Debates of Oct. 31st, 2002

Supply

[Carolyn Parrish, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would like to make one comment and then hopefully inspire a bit of dialogue.

First, I would like to put on the record, given that I can challenge the patience of most whips and House leaders, that I have never been intimidated by the current whip or the current House leader, when he was in that role of whip. This is a much exaggerated theory. On our side of the House we are often put in a position where we have things explained to us, and to please and to continue a good rapport we sometimes change our minds. I cannot speak for others but I have never been intimated by a whip of our party. Members can probably guess from today that I challenge the patience of a lot of people a lot of the time.

My second comment to the official opposition House leader is that we were involved at procedure and House affairs, which I considered to be the most non-partisan committee in the House. This motion has come forward before at that committee. During that time it never really came to the House because it did not get agreement in that committee.

One thing that the mover of the original motion did before it was amended, was to change the second vice-chair from a member of the official opposition to just a member of the opposition. I partially think that was to make the whole opposition feel that it had an opportunity to become vice-chair of some committees. Was it an oversight or was it an intentional modification to be more democratic?

The other thing I would like to ask the House leader of the opposition is this. Is it a big stretch to agree that the chair should be a member of the government, particularly for this round?

This is the last thing I would like to ask him. I have been accused of being rather naive in trusting the opposition to make this work, if in fact it passes on Monday, because this is an adversarial place. I can remember when I was a high school teacher, we would get an OSR on the kids and would find one who had been jail and who was a big problem. The first time that kid stepped out of line, he or she was nailed and then the kid became a problem in class.

We are at the point in that committee where I trust that members really wants this to work for the next year or the next round. It would be very good if the member could assure the House that I am not naive, that the member has every intention of selecting the best chairs possible and not disrupting, not being adversarial and not purposely choosing chairs who will not work.

[John Reynolds, Canadian Alliance, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member for Mississauga Centre that she has never challenged my patience in committee. I do not think I have done it to her either.

My experience, in close to 30 years in and out of politics, with the policy and procedures committee is a committee that works for the betterment of Parliament. It tries to be as non-partisan as it can be. That is why we have this motion coming from that committee to the House. It has been debated for years and I have given my argument to the government House leader as to why sometimes piecemeal things have to happen in the House. It is hard to get packages all the time.

Yes, the member's amendment to my original motion to say that we would have to have a government member or two opposition members on the other committees is a bit of a stretch. I really believe in the integrity of members of Parliament to select the best chairman.

The chairman of the environment committee, the hon. member for Davenport, and I may have had great disagreements on how the environment works, but I can think of no better person in the House to be chairman of the environment committee. I would vote for him at any time. That is also true of every other committee.

I sincerely believe the PMO, much like the House leader of the opposition, has power to decide who our chairs will be. They all get paid and there is politics played. The government whip has made it very plain that she will do everything she can to ensure that this does not make the light of day.

This puts it in the hands of those who we all decide should sit on those committees. The government will not lose anything because they will still be chairing the committees. I would hope that at the end of the year the government House leader would see, as the member for Mississauga Centre said, that there will be integrity and no games played.

I know we had jokes when we were in the committee. One of my Liberal colleagues has a good sense of humour. I sometimes have dinner with him every once in a while and we have some good laughs. We were talking and had a list of some people that could be chairs of certain committees who nobody would want and probably would not do a good job because it was not their forte. They should be in another committee. That will not happen in the House. We will not play those kind of games.

The opposition is here to build reform in Parliament that allows Canadians to know that we are here, that we do a job with integrity, that what is good for Canadians and good for all of us.

I would hate to be in the room with the person who called the member for Mississauga Centre naive. It is just not true. She is a very hard-working member of the House who believes in what she is doing as much as I believe in what I am doing.

[Loyola Hearn, Progressive Conservative, St. John's West, NL]

Madam Speaker, my experiences with committees are similar to the ones mentioned by the opposition House leader.

On the fisheries committee we could not ask for a more independent chair. It is the same thing on the culture and heritage committee. If we had the opportunity to vote for chairpersons, we would have no problem voting for the two people who currently fill those roles.

