Debates of Sept. 29th, 2014

Opposition Motion—Changes to the Standing Orders

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

I would remind all hon. members to direct their comments to the Chair. The reference was “you guys” should understand the rules and I am sure that my colleagues and I in the chair will take that to heart.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Toronto—Danforth.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl.

The motion today quite simply is to add a very brief amendment to Standing Order 11(2), which basically makes clear that answers in question period are included within the rule that interventions in the House must be subject to the rules of relevance and non-repetition.

In a system of responsible government within our Westminster system as well, the accountability of the executive branch—the ministry, the cabinet, including parliamentary secretaries—to the House is absolutely fundamental. It is primordial. That accountability extends from the House to Canadians at large. Accountability includes the right in question period to seek information and also explanations.

Question period was a Westminster parliamentary innovation. It is called “question time” in the U.K. still. It has no equivalent, frankly, in non-Westminster systems. We should be proud of it, and we should be constantly figuring out ways to improve it or fix it when it becomes broken over time.

When one has a Westminster system that essentially involves a form of fusion of the executive and the legislative branches on the government side, one particularly needs question period to emphasize the very separation of the ministry from the House.

This is all the more the case when executive domination, indeed I would say Prime Minister's Office and prime ministerial domination, of the legislature has deepened gradually since the days of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau enhancement of the powers of the PMO and has accelerated, nobody will contest, under the current Prime Minister. For example, committees have been turned into, frankly, appendages of the PMO. When it comes to questions beyond legislation, the question of accountability, our committees at the moment are certainly not occasions for holding the executive to account.

To compare us to the U.S. Congress, for example, cabinet and senior civil servants are regularly called to testify at length in the United States in hearings where hard-hitting probing often occurs, but not here.

We have all kinds of other problems about which I will not go into detail, but I will say it is ironic that the government House leader would, in the context of this debate about accountability and the role of question period unaccountability, move a motion that this question be now put, in a way that is deliberately intended, as we heard from a parliamentary secretary, to block any amendments at all, including amendments that were beginning to be suggested by members from the opposite bench during the early parts of the debate simply clarifying that the rules of relevance and non-repetition also apply to the question, which is already the case in practice as is clearly outlined in the relevant authorities and enforced.

I have no problems with that kind of amendment, but we have just been blocked from entertaining it. It will make it much less likely that the members on the other side would vote for it for that very reason. I hardly think that was a good faith intervention by the government House leader.

We have heard from the government benches throughout the debate today to be even-handed and apply the rules to questions as well, that somehow or other we are asking for something that is unbalanced.

First, I do not know how many times it has to be said, but relevance is already enforced when it comes to the questions. It may not be adequately enforced from the point of view of the current government members. Examples were just given by the parliamentary secretary, some of which I have some sympathy for. However, the fact is, we have a list in O'Brien and Bosc of some 15 different subcategories of relevance that the average speaker has to keep in mind, and that members on this side do keep in mind so that questions generally are not posed in a way that breaches those relevance rules. Yet on the other side, we have the idea that relevance is somehow completely alien to the spirit of question period when it comes to answers. I frankly find that hard to understand.

The second question is on repetition. We have had lots of complaints that there is a repetition of questions by different members in the House. We should keep in mind that often this is because no clear answer has been given. Often what also seems to be a repeated question is a slightly different take on the same question, and that often happens by way of a supplementary question, certainly from the way in which the Leader of the Opposition tries to conduct his questioning.

It is also important to note that in a bilingual country, there are questions repeated in a second language. That is something I will gladly and frankly say occurs on our side. We often do ask a very similar question in a second language so that Canadians of that other language can hear, directly, the same answer in their language. There are no excuses and no apologies to be made about that.

Right now, customary interpretation by not only the current Speaker but by successive Speakers has created a distinction between all the interventions in this House and one sub-category, that being answers in question period.

