My colleague Mr. Arnold is quite right. We have no choice but to do that. We have to be able to show our displeasure as vociferously and as pointedly as we can to try to underscore the importance of what we are discussing. It is not enough to say simply that this is an issue that most Canadians aren't concerned with, that it's inside baseball. That may be true, but it affects Canadians nonetheless, because it affects how their elected members of Parliament have the ability to do their jobs.
In other words, it is undercutting the ability of any opposition party to be an effective opposition. There have been countless examples throughout history when, because of a competent opposition party, potentially damaging and destructive legislation was stopped, was prevented. Unfortunately, this government, when it talks about efficiency, wants the Standing Orders to be efficient only for themselves: to remove roadblocks from their way; to prevent opposition parties from having the ability to slow down and, in some cases, delay and prevent legislation from crossing the finish line. I'm all for efficiency, but I'm certainly not for a form of dictatorship, and that seems to be the considered approach of this government.
Let's look at a couple of examples from this discussion paper. One of the apparently more innocuous suggestions of the government is to change the length of time until a government is required to respond to written Order Paper questions from 45 to 65 days, or, as the government puts it in the discussion paper, put “an upper limit”, so that a government is required to respond between 45 and 65 days later. The rationale is that the 65-day upper limit would give the government more time to give a more considered and thorough response.
To that I say balderdash. I've been in this place for close to 14 years. I was in government for nine. I saw questions coming from the opposition that caused us to respond, in some cases, in 50 to 100 pages for one question. As I made reference to in my last intervention, to prove a point, I stood in the House and read one of the opposition Liberal Party's questions into the record. It took me 17 minutes to read it in the record. That was one question.
I made a suggestion that perhaps we ought to put some rules around the types of questions that can be asked so as to prevent opposition parties from abusing their right to ask written questions. It took countless public servants days upon days to develop answers, which then had to be translated into both official languages, photocopied, and presented. The cost to our government was enormous. I did a calculation and found out that literally tens of millions of dollars were being spent to respond to opposition questions, many of which were dilatory, frankly. They were simply done to try to put a monkey wrench into government operations by taking skilled professionals away from their jobs and into responding to a question. It was obstructionist at its very core.
I appealed to the prime minister at that time that perhaps we should take a look at doing at least a review of the Standing Orders, because I thought we could save taxpayers millions of dollars. The prime minister said it sounded like an interesting concept and to send him a memo, as he normally said to members who had ideas he felt were worth exploring.
I did. I sent it to them. We had a discussion. What ensued from that discussion was that the prime minister made it crystal clear to me that any standing order changes had to be done for the right reasons. He didn't talk about unanimous consent at that time. That was something I brought forward on my own initiative when we assembled the committee. His marching orders to me, however, were very clear. If the standing order changes proposed by the committee make sense, that's fine. However, we—and “we” meaning the government—were not to introduce proposals that would effectively impinge upon the rights of opposition parties.
That surprised me, frankly, because the prime minister was a very wise and some would say brilliant political tactician. Some changes to the Standing Orders, which haven't been included in this discussion paper but I certainly considered, would have hamstrung the opposition. The prime minister wanted none of it. He understood, I believe more than anyone else in our party, why the Standing Orders were put in place to begin with.
At the heart of everything else you can say about the prime minister, he understood what democracy meant.