Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to rise to address the motion that our party has put forward, which will hopefully be supported by all members in the House.
The main intent of the motion is to improve the workings of the House of Commons. It is also in the best interest of all of us here, including the government, the opposition and therefore all Canadians.
Unless we can change the system, we will not change much else. That means that unless we can improve our procedures and the way in which we make decisions, we will not really be able to do much to improve the lot of most Canadians as we deal with legislation and issues in the House. We need to put in place legislation and policies and to make changes that make parliament work for all Canadians.
I would like to refer to a book that we have regarded as the handbook for the orders and procedures of the House. The first principle in Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules & Forms states:
The principles of Canadian parliamentary law are:
To protect a minority and restrain the improvidence or tyranny of a majority; to secure the transaction of public business in an orderly manner; to enable every Member to express opinions within limits necessary to preserve decorum and prevent an unnecessary waste of time; to give abundant opportunity for the consideration of every measure, and to prevent any legislative action being taken upon sudden impulse.
Everything I say today will be based on that first principle of parliamentary procedure.
By making this change, we would trigger meaningful debates across the country on various issues. The change I am referring to is to amend the standing orders in order to allow all private members' business items to be votable if a member wishes it to be that way.
I sincerely believe that one of the problems we face in Canada is that we, as politicians, and Canadians generally, do not scratch below the surface on key issues. Many issues are often left unexamined and this hurts all of us.
In order for democracy to work and to work well we must be well informed so that we can make decisions intelligently. Many Canadians may not realize how important the motion is but if they have ever tried to bring forth an issue through their elected representatives, they will realize the importance of the motion.
We could play a very effective role in having everyone look more closely at the issues that affect them greatly and yet in our current system they are not examined in depth. For democracy to work effectively, those people making those decisions must understand the issues, and this change hopefully would do that.
I would like to give a bit of an historical perspective before I go into the arguments for this because history can really help us understand why these changes are necessary.
My source of information is from the Library of Parliament. It is a paper that was prepared by James Robertson for the subcommittee on private members' business. I cannot go into all the details that he provided going back to 1867, but as we look through the report we see that private members' business has not been static.
From 1867 to 1962 the standing orders gave precedence to private members' business on particular days in each week. However successive governments found such a distribution inadequate for the conduct of their own legislative programs and regularly gave precedence for their own business via special and sessional orders. What this means is that private members' business used to dominate the business of the House of Commons, but gradually that has been eroded.
The agenda in private members' business has taken second place to what we do. We need to bring more prominence to that issue. By 1955 government business dominated the agenda of the House and the standing orders were brought in to protect private members' business.
In 1962 the House abandoned the allocation of a certain number of days each session for private members' business and instead set aside one hour per day for that purpose.
In 1982 the practice of considering private members' business for one hour on certain days was replaced by a single private members' day.
In 1983, however, the House reverted to the consideration of private members' business for one hour per day on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, with no maximum amount of time on Mondays and Tuesdays. The omission of this part of the former rule meant that the amount of time provided for private members' business actually increased as a result.
Until the late 1950s there were two criteria which determined the order in which private members' business was considered: their date of notice and, in the case of bills, their stage in the legislative process.
Other secondary criteria, whose purpose was to distinguish the different categories of business from each other, also became important. For example, in 1910 a higher precedence was accorded to unopposed private members' notices of motions for the production of papers while opposed motions of this kind continued to be considered with other motions until 1961 when they were given a specific category in the order of business and were debated on a designated day.
I refer to portions of this report in order to show that private members' business has not been static. There have been changes throughout our history.
In 1982 there was a single draw of members' names held at the start of each session. In the 1970s private members' business was organized by the government House leader's office. That was criticized by many members as undue government interference and eventually the private members' office was established under the Clerk of the House.
We are back to the same situation now because the tradition has become such that only bills that receive the consensus of the private members' business committee are deemed votable. We again find it almost impossible to bring forth items for debate and a vote when two or three members of the committee may not wish to bring them forward. It has become a great source of frustration for many members of parliament.