It is our hope, as we get into the new committees, that similar chairs will be there. These are the people for whom we will vote. These are the people we will elect, simply because as opposition members we want to ensure that issues are dealt with in a fair and non-partisan way.

Why then does the House leader think that the government will want to appoint the chairs in caucus? I have seen chairs that have been put into positions to obstruct rather than to ensure that the work goes on. I would like his views on that point.

[John Reynolds, Canadian Alliance, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast, BC]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the comments from my colleague, the House leader for the Conservative Party. I could not agree with him more.

We only have to look at the work done in the last Parliament by the environment committee, chaired by a person I do not always agree with, but an expert on his side of the environment issue. I think he had a little over 300 and some amendments in that committee. The committee worked extremely hard to put together amendments to a bill that was drastically flawed.

However, when the bill came back at report stage, only 120 of those amendments were left. The government saw fit to change them. We know why the government wants to control these things.

In reality, it should be parliamentarians that work with the government. The government brings in legislation, but until we get to the stage where members of Parliament cannot vote against that legislation without the fear of defeating their government or embarrassing it, what is the purpose of legislation? The minister takes it back and rejigs it with his bureaucrats to the way the majority of members of Parliament want it and that becomes the law of Canada.

The Charlottetown accord is a great example. We would have had a Constitution that the majority of Canadians did not want. We had a referendum so we do not have it. This is a similar thing. Let us select chairmen by secret ballot. Let us have committees that work better and we will all be better off in the House of Commons.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, we heard a lot of talk today about democracy and democratic reform. On the topic of democracy, does the hon. opposition House leader believe that it is democratic and respectful to members to establish a protocol committee to scrutinize all public comments of caucus members? A short time ago the Canadian Alliance created such a protocol committee to scrutinize all the public comments of its members to ensure they did not contradict party policy.

In the light of the discussion today, how does the member consider that to be a democratic example from his party?

[John Reynolds, Canadian Alliance, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast, BC]

Madam Speaker, that is debate. We get the clippings every morning to see what they say and what our people say to ensure that we are on target, as the government does. That is part of the democracy. We do not hold people back in this party from saying what they would like to say, which should be pretty obvious to a deputy House leader.

It is nice to be the one party in the House that has a strong, young, vibrant and bilingual leader who is gaining popularity in Canada and does not have anybody stabbing him in the back, has a caucus that is 100% behind him and is moving forward. The other parties are at least conducting leadership campaigns in some sort of semblance of order and with respect.

The Liberal Party is in chaos. It cannot seem to get its legislation straightened out for the House or keep its members under control. It is a party that has prided itself and been elected probably 75% of the time because it has kept everything together. However it is showing signs of weakening and that is really sad for democracy in Canada. My party is open, free, democratic and it prides ourselves in the way it conducts business.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate this afternoon. I listened attentively to most of the speech of the hon. member, apart from a couple of minutes when one has to do what one has to do. Otherwise I listened to as much of the speech as I could. I have had time to review the notes that I wanted to use today, but upon reflection and upon listening to the hon. member's speech, I thought I would do away with those and simply react to a number of things he has raised and otherwise inject some views.

The first day we came back here after the recess, it was made clear to us that the opposition was going to have what it called in its words, a work slowdown. The initial reason for the work slowdown by the opposition was that those members did not like, according to them, the then solicitor general and they wanted his resignation as a precondition to not having the slowdown. The then solicitor general, for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with that, but in defending his honour, decided to withdraw from the cabinet.

Then the opposition members decided they needed a new target for a work slowdown. What I am saying here has occurred and I have seen every single step of it. The next target of the work slowdown was not to elect committee chairs until they could start up this issue, and they did.

[An hon. member]

It is about time.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

An hon. member says it is about time that they created chaos around here, at the same time as they are invoking parliamentary reform and pretending before Canadians that what they want is modernization when all they had in mind was the creation of chaos, but I will get to that a little later.

