House of Commons Hansard #29 of the 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was vote.

Topics

Parliamentary ReformGovernment Orders

10:30 a.m.

Progressive Conservative

John Herron Progressive Conservative Fundy Royal, NB

Mr. Speaker, it is true that a lot of this debate, for individuals who are not involved in the parliamentary process on a day to day basis, may be seen to be very much inside baseball. They do not necessarily know what we are concerned about.

If there is one issue of parliamentary reform that needs to be addressed it is restoring the power of the purse. That is what we are here to do to a large degree, to keep the government to account. It is up to the parliamentarians to keep the government in check with respect to the power of the purse.

Last spring, with only one single vote, without even a debate, we deemed nearly $160 billion of supply. That is incredibly shameful. We need to ensure that ministers know what is going on in their own departments. We have a proposal that would address that particular issue. House of Commons rules regarding supply must be changed. For example, in the period between March and June of each year, a fixed number of hours, say 160 hours, 40 sittings at 4 hours, Monday to Thursday, mainly in the evenings, would be spent in committee of the whole. The estimates of four departments and agencies, to be determined by the opposition, would be examined with no time limit and in any one case the response of the ministers would be required to defend or explain their spending estimates.

This would remove any incentive for the government to pressure committees not to meet on estimates. It would leave in place the provision for committees to examine estimates should they wish. It would require all ministers to prepare for examination because they would not know until the last minute if they were being summoned to the committee of the whole. It would provide for televised viewing, as was mentioned by the member for Peterborough.

The role of parliamentarians needs to be enhanced and the first place to do that is here, not in this democracy by press conference that is done outside the chamber. All ministers in the executive branch are responsible to Parliament. This is where all new initiatives should begin and be disseminated. We have a moral obligation to be informed on actions of the Government of Canada. Without that firsthand interaction with the ministers it simply cannot take place.

Parliamentary ReformGovernment Orders

10:35 a.m.

Mississauga South Ontario

Liberal

Paul Szabo LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Hamilton West.

I am pleased to participate in this debate on the modernization of Parliament, a process that we have gone through once before. With the collaboration and cooperation of all parties some important changes were made to the rules of this place. Most members, if not all, would agree that the results of those consultations and discussions changed this House for the better. We are now coming to phase two.

This issue is all about the whole concept of restoring the public's confidence in Parliament. That is what we are here for. Part of any solution is to recognize that there is a problem.

I would like to give the House an example of a comment that people might have when they see us in the House having a vote. When they see us in the House voting, they see us voting along party lines. They say we always vote with our parties. It is true that a party runs on a platform and the candidates for that party run on the same platform. Since we run on the party platform and make representations on that platform, when we get to this place we are expected to support the platform and policy of our particular party. However we also have other issues that come up. They are mostly issues of detail or underlying detail where the vote of a particular member of Parliament is relevant.

We come to this place and we have some difficulties. Sometimes I am flabbergasted that the solutions we have to some of the problems tend to mask the problem. We are not dealing with the source of the problem but trying to get around it. I will give the House an example.

We have a situation now where, if the House agrees, a vote is applied to a previous vote with, for instance, Liberal members voting yea. What impression does that give to the public when the whip of a party stands up and says we are all voting yea? That is not a vote. The premise is that each and every vote should be valued. If we were to look for ways to get around the voting process simply to save time, the premise would be that we would save time so that we could do more good in other places. The premise that good things are happening outside of votes is a flawed argument. What happens in this chamber is not necessarily productive and constructive.

I would like to look at the U.K. experience as an example. Its debating time on government bills and motions, et cetera, is substantially less than we spend in this place debating each stage of bills and motions. Why is that? The U.K. works out the various party positions, the parties get their best orators, and they make their points once and only once. The U.K. does not stream in piles of members of a caucus, many of whom do not know what a specific bill is about. They have never been on a committee, the issue is of no relevance to their constituency, and they have no knowledge of the issue, but somebody puts a speech in their hand and tells them to give the speech.

A great proportion of time in this place is taken up by members giving speeches on matters that they have absolutely no knowledge of and it comes out clearly during the period for questions and comments. That is why many of these members will speak when there are no questions and comments because they cannot sustain their arguments.

Let us be honest about the reality. We must ensure that the time we spend debating here is spent on making substantive points on bills, motions, et cetera, so we do not repeat them 20 times and have members come in here who have absolutely no knowledge of a subject, and simply read a speech because they want to emphasize a point. That is an abuse of this place. If we want to be productive and constructive in this place we should look at our whole process of speaking here. We should ensure that when we speak, we speak once and only once and make our points, but not engineer, as all parties do, streams of speakers simply for the value of speaking.

We all know there are members here who will speak as often as they can on every issue because they want the television time. I am sorry. Everybody loves to have a little exposure. However when it gets down to someone speaking for the sake of speaking, I do not think this place is done any service. The parties must show more discipline.

My point at this juncture is that all parties have to reconsider their strategies on their speaking and representations on bills and motions in this place. When a member comes here to speak, by knowing what committees the member is on and the member's constituency, what work the member has done, the member's history and reputation, we know that the member is credible and can speak to the issue before the House.

It is important that we consider how we do this, rather than try to gobble up time and then be forced into a situation of calling for closure simply because we are not making any progress and we have been saying the same thing 20 different ways. The maturity of the House would be demonstrated by acknowledging the fact that we are gobbling up the time for the wrong reasons.

I will move on to private members' business. We have gone through more scenarios than anyone could ever imagine on how to deal with private members' business.

The reality is that only 15 private members' bills have passed in this place since 1993. Private members' business has not been a very productive area of legislative success for members.

We all want to champion a cause. We have talked about making everything votable and sending it to a committee, et cetera. There are some realities to consider. One of them is that when it is a person's bill, it often becomes a popularity contest. For a member who has been less than popular in the House, is very unlikely that the bill will go very far.

The House will have to have some sort of a selection process to determine which bills go first. I think all members have to accept that they will put their best efforts forward to come up with a bill and let their reputation stand on its own merit by bringing the bill to this place. There could be a one hour period where the member presented the bill, the rationale and then there would be questions and comments.

We never have questions and comments on private members' bills and I think we should. Instead of going to some committee that is set up for private members' bills or a standing committee, the members should come before the House and make their case. They should let their peers ask the questions and then vote on whether or not the members of this chamber as a group want the bill to go forward through the full process.

If a member has a good bill and has earned the respect and support of this place, that bill should be afforded the same status as a government bill. There should be no limitations on the amount of debate, always questions and comment and full stages. A good private member's bill should get the same status as a government bill.

I had an opportunity to talk with the Hon. Elmer MacKay when he was here for a function. We talked about how this place has changed since 1993, when most of the present members came here. I do not know how other members feel about this because I have not surveyed too many, but I think this place has changed substantially. It has really changed in terms of the level of oratory and the quality of the speeches in this place. There were more games put into it. It was a culture that evolved and reduced us down to the lowest common denominator. I do not think this place does itself any good by having the quality of oratory reduced down to the lowest common denominator.

We should give consideration to exercising an established parliamentary rule that members who speak in the House should not be permitted to read their speeches. I am sorry to say that we cannot have members come here and simply read a speech. If members know the subject and have something to say, let them read quotes and details, but when they state their position, I believe members have to work harder on their speeches.

Members should have the opportunity, subject to certain criteria, to table a speech. I have often found myself in a position where I cannot get on the speaker's list or I am shut out for one reason or another, but it is important to me and I want to be on the public record. I would like to be able to table my speech and represent my views on an important matter. We should give consideration to that.

Finally, with regard to the estimates, 80% of committees do not report the estimates back to this place. That is an abdication of responsibility. We have to look at that whole process and determine whether or not our committees have the tools and the direction to do a good job on the estimates of the government.

Parliamentary ReformGovernment Orders

10:45 a.m.

NDP

Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB

Mr. Speaker, I have heard what our colleague has had to say about modernizing the House of Commons. I would like to make some comments and ask a question, specifically on private members' motions or bills .

We have already worked on bills introduced in the House of Commons where members have the opportunity to express opinions on them.

Approximately 200 members can introduce bills or motions. Instead of debating in each instance as to whether a bill or motion will or will not be votable, as he has just explained, we are proposing a system whereby, when a member has introduced an important bill or motion, the members will hold a democratic vote in the House.

If we have to vote on whether or not it can be tabled in the House, we will be doing nothing but that. I know the government does not have a lot to do. We are having take note debates virtually every day and there are no bills before the House. I do think, however, that it ought to give this some thought, because it would double the time spent in the House. It is already difficult enough letting each member introduce a motion or bill.

Parliamentary ReformGovernment Orders

10:45 a.m.

Liberal

Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON

Mr. Speaker, there are many ways to handle this. The reality is that all members of Parliament will not get to put through a private member's bill in a Parliament. It is physically impossible.

It has to start somewhere, but the importance of having questions and comments and having the chamber as a whole address private members' issues would be a better opportunity for members with good bills to garner support. If it is done in a small committee, a subcommittee of procedure and House affairs or in a standing committee, personalities come into play. If the member has not been a good boy, chances are he will not get an ear.

Parliamentary ReformGovernment Orders

10:45 a.m.

Canadian Alliance

Grant Hill Canadian Alliance Macleod, AB

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite did what he said should be done in the House. He did not read his speech and I give him credit for that. He talks from the heart. In talking from the heart, he did say that members should be voting on things that they ran on, in other words, in an election platform, significant issues.

I am certain there must be a reason and I would like to have him give that reason. The red book promise back in 1993 was for an independent ethics counsellor. The member had an opportunity to vote for that principle in the House not so long ago. He voted against it. I would like him to explain why he would campaign on one thing, have an opportunity to vote on it and vote against it.

Parliamentary ReformGovernment Orders

10:45 a.m.

Liberal

Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON

Mr. Speaker, that is quite true. The obvious response is that members should vote in favour of everything they ran on unless it can be demonstrated there is a reason that has come up and they have determined that it is not the right way to go.

In regard specifically to that one, I was advised at the time when we were considering the vote that the ethics counsellor himself advised that he could not report to Parliament and still be able to protect cabinet confidentiality. As the member well knows, we are now wrestling with how we deal with a member of Parliament versus those matters to do with cabinet confidentiality.

