House of Commons Hansard #22 of the 37th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was opposition.
Standing OrdersGovernment Orders
The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)
I am sure that at this hour we all want to hear what the hon. member has to say, so I will ask the hon. member to resume debate.
John Harvard Liberal Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB
Thank you, Madam Speaker. I hope that is not subtracted from my time.
What has just happened in the last few seconds is quite instructive. I started off my remarks by trying to be positive and by trying to be complimentary toward the opposition. The opposition does play an important role. They are just as important as those of us on this side of the House.
Yet the member from Alberta immediately brought up the issue that the Prime Minister somehow controls every word and everything that is said and done in the House, which is totally irrelevant, especially in this debate and given the motion that is before us.
I listened very intently to the hon. member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca a few minutes ago. He is one of the more respected members of the House. When he speaks, I like to listen. I think he gave a pretty darn good speech, but almost everything that the hon. member said had absolutely nothing to do with the motion before the House.
Let me give an example. I think I can make my case quite clear. What are we debating tonight? We are debating a change in the standing orders so that we do not have to deal with these frivolous, vexatious motions at report stage, which we have been experiencing for the last couple of years. I think that is a very legitimate issue.
I would like the opposition MPs to address their remarks to the motion that is before us. What did I hear from the hon. member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca? I wrote it down. He talked about the alleged dictatorship on the part of the Prime Minister. I do not know what that has to do with the motion that is before us. He talked about rendering MPs impotent. I do not know what that has to do with the motion. He talked about the value of the dollar, the unemployment level, health care in Canada and aboriginals in Canada. He even talked about non-votable motions.
Maybe in some other debate, maybe in some other context, those remarks would be relevant and make a lot of sense, but we are not talking about those things. We are talking about a motion that would change the standing orders of the House because we have had a problem with these frivolous, nonsensical report stage motions.
John Harvard Liberal Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB
Examples? The best examples are those where it is suggested that we change a period to a comma or a comma to a period or, as the member for Halifax West mentioned a few minutes ago, where one member at one report stage made more than 100 motions having to do with the timing of the implementation of the bill. That is frivolous and I do not think it should be tolerated.
One of the speakers—and I do not know if it was the hon. member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca—said that this particular motion before us would somehow aggrandize the power of and add to the dictatorship of the Prime Minister. This has nothing to do with the Prime Minister at all. In fact, if anybody is going to get power out of this, it is extra power for the Speaker. We are actually deferring to the elected Speaker of the House to make decisions with respect to frivolous, vexatious motions. It has nothing to do with the Prime Minister at all, absolutely zero, yet that is the kind of charge we face.
One of the reasons that we have this kind of debate is that there is a kind of crazy culture in the House. Everything that the government proposes the opposition must criticize. Somehow or other in this culture anything the government does or proposes has to be wrong. In fact if government ever does anything that is disagreeable to even one Canadian, the automatic charge that comes its way is “You don't listen”. It is the most familiar and common charge one can hear.
We could go out and consult 30 million Canadians. We might even find favour with 70% or 80% of them, and guess what? The opposition would say we just were not listening, that we were totally irresponsible, and not only that, probably idiotic. That is the kind of culture we have around here.
We are trying in one very small way to improve the performance of all of us, not just of opposition MPs but of government MPs. When we are having debates of this kind, instead of having these free-wheeling discussions where any kind of allegation and any kind of charge can be brought to the floor, I would suggest that we require members, all of us, to talk about the motion before us.
I remember many years ago hearing the story about a debate that took place in the House probably 40 to 50 years ago. It was a debate about wheat. One member stood up. I know his name but I will not mention it. Apparently in those days members could speak for 40 minutes. The member stood up and talked about wheat for 40 minutes and never used the word wheat once, not even once.
The reason I mentioned this is that I consider the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca one of the best members in the House, but when he can address these frivolous motions we face all the time at report stage and talk about the value of the dollar, health care, aboriginals and unemployment, what in the name of heaven has that got to do with the motion before us?
I believe that by tightening up the rules we would all become much more responsible. I think very often that we on the government side wander off on crazy tangents.
John Harvard Liberal Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB
Yes, sometimes. Yes, we are human and we make those mistakes. Maybe we should have stronger rules, forcing us to perform better and to address the issue before us.
I just hope that Canadians who are watching this debate have some understanding of what the debate is about. It is about changing the House order to prevent these frivolous, silly motions that are brought forward at report stage.
Imagine over 400 amendments to the Nisga'a bill in 1999. We spent 42 hours on 469 report stage motions. A year later in 2000, we spent 36 hours voting on 411 report stage motions. It makes no sense. It is silly.
