Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a point of order regarding the usage of Standing Order 56.1. As you know, Mr. Speaker, on March 27, under Standing Order 56.1, the government passed a motion ordering the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to study allegations of inappropriate use of House of Commons resources, allegations that were found, after less than two hours of questions yesterday at the committee, to be baseless, as it turns out.
I believe that the motion in question was incorrectly accepted by the Chair in the heat of the moment as being in order. I will be asking that the Chair spell out the limits of Standing Order 56.1 for the sake of clarity in the future. The reason this is so important is to prevent the abuse of an extraordinarily powerful tool for the government, which it must be said already has a disproportionate number of procedural levers at its disposal.
To oppose such a tactic, 25 members must rise to prevent the motions from being imposed without notice or debate.
The number of 25 MPs may seem reasonable at first glance. However, when you consider that the third, fourth and fifth parties sometimes have 20, 15 or 10 members—or, as we saw this morning, 4 or 5 members—in the House, and that small political parties have just two, three or four members, if we leave Standing Order 56.1 as it is, the government can instruct the committees to do whatever it wants. We know that that could cause a lot of problems for the future in the House.
It is becoming ever more clear that following the next election, if the Conservative Party continues the way it is going, it may have difficulty getting the 25 members in the House in the next Parliament that would allow it to stop this procedural strategy.
Regardless of the specifics, I believe it is crucial to underline that this rule was always meant to be used for the more mundane daily routine business of the House and not as a way to circumvent the democratic process, which is meant to be followed by substantive matters. While the rules surrounding the use of Standing Order 56.1 have often been the subject of difficult rulings from the Chair, I believe the motion of March 27 should have been deemed to be out of order.
I will ask the Chair to clarify, with the obvious benefit of hindsight, whether or not this motion was admissible, and will also seek your guidance as to what should be done in the future when members of this place are faced with a similar situation. As the Chair knows, as part of the study the committee was ordered to conduct by the motion of March 27, the hon. Leader of the Opposition appeared as a witness before PROC yesterday for nearly two hours, until the chair basically said that all the questions had been answered and called a premature end to the committee.
As I am sure the Chair is also aware, the opposition leader clearly explained to the members of the Conservative Party and the Liberal members on PROC, that the NDP satellite offices were set up in consultation with and approval from the House of Commons and that the NDP was proud to be working outside of the Ottawa bubble to reach out to Canadians in the communities where they work and live.
My issue is not with the fact that PROC considered the matter of these satellite offices, which I actually believe provided the official opposition and the leader of the official opposition a wonderful opportunity to clarify the facts of the matter, not to mention it also provided a wonderful sneak preview of what it might look like to have a prime minister who actually would be willing to, and capable of, answering tough questions.
It is not the political issue I am talking about; my issue is procedural and concerns the use of Standing Order 56.1 on matters for which it was never intended.
Let me read what Standing Order 56.1 (1) says specifically, for your review, Mr. Speaker. It states:
(a) In relation to any routine motion for the presentation of which unanimous consent is required and has been denied, a Minister of the Crown may request during Routine Proceedings that the Speaker propose the said question to the House.
(b) For the purposes of this Standing Order, "routine motion" shall be understood to mean any motion, made upon Routine Proceedings, which may be required for the observance of the proprieties of the House, the maintenance of its authority, the management of its business, the arrangement of its proceedings, the establishing of the powers of its committees, the correctness of its records or the fixing of its sitting days or the times of its meeting or adjournment.
When Standing Order 56.1 was created, the members tried to set some limits, as set out above. Unfortunately, a lot of things were left unsaid in Standing Order 56.1, which explains how the kind of motion that could be acceptable under this Standing Order has been the subject of a point of order on a number of occasions.
Nevertheless, what is written in Standing Order 56.1 is very clear. I would like to draw the attention of the House to the only part of that Standing Order that has to do with committees. It clearly states that only motions to establish the powers of its committees are in order. This means that this Standing Order could be used to authorize committees to travel, for example, which has been done in the past.
However, Standing Order 56.1 makes it clear that giving an instruction to a committee does not fall within the limits of this Standing Order. Therefore, the Minister of Labour's motion must be ruled out of order by the Chair.