[Brian Pallister, Canadian Alliance, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

And reprimanding your own members.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I am not reprimanding anyone on my side of the House, bien au contraire. I will get to that in a little while and I hope the hon. member will listen attentively.

I am not too worried about consistency when debating the Alliance members. Their party is the one which not too long ago wanted to take some people whose profiles they did not agree with and put them at the back of the store. It is the same party that chastised its own members and put them at the back of the House. It is the same party that turfed people out of their critic roles and all kinds of other things when they made statements they did not like. So I will take the remonstrances from the people across the way with a grain of salt.

Let me get to what was said a while ago about Canada's record as a liberal democracy. We can have our debates inside the House and disagree with one another all we like, but to pretend that this is akin somehow to our not being the liberal democracy that we are, the international observers that we are, the international defenders of peace that we are and have been, is simply wrong.

It says all kinds of wrong things about the people who work for Elections Canada, with which I do not agree. It says all kinds of wrong things about our peacekeepers, about Canadians working as volunteers offshore trying to install parliamentary democracies and other liberal democracies elsewhere in the world.

I for one am very proud of what they have done, and I am very confident about every effort they have made, such as representing Canada in Zimbabwe. We have been chastised for that by the House leader for the official opposition, which is wrong. None of us on this side of the House, regardless of how we agree or disagree with the motion that is before us, would agree with the premise raised by the hon. member that our international election observers cannot defend Canada as a result of a dispute on how to elect committee chairs. That is simply ridiculous.

This is internal cuisine that we have here. That is what it is. We will solve it and that is fine, but we should at least put it for what it is and not start saying that Canada somehow misses its international role as a result of a dispute two sword lengths across the way for our electing committee chairs.

There was an indication a while ago about how we did modernization and how all of us live by the modernization rules that we have set in place.

We put in place a modernization rule whereby members on all sides of the House could know a day ahead of time what the subject would be. What did the opposition do yesterday, those same people in favour of modernization? They put forward two motions so that we would not know which one they really wanted to move today. Next week perhaps there will be 10, and the week after the entire phone book so we will not know what the topic will be. They are completely going around the modernization rule which they themselves said they are in favour of. Let us remember what is going on here before we believe everything we are told by the other side of the House.

I want to talk about the parallels that have been drawn with the Canada Elections Act. I am the minister responsible for the Canada Elections Act. I put forward Bill C-2 to modernize our election laws, to put rules on third parties and to do all those things so that there would not be some of this grey money, shall I call it, that was entering the political process and so that we could not have these campaigns artificially defeating some of our people in the House. There was the no more prime ministers from Quebec campaign which some of us saw not that long ago. Do we remember those campaigns? Do we remember how they got there?

We remember all those things. We put forward Bill C-2 to plug up those loopholes. Which party voted against it? Do we remember which party was against Bill C-2, which party was against those transparency rules? It was the Alliance Party. Do opposition members think I have forgotten or that any other member on this side of the House will soon forget?

After we put that in place, the National Citizens' Coalition protested. Of course the National Citizens' Coalition is not national and it is not a citizens' coalition or anything close to it. Anyway, that organization decided it would launch a court action against me and the government for having passed that. Then it brought the government to the Supreme Court against having transparency rules. Does everyone know who was the leader of the National Citizens' Coalition when it did that?

[An hon. member]

Tell us.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

An hon. member has invited me to tell the House. It was in fact the member who is now the Leader of the Opposition, the leader of the same party invoking that transparency and democracy before us today.

[An hon. member]

That was for more freedom.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

That was for more freedom, we hear, the freedom to hide money from the Canadian taxpayers, the freedom to use money that comes from everywhere, including possibly offshore, in order to defeat candidates. The money is utilized by international organizations against gun control and whatever else in order to defeat people. And that is the advocate of democracy? I for one do not believe that very much.

The House leader of the official opposition talked about the excellent chairmanship of the hon. member for Davenport. I agree with him that he is an excellent chairman. The hon. member perhaps does not know this but the hon. member for Davenport and I have been friends for a long time. The person who tries to make anything else but friends between the hon. member for Davenport and me has not been born yet.