On the basis of Mr. Wilson's representations, the Prime Minister had to take a decision. Yes, the commitment was not made but I believe the commitment was made for a valid reason.

Parliamentary ReformGovernment Orders

10:50 a.m.

Bloc

Monique Guay Bloc Laurentides, QC

Mr. Speaker, although I have the greatest respect for my colleague across the way, I wonder how the House could vote to authorize making bills votable items when we are all, each of us, specialists on certain issues. We are not necessarily familiar with all of everyone else's areas of expertise.

It would take an incredible amount of very detailed work before we could determine whether a bill should be votable according to our criteria and beliefs. This is virtually impossible.

Second, I believe that if a member has drafted a bill and done everything required to get it this far, his or her bill should be voted on during a given parliamentary session. If the member has gone to the trouble of preparing it, the bill should automatically be votable. There ought to be at least one per session.

Does the hon. member not think that this would be logical? There would be time for it. Not all members introduce bills. I would like to have his opinion on this.

Parliamentary ReformGovernment Orders

10:50 a.m.

Liberal

Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON

Mr. Speaker, on the first question the member's point is that there are so many bills and so many diverse subjects it would be very difficult for a member of Parliament to make an informed judgment for voting purposes. I understand the point. However the member well knows that we are all asked to vote on a wide variety of bills and motions in this place of which we have very little knowledge and we still cast a vote. If she can figure out the response to one, she can get the other.

Her second question is about votability. I agree they should be votable, but the vote after the presentation and the questions and comments would be whether the members in the chamber wanted the matter to go forward. That is votability.

Parliamentary ReformGovernment Orders

10:50 a.m.

Liberal

Stan Keyes Liberal Hamilton West, ON

Mr. Speaker, permit me to begin my remarks by saying that four elections and 14 years ago today, on November 21, 1988, I was first elected member of Parliament for Hamilton West. I want to thank my hometown and my constituents for this honour and privilege and I want to thank my family and friends for their love and support. Happy anniversary, including you, Mr. Speaker, who were elected in 1988, to all my colleagues in the school of 1988.

Now on to today's take note debate on the modernization and improvement of the procedures of the House of Commons. Quite frankly, more needs to be done to modernize and meet the needs of parliamentarians and all Canadians. Some of the ideas we will hear in this take note debate will challenge the status quo and that is a good thing.

I want to present to the House just a few of the simple yet significant ways we can reform the Standing Orders of this place and the procedures that we can follow.

Before I do that, let me thank the House leaders of all parties for including the caucus chairs on the 2002 modernization committee. I was privileged to be elected by my colleagues as the national caucus chair for the Liberal caucus, the government caucus. I very much look forward to participating with my fellow members of Parliament, but also ensuring that my colleagues and those members in the opposition have unfettered access to the committee to put forward their ideas to be heard. I will have more to say about that more specifically in just a moment.

Page 800 of Marleau's and Montpetit's House of Commons Procedures and Practice portrays the development of the rules respecting committees as “the perpetual struggle to alter the balance of power between the legislature and the executive”.

Since the Liberal Party of Canada came to power in 1993, some steps have been taken to enhance the profile and effectiveness of committees for backbenchers. As indicated on page 804 of M and M let us call it, in 1994 the Standing Orders were amended to allow bills to be referred to committee before second reading in order to permit members greater flexibility to propose amendments to bills since the House had not yet voted on the principle of the bill, at second reading as we call it. Some members feel however the government has not used this mechanism often enough. Members do feel restricted in the scope of amendments or improvements that they do propose.

Let us move to party discipline. Party discipline needs to be relaxed to allow members of Parliament to have greater leeway to exercise their own judgment on legislative matters. Today's practice of whipped votes on almost every issue is not a standard of the parliamentary system.

In British practice, whips inform their members about forthcoming House business, indicating when their attendance is requested, a one-line whip; when it is expected as there is to be a vote, a two-line whip; and when their attendance is required on vital business, especially those issues of confidence in the government, a three-line whip. That reference is in footnote 281 on page 489 of Marleau and Montpetit, House of Commons Procedures and Practice .

When it comes to membership of committees, footnote 177 on page 820 of M and M explains that prior to 1991 parliamentary secretaries were prohibited from being members of standing committees in the area of their responsibility.

I had some taste of that when I was elected in 1988 to serve on the Standing Committee on Transport. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport was often at the committee to guide the committee, to inform the government members on the then Conservative side of the committee of exactly what was the government policy on a particular issue or where the understandings of the Minister of Transport were on any given issue. Maybe we should look again at whether or not parliamentary secretaries to ministers should be permitted to sit as a voting member of a particular committee.

When it comes to the conduct of committee meetings, on page 855 of Marleau and Montpetit it states:

As there is no limit in committee to the number of times of speaking or the length of speeches, committees may, if they choose, place limits on their own deliberations.

According to some members, I being one, this allows one member of a committee to filibuster a meeting without restriction against the wishes of all the other members of the committee.

It is true that the committee can place limits on deliberations, something that is not usually addressed when the rules of the committee are first formulated before we begin meeting as a committee, and are permitted more flexibility in deliberations in order to study issues and bills in greater depth. However, some members believe that if we can impose time limits on speeches here in the House at second reading, report stage and third reading of a bill, then why can we not impose such a limit at committee stage. I think this would be a positive opportunity for the committee.

I can remember when the transport committee brought forward legislation back in the early 1990s. I happened to be privileged to be chair of the committee at that time. The issue was either the privatization of CN, the air navigation system or whatever, but the point is that a single member of the committee, a member of the Bloc, decided that the Bloc was not getting exactly what it wanted when it came to consideration of amendments at the committee stage. What resulted, of course, was that committee member started to talk and filibustered the committee. Nothing could happen essentially until that committee member stopped talking.

If there are 17 members on a standing committee, the other 16 members are handcuffed from proceeding with anything further on that bill at amendment stage until that member either decides that he has achieved his mission through some kind of a negotiation or, of course, the member continues to talk until he gets what he wants.

Is this the way we really want to do business? I do not think so. Maybe we should have a look at whether or not there should be restrictions on the amount of time a member can make his or her deliberations at a committee.

There are so many opportunities here to change and improve, I would suggest, the procedures and rules of the House.

On the matter of private members' bills, we have heard this issue ad nauseam in the House. Most certainly this is one of the issues that we will be dealing with at the 2002 modernization committee.

Under the present system, as has been outlined before, under House of Commons Standing Order 86(1) through (5), it is ineffectual at best in its current state. An all party committee meets each session in secret and selects 10 bills by lottery from dozens tabled. Each bill is then subjected to three hours of debate and a vote. Successful bills are brought forward to committee and only a few make any progress. Only a fraction reappear in the House of Commons.

Imagine how much work a member of Parliament has done. I do not know how many private members' bills I have brought forward and they still wait in the drum because I was not lucky enough to have my ticket pulled out of a hat. What kind of business is that for members of Parliament, who are here to represent their constituents, if their constituents are of a mind that we are here as their member of Parliament to do the job? How can we be hamstrung from doing our job because our name is not being pulled out of a hat? It is outrageous and it has to change. We have to allow members to be more relevant in what they do as a member of Parliament.

The proposed procedure follows the reasoning of the proposed practice of referrals after first reading and treating private members' business in the same way.

I have at least a dozen more points that I would like to bring forward, including Friday sittings. Some members have expressed an interest in modifying Friday sittings. That is a good idea. Let us make Fridays a day when we do not discuss government bills. We can move those two and a quarter hours for government procedure into the earlier part of the week by adding a half-hour or 45 minutes to each day, leaving Friday for only private members' bills. That is another solid suggestion.

In conclusion, I believe that the 2002 modernization committee should be an committee open to all members, including even the Clerk of the House of Commons and others, to make suggestions. This process should be transparent and should allow as many ideas as possible to be heard from all members on all sides of this place in order that we can make the best and most well informed decisions as a committee.

Parliamentary ReformGovernment Orders

11 a.m.

Canadian Alliance

Grant Hill Canadian Alliance Macleod, AB

Mr. Speaker, as we talk about how to make Parliament work better, which is the subject today, I would like to pose the question: Why should Canadians care about this? Let me give an example of why Canadians should care.

When I first came here in 1993, I was very idealistic. I came from a different background, a background where I was used to making suggestions, having them listened to and sometimes getting things done. I found on the committee on which I sat that we were asked to vet in fact the Prime Minister's appointments. When I asked whether there had ever in fact been a case n Canada where one of the Prime Minister's appointments was turned down by a committee, the answer was no. I then asked why we were doing it.

It turned out that question had some resonance with the members of the committee. We set out and did a little study on it and made a recommendation after some time that rather than the committee vetting the Prime Minister's appointees, we should vet them as nominees. That has not taken place. There are still committees vetting appointments after they have taken place. That is nonsense. What a waste of an MPs' time and the appointee's time who comes to committee to be reviewed when there has never been a single case of an appointee being turned down.

In the business world and in the world from which I come, the health world, that would not be done. It would be so easy to change. Simply let the Prime Minister pick the nominees, have them presented to the committee and be vetted by the committee. If there was a problem with a nominee, surely the Prime Minister would want to know. If there were no problems, then the Prime Minister would pick from those nominees and we would have an appointee.

I was going to spend a bit of time on the Westminster way or the British way of handling whipped votes. Because we have spent quite a bit of time on that I will not go over that. I wanted to talk a bit about the mother of Parliaments and about it having a process whereby the government does not force its members on every vote to vote as a vote of confidence.

Let me simply say that there are examples in the time that I have spent in Parliament where I watched majority Liberal members vote against their conscience in a way that was heart-rending. The vote specifically on compensation for hepatitis C, an issue that has raised itself again recently, was one that I found very difficult because individuals voted against their conscience, against the way their constituents wanted them to vote, and were forced to vote that way.

Canadians wonder how that could happen. It happens because of the convention which says that if the government is defeated on one of its bills or motions it is a vote of confidence in the government and will be followed by an election. That is not sensible and it is not necessary.

There is a solution to that and it does not even involve three levels of whips. The solution is simply to say that a defeated government motion or a government bill will be followed by a vote of confidence. The vote of confidence of course, in the case of a majority government, would automatically be in favour of the government. The bill would fail but the government would not fall. That is the approach that the Canadian Alliance would take to the issue of whipped votes, to follow a defeat by a vote of confidence.

Most bills then, unless they were confidence bills, that being money bills, or bills that the government had campaigned on, would be free votes so that individual members could go back to their constituents and get their impressions and their ideas and be able to bring to bear their own personal perspective on those bills. A defeated bill then would not defeat the government.

I omitted to mention that I will be splitting my time with the member for Surrey Central.

I have also found it interesting and fascinating that the member for LaSalle—Émard has stepped into the debate on democratizing Parliament. Without being too critical of the proposals he has made, he is somewhat of a johnny-come-lately to this issue. He did sit in cabinet since 1993, although recently he has been removed from cabinet, but I did not hear once during that period of time a single mention of these issues. Let me go over, for the public, the things he is suggesting. I think most of the public, and I personally, support these proposals.

First, loosen the hold of party discipline. That refers to the issue of pushing members to vote one way by the party.

Second, increase the capacity of all members to shape legislation. That enters into the field of private members' business.

Third, members would be allowed to initiate legislation. Once again, this is private members' business.

Fourth, standing committees should be overhauled to provide increasing independence or expanded authority. That gets into the recent issue where we now have secret ballots being used for the committee chairs and vice-chairs.

Fifth, reform the process surrounding government appointments. That reflects back to my first point.

Sixth, appoint an independent ethics commissioner.

Every one of those proposals has been long advocated by the official opposition and many members in the House. There has not been, in terms of movement on these issues, anything until the last few weeks, and that is fascinating to me.

What is missing from those proposals? Those proposals give more power to members of Parliament. There is not a single mention of anything that would be based on the constituents. I call that power to the people, which is missing. In these proposals, every one of them gives power to the party. What is missing then? We also need the ability of citizens to push for legislation, not just the MPs pushing for legislation but citizen initiated proposals. We need more use of the other levers of democracy as well to give power to the people, such as very specific use of referenda, possibly at election time to not add extra cost, to invigorate and reinvigorate the democratic process; and plebiscites. Those are tools that are very seldom used at the federal level here in Canada.

We also need to have the ultimate check on an unruly member of Parliament. I call that “fire a liar”; to be able to remove a member of Parliament who breaks the voters' trust.

We need fixed election dates; a reduction of power for the party in power so that everyone in Canada knows when the next election would be, not an election date at the whim of the Prime Minister.

We also need to take back some of the power that Parliament has let slip. I call that judge made law. The charter has put a lot of emphasis on looking at the laws in terms of the charter. Parliament has, I think, left some of its significant power to judges. That should be addressed.

Because I am an optimist I would like to state that there are some glimmers of democracy here. The fact that we are having this debate today, to my mind, is a glimmer of hope. A Speaker that is now elected by secret ballot is hopeful. That was not always the case. We have private members' business that will be votable. That is a glimmer of democracy. I mentioned that committee chairs and vice-chairs will be and have been chosen without the Prime Minister's stamp of approval.

This debate is one that will touch the future of Canada's youth. It should and must matter to Canadians. I urge the Liberal majority government to go one step beyond and give some of the power of the party back to the people: power to the party versus power to the people. The people should win.

Parliamentary ReformGovernment Orders

11:10 a.m.

Canadian Alliance

Gurmant Grewal Canadian Alliance Surrey Central, BC

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise on behalf of the constituents of Surrey Central to participate in the debate on the issue of modernizing Parliament.

My hon. colleague, the deputy leader of our party, very eloquently gave some of the practical recommendations for modernizing Parliament. I would like to emphasize more the need for parliamentary modernization.

The objective of modernization must be to better serve democracy in Canada. The test of its success will be whether it increases the esteem of the public for their Parliament. Democracy is more than just marking an x on a ballot every four or five years. It is time Parliament reflects that. No wonder voter turnout in federal elections is falling.

Free and fair elections provide an incentive for political leaders to govern more effectively in the public interest, but democratic electoral competition does not ensure true democracy. It requires reform to deepen, strengthen and consolidate democracy to build a rule of law and a culture of governance in which public resources are used for the public good.

A system of effective checks and balances, with an independent judiciary and a network of counter corruption, audit, ethics and other oversight agencies and institutions, can deter abuse of power.

Corrupt, wasteful, abusive, incompetent governance undermines basic economic development. Where governance is endemically bad, leaders do not use public resources effectively. Nor is the private growth sector allowed to prosper smoothly and efficiently.

Where democracy is restricted, governance is poor, more corrupt, wasteful, incompetent and opens the country to recurrent crises. Political corruption scandals threaten to erode public faith in democracy and thereby destabilize the entire system. Corruption aggravates social conflict by raising the premium on control of the state and rendering politics a more desperate, zero sum struggle for control of economic opportunity. An important ingredient in all democracies is the political will of the nation's leaders to improve the quality of governance.

For all these reasons, it is necessary to focus efforts on the promotion and development of democratic structures and institutions and a culture of democracy and the development of an environment conducive to democracy and consolidation of democratic institutions.

Modernization of Parliament should seek to enhance its status so that it is seen as a robust and effective part of the process of decision making by government.

Canadian Parliament is a rubber stamp for the government. The legislature is now dominated by strict party discipline, reducing government members to little more than a cheering section.

We need to encourage results oriented dialogue in this chamber. As things now stand, the purpose of debate is defeated. Members debate with a predetermined, closed mindset and are not willing to listen to arguments. MPs can talk all they want but nothing really changes because an elite tightly controls everything, and there are never free votes on issues most important to the constituents.

Take note debates take place after the government has made decisions on those important issues.

Debates are restricted in Parliament continuously. Closure has been invoked even more times than during the past Mulroney government. I think it has been 78 times that debates have been restricted in this chamber. Attendance in debates is low, as we see now. It is shameful when quorum is called, which is already set very low. It is time to bring increased meaning to everyday proceedings of the House of Commons.

We know that committees are not accountable. They are controlled by the Prime Minister's Office. Government members who fail to toe party lines are disciplined. We know so many changes in this place need to be made, in committees and in other places.

One important element is institutions in government. The commissioners for privacy, access to information, ethics, the Auditor General, ombudsman, et cetera should report to Parliament in a meaningful way.

Their reports should be given more importance. For example, as a follow up to the recommendations of the Auditor General, various departments and agencies should seriously address the concerns and implement those changes. The failures, mismanagement, waste and boondoggles should not be allowed to continue.

Question period is a chance for the public, through the opposition members, to seek information from the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers of government and hold them accountable for their decisions and management of the affairs of the nation. However, as the name suggests, it is question period, not question and answer period. What the opposition members hear from the government in just 35 seconds is only sound bites or sometimes some announcements, but not the real answers to the issues that are important to the nation.

We need to increase access to cabinet ministers so that they can be held accountable. They can answer the questions on issues.

Speaking of question period, I have proposed a motion in the House to change the name of question period to question and answer period so that it can be a meaningful event, not just a media circus whereby the members try to hype their files, or make announcements or sound bites.

The late show or adjournment proceedings should be made more meaningful. Government members should avail themselves of the opportunity to provide supplementary indepth answers. This could be a second question period. The idea would be to restore accountability and transparency in government.

Many meaningful changes need to be made in this place to make real democracy take place in Canada.

When we go abroad we talk about good governance, democracy, human rights and those kinds of things, but at home we need to restore democracy and give it a real chance.

I have many recommendations about committees and so on, but I think I will move to a few other things, like private members' business.

Every member of the House works hard on private members' motions and bills. I have tabled many motions and bills in the House like other members, but nothing meaningful is accomplished because the process is not working.

Private members' business is just like a pacifier to a baby. The baby keeps sucking at it but nothing meaningful comes of it. We keep working hard at our private members' bills and motions, but very rarely do they become meaningful law in this country. What is the use of that process? We need to make significant changes to it.

The subcommittee, which is chaired by the government, is partisan in nature and unfair in the selection of votable items.

One inherent problem with parliamentary democracy is that the government is usually formed by the party which has a majority in Parliament, so naturally there is a bias. That bias is reflected in committees, which should not be the case. Committees should not reflect that bias and Parliament should not act in that fashion.

The Senate, which has the power to delay and modify legislation, is far from a chamber of sober second thought. The Senate is nothing more than a group of partisan, patronage appointees. We need to modify that.

Another issue is regulatory reform. When we talk about democratic reforms, parliamentary reform is an integral part of democratic reforms and regulatory reform is an integral part of parliamentary reform.

The Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations does not have enough power and resources to scrutinize regulations. As we know, 80% of the law in this country is made by regulation but only 20% of it is debated in this chamber. The standing committees should be given the opportunity.

We need to do a lot of work on regulatory reform. We need to harmonize regulations. We need to make regulatory impact statements and the regulatory process should be more meaningful. I am sure that I will talk about regulatory reform in my private member's bill probably in the next month or so.

With these comments, I would like to urge all members to make democracy practical and effective so it can be reflected in this chamber and we can hold this chamber in high esteem.

Parliamentary ReformGovernment Orders

11:20 a.m.

Liberal

Reg Alcock Liberal Winnipeg South, MB

Mr. Speaker, a topic of this sort is so wide-ranging and so complex it is difficult to know how to make best use of the time available.

I taped and watched the presentations that were made last night by the various parties as we introduced this debate. It strikes me that in this debate and in the work that has been done, there are an enormous range of suggestions and an enormous number of targets. Some want to look at changing the issues that have to do with the Senate. Some want to look at issues that have to do with matters that are outside of this chamber. Some want to deal very specifically with the rules of the House themselves, and there were some interesting, very specific comments on that.

I want to step back though for a minute because I think part of the problem that we have is that we are maybe trying to address the wrong problem. We keep coming back to this debate. It was not that long ago when we had a debate of this sort. I thought we had done some of these things. One more time we are back here trying to figure out how to modernize the House of Commons.