Questions themselves in question period, as well as speeches, questions and comments on speeches, answers to questions during debate, and committee debate are all interventions that are subject to the rules of relevance and non-repetition. However, answers in question period somehow are not, to the point that successive Speakers have come to assert what they see as a truism: question period is called “question period” for a reason, which is that it is not answer period.

Unintentionally, this truism has come to be referenced almost lightheartedly, and when it is not lightheartedly, it is certainly referenced ruefully when Speakers bring up this point, so much so that the problem of this disjuncture between questions and answers in question period has gotten lost even by Speakers themselves.

I think also that the reference to relevance and repetition in Standing Order 11(2) has been interpreted as not applying to answers in question period, but other rules that have no specific sphere of application in how they are articulated in the standing rules clearly apply. Sub judice, disorderly conduct, and all of these other rules about keeping the House in order are enforced in answers as well, and not just in questions. Somehow this one has dropped out of the picture, as compared to the other general rules.

Colleagues across the way, including the House leader, have raised the issue of questions being asked without advance notice as a reason to maintain the practice that precludes the Speaker from enforcing the rule of relevance. The idea seems to be that ministers or parliamentary secretaries, unlike in the U.K., are not given the chance to reflect and formulate a response.

Now, it is a valuable contribution to the debate to note the difference between us and the U.K., but frankly, this goes to the quality of the answers. What can be expected of the answers, especially to questions that take a minister or a parliamentary secretary by surprise, has absolutely nothing to do with the base, the threshold question of relevance, unless it is the case that the person has misunderstood the question as a result of not receiving it in advance, so the argument coming from the other side is truly a red herring.

That said, I would not be averse to discussion. I hear the parliamentary secretary now suggesting an all-party committee, just when we know we have not been able to make progress of any consequence on this review of the Standing Orders except for what we are calling low-hanging fruit. That is going to be a valuable cleaning up of the orders, I hope, but it will not go into this kind of detail.

Therefore, if we have in mind for the next year some kind of all-party process that will take question period seriously, bring it on. I am absolutely hoping that will transpire somehow, but it cannot happen in the procedures and house affairs committee, or PROC, because as the chair of PROC across the way will acknowledge right now, we have a docket of something like seven or eight bills or motions. Therefore, if this is going to have to happen, it has to happen differently.

There are many things we could do to enhance the question and accountability function, including, for example, having periodic sessions every two months in the relevant committee, to which the minister would be called in to answer questions. That could be a kind of hybrid that would borrow a bit from the congressional system.

Let me just say finally that I personally would be content if the rule that we are suggesting were adopted. The Speaker would interpret that to require a manifest transgression, such as repeated non-answers or answers that are clearly contemptuous of the questioner in question period. Just the fact of relevance would not be the issue; the issue would be whether it was so much of a transgression that the Speaker, in his or her good judgment and good faith judgment, had to intervene.

That is the way it would work in practice, and that is the way it should work.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I have heard in this chamber many times that the NDP believes that it is important to consult, whether it is with stakeholders about a particular bill or just the general idea of consultation.

My concern is that if the amendment that has been proposed today was conceivably to be approved by this place, it might put a Speaker, such as yourself, in a politically divisive situation. He may refer to it as the good judgment of the Speaker, but others might see it as being politically divisive and could call into question your integrity or that of those who do the important work of the Speaker.

Has the NDP, which believes in consultation, consulted with any current or previous Speakers in support of its proposal today?

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will give the member a straight answer. I actually do not know whether the movers of the motion have so consulted.

The fact is that this is something to do with all members in the House, and the opinion of one or two Speakers would not change what we consider to be a very small change, for the reasons that I gave in my speech. It is not as if this change would have a knock-on effect in the way that some changes to the Standing Orders would. It would simply include the answers in question period in the rules of relevance and non-repetition, as every other intervention in the House is except answers.

I honestly think that we are making too much of a deal of this proposal. On its own, it is not going to radically change question period. My colleague from Wellington—Halton Hills has made clear already the other kinds of problems that question period has, as did my colleague from York South—Weston.

