Debates of June 17th, 2010

Opposition Motion—Prorogation

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, although my colleague has not been in this place a long time, he served in the Manitoba legislature for the better part of 25, 30 years. It is like when we refer to rank, we always give people a higher one, never a low one. If we are not sure what their rank is, they are a general. The hon. member was there for 30 years until I hear different.

The fact remains that he understands how the process works. We do not know exactly when we will report. I only said that I doubted we would be finished until November and if we were, it would only have been by a few weeks. Whether it would come before or after an election, I do not know. The parliamentary secretary made reference to the respect in the way the committee was working. No one is playing any games. We do not know when the election is coming. At this point, no one is saying let us get it done sooner or later to shaft this party or that party. None of that is going on. At this point, all we are doing is hearing from experts. We are getting close to finishing that. It is the first stage of our work. When that is done, we will begin to deliberate.

The hon. member will know that once we are into deliberations, there is no way to know how long. It is like a jury. We could wrap it up in one day or it could take a year. There could be majority reports, minority reports. All I know, in my opinion as the member on the committee for our party, is the committee is doing the work that is necessary. It will deliver a report and the rest of this is just nonsense.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from Hamilton Centre has spoken quite articulately about the lack of substance and about the shortcomings of the motion. The hon. member was quite outraged by the House being prorogued at the end of last year, as I and many Canadians were.

Could my hon. colleague talk about other issues that could help the official opposition, that could have been talked about? My riding of New Westminster—Coquitlam and Port Moodie is facing many issues, such as jobs, the economy, pensions, the environment, climate change, affordable housing or transit. The list is long. Could he comment on that, perhaps focusing on any real and substantive issues that are not already being dealt with? As he has already outlined, there is a committee to deal with this.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely right. We could pick any number of issues, as my colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek did. We could pick an issue that matters to any of our constituents and put together an opposition day motion. It does not take that long if we have to do it at the last minute. It is easy to find issues that are important and bring them forward. However, to do this is what is so insulting.

We have an opportunity. Prorogation and the abuse of it is really important, but as my colleague said, so is health care, so is the environment, so are jobs. Those are things that are not being dealt with in a way that is acceptable right now.

The prorogation issue is in committee. We will have the fights. It is being dealt with in the way it would. Why are we not dealing with are matters with which we have not dealt yet? There is enough of those issues around.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor.

This parliamentary session is starting to wind down. It may even be over by tonight. It has been quite fractious and contentious and, I would submit, little was accomplished with the exception of a raft of micro-mini criminal bills, many of which had already been introduced in previous sessions of Parliament or previous Parliaments themselves.

This session was delayed by six weeks because of the Prime Minister's penchant for prorogation. Whenever the Prime Minister perceives that he is under a political threat he cancels Parliament. If it were up to the Prime Minister, Parliament would be limited to merely a throne speech declaration and budget rubber-stamping. Everything else would go by fiat. In fact, some might say that it already does.

The parliamentary Westminster system gives a prime minister enormous power, power to select the executive, power to appoint the judiciary, power to appoint half of the legislature, power to keep his or her caucus in fear and trembling, plus literally thousands of other order in council appointments and a whole array of quasi-judicial bodies. However, that is not enough for our Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister's repetitive resort to the use of prorogation got Canadians very upset. It was a gross political miscalculation and Canadians let him know, in no uncertain terms, that they expect their democracy to function here in this chamber and have their MPs heard on the issues of the day. However, the people they elected to represent them were muzzled, shut up and sidelined by the unilateral actions and the high-handedness of the Prime Minister.

Canadians were so outraged that they held huge rallies on the Hill and elsewhere and started a Facebook site that instantly grew to over 200,000 users. Emails and letters were flying back and forth between MPs' offices and outraged citizens, and government MPs were accosted on a regular basis for their participation in shutting down Parliament.

What is it that motivates the Prime Minister to shut down Parliament twice in 12 months? I submit that the present Prime Minister in particular, and like no other, cannot stand dissent or disagreement no matter how respectful. He is a command and control Prime Minister like no other. He brooks no backtalk from anyone, let alone those pesky, no nothing MPs who ask rude and impertinent questions. Those who demand transparency and accountability get nothing but stonewalling.