We are just trying to clean this up, so let us not hear this nonsense about dictatorship, about how we are out of control and not being responsible. I think we are being responsible, and I think this work we have put forward deserves the support of everyone in the House.
Werner Schmidt Canadian Alliance Kelowna, BC
Madam Speaker, it is an honour and a privilege, actually, to be able to join in this debate, because I think what we are dealing with here is probably one of the most significant elements that has hit this House for some time. That element is parliamentary reform.
The particular issue I will raise is the quotation that I believe the member for Winnipeg South used. I think he took it from an office placard that he saw. I believe it went like this: “For every complex problem there is a simple solution”. It is wrong.
I suggest that with parliamentary reform we have a very complex issue. It is not something that is going to be resolved simply. It will require a major review of a number of things and I believe the hon. member for Winnipeg South said as much. This is a complicated issue.
I wanted to ask him a question and unfortunately the rules of the House did not allow us to ask questions. The question I was going to ask him was this: is this not a very simple solution to a very complex question? I think it is.
It is good that the Speaker would have the right not to allow vexatious and frivolous kinds of amendments. I have no problem with that. We agree with that.
However, there is a difficulty, which is why the Canadian Alliance put forward an amendment. Our amendment reads as follows:
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.
At that point lies the very heart of the issue. The essence of parliament is to give a voice to the people of Canada.
I see the hon. member for Winnipeg South back in the House and it is great to see him nodding his head.
That is our purpose here. It is to make this place relevant. A number of speakers here this afternoon said that parliament, for many people, has become irrelevant. That is a serious indictment on every one of us here. We should be able to debate in such a way that it is relevant to virtually everyone in Canada, whether we are on the opposition side of the House or the government side of the House.
I will address my remarks in that regard. I will refer to the hon. Minister of Finance. Not too long ago the Minister of Finance made a comment in a speech. I will read the exact paragraph that he used. The Minister of Finance said:
We have been discussing the role of Parliament in enshrining the values of the nation and its response to change. This is an empty debate unless it recognizes the role of the parliamentarians themselves—in our case the 301 members of the current House of Commons...MPs must have the opportunity to truly represent both their consciences and constituencies.
I could not agree more. That is a wonderful statement from a very honourable gentleman in the House who has a major and very responsible position in the government. I really admire that he said that.
The question then is will this kind of a motion bring about a stronger and more effective voice for parliamentarians? It will if vexatious motions are not there.
One of the reasons why there are these, by some definitions frivolous or vexatious, motions is because there is frustration on the part of parliamentarians. They cannot express themselves the way they want to. They cannot give voice to the people. They cannot vote in the interests of their constituents. Why is this? The hon. members opposite know only too well what I am talking about.
I want to refer back to the position of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister stood in the House and said, “I am only an ordinary MP looking after the interests of my constituency”. The Prime Minister is not an ordinary MP. The Prime Minister is a very special person with unique powers. The Prime Minister has the power to appoint supreme court judges, senators and all the ministers of the crown. The Prime Minister also has the right to take away those appointments. He can shift around particular positions. He is not an ordinary member of parliament.
There are times when the Prime Minister exercises certain powers over members of parliament that deny them the responsibility and the opportunity to exercise their representative power of their constituencies.
I remember clearly the vote that took place in the House on the remuneration for hepatitis C victims. I am sure all members of the House know that there are people on that side of the House who voted against what they had been fighting for and what they knew was the right thing to do. Why did they do this? They were told they must toe the party line. That is wrong. That is a denial of the democratic principles of the House. That is what we are decrying.
If there was not this kind of frustration, there would be no need for all kinds of frivolous and vexatious motions. These are expressions of something else that is wrong. We cannot fix a complex problem by taking one little item and changing it and think that all the other things are going to go away. They will not go away. The problems are inherent in the system. The system has to change.
The Prime Minister has to be accountable to parliament. We had a very recent example that happened in this 37th parliament. A red book promise was given to the people of Canada about appointing an ethics counsellor by parliament and having that ethics counsellor report to parliament. The Prime Minister said that was what they were going to do it.
When it came to a vote in the House of Commons to give effect to and implement that particular promise, what did the Prime Minister do? He said his party would vote against that motion, thus denying an opportunity for the ethics counsellor to become the truly impartial, objective person who could evaluate what the Prime Minister was doing and what other ministers might do.
That is what frustrates us. That is what makes it impossible for parliamentarians to do what they were elected to do. That is serious business.
I wish to address one other issue. This comes out of a study that was done by Queen's University. I am sure there are members opposite who know only too well that particular institution, an institution of great learning and one I respect.
Reg Alcock Liberal Winnipeg South, MB
You're too smart for that.