It is true to say that some of that will require some specific changes to the rules. However, if we really want to tackle this task, we need to spend a little time thinking about what is the problem that we are trying to fix and perhaps spend a little time thinking about how did we get to the point where we want to change this. Then maybe we can come back to looking at some of those things that we might want to change.

From one perspective, despite all the angst that we feel about how this place works, it is hard to argue that Canada as a country is not doing well. Relatively speaking, looking at other countries around the world, we have a high standard of living. We have a civil society that functions quite well. These things are the result of this structure of governance. Therefore why are we so upset about it?

At the same time we have, and I am certainly one of those who feels there is a profound need to reform this place, a growing sense of alienation from different parts of the country. We elect parties. Canadian citizens elect people to represent them who do not want to be part of this country. We elect people who have party positions that profoundly reject the values of other parts of the country. I think that is a reflection of an underlying dissatisfaction with some of the ways in which the country works.

It is also a reflection of the inability of the House to perform one of its prime functions. When I am asked to speak about this place, I describe the House of Commons, in its best sense, as an enormous values clarification exercise for the country. When I came here as an urban member from the City of Winnipeg in 1993, the first thing I was confronted with was the codfish crisis on the east coast. It was something I knew very little about, had very little expertise in and had very little interest in until I was drawn into that discussion because colleagues of mine needed some assistance in sorting out what was a very critical issue to the Canadians that they represented. I have worked with them because frankly I want their support when I have a problem with drought in my area of the country.

It is that process of articulating and establishing that consensus. We talk often about the great Canadian consensus. That is where the House adds real value. We suffer when we allow that consensus building process to become too narrowly focused. In many ways that is at the heart of part of the problem that we feel here.

At the beginning of the government House leader's remarks, I heard a comment that is another part of the problem. He said that we were trying to modernize problems which began with the previous government. There was a sense that somehow these problems were the result of the actions of an individual or a group at one point in time.

It is popular for the other side of course to blame this on the predelictions or the inclinations of the current Prime Minister. I have had my own concerns about the positions taken by the current Prime Minister and I have written to him regarding those issues, starting about four years ago.

At the same time, the problems that we must deal with began a long time ago. The report of the standing committee of the British House of Commons, that last looked at this issue, addressed a concern about effective control over government expenditure going back to 1919. It looked at proposed post-war reforms. The British House of Commons has been going through much the same thing as we are, trying to figure out how, in a modern society, a chamber of this sort can hold the government to account.

I am often drawn to a report written by C.E.S. Franks at Queen's University. This particular paper was written in May 1999. He looked at some of these issues and made the following comment:

Compared with other major Westminster style parliamentary democracies, and particularly that of Britain, the Canadian Parliament is government/executive dominated and more highly partisan. In fact, the whole Canadian system, and the provincial governments as well, are executive centred rather than parliament centred, and highly partisan and adversarial as well.

He goes on to explain a development that is kind of interesting when we reflect on what we are trying to accomplish. He talked about a country that essentially did not have a representative chamber. It did not have a democratically elected form of government in its beginning. It was run by a strong public service coming out of the British colonial office. As the country matured and as it began to develop representative bodies, consultative bodies, and finally the development of the Canadian Parliament, the latter came on as an adjunct to what was already a well established executive.

While the Canadian and British styles of government are executive centred in their nature, the Canadian version is even more centered on the executive than would be the case in the Westminster model. We see that when we look at Westminster. We see the actions of its committees and the things it is able to accomplish. It is not uncommon for a government bill to fail in the British House because members reject it. It is certainly common for members to be highly independent in their activities on select committees.

Another thing that Mr. Franks pointed out is something that I had not thought about much until I started to reflect on our history over the last 30 years or so. I would like to read the quote and then come back to how I interpret it. He said:

In comparison with other western legislatures, the Canadian Parliament is characterized by short-term, amateur members.

That is an interesting comment when we think about it. There have been three big wipeouts of this chamber since the second world war: 1958 with John Diefenbaker when he came in and replaced the majority of members; 1984 with Brian Mulroney; and 1993 when we came to office. We came from a small opposition party and went to a large governing party. A lot of the traditional opposition parties disappeared or were greatly reduced.

A lot of members came into the House with basically little experience with the place. What experience they had in political life tended to be experience built around debate in the process of election, which is highly partisan, highly charged, and highly focused on trying to prove that the other person is wrong. As a result, we carried a lot of that kind of activity to the floor of the House. Committee meetings, instead of being collaborative sessions of colleagues with an interest in seeing good government, became mini versions of question period.

I often wonder how public servants must feel when they sit in front of a committee to make presentations and are basically like set pieces to an ongoing debate, one party trying to prove that the other party is either too right wing, too left wing, too irresponsible, too corrupt, or too whatever. The business we get charged with, which is to attempt to articulate to the government the values that we would like to see represented in legislation or in the operations of the government, gets largely lost.

In an environment like that, where there is more external management, it is easy for members to be relatively irresponsible, relatively casual in their relationships to committee work because it has no consequence, nothing much happens as a result of the activity of committees.

It does not mean we cannot all point to positive experiences. I have had some good experiences in committee. Some committees have done some pretty good work, but by and large, the lack of regard for committee work has caused a lot of members to stop putting a lot of time and energy into it. Members are not unintelligent when it comes to the use of their time. They will spend their time and will focus their time, energy and intellectual capacity in areas where they think it produces the greatest return for the people they represent and the issues that they are concerned about.

I want to add another set of forces. It is interesting to note, and Marleau and Montpetit reference it, the creation of the government House leader. I believe it started casually in 1944 and was formally introduced in the Standing Orders in 1946. As depicted in Marleau and Montpetit, the Prime Minister of the day would come to the House each day and say here is the stuff we should work on, here is the piece of legislation, and then would leave. Then the whips of the various parties would sort of work it out, have their debates and then come to conclusions. If a cabinet minister wished to get something passed or worked on, he would be in here talking to people, working on the debate and trying to build upon the atmosphere that existed in the chamber to get important legislation passed.

The arrival of the position of the House leader meant that the process of negotiation delegation was largely passed over to somebody who became more of an operative expert. How something was passed through the House became more critical rather than worrying about the substance of it. The value of passage became more important than the value of the debate.

However, there are other forces at play here. If we graph the size of the public service in Canada, as a metaphor for the change and complexity, during the period between 1901 and the beginning of the second world war, the size of the public service did not increase that much, between 30,000 and 50,000 members, excluding military personnel because obviously there were bump ups during the war years. Post-war, it increased at one point to a total full time equivalence of about 400,000. It has declined a bit since then but, if we think about that for just a second, that difference in the government, that was at one time relatively small to one that is enormous, produced all sorts of different levels of complexity.

Added to that there were massive and continuing changes in the technology of communication. In 1952 television was introduced in Canada. By 1957, 85% of the country was covered by television. However, television is an interesting phenomenon because television tends not to focus well on groups. It tends to focus well on individuals, debate and aggression, as opposed to reasoned discourse.

It did a couple of things. Prior to the introduction of television, the local member in the riding would be subject to a lot of the interaction with local constituents and the Prime Minister would be someone whom one would see occasionally. All of a sudden the Prime Minister was introduced into everyone's living room. John Kennedy was considered to be the first television president in the U.S. It is fair to say that Trudeau would be the first equivalent, the first television-savvy Prime Minister in Canada. That produced, without any changes in the rule, an increased focus on the individual through the hot medium. It produced an increased focus on that office on the executive side, and greatly increased the power and authority of the centre.

Another thing also occurred. Technology began to get more broadly introduced and it has had a major impact on the pace of life. Many people have written about the compression of time and distance. Before, when people wrote cheques on their bank account they might have had a week or two before the money was actually taken out of their account. Today, it happens immediately. If we sent a document overseas it might have been a month before it actually got there, today it is faxed overnight. That compression of time has greatly increased the response demands on all of us. We see it in our daily life all the time. It has increased that need for response on government.

What has the impact been on a deliberative chamber like this one, where people need the time to sit, talk, work out that consensus, clarify those values to come to that compromise, and come to that Canadian consensus? It has been essential in order to meet those demands of the incredible pressure for a response this place has been increasingly subject to. New tools, new rules, new changes in the Standing Orders have all served to move things through the House faster.

We still have a tool called closure. If members go back into the history of this place they will find that it was used once around 1932 and I forget why. It was used once during the pipeline debate in 1956 and once during the flag debate in 1966. Closure had that kind of frequency.

Time allocation was introduced in 1972 to assist with the need to get useful information through the House. It was used on average twice a year during the 1970s and about six times a year during the 1980s. I have not checked the statistics recently, but it was over 12 to 15 times a year in the 1990s. There is talk, and I heard the House leader refer to it, about the British practice of using time allocation on almost everything. The British and members of this House have this tremendous pressure from the community and the people they serve to have a decision. They cannot wait. They need to have some kind of a result from this place.

The problem is that we have not challenged ourselves to reform the House. It is not about the minutia of what time do we stand up or sit down on this thing. It is about how this chamber becomes more relevant in the lives of Canadians. How do we engage in those important public debates? How do we work in real time so that we are working at the speed of a decision that is required in a modern economy? Instead, we pride ourselves on the arcane nature of this place, so that we can sit around and have sober debate, and become increasingly irrelevant to Canadians. It is not because people have some sort of desire to take authority away from the chamber. It is because the public must have a decision.

I heard members on the other side talk a lot about regulation and the tendency of government to use regulation. When I was a public servant in Manitoba I was in charge of writing a piece of legislation. I asked the drafters to write clauses that put important decisions into regulation rather than putting them in the body of the bill. It was not because I had any thought about the structure of power and authority in society or the nature of legislative bodies. It was because if a neighbouring province changed its legislation I needed to respond. I could not wait the year and a half or two years it would take to get the bill through the legislature.

Over time we have seen a migration of the power, authority and the influence of this place move away to other forums. It is not because of nasty desires or nasty intentions of individuals. It is because of the real need of a modern organization to respond more quickly. The profound challenge to us is to start to get our heads around how this place must change to function more effectively in real time.

There is a substantive issue at the heart of this. It lies behind the attempts to deal with some of the rules. I was about to say there is too much authority centred in the executive. There is too much authority assumed by the executive. The reality is this place has enormous authority if it chooses to exercise it. I would argue that if we actually exercised all the authority we have there would be such a public outcry against it because we would grind everything to a halt using our normal practices.