I am not one to overstate what this would do on its own, but it is a start.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for bringing forward this motion. We all realize in this place that there needs to be change in the way that things are conducted in question period. We very rarely get answers to important questions that are asked on behalf of Canadians in this country.

Does my colleague who just spoke to this particular motion feel that the government has made any effort, in light of what transpired in the House last week, which ended in a teary-eyed apology, to provide better-informed answers to the Canadian public?

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have to honestly say that the proof is in the pudding. After the incident in which one of our colleagues answered in the most absurd and offensive way, the answers that later came in the same period and over the next day or two tended to be a little bit more on point. There was a sense from some of the parliamentary secretaries and ministers in the House that a boundary had been stepped over, and we have seen the beginnings of answers to the very questions that he refused to answer being given the next day.

The answers on this topic today from the Minister of Foreign Affairs were pretty direct and pretty clear, with whatever kinds of hedges and evasion that he might have felt that he needed to engage in.

I would say that when attention is drawn to a problem such as we experienced last week, there is enough good faith in the House that people adjust their behaviour. However, without a rule change and without the Speaker being empowered in the way that this rule would allow, I do not think that we could expect that behaviour to last longer than it has already.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. Speaker, soon after I was first elected and came to the nation's capital, rookie members of Parliament were called to this chamber, this very esteemed chamber, for a one-on-one introduction on how Parliament works. It was a crash course on how to be a member of Parliament. The analogy or lesson I took away that day above all others was this: Ottawa is the moon, and the ridings, including my riding of St. John's South—Mount Pearl, are planet Earth.

I took that to mean that Ottawa is not the real world. Ottawa is a bubble. Much of what happens here does not resonate at home. People do not always pay a whole lot of attention.

However, they do pay some attention.

They pay particular attention when what happens here directly impacts them on the ground in the riding, in their living rooms, around the kitchen table, or in their pockets.

People pay attention to scandal when well-paid politicians abuse the public trust.

They pay attention to a skirmish, especially a colourful skirmish. People like a fight, like a fighting Newfoundlander, but then there is always a fight for Newfoundland and Labrador.

They also pay attention when politicians who are elected to represent them in these hallowed halls of Parliament make a mockery of Parliament, show contempt for Parliament, or embarrass Parliament. They pay attention when members of Parliament cross the line.

Canadians pay attention when their government sends them into harm's way—into conflict or into Iraq, for example—so when my leader, the leader of Her Majesty's official opposition, stood in this House last week during question period and asked the Conservative government to define the military deployment in Iraq, to confirm that the 30-day Canadian commitment in Iraq would indeed end on October 4, he deserved an answer. More importantly, Canadians deserved an answer.

However, the answer that came from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister was completely off topic. It was irrelevant to the topic at hand. It was insulting.

If Ottawa is the moon and my riding is planet Earth, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister , the member of Parliament for Oak Ridges—Markham, must be from another planet altogether. Maybe he is from Mars or some bizarro world called Harpertron.

MPs in this House, and Canadians, did not know where the member was coming from. What was worse, and what has rattled this House, Canadians, and people back home in Newfoundland and Labrador, is that the Speaker of the House of Commons apparently has no authority to force the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister to give an answer that is even remotely on topic or relevant in any way.

There are rules in place to require questions to be relevant to parliamentary business, but not answers. The hon. Speaker apparently has no authority to judge whether any given answer is in fact an answer. The hon. Speaker can determine when an MP can speak. The Speaker can determine when language is parliamentary or not, but he cannot judge the content.

As has been said here today, that is why it is called “question period” and not “answer period”. It is in that context that I stand in support of this motion by the hon. opposition House leader, the member of Parliament for Burnaby—New Westminster, to improve and enhance question period, make Parliament more democratic, and force the government to be more accountable, answer simple questions, and at the very least to stay on topic.

The motion likely will not make it to a vote, but if passed, it would give the Speaker the power to cut off a member who persists in irrelevance or repetition. The Speaker can do that already with a speech, but he cannot do it with an answer during question period.

