Mr. Speaker, with respect to the Standing Orders, the next item I had which I think ought to be considered for change is the method of election of chairs and vice-chairs in committee.
I was always intrigued with this when I first came here. When it came to election time, instead of having a slate from which to elect as we do in every other election, in committees we were not permitted to do that. Even when we elect the Speaker here there is a slate of all the candidates and we can choose which one we are voting for. In committees we are not permitted to do that. One person says, “I nominate X”, and then the vote is yes or no on that one person.
I would rather have a slate of candidates, a slate of everybody who is willing to be there, and let the committee choose the chair and the vice-chairs based on a slate. Then of course we would have runoff elections if necessary, if no one has a clear majority. To me, that would be a more reasonable way of electing chairs.
The way it is now sometimes for the candidates who have expressed their willingness to come forward, only the first one nominated gets a chance to be considered. I think there is a huge flaw in that. I know the hon. member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell would probably take exception to this. I am not sure, but I would sure like to hear his comments on that sometime as well.
The last thing I would like to have in the Standing Orders is on the Speaker's reluctance to intervene when there are problems in committees. Several times I have had a problem myself where there have been clear violations of ordinary rules of democracy. This was in a previous Parliament, not the current Parliament, where the chair actually declared passed a motion that had been defeated.
That occurred in a clause by clause of a bill. The committee chair said, “Shall clause 38 pass?”, or whichever one it was that we were on, and not a single person said yes. I and my colleague on the committee said no and the chairman said, “I declare the motion passed”. It was so opposite to the way a democracy is supposed to work when the chair declared that something had passed when in fact the only response in the committee was a negative.
I remember reporting that to the House. The Speaker of the day said that committees can do whatever they want, that they are masters of their own fate. I think they should be, but within the rules of democracy. When there is such a blatant and obvious violation of a simple vote, then the Speaker should be able to intervene in order to make sure that the rules of democracy are kept.
That completes my remarks. I have one more brief comment. We have had this step of a bill being referred to a committee before second reading. I remember when that first came in. It sounded like such a fine idea that all of the committee members could work together to fine-tune the first draft of a bill so there would be a better opportunity to get a good bill.
Unfortunately, within the party politics of the committee, that simply served to take away the debate time in the House. I think that is something that has to be revisited. If we are going to do that, fine, but then that should be added as another stage in the bill.
In other words, if it should be referred before second reading, when it comes to second reading then the debate on second reading should be exactly as it is now, with further referral to a committee. In other words, we should add an extra step because of the fact that the politics involved sometimes prevent real input into the formation of the bill.
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.