It was nothing less than an historic ruling by you, Mr. Speaker, that reminded the Prime Minister that Parliament was supreme and that the government must bow to the will of Parliament.

I would submit that there is a pattern here. It is not just the all too frequent resort to prorogation and it is not just the powerful ruling of you, Mr. Speaker. It is the systematic shutting down of voices of dissent.

In February we learned that KAIROS, after a 30 year funding relationship with the Government of Canada, was terminated, and this spread apart from all of the various parties, a Conservative government and Liberal governments. After 30 years of good work by some of the most dedicated and sincere people that one would ever want to meet, it was shut down.

KAIROS is made up of the Anglican Church, the Christian Reform, Presbyterians, Evangelical Lutherans, the United Church, Catholics, Quakers, Mennonites, pretty well the entire spectrum of the Christian community. However, it was not enough just to de-fund the KAIROS organization. The government said that it was a bunch of anti-Semites at the same time.

If the Prime Minister can shut down Parliament on a whim and defy the conventions of Parliament until a Speaker makes a historic ruling, shutting down Canada's Christian churches is a mere nothing. Thirty years of paid full service were dismissed with a phone call in the night. Why? It was because the organization dared speak truth to power. It is chill and kill any voice of dissent. This is some democracy.

However, KAIROS is neither the first nor the last. Rights & Democracy is an entity that was created by Parliament 22 years ago. It has developed an enviable international reputation. Here the pattern was to destabilize the board and, after a number of confrontations between the board and the staff, the staff signed a mass letter of protest against the board. Regardless of how it turns out and regardless of the findings of the committee of this House after its inquiry, its reputation will have to be rebuilt. At this point, its reputation is destroyed and it has lost its hard-won international credibility. By the way, they are also a bunch of anti-Semites.

Do we see a pattern here? Shut down Parliament, have the Speaker force a ruling, dismiss Canada's churches and shut down Rights & Democracy, a well-respected international organization, by destabilization.

My colleagues, the member for York Centre and the member for Winnipeg South Centre, hosted a meeting last Monday here on Parliament Hill. Seventeen organizations that have been de-funded or are on their way to being de-funded came to Parliament Hill to tell their story. They included the Assembly of First Nations, Council for International Co-operation, the Canadian Council on Learning, the Canadian Council on Social Development, Oxfam and a whole host of others that came to tell their story.

What was interesting when I listened to their stories was that they did not realize that all of the others were being de-funded at the same time and that there was a pattern here, which was that any voice that disagrees with the government, no matter how muted or how respectful, gets shut down. It was sorry but after 5, 10, 15 or 20 years of a relationship where they spoke into the marketplace of ideas, it no longer wished to hear from them.

Each group had its story and each group was either chilled and stilled or on its way to being chilled and stilled. Even those that do not receive funding from the government or whose funding is still secure were shocked by the extensive and pervasive pattern of the government to shut down the voices of dissent. Democracy suffers when those who have a different view are prevented from speaking.

A friend sent me a note and expressed himself far more eloquently than can I. He said, “Canadians value greatly our open and democratic society, believe in the importance of human rights, including the right to free expression and the value of ensuring a diversity of views and perspectives in public debate. The government should act on its responsibility to promote effective policy debate and to cease and desist its active attacks, threats and de-funding campaigns to silence critics in civil society or in the public service who are acting in good faith, consistent with their mandates to create a healthy democracy and protect human rights.

It gets worse. The Canadian Council for International Co-operation represents over 100 NGOs. It is possibly the most respected research and advocacy organization in Canada. It, too, is awaiting the dreaded midnight phone call. After 42 years of human rights work, it will be down the drain. If the government can shut down Parliament, KAIROS, CCIC and Rights & Democracy are mere nothings.

I will end by quoting Martin Niemöller who famously said:

...they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. ... Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Chill, kill and still is the pattern of the government. We are going backwards in this democracy. This past six months is a backward step for the freedom to speak in our democracy and to talk and have our voice heard. This is a pattern and it is a regrettable pattern that must stop.

[James Rajotte, Conservative, Edmonton—Leduc, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I serve with the member on the finance committee and I have a great deal of respect for him but I am absolutely astounded by some of his remarks here today.

The fact is that he was here in the House, as I was, when Parliament was prorogued in the past by the Liberal government when there was a full slate of bills on the order paper. When Prime Minister Chrétien prorogued twice when I was in opposition, I did not hear any complaints from the member at that time.

