Mr. Speaker, I am rising in response to this point. The issue is what an eligible motion is under Standing Order 56.1.
Standing Order 56.1(1)(b) provides:
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.
I will emphasize again that key phrase: that it is for the purpose of “establishing of the powers of its committees”. That is part of its authority.
Quite clearly, the primary thrust of the motion from the hon. Minister of Labour, the motion that gave rise to the occurrence of the Leader of the Opposition before the committee dealing with the question of the improper use of taxpayers' funds by the NDP, was to give the procedure and House affairs committee an order of reference, or to use the words of the Standing Order, “establishing of the powers of its committees”.
Indeed, the last time that this Standing Order was invoked was to provide a committee with an order of reference. Page 2289 of the Journals, for November 8, 2012, shows that the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights was mandated for a motion proposed under Standing Order 56.1, to conduct the study required by section 533.1 of the Criminal Code.
As members can see, there was an order of reference given to the committee, exactly the same as happened in this case, on a matter that otherwise needed to be given the authority, including the authority to hear that witness in particular.
Prior to the adoption of Standing Order 56.2, we also saw a number of instances when Standing Order 56.1 was used to authorize committee travel. House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, at page 461, informs us that Speaker Milliken:
...also suggested that this 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 with powers they do not already possess, such as the power to travel.
The latter portion of that quote is important to bear in mind. It echoes the ruling of Deputy Speaker Bill Blaikie at page 10124 of the Debates for June 5, 2007.
It is important to recall that the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs is exempted from the general and broad sweeping order of reference which Standing Order 108(2) confers upon most of our standing committees. That particular committee's permanent mandate derives largely from Standing Order 108(3)(a). It is buttressed by numerous specific orders of reference which this House adopts.
In that sense, the motion of the hon. Minister of Labour sought to empower the committee, or at the very least to remove any doubts whatsoever that it is indeed empowered to study the matter of the troubling allegations about how the official opposition has been using the resources provided to it by the House of Commons.
Beyond that particular element of the motion, committees generally have the power to send for persons. Pages 136 and 137 of O’Brien and Bosc remind us, “Committees are not empowered to compel the attendance of the Queen, the Governor General, Members, Senators, officers of another legislature or persons outside of Canada”.
To that end, the latter half of the motion empowered the committee by doing something which it itself could not do. Thus, it was necessary to resort to a motion of this House in order to provide it with those powers, if you will, establishing the powers of committee as it is contemplated in Standing Order 56.1(1)(b), and to provide that order of reference.
Clearly, the motion of the hon. Minister of Labour met the test of establishing the powers for committee, as the Standing Order states, and as Speaker Milliken and Deputy Speaker Bill Blaikie have ruled in the past.
I note that there was some reference made to substantive matters. I will note that on the member's reference to the restriction against using this Standing Order on substantive matters, that is somewhat defined by previous decisions, and we do have guidance.
I would quote Mr. Speaker Milliken's ruling at page 5974 of the Debates on May 13, 2005, where he stated:
It is quite clear that the use of Standing Order 56.1, while allowing the House then to determine things in relation to its affairs that are not substantive matters, that is passing laws, may be done by using this technique.
Clearly, in that decision, he has equated the passing of laws through the parliamentary process as the substantive matters that are not covered by Standing Order 56.1. That is, the House could not, through Standing Order 56.1, attempt to substitute any element of the statutory process for passing laws, but that is what Speaker Milliken said is meant by substantive matters.
Clearly what we were talking about, or what the committee was dealing with in this matter, was not the question of a substantive matter in passing a law but was rather a very separate matter about the administration of the House. It was a matter under the authority of the procedure and House affairs committee, normally part of its jurisdiction, specifically the misspending of taxpayers' funds by the NDP for partisan purposes in partisan NDP offices.
Again, that aspect of the ruling of Mr. Milliken related to the interaction between Standing Order 56.1 and the requirement of section 49 of the Constitution Act, 1867 for decisions here to be taken by a majority. Your predecessor, Mr. Speaker, clearly distinguished between questions of substance and “matters of internal procedure, which the House can decide on its own initiative”. The motion of the hon. Minister of Labour did not relate to the passage of any bill or the creation of any law, and therefore, it should not have been ruled out of order and was properly ruled to be in order and accepted by the Speaker at that time.
Finally, I would conclude by referring to pages 672 and 673 of O'Brien and Bosc, where the authors conclude their treatment of Standing Order 56.1 with the following:
...Speakers Parent and Milliken both urged the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to examined the appropriate use of this Standing Order. Having received no feedback from the Committee to the House, the Speaker stated he did not feel it was for the Chair to rule out of order a motion that appeared to be in compliance with the Standing Order, despite any reservations he may have expressed about it.
Though in the present case the motion more than appears to be in compliance with Standing Order 56.1, it is in compliance, I would submit, and in fact, I think the above example shows that despite an invitation to somehow further restrict the application of it, the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs and the House have declined to do so, leaving all those powers I discussed earlier in this argument in place.
Finally, I would like to make one further point, which actually relates to the earlier point of order as well as to this discussion of the appearance of the NDP leader on the matter of the misuse of parliamentary resources for partisan purposes. That is that the earlier question of privilege raised by the member for Kitchener Centre dealt with the fact that the NDP was suggesting that he had misused parliamentary resources when he had, in fact, as he said here, gone the extra step of asking the House of Commons to ensure that no parliamentary resources were ever misused by him. He asked permission to pay for resources that would have been spent for a partisan purpose, something on his own initiative, to ensure that they were not, and he ensured that those monies were paid back.
That is a very notable precedent and one the NDP might wish to reflect on in dealing with this point of order. Perhaps that is the way situations like the one they find themselves in right now are properly dealt with. Perhaps they should now go to the administration of the House of Commons and offer to pay back the funds they have spent inappropriately on partisan purposes.