We need to erase some of the precedents and practices that have tended to make it too easy for the centre to become the articulator of values for the country and the ultimate decision makers on all things. We must rebalance that power relationship and that is not an easy thing to do.

I used to study children's rights legislation. I remember a report from a professor at Dalhousie University who said that a right cannot be bestowed upon someone without taking it away from somebody else. The professor said that power is a zero sum game.

It is much the same here. If the chamber were to assume more power and authority, then that would have to come from some other place. There will always be resistance. I believe it is something worth doing. We must be clear about what we are trying to do.

I note that there was a comment by the House leader that there is a willingness in the chamber to allow us to revisit the subject and talk in more detail. I will forward some of my suggestions.

Committee membership and the length of terms that members are appointed for should be examined. We should do away with the striking committee practice of forming committees every September. I believe that a member should be appointed to a committee and the committee should be functional at least for the period from the throne speech to prorogation, if not for an entire parliament, so that there is some consistency in the operation.

Some changes that need to take place internally are really caucus decisions. I know that our caucus is working on this and I suspect that others are as well. Perhaps we can visit those changes in a further debate, but the real challenge to us, with your indulgence, Mr. Speaker, is to think through how we can modernize this chamber so that it begins to function in a way that makes us able to play a role in the important decisions that the country has to make.

Parliamentary ReformGovernment Orders

11:40 a.m.

Bloc

Suzanne Tremblay Bloc Rimouski-Neigette-Et-La Mitis, QC

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Lotbinière—L'Érable.

I am really quite happy to be able to take part in this take note debate to allow all members who are so inclined, if time permits, to express their views on changes being considered to our procedural rules. Given that my colleague who spoke before me only made it to the end of his opening comments, we likely did not get the opportunity to hear any good ideas or suggestions.

We could spend a great deal of time debating all of the changes to the Standing Orders that we would like to see, especially after all the frustrations that we have experienced in the past ten years. During this time, we have found ourselves in a Parliament where, day after day, we have watched democracy being eroded, because of the system we have, where holding a majority of seats makes a party incredibly arrogant. We must come up with rules that will really allow members to feel as though democracy is lived out every day in Parliament.

We are all elected in our ridings to represent the people. Obviously, we run under one banner rather than another, with a certain ideology, rather than another. Our constituents may choose to vote for us or not, but once we are elected, we represent everyone in our riding. We try to keep this in mind every day.

Therefore, we need to feel as though the institution of Parliament has a profound respect for each and every member, and this starts with getting the respect of the executive. When ministers make statements, it should not be at press conferences or in speeches in their ridings in an attempt to earn political capital at every possible opportunity. The people who should be informed first when it comes to the government's intentions are parliamentarians. Therefore, members' statements should be made in the House so that we are indeed the first ones informed of what the government is proposing for debate as draft legislation or as a bill.

Another way to respect parliamentarians is to ask them to act with a purpose. To that end, every item debated in the House would have to be votable; take note debates, emergency debates, debates on bills, debates on motions. There should be a vote on all debates.

I received an e-mail from one of my constituents who says “Mrs. Tremblay, you must use every possible means to oppose the war against Iraq”.

I sat down at home and I wondered what means I had available to me to oppose such a measure. Legally, I can rise and say that I am opposed to any war in Iraq. I am saying it: I am not favourable to going to war against Iraq, not at all, and not for any consideration.

Having said that, what means do I have to prevent, for example, the government from going to war against Iraq? Unfortunately, I do not have any. Even though I was elected with 60% of the votes in my riding, the only means that I have is to rise and vote against such a measure, and if I were to find out that my party supports the idea, I would have no choice but to stay in my office.

Other than that, I do not have any means to prevent the government from doing it. None of the opposition members have the means to prevent the government. It will not listen to the public, to members of Parliament, to our arguments. It will do as always, it will not ask us to vote. Moreover, it is totally dependent on another state, another country. At times, one wonders if Canada is really a sovereign country.

We should take a serious look—because I suppose that the issues discussed during these take note debates will be referred to a special committee—at how Parliament helps improve the reputation of parliamentarians, or at how it adversely affects that reputation. Because of Parliament's lack of democracy and transparency, the public ends up saying “It is always the same thing, nothing changes; they are always the same. It is useless. We no longer care about politics, we will not bother to vote anymore”.

Interestingly, since the debates of the House were first televised, voter participation has been going down, even though this should have helped cast parliamentarians in a better light. Perhaps the government should look at this issue and see what can really be done to improve the fate of members. Let us not wait for a new leader. The government has all the tools that it needs.

The member for LaSalle—Émard made a proposal at a meeting held at Osgoode Hall. This proposal means nothing to people where I come from. It does little to improve democracy. It has already been discussed elsewhere on many occasions.

As far as the voting question goes, I think there would have to be different ones depending on circumstances. Not all votes ought to have an impact on the government's survival. In certain cases we should be able to feel far freer to vote according to our conscience, while in others we would vote according to the mandate given to us by our constituents. They want us to be for or against a given thing, and to vote accordingly.

I think we should be obliged to vote for something if the subject directly concerned by the debate is addressed by a specific point of our election platform. The people who elected us did so on that basis, so we would have a moral obligation in that case.

For example, the Liberal government ought to have felt morally obligated to scrap the GST. That was a fairly major promise. It also ought to have felt obligated to put an end to EI reform, instead of getting carried away with it, as it has, because the Liberals had promised not to follow the path the Conservatives had taken.

There ought to be more respect. If promises are not kept, there should be sanctions against a government that gets elected under false pretences. It seems to me that misrepresentation is in the Criminal Code.

It seems to me that I have spoken for ten minutes so I will yield the floor to my colleague, hoping that this take note debate will really bring about some changes and improvements to the democracy of this Parliament.

Parliamentary ReformGovernment Orders

11:50 a.m.

Bloc

Odina Desrochers Bloc Lotbinière—L'Érable, QC

Mr. Speaker, I too am very pleased to take part in today's debate. While this is not an urgent matter, this debate must take place so that we may take the necessary action to restore democracy in this Parliament, on both sides.

I remember when the former Auditor General, Denis Desautels, did a post mortem of the ten years during which he held his position. He clearly said that the powers in the hands of parliamentarians, of members of this House, are being increasingly reduced.

The way the Liberals are behaving, often by making what I would call inflammatory statements outside the House, shows that they are gradually creating a Parliament that does not care about democracy.

For example, the House was asked to vote on a motion seeking to make some changes to the operations of the committees. This was a motion that simply asked that the election of committee chairs be conducted by secret ballot. The hon. member for Hull—Aylmer said on CBC radio that he would never have supported such a motion, because it came from the opposition.

This shows how little these people care about democracy. They forget that, before these members became the opposition, they campaigned and won the support of a percentage of voters. In the case of the Bloc Quebecois, its members were elected with very strong majorities, ranging from 45% to 60%.

Despite this, these people say that anything that comes from the opposition is worthless. So, this issue must be examined. Since the Liberals do not seem to be at all receptive, we must look at how the Canadian Parliament works and try to restore democracy in this place. I would like to take a closer look at how committees operate.

It is in committee that I was able to see—and several of my colleagues share this view—that democracy really does not exist anymore, that the discussions that take place in committees are ignored.

I want to point out that the work done in committee accounts for 50% of the duties of parliamentarians. The first part of this work consists in paying attention to everything that goes on here, so as to be able to make comments, suggestions and a contribution to the proceedings of the House of Commons.

The second part consists in attending question period. Again, question period was borrowed from the British parliamentary system. The opposition normally represents the people, who want to know more about policies, decisions and all that is going on on the government's side. Question period no longer meets that need, because what we have opposite is actors who come before us with their texts in hand, and their canned answers.

These people do not respect or defend the interests of Parliament, but they are increasingly defending the interests of their party. With the infighting going on across the way, some are defending the interests of the Prime Minister while others are defending those of the member for LaSalle—Émard. All this to say that not much is happening in this Parliament anymore. When we look at the questions put to the minister, we can see that there are no answers.

It so happens that the people sent us here, to this place, to ask questions and get information. Often, acting this way undermines the credibility of parliamentarians.

Let us come back to committees. MPs work in collaboration with researchers, their staff and their colleagues. They put forward motions and try to improve the bills or the positions taken by the various committees. Often, depending on the time, we see an employee from the government whip's office come in bringing notes. The next to arrive are members, who do not even know why they are there but were directed by the Prime Minister's Office to attend, with the sole objective of undoing all the work of members who have dedicated hours and even weeks to improving bills.

I know that a vote is an important thing. Every parliamentarian is entitled to one, but in light of the context we find ourselves in more and more often in the House of Commons—incidentally, I have launched the battle at the Standing Committee on Public Accounts—thought should be given to correcting the situation. Perhaps we need a mechanism whereby only the members who participated in two thirds or three quarters of the committee proceedings would be allowed to vote. This would at least have the advantage of forcing the Liberals who come and defeat our motions to take part in our proceedings.

Second, in some committees, the non-partisan aspect needs to be emphasized. Right now, we are again seeing that the Liberals are demonstrating no openness, they always take the party line.

Currently, people who follow the proceedings of the House of Commons are asking serious questions about the work we do as parliamentarians. They can sense the attitude of the members opposite. It is having a negative impact on the work of the opposition and parliamentarians. The discontent from members opposite is palpable. Even the government backbenchers are frustrated that they no longer have any leeway. As my colleague said before, voter turnout is dropping with every election because the actions of Liberal members opposite are undermining the credibility of parliamentarians. So, regardless of what happens, we have to deal with perceptions. The perception of people who read the papers, who watch television and who listen to the radio is that nothing happens anymore in Parliament.

I remember how fed up I was when I saw members voting against people who were sick. I am referring to the vote against people with hepatitis C, when the Prime Minister imposed the party line. When it has come to people acting in this way, how can we expect the public to continue to believe in the institution of Parliament? It needs to be changed and improved immediately.

Take voting for example. We could have an electronic vote. Often, we have a series of votes on motions which are put forward by the members opposite, and which mean absolutely nothing. So, we could have an electronic vote.

