Madam Speaker, I rise on behalf of the people of Surrey Central to participate in the debate on the government's proposed amendments to the standing orders of the House.
The government's motion reads as follows:
That section (5) of Standing Order 76 and section (5) of Standing Order 76.1 be amended by adding at the conclusion of the notes thereto the following:
For greater clarity, the Speaker will not select for debate a motion or series of motions of a repetitive, frivolous or vexatious nature or of a nature that would serve merely to prolong unnecessarily proceedings at the report stage and, in exercising this power of selection, the Speaker shall be guided by the practice followed in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.
The official opposition is proposing that the government's motion be amended by adding the following:
and for even greater clarity, the Speaker may select for debate all motions, regardless of their nature, if in his or her opinion the rights of the minority have been infringed upon in any way.
It is unfortunate that at a time when members on all sides of the House agree that too much power is concentrated in the Prime Minister's office and exercised by the Prime Minister, the government proposes an amendment to the standing orders that strengthens the executive branch and weakens the role of duly elected members of the House.
The motion is an assault on the rights of Canadians' elected representatives in the House. The government is only interested in selectively borrowing those practices from the U.K. that increase its power over the House of Commons. There are other practices they could borrow from the U.K. that would strengthen our democracy. I will speak about some of them now and later I will speak about committees.
Let me talk about what happens in the House of Commons. Whenever the government feels a formidable challenge or feels that the opposition is embarrassing it, the government cuts off debate in the House and passes whatever piece of business it is working on.
Does the government entertain changes? No. Does it listen to what Canadians are saying? No. This brings us to the heart of some of the procedures in the House that make little or no sense at times.
Why will the government not allow scheduled votes to take place immediately following question period? All members of parliament are in the House for question period. Would it not make sense to vote when everyone is here?
The government is not prepared to entertain good suggestions and ideas from members of parliament on all sides of the House, including its own backbenchers. The government is famous for its thin soup legislative agenda. When the opposition parties try to thicken the soup, the government refuses to allow it.
The country has not had a referendum since the one on the Charlottetown accord, except of course the one on tearing the country apart. The Liberals will not allow important questions to be decided directly by the people. The Liberals are control freaks.
Another issue is petitions. The government does not want to allow Canadians the freedom to speak out on issues. Petitions are good examples of that. Canadians spend a great deal of time and effort in preparing petitions for submission to the House. They spend gas money and go from door to door collecting signatures, in the cold of winter and the heat of summer. The MPs proudly present the work of their constituents in the form of petitions and the Liberals throw them onto a shelf to gather dust. Sometimes after a few months they issue a small token reply using politically correct phrases. The government takes no action on these petitions.
In regard to voting, the Liberal whip tells government MPs how to vote or else. Where is the democracy in that? Not everything has to be a vote of confidence in the House. There have even been assurances from opposition members that a certain vote would not be considered a vote of confidence. An example of this was the vote on hepatitis C.
The government must wake up to the needs of the people in this new millennium. The government is not expected to fall each and every time the 301 members of parliament tell the government what to do. If a vote goes against the government, that should start a process whereby members of parliament work with the government to reach a compromise or to modify the government's position or to do a great number of other things that would allow the will of the people to be done.
Another important aspect of this issue is how we work in committees. The government could allow opposition members to chair more standing committees as they do in other countries, including the U.K. Regarding the election of committee chairs, secret ballots are still not allowed even after insistence by the opposition.
The voting procedure in committees is a completely partisan exercise in which government members gang up on opposition MPs. Even the future business of the committee is decided in a partisan manner, with the government members taking orders from the higher-ups. Even the decisions concerning witnesses who will be permitted to appear before the committee are taken in a partisan manner.
The government prevents significant issues from being dealt with by committees. Through votes in committees where the Liberal members hold the majority of votes, the government can ensure that its own agenda is pursued. Any business that it does not want to deal with never gets heard by the committees.
It is no secret that the government refuses to adopt most of the amendments to legislation that are submitted by opposition members from all parties. Often government members will hold press conferences without making the reports available to opposition members just to pre-empt them by not giving them enough time to prepare their responses, or to not give opposition members credit where credit is due most of the time.
The government is also fighting to prevent committee hearings from being televised. It knows that the way it runs committees is a farce and it does not want Canadians to be able to watch the circus that the House committees have unfortunately become under the dictatorship of this government.
In regard to the various kinds of appointments, the power to appoint senators, the auditor general, the ethics counsellor, the privacy commissioner, the information commissioner and others should not reside exclusively with the Prime Minister's office. People in positions such as auditor general, ethics counsellor and information commissioner can possibly, after their intensive work, make excellent recommendations to government departments but they are not allowed to do that. People in these positions only report on their investigations and the government can then throw out those reports.
Some of these reports should be considered binding on the government. They are in fact supposed to give direction to the government so they should not be ignored, buried, shelved or ridiculed. The government not only covers up these things but also ridicules and tries to tear down the integrity of the person doing the criticizing.
In regard to parliamentary trips, many members of the House, from all parties, go on international trips from time to time. Whenever delegations from the Parliament of Canada travel abroad, they should be team efforts. Opposition MPs are often denied briefings. They are left out of some of the events and meetings held abroad. Often the government officials will prohibit the opposition members from talking to the media about findings or other issues relating to the trip. They restrict the opportunity for opposition members to express the opposition's views or perspectives. The procedures used by the government are partisan in nature. The Liberals cling to a mentality of exclusion that defeats the full representation of the people of Canada to the outside world.
In regard to special treatment, decisions on government grants, jobs, favours, appointments and a host of others are made by the government to benefit the governing party, the Liberals in this case. Sometimes ministerial permits or visitor's visas are issued to visitors to Canada upon request by government members, even though these same visitors have been refused permits or visas when they applied through opposition MPs.
Canadians are not being treated equally in many respects. The government engages in favouritism based on political support and perhaps sometimes on monetary donations. These are problems of procedure. The process should be fixed so that these kinds of things are not permitted.
In the House, the position of Clerk of the House is a responsible and respectable position. The Clerk of the House is appointed by the Prime Minister. The clerk advises the Speaker. With due respect to the Clerk of the House, our Speaker is elected by secret ballot and the Prime Minister's office continues to try to have a hold on the Speaker through the clerk's office. It defeats the purpose of the election of the Speaker of the House. Canadians do not think it is fair for the Prime Minister to give the clerk a job and then expect the clerk to be neutral and impartial. I say this with great respect for the Clerk of the House, who is a wonderful person, but I maintain that it is not fair. It is not even fair to the clerk.
Question period in the House is another area of procedure in which changes should be considered. Most of the time, the ministers do not provide real answers to important non-partisan questions.