moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today on the third reading of Bill S-34, the royal assent bill. This is my first opportunity to speak on legislation since my reappointment as Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, which I have referred to with exaggeration, perhaps, as my home, to the extent that any member can call this place his home. Of course it really is not. This House is not our home, because we reside here only so long as our constituents decide that we do, but in my case it is very close to home. I am approaching the 36th anniversary of the day that I first came here as a House of Commons employee.
I am very proud to have the opportunity early on to speak not only to this bill, but to a bill that involves of course parliamentary democracy and the non-partisan efforts and wisdom of parliamentarians to work together to make the House a better place.
Of course we had our modernization committee about a year ago. That was very successful. It enjoyed the unanimous support of the House. I repeat today the thanks that I gave at the time to other colleagues.
Today, arguably, this is a smaller issue, but nevertheless one that involves modernization of a parliamentary institution again. The royal assent bill is based on the advice and recommendations of the 1985 McGrath committee, as well as the contribution of many members on both sides of the House and in the other place over the last nearly two decades. No one said that these things are done in a hurried way.
I would like to mention in particular, and I will refer to them by name here because they are members of the other place, Senator John Lynch-Staunton, the leader of the opposition in the other place, who has been speaking about this issue for years and years now and on whose bill this bill is modelled, as well as the hon. Senators Murray and Gauthier for their efforts to develop a workable solution to the royal assent problem. Obviously I also want to congratulate and thank the sponsor of this legislation in the other place for his continued efforts in assisting us in this regard.
The current ceremony of royal assent is based on conventions established over the centuries in the United Kingdom. It is therefore appropriate that this bill, Bill S-34, should reflect legislation adopted by the U.K. in 1967, authorizing royal assent by written declaration.
I know that my colleague from Lanark—Carleton has concerns about this bill because he wants our traditions preserved. I must tell him that I support him in this initiative to preserve our parliamentary traditions. I am one of those who believe that, in a young country like ours, we perhaps have less tradition than certain other democracies do. Our traditions for protocol and other things must therefore be as carefully guarded as they are elsewhere. After all, by definition, our relatively youth means that we have far fewer than some other countries.
That said, we really should not think that we need to preserve all traditions and never modernize them. There must be a happy medium somewhere. I believe that we have found that happy medium with this bill.
First, this bill would preserve the royal assent ceremony as an important tradition. I am very pleased with that. The bill would require the ceremony to take place on two occasions every calendar year, one of these being for the first appropriation bill of each session.
We are aware of the importance a parliament such as ours assigns to budget appropriations, so the first such bill would be the subject of a traditional royal assent ceremony, if I might call it that. Second, this existing tradition must be maintained at least one other time in the year.
The purpose of all this is to ensure that we are not rushing into a new initiative that could be prejudicial to the parliamentary traditions we all want to preserve.
Second, the bill would authorize royal assent by written declaration.
I know that the current ceremony, which is based on the customs and conventions developed in previous centuries in the U.K., is significant to members of parliament and, to a degree, the public, as it should.
At the same time, the scarce amount of time available for debate means that the interruption in the business of parliament caused by the traditional ceremony has led to calls by many, including the all party report of Mr. McGrath many years ago, for an additional streamlined process of royal assent.
Just to remind all members, at the present time if we have royal assent on a particular day and two days later we pass another bill, we could be in a rather curious situation of interrupting parliament twice in the same week for royal assent. That is a bit much under the system we have now. Actually we are the only parliament in the Commonwealth that has a system as strict as the one we have.
Bill S-34 would establish a balance between the traditions and the modernization of parliamentary procedures. I do not think it goes very far but it goes that distance. Should we want to go further someday we could. I would prefer that we do it that way rather than go too far and then have to reinstate those provisions because it would be in the interest of preserving our parliamentary traditions. This is why the bill enjoys the support of all parties in the House.
I know a few members are still concerned even though their party position is to support the bill. I do not in any way pretend that their arguments are invalid or that their wanting to preserve tradition is somehow less valid. I know their arguments are as heartfelt as the arguments made in the other place. While most senators thought we needed to modernize this procedure to the limited extent that we were advancing it, some thought we should not touch it at all. That is okay. Perhaps having a few members with that kind of careful reticence at the end is a reminder to all of us that we should not go headstrong into some of these things that could, if abused, which I do not think they do in this case, damage the traditions that we hold so dear.
I would like to emphasize that Bill S-34 is procedural and only relates to the form of signifying royal assent. The Governor General or her deputy would of course still continue to exercise the royal prerogative and it is only in that way that it can be done.
The royal prerogative of assent is retained in the Senate chamber when royal assent is done by way of a ceremony or by a written declaration of the Governor General or her deputies when the written declarations are reported to the Speakers of both Houses of parliament. Both procedures respect the convention that all three constituent elements of parliament are involved: the Crown, the Senate and the House of Commons assembled in parliament. That is our constitutional definition now and it would be preserved by this process.
It has also been pointed out during consideration in the House that Canada is the only Commonwealth country that uses the traditional royal assent ceremony. Among the provinces, the Ontario legislature in 1973, through an all party agreement, waived the formality of summoning the lieutenant governor to the chamber for royal assent. Everyone knows that in Ontario, the province I represent, our motto is loyalty to our tradition. Translated from Latin I believe it states: Loyal she began, loyal she stands. The insistence of the preservation of that is very strong in the province I represent in the House. The most important highway in the southern part of Ontario is even called the Queen Elizabeth Highway, the QEW. Even though the traditions are very strong in the province of Ontario those traditions have been modernized there.
Quebec also uses the written procedure which is done in the office of the lieutenant governor general.
Bill S-34 would modernize the procedures of parliament in a way that would draw upon the advice of members of the House and of the other place, and which is based on the experience of other jurisdictions, including the U.K. and of course a number of provinces.
In conclusion, I am pleased to say that the bill received the support of all parties at second reading and in committee. The bill enjoys support on all sides of the House and would remove a significant interruption in the business of the House to the benefit of all members, while at the same time preserving the royal assent ceremony as a tradition of parliament and, I would like to add, as a very significant and important tradition of this great institution.
BIll S-34 is the result of careful study and recommendations by members of parliament and senators over a period of 20 years. It is consistent with the practices of Commonwealth countries and of our provinces.
For those reasons I would like to invite all hon. members to join me in supporting the passage of the bill. I want to thank the sponsor of the bill in the other place and all those who produced parallel and previous private members' bills in this House and in the other House toward modernizing this institution.
I see the hon. House leader of the official opposition and I would like to take this occasion to say that I look forward to working with him over the next while, as we have done for a long time in the past. We both changed positions for awhile and somehow ended up across from each other some time later doing precisely the same function that we did in some previous political incarnation. I salute him at the same time.