In terms of dissent, it is interesting that the member equates not funding an organization with not allowing that organization to speak. An organization has every right to speak and every right to raise funds, as groups, such as Results Canada, do, which I know that he and I both respect.

With respect to funding, though, the member is constantly telling me how we should be spending less as a government. If he does not think that cuts to those certain groups should have been made, I would like the member to stand in his place and state explicitly where he or the Liberal Party believes this government should actually cut funding instead of the funding to the groups that he has outlined.

I would also like the member to address the issue of dissent. This Prime Minister, as a member of a centre right government, actually appointed to our most important foreign post perhaps the most successful centre left politician in this country at the provincial level, Gary Doer, to represent us in Washington. If that is not an example of a Prime Minister reaching across the ideological aisle to ensure that we are well represented as Canadians, I do not know what is.

I would like the member to comment on those things and perhaps retract some of those outlandish statements he made in his speech here today.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member said, I do serve on the finance committee with him and I do respect his work. It is one of the functioning committees, which I guess speaks to the point, because for the last six months the government has adopted a slash and burn attitude toward a lot of the committees and made them dysfunctional. That, too, is part of shutting down the voices.

The hon. member and I have a great deal of time and respect for the Parliamentary Budget Officer but he has come before our committee and has said that he was not getting any co-operation from the government and therefore could not offer impartial and accurate advice to our committee.

In terms of shutting down voices, there is Linda Keen of the Canada Nuclear Safety Commission; Adrian Measner of the Canadian Wheat Board; Yves Le Bouthillier, president of the Law Commission of Canada; Andrew Okulitch of Geological Survey of Canada; and Allan Amey, president of the Climate Fund Agency on Canada emissions reductions. I could go on with quite a list of people, all of whom have been silenced by the government. It is a chill on dissent in this country.

[James Rajotte, Conservative, Edmonton—Leduc, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member mentioned the Parliamentary Budget Officer. If the member will check the record of the finance committee, he will see that no one has appeared before our committee more often, certainly since I have been on that committee in the last two years, than that very Parliamentary Budget Officer.

In fact, in the last supplementary estimates the member will know that the funding was increased for the Parliamentary Budget Officer. The member will also know that reporting is all done online. Canadians, parliamentarians or whoever can fact-check that out for themselves.

In fact, voices that have at times been critical of this government and appointments that have been made by this government are very welcome to come to committee. There has never been a refusal by any Conservative member on the finance committee whenever a request from the opposition was made for the Parliamentary Budget Officer to come forward.

The image that the member is portraying is so fundamentally wrong. What I like to tell Canadians back home, and I like to use hockey analogies, is that the reality is that as a minority government we are basically short-handed for 60 minutes and every once in a while we like to get a breakaway and hopefully score a goal.

The reality is that it is hard to get anything done in committee because, as the member knows, the opposition always outweighs the government on any single vote. We have to cross the aisle to get anything done--

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I will have to stop the member there because there are only 30 seconds left to respond.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that the Parliamentary Budget Officer has been invited to the committee and has come freely many times. However, during each occasion that he has come to the committee he has said that he was not getting co-operation from the Department of Finance and the Government of Canada and that, therefore, he was limited in the report he could make to our committee and therefore to this Parliament. That is the point that the Parliamentary Budget Officer continues to make.

I do not quite understand why that is not one of the more fundamental ways in which the alternative voice to the government--

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I will have to stop the member there.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I am inspired to stand to debate and discuss the issue of prorogation itself, because I am concerned about the execution of it in the past and am deeply worried about how Parliament should behave.

As a parliamentarian, I think I should defend the supremacy of Parliament. It is my responsibility to defend the institution. We bring laws in here. We certainly feel that given the supremacy of Parliament, it is a place where we should all behave. That way, any divisive issue, any issue that is used as a wedge to gain better poll positions or political points, should not be used through this particular procedure.

Prorogation has certainly become a hot issue over the past two years. The first time it happened, it seemed to slip under the radar somewhat. The second time it occurred, the Conservatives thought the execution of it was so silky smooth that they were going to get away with it and that the general public would actually forget over time.

