Mr. Speaker, I will be using the full time. Sometimes in the House one is not really anxious to speak on issues and sometimes one is, and this is one time that I feel very privileged to have the opportunity to speak.
When I walked in this morning it was interesting to look around and think how strange a world we work in and how strange the situation is. We are actually here debating whether or not you should keep your job, Mr. Speaker. That is a very strange issue to be discussing. It would not happen in any other walk of life.
Can we imagine the Royal Bank discussing in public whether or not employees or management personnel should keep their jobs? While you sit there, Mr. Speaker, we are discussing whether or not you should keep your job, not only in front of 301 members but in front of millions of people who are watching this debate. Before I go any further, I want to say that we in the Conservative Party feel you should keep your job and we will be voting that way in the end.
The Canadian public should understand what a different world we work in. Just in the last two days we have certainly seen circumstances to prove how different our world is from the normal world of the working person, the employee in the private sector.
If members of a company discussed in public whether or not a person should be kept in their position of employment, they would probably be charged with infringement of the rights of privacy of an individual or could be charged with constructive dismissal. You could charge us with constructive dismissal if we were in the private sector. This is how much of a strange environment we work in.
Your job is certainly not easy. Every time you make a decision you automatically make some people disappointed. Every decision you make makes some people disappointed. Sometimes we are disappointed in your decisions. Sometimes we are elated if you support our position, but every time you make a decision you will disappoint someone. We should all understand that you can never make everybody happy in your job. It is a very difficult job.
In 1988, when I was first elected, I remember we were on the government side and we had an awful lot to say in the selection of the Speaker at that time. The Speaker was one of our members. Even although the Speaker was one of the members on the government side, I am sure we were just as disappointed in his rulings as many times as the opposition was, but perhaps the opposition did not realize that at the time. I just want to point out that yours is a difficult job and we understand that you cannot please everybody all the time.
I also think we should understand that this whole issue arose in a very emotional situation. I do not agree with the Bloc's position and their main purpose of being here, which is to separate from Canada. I do not agree with that, but I definitely agree with their right to be here to state their position.
I also want to point out that last night after we were through we went back into the lobby. I just happened to be on the phone in the phone booth in the lobby and I watched the Bloc members and how they handled the disappointment of the decision we made on Bill C-20.
I have never seen a group of people so emotionally disappointed. They showed their emotion with tears, hugs, holding hands and everything. I respect that, I really do, but it struck me how emotional it has been for them. This is very important to the Bloc members. I admire them for their passion. I admire them for their ability to plead their case as strongly as they do. I admire them for the position they take, even though I do not agree with it. I truly do.
When we pass a tax bill, a Canada pension bill or a veterans bill, we do not see members going back in the lobby and hugging each other and showing tears of emotion one way or the other. When we talk about helicopters or even HRDC, that does not happen. That is what happened here. This is a very emotional debate and this non-confidence motion is tied up in the whole cloud of the emotion of the debate.
I say to Bloc members that I was truly moved last night, to the bottom of my heart, by how much it affected them, and how much I admire what they do and how they do it. I do not agree with them but I admire how they do it.
We are dealing with a real serious issue. It is a very serious charge. Although we deal with debate every day in the House of Commons, we do not often deal with this. This is the first time I have ever had to deal with it. We are actually discussing the removal of the Speaker from his position.
You are our leader. You are our umpire. You are the one who makes sure that everybody is dealt with fairly and that everybody has his or her share of time in the House, an opportunity to speak. No matter whether or not you agree with it you always ensure, as it is your job to ensure, that we have our say and are treated fairly. From where we sit it appears that you do that.
We are now being asked to consider removing you from your job. We do not agree with that. On one hand we do not agree necessarily with your decision on this issue, but it is your job to make decisions and it is our job to respect those decisions. We totally support your tenure in the chair as our Speaker and will not be supporting the motion that would have you lose your job.
I go back to some of the issues like the emotion I was talking about. Many things have brought us to this point today. This is not just about something that happened in the administrative office of the Speaker. It is all involved with the emotion in terms of Bill C-20. It is involved in the tactics the government is taking, the tactics it has used throughout this parliament to try to restrict debate, limit our ability to move amendments and thwart us in our job. This is part of our frustration, aside from the emotions.
The situation was exacerbated because of the nature of the bill. If this decision had been made about the helicopter issue or another issues it probably would have never come to this censure motion. I hope, Mr. Speaker, you understand that is part of this whole thing.
Also, it is a reaction by all of us on the opposition side to the abuse that the government has made of the rules to try to expedite debate, to take shortcuts and to restrict us from doing our job.
