost trust in each other, could not build consensus while working together, and could not find a way to co-operate.

Harris's opposition to the premier's policies resulted in a number of tactics to delay government legislation. The opposition decided to get creative. On May 6, 1991, Mr. Harris introduced a bill whose title included every single body of water in Ontario. I'll let that sink in a bit. I'm not from Ontario, but I would assume that there would be a very large volume of names to write down. Not only did Harris, as sponsor, have to read it, but the Speaker and the Clerk had to read it, in both official languages.

They had to read it in French as well. It's interesting.

The opposition never would have done that if there had been an opportunity to find a way to build trust, consensus, and co-operation, which is why we're pushing this amendment to the motion. We're not saying that we're opposed to any type of change. That is not our goal. We're saying, “don't shut us down”, and I'm also saying, “don't shut yourselves down”. You're members of the government caucus, and working hard to join the executive, I'm sure. However, until such time as you're called upon by the Governor General to join the executive, you should be mindful of your roles as parliamentarians first and foremost. I think that's more important.

Parliamentary government assumes that the government will get its way eventually, but the opposition parties have the right to criticize and to delay business from occurring.

The New Democrats brought in some of the most restrictive changes to those standing orders; there were some that were complaints and were not so much brought in. They limited speech in debate, and time limits were introduced at that time. There was a limited amount of time for the introduction of bills, which is a direct result of Mr. Harris's private member's bill—or the equivalent in the Ontario parliament—that he brought forward, which caused that extensive reading of all the names of bodies of water into the record. They also provided for time allocation of bills.

All of these changes prevented the possibility of the opposition taking over the legislature the way it had been for the previous two years under the New Democrats. As a result, in the wording of the author, the legislature “is much less relevant”—I wouldn't say that about the Ontario parliament—“than it was twenty years” previously. Again, this is from an article, “Evolution of the Ontario Standing Orders since 1985”.

Prior to that I can't speak to the content, the standing orders that existed, and the types of changes that may or may not have been considered, but we have an example there where there are drastic rule changes as a direct result of the opposition's activities. Those were the results, and those opposition activities to obstruct and delay and to be heard were the result of the government's intransigence, inability, and unwillingness to compromise.

All we're asking for through this amendment, Mr. Chair, is compromise. It's a very reasonable amendment that would take a reckless motion and bring it more into line with what should be and must be the standard practice of this House, which is to seek consensus in this committee meeting. Of all the committees that should be able to agree, I think this committee should be the one that should find consensus as much as possible. As for what this amendment will do, it will say that we will study and we will look at the changes, but we want to unanimously agree for the report.

Then our colleagues the New Democrats and we on the Conservative side can come to some type of agreement with the members of the government caucus on what types of changes to the Standing Orders will be suggested going forward. That will elevate the quality and the opportunity of each member of Parliament to represent their constituencies, to edify Parliament, and to steward their seat for the person who comes afterwards.

As I mentioned before, we are parliamentarians first. There is no rule—I can't find anything in the Constitution—that says we must pass government legislation, except for those very few where we need to confirm the oaths of office for the members of cabinet and to pass their budget. That is our main role, along with the estimates, confirming that the government has the confidence of the House and is able to pass a spending bill, or successive spending bills in the case of supplementary estimates. Our core role is to review how the crown spends money. At committee I was told—I won't mention which member of the government caucus said this to me—that it's not as important as looking at policy issues. I agree that policy issues are very important, but looking at the main estimates and how government spends is much more important. It is our constitutional obligation.

As the official opposition, in fact Her Majesty's loyal official opposition, we don't oppose you because we consider you adversaries. As I mentioned before, you're not my enemies. You're not my adversaries. We may not be friends, but I would think that our relationship, as we build it over time, will get better. We can honourably oppose each other but also find ways to co-operate later on.

We are loyal to Her Majesty. We've taken an oath of office to fulfill our obligations. It's our obligation to oppose you, to criticize, and, when necessary, but only when necessary, to obstruct when you are being unreasonable or when we think you are being reckless. We take that responsibility seriously.