However, we found ourselves in a grassroots campaign, compliments, for the most part, of social networking on the Internet, which brought this issue to the fore. We finally felt that the government recognized that the people of this country recognize the importance of their democratic institutions, primarily of course, in this particular situation of prorogation.

I am glad that this motion is in the House today and that we are going through this procedure.

In the meantime, we find ourselves at least trying to defend the institutions of Parliament, to the point where sometimes we get bogged down in the minutiae of day-to-day mudslinging, certainly when it comes to question period. I hope that the decorum will come back to the House so that we can show people that we are making a concerted effort to make this a truly democratic institution. My goodness, if we tried that, we would be heroes all.

I want to point out some of the comments that have been made about the latest round of prorogation. I do not even have to explain it any more, because now everybody knows what prorogation is. Unfortunately, people know about prorogation because of the way we have been abusing it. That, in and of itself, is certainly sad when it comes to the House of Commons, which we hold in such high esteem.

Nelson Wiseman is an esteemed professor whose opinions we rely on quite a bit around here. In an article, he writes:

Responding to public revulsion, the director of communications for the Minister of Finance rhetorically asked in The Hill Times, “where was the outrage toward the previous 104 instances”?

He went on to state:

The answer is simple: no prime minister has so abused the power to prorogue. Harper’s former chief of staff Tom Flanagan understood the obvious: the purpose of prorogation —

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Order. The hon. member cannot name members of the chamber, even when quoting.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, excuse me. It is late in the season, and I get a little carried away when it comes to defending the House of Commons.

Anyway, I see that I have created quite a bit of excitement across the way. I would like to point out something else to them.

Speaking about this particular situation, another certain professor, Andrew Heard, had these points about prorogation itself and about how we must be careful that we do not abuse the system. He said:

There is little guidance to be had from historic precedent as no Prime Minister in Canada has asked for prorogation in the face of an almost certain defeat on a confidence vote. Prorogation is normally granted after many months of parliamentary business have elapsed....In 1988, Parliament was prorogued after only 11 sitting days....Prorogation came after only fourteen calendar days and twelve sitting days in the first session after the 1930 federal election. In both 1988 and 1930, however, the government had a solid majority in the House of Commons, and there was no question that prorogation would permit the government to avoid defeat.

Basically, what he is saying is that the precedents that some people cite, and what happened before and quickly thereafter, were not questions of government survival, because the majority was in place. That was not the case this time.

Now we find ourselves in a situation in which we could be abusing the system only for the sake of political survival. In this last particular situation, it was certainly perverse in the way it was used, because the government wanted to avoid one small particular issue: Afghan detainees.

I would caution everyone in the House not to use the methods within the House to defeat the purposes of the supremacy of Parliament. I remember that just a short time ago we brought in a motion to say that we did not agree with reforms to NAFO, the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization. There was a vote in the House that said that we did not agree with what they were doing in NAFO. We did not agree with the agreement that was struck in Europe, with many other countries, regarding the health of fish stocks off our coast, particularly the east coast.

The vote said that we did not agree with it, yet the very next day, the government ratified the agreement, defying the opinion of the House.

We might cite precedents showing when that has happened before. However, let us go back just a few more years and talk about 2006. I say this with the utmost respect. Let us talk about the document called “Stand Up for Canada”.

As a man who is 5 feet 4 inches tall, I certainly appreciate the respect I can get when I stand up in the House. When the government stands up and says that it will bring every international agreement within the confines of the House to debate and vote on, it tells us that the government must respect Parliament. At least, that was the intention.

The government did not even bring that agreement to the House. We had to bring this particular agreement to the House to debate. We voted. We did not like it. The next day, in defiance of that opinion, it was signed, or ratified, which is the term used.

Bradley Miller, assistant professor, University of Western Ontario, made a good point about prorogation. He said:

Prorogation is a regular event in the parliamentary cycle, but until this occasion had always come at the end of a legislative session—that is, when the government decided that its legislative agenda was complete. There is no Canadian precedent establishing that the Governor General has the power to refuse to grant prorogation in these circumstances....It is, however, arguable that the power to refuse dissolution ought to extend to the power to refuse prorogation....It is argued that one of the rationales for the power to refuse to grant a dissolution—to provide that check on the [government]....

That applies in this particular situation. I would say, according to his words, that the Governor General has to take a greater role in the future so that dissolution, or in this case, prorogation, is not abused by the levers of government, because that power is vested within the Crown. Therefore, we must seriously consider that.

