Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the motion moved by the hon. Conservative member. Earlier I asked a question of the member, who did appear open, but we must nevertheless have a closer look at the situation. Why is it that we are discussing question period here today? Recent history tells us why.
We have had a minority government since 2006. Inevitably, this government is feeling a little oppressed by opposition questions. Prior to that, we had the sponsorship scandal, and question period in the House had a significant impact on what happened in Canadian politics. If we want to change how things are done, it is very important that the opposition not lose any of its power to put questions to those who deserve them. At the time of the sponsorship scandal, Alfonso Gagliano was bombarded with questions every day. So we have to look at how the Conservative member's motion will affect this way of doing things.
The Bloc Québécois agrees with the first paragraph of the motion:
(i) elevating decorum and fortifying the use of discipline by the Speaker, to strengthen the dignity and authority of the House,
We have already mentioned this many times in the House. Of course, we believe the Speaker has the power to elevate decorum. That is his responsibility, and he must exercise it.
The motion contains other paragraphs:
(ii) lengthening the amount of time given for each question and each answer,
I listened to the speech given by the hon. Liberal member just before me. She mentioned the Quebec National Assembly. We must not forget that at this time, the House has two and a half times more members than the National Assembly. If the Conservatives' reforms for the House of Commons go ahead, this would add about another 30 members and the House of Commons would have three times more members than the National Assembly. So it is only natural that, during question period, the questions and answers are longer because there are fewer members.
As I mentioned earlier to the Conservative member who moved the motion, the problem is that we do not want to see the number of opposition questions decreased as the amount of time for questions and answers is lengthened. Obviously, it was not clear. What he said was that we would have to ask shorter questions. Why would the Bloc Québécois ask 30-second or 20-second questions? Because it wants to keep the same number of questions it has now. Otherwise, question period would have to be extended. But extending question period would affect committees and all kinds other things. Things are this way for a reason.
The third paragraph states:
(iii) examining the convention that the Minister questioned need not respond,
We have always said that this is question period, not answer period. The ministers could always claim that they answered us, and then provide unsatisfactory answers. I have to wonder about that paragraph.
(iv) allocating half the questions each day for Members, whose names and order of recognition would be randomly selected,
Once again, if the point is to allow every member in the House to be eligible for the random selection, so just as many government members as opposition members, that means that government members would get more questions, and the opposition would get fewer. That means that we would not have been able to ask the 440 questions that were asked during the sponsorship scandal, and that the Bloc Québécois would have fewer opportunities to clean up Parliament.
(v) dedicating Wednesday exclusively for questions to the Prime Minister,
It is similar to the paragraph that follows it:
(vi) dedicating Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday for questions to Ministers other than the Prime Minister in a way that would require Ministers...
That would mean that if a current affair involves a minister and his day is Thursday or Tuesday of the following week, we would have to wait a week before being able to question that minister. That makes no sense. We would have to wait a week before we could ask the Prime Minister a question on Wednesday. That makes no sense. Take, for example, the effect that question period had on the sponsorship scandal. Every day it helped reveal the scope of the largest scandal involving the Canadian government in our country's history.
Obviously, at first glance it would be understandable to agree with the principle of this motion. We agree that decorum in the House needs to be improved and we will support any measure to that effect. But, the motion moved by the Conservative member seems to want to muzzle the opposition and we will never agree to that. I can understand that the Liberal Party, which was hit hard by the sponsorship scandal, will support the motion. However, they will understand that the Bloc Québécois, which wants increased transparency in this House, will oppose any measure that would limit the opposition's time to ask questions. Obviously, our discussions and positions will always be aimed at increasing transparency.
I realize that our Conservative colleague has reached out to us, but we have to say that it was the Conservative Party that prorogued Parliament when under a great deal of pressure about the treatment of Afghan detainees. It was this government that refused to turn over the documents, and the Speaker had to make a historic ruling to force the government to turn over those documents. And it is this government that is refusing to allow political staff to appear before committees, so we have to watch out. When I read the motion as written, I feel that the intent is to shut down and muzzle the opposition, but we will always oppose any attempt by the Conservative Party to muzzle us.
I would warn the Conservatives about minority governments. Great Britain, the mother country of many members, just elected a minority government. They will see what happens, but I feel we cannot change the way we do things just because we have a minority government and the Conservatives do not like how question period goes. We will always be in favour of greater decorum in this House. Having civilized debates is no problem.
But this would limit the number of questions the opposition can ask and the ministers of whom they can ask questions. If we have questions for the Prime Minister, we should be able to ask him questions every day. If he is at the root of all of the problems we are having now, he should have to answer questions during question period every day, just like Gagliano had to answer questions every day because he caused a problem. We would not want this motion to exempt ministers from answering any of the questions that come their way just because their turn only comes around once a week.
When ministers decide not to rise and delegate colleagues to rise in their stead, that sends a message. The Conservatives are very good at it. They decide that ministers involved in or targeted by media attacks will not rise to defend themselves. They need to know that the people and the media see what is going on. People see what they are up to.
This Parliament has always worked a certain way, and I think the results have been good. Among other things, our approach exposed the sponsorship scandal. I have a problem with the Conservatives trying once again to amend the act to prevent people from exposing scandals involving governments in power. We support the first paragraph of the motion, which says that we must elevate decorum and fortify the use of discipline by the Speaker, but we do not support any of the other paragraphs.
In the end, given that there is more disagreement than agreement, we will oppose the motion. Nevertheless, if the member's motion does not pass, we strongly encourage him to move another in which he respects the fact that the opposition has the right to ask any question. The opposition represents all those who want to know what the government is up to.
In my opinion, anything that appears to muzzle the opposition is antidemocratic, so before we proceed with any changes to parliamentary process here in Canada, I would suggest we wait and see what will happen with Great Britain's minority government.