We would not obstruct endlessly, because any opposition could do that right from the start. They could just obstruct from day one and not allow anything to happen. There are many different things you could do in this House that would further delay the activities. We choose not to, because the opposition has a responsibility with all this power, just as the government, both the caucus and the members of the executive, have a great deal of responsibility.

I don't see that in “Reforming the Standing Orders of the House of Commons”, this document for discussion that the government has put forward. I don't see that. My personal belief is that they're reckless, some of the changes being discussed in here, or the potential for changes without great details. That's why. to me, this amendment is so important. Moving forward, we need to know, and have faith in you as members of the government caucus, that you will not see your roles as defenders of the executive but as defenders of Parliament.

The John Diefenbaker quote I like to use, the speaking crutch he used to have, that appears in his mention in Sean O'Sullivan's book—I see the gentleman's nephew sitting just behind—was, “I love Parliament”. As a speaking crutch it was incredible, but he didn't just say it, he believed it. We should all—all—believe it.

I mentioned an article at the beginning, and I want to briefly speak to it on the record. Again, it's germane to this discussion. Mr. Julian was the New Democratic House leader at the time. He no longer is. When motion six was tabled by the House leadership, he called it a “draconian motion” that breached the privileges of members of Parliament. He said that it would “put all the other members in a straitjacket and limit their rights and privileges” and would “deny MPs the right to spark debates on the crucial work” of committees. About the executive, he talked about it “attempting to set aside those rights and privileges for all MPs, other than for cabinet ministers”.

That wasn't a belief of just politicians. That was also a belief of the media at the time. I'll quote Kady O'Malley here. She said that there was an attack “on the privileges of the House” and that it stripped “the opposition of their parliamentary rights”.

I think to the credit of the government, they didn't proceed with implementing the motion. I don't think it was because you were convinced of the argument—by “you” I mean the members of the executive—but more so it was the public pressure. We're seeing public pressure mount on the executive, on the government caucus, to stop this, to pull the motion off the table, which would then render the amendment unnecessary, obviously.

Only with the amendment can this all go forward. It is the only way that I can foresee this working out.

I think Canadians believe that if there are changes to be made to how the opposition functions—because these changes are meant mostly for us, for the official opposition and for the third party, and for other smaller party members as well, such as the Bloc, which is not a recognized political entity in this House, and for the independents, who serve on behalf of a political party—this would significantly change the work they do. Without unanimously agreeing to changes ahead of time, without the process by which we will come to agreement, and without agreeing to this at the very beginning, we do a disservice to ourselves as parliamentarians. We also do a disservice to Canadians and their expectations.

On this motion 6, at the time it was said that “the motion would have curtailed the ability of Members to move certain motions which they would have done largely for the purpose of delaying the progress of Government business.” That's absolutely true, but the delay is also an opportunity for us to deliberate and to make a point. That's the only time we have in the House of Commons to make that point, because otherwise the government runs the business. It's the government's orders of the day; it's the government's business.

As the member of Parliament for my riding, I can't rise randomly during debate and say that I'd like to talk about the Green Line LRT. As much as I would like to, I keep those conversations on the side so that I can go to the infrastructure minister and plead the case of my constituents, who really would like to see this done and have the project funded. I've taken every single opportunity—I've found him in a lounge somewhere and on a plane—to raise this very briefly, just so he doesn't forget that it exists.

I mentioned this before, but I have a reference on parliamentary privilege that I'm going to be using here. As members, we have parliamentary privilege, but not from the Standing Orders. The Standing Orders exist to enable parliamentary privilege. I have a very brief list here of the rights, privileges, and immunities of individual members of the House, which we can categorize as the following: freedom of speech; freedom from arrest in civil actions; the exemption from jury duty; the exemption from being subpoenaed to attend court as a witness; and, freedom from obstruction, interference, intimidation and molestation. That last one is with regard to the breach of privilege that was moved last May during an unfortunate incident in the House.