Eric Adams is another highly esteemed professor. He said:

The specific power to prorogue Parliament is unmentioned in the Constitution, but it was well understood by the framers to fall within the prerogative of the Crown.

I just mentioned that idea.

Blackstone stated and explained:

A prorogation is the continuance of the parliament from one session to another, as an adjournment is the continuation of the session from day to day.

That is a good point, because we do not stand here and try to interrupt the daily session just because it is not going well. There are times when we are just not performing up to par. I use that term rather lightly, as the House can well understand.

We do not use that power to shut down for a particular day, so why should we shut this down for a particular session? They talked about the fact that we were holding up legislation, yet at the very same time, the government prorogued Parliament, killing 37 bills, the vast majority of which were promises it made in successive campaigns. The government thought that the execution was so silky smooth that it was actually going to work.

The grassroots then decided that they did not think so.

I agree that this committee should be struck. I agree that we should expedite the process by which we get to the bottom of prorogation and deal with it using the recommendations we bring.

[James Rajotte, Conservative, Edmonton—Leduc, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member a few questions. If the actions of the Prime Minister and this government were as egregious to him as he outlined, why did his party not stand fully and squarely opposed to us in terms of our throne speech and our budget this year?

He talked about the Afghanistan issue. Liberals said during the months of January and February that the Afghanistan committee would not reconvene. Can he explain why it was reconvened? In fact, it was the first committee to reconvene after Parliament returned in March. Can he explain why that happened?

If the Liberal Party believes that this minority government is so egregious, why has it continued to allow this government to operate? Perhaps he can explain the situation with respect to the refugee reform bill. Our minister and our government thought that we had the support of the Liberals on that after accepting 80% of their amendments. Instead, they changed their position, so we in fact worked with the Bloc Québécois and the NDP. We appreciate their support for that bill.

Can he address all of those issues for me here this afternoon?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member checks the record with regard to those issues, he will see that I did vote against it at that time, and with great conviction.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, to follow up on the government member's question, if the Liberal members disagree with the government's programs so much, why do they continue to keep them in power by holding enough of their members out in terms of these crucial budget votes? Why have they essentially voted with the Conservatives almost 100 times already?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I just mentioned that I did not vote for them. There was a speech made earlier by one of the member's colleagues. He talked about fake lakes and fake motions. I would add a third: fake indignation. That is exactly the word we are looking for.

Let us cast our memories back to last fall for just one moment. We put a motion in the House. We expressed consent. We asked for consent from the House. We just did not like the way the government direction was going. We asked them to show no faith in this particular government. We asked them to show no confidence in the government, and therefore, the vote was had.

They, of course, supported themselves. We decided that we had no confidence in the government. The Bloc decided that they too had no confidence in the government. Here is the best part. Here is the punchline. At the very end, when the vote was for no confidence, this proverbial tumbleweed ran right through the House of Commons. We were waiting. The new expression became, “There is an APB on the NDP.”

For goodness' sake, where did they go? We looked. We cast across the way, and all of a sudden we could not find them. All of a sudden, the strength and backbone with which they stood against the government collapsed. An entire team of paleontologists stood outside this room looking for this particular species that lost its backbone so quickly they created a whole new class of invertebrates. It was unbelievable. It happened right before our eyes.

There is a fake lake. Maybe this is a fake motion. I do not think so, but there is the fake indignation we always get, and it is about time they were called on it.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when I first saw this motion, I thought maybe there had been a huge mistake. It is asking for a special committee of the House to be established to undertake an immediate study of all relevant issues pertaining to prorogation. The procedure and House affairs committee has been studying this for the last number of weeks, if not months.

The colleague's own members, including the deputy whip, the whip, and the deputy House leader, are all on that committee. They ask for a report by June 23. How seriously should we be taking this motion when it contains those kinds of blatant errors?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague may want to check up on the latest amendment because we are talking about November now. However, what bothers me in this House is that for the sake of, I mentioned faked indignation, my goodness, but let us talk about the fact that we should be raising the bar here. This situation requires the expediency of the process and therefore what the motion does is it allows us to get to this faster. We get to the bottom of it. This issue of prorogation is one that is sincere. I am sure members know what I am talking about.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, before turning to the remarks I have prepared, I have to offer a brief editorial comment on what just transpired. The novelty of watching a Liberal member attack the New Democrats for lack of backbone given, in this Parliament, the voting records of the two parties and the level of consistency, or indeed of ability to turn up for votes in the House.

