Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order to respond to a point of order that was raised by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons. I must admit that when I heard the objection he was making to a question that was put on the order paper, I was a bit surprised given your ruling about four years ago when he and I had an exchange on the same point. What I see are very similar issues and he appears to be making the same errors in terms of his analysis of this particular question by the member for Honoré-Mercier. It is about Standing Order 39(1) and 39(2) and just for the record. Standing Order 39(1) reads:
Questions may be placed on the Order Paper seeking information from Ministers of the Crown relating to public affairs; and from other Members, relating to any bill....
I will not go on with the rest of it, as it is really the second part that is important. It authorizes the Clerk of the House to be able to determine whether the question is a proper one. The test for that is that the question must be coherent and concise.
The question was submitted and I will give a quick history because this is not in the record right now. We had the pattern up until, I believe, 1999 where there were very little limits on the number of questions members could put on the order paper. I have heard some commentary suggesting it could be as much thousands of questions on the order paper. There was no limit on the number of questions that individual members could put on either.
In 1999, we changed the Standing Orders and limited to four the number of questions that any member of Parliament could have on the order paper at any given time and, at that time, introduced Standing Orders 39(1) and 39(2) where we are dealing with this issue of what test is used.
Obviously, Mr. Speaker, the way around the limit of four, which I think you have recognized in previous rulings, is to put a whole bunch of sub-questions in.
Mr. Speaker, in terms of the rulings, and specifically the one you made in 2006 involving a question that was on the order paper to the defence department by Dawn Black, a former member of Parliament from New Westminster--Coquitlam, you made a specific ruling and I want to draw your attention to that because it has not been mentioned by the other people who argued this in previous days. You made several rulings that have guided us since then, which is why I am surprised that it is here, but I want to draw your attention to it again.
You made reference to the history and then you talked about a pattern that we had seen by members of the opposition, Conservative members or Reform Alliance, I am not sure which party they were, where very lengthy questions were being put in. Within this one ruling, Mr. Speaker, you made it very clear that length was not the test, that it was conciseness. In this case, you made a ruling on October 18, 2006, and I will read two points with regard to the issue of length. The first point is on the fourth page of the decision:
The issue was not the length of the question but rather the fact that it contained unrelated sub-questions.
Therefore, you made the point that it was back to conciseness. With regard to how conciseness is looked at, you made this point:
It is no longer interpreted to mean short or brief but rather comprehensible. Undoubtedly, this practice has evolved as a means of getting around the limit of four questions per member.
Mr. Speaker, I want to read part your decision in Question No. 9 because you set out the means by which you proceeded to divide the question. I must say that what you did at that point was logical. You broke it down into three sub-questions. With regard to the paragraph that deals with that, you said:
The first question concerns the government's objectives, strategy, vision, results and capabilities with respect to the Afghanistan mission and includes 33 sub-questions. The second deals specifically with Canadian Forces casualties in Afghanistan. It contains five subsections. Seven sub-questions related to financial matters are grouped together in a third question.
You broke it down that way and it seemed to be a logical and appropriate result. I think the House, generally, was quite satisfied and has tended to guide itself by that ruling over the last four years.
However, now we come to the question that the member for Honoré-Mercier has put forward. I have looked at it, using your same criteria, and I must admit that it is quite a lengthy question, as the parliamentary secretary pointed out repeatedly. However, although it is very lengthy, it really asks the government if it has done the analyses. There are five analyses and then two other sections. I could see it being broken down into two questions but no more than that.
The point I want to make in this regard, and I feel like I may be acting on behalf of the member for Honoré-Mercier, is that what he has really done is to be helpful to the government in terms of it being able to respond. He is saying that here are the analyses that he wants to know about, whether they are legal and the effect it has on privacy. He has listed those at the start of each subsection and then explains the kind of detail he wants, if the government has it.
It is easy for the government to say that it has very clear points that the member wants to know, which, I believe, makes it easier for the government to respond, as opposed to the member just putting the individual headings of the analyses that he wants and then the government is left to try to guess how much detail he wants. He has set that detail out. Therefore, his question is concise and comprehensive.
Mr. Speaker, if you are going to break it down at all, I think it should not be into more than two questions: one is very clear analyses, and there are five of those, and there are two other areas.
The parliamentary secretary kept arguing that if the intent here is to delay the matter. If the effect of these questions are to cause some delay to the government, it is not a criteria that you, Mr. Speaker, would take into account, at least you have never ruled that way in the past. So that is a specious argument as far I can see.