Mr. Chairman, when I last spoke I tried to differentiate between the debate changes that need to take place that would be rightly fitted under some topic of parliamentary reform.
Some of the issues and the challenges that the Chamber faces are of much greater magnitude than we would deal with in the debate. We have to deal with finding ways of changing this place to make it fit better with the ever changing community that we live in.
Some of the problems that we face are as a result of the Chamber being unable to find ways to move the pace of the external community. I will not spend a lot of time on that tonight. We are here to talk consequentially, to offer some advice to the committee about specific changes to the operations of the House that may produce the kind of effect that would allow members of the community to see this place as more relevant.
I do not mean to dismiss some of the talk about private members' bills and other instruments. They are not unimportant and their process is not unimportant. I do however wish to make one point. We are dealing with an odd kind of loss of authority. It is an odd kind of loss of authority because the House has enormous authority. Committees have enormous authority.
There is an incredible power in this place. We make and change laws. We tax, spend and do all sorts of things. We, the members of this place, can do it. Yet for a couple of reasons that are hard to reconcile, it is difficult for us to function in a manner that expresses that authority in a useful or consequential way.
What I mean by that is that we have two things going on here. When the hon. member opposite talks about private members' bills and the importance of individual members being able to put forward a bill, one could argue that all bills emanating from the House should be the bills of all members.
One of the things that we have allowed to happen, and it is interesting to read some of the observations of people who have studied the British parliamentary system and studied this parliament, is very hot partisan debate that has very little to do with governing to intrude upon the process where law is made. When one talks to members of the House, particularly members who have been here for a long time or former members, and asks them what experiences they talk most about or feel proud of, they say committee work. They say that the real work is done in committees. That is where they have the debates.
At least two hon. members opposite are members who I have worked with on committee. We have had very real debates that have produced very real compromises which produced a permanence to legislation. We can all feel good about that if that is what we were doing here.
On the other hand we have the kind of debate that takes place in this Chamber. The problem with it is that it is easy to make fun of. I could say that we have spent the last however many months arguing about Shawinigate and I could deride the opposition about that. The fact is that we would have done the same thing if we were on the other side of the House. I was in opposition for a period of time. The fact is that in the public arena, through the eyes of the television camera, we get rewarded for outrageous behaviour and strategic outrageous attacks.
Attacking the credibility and the personality of the Prime Minister is, I would argue, not a very pleasant thing to do, not a very nice thing to do. Unfortunately I cannot argue that it is not a strategically smart thing to do. However it has nothing to do with running the country. It has to do with fighting the battles of politics, which are about getting oneself in the position where one has the power to govern.
The circle I cannot square is that we cannot control that debate because there is a reward for that debate. There is a reward for members opposite to make members on this side look like they are corrupt or stupid. There is a reward for members on this side to make members on the other side look like they are incompetent or whatever pejorative kind of phrases one wants to use. If there was not a public reward for it we would not be doing it, however distasteful it might be.
I do not blame anybody in the House because we all do the same. That is the way the community has trained us to behave in the same way that we have concerns about public servants because that is the way we have trained them to be. How do we step aside from that debate into that environment that we all want to be a part of, which is an environment that produces law?
If there were a consequential change right now in the context of this modernization of the rules, and modernization is a tough word to apply because we are not making it very modern, we could talk about a whole bunch of other things such as the House getting the tools to function in the world. Unfortunately that is a topic for another time given the focus of this debate.
If I had to recommend to you, Mr. Chairman, and to the other members of this committee one change that would have a significant impact on the operation of this place, it would be to create a process whereby members would be elected to a committee for the duration of a parliament.
The exact mechanism for that might be a combination of seniority in election, much as we do with parliamentary associations. When a member comes here he or she would know where they would be. They would make that choice and they would have to fight for it. Older members who had more experience would have a chance to get there. Members would have to convince their colleagues that they are the person to be elected to that committee in the same way you and Mr. Speaker had to convince your colleagues about the election of the Speaker. However once there we have a couple of things. We have stability. The election of the chairman becomes a consequence of that because members now own that committee. If we think about that for a second, there is a whole bunch of powers of authority that those committees have that we never exercise. Why we do not exercise them is really the question? We do not exercise them right now because there is a fear that sits out there that somehow we will not be on the committee any more or that each year we will have to face reconsideration for the committee.
However there is always talk about estimates. The estimates process in this place is a joke. It is a farce. We do not deal with estimates. We do not provide an accountability function to anything around here, in part because it is not consequential. We cannot do anything, so harrumphing about what has gone on in a department for a period of time is not worthwhile. The amount of work it takes to get a piece of information in order to have the harrumph is not worth the effort.
We made a bunch of changes when we came to government. If members focused on the system that is there, those committees would have enormous authority. The problem is we have allowed that partisan debate to intrude upon the committee debate, so in committee it is hard to have the kind of partnering that we would like to talk about. We have done it on occasion. I look across to one of the members who worked with me on a particular committee where we did a lot of that.
There is an aspect to committee travel that is very interesting. Not only do we get a chance to understand the country a little better, we get a chance to understand each other a little better. We get a sense of the shared values that we all have. Part of the real value of this place in a Canadian context is the way it acts as a massive kind of values clarification exercise. We all understand our country and what makes the country work a little better
The process is really simple. The departments come forward and say what they are planning to do. Has any committee ever held hearings on that and then written a report that has differed with the department's opinion of what they wanted to do? The committees have the authority to do it. If the department did not respond to that comment by putting in their estimates, the committee could delete the funding.
Everybody gets a little twitchy about that but not only would that cause a complete reconsideration on the part of the department or its relationship with the House, it would also cause members to take their actions seriously. Right now we can be as irresponsible as we want on committee because we do not affect anything. However if we actually committed an act that changed a policy, we would have to live with that and I think that would force us to be more serious.
We should think of the value we place on minority governments. Why is that? It is because we have to negotiate. We have to negotiate, we have to clarify our values, we have to debate and then we have to decide. Those functions could occur within committee.
Making members stable on committee, would that produce the kind of change we want? I am honestly not sure because I think the real problem in here is us and our unwillingness to exercise the authority that we have. However stabilizing members on committee, and committees already have the right to elect their own chair, would take away an excuse for why the place does not function in the way we would like it to function.
Very simply, I will help design the system for election but that one change, break the prerogative, the members control of it, and then trust us to mess up but as long as we do the right thing.