He said that the member for Davenport was elected by secret ballot. Yes, but how did we have that secret ballot? By unanimous consent of that committee in order to have the secret ballot. The committee had that kind of confidence in the hon. member.

What is proposed before us today? Leave aside whether or not we should change the standing order at all. If I happen to err, I want to err in favour of greater transparency as opposed to greater secrecy, but that is a personal choice. Perhaps we are not there yet.

Let us leave that aside for a minute and look at that standing order. Even if the committee, according to this proposed standing order change in the opposition motion, unanimously agreed to have a transparent public vote, it could not do so. That is the standing order we are asked to change.

I asked that the standing order go back to committee for two weeks, not 10 years, to have it corrected. At least if we pass such a standing order, it should be drafted properly. Hon. members across the way who say they are in favour of modernization are against having the rule drafted properly. They do not want it to go back to committee for two weeks.

How many people in the House actually know that the motion does not only create a secret ballot, but it also alters the system of electing committee chairs by way of a motion which we have had from time immemorial? Should we not discuss this in our respective caucuses, have it brought to committee and make a decision there before we implement it?

What about the issue of consent? If parliamentarians on a committee decided by majority or otherwise to have a public vote, they would be prevented from doing so. Is that what we want? I am not sure. I am not sure that we have had enough time to debate this, consider it and alter it in order to have a final decision on it. There is more.

We have changed standing orders by a number of ways in the House of Commons. I have changed enough of them with my colleagues from all other parties. I think they remember how it is done. It has been done by unanimous consent in large measure. Ninety-nine per cent of standing order changes have been made by unanimous consent. Members on each side of the House would look at the change and if they felt the change was good and right, it was proceeded with.

That is not the case here. Regardless of how this ends, if unamended and written exactly the way it is, there will be a quantity of hon. members who will not agree with this change. And it will be a permanent change.

Whereas in the few cases where there have been standing order changes that did not form part of a consent or a broad consensus, and where they were imposed, and there have been very few of them, they at least had an expiry date on them. After one year they lapsed unless they were re-enacted. There is no such clause in the proposed change. If this does not work, there is not even a mechanism to change it. It is not even built in.

Why are hon. members across the way who say they are in favour of modernization against sending it to a parliamentary committee?

The hon. member opposite may plead all he wants for provisions to have bills lapse, as if he did not know the difference. We are talking about the rules governing this House.

Finally, I would like to address this issue and the parallel that some draw with the fact that our constituents elect us by secret ballot, using that as a justification for us to do the same in parliamentary committees. I think the reality is the opposite.

Naturally, the people who elect us have a right to do so in privacy because this is a decision all Canadians make according to their conscience: to elect those who are to represent them in this great institution. I have been here for a very long time, in one capacity or another: since October 25, 1966.

Some of the jobs I have held have been less prestigious than others. Nevertheless, I have come to respect this place and the people who send us here. How does hiding to vote after having been elected improve transparency and accountability? I do not understand.

As I said earlier, this will remain a personal choice. If a committee decides otherwise, by a majority vote for instance, it may do so even if I disagree. But it is a different story entirely to say that a committee is to act this way all the time, even if members unanimously decide otherwise and want everyone to see how they vote. They would no longer be allowed to under the proposal made today.

This is not well thought out. This issue needs to be referred back to a parliamentary committee. We must ask parliamentarians to fully reconsider the issue. If we have to go ahead with this approach, we will, although I may disagree, but at least it will be done in a structured and reasonable fashion, with deadlines, given that this is not an amendment to the Standing Orders requiring a consensus of this House.

I say to my counterparts—I treat them as my counterparts, they are the opposition critics, they are not ministers—, that is the House leaders on the other side, that they ought to think a little about what they are creating if they act in this manner. If we create the precedent of being able, through a simply majority of the House, to change rules that do not please the vast majority of parliamentarians in this House, those who may one day be on the side of the majority might do the same to those on the side of the minority.

