Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to make a few remarks. They will be more in the form of comments, but I would appreciate feedback.
What is one of the most important roles the Speaker in the House of Commons plays?
I want to say at the outset where I am coming from. If the Speaker were to err in his day to day decisions involving a conflict between the government or the leadership and an individual member, that ruling must always protect the individual member. I am making that assumption at the outset.
The answer to my question “What is one of the most important roles the Speaker plays?” is, to protect the rights of individual members, to protect individual MPs from the power that the crown exercises, the government, the people in authority over us. We must always respect that authority. I respect your authority, Mr. Speaker. As well, we must always ensure that everyone here is accountable.
There are many ways that you, the Speaker, do this. Obviously there are upfront decisions that you make every day in the day to day proceedings of the House, in debate, in question period and in the routine proceedings of the House. But there are also behind the scenes activities that take place in parliament which are very important to individual members. There are the support services that assist members in their ability to represent their constituents.
We deal primarily in this place with the making of law, the rules that all Canadians must play by and, in order to assist us in dealing with legislation, we as individual members need to have good quality, confidential research and legal advice in analyzing and drafting legislation and amendments. The legislative support staff is used mainly by opposition MPs, as the government has its own staff to do its work. MPs in the House lose confidentiality and solicitor-client privilege with their lawyers, but the government does not because it employs its own.
Since 1993, and I think the member may agree with me, I have watched the degeneration of debate in the House. We spend much less time in actual debate than we did when I first arrived in parliament. Why? It is because there has been a decline in the democratic process, in the spirit in which affairs should be conducted in the House. Much of that is due to the heavy-handedness of government. Members of the opposition have been trying to use the standing orders of the House to make their voices known. The standing orders are there to ensure we have democracy. Democracy needs to ensure that minority voices are heard. I use the word “minority” loosely because we in opposition represent 60% of the people of Canada.
I appeal to the Speaker to preserve that atmosphere of democracy which should surround all the debate and support services in the House. I cannot think of one good reason we cannot have client confidentiality in the legislative support services provided by the House of Commons. I have heard all of the excuses, like the parties have negotiated the changes, the support staff work for the House, et cetera, but the office of the Speaker exists to protect us and must not allow any change in this area which erodes the protection and support individual members must have.
I thank the Bloc for introducing this motion. It allows me to bring forth this concern.
I would like to make one more tiny point. The recent change in policy of the House of Commons was really done behind the backs of members—