The fact is that one of those parties has been consistent and one has been, put honestly, very hard to figure out exactly what it stands for. Anyone other than the member would have no trouble distinguishing which of the two parties actually has had a backbone in this place.

I want to pick up where my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons left off. He had quite a bit of fun dealing with the fact that the motion proposed by the Liberals today is so obviously, indeed comically, redundant. I will not go through all the things he pointed to, but the motion, at least in its unamended form, calls for a deadline and report back to the House six days from now, deals with subject matter which is being looked at extensively by a sitting committee, and seems to have been put forward without any actual re-reading of its content and the datedness of its content by the Liberal House leader who put it forward.

I want to take some time today to talk about the rest of the Liberal motion because it is a very lengthy motion and contains in addition to a call for a new special committee reporting back on June 23 and then adjusted to November 2. It also calls for particular attention to be devoted to a proposal put forward several months ago by the Liberal leader. I will come back to that in a second.

Looking at that, the first thought that occurs to me is that when it comes to putting forward a motion on this subject and trying to claim leadership on the issue, a candid observer would say that the horse has really left the barn on this one.

The House did vote on March 17 on a motion put forward by the leader of the New Democratic Party, the member for Toronto—Danforth, on this very subject. I will read the wording of the motion:

That, in the opinion of the House, the Prime Minister shall not advise the Governor General to prorogue any session of any Parliament for longer than seven calendar days without a specific resolution of this House of Commons to support such a prorogation.

Just to be clear about this, I actually voted against the motion. The record will reflect that. However, it actually passed 139 to 135 votes and that includes a good number of Liberals. So I am a bit at a loss as to why, having dealt with the subject matter in this way, a different and really, if we get into the meat of it, a contradictory motion would then come forward.

It is not just a motion about studying prorogation, it is studying it, and taking into account and giving a special privileged place to another motion which could have been brought forward by the Liberals, but they chose not to bring forward. That is a vexed question.

It does point out something interesting. On the first available opportunity to deal with this issue, the New Democrats on their very first opposition day brought it forward. The Liberals, on their very last opposition day, are bringing it forward and one cannot help but think they just did not have anything else in their quiver they could haul out and in an act of desperation or absent-mindedness, they reached in and pulled this out, and produced it to deal with an issue which at the very least would not involve them taking a position on anything new. I think that is a fair comment, although it may seem a little tough.

There is a second problem, which is the presupposition that the Liberal leader's proposal is one that ought to be privileged, put ahead of others. Remember this is a series of proposals that he developed prior to the hearings that have taken place in the procedure and House affairs committee. We ought now to take this and essentially take his proposals and use them to supercede all the information that has been gathered by all the parties.

I might just take a moment to read what is the meat of this motion. Again, a special committee is called for to engage in a study, and then:

--that, as a part of this study, the committee take into account the specific proposals for new rules pertaining to prorogation offered by the Leader of the Opposition, including: (a) a requirement that the Prime Minister give Parliament written notice in advance of any request to prorogue, together with his/her reasons therefore; (b) a requirement that there be a debate in the House of Commons after any such notice is given, but before any request for prorogation is made; (c) a requirement that the express consent of the House of Commons be obtained at the conclusion of any such debate if (i) fewer than 12 months have passed since the last Speech from the Throne, (ii) the requested prorogation is for a period of more than 30 days, or (iii) an issue of confidence is outstanding before the House; and (d) a provision that allows committees of Parliament to continue to function during any prorogation;--

So, that is the substance of it.

Two things strike me about this. First, we have been engaged in a lengthy study for several months now in the procedure and House affairs committee and, as the member for Hamilton Centre has observed, it is been a very fruitful discussion.

This effectively says, let us reset the clock to the Leader of the Opposition's proposals, as if we had not moved beyond that point through the work of members of all parties and of many Canadian constitutional experts coming forward and presenting thoughts on the various aspects and considerations for taking into account on prorogation. That is the first thing.