Werner Schmidt Canadian Alliance Kelowna, BC
I would like to address the hon. member for Winnipeg South because he understands this university very well. He probably knows many of the people who teach there. I would like to refer to this particular study entitled, “Searching for Good Governance”. I am going to quote a couple of paragraphs from this particular study. Bill Stanbury in 1994 concluded that the present system of cabinet government was seriously flawed with respect to one of its most widely cited virtues, accountability.
We have just talked about exactly that. Accountability is the issue. It is not vexatious or frivolous motions that come to us. Those are byproducts of a much bigger problem which is accountability.
Mr. Stanbury went on to say “Little useful information is disclosed that would permit the voters to properly assess the performance of the government. The ability of parliament and voters to hold accountable the cabinet and the rest of the executive is highly limited”.
That is what we are talking about today and it is very significant. The issue is the accountability of parliament and the accountability of the Prime Minister and ministers of the crown. He argued that between elections a majority government was ultimately constrained only by self-restraint, a form of self-regulation.
Members know that self-regulation that is talked about here is nothing more and nothing less than the self-regulation of the Prime Minister himself. It is the Prime Minister's office that decides what will or will not happen. Mr. Stanbury went on to say “The government often controls the means of monitoring its performance. It controls much of the quantity, quality and type of information available. It is unlikely to admit non-performance and will do its best to conceal bad performance”.
In his book Checks Unbalanced: The Quiet Side of Public Spending , Herman Leonard wrote: “Civilized people go to great lengths to avoid having to confront unpleasant news and uncomfortable feeling. But when we practice avoidance and obfuscation in public affairs, the consequences reach us all. A civilized penchant to look away. The willingness of some to hide and of others to tolerate the hiding of the public's business is on its face antithetical to our society. Society's fundamental governing precept, governing by the informed consent of the governed”.
That is a major insight but very important for us to realize. That is at the heart of what we are debating here today, that we make parliament relevant so that every Canadian can say it is a place where their representatives can tell the people what it is that they want done in a democratic form. They will take their view from the majority position but they want their voice heard there.
This is the point that he is making. He is saying that if information is not given or if it is somehow obfuscated or it is adulterated in some way, electors no longer make an informed decision about who can represent them. That is what that is all about.
He goes on to the accountability of expenditures. This is probably even more significant than anything else I have said so far. The authors of the study concluded:
Most of the “bottom line” focus of accountability in the media is the general budget presentation of the deficit by the Minister of Finance.
We do not have a budget right now but we do have the rest of this which does apply. It is a well established practice that the media takes the bottom line from the budget presentation by the minister. It provides an incentive to manipulate the presentation of the general accounts to give the impression of better performance in this regard.
The study further stated:
For example, spending might be shifted “off-budget” to an independent agency such as a Crown corporation, or into a loan guarantee as opposed to a direct subsidy, to reduce the “deficit” registered in the general accounts. Alternatively, accounts might even be made to look worse in order to make more dramatic an expected improvement. It is well-known that new governments tend to attribute as much responsibility for deficits as possible to the previous political managers.
How many times have we seen that in the House? We have seen it over and over again.
It goes on to state that preliminary work done by Postner emphasized the need for a consolidated budget, a budget that would provide a unified presentation of all government activities, including general government activities, trust fund activities such as public sector pension plans and enterprise type activities such as crown corporations.
By doing so it would help to illuminate the complete financial picture of the government and diminish the potential to shift activities off budget to conceal politically embarrassing information.
There is the heart of the issue. We are unable to assess accurately whether the information we are getting in the budget document is an accurate description of where the government has spent its money and how much it has spent. We do not know and we cannot know because the accounting system is such that it does not accrue the total expenditures. They are expenditures that take place off budget. They are still a liability to the government. It has spent the money but it does not appear in the budget that as presented to the media and the public. It is not an accurate reflection of the real financial position of the government.
This is at the heart of the frustration which we are experiencing. We can argue about free votes. We can talk about the role of committees and amendments. If we do not deal with the fundamental issue of representation of our constituents, of our consciences in this place, we are denying the fundamental principle of democracy. That is what we need to address.
I would like to say one more thing with regard to the whole business of reforming parliament. We must first of all recognize that we are Canadians, that we are here as a democracy, a democracy that has stood the test of time, a democracy that is in a crisis situation right now and a democracy where many people are saying it is no longer relevant and they really do not care. That is a serious indictment. We must care because the iron law of politics applies to us and to every Canadian. Those who choose not to get involved are bound to be governed by those who do.
