Debates of May 18th, 2016

Government Operations and Estimates

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the second report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, entitled “Main Estimates 2016-17: Vote 1 under Canada Post Corporation, Vote 1 under Canada School of Public Service, Vote1 under Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat, Vote 1 under Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board, Vote 1 under Governor General, Vote 1 under Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner, Vote 1 under Privy Council, Vote 1 under Public Service Commission, Votes 1 and 5 under Public Works and Government Services, Votes 1 and 5 under Shared Services Canada, Vote 1 under The Senate, Votes 1, 5, 10, 20, 25, 30 and 33 under Treasury Board Secretariat”.

Procedure and House Affairs

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in relation to the main estimates.

While I am on my feet, I move:

That the House do now proceed to orders of the day.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, during question period, the government House leader said:

...in no other workplace is it acceptable to arrive at work, pull the fire alarm, and make all of one's colleagues cancel their meetings in committees.

Today alone, over 20 witnesses will be disrupted at committees.

It is the Liberals' own motion that is doing that.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

The hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle knows that is a point of debate and not a point of order.

I am hoping the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby has an actual point of order in which he can refer to some precedent or standing order.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

I certainly do, Mr. Speaker. The precedent in this place, of course, is to respect the right of vote, and the precedent as well is not to throw the House of Commons into chaos, which is what we have seen all this week from the government side. I think it is fair to say that I would agree with the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #62

Committees of the House

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

I declare the motion carried.

I wish to inform the House that, because of the ministerial statements, government orders will be extended by 30 minutes.

Before the hon. government House leader rises, I have notice of a question of privilege from the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby.

House of Commons

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as you know from the letter I deposited with your office this morning, I am rising on a question of privilege relating to Motion No. 6, which is on today's Notice Paper in the name of the government House leader.

Through my brief remarks today, and in more detail at a later date, I will ask you to eventually rule that there exists a prima facie case that the privileges of members of Parliament have been breached by this draconian motion.

I think you will find others who will want to intervene in coming days as well. I include in that the parliamentary House leaders of the Conservative Party and Bloc Québécois and the leader of the Green Party. I think they will all want to speak to this question of privilege.

I preface my remarks by saying that this is a sad day for our democracy. Today, the Liberal cabinet, through its leader in the House, introduced a motion that rewrites our Standing Orders in more than 17 different ways so that the executive has unilateral control over all of the procedural tools in the House.

This motion moved by the Liberal cabinet uses parliamentary procedure to put all the other members in a straitjacket and limit their rights and privileges. That includes independent members, members of the Bloc Québécois, members of the Green Party, members of the recognized opposition parties, namely the NDP and the Conservative Party, and even the Liberal backbenchers.

That, Mr. Speaker, cannot and must not be allowed, and you may be the only person who can stop this unilateral and autocratic rewriting of the regulations governing our democratic institutions.

In this straitjacket of Parliament, cabinet, according to the motion, would not need to consult other MPs on the timing of debate, on when we return to our ridings for the summer or at all, or even when MPs can go to bed. So much for a family friendly Parliament. Liberals should be hanging their heads in shame to move this motion.

Further, it would deny MPs the right to spark debates on the crucial work done at committee. It would force MPs to debate their bills in the middle of the night, ensuring absolutely no votes will interrupt the Prime Minister's beauty sleep while opposition MPs have to be available, wait for it, 24 hours a day in the possibility that a bill for which they are responsible is brought forward. The list goes on and on in 17 different areas through the course of more than a dozen clauses and subclauses to tilt the playing field in the favour of the government.

I am wondering how the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons was able to justify this type of undemocratic motion to his caucus this morning or whether he told his party's backbenchers about it at all.

From what we heard in question period today, it seems that even the Prime Minister does not really understand what this motion does.

Motion No. 6 does not merely, as the Prime Minister claims, allow for more debate. It gives cabinet ministers unilateral control over when the House adjourns. If he or she is not happy with how a debate is unfolding, the minister can simply stand up at 8 p.m., at 9 p.m., at 10 p.m., at midnight, at 3 a.m., whenever, and adjourn the House or keep it going until the next morning. It invests the power of a dictatorship in the heart of our democracy.

Erskine May's Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament defines privilege in the following way on page 75:

Parliamentary privilege is the sum of the peculiar rights enjoyed by each House collectively...and by Members of each House individually, without which they could not discharge their functions....

It is clear the executive is attempting to set aside those rights and privileges for all MPs, other than for cabinet ministers, and when we have had more time to digest this draconian legislation that affects 17 important areas in our Standing Orders, I intend to return to the House with a much more fulsome intervention.

I will continue another day, but I will say this. No government in history has introduced a motion that has had, or will have, such a draconian impact on Parliament. Liberals should be ashamed of themselves.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I will be very brief. I have listened to my colleague's intervention across the way. I would like to ask the Chair to reserve my right to reflect on what he said and come back to the House and provide a more fulsome comment.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to add some of my comments here as well and perhaps provide a little bit more for the government House leader to consider as he goes and prepares his remarks.

