Madam Chair, to be quite honest with you, I say—and I don't mean this as an understatement—the pleasure is all mine.
I want to thank Ms. Duncan for her interventions and for going through her experience, all of which you've just described aptly.
I want to say hello to my colleagues. It's been ages since I've seen you amongst the squares that unfold in front of my screen.
Yes, I see you too, Wayne. It's nice to see you as well. I included you in that, by the way, if you had any trepidation about that.
This is something I want to get into, because I took great interest in it. You may not believe me, but it is true. I'm taking a great interest in this and I'll tell you why.
When I was first elected in 2004, I think sideburns were a thing. I'm not sure we've progressed further in fashion since then; nevertheless, that's quite some time ago. I was so naive, so green towards the whole process of parliamentary procedure—this is an actual, true story—that I got to Ottawa for the first time and was standing in a lineup of about 50 people. The security guard came along. In those days you had various security guards. You had one set for the House of Commons and you had different security guards for the Senate.
A Senate security guard walked by, and I said, “Excuse me, sir, I'm just waiting to get in here, but do you know how long this will take? I have a meeting.” He said, “Who is your meeting with?” I said, “My meeting is with the Speaker of the House.” He said, “Are you from his area?” I said, “No, I'm from Newfoundland.”
We got to talking. He said, “What do you do?” I said, “I just got elected. I'm a member of Parliament—not sworn in yet, but I just got elected.” He just sighed and said, “Come with me, sir.” I said, “What did I do?” He said, “Sir, you can go wherever you want.” I said, “Really? I can go anywhere I want? I can walk in and see Paul Martin, the prime minister?” He said, “But not there.”
It was quite a journey. When I got in there he asked, “Are you okay?” I said, “Yes. Can I ask you a question?” He said, “Go ahead.” I said, “Where's the House of Commons?”
I was in the lobby of the western side of Centre Block. I didn't have a clue where the House of Commons was. Not only that, I also didn't really have much of a history of how it works. All I know is from question period, when you get up and ask a question and someone gets up and answers the question. Neither of the two relates to the other. What was asked and what was answered would seem to be madly off in different directions.
Of course, everything has changed since then, right?
I was looking for a reaction. I see it.
At the time, I was thinking to myself that I knew nothing about how this place operates, how this place works. I never undermined its importance. I just thought to myself, "How does this all work?"
I sat down with as many rules and procedures as I could and talked to as many people as I could. I'll never forget one individual. He was sitting in front of me in the House of Commons. He was a Liberal, like me. His riding was Peterborough, which I think is Minister Monsef's riding. His name was Peter Adams. He had a very thick English accent. He taught me so much. He has passed away since then. I haven't thought about him in ages until this very moment. He took on the role of mentor to me and several others. He walked me through a lot of things.
I realized that many things happen in the House of Commons that are not written down. It's based more on tradition than anything else, which we inherited from the U.K. parliamentary system. I'll get to that in a moment. I know you're dying in anticipation, but I'll get to it in a moment.
Shortly thereafter we went to an orientation session. It was one of the first times they had instituted an orientation session for new parliamentarians. These things are fairly regular now, but in 2004 they weren't that regular. They were just starting out.
I was sitting down with three other members of Parliament. Two of us were Liberals and two were Conservatives. We got to know each other. It was then that I realized we were members of Parliament representing areas of Canada, and with a lot of the same goals, because before you come into Parliament, what you think of partisanship and what you think of debate.... It's like something that is altruistic, in the sense that you're constantly debating the other. It's not like that. There is a lot that happens that you don't see on the screen, and I mean that from a CPAC perspective, not from Zoom.
I'll never forget the person I sat next to. As I said, we were all members of Parliament, but there was a guy named Andrew Scheer there. You probably know him. I remember having a long discussion with him. He, being from Saskatchewan—from Ottawa but representing Saskatchewan—and I being from Newfoundland, we shared stories about people we knew in either province and so forth. There was another MP there, Mike Savage, who's now the mayor of Halifax, and another guy by the name of Jeff Watson. Some of you know him. Jeff was in Essex, in southwestern Ontario. I think he lives in Alberta now.