Those privileges and the Standing Orders that impact them and encapsulate how they work in the House, and at committee as well, I think are really important. When the initial changes were done in 1969, and the committees became more formulated and strengthened and became the process by which we have substantive, deliberative debate, committees became the place where you could have an open debate among the different sides. You could hear all the different sides and the disagreements they had. There were legislative committees as well, to debate specific legislation, and you reviewed the main estimates, etc. Members made their points there. You had almost unlimited opportunities to debate. You could move a motion, you could move amendments, and you could debate. In the House of Commons, we were then constrained in debate, and “efficiency” was the original term used.

It's used again in this government document. Again, just for the committee's sake, it's called “Reforming the Standing Orders of the House of Commons”. It's a March 2017 document, which was made public on March 10, I believe. This document talks about efficiency, which, as I've mentioned, is all about speed and speeding up the process. We've done that already, but what they're talking about in this document, and what I fear will be done through this motion without the amendment, will be that we will look at pure efficiency, at how much we produce in a day and how much we hand over to the Senate for its consideration. I think it could be doing more work, I'm sure, and I've met a lot of senators and have spoken to them about the work they do.

I actually read Senate transcripts now to get ideas on what we could look at. Even after this, when this is done, I will go back and maybe read a Senate transcript from its foreign affairs committee that my staff will find for me. They will tell me that it is important for the work I'm doing and for my interest.

If at this committee and at any other committee of the House you limit the debate of members, of parliamentarians—and of you as well, as members of the government caucus—you will find opportunities to represent your constituents reduced when you disagree with the government. Kudos to those of you who are free thinkers and have voted against the government or with the opposition parties. It happens. I've done it as well. I have voted against what the majority of my party thought was the right thing to do.

You will find those opportunities reduced, or potentially reduced. You may not be here during an entire study. You may miss specific meetings where decisions are made and a report is finalized. You may not like the final product.

We're saying let's get it right from the beginning. Let's make sure that the tools by which this review will be done, that the format by which it will be done, are the right ones. Let's get off on the right foot.

When I helped the volunteer policy committees at the chamber of commerce sharpen their focus on some very specific issues that the membership there wanted to treat, we brought it through and created a new committee called the policy advisory council. We went through consultations with every single group to make sure they understood what this would mean. This new council would basically not so much direct the work they were doing but choose from the areas they thought were important and then bring it back up to the board of directors there to make sure that these were issues of immediate concern to the broader membership of the chamber.

That's a good model for the chamber. It's a consensus model. It's a model built on trust, in which staff members and members of the executive on the staff of the chamber serve as go-betweens to inform members. What I see in this document here, though, is an attempt by the government to dictate to parliamentarians what you shall consider and what you shall not. By omission, you can say what not to consider.

I've said from the very beginning that this is so broad, that there are so many substantive things to discuss, you could break this down into several studies. It could take two or three years, potentially beyond the next Parliament, for a new group of parliamentarians to consider whether this is something they truly want to implement.

Again, I would look toward the veteran members, the more experienced members who understand the traditions and customs of this place, who are in a lot of ways mentors to those of us who are new and who are rookies. Although we can understand the Standing Orders, we can read them and comprehend them....

Mr. Nater has probably memorized all of them. There are pictures of his kids memorizing the Standing Orders of the House. I'm sure that's their bedtime reading too.

We understand the Standing Orders in the way that you can read a book and understand what you've read, but to really comprehend them, you have to experience them. That experiential learning is not something that any new parliamentarian can just do with a flick of their fingers, a flick of a switch. At times I have depended on the committee chairs to explain the rules to me. I make a point of clarification. I ask questions. As I mentioned, Tom Lukiwski is the chair of one of the other committees. He has explained to me how to be a good parliamentarian in committee. It's different from in the House, and I think that is important to remember.

Will those disappear in this model? How many of the standing orders will be changed at the end of this, and how will these potential changes impact the work we do? How will we experience the changes in the work we do, in the day-to-day activities? Will there be opportunities to talk like this, back and forth, or will it all be scripted again?

