Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by following up on one comment that was made by my predecessor from the New Democratic Party. His thoughts were well considered, but I disagree with him on the merits of throwing members out of the House.
One of the great strengths of the current Speaker of this House, who has served as Speaker throughout my entire career, nearly a decade, is that he has not thrown members out and has eliminated the grandstanding that so often goes along with such ejections. However, that is one of the things we can look at. There are other legislatures, like Ontario, where a different practice obtains.
I want to speak today to what I think is a well-considered and thoughtful motion put forward by my colleague, the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, and, more particularly, to the amendment proposed by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons on May 27.
The motion, unamended, would have the procedure and House affairs committee on which I serve, as does my colleague from the New Democrats and most of the members who have spoken here, change the Standing Orders in a specific way.
The amendment put forward by theParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons proposes three changes. I want to talk today about those three changes one at time and discuss their merits.
The first change would be to use the word “study”: that the procedure and House affairs committee study the Standing Orders and other conventions, as opposed to saying “recommend changes to”.
The second proposal would be to drop the wording, “examining the convention that the Minister need not respond”, in reference to questions that have been asked of a specific minister.
The third change would be to add words allowing us to examine, and encouraging us to examine, the practices in the mother of Parliaments in Westminster and in other Westminster systems. Although no other parliamentary bodies are specifically mentioned, we can guess that this would include such places as Australia, New Zealand, and the various provinces.
Let me go through and talk a bit about the changes I am proposing.
The first one deals with the roles and responsibilities of the procedures and House affairs committee. The wording of this motion, as originally put forward, would require the committee to recommend changes to the Standing Orders and the conventions regarding question period. Therefore, it presupposes a need for changes to the formal rules before the committee has actually had a chance to decide that for itself.
The amendment says merely that we are required to study it. We may make recommendations; I suspect we probably would make recommendations. However, we ought not to presuppose that those changes need be made.
Standing Order 108 gives each committee the authority to make recommendations on any issue within its mandate. So the requirement, in the original wording of Motion No. 517, that the committee make recommendations actually contradicts this Standing Order. The amendment would remove that problem. Perhaps it is only a technical problem, but it is an important one.
The second aspect of the amendment is a change regarding the proposed requirement that ministers respond to questions that are directed to them.
The amendment would remove the requirement that ministers be expected always to respond to a question that is directed toward the individual minister.
Speakers have always ruled that the choice of which minister responds to a question is a matter that is left to the government. That is not a just a tradition from this House. It goes back to the origins of the concept of responsible government in the 18th century in the United Kingdom.
In our current conventions, the practice is summarized by O'Brien and Bosc on page 508 of their manual, in the following words:
Questions, although customarily addressed to specific Ministers, are directed to the Ministry as a whole. It is the prerogative of the government to designate which Minister responds to which question, and the Speaker has no authority to compel a particular Minister to respond.
That is consistent with our system of government and there are several reasons for this salutary practice, which I would like to go through now.
The first reason is all members will understand that prime ministers have traditionally responded to a whole range of questions covering all aspects of the government's mandate. If a person asks a question of the Minister of Finance, it ought to be the prerogative of the Prime Minister to stand up, as the minister who is ultimately for all areas, and to respond in that area. Likewise the reverse, if the Prime Minister is asked about a question and the greater technical expertise for a fulsome answer falls within the purview of the actual responsible minister, it seems appropriate that the Prime Minister can avoid answering by having the relevant minister answer.
The second reason is there are frequently questions that fall within the purview both of a minister's portfolio but also within the purview of a regional minister. One can imagine an equalization question, for example, falling within the purview of both the finance minister and of a minister responsible for western economic development, or for ACOA.
The third reason is a minister may on occasion have a specific responsibility on an issue that falls outside that minister's normal departmental responsibilities. We ought to have the option of allowing ministers with such a special responsibility to answer the question.
The fourth reason is allowing a particular minister to respond to a question would be inconsistent with the principle of cabinet solidarity and the principle of responsible government, whereby all ministers support the government's policies and the ministry is actually responsible. This is a very important concept, which goes back to the 1720s in the United Kingdom, to the prime ministership of Walpole.
Prior to that time, ministers stood or fell at the King's pleasure, but they fell individually, and ultimately the King was the de facto executive and also the de jure executive. What has happened is the monarch remains in our system as the nominal executive, but in fact always acts on the advice of the prime minister. The prime minister represents the entire government and is the only minister who actually communicates directly with and in the formal sense advises the Governor General, or the Queen, as the case may be.
That is an extremely important concept. It fundamentally means that the responsibility is shared by the entire ministry in order that the House itself will have control over the system of government. It brings responsibility from the House by centralizing it in a single unit.
The final point that needs to be made is also very important. The Speaker in our system needs to be impartial and should not be transformed, as this rule would do, into an enforcer, a kind of policeman. This is a concept. The impartiality and the non-coercive nature of the Speaker's office is absolutely essential to the way the parliamentary system has developed in our country.
Under the congressional system in the United States, where the executive lies outside of the House of Representatives, it has an entirely different system. The Speaker is a highly partisan individual, but the Speaker is also emphatically not performing many of the functions the Speaker in our House does. At least to some degree that would be lost.
I also want to point out as my final note that we are looking and recommending in the amendment that other jurisdictions be looked at.
The third improvement, if one wants to call it that, or the suggested change, would be to have us look at the practices of the United Kingdom's parliament and other jurisdictions regarding question period and their appropriateness for the Canadian setting, specifically the federal Canadian setting.
There may be a variety of lessons. For example, I know the U.K. practice of having Wednesdays dedicated to questions to the prime minister is one option put forward in the motion.
We should also look at other Westminster style jurisdictions. As I mentioned earlier, there are Australia and New Zealand. I have seen question period in both countries. They are very different in their structure from either our system or the U.K. system, but they work well.
Similarly, there are the various Australian states. There are two Houses in each state. We have each of our provincial legislatures. There are numerous other jurisdictions within the Commonwealth, all of which could potentially provide us with very worthwhile alternatives to what we do now.
I will finish by saying that I think this is a good motion and I encourage members to support it. I also encourage members to support the amendment proposed by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons.