Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour for me to stand here today to discuss this subject.
As a new member, I arrived here some nine months ago wondering what the rules were, and found out that not only were there a lot of rules, but there were a lot of unwritten rules as well. This was difficult for me to get my head around.
When I heard that we would be spending today talking about the Standing Orders, I welcomed it. It is indeed a chance to brainstorm all of the different ways that we could make the House conduct its business in a better way. I listened with great interest to the speeches this morning, and there are more to come later today from my fellow members about how we could do that.
For my part, I want to take things in a different direction and talk about how we can make the debate in the House much more meaningful to each other, more meaningful to the work that we do here as members of Parliament, which is to create, to review, to vote on legislation, and hold the government to account.
I want to again thank our clerks and officers of the House of Commons for the terrific support that we receive from them.
I did some research from our big green book, House of Commons Procedure and Practice, Chapter 13, on the evolution of how things came to be here with respect to maintaining debate.
There were things that were of particular interest to me. I realized that I broke one of the rules very early on in the game. I learned why we have the mace on the table and why we are not to pass between the mace and the Speaker. The reason is that at different times in our history, members tried to impede debate by grabbing the mace. I do not know what they would have done with it, but they did grab it. That was certainly not my intention when I did that. That is the kind of thing that I have learned.
I also learned that in the early years, the debates were very vigorous. Members sat for long hours, and apparently it was not unknown to have some imbibing going on outside the premises. This also led to the invocation of different rules, where the Speaker was able to tell a member that he or she was being repetitive, redundant, or off topic. At that time, members did speak off the cuff and were not always to the point.
I am doing my best today to speak to the point because it does bring back stimulating and vigorous debate in the House.
I do believe in preparation. It is a good idea to do one's research and to know what one is going to talk about before speaking. Do forgive me if I resort to my notes from time to time.
When we are looking at decorum here in the House, I have to ask what the purpose is of that. It is not because we are having a tea party here. It is because we want to engage in civil and free discourse to the greatest extent possible, so we can have an exchange of ideas and constructive criticism as we debate the many important topics before us.
Apparently, it is the Speaker's job to maintain that decorum. The Speaker has a very heavy-handed tool to do that. Basically, it is in article 11, which allows the Speaker to name a member and cause that member to withdraw from the House. It is my understanding that naming a member came out of British parliamentary tradition. We are talking perhaps around 1913, and I am sure that someone will check that for me. Naming was such a shameful thing for the member in question, and the member would immediately apologize to the House. Decorum was basically kept for another 30 years after that. There is something to be said about members knowing they have crossed the line, that they have disrupted the House and are being called to account for that.
There is something to be said for having intermediary measures. In my own background, one of the many things I did—and I do not know how it happened—was act as the disciplinary officer for the director of a student residence at McGill University, with 750 18-year olds. If members want to see wild and disorderly conduct, they should go to a student residence on a Friday or Saturday night. They are young people who are very active. We had one rule at McGill, which was respect. However, they did not always know what that meant, so I had to spell it out for them in different ways. I did not want to use the heavy-handed tool of a formal reprimand, which could lead to suspension or expulsion, as that was too much and went too far. What I found very useful was a very timely call to a 7:00 a.m. interview, in a formal letter to the students that would be put under their bedroom door at the residence. I figured if they were going to bother me, I was going to bother them. Those interviews really led to a general calming of the waters, to the extent that when students learned that there would be consequences to their actions it became a much safer and more enjoyable place for everyone.
Coming back to the intermediary measures, I had a few ideas, and we were kicking them around a bit. I sometimes think of this place as a bit like a sports arena, so I was thinking of a penalty box at the end of the chamber. The Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities had a great idea, basically like in soccer, where yellow and red cards could be used as a warning to members who are being disruptive in the House and interrupting another member. If we were in a baseball frame of mind, it could be that members are given a first warning, a second warning, and a third warning; three strikes and they are out.
We can look to the kind of practices that we already have, whereby the Speaker has the authority to recognize or not recognize a member as he or she chooses. I believe that is something we need to get back to and perhaps also codify in the Standing Orders to make it evident to the members. Then, the Speaker could say something to the effect of “I admonish you under Standing Order x, y, or z”, so that the member stands warned, because as it is now sometimes one side or the other will lose a question, but it is not normally the offending member.
Those are the kinds of things I was thinking of, because I really do believe that the best thing we can do for Canadians is to make the debate and the work we do in this House more meaningful. We need something that would bring out the best in us, rather than the worst, as we have unfortunately seen on too many occasions.
Also, I am a great believer in apologies. I have used that to great effect when I was working with students. There is something to be said about people acknowledging that their behaviour has hurt other people.
Therefore, I would call upon the procedures and the House affairs committee to think about these different measures. Let us give our Speaker the authority and the tools that he or she needs to help remind all members why we are here and what kind of behaviour and decorum we should be keeping.