How relevant were the answers last week by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister on the subject of Iraq?

The Telegram, the daily newspaper in my riding of St. John's South—Mount Pearl, described it as the “ever-worsening circus on Parliament Hill”.

However, the quote that resonated the most with me was from an editorial in the Ottawa Citizen, and I quote:

But it must make the decent MPs from all parties cringe. If this is what a successful MP looks like now,

—referring to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister—

why would anyone even want to go to Parliament, to play that cringeworthy part, to embarrass themselves, their government and their country over and over again? At some point, it stops being about strategy or even about the rules. This is a fundamental question of honour....

This brings me to Friday's apology in the House by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister who wept during his apology, but the apology was a little off. At the same time that the member's voice was quivering, he was saying that he will probably do it again. The MP said, “I do not think it will be the last time that I will get up and answer a question that does not effectively respond”. I do not want to pick on the MP for Oak Ridges—Markham, the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister. He is not the first Conservative lackey to the Prime Minister and he probably will not be the last.

The government's conduct in the House is a direct reflection of the leader's consistent contempt for Parliament. The House and the office of the Speaker must be given the power to override that contempt, a contempt that threatens to rot—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Order. The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice is rising on a point of order.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening intently to this debate the whole day and the NDP put the motion it says in good faith with bona fides to try to make this place a better place for debate, yet I just heard the member call the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister a lackey. It does not sound like parliamentary language to me. It is not the kind of thing that is going to promote collegiality in this place. I would ask him to apologize for that remark.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

The parliamentary secretary knows there is a list of words that have explicitly been identified as unparliamentary. I do not believe that word is actually on the list. I would again remind all hon. members to demonstrate a respect for the place and their colleagues in their choice of language.

The hon. member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last week in the House I posed a question during question period and the unbelievable happened. It was a first in my time in the House. I raised a question and I actually got an answer, an answer that was on topic. The question was about an extension to the fixed dates for the food fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador to take bad weather into account. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans took to her feet, responded on topic and agreed to extend the fishery. I was floored. The crowd on this side of the House applauded the minister's answer and the fact that I got one. People paid attention at home and it played on the news. The fact that asking a question and getting an answer results in such fanfare, such surprise, tells us that we have a problem.

This past weekend I went back to my riding and I spent much of yesterday, Sunday, in a small wooden boat known as a punt. I was handlining for cod off a place called Petty Harbour. It was as real as it gets, the sea spray, the sun, the sweat, the wind, the taste of salt. Back to my original point, Ottawa is the moon. My riding of St. John's South—Mount Pearl is planet earth. The House must be the high ground in between the moon and earth. The House should raise the bar for truth, accountability, transparency and for honour. Too often, the bar under the Conservative government has been lowered.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to have this opportunity to ask my colleague a question. I know that there have been several speeches today. The Conservatives do not seem to understand the fact that our motion is just about the relevance of a particular subject. The motion states that the Speaker will intervene when he deems that the answer has nothing to do with the question, when it is completely off topic. If the Speaker thinks that the answer could have been better, but that it was nevertheless on topic, the Speaker will not intervene. In other words, if a member is talking about the same thing, the Speaker will not intervene, but members will still have the opportunity to participate in adjournment proceedings.

Does my colleague get the impression that the Conservatives do not understand this simple motion that asks members to stay on topic? Has anyone commented to him that MPs were a little ridiculous, considering what happened on Friday, and has that had an impact on him in his riding?

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I did get a sense of that in my riding this weekend. The people in my riding of St. John's South—Mount Pearl and right across Newfoundland and Labrador were outraged last week when, on an issue as important as Iraq, a pointed question from the Leader of the Opposition was asked directly of the government and the response was not on topic. The member asked a question about Iraq and the answer was about Israel. When that happened, people paid attention right across the country.