I will keep my remarks very short, because I think what most members of the House would like to do is debate Bill C-14, which is a bill that could have been called on Monday, on Tuesday morning, or earlier today before the dilatory motions. As the government House leader said during question period, in essence, the Liberals just pulled the fire alarm.

Simply put, Motion No. 6 is a disgrace and not worthy of a democracy such as ours. It is an affront to the dignity of the House and its members.

Motion No. 6 is a complete quashing of the opposition's ability to hold the government to account. It is the total disempowerment of certain members of Parliament, who were sent here by 60.5% of Canadian voters. Motion No. 6 is indirectly disenfranchising every one of those voters through the draconian measures set out.

Beauchesne's, sixth edition, outlines some elements of the Constitution Act and our system of government, which I believe is relevant to this very point. It states:

Canada thus was ensured a responsible Cabinet system with the assumption that there will always be a recognizable government with a legislative programme. If the electorate so wishes, the system also presupposes an Opposition ready and willing to attack the Government in an attempt to have its legislation altered or rejected.... More tentative are such traditional features, as respect for the rights of the minority, which precludes a Government from using to excess the extensive powers that it has to limit debate or to proceed in what the public and the Opposition might interpret as unorthodox ways.

On May 2, 2000, during a discussion of the rule of time allocation at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, the former clerk of the House of Commons, Robert Marleau, responded to a question regarding the Speaker's authority to protect the minority in the manner described earlier. The former clerk said, “it exists...intrinsically in the role of the speakership”, and continued, “all the time, where there can be tyranny on either side. It could be the tyranny of the majority or the tyranny of the minority.”

My interpretation of what the clerk said is that there exists a limit to what a majority government can do.

In an earlier point of order, I described how Speaker Fraser ruled on the government tactic of skipping over Routine Proceedings in order to get to a point where time allocation could be moved. On one occasion in 1986, he disallowed it, whereas on other occasions he allowed it.

If there was ever a point when a Speaker should intervene to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority, Motion No. 6 is it.

Parliament is fundamentally about debate. It is also about the right to dissent in a civilized manner. Genuine political opposition is a necessary attribute of democracy, tolerance, and trust, and the ability of citizens to resolve differences by a peaceful means. The existence and tolerance of an opposing view is essential to the functioning of government.

I have more to say on this, but I would like to reserve the right to come back at a later time when the House is not up against the clock on such an important bill as Bill C-14.

However, Mr. Speaker, I do ask you to consider that Motion No. 6 is a completely unprovoked response to a situation that simply did not exist. I would invite the government to show me one example of a dilatory motion being moved by either opposition party when it came to the legislative agenda that the government is currently putting forward.

The Liberals are unilaterally withdrawing every single tool that the opposition has to propose alternate subjects of debate, they are ignoring the good work of committees, they are preventing members fo Parliament from debating such things as motions to instruct a committee, and they are completely changing the rules around the clock and the calendar.

Therefore, I would like to come back to the House at a later time, but being cognizant of what little time left the House has to debate Bill C-14, because of the tactics of the government, I will yield the floor at this time.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to reserve the right to talk more about this later. I want to participate in the debate.

Briefly, it would be good if we could debate this today. I wanted to say that the motion is excessive and that it is the ultimate gag order. The motion blatantly disregards parliamentary democracy. In some ways, it may be a retaliation against the opposition, which almost got the better of the government on Monday.

My party thinks that it is unacceptable to impose closure like this. The government is preparing to do whatever it wants with the official opposition whenever it wants, and that is unacceptable.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

I would like to thank the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby, the hon. Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, the hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle, and the hon. member for Montcalm for their remarks.

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

Mr. Speaker, I just want to build on what the opposition House leader submitted, and say that I, too, have great concerns about the motion on the paper, in particular with one aspect of it.

The fundamental responsibility mechanism in the House is the confidence convention. The 20 or so members of Parliament who are part of the ministry who are the government sit there because they have the confidence of the majority of members of this chamber. It is that confidence convention that is undermined by the motion that the government has put on the paper.

By giving members of the ministry the unilateral right, at any time, to adjourn the House undermines that confidence convention. It undermines the ability of all members of the House to hold the government accountable.

For that reason, I hope a prima facie case of privilege is found.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

I thank the hon. member for Wellington—Halton Hills for his intervention, as well. I will take those under advisement.

Bill C-14—Time Allocation Motion

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I move:

That in relation to Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make related amendments to other Acts (medical assistance in dying), not more than one further sitting day shall be allotted to the consideration of the report stage and one sitting day shall be allotted to the third reading stage of the said bill; and

That fifteen minutes before the expiry of the time provided for Government Orders on the day allotted to the consideration of the report stage and on the day allotted to the third reading stage of the said bill—

[Some hon. members]

Shame.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Order, please.

Colleagues, we just heard arguments about the tyranny of the majority and the tyranny of the minority. I do not think we want to have either one of those tyrannies in this House. There is a tyranny created by that kind of noise.

I am going to allow the hon. government House leader to continue, and I expect members to allow that to occur, if they want to stay in this chamber.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I will pick up from where I think you rose.

—any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this Order, and in turn every question necessary for the disposal of the stage of the bill then under consideration shall be put forthwith and successively without further debate or amendment.