It is interesting that I just came across some notes from when we were in government. Some Liberal members took offence when we invoked time allocation. When the minister of Indian affairs was in opposition he said that parliamentarians who represent the people should not be so quick to ram agreements through the House. That is exactly what the government is doing now. The minister of public works said:
We could have debated it in order to afford all members an opportunity to receive criticisms and comments from their constituents, to urge the public to understand what we are talking about, to understand all about this...bill that we are trying to push through as fast as we can during the night.
That is what the Liberals said about the Conservatives when the Conservatives were in power, and now they have invoked time allocation a record 63 times to do exactly what they were so much against when they were in opposition.
The government has tried to distort the rules and abuse the rules, especially in the case of Bill C-20 which has been so emotional. It stopped debate at second reading. It limited the powers of the committees. It refused to travel to hear people all over Canada even though every Canadian will be affected by this maybe some day. It attempted to restrict the power of the MPs to present amendments.
This bill is extremely emotional and extremely important to Bloc members. They felt thwarted in their job. They felt frustrated, as we all do, but for them it was exacerbated because of the importance of the bill. That should have been taken into consideration throughout the debate.
The first issue is the ruling from the Speaker concerning confidentiality from the law office of the House that we are dealing with today. We disagree with the decision from the Chair. The notion of all House employees being part of the team equally under the blanket of secrecy and therefore privy to everything is not the same as a solicitor-client relationship.
We have to have confidential meetings with House officials. We have to be able to deal with them on a confidential basis. We have to expect that our discussions with them in drafting bills and amendments and everything else is confidential and not to be shared with anyone else in the office, any other party and especially the public.
We support the Bloc in its point but we feel it is an administrative issue and certainly not a reflection of the Speaker who presides in the chair. It is a problem that we would want addressed. We would certainly want to be assured that confidentiality is a priority in the House. We expect confidentiality to be just that and nothing less.
I often wonder if this had been government information whether it would have been shared or presented in the same way. I suspect it would not have been, but I hope that is not the case. In the instances which were brought to the House by the Bloc House leader we believe the secret information was shared too broadly in an attempt to provide services under trying conditions. I emphasize trying conditions. We view this as extremely serious when confidential information is shared. We go to the legal advisers and we treat them as solicitors. We need confidentiality, especially in the adversarial relationship we have in the House.
Members in this caucus have received written assurances from the House lawyers that consultations on these matters will be kept confidential. We certainly hope the Speaker will take steps to ensure that those assurances are followed through, but there is a cloud over these professional consultations now because of this situation. It is a clear impediment to the way we do our work. Nonetheless the Speaker's finding on this issue was in support of what happened and we tend to disagree with that decision. However, again, it is the Speaker's right to make that decision.
As a party and as a caucus we will work to change the system. We will use the powers we have within the administrative structure to pursue that end. After all, we create the rules. These are our rules. They are not the Speaker's rules. If the rules need to be changed or enforced in a different fashion, it is our responsibility to see that is done, as well as the Speaker's. The tools are there to do this and we will use them. We do not need to have the Speaker step down in this case, not even close to that.
The remedy is there in committees and the Board of Internal Economy. Although we disagree with the ruling we accept it. We do not find it sufficient reason to remove or even censure the Speaker. We oppose this motion. Nothing happened here that could even come close to causing the Speaker to lose his job.
As I said earlier, we do not always get the decisions we want from the Chair. We do not always like the decisions but we accept them. We know that is the Speaker's job and we know that he cannot always rule in our favour even though we are almost always right.
I was elected in 1988 and the Speaker at that time made decisions that we found disagreeable or even offensive sometimes to us even though we elected the Speaker. We accepted them in the same way we accept the Speaker's decisions now. We know the Speaker does not write the rules. He does not invent the administrative practices, but it is the Speaker's job to ensure that they are administered in the proper way.
I wrote this speech prior to the passage of Bill C-20, which changes many things I was going to say, but it does not stop me from saying that during the great debate on Bill C-20, and it was truly an experience to be involved with that debate, the government refused to let the committee seek opinions of Canadians in Quebec, in Nova Scotia and in British Columbia.
We were driven by an agenda to meet the Liberal convention that started last night, today, tomorrow or some time. The whole agenda was driven to get this done and passed before the Liberals had their convention. To do that they had to run over some of us. They had to run over some members of the Bloc. They had to run over some rules in the House. I believe that was a driving factor and it should not have happened considering how important it is, especially to the Bloc members.
