Debates of Sept. 29th, 2014

Opposition Motion—Changes to the Standing Orders

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. Yes, I heard from quite a few people about what happened last week, and they were appalled. As my colleague said, we hit a new low.

We are talking about making a change to the Standing Orders regarding question period. The Speaker of the House already has the power to rule on the content of questions, but not on the answers. Members must vote in favour of this motion.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Thunder Bay—Superior North, Natural Resources; the hon. member for Newton—North Delta, Social Development, and the hon. member for Drummond, Natural Resources.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for York South—Weston.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to this very important issue.

We are having this debate because we think that there has been a loss of respect for the institution of Parliament. It has shown itself in a number of ways, and not just in the attitude toward question period, a situation that came to a head last week.

When I was elected to this august place, I was told by my leader, Jack Layton, that our party was to change the way Ottawa did things. We were not to heckle. We were to refrain from being part of the childish screaming that goes on in this place.

The French word chahut is the equivalent of “heckling”.

The heckling has continued. Unfortunately, people watching on television do not know who it is coming from. It is largely coming from members to my left and members across the way—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there they are. Generally speaking, we are as respectful as we can be in terms of heckling.

Another lack of respect is the use by previous governments and the current government of omnibus bills, which allow them to gleefully shout out in their speeches and otherwise, “You voted against it”. These were measures that we would have supported, had they not been part of an omnibus bill that had the destruction of the environment at its core. For that reason, we could not have voted for them.

Then we have time allocation and closure. The Conservative government has now moved time allocation and closure more than any Westminster style government in the world. Why? It is because the government insists on limiting debate. Debate is fundamental to a parliamentary democracy, and the word “Parliament” has at its core the word “speaking”, yet the government time and time again wants to limit debate.

One of the places where we can get at some of the central questions that Canadians are telling us concern them about the country is in question period. Question period is only 45 minutes a day. It is actually not very long. It is one of the few times that everybody shows up for work.

We have a situation in which question period has become part of the irrelevant Parliament that I think some members of the government would prefer it to be. If they make it as irrelevant as they can, people will start losing interest in democracy entirely. Once they have lost interest in democracy entirely, fighting elections will be much easier for some parties in this august place.

We have a government House leader who said today in the House that the Leader of the Opposition would prefer to make question period a one-way street, but question period is a one-way street now. Opposition members ask the government questions. That is what it is all about. It is not a period of time when the government gets to ask members of Parliament generally or members of another party questions that they would like to ask. That is not what question period is. I gave the House leader more intelligence than that. To suggest that question period should be a two-way street is a little bit telling.

He also suggested that we want the rule changes to keep us from facing any tough questions. Again, we are not here to face tough questions; we are here to deal tough questions. We hope that those tough questions will be answered with straightforward, clear, and transparent government answers.

The government and the ministers opposite are responsible to the people of Canada for the spending of their money and for the administration of this country. We have 45 minutes a day to ask the government how it is doing with that. The government, time and again, does not want to tell us.

People talk about how some members duck questions and some ministers obfuscate, but what happened last week made it very clear that question period has become quite broken. That is one of the reasons that we have put forward this motion: to try to repair the question period that we all know and love.

It is why we all come back here every afternoon. This is the one place where we get to hold the government's feet to the fire, as it were, to make sure that the government is telling us the truth and that the truth is out.

Last week, of course, we had the spectacle of a question being asked that dealt with war. One of the most serious things that ever happens involving the Canadian government is whether we are at war with another country, or with Islamic terrorists, if that is what is going on. However, to determine that a very serious question about whether the country is at war is to be answered by a non-minister, in non-parliamentary language, with a non-sequitur, totally unrelated, is very telling of the Conservative government's attitude toward reasonable questions being met with complete non sequiturs.

We are asking the Parliament assembled here to agree with us that this should change. We are not suggesting that ministers would not be able to fog their way around an answer in such a way that one would not really know if one received an answer. However, we did get some pretty clear answers today on whether there is going to be a vote. We could not get that last week, but we got some answers today.

We did not get any answers on what is going on at the moment in Iraq. We had the Prime Minister saying in New York that we have boots on the ground in Iraq now, but we had his minister saying that there are not actually boots on the ground in a combat role. Anyway, we did finally get an answer. We tried to ask that same question last week and got nonsense instead of an answer. That is why we are asking for this change in the Standing Orders.