The time has come for each of us to work together and to work through the principles of true democracy. This is where people are elected on the merits, platform and philosophies they present. They are elected on the basic principles and policies that they stand for, that they will implement when given the reins of power and that we can depend on those people to do what they said they would do.
Dennis Mills Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
Sounds like a Liberal.
Werner Schmidt Canadian Alliance Kelowna, BC
The hon. member cries that it is the Liberal way. That is not the Liberal way. I just gave the House an example that said clearly that a promise was given to appoint an ethics counsellor. He would be appointed by parliament and report to parliament. The Liberals denied that. They voted against it. That is what the Liberals did.
The ethics counsellor should have been appointed by parliament. He should have been given that kind of power. If they did not want to do it then, they should do it now. It would have been far better for the government in power today to have put that kind of motion before us. We could all have supported that motion, not this kind of motion which does not get to the heart of the issue and which deals with peripheral duties. The real frustration comes from these other issues. That is what we need to keep in place and recognize that it is the case.
The point has come for us to realize that many of us in the House, and I have spoken to several members on various committees, whether it is from this side of the House or from the government side are asking what in the world they are here for? They feel they are wasting their time. They say the minister tells them the bill they will be voting on or the legislation they will be dealing with. They cannot make any amendments to it. They cannot determine who the witnesses will be. To some degree there is some flexibility but by and large, if the minister does not want, or if the Prime Minister does not want, certain witnesses to appear, they will not appear, notwithstanding the committee has the power under legislation to subpoena people. However, what happens? Nothing.
There is the frustration. We need to come to grips with the realities of giving to the parliamentarians meaningful work, inside and outside committees. We need to allow them to vote the way they want to vote and allow them to express what needs to be done. That is consistent with what the people want them to do. That is at the heart of the issue. I am pleading for the House to reform parliament to make that possible.
Steve Mahoney Liberal Mississauga West, ON
Mr. Speaker, I listened to some of the members opposite and I half expect someone in a red or blue cape to come flying through here. They just have all the solutions and all the answers. Frankly, I find it a little bit tiresome and a little bit frustrating.
First, here are a couple of facts. We are sitting here and it is 9.15 p.m. On a normal sitting day the House would have been recessed by approximately 6.30 p.m. We will be here until 11.30 or 12 o'clock tonight at least. Just so people know, the cost to run this place beyond the regular hour is somewhere around $25,000 per hour. The debate this evening will cost the Canadian taxpayer, for whom I assume my friend from the Bloc could not care less, about $125,000. I just wanted to make the cost clear.
Why do we have the motion? Other members have stood up and said to speak to the motion. We have sat in this place through 24 hours of not debating and not talking but simply voting on motions that would make absolutely no difference to the legislation or to the quality of the legislation. They would have no impact on the end product. They do nothing more than delay. To sit here doing that is not just a waste of money, it is an abuse of the democratic system.
If members opposite want to talk about ways to reform this place, why do we not start with this motion? The motion is indeed parliamentary reform. The motion says to my hon. friends opposite that if they want to filibuster and stand in their place and talk with at least a modicum of intelligence about the particular issue involved they can do so. They have that opportunity. In the good old days, filibuster meant talking out the issue, debating.
When I was a member of the Ontario legislature I recall sitting through filibusters that would last a day or two. I may not have liked it or agreed with it but I had to respect the ability of parliamentarians to stand in their place in opposition to the government of the day. Whether we were members of the opposition or members of the government, we had to respect the ability of the individual to stay on topic and talk about the issue that was of concern to their constituents and, in that example, to the people of the entire province, and in this example, all of Canada.
What have we had? We have had a major debate. The one that comes to mind is the Nisga'a treaty. The opposition did not agree with us. It did not like the treaty and did not like what we were doing. I did not have a problem with that. It is totally within its rights and its purview to disagree with us.
However, the opposition submitted hundreds of amendments that were—and I love the word—vexatious, which means annoying. They did not change the treaty one bit and did not change the outcome of the government legislation one iota. They simply required the government to stay here and vote on periods, commas and semicolons.
Now, really, is that what Canadians elected any of us in this place to do? Absolutely not. Canadians may have some respect for a member opposite who could stand up and clause by clause, line by line, word by word, go through that particular bill and explain to the Canadian public why he or she is against a particular bill.
I do not care what bill it is. I have served in opposition and I have served in government. I respect the responsibility and the important role that opposition must play in this kind of democracy.
What bothers me, though, is that when the opposition today does not like what the government is doing it says that it does not like the process. When it says it does not like the process means it lost. Rather than argue the substantive impact of the motion, the bill or the document before parliament, members of the opposition cry foul that somehow the big, bad Prime Minister whipped them. He has chains and runs racks in the back room where they are tortured mercilessly. Their brains are taken and put in jars somewhere when they arrive. They just denigrate the role of MPs.
