Mr. Speaker, today we are debating the standing orders, the rules whereby this parliament governs itself. As I gaze about me at this great throng of members sitting dutifully at their desks after a two week recess, I perceive that some members are perhaps a little bored with this subject and perhaps distracted.
To provide a little stimulus I would like to start with a little story.
Once upon a time there was a king named Jean I, who presided over a castle surrounded by a moat with a drawbridge. The inhabitants of his castle were divided into two classes: lords and ladies who occupied the front benches of the royal throne room on state occasions and the peasants who occupied the back benches.
One day a group of peasants, or backbenchers as they were called, went out to toil in the fields. As they crossed the moat and started down the road they passed a cave from which emerged a great dragon breathing fire and smoke. The fire consumed 50 of the backbenchers and sent the rest scurrying back into the castle.
When King Jean was told of this terrible tragedy he resolved to investigate it himself. To help him, he took along two of his most trusted knights. They included Lord Bob, the keeper of the royal whip, and Lord Boudriavere who had once been a bus boy in the castle cafeteria but had risen to high rank through his faithful service to King Jean.
As they surveyed the scene of the tragedy they observed three things. They saw the 50 fried backbenchers and said that was too bad. They saw the dragon lying dead from overexertion. They also noticed that the dragon's fire had ignited a seam of coal in the cave from which smoke continued to billow.
Lord Bob, who was a straightforward fellow, and had been a sword fight referee in another life, said the obvious “The dragon is dead. This is good news. Let's go tell the backbenchers”. But Lord Boudriavere, who had once been a bus boy in the castle cafeteria and had risen to high rank through faithful service to the king, said “Not so fast”. Turning to King Jean he said “I see an opportunity here to maintain and increase our control over the peasants. Let us imply, indirectly of course, that the fiery dragon still lives. We can point to the smoke belching from the cave as evidence of this. Let us tell the backbenchers that henceforth they can only go out of the castle with royal permission and under the supervision of myself and Lord Bob, for the safety and protection, of course, of themselves and the castle”.
King Jean thought this was a splendid idea and thus the myth of the fiery dragon was established. It was used to coerce and control the backbenchers of the kingdom until King Jean was defeated in battle by a knight from the west which is another story I will tell on some other occasion.
This is the point that I want to make.
There is a myth in the House that lurking out there somewhere is the fiery dragon of the confidence convention, the erroneous belief studiously cultivated by the government that if a government bill or motion is defeated, or an opposition bill, motion or amendment is passed, this obliges the government to resign. This myth is used to coerce government members, especially backbenchers, to vote for government bills and motions with which they and their constituents disagree and to vote against opposition bills, motions and amendments with which they substantially agree.
The reality is that the fiery dragon of the confidence convention in its traditional form is dead. The sooner the House officially recognizes that fact, the better for all. It is true that there was a time when the rules supported the traditional confidence convention but that is not the current situation. Our present practice is outlined in Beauchesne's sixth edition, citation 168(6):
The determination of the issue of confidence in the government is not a question of procedure or order, and does not involve the interpretive responsibilities of the Speaker.
Following the recommendations of the Special Committee on Standing Orders and Procedure as well as those of the Special Committee on the Reform of the House of Commons, December 1984, the House removed references in the standing orders which described votable motions on allotted days as questions of confidence. The committee concluded that matters of confidence should at all times be clearly subject to political determination. Motions of non-confidence should not be prescribed in the rules.
The British parliament, the mother of all parliaments, has acknowledged the death of the traditional confidence convention. For example, in the British parliament of 1974 to 1979 the government was defeated 42 times, 23 times as the result of government MPs voting with the opposition and 19 times when the opposition parties combined against the government after it had slipped into a minority position in 1976.
Some of these defeats were on important issues such as economic policy and an important constitutional bill. Yet the British prime minister neither resigned nor requested dissolution. Despite the current citation from Beauchesne's and these historical facts, the myth of the confidence convention still appears to live in this parliament.
It is in the interest of the majority of the members on both sides of the House to dispel the myth of the confidence convention and thereby permit freer voting. I therefore offer the following three challenges.
The first is to the Prime Minister. Will he please stand in his place in the House and declare his intention to allow government members to vote for or against all bills and motions and all amendments to bills and motions free of party discipline, and that no such vote other than the adoption by the House of an explicit motion of non-confidence in the government shall require the government to resign? All he has to do is stand up and make that statement. It would take about 20 seconds and it would change the character of this place overnight.
The second is to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to study this issue and report to the House with a view to dispelling the myth of the traditional confidence convention once and for all.
The third is to government backbenchers to test my hypothesis for themselves that the fiery dragon of the confidence convention is indeed dead, even though with the help of Lord Bob and Lord Boudriavere the smoke still appears to be billowing from its cave. I suggest that someday during question period while they are awaiting their turn to ask a scripted question they should engage in a simple mathematical exercise: count the number of people on the front benches and include their parliamentary secretaries, and then count the number of backbenchers. I know this is a strenuous intellectual exercise, but if they could carry it off they would find there are more backbenchers than there are those on the front benches and parliamentary secretaries. Then on some future occasion they could vote down a government motion or bill or support an opposition motion or amendment.
What will happen? Will the earth open up and swallow government members and their political careers? Of course not. Will the government resign? Of course not. Instead the government will demand a vote of confidence and since government members ultimately outnumber opposition members the government will surely win and carry on; but it is possible to kill a bill or part of a bill or to change it without killing the government.
The government will do exactly the same thing as the Pearson government did in 1968 when it was defeated on Mitchell Sharp's budget resolution but then carried the confidence motion which immediately followed. After that incident, Anthony Westell of the Globe and Mail concluded:
If the principle comes to be accepted that bills can be amended or rejected without forcing a change of government—the effective power of the opposition and of private members of the government party could be strengthened; the power of the cabinet to have its own way could be reduced.
In other words the House will have passed from the dark night of excessive party discipline into the bright sunshine of freer votes.