As one of the members on our side of the House mentioned a few moments ago in his answer, the Conservative government members have gotten that message loud and clear because the tone today in question period was totally different. They answered questions. If one good thing has happened, it is that they are starting to answer questions.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I heard the member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl's speech, and I know we are dealing with a motion on the floor today that is talking about conduct in question period. I am assuming the member is supporting the motion. I do not know if he gave any justification as to why he thinks we need to do this. I heard about his fishing trip off Petty Harbour, but I did not hear a lot with regard to this particular motion.

Why does the member feel that the motion should be passing on the floor of the House today? I would like to say that I hope he used feather bait and not a jigger when he was down on Petty Harbour.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I did not do a whole lot of fishing actually. I dropped a line once or twice, but it was too windy. I had a great time on the water.

In terms of why it is important for an answer to be relevant, this past weekend my sons asked me about this. They heard about this in the news. They pay attention to the news. They know that I am a member of Parliament so they pay attention to the debate that is going on in the House. They said, “Dad, how come when you ask the Prime Minister or his secretary a question, he can't be forced to answer? How come they can't be made to answer a direct question?” I said to them that they should have to answer. It should be that way.

I tell my sons to tell the truth, be honest, be forthright. If that is how I want my children to be raised, those principles, which are pretty simple and straightforward, should be upheld in this House as well.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to start by rereading the motion before the House.

The purpose of the motion is to change six words in Standing Order 11(2). Those words are “including during responses to oral questions”. The Standing Order 11(2) deals with repetitious comments provided in debate. It was entered into our Standing Orders around 1910 and was a direct copy of a rule adopted in Britain in the 1880s, in the Westminster House of Commons.

It was changed in 1927 and it has had the same form since that time, which suggests that, on the whole, it is a good rule and that we ought to consider changes to it with considerable caution. That is going to be a theme of what I say today.

I want to deal with three subsidiary topics as I go through this. First, I want to talk about the value of informal rules, such as the rules that govern question period and that would be replaced under this proposal with the formalized rule that I have just quoted.

Second, I want to deal with the neutrality of the Speaker and some of the problems that might arise for the Speaker's neutrality if this rule were to be adopted.

Third, I want to deal with the fact that there are in fact some relevant rules dealing with the underlying issue that I think is really at stake here, not so much the rhetorical issue but the underlying, legitimate issue that is at stake here.

Let me do these things in order. First, with regard to informal rules, right now the only formal expectation regarding answers to questions is, and I am going to quote O'Brien and Bosc on this point, which says:

There are no explicit rules which govern the form or content of replies to oral questions. According to practice, replies are to be as brief as possible, to deal with the subject matter raised and to be phrased in language that does not provoke disorder in the House.

It is according to the practice of the House, not to any formal rule but to the practices that have been found to work by members in this place going back, not to the beginning of the House but certainly back to 1927 and 1910 when the current Standing Order 11(2) was adopted and then amended.

We have to think carefully about what is being said here. The test of an answer, whether an answer to a question is legitimate or acceptable, is whether or not it provokes disorder, whether or not there is a brouhaha because it was found to be an inappropriate answer in some respect or another.

I can think of a number of different examples of answers that have been given in the House over the course of the 14 years that I have been here that have provoked enough disorder, enough dissatisfaction expressed by members here, picked up in the media, conveyed to the public, that they have caused some form of withdrawal. It could be misstatements of fact that were usually unintentional but nonetheless occurred, and the appropriate response is for the minister to stand up and correct the record after it has been pointed out to him or her. There have been other kinds of overuse of rhetoric in the response. Questions have had the same effect, by the way.

That is the basis we have always used. The proposal here is to remove this informal test and to replace it with something else. I think that is a dangerous thing to do.

The test of looking at our practices and formalizing a practice so that it is now a formal rule means that we are moving away from something that, depending on its context, is known as a practice, as we call it in the House, a folkway as society at large calls it. A convention, which is what we refer to when we are dealing with the manner in which the government is structured outside of Parliament and what is permissible and impermissible, in practice although not in law or usage, is another term for these things.