As the Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification said, individual members must hold their own heads up and take their responsibilities seriously. If there were a consequence for not taking one's responsibilities seriously, a consequence from the Speaker of this place, who is our leader, as it were, then that consequence might cause how the government behaves in question period to change, which is what we are looking for.

We are not looking to create a nonsensical series of points of order about specific answers following every question period. It is very clear that we are looking to prevent what happened last week from happening ever again. Last week was the lowest one could go.

Members opposite suggested that if we do not like an answer, we can always turn to adjournment proceedings. Well, I was the recipient of ad hominem attacks by the member for Essex during adjournment proceedings that had nothing to do with the question I was asking. If those adjournment proceedings are to be as contaminated as question period has become, then we must look for answers, as the Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification said, from our own core values.

Our core values include that we are not going to behave like children. There are frequently children in the gallery watching question period. For us to behave as if we are in some kind of high school classroom is beyond the pale. It is something I will not tolerate, and I remind my colleagues about that every week.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to support the motion moved by the member for Burnaby—New Westminster, but I want to make several points.

I think the previous Parliament, as we all know, overwhelmingly voted for a motion calling on the procedure and House affairs committee to examine reforms for question period. Despite that motion being overwhelmingly adopted by the House, a rubric of which was to examine the convention that ministers need not respond to questions, nothing ever came of it. Here we are, four years later, once again debating the reform of question period.

The other thing I would say is that we need to avoid turning these debates about parliamentary reform into partisan advantage or disadvantage. I think it is really important to focus on the substance of what is at hand.

In closing, if making members of Parliament and members of the ministry respond to questions is going to be a responsibility of the Speaker, then so too should it be the responsibility of the Speaker to make sure that irrelevance and repetition are not part of a questioner's line of attack when asking questions. I think we need to focus on the substance of the issue here.

I will be supporting the motion, and I encourage members not to turn it into partisan advantage or disadvantage.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Wellington—Halton Hills for the support he is obviously going to show for this motion. I appreciate that.

I agree with him that we should be debating the substance of this motion, not using it for partisan purposes. The ability of a minister to respond is of utmost importance to Canadians.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we again have another member who has spoken about the heckling that goes on between the Liberals and the Conservatives. I need not remind him that immediately following question period, it was a New Democratic member of Parliament who had to stand up and apologize for heckling today in question period. Therefore, it is something that goes around. All political parties participate in heckling.

Having said that, picking up on the idea that a number of reforms are necessary to make sure that the House becomes better in terms of operations, decorum, and so forth, I wonder if the member might comment on the importance of taking a holistic approach to changes to our Standing Orders that would make our House much more workable in the future.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would love to take a holistic approach to all the Standing Orders of the House, including such things as the ability of governments to introduce omnibus bills and such things as closure and time allocation. However, we are dealing with a specific issue and are dealing with it in a specific way, with a specific motion, and that is the matter for debate today.

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech on the importance of question period.

Question period is meant to inform the Canadian public about what is going on in the country. However, it is sometimes very difficult to hear the questions and answers because there is too much heckling in the House.

I would like my colleague to tell us whether the cynical attitude towards Canada's Parliament is one of the reasons why people are not interested in Canadian politics and why they do not exercise their right to vote. Fewer and fewer people are voting, and this is especially true of young people. Is the noise in the House one of the reasons why people are no longer interested in politics?

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I believe the member is right that there is a certain disconnect between what goes on here and the Canadian public and that the Canadian public becomes less likely to be supportive of the political system in general when they see and hear the results or the actual discourse here. Sometimes it is not discourse; it is shouting. Sometimes it is not Parliament; it is an attack in one direction followed by an attack back.

We need to return to a system where we are asking clear and simple questions in the hope that we will get clear and simple answers from the government, and we need a Speaker to be able to help us get there.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to join today's debate on the opposition motion to make reforms to question period by changing the Standing Orders. As is my custom, as I am sure most members in the House are well aware, I never read from a written speech. I do not believe, frankly, in that. I particularly do not like the practice that seems to have become common in this place whereby members come into this place and read a speech, which someone else has written, not even knowing the content of the speech. They are just reading words. It is almost like white noise.