When I am here in the nation's capital as a member of parliament, like many of my colleagues on all sides of the House I work between 12 and 18 hours a day. Our day starts very early with committee meetings, working in caucuses and working with opposition members. We find quite interestingly that in spite of the theatre which goes on in here, when we get members of parliament from all across Canada sitting in committee talking over issues they can actually be reasonable. I wonder why they are not like that in the House of Commons. Why can we not work together?
Someone from the NDP asked when we would start to work together. I was at the HRDC committee the other day talking about Bill C-2 and changes to the employment insurance bill. At that time I questioned the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the construction trade unions that were before us.
I asked the chamber why, when the country is in a recession, when the government supports all people who lose their jobs and when the EI account is in major deficit, we do not hear from it? Why does it not say that it knows the account is in deficit and it will pay more? We do not hear from the chamber in that instance, because it is the responsibility of the government to be the insurer of last resort.
Is that a question that someone might expect from a government member? I think not, because I think some of the more socialist minded folks might agree. Some of the more right wing people might not agree. They might think I was being hard and harsh on the poor chamber of commerce. I see at committee all the time where we cross on issues.
The member opposite doing most of the chirping served with me on the citizenship and immigration committee for some time. With the odd exception, when that member decided to ignore the rules of parliament and released a document to the media before it was tabled in the House, for which he was properly chastised by the Speaker of the day, I found that he tried to work and to deal with issues of concern around the citizenship bill and around refugees. He tried to put forward from time to time some thoughtful comments in debate.
Why is it that after we have gone through the process of losing whatever is the issue of the day—
Ken Epp Canadian Alliance Elk Island, AB
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I am not sure that we on this side should be the only ones required to listen to this diatribe. I would like to see more Liberals in the House and I am challenging you on quorum.
And the count having been taken:
Steve Mahoney Liberal Mississauga West, ON
Mr. Speaker, I wanted an audience. I generally perform a little better when I have an audience, so here we go. That is exactly the kind of nonsense that sends this place into disarray because that party over there does not have—
Leon Benoit Canadian Alliance Lakeland, AB
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We can stray a little in debate but I would question the relevance of the comments the member is making.
Standing OrdersGovernment Orders
The Deputy Speaker
With the greatest respect to my hon. colleague, I think that is not a point of order.
Steve Mahoney Liberal Mississauga West, ON
Mr. Speaker, they always interrupt me because they have very thin skins.
Let me deal with the issue. The issue is parliamentary reform. The issue is whether our Speaker should have the ability to rule an amendment out of order that is put forward by anyone in this place. As a matter of fact I am not even sure we need the particular amendment to the standing orders. Having read them, it is my opinion the Speaker already has the ability to throw those kinds of things out.
If he or she considers them vexatious or irrelevant, it is my opinion that the Speaker of this place can rule them out of order. However, we want to have a debate about toughening up the rules, making it more clear to the boys and girls that we will no longer allow periods to be substituted for commas because they simply do not change the basis of the bill. We will no longer allow someone to submit 3,000 amendments for the sole purpose of stopping a bill that the government, duly elected in a majority position, has not only a right but a responsibility to put forward. It is the agenda of the government that needs to be put on the table.
If opposition members had any credibility whatsoever they would stand and fight. They would stand and debate. They would stand and disagree, but they do not. What do they do? They say that this place is dysfunctional and that MPs are irrelevant. I take exception to that.
It is my view that the proudest thing one can do in this great country is serve in this place. It is clearly an honour to have people in our communities, our neighbours and our friends, say that they trust us to go to Ottawa to represent them, that they believe in what we are telling them. They do not like everything we do. They disagree with us from time to time. We may have to vote a certain way because we do or do not agree on a certain bill. They understand that. That is the process. That is the democratic way.
I will paraphrase Winston Churchill who said that it may not be the best system in the world but it is a long way ahead of whatever is in second place.
Let us understand that when they lose and when they cry about the system that is one thing. The next thing they do is denigrate their colleagues. However, when they look in the mirror and say as members of this place that MPs are not doing their jobs, that they are irrelevant or that they are trained seals, they denigrate the face in the mirror.
That is the problem in this place. If we want to return respect of parliament to Canadians, if we want to return respect of parliamentarians to Canadians, it is time we respected ourselves. That is not to say we should be arrogant. We have no right to do that. In fact the opposite is true. We need to work, as my colleagues do and even members over there do. We have round tables in our communities. We have public meetings in our communities. We put out householders. We all return phone calls, I would hope, to our constituents.