These are absolutely fundamental to the way our society and our structure of government works. For example, on conventions, there is nothing in the Constitution of Canada that indicates that we have a government in which the Prime Minister, who is not named at all in the Constitution, is the key figure.

In reading our Constitution literally, one would say that the Queen is a dictator who rules through her Governor General and that Parliament very much plays a subsidiary role. There is no such thing as cabinet government. It is not even mentioned; it does not even exist. The only hint we have for the form of government we have is the preamble to the 1867 Constitution. It says that whereas the provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, the initial three colonies that became the first provinces of the new Dominion, are desirous of a constitution similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom, the following would occur.

That is significant. All we have done is to hint at the practices: the constitution, meaning the unwritten constitution of the United Kingdom, as the basis of our government. By the same token, we have a series of practices in the House that are not written down but are ultimately dictated by whether the House itself accepts the responses that are given to questions. We should move with caution when we deal with potential changes to informal rules.

Let me point out one of the kinds of things we should be worried about here.

Mr. Speaker, as I am addressing this to you, I would like you to consider the position you would be in if you had to make a decision during question period on whether a response to an oral question was repetitive, insufficiently relevant, or germane. You are given only a few seconds in the normal course of questions to indicate the next speaker. If you have to stop to say, “I do not think that was right. Try again.”, or, “That was not satisfactory. Deal with it at some other time.”, I am not sure what the remedial action would be in practice.

The insertion of this provision into the Standing Order, Mr. Speaker, suggests that you would name people. Presumably you would either do so in the middle of question period, which would create chaos, or you would do so at the end of question period. We would find out after it was over that the questions earlier on had been unsatisfactory and you had been sitting on your hands regarding the decision. I think it would be completely impossible for you to act as an impartial individual and arbiter in question period. There is a reason we have said that there can be no points of order during question period. It would break the whole process of question period down. It would completely collapse if we allowed that. By the same token, trying to deal with this problem in this way during question period would have a similar result.

The rule relating to relevance has to do primarily with long-winded speeches or filibusters in the House or committee of the whole, or potentially in subordinate committees. We have all experienced them. In fact, many of us have engaged in what probably would be considered by most standards to be a filibuster that was highly repetitious. I can think of a few examples in which I was on both sides of that, government and in committee.

I see a fellow member of the procedure and House affairs committee chuckling. I suspect she is recalling a particular occasion in which an opposition member was engaged in a filibuster and was running out of steam, and I tried to spell him off so he could reformulate his thoughts.

In such a situation it may be appropriate to speak of relevance, but that is in the context of debates that go on for very long periods of time. Our questions and answers are all less than one minute long. Therefore, trying to deal with these things through the direct intervention of the speaker, using a rule that was intended for an entirely different situation, would put an impossible burden on the Speaker. I, for one, would not want to serve as a Speaker under such circumstances.

There is a rule in place that deals with the fact that sometimes answers are not satisfactory from the point of view of the MP who asked the question. The most fundamental of these is that we frequently get a question and then a supplemental. The supplemental tries to focus a little more tightly, if the minister missed the point of the initial question. However, if that does not work, we have a rule that has been in effect for a very long time, since 1964, that allows for the MP to ask to have the matter raised during adjournment proceedings. This is Standing Order 37(3), which was adopted 50 years ago, in 1964.

This rule says the following:

A Member who is not satisfied with the response to a question asked on any day at [question period]...may give notice that he or she intends to raise the subject-matter of the question at the adjournment of the House.

This is known as “the late show”. That term has been used since the 1980s. Late show questions, or adjournment questions more precisely, are initiated by using a form which is circulated to members. I actually brought one. I am not sure it counts as a prop to wave a form around that is given to members of the House of Commons. It is perhaps just as well that I have misplaced the copy I had here. Normally they are placed in our desks. I went up to the Table and asked for a copy to show to everybody.

We fill in the form. We indicate that minister X has given a response that seems in our own discretion to be unsatisfactory. That form is then presented to the Table, and the minister or the parliamentary secretary to the minister then has to respond within a certain number of sitting days.