I can appreciate the fact that some members, in order to collect their thoughts and give them a coherent stream, do write their own speeches, as did my colleague the Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification today, and a good speech it was. I have no real objection to that. However, I take a different view. If members have knowledge of a particular subject, they should be able to speak here for 10 to 20 minutes, at least, and converse with their colleagues to impart their views and opinions on the subject at hand.

While my thoughts today may be somewhat random, I hope I can connect them in a way that will be somewhat understandable to my colleagues opposite.

I have been listening to the debate throughout the day. That is why it has taken until now for me to formulate my thoughts. I will start by saying that I will be opposing the motion, as opposed to my colleague and good friend from Wellington—Halton Hills, who will be supporting it. I am going to be opposing it for a couple of reasons.

First and foremost, I do not believe that Parliament should be changing the Standing Orders in a one-off manner, as the NDP is trying to do here.

I have been involved for the last two and a half years, believe it or not, at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, in examining potential changes to the Standing Orders. I have been absolutely frustrated, not because we have not had goodwill on all sides of the House to try to make changes that would fundamentally improve the functioning of Parliament, and that is the objective we all had, but because we keep getting interrupted. Much of this is outside of our control. There are pieces of legislation that come to our committee that take precedence. There are private member's bills or matters of privilege and those types of things. We have always been interrupted.

I point that out because I believe that if we finally get to a point where we have members from all sides of the House on a committee dealing with reviewing the Standing Orders to see if there are things we could do to improve the functioning of Parliament and the House, whether it be in question period, at committee, or otherwise, it would benefit us all.

As I mentioned to a few of my colleagues today, when we were meeting again about the Standing Order review, when I leave this place, whether willingly or because of ill health, that being, of course, because my voters get sick of me, and someone asks me years from now what difference I made in Parliament, I would like to be able to answer with something substantive. If I could say that I was part of a committee that changed the Standing Orders in Parliament and improved the way Parliament works, I would be one happy individual. I hope we can actually do that. That is primarily why I have opposition to this one-off approach the NDP takes.

I have a few other problems with it. I feel that question period as identified and as illuminated by some of my colleagues on the opposition benches is primarily an opportunity for the opposition to question the government of the day. I have no issues with that whatsoever. However, I also feel that opposition members must also follow the principles and guidelines as established in O'Brien and Bosc. I do not even know if most members here realize that there are principles and guidelines governing questions asked of the government, but there are. There are clear guidelines.

We have heard before that we cannot be repetitive. Today one of my colleagues told me he thought there were 12 questions in a row on ISIL. They were all the same question. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was giving a proper response, saying that there will be a vote in Parliament and a debate in Parliament if it is the government's view that we should be entering into a combat mission.

One question, when answered, should have sufficed, yet we had the same question 12 different times. There were 12 different variations, but of the same question and receiving the same answer. Does that benefit anyone? Of course not.

We have to look at not only how the government responds to questions but how questions are posed. Rather than this one-off on the relevancy of questions or answers, I would like to see a more comprehensive review of Parliament as a whole. That is something I am still going to try to spearhead over the course of the next few months. Perhaps it might even go into the next Parliament.

All of us need to be accountable to Parliament, and it is not just question period. Most of the members of the opposition when debating the motion today have focused in on question period. I understand that. It is their 45-minute opportunity each and every day to try to question the government, to try to score partisan points for themselves and to get public opinion on their side. I understand that. Similarly, a lot of the answers we give are obviously going to try to make the government look in its best light. That is the nature of adversarial politics. That is the nature of Parliament. However, we cannot view that in isolation. We have to look at a larger picture.

I have also heard members of the opposition say it is the role, and only role, for opposition members to be questioning government. I disagree. As expressed by my colleague, the minister of western economic diversification, every single member here needs to be accountable.

For example, while members of the opposition question the government on its future plans to deal with ISIL and other terrorist threats, I have yet to hear in Parliament an articulated view from members of the opposition parties, both Liberal and NDP, of what their plans would be. Do they, or would they, support combat missions to join with the United States and allies, if that in fact was what the request was? I have not heard that, not in this place at least.

I have heard outside of Parliament some news reports saying that the NDP has said it does not agree to any mission, combat or non-combat. I have heard outside Parliament members of the Liberal Party saying they would not support a “boots on the ground” movement but would perhaps support limited air strikes. I have not heard them say that in here. Therefore, there is a need for accountability by even members of the opposition in dealing with issues that affect Canadians.