I can see that my time is running out, and I have so many things I would like to say. For all those listening today, and in light of the comments made by my colleague, who gave an interesting speech, I hope that today represents a new beginning for democracy and that we will give serious consideration to the work of parliamentarians and to the business of the House, and that we can all work together to restore some credibility to parliamentarians in this House.

Parliamentary ReformGovernment Orders

Noon

Halifax West Nova Scotia

Liberal

Geoff Regan LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Scarborough East.

It is an honour for me to take part in this take note debate on modernizing the House of Commons. It is, in my opinion, very important to give members the opportunity to express their views on potential changes to the procedure, which the committee could study.

The government House leader has mentioned a number of possible initiatives that could be submitted to the modernization committee. I would like to take this opportunity to speak about two of those initiatives in which I am particularly interested.

In his speech, the minister pointed out that the United Kingdom and Australia have inaugurated a chamber parallel to the House of Commons. For those members who are unfamiliar with institutions of that type, I will take a moment to describe them briefly, because I am greatly interested in this as I have said.

The use of Britain's Westminster Hall was first recommended by the U.K. modernization committee in April 1999. It recommended that there should be an experiment with a parallel chamber in the grand committee room known as Westminster Hall, the famous huge hall at Westminster Palace. Of course Westminster Palace includes the House of Commons and the House of Lords, as well as a large room behind the House of Lords, which is for royalty to use when they are at Westminster Palace. Originally Westminster Palace was a palace, a residence of royalty, of the king or queen. We are talking about the large room called Westminster Hall, an ancient room in that building.

The committee's report containing these proposals was adopted and now all members of parliament in Britain are able to attend sittings in Westminster Hall to debate matters that are agreed by all parties to be important but for which time on the floor of the House itself is not readily found. For a matter to be discussed on the floor of Westminster Hall, all parties must agree to refer that matter to Westminster Hall. Decisions can be taken only with unanimity. Everyone in the chamber at Westminster Hall has to agree in order for a decision to be taken.

Westminster Hall sits on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings and on Thursday afternoons, for a total of about nine hours per week. That allows for a lot of discussion about issues that the House itself does not provide time for. The specific items considered in Westminster Hall include private members' business, debates on committee reports and other business that is selected through the usual channels.

One of the debates we could hold in a parallel chamber like Westminster Hall is, for example, a take note debate. We are all familiar with the fact that there have been times when we have had take note debates or emergency debates that have gone on into the wee hours of the morning. There is no question that members are prepared to do that. They show great determination to stay during long hours and perhaps sometimes all night to debate important matters, but I am not sure that is being generous to or reasonable for the staff of this place, nor reasonable for our own health, for that matter. It is responsible for us to ensure that we keep hours that while perhaps long are at least reasonable for our own health. Staying all night long for debates and then having to work the next day is not necessarily in keeping with that. That is one more reason that a parallel chamber could be a positive development.

In November 2000, the U.K. modernization committee conducted an evaluation of Westminster Hall and reported that the experiment was proving successful and should be continued. The committee noted that one of the strengths of Westminster Hall was that it greatly added to the opportunities for members to debate matters that were of concern to them as individuals. For example, in the 1999-2000 session, 20 committee reports were debated in Westminster Hall on issues ranging from foreign affairs and agriculture to the environment and health. During that session, 14 general debates were held in Westminster Hall on issues such as children's social services, U.K. engagement in Africa, pension reform, and crime reduction. We can see that a wide range of important subjects is being debated at Westminster Hall.

In fact, the committee noted that Westminster Hall greatly expanded the opportunity for members of parliament to advance private members' items. For example, without Westminster Hall, there would have been only 129 opportunities to debate private members' business. With Westminster Hall, there were 263 opportunities for private members' business to be debated, a 100% increase, a pretty dramatic impact from that one initiative. Overall, the additional number of opportunities available to members for debates went from 135 to 296, an increase of 54%, a very substantial and significant increase.

As a result, the U.K. modernization committee concluded that Westminster Hall had proved to be an effective forum for members to advance issues. For this reason, the modernization committee stated:

...there can be little doubt that the creation of Westminster Hall is a radical innovation...we see the current experiment as an exciting and major new development which should give the lie to those who claim that the House of Commons is hopelessly antiquated and impervious to any change whatever.

It is important to note that Westminster Hall is designed for individual MPs. It is not designed for the government to advance its initiatives. Westminster Hall is not designed to detract from the business of the House of Commons. To summarize again, the modernization committee concluded:

It is important to note what Westminster Hall has not done. It has not enabled the Government to expand its legislative programme: the business taken in Westminster Hall has been additional business which would otherwise not have taken place at all. Overwhelmingly it is accepted that Westminster Hall has not detracted from the primacy of the Chamber: the House has had no difficulty in keeping the business in the main Chamber going on Thursday afternoons when the parallel Chamber has also been in operation.

Australia has also had a successful experiment with a parallel committee dating back to 1994, called the main committee. In 1993 the Australian procedure committee prepared a report, known as the Blewitt report, with proposals to improve the handling of legislation.

The key proposal of the Blewitt report was the establishment of the main committee. The Blewitt report envisaged a standing committee of the whole house which would deal with the second reading and consideration in detail of certain bills.

The main committee was designed with the following characteristics. It would be less formal. It would show cooperation with and due deference to the house itself. It would work in subordination to the house. Any decision made by the main committee would have to be confirmed by a decision of the house itself. Unanimity was another feature required. Issues lacking unanimity would be referred back to the house for a decision, which is quite similar to the situation in Westminster as I described earlier.

Although the main committee was first designed to work as a parallel legislative stream, when it was implemented it was also established as a forum for debate on government policy and committee reports, much like Britain's Westminster Hall.

Important changes were made in 1997 to provide for members' statements and adjournment debates so that the main committee also became a forum for the ventilation of grievances and matters of interest and concern for individual MPs.

The main committee has had the following benefits. There has been less use of time allocation, which I am sure members across the way would be happy to hear about. There has been more time available for debate on each bill. There has been more debate on committee reports and government policy. As well, there have been greater opportunities for private members to take part.

These benefits in fact can be demonstrated by quantifiable empirical data. In 1992, 132 bills were guillotined or time allocated. In 1993, 111 bills were guillotined. This number fell to 14 in 1994, 1 in 1995 and 6 in 1996. In 1999, 59 MPs made 120 speeches in adjournment debate. Over 80% of MPs who responded to a survey considered the main committee to be a success.

I hope that our modernization committee will seriously consider the advantages enjoyed by Britain through Westminster Hall and by Australia through the main committee.

I had other matters I would have been delighted to discuss. The idea of a parallel chamber is one which I think members should consider very seriously. It holds great benefits. It would save the health of a lot of members and certainly of staff, and would be a much more reasonable approach to take note debates and many other matters.

I look forward to seeing progress in this process.

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12:10 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Jason Kenney Canadian Alliance Calgary Southeast, AB

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's reflections on the experiences of parliamentary reform elsewhere. Let me just say I find troublesome the use of the term modernization in the context of the House because for some reason the government has an aversion to the use of the conventional word reform.

Modernization I would submit is precisely the problem. It implies rendering the operation of the House more efficient, that is to say faster. Often the only tactic at the disposal of the opposition to express dissent or opposition on behalf of Canadians toward government legislation is to cause this place to move more slowly and deliberatively.

I would submit that the fact to which he attested, that the Westminster mother parliament is in many respects more democratic and a more deliberative body, and a much older one, supports my thesis that we need to reform this place, not necessarily to modernize it if that means rendering its processes more efficient.

I would like to ask the member a specific question. Given that he has been a student of the Westminster parliament recently and that the broader question of parliamentary reform encompasses reform of the other place and not just this House, perhaps the member would care to comment on the following.

The convention in the British Parliament is that the prime minister is not the only public official to submit to the sovereign names for peerages to the upper chamber but indeed the opposition parties in the lower house, in the House of Commons at the Westminster Parliament, also are permitted to submit names for appointments to the upper chamber. Would the member care to comment on the fact that in that sense the British appointed and quasi-hereditary House of Lords is substantially more democratic and representative of the plurality of modern political choices than is our Senate?

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12:15 p.m.

Liberal

Geoff Regan Liberal Halifax West, NS

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to hear of the hon. member's interest in and approval of the Westminster parliamentary system.

I was disappointed that he did not respond to the heart of my comments. I was focusing on the question of a parallel chamber. I am disappointed that he did not show any interest in that topic. I hope members will show an interest in that topic because it has many benefits that we should consider.

The member likes the U.K. system but he fails to recognize that in the Westminster Parliament the committee is called the modernization committee. What has happened is we have adopted the same term as used in the mother of our Parliament, the mother of all parliaments as some say.

Clearly we have had a wide-ranging debate today already. The committee itself I am sure will have a wide-ranging debate. I do not think it will be confined by whether it uses the term modernization or reform. It is a question of semantics. I think we should really deal with the issues that can probably improve the way this place works. That really is what this is all about.

The British system is very different in terms of how appointments are made to the House of Lords. It goes back hundreds of years to when appointments were made by the monarchs themselves. It is very different in other ways. For example, the prime minister attends one question period per week. In Britain the prime minister's question time is on Wednesdays if I recall correctly. It is a very different system from what we have here.

In that regard I think many members are interested in seeing reform of our Constitution in due course and in the way both houses in Canada operate. However it is disappointing to note that when there was last a chance to make changes to that with the Charlottetown accord, the member's party voted against a system that would have had an elected Senate.

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12:15 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Vic Toews Canadian Alliance Provencher, MB

Mr. Speaker, just because I will not comment specifically on the comments made, does not mean that I dismiss them.

The member's suggestions are interesting but there are essentially two fundamental problems with our system. First is the method in which people are appointed to the other place, the Senate, where there is no real opposition to the government agenda on a regional basis or otherwise. Second, the House is standing on its head in that the executive controls the private members instead of the private members holding the executive to account.

I noted the member's comments on an elected Senate. Where does he stand on an elected Senate and are his suggestions helpful in respect of holding the executive more accountable to private members?

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12:15 p.m.