This allows for a more detailed response, in part because the responses at adjournment proceedings, the late show, are four minutes long. The member will re-pose the question, sometimes with a great deal more detail, and he or she will get a four-minute long response. I have posed questions at the late show.

The member then has a one-minute supplemental question, and a one-minute response from the minister or parliamentary secretary. This allows the member to focus on whether the minister or the parliamentary secretary has been digressing or missing the point once again.

Originally the rules called for simply one question and one response, and that was changed when it was found not to be good enough. I had the honour of being the first person to ask a question under the new rules that allow for the one-minute supplemental question and one-minute response. This was designed to ensure a little more spontaneity from the minister or parliamentary secretary because written responses were frequently given.

Attempts have been made for half a century, with adjustments in the 1990s, and again in 2001, to allow for more fulsome answers. I suggest that is an excellent way of dealing with the basic problem of relevance.

I do not know if the member who spoke a moment ago, from St. John's, took advantage of that opportunity, but I would say to anybody who finds themselves in a similar situation to do that. I always did it when I was dissatisfied with the answer. Sometimes I thought the answer was just fine, but I submitted one of the forms anyway. It is an option that can be exercised at the absolute discretion of the questioner.

That is a mature and thoughtful response to a legitimate problem. Sometimes in the hurly-burly of question period we cannot deal with a problem, or we cannot get something dealt with in a thoughtful way. We cannot get a considered response in 35 seconds. Sometimes the minister has misunderstood the question, and sometimes the questioner does not think that the response is legitimate.

Separate from that, we have a custom in the House that if the question and the response to the question cause some kind of disorder, then remedial action is taken. I suggest that a version of that is what happened last week, and I think that is healthy for the House.

In my view, there is no need for this particular change. However, if a change were to be considered, I would strongly suggest that it not take the form of an amendment to Standing Order 11(2), which was intended for something else. That is an unwise place to put this kind of change. The Standing Order was clearly intended to deal with matters that are entirely different, very long-winded debates that go on for hours, and not for a matter of just a few seconds.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington for his speech. I am always very happy to discuss issues like this with him. I respect the member very much because he brings a lot of substance to debates, and that is the case again today.

I listened closely to his speech, and I found it very interesting that, basically, this rule already exists, albeit informally.

Last week, the government gave a totally irrelevant answer to a member's question; the answer had nothing to do with the question. I am not talking about content or an answer that was not satisfactory.

If topics have nothing whatsoever to do with each other, which is what happened last week, what solutions does he offer to ensure that Canadians watching question period do not feel let downdo not say that what is going on in the House makes no sense at all?

I know that he thinks this is a very important situation and that he would like to see improvements.

How, then, does he see it? What solutions can he come up with?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the solution already exists in the practices of the House, in Standing Order 37(3), if I am not mistaken.

It seems to me that we already have the mechanism for dealing with this. The most important thing to remember in a situation like this, as she said, is that if the Canadian people find a response to be unsatisfactory, or a manner of carrying out a response to be unsatisfactory, that feedback gets back to the government.

We are politicians. We are all hypersensitive to public feedback. We are all very anxious to have public approval. We understand that public approval is necessary for re-election. For people who have the kind of job that could be ended very abruptly at the next election, that is more powerful than any formal rule.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Mr. Speaker, we cannot speak out on both sides of this issue. Either we support what is happening in the House of Commons right now, or we support reforming it.

One of the things that is expected of cabinet ministers, as documented by the Prime Minister's own guide, is that they answer questions in the House in a way that is informative and honest. This motion would give the Speaker some power to ensure that is the case and that it is actually followed.

Why would the member not support the motion that is tabled here today? The alternative is that you agree with the kinds of actions we have seen in the House and the responses coming from some of your colleagues over the recent days.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

I would remind all members to direct their questions and comments to the Chair and not to other members of the House.

The hon. member for Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the best way to respond to that question is to refer to the Annotated Standing Orders of the House of Commons. This is an excellent volume, which gives a bit of information regarding the rationale behind each of the Standing Orders.