I find it interesting that constituents will phone my office and say that they are calling because they are mad about this or mad about that. They leave their names and phone numbers. They think I will not call them back but I do.
My policy is that within 24 hours I return a call personally. Guess what they say, Mr. Speaker? They ask whether that is really me. They are stunned that a member of parliament actually called them back. If they did not want me to call them back, why would they call and leave a message?
It is our job to talk to the people. That does not mean and never will mean that we are puppets. I love it when the whip of the Alliance Party says that members of the Alliance Party will vote in favour of the motion unless they are told otherwise by their constituents.
Do they have a hot line? Do they have all their constituents on a big speaker phone doing a yea and a nay, doing a referendum of some kind? I guess three per cent of the people told them that this was what they wanted them to do. They are all out there saying “Mary, what do you think? Should I vote in favour of this or not?”
I am being a little facetious but the serious point is that we do an injustice to the Canadian people to run down this institution. If members want to know what fuels the so-called alienation we hear about in places like Quebec and western Canada, it is exactly that kind of behaviour which runs down this place. They throw gasoline on the fire and the people say it is awful that those terrible politicians in Ottawa will not listen to them.
It is interesting that the people of Canada do not buy it at the end of the day. I have talked to people in my community who say that they do not like politicians but that they do not mean me. I am sure everybody in this place gets that. I do not want a second opinion, either.
That is what happens because they read it in the newspaper, saw it on the news or heard someone in parliament say we are all a bunch of bad people who do not care about our communities. We know that is not true. Putting forward motions to change periods and commas and semicolons is not even an intelligent way of using the parliamentary democracy that is available in this wonderful place, in this incredible establishment.
It says to Canadians that we are here. I agree with one thing the member opposite said in his speech, that we are here to provide a voice for all Canadians.
I want to talk on the issue of the ethics counsellor that the opposition is having a field day with. Nobody over there mentions the fact that in 1999 the ethics counsellor appeared before the industry committee and made a report to parliamentarians. I am assuming, a terrible leap in faith maybe, that there were members opposite in attendance at that committee since it was a standing committee of this House. They heard Mr. Wilson make his report and they had opportunity to question him on his findings. That committee then reported to parliament.
I refer to the commissioner of the RCMP, which brings up another point that the member of the fifth party over there in the corner does not want to accept, the absolutely independent investigation by the RCMP which found that there was no wrongdoing. Those members say they want it referred to the ethics commissioner and then when the ethics commissioner says there was no wrongdoing on the part of the Prime Minister, what do they do? They complain about the process. It is what I said before. They complain that the ethics commissioner, because they did not like the answer, is a lapdog. That too is an insult.
As far as how I voted and my colleagues voted, I am very strongly of the opinion that we have already lived up to the commitment in the red book by appointing the ethics commissioner. He has the responsibility and the opportunity and will be invited from time to time to appear before a committee of the House. All we have to do is ask and he will come. He will answer questions and then the committee will report to this place. It is absolutely normal.
I will give the members opposite credit for one thing. They managed to trick the media a little bit. They managed to put some kind of message or image out there that we were breaking a promise when in fact they knew full well we had already kept that promise and lived up to that commitment.
To this day that ethics counsellor is there. If they want to apply to have him investigate, they can do so. If they do not like the answer, they had better not come crying to me. He is there to do a job and he has his responsibilities. He will absolutely discharge those responsibilities.
I want to talk about someone else. Someone always throws out the name of my former good friend Mr. Nunziata. Mr. Nunziata stood in this place and voted against the government on a confidence motion that had to do with the budget. Everyone said how wonderful and great he was.
Let me ask members a question. Everybody loves hockey in this country. If I played on a team and I shot the puck on purpose into my own net, what would my team members do to me? They would tell me to sit on the bench or they would kick me off the team.
If Mr. Nunziata would have had the courage to step out of caucus and vote against the government, I would have nothing but admiration for him. He did not. He voted against the government, against the team, and the end of the day this is a team sport, a blood sport and a fabulous place to be. I could not be more proud to represent the constituents of Mississauga West and I will continue to do so with vigour in this place.
Michel Guimond Bloc Beauport—Montmorency—Côte-De- Beaupré—Île-D'Orléans, QC
Mr. Speaker, I will try not to raise the pitch used by the hon. member for Mississauga West in his speech.
Those who are listening to us and winding down in their living rooms now that their children are in bed have heard examples taken from hockey by the member for Mississauga West. With all due respect for the hon. member, his speech was worthy of a chihuahua. Members know that a chihuahua is a small dog that yaps a lot but does not bite. So, the member for Mississauga West made a speech worthy of a chihuahua. I am only referring to the pitch of the speech, not its content.