As a person who has great respect for this House, I say that this is not the way to go about changing the rules. This, in fact, would create a system with a greater level of adversity, and the tyranny of the majority could increase in such a system. This would not be good for the institution that I am called, as Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, to defend.

Yes, I am the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons. Of course, I want to ensure that my colleagues on this side of the House are well served and that the government's agenda moves forward. But I also consider that I have a responsibility, in the British sense of the term, as Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, toward all my colleagues.

I do not think there is one single colleague in this House, from either side of the House, who has called me or contacted me during my holidays or at some other time and whom I did not personally call back. I have always done so. I firmly believe that I have this duty toward all parliamentarians in this House, whether on this side or the other side. Those who have been here for a long time know that this is what I am referring to. So I ask them particularly to think about this seriously.

What I have asked the committee is for two weeks to draft this procedure correctly. If we still decide to do things this way in future, perhaps it will be adopted. It will be for parliamentarians to decide.

But in the meantime, it is not right to adopt something that is poorly drafted, that is almost impossible to change, that is done in a manner that reduces transparency, that seeks to get tough with a government that wants to move ahead with its legislative agenda, by electing committee chairs to make committees work. This is not the proper way to do things.

I do not think that what I am telling hon. members is unreasonable. I am asking them to think about this. Yes, I am now a government member. I even sit on the front benches because I am a minister. But that was not always the case. I spent time on the back benches and even more time on the other side of the House. I intend to be here for a very long time. I hope to be on this side of the House for a long time, but it is possible that, some day, I will sit across the floor. I hope it will not be soon, but many years from now.

In any case, whether I sit on this side or on the other side of the House, this institution remains a great institution and we must abide by its rules. To the extent possible, the rules that we adopt should be the result of a consensus. We do not want 51% of the members supporting the rules that govern us, with 49% opposing them. It is improper to adopt rules in this fashion, not to mention the fact that it would be almost impossible to change them.

This is the plea that I am making to parliamentarians today. This is what I am asking this House to adopt. This is what my colleagues asked this morning, when they proposed to adopt the report and refer it to the committee for review.

I am prepared to cooperate with the other House leaders and with parliamentarians, to adopt whatever they want after a review by that committee and, of course, the establishment of a modernization committee.

There is a committee that changed 26 of our rules. I have proposed a change and it was decided, by all of the leaders, to have a first debate on modernization in the week following the November recess. So, we will have a debate in the very near future.

The government's intention is clear and my intention is clear. The Prime Minister alluded to it. I have been talking about it for a long time. In fact, this was included in the conclusions of the old report. So, we all know what we intend to do: to move forward on this issue. This is what we have done. We have already changed several rules and I am not opposed to changing and improving other ones. But I think that adopting now what is before us would be very detrimental to this great institution.

[Gerry Ritz, Canadian Alliance, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Madam Speaker, it was interesting listening to the House leader's passionate rant or argument, whatever we want to call it. Toward the end, he said that the motion was not worded properly, that it was not in the right governmentese and that it was just a heinous piece of legislation. His argument was that it was not worded properly.

However, less than an hour ago he stood in that same place and made the argument to the Speaker and to our House leader that the motion too closely resembled a government concurrence motion and that the wording was too exact and so on.

How can he say one thing now and another thing an hour ago?

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has been in the House for some time and, frankly, for someone who has, I am a little perplexed that he would not know that in fact the motion to refer an issue back to committee, which is what the concurrence motion and the amendment thereto does, is to send it back to committee for improvement, which is exactly what I am saying now.

He is saying that the opposition motion is the same as the motion that I think should be sent back to committee because it needs improvement. Of course that is what I am saying. Why does he think I asked that it be sent back to committee for improvement? It is because both of them, that are worded virtually the same, are not properly worded. That is not an inconsistency.

If the hon. member does not understand that after having been here, after all, for a little while, the books are on the table to explain parliamentary procedure.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Beauport—Montmorency—Côte-De- Beaupré—Île-D'Orléans, QC]

Madam Speaker, I do not intend to be long because I will be the next speaker after the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons.