The House of Commons can be scripted at times. When I started in this House, I would write all my speeches, because I didn't have the confidence to speak off the cuff. Now I feel perfectly comfortable, as many of you have experienced over the last few hours, just talking off the top of my head. It took me about a year and a half to get to this point.

I did conferences before, and I spoke at rallies, obviously. We've all done that, at some point. It's different from speaking in the House of Commons, where you know that every single word you say is permanently recorded for the future. Some not very edifying things have been said in the House. If you look back far enough, you're like, “Wow, my predecessor said that? They were kind of a jerk.”

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

There are many, many, many such instances. Just as it says in the Yiddish proverb I used, I weigh my words carefully, I don't count them. If I don't need to stand for 10 minutes to make a speech, I don't stand for 10 minutes. As I mentioned, we can do a lot of things in the chamber and in committee by unanimous consent and by agreement when we police ourselves. At different times we are better or worse at it.

Again, if I don't need to speak for the full 10 minutes, I don't speak for the full 10 minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

You must be almost finished.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

My introduction, yes. I'm almost through my introduction.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I'll go back to the outline in a moment, because I finished the first part.

I think that's a really important thing to remember during the debate on this amendment, because this amendment will allow us to do that, to continue this. This amendment doesn't shut down the main motion. It doesn't say not to do a study. It says to respect us as parliamentarians and likewise we'll respect you as parliamentarians.

The last thing I wanted to mention is from this article here, because it mentions the United Kingdom, and that's an example used here too. The United Kingdom has a second chamber where they do other debates, where they move it for efficiency's sake again, which in this case means making it faster. In the United Kingdom, at least a quarter of government bills will start off in the House of Lords, which of course frees up more time for the Commons, and it avoids the problem that we have in our Senate, which this article says has next to nothing to do, which I think is incorrect. I think the Senate has plenty to do, and does plenty right now. It has plenty of bills to study, and it has been much more active in creating its own public bills. In the United Kingdom, though, the second House they have created really has to do with dealing with the large number of members of Parliament they have, and the inability of all of them to sit in one place.

The House of Representatives in Congress has a similar model, which they call the track. You can enter Congress in the United States and declare to the Speaker that you are speaking on a different bill from the bill debated previously. That's potentially something the government caucus and executive might want to consider as a suggestion. But that is not something you can introduce in the span of 45 days and just decide. That is a substantive, huge change to how this chamber functions. So is setting up a second chamber, which I would not like to see done either—and again, this is my personal view—since as it is we already have too few members participating in debates right now without opening a second chamber in order to deal with other issues.

I think any type of change to the standing orders should bring more members of Parliament back to the House for debate. I have experienced excellent debates in which there have been a few more members, and in which there was back-and-forth debate with them, when we didn't use the full 10 minutes for Q and A on a 20-minute speech, and there were very short and to-the-point answers. I've enjoyed the back-and-forth banter too.

I've had Mr. Lamoureux come to my side to explain to me what he was trying to say or to explain how I was wrong on a specific point. It's an educational experience for me—that's fine—and I've done it to him as well.

Now I keep stats and records and quotes in my desk, because I know they come up on a periodic basis and because I know members of the government caucus love to use the word “historic”. It's been overused: historic commitments, historic investment; everything's historic.

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

Historic filibusters.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Historic filibusters.

[An hon. members]

We have a ways to go.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

We can't waste a good historic moment.

Now, on motion 6 I have a last point, and then I'll stop talking about this article. There was a reference made that the motion was denying the right of MPs to debate committee reports. That's one of the things the government, I guess, had wanted to do.

The motion did no such thing. It simply stipulated that if a member called for concurrence debate on a committee report—committee reports are only debated if a member requests such a debate—there would be 20 minutes of debate, the debate would be adjourned, and then a debate could be called again at a later time.

This may seem like a good idea, but again, it robs the opposition of the opportunity for others to participate in it too. Why would it be only one member? The model that we have now allows for multiple members to participate.