Nevertheless, I was talking to Andrew and Jeff, and I realized that they had such wonderful families and great kids. I spoke to their spouses, their partners, who were wonderful people. You sort of get into the context of why we're there in the beginning, and it's not to be a Liberal or a Conservative or an NDPer, but to further your goals as a Canadian. Sometimes I worry that we're losing sight of that in this virtual world.
Now, you might be thinking that's probably not apropos to the conversation at hand, but I only say that to preface my comments by saying that I would like to get into how Parliament has evolved from a human dimension, as well as the rules and procedures that we're doing, because, quite frankly, we are talking about one of those tools that we have in the tool box, which is known as proroguing the House. People will know what proroguing is—not very many—but they know what it is as in the superficial meaning of the word “proroguing”. Far fewer, probably, know how to spell it, me included. I've been saying it for years and never knew how it was spelled, to be quite honest with you and, let's be honest, we're all honest.
It's a concept that I think is a tool we can use and which I think is a functional one. I think it's something that, as Canadians.... It evolved from a country outside of our own, but nevertheless, we've grasped this concept because we think it's one that is good, among many other traditions, customs and procedures of the House that we go through.
All that is to say that I'm glad to be a part of this, because I want to look at this from the functional aspect of what is proroguing of the House and, in a general sense, how our House operates, so that we can handle and pass laws in the most efficient way we know, and how the system has evolved.
Should the system be fixed? Yes, it should be. I looked on the screen here and I saw Mr. Nater earlier, who taught me a lot about the Magna Carta, stuff that I didn't know, from a session that went on and on—someone give me another word for “filibuster”. Okay, it was a prolonging of a discussion that we had. It was the prolonging of a discussion primarily by the Conservatives and also the NDP and Mr. Christopherson at the time, which I found rather enjoyable. I actually found it to be really good. It was quite informative, with characters like Mr. Nater and Mr. Genuis and others who talked about how the Magna Carta had such a deep impact. We're talking about a thousand years ago.
Just by way of quick facts, do you know why the House of Commons is green and the Senate is red? The Senate is red because it signifies royalty, the Crown, the Queen, the King and all throughout the history of the last thousand years. We all know that red means the Crown. The green in the House of Commons signifies grass. No, not that grass.
Let's back up for a minute. When the Magna Carta was signed, it was done outside. There was no place inside for people who were commoners. There was no institution that would sanction the fact that commoners were getting together inside to debate issues. They had to do it outside, so naturally, the green represents the green grass outside where they debated. Now, of course, loosely based on the modern sense of debating amongst our peers, you probably looked to Iceland and the Althing, way back when. Nevertheless, the Magna Carta was signed around the time of Runnymede. That's why you see the green representing the outside, where the commoners would have to gather to debate.
Going back to the basics, the Magna Carta gave us the power of the individual to live in this country, to live in this world and to make sure they had human rights. Essentially, the role of the Crown was not to be against the people they served, if I could put it that way. Obviously, it's more complex than that. I'm just simplifying it the best way I know how.
Over the following thousand years, all of this evolved into the common rules and procedures that we have now. During a debate we had a few years ago over prolonging the discussion, we'll say, of House rules, one of the things we talked about was how unique times can create different measures and rules by which we govern ourselves. This was not even taking into consideration what was around the corner—the situation we find ourselves in a year and a half later.
If someone had told me when that was happening in 2018 that I would be voicing the opinions of my constituents with a “yea”, “nay” or “abstain” in the House of Commons by using this, I would have said, “That's insane.” I never would have thought about it.
I remember a member of the European parliament who came over from Germany. She had spent 25 years in Brussels, I think. She was a very smart person, very experienced. I'm president of the Canada-Europe Parliamentary Association, so I invited her and her colleague—