I would like him to indicate to us which words are inappropriate in the 42 line motion before us. Can he tell us which words are a problem?

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will say that, personally, I find the whole motion excessive. That being said, should we adopt that motion, I can see, at first glance, three elements that I think are not worded properly.

First, when such an amendment is proposed on which there is no consensus, and this is the case here, there is usually some sort of expiry date, like a year or so, after which the rule no longer stands. That is the first element. It has been done several times in the past. The member is certainly aware of that.

The second element of particular concern to me—and if this is referred to a parliamentary committee for a few more weeks, there will certainly be other improvements to be made—is the proposal to change the voting procedure. In committee, the vote is taken on a motion: “I move that Mr. so-and-so be appointed chairman”. People vote in favour or against the motion. This voting procedure is being changed, but to what extent were parliamentarians consulted on such a change? I am not convinced that most members are aware of this.

The third element is as follows: there would have to be a secret ballot even if the committee members all agree to vote by a show of hands. I do not think that is what the committee intended to do. Let me ask those who want secret ballots--and I am not one of them--would it not be desirable to have the majority agree to have secret ballots, whether that means two thirds of the members or all of them, it does not matter, as long as there is some flexibility? As it stands, there would be a secret ballot even if that was the opposite of what all the committee members wanted.

Have we thought about that? Is that what we want to do? Would it not be wiser to refer this proposal back to the committee for 15 days, as I suggested, in order to review it and go over the rules and see how we can change things, if that is what we want, and then bring it back to the House with an expiration date after one year. We would implement it and, if we do not like it, we would send it back again.

Since this morning, I have come up with these three elements. I am sure other parliamentarians who are familiar with this issue will want to examine it. I have not sat on a committee for some years now, because I am a minister and before that I was the whip. However, I want those who sit on a committee to know that a structure is being set up. Are we quite sure this is the structure we want? I do not think so.

[Bev Desjarlais, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Madam Speaker, following along the same lines, what the problem was with the motion, I cannot help but think that it was not a matter of what the problem was with the wording of the motion. It was simply a matter of the government not liking the motion.

In our efforts to be respectful of the integrity, the intelligence and the commitment of all members of Parliament, I am somewhat annoyed that my colleague would suggest that those committee members really did not know what they were doing, that they really did not know they wanted a secret ballot, that they really did not know they wanted a change in the procedure of the vote, and that they really did not know there was no expiry date mentioned.

Each and every member in the House has a fairly good idea of those things. The committee certainly had a very good idea of those particular issues. It is somewhat annoying, offensive and disrespectful of all of us as parliamentarians to suggest that we do not know and that we have spent this entire day speaking so passionately to something so important.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Madam Speaker, I apologize if the hon. member is offended. I do not know if she sits on that committee or not. If she is offended, I am sorry for that. The purpose is certainly not to insult members, either personally or collectively, who sit on that committee. That is not the point and I think I have explained it to all hon. members. The point is that should we have rule changes when they do not form the broad consensus of this House, at the very least we should arrange them in a way such that they are not permanent. Those have been part of our longstanding conventions.

I am sure that if the hon. member sits on that committee she knows that. Actually, whether she sits on the committee or not, being the well reasoned and well versed person that she is I am sure she already knows that. Given that the knowledge was already there on the part of the hon. member, I do not see how she can possibly be insulted. I am advancing to her reasonable thoughts in looking at this thing, I believe, and if they are not reasonable, in 15 days the committee will tell us that too. I do not think they are wrong.

The hon. member said that every single member who voted for this knew that from here on in that every single election of committee chairs would always be in secret even if 100% of members wanted otherwise. Maybe. I am sure there are some members who do not sit on the committee who do not know that. Did every single member of the committee know that? If she does sit on that committee, maybe she knows that.

Nonetheless, I invite members to think about what is being proposed, about the business of changing the method of election that has been there from time immemorial, of voting on a motion for the one of putting the names seriatim. Is it better? It is a drastic change and is certainly one that I think comes at us very quickly.

