Mr. Speaker, I will be brief on this issue. I would suggest that the Speaker not enter into debate on this issue but give rulings on it.
Today on the Order Paper, there are several questions with at least five parts, and a number of longer questions. The member for Delta—South Richmond and the member for Calgary Centre have questions with 10 parts. The question of the member for Madawaska—Restigouche weighs in at 11 parts. Without any clear guidelines, I suppose I could pick apart here in the House these long questions and make the argument that they are 10 or 11 separate questions. We just cannot put a number on the parts to a question and cut it off there.
I take it that guidelines are imposed to these questions but it is not clear what those guidelines are. I think that is what we are dealing with here. I will read Standing Order 39 which you began to do in my stead, Mr. Speaker.
Standing Order 39(2) says:
The Clerk of the House, acting for the Speaker, shall have full authority to ensure that coherent and concise questions are placed on the Notice Paper in accordance with the practices of the House, and may, on behalf of the Speaker, order certain questions to be posed separately.
The only reference in the standing orders to separating questions is that the clerk has the authority to do so. Nothing more, nothing less. I am not blaming the clerk. We have charged him with this responsibility without giving him the detailed guidelines.
The standing orders also have a provision whereby the government is required to answer the questions within 45 days. While that 45 day guideline is clear, the government does not have to obey it, which is the big problem I am sure members opposite have.
The rules governing questions were established in the 33rd Parliament. Unfortunately the members in that parliament struck a bad deal with the government. In exchange for the restrictions on the number of questions a member could submit to the government, the government promised to answer the questions within 45 days. The problem is that the members are forced to uphold their end of the bargain but the government is not.
This is the same sort of deal the government made with respect to Standing Order 73. The government asked that the motion to refer a bill to committee before second reading be automatically time allocated to 180 minutes in exchange for more flexibility in the type of amendments to be proposed in committee.
In practice the government gets its time allocation guaranteed in the standing orders, but the acceptability of amendments is no better than before. In some cases it is worse because the government began to take advantage of the fast-tracking mechanism of this process and started to send controversial bills to committee before second reading.
Finally, in questionable cases regarding order paper questions the member should be given the benefit of the doubt. The government does not need any favours since the rules overwhelmingly favour it to begin with. If you are going to impose strict restrictions on members with respect to the length of questions, Mr. Speaker, then I hope you impose the 45 day requirement for the government to answer those questions.