Getting back to the issue before us, it is unfortunate that we must debate until 11 p.m. the government House leader's Motion No. 2, because this motion—
Michel Guimond Bloc Beauport—Montmorency—Côte-De- Beaupré—Île-D'Orléans, QC
A motion for closure, I agree with the hon. member for Roberval, has very serious implications. It is appropriate to read it.
Mr. Speaker, let me say from the outset that it is not the integrity of the Speaker or of the Chair, as it is called, that is being questioned, but the action taken by the government House leader.
The motion reads as follows:
That section (5) of the Standing Order 76 and section (5) of the 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.”
Mr. Speaker, I know that you are a man of law. I did say a man of law not a man of the right.
I know that the government has hit one of your tender spots. I do not know you well enough to know all your tender spots, like in hockey, when they know a player has bad knees for instance, and focus on them, but I do know, with his reference to the parliamentary system of the United Kingdom, that the government House leader has hit on one of your soft spots, because you are greatly fond of the parliamentary system as it prevails in the United Kingdom.
This motion contains elements which give incredible latitude and we cannot subscribe to them. Who, for instance, will be the one to determine whether motions are indeed repetitive, frivolous or vexatious?
I submit, respectfully, that in parliamentary law these are totally subjective concepts. There is nothing objective about this. We are in the realm of subjectivity.
With this motion, then, the government wants to give itself a clear conscience by including an initiative we consider totally partisan, something it had been thinking about for a very long time, but did not want to take the fall for. Taking advantage of the election last November 27, and the first block of the new session, the first five weeks of sittings, the government, and the government House leader in particular, said to itself “Now is the time to strike”. I submit that the government is going to have to take the fall for this.
This motion confers upon the Speaker the right to decide on the motives and motivations of the members of the opposition when they bring in amendments in the House.
If the opposition is denied the right to bring forward amendments or if our amendments are subjected to an arbitrary decision, what is there left of the opposition? Is the government unhappy with the fact there is an opposition? Would the government like to have had all the 301 seats in this 37th parliament?
I think that the members on this side of the House are legitimate as well. In other words, they are elected just as democratically as the members on the other side. Does that mean that the government is unhappy about having an opposition?
There is no doubt that, when the government House leader presented his motion, he certainly did not think his own motions in amendment could be frivolous or vexatious. This is surely not the case with the some 200 amendments to Bill C-7 on young offenders.
This motion is very insulting to any self-respecting political party working sincerely to improve legislation introduced by the government.
Thus, according to the motion the government introduced, the Speaker will have the power to judge, to all intents and purposes, the relevance of any party's political strategy. This Liberal government wants as little criticism as possible and imposes changes to the standing orders in order to manage public affairs on its own.
Here we have a basic question before us. Does a mathematical majority of members give the government the right to do everything? Can the government usurp this power simply because it had a standing of 172 seats at the latest election? Does that give it the right, literally, to negate any opposition? If this government is democratic and transparent, as it claims, what is the point of presenting such a motion as Motion No. 2, presented by the government House leader?
There is a political price to pay for managing public affairs.
When government decisions are not popular, they must be debated in parliament. The opposition has a legitimate role in parliament of working to amend legislation. If this right is withdrawn, we might as well ask what is the point of committee work, and of making speeches in the House, most of the time before empty chairs. What is the purpose?
I have a suggestion for the government. If the government wants to move quickly, all it has to do is introduce its bills and say “There will be no debate on this bill that we have put together. No opposition member will speak. Only members of the party in power will be allowed to speak. There will be no parliamentary committees, and no witnesses will be called to appear before them. I, such and such a minister, rise to introduce a bill, and I ask my Liberal colleagues in the government majority if they have any speeches to make. I give them the floor and I order that we proceed immediately to pass the bill at first, second and third readings”. Bingo. We send it to the other chamber and that is that, no more discussion.
Is this the kind of democracy that the Liberals want and the kind of country in which they want to live? If so, we need to know. I think they should have been just as plain about it in the campaign leading up to the November 27 election.
The process whereby the opposition tries to amend an act is, in itself, a sound process in a democracy. It is the expression of democracy by a part of the population that does not think like the government. I looked at the situation, and we on this side of the House should be lobotomized to ensure that nothing the members opposite say will be questioned.
Michel Guimond Bloc Beauport—Montmorency—Côte-De- Beaupré—Île-D'Orléans, QC
Of course, government members are applauding. They would love that, but they really should not applaud when I make such comments. This is what they are aiming for, but in a somewhat more hypocritical if not subtle way.
