Mr. Speaker, I wish to join the debate on the matter raised by the member of Parliament for Langley regarding speaking rights in the House. I am going to turn to a number of reference documents, so if the House will bear with me, I will try not to sound or look too much like a professor flipping through volumes quickly.
From O'Brien and Bosc, we begin with:
Members are expected to show respect for one another and for viewpoints differing from their own; offensive or rude behaviour or language is not tolerated. Emotions are to be expressed verbally rather than acted out; opinions are to be expressed with civility and freely, without fear of punishment or reprisal. Freedom of speech is one of the most important privileges enjoyed by Members of Parliament.
I will turn now to some of these privileges.
O'Brien and Bosc, on page 60, states:
The classic definition of parliamentary privilege is found in Erskine May's Treatise on The Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament:
Parliamentary privilege is the sum of the peculiar rights enjoyed by each House collectively...and by Members of each House individually, without which they could not discharge their functions, and which exceed those possessed by other bodies or individuals.
....The rights and immunities accorded to Members individually are generally categorized under the following headings:
The first is freedom of speech.
Page 212 reads:
Members sit in the House of Commons to serve as representatives of the people who have elected them to that office.....
The member of parliament represents his constituency through service in the House of Commons.
Later we find:
The privileges of the Commons are designed to safeguard the rights of each and every elector. For example, the privilege of freedom of speech is secured to Members not for their personal benefit, but to enable them to discharge their functions of representing their constituents without fear
It goes on.
Privilege essentially belongs to the House as a whole; individual Members cannot claim privilege insofar as any denial of their rights, or threat made to them, would impede the functioning of the House.
I would put to the House that this is where we are.
I would like to turn next to a report that really is the genesis of the S. O. 31, or the member's statement. It is the third report of the special committee that dates back to 1982. There is one paragraph I will draw your attention to, sir, and I quote it, although I will jump through it and not read the whole thing. This is effectively what it says:
Under the new recommended procedure the 15 minutes preceding the question period will be reserved for Members...to raise matters of concern for the purpose of place them on the record.... Every Member recognized by the Chair would be given a maximum of one minute
I will just highlight. It is members that are “recognized by the Chair”. That is to say, you, Mr. Speaker.
Later we see, in debates, that the hon. Yvon Pinard, and I think this captures the intention of this reform, stated:
I hope that the Chair, mindful of the intent of the committee report, will recognize Hon. Members without any regard for party affiliation and that the time available will be equally distributed between both sides of the House.
Then if we turn quickly to page 423 of O'Brien and Bosc, just to summarize where we are at today, 30 years later:
The opportunity to speak during Statements by Members is allocated to private Members of all parties. In according Members the opportunity to participate in this period, the Chair is guided by lists provided by the Whips of the various parties and attempts to recognize those Members supporting the government and those Members in opposition on an equitable basis.
Others who have gone before me, in particular the member for Edmonton—St. Albert, have given a good overview of how those rules are to be interpreted today. However, my point to you, Mr. Speaker, is that rules and conventions cannot trump parliamentary privilege. That is to say that whether the situation in which we find ourselves today evolved to where it is or was actually passed and can be found in the Standing Orders is irrelevant, simply because anything that comes along that blocks or impedes members from acting on their rights ought to be placed out of order. Blocking any MP from delivering a statement, known as an S. O. 31, is a violation of a privilege or right.
You, Mr. Speaker, recognize MPs. You do not do so through any other authority or any other institution. We have heard the analogy to a hockey game and who decides who plays and who does not, but I put it to you that the decision was made by voters. They chose who would be on the ice in this House of Commons.
If we were to accept the analogy and that the Speaker does not decide, and I urge you not to, it would mean that the Speaker does not have the ultimate authority to recognize members. That actually goes against the entire set of rules, laws and institutions that govern this House.
What is being proposed by that flawed analogy is that in addition to removing the right of MPs to speak, your authority is extinguished. It suggests that there is a higher authority. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, whether you are prepared to yield this ground.
Earlier, one of my hon. colleagues in the House further expanded on this analogy and likened this to a house league, saying that we all ought to have equal time on the ice. That is an apt analogy.
I will go in a different direction, which I think is a better one. I view this Parliament as the NHL, the top league in terms of law-making in this country, and the government is the Stanley Cup champion. It wins, in large part, through team discipline.
Parties have great authority and great powers. They can rotate members in and off committees. The whip can cajole and intimidate. Ultimately, these teams can decide who will sit on the team and who will not. However, the teams do not decide who is able to speak in this House.
I believe that there are limits that have been crossed that involve removing speaking rights and that suddenly now involve veto rights over who is able to be recognized as a member of Parliament.
Earlier today we heard from the opposition House leader. He very nearly missed the point. His focus was on decorum. That is something I think all members of Parliament would like to see improved. Let us not forget that even the opposition party has begun to move into territory where S. O. 31s are being used by the opposition similarly. The opposition whip picks and chooses who will speak. I believe that one out of every five is used in this manner.
The point that was nearly missed, and the House leader came through on the end, was that in addition to decorum, this also involves our democratic principles. If the Speaker reinforces the authority of members of Parliament by reaffirming their right to speak and the Speaker's right to recognize them, we will together strengthen democracy in this chamber and the power of representation. In turn, I believe, decorum will be improved. This brings me to my final point.
Mr. Speaker, your review of the S. O. 31 and how it is governed will logically take you into another area, and that involves question period and how you recognize members.
There is a wonderful daily spectacle in Westminster of MPs bobbing up and down hoping to catch the Speaker's attention. The Speaker uses a combination of judgment and skill to select members to speak, and that could include party affiliation, the region the member comes from, the rural-urban balance, gender and ethnicity. These are the balls the Speaker must juggle in determining who will be recognized. On that, I would like to recite few lines from a book called, How Parliament Works, 6th edition, authored by Rogers and Walters. On the Speaker's power of the chamber, on page 50, it says:
First...there is the power to call MPs to speak in a debate or to ask a question, described by Speaker Thomas as his most potent weapon. [Of course] Speakers strive to be fair to every MP....
Later, regarding questions in the commons, it states on page 337, that question period is:
—one of the main opportunities for back-bench MPs on all sides of the House to pursue and expose issues, and to get the government of the day to put information on the public record. The very existence of parliamentary questions, and the opportunities that they provide for the representatives of the people to question the government of the day, are of constitutional importance. Their effectiveness has always been down to the tenacity and skill of individual MPs; but whether the system can survive the strains that are now being put upon it is also in the hands of MPs generally.
I feel like that last line is perhaps foreshadowing the decision that you face here, Mr. Speaker.
On that note, as I ask you to expand your review of this question to not just consider S. O. 31s but questions in the House, I would remind you again, sir, that rules and convention cannot trump a parliamentary privilege, a right. What we have seen over the last 30 years has all happened very slowly. To use an analogy, it is a bit like a frog in a pot of water: if we toss a frog in hot water, it will quickly recoil and jump out, but if we slowly increase the heat, the frog will not jump out. Instead, the increasing heat will eventually kill it.
As I said, Mr. Speaker, I propose that your review go further and that you are guided both by your judgment and authority on these questions and yield to no one.