I have personal experience with this. I don't track what every single other committee does, but on occasion I do have my staff get me the report of the natural resources committee just so I can see what the recommendations were and which witnesses they spoke to. Sometimes I do get constituents or stakeholders asking me if I saw the report. I keep track of the reports now so that I have them handy in my office, or I have a link ready to go so that I can read them. That's my airplane reading. In my case, I have to use an airplane to return to my constituency.

Now, we should be able to debate that, and it shouldn't be just one member. Opportunities should be given for others to participate in it too, which is why motion 6 was considered, as Mr. Julian called it, “draconian”. I don't know if we can term it that way, but that was the opinion of another parliamentarian, a parliamentarian with experience in the House. I will probably never agree with Mr. Julian on very many issues of substantive policy, but I will agree with him on issues of parliamentary debate, I think. I think we can find common ground. Although we haven't spoken much, he now sits much closer to where I do, so maybe we can have that debate between ourselves in private, build that trust, and find a way to co-operate on future issues.

You heard me mention Sean O'Sullivan, and Diefenbaker's great love for Parliament and what he considered to be its substantive work—i.e., debating motions like the one we're debating today, producing reports, reviewing how government spends, making a point on behalf of a constituent, and rising in the House to name them. In that case, I think it's a good thing when you can speak on behalf of a constituent who has a very specific issue and either ask the government for action or get other members, such as members of the government caucus or opposition caucus, to rise and congratulate them on an activity or a success or an achievement. Diefenbaker used to say, “I have always been a House of Commons man”, and I think that's important to remember. All of us should look to the House of Commons as the ultimate deliberative body. We should all be House of Commons men and women, to edit Diefenbaker's original comment.

There's one last thing I'll mention about Sean O'Sullivan before I stop mentioning his name. He was the one who moved a private member's bill that made the beaver a national symbol of Canada, seconded by the Right Honourable John Diefenbaker. Would he have been able to do that if these rule changes had been introduced?

I genuinely like private members' business, because I think people bring forward ideas, and you can learn more about individual members' interests and passions by the types of private members' motions and bills they produce. I'm just concerned that in private members' business, as it stands now, there's not as much substantive debate. We give 10-minute speeches. Sometimes we use the full time and sometimes we do not. Maybe there should be a Q and A, or maybe there shouldn't be. Maybe it could be restructured in such a way that there is more back and forth between members for discussion.

I can't tell you what the right or wrong answer is on that one. What I can tell you, though, is that if you get rid of Friday sittings, there will be that much less time to consider them. As Mr. Simms has said, his view would be to have a full day, potentially. But I just heard the House leader on the government side, in her answer to a question in question period, say that we could reapportion the days. That's not the same thing Mr. Simms said.

I appreciate that we can have individual ideas about how it should be done. I personally think that Friday sittings should be as they are, but perhaps you can change the way it's done, with more private members' time. Maybe it should be all private members' business. Maybe it should be a time for a specific committee or two committees of the House to take their work straight into the House, for it to be debated openly.

I don't know. That's just a suggestion, but it's a suggestion that would take probably more than 45 days to consider. It would be a substantive change to how we operate as parliamentarians. Committees and individuals would need to prepare. Would it be a debate on a motion or would it be a debate on the types of reports you want to do? Reports are typically considered in camera before they're produced. Would it just be on the committee report, potentially, for a full-day debate on it?

All these types of changes to the rules have to be done with our amendment passed in order to be considered. I personally view this as a short timeline for this study; it's too short to consider something so substantive as changing how we treat a Friday in this House. As I mentioned before, a lot of ideas are being pitched by the government in this modernization of the Standing Orders of the House of Commons, which, as I've mentioned, I think is the wrong way to go about this. It should come from parliamentarians to the executive to say how we think we should change the system.

It's not for efficiency's sake, and not for speed. It's to be able to deliberate in a better manner and to improve House of Commons debates with the increased participation of members. I don't see very much of that here. It talks about convincing more people to run for public office.