Second, the people who have been submitting testimony to this committee, and there are some very impressive individuals, I will name some of them in a moment, have taken the time to go back and examine the various proposals that have been put forward, both the Leader of the Opposition's proposal, the one that was actually passed in the House of Commons in March, and others that were booted at the time that the prorogation was under way and in its aftermath, and have come back with comments on these things.

So, there is already a considerable body of commentary on what the Liberal leader has proposed and some pretty fair criticisms of it.

All of this is ignored and a fairly arrogant assertion is made that we ought to reset the clock and go back and take these ex cathedra pronouncements of the Liberal leader as being, not really our starting point, but as our presupposed finishing point, which is something that, I think, speaks very strongly to arrogance. The preordained conclusions are certainly one thing to think about.

I want to turn now to the proposed special committee and the amendment that was rushed through by the Liberal deputy leader, I think, after the Liberals realized that they had goofed in putting this motion forward.

She proposed several things. First, there would be a delay of the date to November 2. Obviously, June 23 is just preposterous. However, November 2 is, again as my colleague from Hamilton Centre has noted, itself a problematic date in that it is conceivable that our committee will not have reported back by that time.

If it has reported back by that time, the report is likely to have been so freshly done that there would not be time to create the new committee, have it engage in anything, in any work at all other than, I suppose, to agree to adopt the testimony of the previous committee into its records. So, we would have essentially a make-believe committee or, certainly, an extraneous committee producing a report after really no consideration whatsoever.

There is a second interesting possibility. Perhaps given the short timeline, and this is not such a danger. However, if this committee were actually to meet and had enough time to conduct its own hearings all over again, the possibility would exist, in fact, I think the possibility is highly likely, that the committee would come to some different conclusions, unless it simply produces a report to the House that says, “We endorse everything the last committee said”. Maybe they can just have a report that just says, “What he said--”

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Ditto.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Or ditto, yes.

“--about the previous committee, the committee on procedure and House Affairs”.

But assuming that this does not happen, assuming that it is a different set of recommendations, we now have a problem. The House is now faced with, not one, but two committees which both have, although perhaps different cross-sections, a majority of their membership reporting back with two different sets of conclusions and to the degree they are different, they are necessarily in conflict.

What do we do? Do we adopt one? Do we adopt the other? I am not sure how one would engage a concurrence debate in the House. It would certainly be interesting to deal with that, but it is hard to see how this improves anything.

Finally, I have one last point. I will just note that in her haste to put together some amendment, any amendment, to make it appear that the Liberals actually have some kind of plan at all, other than simply to avoid talking about any actual issue or at least any actual policy proposal, the Liberal deputy House leader produced a proposal for a committee which will have 11 members instead of the normal 12 who are assigned for special committees.

This is as a result of a negotiation that took place among all the House leaders at which she was present. We would always have 12 members for our special committees, and the reason for that was to ensure that we would not find the situation in which, if it is chaired by an opposition member, a tie vote would be cast between the government members and the opposition members. That is not an accurate reflection of the actual makeup of the House, but in their haste to put this together, she seems to have overlooked that point, and I think it once again points to the panic that the Liberals were in as they pulled together this amendment to their own motion.

Let me talk a little bit about the experts we have heard from. They are a very impressive cross-section of Canadian academia and the constitutional experts who have dealt with this problem and the surrounding issues dealing with Canada's unwritten constitution, that part of the constitution which we have inherited from Great Britain, the powers of the Governor General, the conventions regarding the advice that is given to the Governor General by the Prime Minister, and the conventions regarding where else the Governor General can turn, not for advice in the formal sense, advice meaning effectively instruction in the formal constitutional sense, but rather for other opinions and perspectives. This includes people who have served as advisers to Her Excellency and Her Excellency's predecessors on various political issues in the past.

For example, we have heard from Patrick Monahan, a very distinguished scholar who has advised Her Excellency in the past; Peter Russell, emeritus professor, who likewise has served as a vice-regal adviser. We heard from Nelson Wiseman, who has written extensively on these matters; from Thomas Hall, a former Clerk of the House, who had some very insightful comments; Bradley Miller, who presented to us just two days ago and who has written on the specific issue of conventions. That is the unwritten but generally accepted rules that govern us under the Westminster system. Andrew Heard talked to us, and we could go on.