The process whereby the opposition tries to amend an act is a sound, democratic process, and the opposition has a duty to ensure that the government respects the public in managing the affairs of the state.
Depriving opposition parties of the tools that they need to do their job tends to change the role of our democratic institutions. This is a serious matter. It is through debates and decisions made democratically in the interest of all that a government should manage public affairs, not in the interest of a fistful of individuals, and not in the interest of a certain group of members who sit in cabinet.
The role of each and everyone of the 301 elected parliamentarians, whether they sit in the fifth row on the opposition side or on the government side, is to improve the legislation, unless the government House leader thinks he has a monopoly on truth, in which case I am wasting my time, I should sit down immediately and no one else should talk.
With all due respect, I submit that the government House leader does not have a monopoly on truth. At any rate, all we on this side have to do is look at the way he directs the work of this House to see that he does not have a monopoly on the truth.
The government is calling upon the institution you represent, Mr. Speaker, to intervene in order to limit opposition delaying tactics. The government House leader is giving this reason to all the media: “I do not want to see MPs turned into voting machines”.
I regret to inform hon. members that we were elected to listen to the debates, to get some idea of what bills are about, and to respect the concerns and needs of our fellow citizens. Then, having done all that, our fellow citizens expect us to come here precisely for that reason, to vote. Is that being voting machines? If, within one year, we are able to pass 600 pieces of progressive legislation which will help improve society, which will add something to democracy, to the relationship between citizens and their government—for this is what we often fault government for, and I do not necessarily mean this one, or a provincial one—we will have done our duty as parliamentarians.
When the people listening to us run into us at the mall buying groceries, what criticism do they often share with us? They fault government for being out of touch with their concerns, with not listening to them. That is why they elect someone and tell them “You, sir or madam, are the one we have decided to send to Ottawa to represent us in parliament, and we want you to be our spokesperson. We want you to be the one to speak on our behalf”. Is that what being a voting machine means?
The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons added that dilatory motions can lead to hours of unnecessary voting. This is once again a value judgment on the part of the government House leader. That is what he thinks. He is the one who feels the voting is unnecessary, but if the government introduces bills that are reasonable, if the government House leader introduces bills that are valid, that have the approval of society and all the political parties, we are in agreement.
Members have seen that, in such cases, there have been no lengthy debates for hours and hours and no amendments. When there is a consensus on the bill, we can pass it quickly. For sure, when the government introduces bills that are meaningless, such as the bill on young offenders, such as the clarity bill, such as the bill on the Nisga'a treaty, which our Canadian Alliance colleagues considered inappropriate for the people they represent, naturally amendments are tabled.
This is the right of parliamentarians. The best proof that it is a right is that we do not use it unreasonably and in a repetitive fashion with every bill. You use a right when you want to, when you feel a need to use it. A right and a privilege for an MP, that is what that is.
The government says that we are voting unnecessarily for hours and that it costs some $27,000 for each hour of overtime the House sits. I say to the government House leader that democracy has no price. If we find that $27,000 is too much, and if the government House leader wants to make cuts—
Michel Guimond Bloc Beauport—Montmorency—Côte-De- Beaupré—Île-D'Orléans, QC
Let them abolish it. Let us say that if there are savings to be made, we should shut it down. Shut it down for six, eight, nine months a year. We should try to compress all of parliament's work into one week. If we sit for just one week, we will save $27,000 an hour times 24 hours for 51 weeks. That will save a bundle.
Democracy does have a price, and I think that passing a motion such as Motion No. 2 would be to deny the right of all parties, including the opposition parties of course, to introduce amendments.
While the government is using this faulty argument, while it is trying to prevent us from representing our constituents, it has, since 1993, pocketed no less than $31 billion of the surplus in the EI fund, money that belonged to unemployed workers. The government has many ways of limiting opposition to a bill.
I will give an example. We do not need to give the government House leader ideas for keeping us down; he has all sorts of his own. One of the tools used by the government House leader is closure.
What is the main reason for closure? It is intended to silence the opposition members. The government House leader decrees “There will be another two and a half hours of debate on such and such a bill. We feel that you will have said all you had to say in those two and a half hours and we are not interested in hearing any more. It does not matter whether you can provide additional arguments, whether research assistants found a study somewhere in the world or in Canada to show to the government that it is headed in the wrong direction. The government has decided to put an end to the debate after two and a half hours with a gag order. You will have said all you had to say by then”. I say two and a half hours, but it could be one hour, three hours or three days. We cannot accept such a measure.
From 1984 to 1993, the Conservative government used a gag order 49 times for 519 bills, or 9.4% of the time. In the seven years it has been in office, the Liberal government has resorted to closure 60 times for 350 bills—