To be honest with you, I did not reread the Standing Orders of the House of Commons before I chose to run for Parliament. I did not reread them to make sure that I understood in full what every single standing order allowed me to do or disallowed me from doing. They bore no relationship to my decision to run. I think a great many people do not read the Standing Orders before they decide to run. Perhaps they should. I don't know. It might help them establish themselves in the role and be a better parliamentarian. They give us the book on the very first day, and we're told to read it. It's like your first university class, when you walk into the technical college and the master electrician hands you the code book and says, “Read it, understand it, and then come back to me.”

I think that for the Standing Orders it's a communal ownership. It's an intergenerational ownership. They don't belong to you as members of the government caucus, and they don't belong to us as opposition members. They belong to all of Parliament.

They definitely do not belong to the government. The government cannot dictate to us and tell us that we're too slow in passing its legislation. We are working as fast as a deliberative body can and should work. It's not my fault that it hasn't tabled all that much substantive legislation. It has had some that has been pretty substantive, and I wish we would have had more debate on it, but the executive being able to move forward legislation in a speedy manner—or what it believes is speedy—is not our responsibility as parliamentarians.

What we're doing now in having this debate is our responsibility. It's our constitutional responsibility to debate, deliberate, criticize, and find opportunities to amend and improve things, just as this amendment is our attempt to improve the motion presented by Mr. Simms. That's all it is.

Again, to go to the point I've made repeatedly, Parliament cannot fail. There is no backup. You only get one chance. Substantively changing it in the way mentioned in that 1985 article on Ontario will mean deep and permanent changes to the institution, to how the work is done, and then to the opportunities to co-operate and work together.

I won't read the Magna Carta here, but I will reference it. Many of the privileges we enjoy are from that time, when it was far more dangerous to be a member of Parliament than it is today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

You're not going to read it, are you?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

No, no.

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

Read it in French.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

In French. If I can find a transliteration, I might use it.

It was far more dangerous before. In fact, I believe the first few Speakers who were elected by our parliamentarians to sit as Speakers—Mr. Chan is making the motion—did not keep their heads. They displeased the executive.

In a more symbolic sense, then, don't behead the opposition. We're not your opponents. We're not here to displease you. We're just here to raise the point that we're stewards, with you, in Parliament. You may be on this side, and then you may not find the rules as pleasant when it's someone else using them against you.

I would not be the one to want to use them against you. I think the best opportunity for us is to find a way to pass this amendment on the motion, to proceed with a study, and to build that trust, which I believe this committee did have before. It grants us then an opportunity to debate these things, potentially, but to come to unanimous agreement on what actually goes forward.

The committee is always free to take up afterwards another study or another series of studies. This is probably the most important committee of the House. The public accounts committee perhaps rates a very high second. The Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations has a disallowance clause....

The member for Perth—Wellington is looking at me with shocked eyes. I'm sure he has a favourite committee that he wants to reference.

You know, as another idea, we could always agree that if any member disagrees with a proposal that it be stricken from the discussion. I know that's been mentioned before. That's basically what our amendment says. I think we've covered off everything that may potentially be changed: “Standing Order, provisional Standing Order, new Standing Order, Sessional Order, Special Order, or to create or to revise a usual practice of the House”. We're just saying give us an opportunity to keep things as they are and consider it some more.

There's nothing wrong with further consideration. Delay is not a bad thing in Parliament. It truly is not. You want to get it right the first time you do it. I hope we get as close as possible to getting things right the first time we do it. A lot of the detailed work is then done in government regulations or passed by order in council. We give to the executive, to cabinet ministers, the ability to make very specific decisions. Our statutes are detailed, but they don't go down into the minutiae most of the time. We trust that the cabinet will make the best decisions on behalf of Canadians. We also trust that public servants will then implement those decisions, both statute and regulatory decisions, on behalf of Canadians. We hold the government accountable for the activities and the services rendered to Canadians by public servants.

Madam Jordan was here before. I used to sit on the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations. We had two witnesses, and I was told that it was the first time in eight years the standing committee had witnesses appear. Both times we were debating, and then asking the witnesses very specific and pointed questions about why the departments had not followed the orders given to them by the cabinet and given to them by members of Parliament through the statute. They had gone, we believed, far beyond a reasonable interpretation of the statutes and regulations.

There wasn't finger-pointing and blaming. There were Liberals there too, at the time. They outnumbered the Conservatives but they agreed with us, and I agreed with them. This had nothing to do with our partisan affiliations. It had everything to do with the fact that a deliberative body, Parliament, had decided, with specific wording in mind, that specific regulations were passed, and public servants were not following through. They were going beyond the letter of the law. It was an opportunity for us to question them, to debate back and forth, and to make the point to them that they had gone beyond what Parliament sought to do through a statute.

Will those opportunities disappear? Will they go away? How will these joint committees with the Senate work? That's my worry here. If we program too much of the activities at the committee level, will I have that opportunity, if I rejoin that committee, to question aggressively, if necessary, a public servant or a stakeholder group—perhaps because they've misled me, either on purpose or by accident—who comes to present before me? Those types of opportunities are rare.

Will I even be able to call them as a witness? That's an open question: will I be able to do that? I don't know. I've been on committees such as the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, where it's freewheeling and we add witnesses whenever we want to. There's a great deal of trust among us. There has not been a single dissenting report since I've been on the committee. I think that's a testament to our willingness to work together, back and forth, just as it should be, if we can pass this amendment to the motion.

A lot of the proposals the government is pushing for in “Reforming the Standing Orders of the House of Commons” would be termed historic. “Transformational change”, in fact, are the words I would use, because they would transform how this place works. I mentioned before that faster is not better; being more efficient is not necessarily something we should seek. We are a results-oriented organization, it's true, but it's also about the journey of how you get there, because that builds the public's confidence that we have considered everybody's opinions.

When you have time allocation and you shut down debate, that's one thing, and people get angry and unhappy. Governments have different reasons for doing it, but when from the beginning they say that you cannot do this because the rules say you can't express yourself to the point you may wish to in order to represent your constituency, it is going to have an impact on parliamentarians, both on this side and on the government caucus side.

What it will do is disincent members from running for office again. I'm sure there are organizations out there that will cheer that: fewer members of Parliament rerunning for office, and more rookies and new people. But here's where I think we will lose if we don't have these members who run again, who recommit to another four or five years in Parliament: we'll lose that experience. I can't pick up the traditions of this place by reading the Standing Orders. Nobody told me on the first day when I entered the chamber that you bow towards the Speaker or bow when you walk across the floor in front of the mace. They just told me not to walk across the box. It's like traffic light signals. It's very important. I saw a member of the Liberal caucus almost pass through it accidentally, not thinking, and I've almost done it once myself. I stopped myself.

Nobody explained that to us. You only pick that up from the members who have been here longer and who spread the news, almost like preachers of Parliament's traditions. That's how I've learned about the respect you should have for the mace, for the Speaker's chair, and for the institution we're in.

I'm worried that this motion is too reckless without amendments. I know that at the beginning I mentioned that I had only a couple of points, and that I would go through about three dozen sub-points for each of my main points. I'm about halfway through the first bullet.

The decorum in the House is governed by really just a handful of Standing Orders, if that, and they're very broad; they're up for interpretation. We rely on the Speaker and the more experienced members—again, the veteran members—to tell us. The clapping, the excessive standing ovations, the eating in the House.... It's not a cafeteria. It's where great men and women have debated substantive issues: whether or not to enter a war, how to conduct a war, World War II, World War I, the Korean War. Important debates have happened there.

I know that in other workplaces you can work at your desk because you don't have time to leave and go anywhere. On things like decorum, I was told that clapping was introduced in the early 1970s. It was introduced because members used to thump their hands on the desks and cause the microphones to pop out. Also, it was probably damaging to the desks. If you do it enough, they'll will go away.

Look at the Assemblée nationale in Quebec. There is no clapping. There is no heckling. There is no anything. It is stoic, maybe you could say, in its question time. I think “stoic” would be the nicest term you could use for it, but it can be boring.

