One of my Liberal colleagues says he is getting a Twitter feed right now from one of the two individuals I just mentioned.
All kidding aside, these were two very experienced parliamentarians who were very knowledgeable about Standing Orders and chose to share their expertise at every opportunity in the House. I am glad to hear that they are watching this debate.
This is the fourth time we have had the opportunity to debate Standing Orders in this place. In 1982 a special committee on Standing Orders and procedures recommended that in each Parliament in the first session following an election there should be a debate on Standing Orders. In the past there were many suspensions of this debate, sometimes because of an early election, or prorogation or because there had been debates on Standing Orders in other forums.
To stand here today and debate the Standing Orders and to talk about some of the proposed changes that we would like to see is a healthy thing for democracy. It allows all backbenchers as well as frontbenchers to express their views on how we govern ourselves and the rules that we adopt.
I should also point out that many of the Standing Orders that we follow today have been around literally for decades, in some cases for 100 years. There are many Standing Orders that just need to be modernized, that is some of the ones our party will be advocating and some of them will be suggestions that we will bring forward to committee.
I will give the House a few illustrations of what I mean to try and give a sense got the rest of the members in this place of the type of modernization that we think is necessary.
Standing Order 16(4) says “When the House adjourns, members shall keep their seats until the Speaker has left the Chair”. That has not been observed for generations, so why have it at all? We suggest we may want to look at deleting that phrase.
There are also references in the Standing Orders to something called “dinner hour”. In previous Parliaments many years ago, Parliament sat during the afternoon and evening and there was a specified dinner hour. That does not happen anymore, but we still have the reference in the Standing Order. We feel modernizations, deletions of terms like that, which are somewhat archaic, are necessary to ensure we have Standing Orders that actually fit the time.
I want to focus most of my remarks on a couple of issues raised by my friends in opposition, primarily on time allocation. A lot of members in this place, and a lot of members of the general public, confuse the term time allocation with closure. They are completely different elements of the democratic process that we follow in Parliament.
With respect to time allocation, what I hear from members opposite is that our government has used time allocation indiscriminately, that we have used it to try and advance our agenda without consideration to debate or to members comments opposite. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
My colleague and my friend, the chief opposition whip, said that time allocation should only be used in cases where the opposition tends to filibuster a bill. That is exactly what has been happening. We have seen time and time again with pieces of legislation that our government has introduced the opposition quite clearly and openly demonstrate to Parliament and to Canadians that it has no interest in simply debating the bill. It simply wants to delay the passage of the bill and if it had the opportunity, it would, with apologies to Quentin Tarantino, kill the bill. That is not democratic. That is simply an opposition trying to run roughshod over Parliament.
We have a democracy in the country that elects governments. We have been fortunate. We have been graced to have been given a majority government by the people of our country. Therefore, we feel very compelled to advance our legislative agenda as quickly as we can after adequate debate. However, the opposition does not believe in normal or adequate debate. It wants to delay, delay, delay and obstruct, obstruct, obstruct.
I will provide just two examples of many which prove my point.
The first example is Bill S-5, a financial institutions bill. This bill, quite frankly, is almost pro forma. The bill comes before Parliament once every five years. Its intent is to merely ratify the rules and regulations of financial institutions in Canada. In the past number of Parliaments that have dealt with Bill S-5, debate has primarily lasted one day. Usually one speaker from each party makes comments, the bill is referred to committee, in which members look at the legislation to ensure that all of the elements of the legislation in the bill are unchanged, and it is passed. Without doing so, the regulations that govern our financial institutions would basically be gone.
This bill is non-controversial and it is one that should be passed quickly. However, when we asked our friends in the opposition, primarily the official opposition, the NDP, they demonstrated absolutely no willingness to accommodate the quick passage of it out of this place and into committee so we could ensure our financial institutions would have the ability to perform as they always have. That is obstruction.