Liberal

Geoff Regan Liberal Halifax West, NS

Mr. Speaker, clearly today we are discussing the modernization of this chamber. That is the topic of our debate and it is reasonable for us to talk about that subject. At the same time I take the member's interest in this question of constitutional change. I am certainly interested in it. I did in fact support the Charlottetown accord which would have provided for an elected Senate. My position on that is quite clear.

We all know the difficulties that arise whenever we talk about constitutional change. I do not hear from my constituents a whole lot of desire for more constitutional wrangling, even if there might be a desire to see an elected Senate.

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12:20 p.m.

Liberal

John McKay Liberal Scarborough East, ON

Mr. Speaker, in this debate I would like to offer my observations on judicial nominations, on the issue of take note debates and on the role of a parliamentary secretary and the appearance of ministers at committees.

The first is with respect to judicial nominations and the prerogative of the Prime Minister at this point to make judicial appointments without the supervisory role of Parliament. This comes out of some history where a prime minister did not have to be overly worried about the social views of a potential nominee for a judicial appointment because judges were expected to operate in the realm of what was called black letter law.

Black letter law is a very narrow view of what the common law says on any particular issue. There are limitations on what is or is not admissible as evidence. There are limitations on what can be considered and how one interprets the law. Therefore, the prime minister of the day could sit back, relax and not anticipate that a judicial intervention into an area of social policy would significantly impact the prerogatives of Parliament.

That brings me to the issue of the supremacy of Parliament. Historically the supremacy of Parliament in the area of social policy direction was just that. It was supreme and courts merely interpreted what Parliament must have meant in the circumstances.

However, that was then and this is now. We have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms which has given judges a far greater scope to shape social policy. A judge can put a particular social policy through a charter lens and read an interpretation into a particular piece of legislation. Probably one of the more outstanding examples is that of sexual orientation, where clearly Parliament thought about putting that into the charter and chose not to, but subsequent various judicial interpretations read sexual orientation into various statutes and pieces of common law.

This has resulted, as some say, in what is called a dialogue with Parliament. The charter interpretations are a text that dialogues with this body. Some have interpreted it as more of a monologue and that the judges are having the final say. I am more of the view that there is some give and take, some push and pull between Parliament and the judges. As I say, reasonable people can disagree on the role of the supremacy of Parliament. I think it is fair to say that the supremacy of Parliament has somewhat been eroded by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I raise these background issues in the context of the appointment of judges because when judges were merely black letter law judges we really did not have to worry about what their social views were. Now we do have to be concerned about what their social views are. Their views on particular areas can shape social policy and shape it in directions that possibly Parliament would not necessarily wish to go. That argues for a review of the nomination of judicial appointments by Parliament.

What is the problem with this? I suppose the problem we all look at is the circus that we see in the United States with the congressional reviews of judicial appointments. We see that certain members of congress turn it into, shall we say, a mini-business to ferret out the dirt on various nominations. No stone is left unturned. No embarrassing marijuana conviction or sexual liaison is left to where it should be, namely the private realm of those individuals. Rather it is paraded by the media before the public and it destroys the reputations of very good men and women.

I think there is an intense reaction to this circus that we see to the south of us, these rather graphic examples of turning good men and women away from letting their names stand for judicial appointment. The irony here is that rather than in fact expanding the democratic process, it is actually a turnoff. We see this in voter apathy and in resistance on the part of American electors to engage themselves in congressional elections.

So the issue is this: How can we review a nomination thoughtfully, responsibly and carefully and find out the views of these men and women on important social issues while not turning it into a circus that essentially forces them to withdraw their names from nomination? The short answer to that is, I do not know. Presently we have a system that is very secretive. It is almost like electing a Pope. Possibly we should outfit the Peace Tower to emit black or white smoke on the selection process.

It is not without its politics. I have been practising law for a long time and have some feel for the intensity of politics that goes into the selection of judicial appointments. It is a high art form. It is very intense and I would say very elegant, but it is also very ruthless. Politics is involved in judicial selections, except that the public has no say at all.

The legal community has its own criteria and its own way of doing its self-selecting, but that is based upon its own views of what a competent judge should be. I would argue that by and large the men and women who serve on our benches are very capable people and give very good service to the public. Nevertheless, the public has no say in their views.

So how the people's representatives, those of us in this Chamber, would not turn this process into a circus is the only hesitation I have in this particular issue, but in my view it should be examined. These appointments are of great significance to Canadians.

The second point I want to make is with respect to take note debates. Personally I like take note debates. I like those opportunities. I think they are important debates. What I do not like about them is, first, the short notice that we get. I would like a bit of time to reflect on whatever the debate issue might be. The second issue is that I do not particularly like speaking at 3 o'clock in the morning. It seems that we lay on these take note debates and they go on and on. I do not think that people are at their best at 3 o'clock in the morning. I am certainly not.

The third thing I do not like about take note debates is that there is no formal way in which the government responds to the content of the debate. These debates are usually on very important issues. One example is whether we do or do not go to war. When I first arrived here I assumed, basically on a historical reading, that it was Parliament that decided whether we did or did not go to war. Much to my surprise, Parliament has not decided in a long time, probably since the Korean war, whether we go to war or go to peacekeeping missions. Frankly, I think that the people should have a say. After all, it will be their sons and daughters who are going to be killed or injured in these hostilities. I frankly think the take note debate should be something more than simply a comfort zone for the executive.

On the point about excluding parliamentary secretaries from committees, I do not think that is necessarily a good idea. Properly instructed, a parliamentary secretary can inform a committee of the views of a minister and the views of a department. I appreciate that some parliamentary secretaries are overly partisan and overly zealous, but possibly with some instruction that can be changed.

Finally, on the point about a minister being present for clause by clause, I was there for Bill C-36, probably one of the most important bills that this Parliament has engaged in. While the parliamentary secretary did an able job on 167 amendments, I thought it appropriate that the minister be there to put forward those amendments.

These are my views on those three issues. I appreciate the opportunity to make these comments.

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12:30 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Ken Epp Canadian Alliance Elk Island, AB

Mr. Speaker, I actually enjoyed the speech that the member opposite gave today. I wish I would have had the opportunity to ask the previous speaker this question, but I will ask this hon. member as he obviously comes from the same side of the House and I would like his point of view on it.

The previous speaker mentioned something about take note debates and how valuable they are. He included in that the idea of a parallel parliament. I would like to have the member's comments on this topic, because as we know it is difficult enough to time the schedule of members of Parliament so that they can attend the various committee meetings and all other duties that MPs attend to and also attend debates. I think it might be very appropriate for him to indicate right now, due to the silence of all of the members on the government side, how eager he thinks members would be to have yet another parliament to attend, another massive committee meeting, and whether it even would be practical to expect anyone to actually attend.

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12:30 p.m.

Liberal

John McKay Liberal Scarborough East, ON

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for that question. I agree with him. If we cannot be in two places at one time, how are we going to be in three? It is a good point.

This brings me back to my law practice days, when I used to beat my brains in to get to court at 9:30 so that I could sit there until 2:30 for my case to be heard. It basically wasted those five hours of my day when I did absolutely nothing. It was pretty frustrating.

I find that around here, to be perfectly honest. We are continually rushing to sit somewhere and do nothing. I think this really is more a matter of time management. Frankly, a number of things could be reduced. We do not have to do them.

On the other hand, some of this is brought on by ourselves. There are times when debate is quite useless, frankly, when it goes nowhere and there are endless procedural motions et cetera. I also think, and this is really an off-the-cuff opinion, that some of the time spent in here could be better spent somewhere else. I would not be overly fussed about some of the extensive debate that goes on here, which frankly appears to be pointless and may in fact be pointless, either not going on at all or going on with more focusing of the debate in a more formalized or other chamber. It may mean simply using this room in a different way. That is a totally off-the-cuff opinion, but in my view this is an issue of time allocation as much as it is one of trying to be here, there and everywhere.

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12:30 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Ken Epp Canadian Alliance Elk Island, AB

Mr. Speaker, it is a matter of high privilege to stand in Canada's Parliament to debate the issues that pertain to our citizens, our taxpayers and, indeed, the future of our country. Pivotal to that whole event or that whole process, of course, is the operation of Parliament itself.

I always think eagerly of the enthusiasm with which our new pages come to the House every year. They are all excited. They have finished high school. They have been accepted into the pages program. They come here and are ready to observe how our Parliament works. I often think of them as being the embodiment of the youth and in fact the guarantee of the future of our country, representing thousands of young people across the country.

As a member of Parliament one of the things I do is visit schools quite frequently. In Alberta it is in the grade six year that there is a unit on government. I make myself available to the teachers in my riding and I visit the classrooms. These grade six students have very insightful questions. Very frankly, occasionally when they ask some of these questions it is really challenging to give them a really good answer and to explain to them how Parliament works or how it is supposed to work and how indeed our country is one of the best countries in the world because of our democratic system.

Deep inside, I always worry that I may not be actually telling them what they really should know and that is how dysfunctional their Parliament is. I try to downplay that, but I also mention to them from time to time that members of Parliament sent to Ottawa by their constituents very often have their hands severely tied and cannot really represent their constituents, for various reasons.

So the main emphasis in my talk this morning is going to be on the fundamental reform of Parliament that I think is desperately needed. We as individual members of Parliament come here with the express purpose of and also the dedication and the commitment to representing our constituents first, representing the well-being of the country second, and third, making sure that we look at the long term so that the country is stable, well run, economically viable and successful, and that our resources in the country are well utilized, well into the decades beyond the time when we will be here.

Mr. Speaker, I was remiss in not mentioning in my opening sentence that I am sharing my time with the hon. member for South Surrey--White Rock--Langley. I am very honoured to share my time with her since my uncle is one of her constituents.

Let us talk a little about the need for the idea of a free vote. It is a serious flaw here that we have disciplined votes. I do not mind a party having a stand on something. I think that is great. I think it is wonderful if we can go to the people of Canada at election time and say that we are going to stand for balanced budgets. That was one of our big themes in the election prior to 1993. We said that we were going to stop that incipient sliding into deeper debt which would totally hamstring the young people of the next generation and generations to come with them having to pay the interest and the debt.

