Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 13th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Let's suspend for five minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

The meeting is resumed.

Ms. Shanahan, you have the floor.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I hope that the problem my colleagues were having has been fixed.

I'll continue with a number of quotes in English that I feel would be of interest to the committee.

As the Clerk of the Privy Council observed in the “Twelfth Annual Report to the Prime Minister on the Public Service of Canada”—that was some time ago, in the early 2000s, I think—“we cannot build systems based on distrust.”

This is just going to this whole accountability and what we're trying to have as our rules. It continues:

We cannot go backwards, building layers of hierarchy and rules governing each transaction. And we cannot treat all errors in the same way. Errors made in good faith are inevitable, especially in an organization that values innovation and creativity. Accountability requires that we report honestly and accurately, including the errors, and demonstrate that we have learned from the mistakes and have made the necessary adjustments. But accountability cannot become mere blaming.

I'm pleased to be reading this quote for you because, as we have seen over the past few months, parliamentarians do indeed have the right to ask questions. We want them to ask questions and to demand explanations.

The government, which is the executive authority, is accountable. It's important to ask whether the government is acting in good faith and whether it has our confidence. Allow me to repeat the fact that parliamentarians can indicate whether or not they have confidence in the government. Since the start of the pandemic, there have been several confidence votes. As my colleague mentioned earlier, not all parliamentarians voted to keep the Liberal party in power, although some thought it was a good idea. It makes sense to believe that those who voted against the government wanted an election to be triggered. So what's the current priority? I believe that it is to adopt Bill C‑19 in order to implement measures that would allow us to hold an entirely safe election, if it were to prove necessary.

I would now like to return to the concept of ministerial solidarity, which is an important, unique and essential factor. All members of cabinet swore an oath and accepted the responsibility not only to maintain confidentiality, but also to express the will of the government and present its policies.

It states:

Collective ministerial responsibility [of cabinet] refers to the convention requiring coherence and discipline of the ministry in deciding policy, managing government operations, and speaking to Parliament with a single voice.

Cabinet members must be able to speak in Parliament with only one voice. We see this in question period. While the questions are often for the prime minister, the prime minister is not necessarily the person who will answer the question. In accordance with this long-standing convention, another minister, who may have more information about the question or who has a higher level of responsibility for dealing with it, may answer. It can also be someone completely different. The cabinet members decide which ministers will answer the questions during question period and these answers are treated as if they came from the prime minister.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Chair, with apologies for the interruption, I wonder if Ms. Shanahan might accept an intervention according to the Simms protocol, which I was very happy to accept earlier from Mr. Simms himself.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Ms. Shanahan.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

I am nothing if not flexible.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Madam Chair, there is an interpretation problem now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes, I think I'm having it too. I can't hear because everything is so loud.

What I was trying to say, Ms. Shanahan, was to ask if it is okay for Mr. Blaikie to interject.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Yes, if I have the floor after his interjection.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes, you would have the floor.

Let's just wait to see if the sound issue is resolved.

[The Clerk]

Madam Chair, it should be resolved now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Am I coming across okay for all the members of the committee with translation?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Can you speak in French, Mr. Blaikie?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Yes, I can speak to you a little in French. However, I would like to read a quote and I can't do that in French.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

It was just for the sound check. I wasn't demanding that you carry on in French. I know you can, so I figured you could do it for the sound check.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Right on. Am I coming across okay, Madam Chair? Am I okay to go?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I just want to say that I appreciate Ms. Shanahan's discussion of the nature of collective responsibility for cabinet. I would draw her attention to page 30 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice. It talks a little bit about this, but also emphasizes that ministers do have individual responsibility as well. We read on page 30:

In terms of ministerial responsibility, Ministers have both individual and collective responsibilities to Parliament. The individual or personal responsibility of the Minister derives from a time when in practice and not just in theory the Crown governed; Ministers merely advised the Sovereign and were responsible to the Sovereign for their advice. The principle of individual ministerial responsibility holds that Ministers are accountable not only for their own actions as department heads, but also for the actions of their subordinates.... Virtually all departmental activity is carried out in the name of a Minister who, in turn, is responsible to Parliament for those acts. Ministers exercise power and are constitutionally responsible for the provision and conduct of government; Parliament holds them personally responsible for it.

If you then go to page 392 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, under the discussion of prorogation and dissolution, it reads:

Prorogation of a Parliament, a prerogative act of the Crown taken on the advice of the Prime Minister, results in the termination of a session.

In the note on that, 110, it reads:

See decision of the Committee of the Privy Council, PC3374, on October 25, 1935, “Memorandum regarding certain of the functions of the Prime Minister”, which stated that recommendations (to the Crown) concerning the convocation and dissolution of Parliament are the “special prerogatives” of the Prime Minister.

Indeed, if you go to that order in council, what it will tell you is that this is a special prerogative of the Prime Minister specifically delineated by cabinet as an exception to the normal convention of collective responsibility, which is not to say that cabinet ministers aren't required to defend it, but it is to say that the Prime Minister plays a unique role here. It's listed alongside things such as the appointment of cabinet ministers.