Standing Order 11(2) deals with the kinds of rulings that have been made regarding relevance. I would suggest that it would be very difficult for a Speaker in the context of question period to indicate where the problem lies with relevance, given its rapid-fire nature. It is very different from the longer debates that go on. That is the reason this would not work.

Here is an example. A Speaker once asked the following:

How can you tell if a Member is repeating until you have heard him, and once you have heard him he has completed his repetition and therefore you cannot ask him to swallow his words.

That is regarding repetition. With regard to relevance, one example says:

...the Speaker pointed out that debate on a motion for the production of papers in connection with steamship service between Montreal and Gaspé “could not properly include the terms of union between Prince Edward Island and the rest of the Dominion.”

This is something that takes time to express. There are other similar examples. On another occasion it was pointed out that a member's remarks with regard to criminology had “little to do with import duties”.

These are all things that cannot be expressed in a few words. They would involve the Speaker actively disrupting question period, or else, as the Standing Order assumes, waiting until the end of question period and naming the member. Essentially it is only at the end of question period that members would find out that an answer had been considered so inappropriate by the Speaker that the Speaker was going to take remedial action. That is very problematic.

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

Mr. Speaker, the member for Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington referenced early in his remarks the fact that the current rule, Standing Order 11(2), was modelled on a rule in the British Parliament from the 1880s. I would have thought that the current rule in our Parliament, Standing Order 11(2), would have been interpreted in a way that included oral questions. Clearly, previous speakers and the current Speaker have not interpreted it that way.

I note that in the U.K. Parliament today, the Speaker has the right to cut off members of the ministry if he does not feel they are properly answering questions. In fact, this happened on April 30, 2014, just a mere six months ago, when the British Speaker at Westminster palace cut off the Prime Minister, because he felt the Prime Minister was not being relevant during question period.

I would point that out to my colleague as an example of a sister parliament, where the Speaker gets more vigorously involved in making sure that the ministry adequately answers questions put to it.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I only quoted the six words that would be added to the Standing Order. Maybe if I read the whole thing, it would make the point as to why this is problematic. It states:

The Speaker...after having called the attention of the House...to the conduct of a Member who persists in irrelevance...including during responses to oral questions,

That is the part that is added in. Then it goes back to the existing wording, as follows:

may direct the Member to discontinue his or her intervention, and if then the Member still continues to speak, the Speaker shall name the Member or, if in Committee of the Whole, the Chair shall report the Member to the House.

The last part is not relevant, but it says, “the Speaker shall name the Member”. Naming seems really strong. It has not happened once in the House during my career.

It also says that the Speaker may order the member to discontinue. If the Speaker says, “Make the comments relevant or I am going to cut them off, because that is not relevant” and goes back to the questioner, that is a different process than what is recommended here.

What is recommended here is simply the wrong weapon for the situation, because a Standing Order intended for an entirely different purpose is being used for this purpose. I suggest that it is like trying to fix a hole in a boat with something that is inappropriate, like barbed wire. It is the wrong tool for the situation. It is like using glue to repair a rip in a blanket. It is the wrong tool. That is the main problem with this.

If members want to come back with some other way of dealing with this issue somewhere else in the Standing Orders, we may have greater success, although I still go back to my thought that it is best to rely upon the practices of the House.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about answering the question and ensuring that the answer really addresses the question asked. The answer needs to be relevant.

I would like to know if the Conservative member listened to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, who was more worried about the fact that the government cannot ask the opposition any questions. In my view, when a question is asked, an answer normally follows. Today the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons defended himself, saying that this motion would take away the government's chance to ask the opposition questions.

Really, in any parliament, it is the opposition that asks questions of the government. There are also members on the government side who ask three or four questions during question period. This motion does not take away their right to ask questions.

Does the member agree with the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons that the motion would take away the government's opportunity to ask questions and cost him this privilege he thinks he has?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I was not here when the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons made the comments the member is referring to.