Mr. Speaker, on page 672, of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, by O'Brien and Bosc, which you know backward and forward, we can read the following, “...its use...to give a direction to a standing committee of the House has been deemed contrary to the Standing Orders”.
Indeed, there has been only one other time when Standing Order 56.1 was used in this matter, and the Speaker at the time ruled the motion to be out of order.
On May 31, 2007, the government House leader moved the following motion under Standing Order 56.1:
That, notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practices of the House, when the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development convenes a meeting, it shall not be adjourned or suspended until it completes the committee stage of Bill C-44, except pursuant to a motion by a parliamentary secretary and, provided the bill is adopted by the committee, agrees to report the bill to the House within two sitting days following the completion of the committee stage.
With less than 25 members having risen to oppose the motion, it was adopted. However, the member for Wascana, realizing the mistake of the Chair, then rose on a point of order asking that the Chair deem the motion to be inadmissible. The Chair immediately ruled the motion to be out of order and said:
I think that use of Standing Order 56.1 to direct the business of the committee, of any committee, is a new development in the House and one that I find out of order.
He added to his ruling, on June 5, 2007:
A key element in my ruling today is the fundamental precept that standing committees are masters of their own procedure. Indeed, so entrenched is that precept that only in a select few Standing Orders does the House make provision for intervening directly into the conduct of standing committee affairs.
He added at that time:
...the only reference to committees in the Standing Order is one allowing motions for “the establishing of the powers of its committees”, suggesting that the rule was meant to be used not to reach into the conduct of standing committee affairs to direct them, but rather in a routine manner, to provide them powers they do not already possess.[...] The only examples dealing with standing committees or standing committee activity the Chair has been able to find have to do with granting standing committees the power to travel. [...] the use of Standing Order 56.1 in that regard falls squarely within the parameters of the rule.
Outside of these very specific and very clear cases, Speakers of the House have occasionally had to rule on the use of Standing Order 56.1.
In 1991, in response to concerns raised when Standing Order 56.1 was adopted, Speaker Fraser provided the following clarification:
...this "over-ride" provision can operate, as the Chair understands it, only with respect to a certain very limited range of motions offered at a specific time in our daily agenda by a minister of the Crown....
On September 18, 2001, Speaker Milliken also pointed out that:
It should be emphasized that at the time of its adoption it was envisioned that the standing order would be used for only so-called routine motions as defined in Standing Order 56.1(1)(b).
I could provide more examples, but I do not want to go on about this any longer because I think that this case is very clear. With respect to committees, Standing Order 56.1 can be used only to give them powers they do not already have, such as the power to travel. The use of Standing Order 56.1 to direct a committee to study a particular subject or to hear certain witnesses is definitely outside the scope of Standing Order 56.1. Consequently, the Chair should have indicated that the motion was not in order.
The motion moved by the Minister of Status of Women on March 27 represents a new use of Standing Order 56.1, one that does not respect practice or rulings of previous Speakers on this order. The government had a normal mechanism for asking a committee for a study. The mechanism that we have for this is to table a motion and, following the normal notice period, call it for debate and a decision from the House. There was nothing preventing the government from proceeding in this way. There were no extraordinary circumstances justifying the use of the extreme measure of Standing Order 56.1 in a way for which it was never intended.
I must say that I worry. I am noticing a trend with the current government, which tends to completely disregard the spirit of the practices and procedures that guide our work here in the House of Commons. Of course, we would all like the procedure and House affairs committee to proactively review and clarify the standing order in question, but, as members know, the committee has been very busy fulfilling the order of the House as part of a kangaroo court routine.
This use of Standing Order 56.1 cannot be allowed to stand without clarification from the Chair. Our party will have 25 members from here to the election, but for the smaller parties in this Parliament that do not have 25 members who can stand, and for the Conservative Party in future Parliaments, which will not have 25 members to stand, the precedent would put all of those MPs at risk of further abuse by majority governments like this one that have lost all reverence for this institution and its foundational importance to our democracy.
In conclusion, I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to reflect on the Chair's decision to allow the government's motion of March 27 to be presented pursuant to Standing Order 56.1, and to also provide any further guidance to the House as to how this provision should and should not be used in the future.