Now, I don't think that we would want to say that the government House leader or any other minister is somehow responsible for the decisions of the Prime Minister on the composition of his cabinet, yet the decision to prorogue is laid beside that very prerogative of the Prime Minister, so I think that it's very clear that, in addition to collective responsibilities, members of cabinet have individual responsibilities, and when we talk about prorogation, it is a very special prerogative of the Prime Minister that's been singled out by the Privy Council itself as laying firmly on the shoulders of the Prime Minister and not as a collective decision of the cabinet.

I would invite any reflections Ms. Shanahan may have on those authorities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Mr. Blaikie.

The floor goes back to Ms. Shanahan.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Indeed, and I thank Mr. Blaikie for that, because that leads me to my next point, which was exactly the role of the Prime Minister, and bear with me, if you will. I am not a lawyer, but I was a student of history, and I find that in the lessons of history, which we are making every day, we see there is theory and there is practice. This is where I want to go now, because we also see, again in the same report, which, I see in the references, calls upon not only, of course, procedures and practice but on many experts in the field.

Let's turn to the role of the Prime Minister in the assignment of responsibility:

The leader of the political party that appears able to form a government that will have the confidence of the House of Commons—normally the party with the largest number of seats—is asked by the governor general to form a government. This is the defining responsibility of the prime minister: to select the ministry and to organize the Cabinet both as a decision-making body and as a mechanism for setting the broad direction of government policy and operations. Ministers are accountable to the Prime Minister, who is, in effect, the steward of the collective responsibility of the cabinet.

You cannot separate one from the other. The Prime Minister does not operate independently of his ministry.

In other words, we could have said that a prime minister can decide to act as the leader of the whole country, does not have to appoint other people around him and can make all decisions alone, like a dictator. But that's not the case. The prime minister is responsible, but with the assistance of cabinet.

Ministers are responsible for the mandate they receive from the prime minister to perform certain duties. For example, Mr. Rodriguez, as the government House leader in the House of Commons, needs to deal with the other parties in the House, provide explanations, and answer questions about House activities. That is what Minister Rodriguez did when he presented the report to Parliament about all the reasons for the prorogation. So everything has already been done. The objective of Ms. Vecchio's motion, particularly with respect to the first point, has already been met.

I want to end with the following quote from the Treasury Board Secretariat report on instances in which there is mismanagement or abuse, or when things are not working properly.

It states:

It was pointed out that Parliament has a somewhat blunt instrument for sanctioning mismanagement. It cannot apply personal sanctions to individual ministers (beyond political censure), and withdrawal of support for the government (via a vote of non-confidence) is a significant threat only in the case of minority governments.

That's in fact where we're at. We have a minority government. The purpose of the prorogation was to give the Prime Minister and his cabinet the opportunity to present the government's plan in the September 2020 throne speech.

In this instance, of course, there wasn't an election campaign right before the throne speech. We were in the middle of a health crisis. It's because of the prorogation that we were able to present the government's new plan, giving parliamentarians the opportunity to demonstrate whether or not they were satisfied with the government's management.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, prorogation is not a serious issue in my riding. The COVID‑19 pandemic is what everyone is talking about. People want to know how we're going to get out of it.

Fortunately, we have a plan, and the different levels of government have been working together, even though it's not easy for everyone to agree because there are different ways of addressing the problem. I'm someone who believes in communication and cooperation on behalf of citizens. That's why we were elected; to represent the citizens in our ridings.

If, in response to the pandemic, the government had taken all sorts of inexplicable and inconsistent measures that were not based on science, if I had been a member of the opposition, I would have wanted to take the opportunity to force a vote on censuring the government.

We were absolutely clear: that would have been the time to do it.

Mr. Blaikie nevertheless said what he wanted. And I'm very fond of listening to the exchanges between Mr. Blaikie and Mr. Simms, among others, because they focus on the details of the rules and on how to amend them. Does the prorogation deserve a study? I don't think anything is preventing this committee from pursuing a study of this prorogation. However, we are facing an emergency, namely the possibility that we will no longer have any dance partners. Historically, governments have been overthrown for all kinds of reasons. It can happen because of a mistake or because someone failed to receive a memo.

Particularly on this committee, when there is an order of the House, we have to study it…

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

I'm just not sure what the plans are today. I'm seeing there's a list of speakers who are going to continue to speak. We have postponed lots of things. If we're just going to continue to filibuster, I think that's one of the things I'm looking at.

I would like to move for suspension so that we can come back and actually have a real discussion, rather than continuing this filibuster. Perhaps everybody can go back and decide what they're going to be doing, because we do have a motion on the floor that could be voted on. We could open that as well.

This might be a good opportunity for the government members to decide what they want to do. They know what we're asking. I know that's the case, but we're continuing to filibuster so I would like to put forward an opportunity to suspend at this time.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Madam Chair, is that a point of order? Can I speak to that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

You can definitely speak to it, because I was going to put it to the committee to see if there is consensus on suspending.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Members of the committee were considerably frustrated last time with the fact that they wanted to clear the deck, as Mr. Blaikie had put it, and propose an amendment to Ms. Vecchio's motion. Obviously, we're still in debate on that, because we haven't agreed with that from the beginning.

If we suspend today's meeting, I wonder whether the opposition members are actually going to put forward an amendment, because that's exactly what I thought was supposed to happen today, but it did not happen.