For our party to have come here at that time with that as our primary theme, to balance the budgets and to stop borrowing, I think that was an excellent theme. I am very proud of the fact that as a party we were able to present a united front on that, to the point where a Liberal government, which means, as we know, Liberal spending, was actually willing to do the things that needed to be done, to a degree at least, to solve the problem of continued borrowing. It is also true that they were lucky in the sense that they came on to the scene at a time when, due to some of the policies of the previous government, free trade and an economic boom in North America, the revenues of the government increased.

If we were to look at the numbers, we would see that it was just a fortuitous stroke of good fortune that they came here at the time when they did since the government expenditures actually have increased substantially, but at least we were here with that agenda and we gave a united front.

My party persuaded me to join the party based on those policies. It persuades me to stand up and vote with it because I agree with those policies. I will concede that the Liberal members opposite probably often get up and vote with their party because they are persuaded that it is the right thing to do.

However, we know of a number of instances where individuals, and in some cases a large number of individual members of that party and perhaps other parties, have voted against their will because they were instructed how to vote because of party solidarity, not letting the government fall and all that stuff. That, I think, is deplorable.

I really believe that we potentially have in the House 301 talented individuals, most of whom are able to think very well. They are well endowed mentally. Many of them have excellent training academically and yet we find they sometimes go against their better judgment in order to vote for something because it is government policy. I would like to see that changed. That is the main theme of my talk.

There should not be punishment for dissent. John Nunziata should not have been punished by being given a chair beside me because he simply decided to vote against something in the budget that was not according to the way he thought it should be.

It is interesting that we have rules in our Standing Orders and in the Parliament of Canada Act. It is against the law to influence a member of Parliament to vote a certain way. Bribes are considered a high crime, yet for some reason we do not object when a prime minister, a party whip or any of the other party apparatus says that we must vote a certain way or else. To me that is a serious breach, especially because our laws provide that members of Parliament should have the ability to vote freely.

I remember being on a school board many years ago. It happened with great frequency that one of the members would make a motion. The motion would seem quite reasonable at first so someone would second it. Debate would start and suddenly one of the members would say that we should think of the consequences if the motion were to pass. Another person would pick up on that train of thought and say that something else could happen. It would not take very long until the consensus of the group was that we could serve the people best if we rejected the motion. We did our job as a school board.

I was the chairman of the board at the time and when I asked for those in favour of a motion to raise their hands, sometimes even the person who moved the motion had been persuaded that it was a stupid motion and decided to vote against it. The majority of the board was opposed and the motion was defeated. We went to the next motion or item of business.

That does not happen in here. We have this insane imposition on our decision making. Even though the Speaker says “the question is...” and he reads the motion that we are debating or that we are voting on, the people who vote are forced into the mode of saying that what they are really voting on is whether there should be an election. We cannot make decisions that way if the real vote is on a question other than the one we are voting on.

I simply make the point that the fundamental change we need in this Parliament is that we put together our collective heads as wise counsellors and we make the best decision because we are persuaded in that direction rather than being coerced into voting the way we do.

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12:40 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Val Meredith Canadian Alliance South Surrey—White Rock—Langley, BC

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to be here this morning to speak in this take note debate. It was interesting to listen to some of the comments made prior to my speaking because they reflect many of my thoughts.

It was very interesting to listen to the hon. member for Scarborough East who said that he wished the take note debate could be more than a comfort zone for the executive. That really reflects what I think of take note debates.

Yes, it is nice to express our opinions on issues on an interim basis, quickly thought out, largely to fill in time spaces for which the government has no legislation, but what do they really mean? We have a take note debate and very few government members in here listening to it. The results of it are nothing. The government does not listen to what these take note debates are all about and they certainly are not reflected in any of the decisions or policies it comes forward with.

The questions have to be: Are members of Parliament being effective? Are they doing the best job they possibly can within our parliamentary system? After being in this place for nine years, I would have to say that it is obvious to me and to Canadians that changes have to take place.

I came to this place with that particular point in mind, that changes needed to take place and that we needed to reform our parliamentary system as well as other things within government. It has been a frustration to realize that nobody, particularly on the government side, is really interested in any kind of change or reform.

I have had some positive experiences through the committee process. I have been able to sit in committees that, for the large part, because there were no cameras following the debates and discussions, have been non-partisan and where committee members have tried to come up with changes and good recommendations for the government. However, again, the government does not listen.

I have seen the government take a report from the committee, sometimes a unanimous report, and not only ignore it but come up with some legislation that is contrary to the recommendations coming from the committee.

There are some things that we can do to make this place work a little bit better.

We were elected to represent our constituents. We were elected to come here and express the viewpoints of the people in our constituencies in debates and in committees. We face the frustration of not having the ability to do that through the voting process, which is probably a very meaningful conclusion to debates, but the debates themselves are not necessarily overly important. Sometimes I agree with my colleague; I also wonder why we are debating the issue when the government has already made up its mind what the end result is going to be. However at least the vote records what a member of Parliament is prepared to stand up for.

My hon. colleague from Elk Island brought up the issue of every vote being taken as a confidence vote. That is ludicrous. Why can we not vote openly as members of Parliament, representing our constituents, and defeat bad legislation without the threat of defeating the government? It is done in other nations. It is done in the mother of all Parliaments in Great Britain where a motion or piece of legislation of the government that is defeated does not constitute a non-confidence vote. A non-confidence vote would be held afterward and only if that vote passed would the government fall. That is an easy thing to change and it would make the workings of the House much more open and transparent.

What we have is a real lack of commitment from members on the government side. It would appear to me that the backbenchers of the government do not see a great problem with handing over all the control to the executive branch, or, if they do, they are not prepared to do anything about it.

Our system of allowing only the government to put serious bills on the floor of the House is wrong. It is wrong that government members are forced to support that government legislation. It is wrong that the committees are not allowed to openly research and debate the merits of government legislation and to make necessary changes. It is wrong that the executive branch has that kind of control over our parliamentary system.

Maybe it is not possible to separate the executive branch of government from the legislative branch. I would hope that it would be possible but maybe it is not. If it is not, it can at least function better than it is now. It can at least function in a way that allows the members of the government side to challenge the executive branch of government. Right now we do not have that.

I do not know whether we can legislate that change to separate the executive branch from the legislative branch but it would be nice if we could at least legislate backbone for the government members.

It is unfortunate that members of Parliament have to rely completely on their parties. It is unfortunate that resources are divvied out based on a party and given to the party as opposed to members of Parliament.

I am a representative of the Canada-U.S. interparliamentary group. When we meet with our American colleagues it is interesting to see how they operate. The legislation they put on the floor of the congress is not government nor administration legislation. It is legislation that each and every one of the members, who have something to contribute, feels is necessary. They then are able to go to both sides of the house and find support. If it is a good change and a good piece of legislation, they do not have any problem building the support for that legislation to pass.

It is not government's and not the administration's legislation. it is the elected representatives of the Congress who put legislation forward. I am envious that they have that opportunity. More important, because of that process they are given the resources, as members of congress, to research the legislation as to how it affects their constituency and what impact it will have on the nation and are able to make their decision on voting based on facts and on the research they have been able to do. The way our structure works is that resources are given to the party instead of an individual member of Parliament, which does not give us that same ability to look at each piece of legislation in detail.

The other thing that I feel is an important item in the United States is the responsibility and the jurisdiction that it gives to its committees. Its committees have the ability to look into issues on a very serious matter and to call in witnesses without any controls placed on it by the administration. I would suggest that is another thing that has to be changed within our system. Committees have to be removed from the control of the executive branch of government.

Committees are supposedly the child of the House of Commons. They are the arm of the chamber in order to follow legislation through the process. However, what I have seen in the nine years that I have been here, is committees controlled by the executive branch of government. The executive branch of government is the only one that puts in legislation. It is the control of the committees by the executive branch of government that determines the legislation will not be amended or changed. It is the executive branch of government that controls who the members will be and how they will vote on issues. Until we remove the control of the executive branch of our government from the legislative branch and from the responsibilities that the legislative branch has to the Canadian public, we will not change the way the system operates.

I would suggest that part of the result of how we operate as a legislative body is part of the reason, if not the reason, that Canadians are disconnecting from the governance of their country. We are constantly concerned that every time we have an election fewer and fewer Canadians come to the polls. I would argue that it is because we have ignored them. We have removed our connection to them. We continue to do so with the way we operate.

If we want Canadians to be truly engaged, whether it is in the voting process or providing us with issues and their comments on issues, we have to be a more open and transparent organization which respects that each member of parliament has a role to do here. The member has been given a mandate by the voters to be here and to represent them.

It is our duty to change the system to allow a member of parliament to function in a meaningful way in the future of our country.

Parliamentary ReformGovernment Orders

12:50 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Ken Epp Canadian Alliance Elk Island, AB

Mr. Speaker, it was very wise of me to share my time with the member for South Surrey—White Rock—Langley. She gave an excellent speech. The member made a comment regarding committees. I would comment that the committees themselves are controlled by the executive branch of our government.

In legal parlance we say it is not right for someone to be both the judge and executioner. There should be a separation. We have to have a government to administer the laws produced by parliamentarians. Parliamentarians should be able to use their own abilities, their research, their input from their constituents and other areas to have a reasonable representation in our laws of what the people want. The job of the committees is to do that.

There are examples in my committee work. In the finance committee we made some 80 recommendations. The finance minister in his budget chose about five of them and ignored the other 75.

There is the example of the air tax. Every witness who came before the committee said that the air tax would kill short haul airline services. We recommended that the tax should not be implemented. However the vote in the parliamentary committee was whipped and it went exactly opposite to what all of us in the committee knew should happen.

I commend my colleague for pointing out that very serious flaw in our legislative process. Committee work is a very important part of making good laws for Canadians.

Although it is not done publicly, at the beginning of each session we have a prayer. We pray for God almighty to help us make good laws and wise decisions. As parliamentarians we would love to do that. We would like to help the Lord to answer that prayer, but the Prime Minister, who considers himself an authority above all authorities, prevents that from happening by the coercive measures taken to control committees.

I commend my colleague for saying that. Perhaps she has a little more to add to the topic.