Mr. Speaker, I want to zero in specifically on why there needs to be a special committee, which the motion we are debating today would set up.
The regular standing order review which is required under Standing Order 51 is taking place this evening. We will be debating which standing orders should be changed.
If we look at the mandate of the committee that will be reviewing this, there are seven paragraphs in the standing orders outlining the responsibilities of the committee. Parliamentary reform is only one of those responsibilities. If parliamentary reform is the priority which I think all members of the House would like to make it, then the time is right for a special committee dedicated to developing proposals to modernize this place.
In the last parliament the process to reform the rules began with a similar debate to this one, on April 21, 1998. The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs was supposed to take the wisdom of the debate and come up with proposals to reform the House. The committee did not get around to considering parliamentary reform until October 2000. Then the election came and time ran out. In other words, it just did not happen. Not a single standing order change proposal came to committee, made it through the House and became a change that we could enjoy in this 37th parliament.
The last major reform done in the House of Commons was done by a special committee chaired by James McGrath. The member for Winnipeg—Transcona frequently refers to the work of that committee. I am convinced a special committee is required because a special job like modernizing parliament requires a single focused committee to get the job done.
As a member of the proposed committee, I look forward to working with a smaller committee. The McGrath committee emphasized and recommended a smaller committee. The McGrath committee report stated that the committee should focus more on the task at hand, be less partisan and work toward consensus much easier.
I am convinced that a smaller group is more productive than a larger group, as long as the committee reflects the proportionate party representation when it comes to speaking time, questions and comments, witnesses and so on. One of the recommendations I hope we will eventually see is the creation of smaller committees that look after the speaking time and weighted votes. I believe this can be achieved in the days to come.
The other interesting aspect of this committee is the fact that its report must be unanimous. If we are to reform parliament in a meaningful way, and not just in a way that strengthens the executive, both the opposition and government must buy into the proposals. Ramming through changes under closure, as the government did not so long ago, will not work in the long run. This is inviting the opposition to find ways to get cranky with the government. It also invites the opposition to find loopholes in the standing orders to express its frustration. Surely that is not what we should be spending our time doing.
We should be spending our time in this committee and in this debate today trying to find ways to come to unanimity on important changes that give power to all parliamentarians, not just the executive branch.
I remember when the government's famous Motion No. 8 was on the order paper in the last parliament. That was a knee-jerk reaction by the government. The motion was not intended to address opposition grievances. It was simply intended to punish the opposition. The government House leader, who normally enjoyed a co-operative opposition for the most part, faced a revolt on this motion that even his skills and his majority could not have handled. I believe the Speaker would likely have ruled Motion No. 8 out of order if it had been debated.
That draconian measure eventually was dropped because of the realization that we could not have meaningful reform in this place if it was going to be done unilaterally. The House would have been consumed with routine orders of procedure unless the government had the co-operation of opposition parties. No one, especially the government House leader, would have liked to see that happen.
I also believe that the timing of this committee is right because the spirit is right for change. My party has a number of proposals already on the table. Our last batch of proposals were released in a document entitled “Building Trust”. It has taken me personally by considerable surprise because literally thousands of people have requested copies of it. I cannot believe there is that much interest in parliamentary reform.
It is an indication that not only is the time right for members of the House to begin fixing parliament, but Canadians are calling for it and the media are willing to communicate it, for maybe the first time. Members of parliament can actually get cachet on this subject and can get traction on this subject back home, where people are saying that parliamentary reform is long overdue.
The latest series of proposals, which I will be releasing tomorrow morning, builds on the original building trust document. I will be contacting all members of parliament to get them to talk about what I guess we can call “building trust plus”. It is a series of proposals that includes everything I released in January, plus much more. I would like to quickly go through some of the specific proposals I hope to take to the committee. Hopefully we can have unanimous consent to bring them back to the House by June 1.
The building trust document talked about: free votes; the ethics counsellor becoming a true officer of parliament; the process of how the Speaker is elected; the creation of a new privacy, access and ethics committee, which I think would be in all of our interests; how the appointment of House officers is done; and the appointment of the clerk as an appointment of the House instead of an appointment of the executive, and so on. There is a whole series of proposals which I think would strengthen the role of parliament instead of just strengthening the government.