I dealt with the modernization committee with the hon. member's colleague, someone who has been around here even longer than I have. We did hours and hours of work on these things. We adopted rules. We made some of them temporary where we were unsure, those permanent when they formed a broad consensus, all of these things. We did it several times. I know that is how we did them. We did them often enough so that I can remember. That is what I am inviting the member and others to think about. I am in no way trying to insult her skills or her ability, or those of anyone else, to do these things.

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Madam Speaker, I want to put a question to the minister regarding some action that was taken by the government and this House in 1985 when for the first time we elected the Speaker of the House. As we well know, prior to that the Speaker, he or she, was appointed by the Prime Minister. In fact, Mr. Trudeau, whom I often agreed with, disagreed with the idea of a secret ballot in the election of the Speaker, but I have to say that it has been very good for Parliament and good for this House.

I know that the member has built his career on demonizing Prime Minister Mulroney who actually brought forward that idea, but would he not have to at least admit that it has been good for Parliament and good for the country? What would be wrong with doing that at the committee level where so many of his members completely agree with those of us on this side of the House on this issue?

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am glad the hon. member brought up the McGrath committee report. He says this issue is analogous to the McGrath committee report and that is essentially one case that I was raising to buttress my argument.

The first McGrath committee report was one that the entire House agreed with. It was passed by consensus. What we are dealing with today is something on which, to the best of my knowledge, roughly half the House is on one side and half on the other. That is why making that kind of a change on the strength of the majority plus one or some such, whatever the precise number is, and then proceeding with it as a permanent rule change would be wrong. So in fact, the hon. member invoked a case where the McGrath committee report was formed on the consensus of not only all parties in the committee unanimously when it reported, but then of the House itself. Interestingly, the second McGrath report was done differently. The hon. member was perhaps a member at the time when the second McGrath report was adopted, when the government at the time cherry-picked from the report the amendments that it liked, adopted them over the wishes of the opposition, and I was sitting in the opposition, and did only them. I thought that was wrong.

[Ken Epp, Canadian Alliance, Elk Island, AB]

Madam Speaker, I say this sincerely because I have always held this member in high regard and great respect. I hope he takes the time to watch the video of his speech today and observe the string of internal contradictions.

He talks about wanting to have this thing extended for 15 days so the committee can study it and get it right, yet how often has he been in charge of invoking closure in the House when exactly what we have tried to do, by promotion of debate and exchange of thoughts, is to try to improve a bill?

Another contradiction was in terms of democracy. It is bizarre that a member of the House should stand up and say: I am going to help promote democracy by making sure that the people that the Prime Minister appoints are elected by the members of the committee. That is just the opposite of democracy. It is a contradiction.

It would be much more honest on the part of the government if it is going to continue with the way it is right now to simply appoint the chairs and be done with it. It is a facade to say that here is the appointee and then force the members of the committee to vote in favour of that appointee as a way of putting up a facade of democracy for it. I have much more to say but I know my time is up.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am sure the hon. member who is advocating reviewing the video of what was said will want to review the video of what he said, because the last statement he made about me, I have never made. Perhaps he will want to review that and then correct the record, but I am not holding my breath.

On the other item, the thought of somehow equating this with closure of debate is debasing the currency and is most unfortunate. The House will know that the closure rules, the time allocation rules, are in the Standing Orders. I am not inventing parliamentary law. They are there. Just as the opposition has a right to delay legislation, the government has a right to bring it back up to speed once it has been delayed. That is the fact. Everyone knows that. Any independent observer of our institution will know that.

The British house has in its rule that every bill is time allocated to the end of the day when it is debated. It is debated that day and when the house shuts down at night, they vote on it and it is finished. Every bill is time allocated to one day. We do not have that rule here. We debate and when the opposition delays it too much, or the government runs out of patience, or there are time imperatives and we must have the bill or other such things, then the process is advanced by way of a democratic vote held by members in the House. That is not synonymous with what he is advocating and surely he knows the difference.