Madam Speaker, I want to speak very strongly in support of this motion, which, in essence, speaks to establishing a committee with the powers of a standing committee so that it could look at all of the issues pertaining to prorogation. It further goes on to elaborate on those issues and expands on what this committee would do.
I support it because, currently, as many of the hon. members rightly said, there is a special committee of the procedure and House affairs committee that is doing this, but this is an arm of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
What I am suggesting here is that this is a tool, in effect. As one of my hon. members said earlier on, the motion is raising the bar. It is asking for a committee in its own right, with all the powers of a standing committee, to study this issue in its entirety. The powers of a standing committee give the committee a very special ability to report directly to this House and to do certain things that special committees and subcommittees cannot do. What it really is trying to do is strengthen the teeth of a committee as it does its work. The question really is, at the end of the day, about a study on prorogation.
A lot of people seem to think that picking up a thread and moving it logically through from prorogation to silencing of voices is reaching. It is not, actually. It is a fairly logical progression, because this is really all about the abuse of power and the abuse of a particular tradition of power called prorogation.
Of course, this power was used by the monarchy, historically, to shut down or shut up Parliament. Historically, Parliament sat only at the whim and at the behest of the sovereign. If the sovereign thought that Parliament was getting in his way--and in those days it was a “his”; the only time Queen Elizabeth ever prorogued Parliament was when there was a plague, which was a valid reason—prorogation was a way of shutting up all those little niggling voices that tended to get in the way of the monarch and his absolute power.
When a prime minister abuses this power of shutting down Parliament and shutting up the voices of duly elected parliamentarians, there is a sense that it is because, like the old monarchs of the day, he or she does not like what they have to say. They are getting in the way. They are really becoming a nuisance, and the prime minister just wants to keep them out of the way. That in itself is arrogance, as if this country is now ruled by a single monarch.
I might tell members that the Tudors used to make frequent use of prorogation as a means of controlling Parliament. Does that sound familiar? Henry V considered Parliament to be little more than a necessary rubber stamp. He used his powers of prorogation to call elected officials together just long enough to get what he wanted out of them. He would send them off again if he did not like what they had to say.
In the times of Oliver Cromwell, prorogation continued to be a favourite tool for trying to keep Parliament subservient to the Crown.
Well, the Prime Minister and the government of this country are not the Crown. To try to keep Parliament subservient to the Crown and shut it up is not an appropriate use of the power of prorogation.
Today, prorogation has actually evolved and is now traditionally used to allow a government, when it has done all of its work, to recast its plans and agenda and set a new course for the future, as has been done in the past. All of the bills have been passed. All of the committees have finished their work.
The use of prorogation in both instances by the current Prime Minister actually stopped the important work of committees. It stopped important bills that were in the House. It took them off, and they had to be resurrected again and again, twice in a row.
That in itself seems to give, again, a sense that the Prime Minister is saying, “I am a monarch. I do not like what you are saying. You are getting in my way, and you are raising things that I do not wish to discuss.” That is one of the reasons the last hon. member spoke about silencing. It is a method that is now being reused by our Prime Minister as a means of shutting down and shutting up parliamentarians who have been duly elected.
If we recognize that the current government has a tendency to shut up anything it does not like, we can take that and move it a little further, to one of the actual arms of Parliament, the standing committees of Parliament.
We can extrapolate and move on to say that if the Prime Minister does not like what standing committees are doing, they will be shut down as well, because, actually, they are in the way, he does not like their recommendations, does not like their witnesses, and does not like their processes. The Prime Minister, by saying that he does not like those things, is basically shutting down, filibustering, and creating problems for committees in doing their work.
I want to draw attention to something that happened in the House today that is another way of showing disrespect to the House. Very clearly, there are rules for a committee in tabling its reports. If there is a dissenting report, the committee actually presents it under the clear motion of rules on the number of pages, the font, and the timeline. When that does not happen and the committee actually tables its report, it will not have that dissenting report there. If it is done according to the rules, the dissenting report is tabled in the House.
Today we saw two attempts, one successful, because it was the minister's, to actually go over those rules and find a way to get that dissenting report, by hook or by crook, onto the table. That, of course, occurred because the minister was able to do it. However, it shows a fundamental disrespect for the rules of the House for standing committees of Parliament. In fact, I wonder why we want a standing committee to look at prorogation, because it is obviously going to be equally disrespected. Anything it tries to do will be equally silenced.
When we talk about taking that logical thread and moving from silencing the House and silencing parliamentary committees of the House, we can take one further step. We can see how ministers of the Crown use their power to assist ordinary Canadians and civil society in the things they need to be assisted with, through programs and policies, by tying to it that same silencing. If people do not like what Conservatives say, if they dare to criticize, they will be shut up, because the committee will be disbanded.
I know that there are many groups and NGOs currently that not only do not dare open their mouths but that no longer have a little office or a phone or a computer to send out emails to say what they feel is wrong about the whole issue.
Last year I asked a question of the Minister of Canadian Heritage in the House about the arts communities in Vancouver. It was coming up to the summer, and they should have had their money for putting on their festivals, and they had not even heard from the minister. When those NGOs asked me to bring this question to the House, they actually were so frightened that I would use their names that they said to please just call them “a group of”. They asked that I not use their names, because they said that they would not be able to get the funding at all.
We see the shutting down of many women's organizations. They are refused funding, as we have seen happening, because they dared to criticize, because they dared to speak out. Again, it is the same thread that moves from shutting up Parliament, shutting up things the Conservatives do not like said, shutting up committees, and then using one's powers as a minister or as the government to shut up people who they do not think will vote for them, who do not like them, and who dare to criticize them.
There was a meeting here of many women in January. It was interesting, because the women all said that they were so pleased to be able to come together in this place and speak and meet with ministers, as they had been accustomed to doing under the Liberal government and under the Progressive Conservative government. They laughingly said that the problem is that they at least knew in those days that they could criticize government, and no one can criticize government anymore. No one is able to speak out against anything the government does, because they are afraid.
This is again a method of shutting down, shutting up, and silencing, which is what prorogation was originally set up to do. I guess that one can suggest that the government and the Prime Minister are trying to prorogue Canada and the citizens of Canada. Unfortunately, they are unable to do that, and unfortunately, the Prime Minister is not yet a monarch. We see that there is push-back. This motion is about push-back.
This motion is about putting teeth into a process, into a committee structure, that will find a way to take away from the Prime Minister the power that he has shown himself able to abuse so readily.