I know my next few comments will not be viewed with any delight by members of the opposition, but I do want to point this out because my House leader mentioned it in his intervention this morning. An issue that is before Canadians is the issue of illegal mailings and satellite offices by the NDP. What I do not think most Canadians are aware of, however, is the background to that. I want to spend just a few moments on that because, frankly, there is a need for accountability from the NDP when it comes to these very issues, because we are talking about a lot of taxpayers' dollars here.

Most Canadians who may be watching this are aware that most members of Parliament, hopefully all members of Parliament, send out communiqués to their constituents on a regular basis. They are usually in the form of ten percenters or householders. Ten percenters is an inside baseball, inside politics term. Basically, for those Canadians who many be watching this debate, it is a small brochure that one could fit inside a coat pocket. They are sent out by members of Parliament at various times throughout the year, sometimes half a dozen times or more. Householders are a larger format, more like a newsprint. They are sent out usually four times a year. I say this as background.

The issue at hand is that the board of internal economy stated that the mailings the NDP sent out last fall during a time there were three by-elections being held in Canada, one in Bourassa, one in Provencher and one in Brandon—Souris, were illegal. Why is that? It is because the rules quite clearly state that these communiqués that members of Parliament send out should not be political in nature. They should not be there to promote elections or anything like that.

In the case of the mailings in question, the NDP did a couple of things, which on the surface would appear to be extremely strange.

As members know, and as most Canadians know, all of the ten percenters and householders that I was referring to are normally printed by House printers and they are paid for by the good taxpayers of Canada. They allow us to communicate with our constituents, to give information to our constituents about what is happening.

I found it extremely odd that the tens of thousands of brochures that were sent out by the NDP during the time of these three by-elections were not paid for by the House and were not printed by the House. The New Democratic Party went to an outside printer, paid for them itself, and then mailed them out in franked envelopes, franked envelopes meaning taxpayer paid-for envelopes. The NDP did not have to incur the cost of postage.

Why would those members do that? The answer is quite simple. They knew if they put the content of those brochures before House administration, House administration would say they could not be mailed out because the content of the brochures did not fit the guidelines we have to follow. Why? Because they were campaign documents. They were documents meant to promote the candidacy of the NDP candidates in those three by-elections.

The NDP went to an outside printer to get them printed, and there is nothing wrong with that. The New Democratic Party paid for those brochures itself, and there is nothing wrong with that. The New Democratic Party should have paid for those brochures because they were campaign documents. Then that party used—

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would be grateful if the hon. member would make his comments relevant to the motion before us, which is related to question period, not mailings.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

The Chair has the floor. Is the hon. member rising on the same point of order?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

May I respond, Mr. Speaker?

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

No. I will respond.

The hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands has raised a question of relevance. I am sure the irony is not lost on some members of the chamber that there is a discussion today about questions and whether the Speaker ought to be more proactive in terms of ruling on issues of relevance. I am also not certain whether the hon. parliamentary secretary structured his comments in such a way as to test the bounds of relevance today.

There is a specific motion before the House and as is often the case, members take the principle embodied in a specific motion or bill and then speak about the principle and then expound in quite a different direction in terms of another example of another issue that might relate to that same principle, even if it quite obviously does not reflect what is before the House.

Members in this place have raised the question of relevance many times. My colleagues and I in the Chair have risen to respond, pointing out to all members that the responsibility rests with them to keep their comments relevant to the matter that is before the House. The Chair gives significant latitude to members to do so in the understanding that members will not deliberately, or in some cases in almost a provocative way, stray from that to talk about something that is in fact quite unrelated.

With all of that as a preamble, I would remind the hon. parliamentary secretary of the actual motion that is before the House today and ask that he keep his comments related to that. If he takes some small detours that is understandable, but long detours that relate less to the matter start to get close to that line. I am quite certain that the hon. member would not want to put the Chair in that position.

With that, I give the floor back to the hon. parliamentary secretary.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would just explain the background of what I feel to be the need for accountability in this place, and that was my whole point.

To date the NDP has not spoken on that issue. It has not been accountable to taxpayers. That is my purpose in bringing up those examples. I will leave it at that. Suffice to say that I wish the NDP would speak of it. I do believe there is a need for accountability from the opposition benches, as well as the government. We have heard the term “one-way street”. I agree that it cannot simply be a one-way street.