There are other things I would like to throw into the mix. We should have more of the opposition party members chairing committees, like they do in England. When I told them in England that virtually every single committee is chaired by the government, they just could not believe it. In England, a third of the chairs of committees are given to opposition members. This would make committees so much better in the sense that people would understand that our duty in committees is to discuss the subject matter, not to have political diatribes. If the government shafts one committee and the opposition is chairing the other committee, it could be tit for tat. There is no value in making committees dysfunctional because there is an interest in making them work. Sharing the committee chairs with the opposition means sharing some of the power, but it also means balancing that power in a way that reflects the true representation here in the House.
As well, we are keen to televise committees. I know eventually we are going to have a new committee building in these precincts, but in the meantime anything we can do to televise more committees, to show members of parliament busily doing some of the grunt work of parliament, is a good thing, and we should encourage it.
In regard to the way the government responds to committee reports, I know the government House leader would like to have an automatic response, but I would point out to him that in the new government of Nunavut, for example, when a committee tables a report in its legislature and the minister does not respond within a certain number of days, it is deemed adopted. Instead of restricting the report, saying that concurrence is as if there had already been a debate, and the government being given unlimited time to respond, in Nunavut they say that the minister has to do that report's bidding unless he or she tables a response to do otherwise.
In other words, it is negative option billing on the minister. He or she responds to the committee's recommendations or it is a done deal. That strengthens the hands of committees. It strengthens the value of the report. Ministers who say they will just ignore reports will find out that their departments have been given direction by the House if they have failed to react within an appropriate time.
We have a lot of recommendations on closure. I have always said that the government at times will use closure if some shenanigans are going on in the opposition and it has to move that way. On rare occasions it is understandable. However, in return, the government should have to produce the minister to the House of Commons for a period of questioning on why it has restricted debate, on why it thinks debate has gone on long enough, on whether it has encouraged enough diversity in debate, and on why something is so time sensitive that it has to go through the House in such a hurried fashion. In other words, a minister should have to be accountable for bringing in a closure or time allocation motion. We have some specific proposals on that matter which I will be happy to bring forth.
We also want to bring forward changes in how the estimates are handled. There are good proposals from an all party committee on how to improve the estimates process. Right now the estimates are set in stone. The government brings them forward and members cannot change anything. If members change anything the government considers it a non-confidence vote. That is why the all party committee, including the current government whip, has proposed changes, which I agree with and which will allow members of parliament to move funds around within a department, not to spend more money but to allocate funds according to the committee's wisdom.
That again strengthens the role of committees. It strengthens the role of the Liberal backbenchers and allows estimates, the real spending power of parliament, to be brought forward not just for scrutiny like they are now, but for actual direction to the government. What a breath of fresh air it would be for Liberal backbenchers to actually have that kind of input.
We want to also talk about things like the order paper questions. This is a technical thing on how those questions are answered and how timely the answers are. I know that the government House leader will be keen to do that.
We want to look at the parliamentary calendar. We want to decide on what is the best use of our time here in Ottawa. Can we make better use of Fridays? Instead of having attendance that is in the 20% to 30% range on Fridays, can we make better use of that time so the people who are in attendance in the House on Fridays have meaningful debate on meaningful subjects? Perhaps private members' business could have more pre-eminence. We can make better use of our Fridays in the House and I look forward to that debate as well.
On the subject of private members' business, in the Alliance Party we want any private members' business drawn for debate in the House to receive a vote. Too often people have put a lot of time, energy and effort into bringing forward private members' bills and, for whatever reasons, there are no votes. They are debated for an hour and then go off into the ether and are never heard of again. Members who have put time into a private member's initiative should know that there will be a vote and a decision at the end of it. We encourage all members to allow not just the debate but a vote to occur on private members' business. I think members on both sides of the House would look forward to that.
Again I want to emphasize that it is my belief that smaller committees will be more efficient committees. We need to look at committee structure instead of expanding committee membership to 17 or 18. Sometimes a joint committee has 25 or 30 members. How on earth can there be meaningful time for individual members on a committee of that size? We need to reflect the proportionality of the House, restrict the number of members on the committee, and look after the questions of voting and question and comment time. In other words, the time should reflect the proportionality. Let us find ways to deal with this.
Let us not just make the committees ever bigger. They are inefficient and a poor use of time and they do not do any better job of reflecting the reality of the House as far as numbers go. Often people get so discouraged that they quit attending because they never get a chance to speak.
I look forward to this special committee. I am grateful for a chance to sit on it. I look forward in the weeks ahead to all members feeling free to talk to all House leaders about what is on their minds in order to make this place work better for the benefit of all of us and the Parliament of Canada.