I'll say one thing about our question period: it is not boring. Neither is question time in the United Kingdom. It is not boring. Questions go fast. You have to listen to the answers. A good minister or a good parliamentary secretary will be humorous, will give a direct answer and a substantive answer, and actually will answer the question.

I think that's all that opposition members are really looking for. We're not looking to catch you in an error or anything. What we want is a substantive answer. It can be a short one too. A simple no or yes would suffice at times. You don't have to use the whole time. You could police yourselves.

My concern is that with some of these changes that we may bring through, we may not think about these traditions or customs or conventions that we have. We may accidentally introduce something, or take away something else that made us want to work together, that made us want to reach across the aisle and maybe have a private conversation with another member over something they were or were not doing.

I know that the ruminations of the president of the Treasury Board at times can be interesting. I know that the Speaker has admonished him at least once for eating in the House. I don't eat in the House, because it is not just like any other place of work. It is Parliament. It's the House of Commons. It's the floor of the House of Commons. In many other workplaces, I ate and did everything at the same time at work, especially when I was an exempt staffer. Every single exempt staffer will appreciate this. You don't have time to eat your lunch somewhere. You stay at your desk and you prepare your boss for question period. You resolve the issues ahead of time. You have the meetings you need to have, and you resolve them. That was my experience.

This is not like any other place of work. That's why changing how this place of work functions should not be done by only one caucus, or one party, or a small group of people. Further, I would say that it's not even the caucus but the government that is looking to do this through this very short, slim document.

Reducing the speech lengths that we could have would deprive Mr. Genuis and Mr. Christopherson, who have spoken before, and deprive those who come after me from being able to speak to the amendment of this motion. Some things that could take five minutes to say should be said in 20 minutes to allow the translators to translate, potentially, but sometimes you need all the detail to truly understand. It could be vice versa, and something said in 20 minutes should be said in five. There is no reason to be verbose. I feel I need to be verbose today, but not on most days.

I know that the main motion discusses October 6, 2016, the day that was spent in the House to debate the Standing Orders. I think any subject matter taken up from those debates should have a more substantive study than the 45 or 60 days that would be allowed by this. As well, just because their ideas are being pitched here on the floor of the House,...they still should be unanimously agreed to. They cannot just be one member's idea, or a group of members' idea, like the executive council of the cabinet members, to push it through on the rest of us.

You are all parliamentarians, equal—equal to the chair, equal to me. I don't have any extra power than you. We should all have an equal opportunity on the Standing Orders, the sessional orders, and the rules of the House, as they stand now, that will help us do our work. Changing them or amending them should be done by unanimous agreement.

I now want to reference a few of the speeches and some of the ideas they've picked out of them. Some of them are about process.

Mr. Chair, you're the one who mentioned the semicircle, and as I mentioned before, the reason we sit across from each other is really an echo, a historical echo, from Westminster chapel, where the monks sat across from each other. The pews faced each other instead of facing the altar. We've continued that tradition down through the ages. The mace sits on the table. There's a calendar on the table that we don't really all need. There's a clock in there, but we all have smart phones. It sits there by tradition, as do all the rules. All the Standing Orders and all the procedural rules are in those books. The clerks sit there as well. They now have screens built into the table. We've adjusted technologically to changing circumstances and on different things in order to speed up certain mechanics of this place.

I remember 12 years ago, when I was here working as a staff member to a member of Parliament, that they still delivered the Order Paper and Notice Paper every single day. Now you need to get them online. They are no longer delivered, at least not in the Confederation Building. That's okay with me, because doing that was probably a waste of paper. All of us can get them online.

That's a mechanics change. It doesn't have substantive impact on the work I do. I check the Notice Paper every day. Every Monday, when I am back here, my staff has already printed it off and provided it for me. That allows me to do my work. I can figure out what's going to happen, generally speaking, over the next few days.

I also have certainty that when I go to committee, I will be heard and I will be able to speak. I don't have that certainty, based on the way I see this motion functioning, based on the non-commitment I see to this particular....

I see that the bells are going off, Mr. Chair.