In question period, yes, without question, the role of the opposition is to question the government. The role of the government is to respond to questions. However, the questions have to be phrased properly, and the responses from the government have to be on topic.

Let me give an example. I spoke earlier about the fact that there are principles and guidelines for questions to be posed in this place. I am not sure how many members know there are such guidelines in place, but there are. I want to give an example to members opposite, who feel they have free rein to ask a question on any topic in any fashion they wish, of how they have failed.

If in fact members want to change the Standing Orders, if they want to take a look at conduct in question period, let us look at conduct in question period not only from the government side but the opposition side.

There are many guidelines in place. One of them is that a question should not be on a matter that is sub judice. Again, for Canadians who may be watching, that basically means questions cannot be posed in Parliament on a matter that is before the courts, because it might unduly influence an outcome. We have privilege. We have immunity in this place. A question cannot be asked that is sub judice.

However, if we go back in Hansard, particularly over the last eight to 10 months, these questions have been asked literally hundreds of times, whether it be on the Duffy affair or others. The Leader of the Opposition has posed them himself. Those are questions that should not be posed.

The opposition is stating that it wants to see the Speaker be the arbiter only to force the government to answer questions that opposition members think should be answered in a manner in which they think should be answered. How would that be administered?

How does any Speaker say that they think it is relevant? Does that mean the Speaker would have inside knowledge of the government's policy decisions? Or is it merely that the Speaker would say that based on what he or she heard that it may be relevant? However, the opposition members would probably clamour to their feet at that point saying that it is not relevant at all and that it is not giving the information they demanded.

It puts the Chair in an impossible situation. Conversely, if the Speaker were to be that kind of an arbiter, to enforce what the Chair believed to be relevant, then I believe the Speaker would have an equal opportunity, or at least obligation, to question whether or not the opposition members are posing their questions in a manner that is proper.

I would also point out that many times—and I will not offer motivation on behalf of the opposition on this—I believe questions are asked from the opposition to the government on matters that should not be questioned because it deals with security matters, whether it be national security or cabinet privacy. Opposition members, or at least this official opposition, seem to think they have the absolute right to ask questions on any issue whatsoever and demand an answer.

For a prime example of why that should not be allowed and why there should be more respect by all members who are posing questions, I would simply go back to the issue in 1979 when we had the Iranian hostage crisis. At that time the opposition, led by former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, kept hammering the government of the day, former prime minister Joe Clark and then foreign affairs minister, Flora MacDonald, on what Canadians were doing to help the Americans in hostage situations.

Our government was not prepared to say anything about that. We all know the story. They were hiding in the Canadian embassy. Eventually former prime minister Clark took opposition leader Trudeau into his confidence and told him what was going on. He told him that we had hostages hiding in the embassy, and asked him to lay off because lives were at risk. It did not help. If anything, it increased the opposition's desire to ask questions to try to embarrass the government.

Those are situations in which we all bear responsibility. For the opposition members simply to say that it is a matter for government to respond in a manner in which they wish to hear responses made is not good enough. There is equal responsibility that should be taken by both sides. I hope we all can agree on at least that.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague opposite for his speech. I would recommend that he use some notes or speaking points so that he does not go off on a tangent or lose his train of thought and so that his speech stays on track.

That said, and to come back to the issue at hand, I agree with my colleague on one point, namely the fact that we should not change rules in a one-off manner. I would invite him to go speak with some of his backbench colleagues, who tend to introduce minor bills to amend the Criminal Code. It is always very dangerous to amend the Criminal Code piece by piece. Then the government takes credit for all of that to get some mileage out of it and use it for marketing.

The Speaker has endorsed the long-established principle that question period is designed to hold the government accountable. That is very important, given that it is one of the three pillars of our democracy.

Does my colleague accept the fact that this particular responsibility provides meaningful accountability?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I think any government is obliged to give responses to the questions at hand. If it is a question on the foreign affairs policy of our government, then yes, the Minister of Foreign Affairs should respond accordingly. We saw a prime example of that today, but why were there 12 questions on the same issue?

I also want to point out that in the earlier part of the member's intervention, I think he was trying to make a point regarding government backbenchers bringing forward private members' bills on justice issues, but the issue we are dealing with here is a change to the Standing Orders, so I would ask the member opposite to please stay on topic.