I will note that as recently as last week, we came to an agreement to invite Professor Hogg to come back and testify before us. Inevitably that will be this autumn. Professor Hogg has also been an adviser to the Governor General and is one of Canada's leading constitutional authorities. As early as last week, the presupposition from the Liberals was that this committee would be meeting and continuing its hearings in the autumn. We will not have gotten to the point where we will sit down, collate the information and try to actually produce the report. We would still be conducting hearings in the autumn.

As befits any hearings into as serious and technically complicated a matter as this, it cannot be done quickly or easily. All of these factors show, first, good work is being done by the current committee and therefore there is no need to supercede it; second, it is just silly to talk about superceding it or replacing it; and third, I think they speak to the main theme that I am addressing today, which is just the disorganization and confusion of the Liberals.

Although the Liberals may not have thought it themselves overtly, I think in their heart of hearts they are starting to come to the conclusion that they really are no longer the natural governing party of Canada, a party that is capable of governing a country. They are really an opposition party that just opposes for the sake of generating attention to themselves, and they have done this without unfortunately having taken the steps that are necessary to be an effective opposition at the level of ideas.

I think there is a role for parties that are in opposition that do not have a real expectation of forming a government. I, myself, was a member of such a party back in the early days of the Reform Party when we did not think we would be forming the government in any immediate point in the future, but we did believe that we could intelligently and effectively advocate ideas. The Liberals have not quite mastered that yet.

I would suggest there is a long history of the CCF that Liberal members could examine which might guide them in this matter. I would suggest they start with comprehensible proposals like the one the leader of the NDP moved back in March, rather than incomprehensible ones such as the one the opposition leader moved. I would suggest they develop ideas and they stick to those ideas consistently and then perhaps they can serve that role.

If the Liberals want to demonstrate that they are capable of governing, which is a legitimate role they had in the past, then they have to start showing that they can conduct themselves in a businesslike manner. They certainly have demonstrated quite the opposite here.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague takes these kinds of issues very seriously. He reads about and is informed on a lot of constitutional issues.

My colleague mentioned Nelson Wiseman as perhaps being a witness at the committee that he attends. Mr. Wiseman of the University of Toronto has said that no Canadian prime minister has abused the prorogation power to the extent that the current Prime Minister has. He has quoted Canada's pre-eminent parliamentary expert, Senator Eugene Forsey, as having said:

An unwanted and uncalled-for prorogation [is] a usurpation of the rights of the House of Commons, a travesty of democracy and a subversion of the constitution. Prorogation is more than mere delay for it prevents the House from voting, holding the government to account and possibly bringing it down.

Does my colleague agree with that quote? Does he believe that the Prime Minister was right to prorogue Parliament?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague referenced Nelson Wiseman referencing Eugene Forsey. I think that Eugene Forsey was speaking hypothetically about prorogation. He dealt in more concrete detail with a separate issue, an abuse of prime ministerial power, which did take place in 1926 when the prime minister of the day, Mackenzie King, sought to avoid dealing with a crisis in the House by seeking a dissolution, a somewhat different situation.

With regard to the Prime Minister's use of prorogation, there were only two prorogations actually. There was the one that took place at the end of 2008 which resulted in a new throne speech in early 2009. There was the later prorogation that took place on December 30, 2009, resulting in a throne speech earlier this year in March.

Yes, I do think both of those uses of prorogation were legitimate, and I want to point out to my hon. colleague that he thinks they were legitimate too. He may speak against them, but the fact is that he and his party had the chance to demonstrate their lack of confidence in a government that would use prorogation in the manner it was used by voting non-confidence in the government and forcing an election at that time. His party did not do that. It is always an option at the end of any prorogation in a minority Parliament.

I would simply point out that his party supports the government when the rubber hits the road and members of his party think this is a legitimate use of prorogation too. If they did not, we would have had an election on not one but two occasions.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have enjoyed listening to the comments by my colleague from Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, who sits on the committee that is dealing with prorogation. People can see where we completely disagree on some fundamentals about prorogation, but on the process, I believe we are like-minded.

There have been other comments by other members. Can the hon. member recall even one occasion when the Liberal members on the committee expressed any kind of concern whatsoever that the work we were doing was not adequate, was not fulsome, that the mandate was not big enough, that the committee was not working? Does he recall any comments at all from the Liberals about the conduct and the ongoing business of the committee already seized with the issue of prorogation?