We need a fundamental review of the entire operation of question period. That is what we will try to do. Frankly, in very short order, I will be speaking with members opposite, many of whom I have a great deal of respect for, to see if we perhaps can set up an all-party committee to deal with an overall review, to see if we can come to some agreement. What happens in this place affects all of us, and the rules we have to follow should be agreed to by all of us.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's comments, but what brought us to this motion and this discussion today was a question about Iraq, which is not a casual question. The Leader of the Opposition asked a very serious question on behalf of all Canadians, because we all have great concerns with this issue. However, as parliamentarians we need to know that there will be an opportunity for all of us to be fully informed as we move forward.

Lots of times in question period, the questions are not necessarily answered, because it is not answer period; it is question period. However, on the issue of Iraq and the importance of those discussions, I would have to ask my hon. colleague, does he expect parliamentarians on this side to blindly go along with whatever tidbits of information we get from the government members or from the media?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, clearly not, but I thought I made that quite clear in my presentation, and I thought the Minister of Foreign Affairs today in question period made it quite clear that if there is to be any suggestion from the government of a combat mission for our troops in Iraq, there will be a debate in this place.

Of course, in answer to my colleague, I expect there to be discussion and debate on an issue of that importance and of that sensitivity. I would also point out to my colleague to remember the words I spoke in the last few moments of my intervention, on what happened in 1979. I am not going to try to gloss over everything by saying that the government cannot answer because of national security, but I can assure her that there will be times when there will be some information which the government has that it probably cannot and should not reveal because of security issues.

I ask members of the opposition to please keep that in mind. Rather than repetitively asking the same question trying to get information on the same question, there are times when the government has an obligation to respect the national security of our country.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary made mention during his remarks that he welcomed other suggestions to reform question period.

One thing that I think would increase the relevancy of questions and answers during question period would be to do away with the 35-second rule.

Many members who were more recently elected may be surprised to find out that the 35-second rule came in after the 1997 election when there were five parties in Parliament. The five recognized parties in the House each wanted a slice of question period to ask their questions, and so the length of time was shortened from about a minute or a minute and a half to 35 seconds to ask and to answer questions.

One of the things the House should also consider to make question period more relevant is to lengthen the amount of time given to ask and to answer questions now that there are only three recognized parties in the House.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is true that since the early 1990s we have changed the way Parliament handles question period. It is more of a convention now than any hard and fast rule and could be altered. I know in other parliaments throughout the world, questions can sometimes be as long as two or three minutes, and there can be a lot of substantive information in an answer of two or three minutes as well.

That is a suggestion I have heard before, which I think is worth examining, but I do not know whether opposition members would agree to that, because it would limit the number of questions they would have each day. Questions may be longer, may be more substantive, and it may ultimately be the best thing for Canadians, but I sense there would be continuing opposition from whoever is in the opposition benches just because they would be reducing the number of questions their own members would be allowed to pose to the government.

The member makes a very good point that there are more ways to look at question period than the process and protocols we are observing today.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thought it was interesting that the parliamentary secretary affirmed, and we heard from the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, his intention to vote for it. The hon. member in his remarks I believe said that he was planning to vote against it. He is nodding his head yes. However, just a little while ago, his boss, the government House leader, moved a motion that this question be now put.

We understand, of course, that vote will be first. If that vote is first and fails, then the motion today would not be put and the hon. member for Wellington—Halton Hills would be denied his right to express his opinion on this motion, as would the parliamentary secretary. I am sure what I am describing is not true because it would be so against the spirit of what we are talking about: rights, respect and privilege.

I would like the hon. member to stand and clarify, clear the air for us and assure us that he will be voting against the motion to put the previous question so that the original motion can be put and we can all vote on it, including him and his colleague.

I would ask him to clarify that it is his intention, and I would think the intention of the caucus, to vote against that motion so that we could have the right and the respect to vote on the motion that is actually before us today.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, my friend ought to bone up on procedure because the motion on the previous question was basically to prevent you from making any amendments. It does not stop the vote. You guys ought to get your procedure in order before you make an accusation like that.

We will have a vote on the NDP opposition motion. I am sure it will be making a deferral today for a vote that it does not even think is going to happen, but it will, and we will express our opinions at that time.