Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to join this debate. My colleague from the New Democrats in his contribution mentioned King Charles. It was King John who dealt with the Magna Carta, and he was not beheaded, actually. He died of dysentery. It was King Henry III who reintroduced the Magna Carta a second time. Three of those clauses are still part of the United Kingdom's constitution. It speaks to the strength and traditions, which have lasted through the ages and form the rights and privileges that both members of the public and members of Parliament enjoy.
I want to begin with a quote from Lady Thatcher on the quality of debate and the arguments made by different sides. She said, to The Times, in 1980, “I love argument. I love debate. I don't expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me -- that's not their job.”
I very much agree with the emotion and sentiment she shared. When members of the House from the different political parties we belong to, but also some of us who are more independent thinkers than others, debate in the House, we do not necessarily have to come to an agreement. It is the same at committee. It is not a requirement that we always have consensus, with 100% of us voting every single which way. Fundamentally, all members, especially when in opposition, and members of the government caucus will be there some day, have to agree that the rights and privileges we enjoy as members of Parliament are worth protecting, not just for the work we do today on behalf of our constituents but for the work future members of Parliament will do on behalf of their constituents. These seats do not belong to us. We are stewards for a next generation, for the future members who will sit in the House and defend the rights and interests of their constituents, as will be their right and privilege at that time.
I have listened to the debate. I have read and re-read the transcript of the debate when this was before the House before. Some members of the House, especially on the government side, must have some form of cognitive dissonance that must be experienced communally.
We have a ruling by the Speaker. The matter we have before us is a breach of the privilege of two members of the House. The member for Beauce and the member for Milton, who sit behind me, were affected directly by this, because they were unable to come to the House and vote on a matter the House had under consideration.
The Speaker's ruling established certain themes. He also said there were sufficient grounds for filing a prima facie question of privilege. Thereafter, the Speaker advised that the member could move the required motion to have this matter rightly referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. It is a committee I have been at during the PROC filibuster, of course. It has been mentioned here several times now. I remember being there until 3 a.m. participating in debate. I remember doing a straight eight hours of debate. I promise not to do that here. I promise not to speak for eight hours, but I was required to do it at the time.
My point at committee was that we are here to defend the rights and privileges of members. The changes to the Standing Orders being proposed by members on the government side would reduce our ability as members of Parliament, especially the opposition, to serve our constituents.
Last year, in December 2016, Jim Prior passed away. He was a great House leader in the Ted Heath government as a member of the Conservative government in the United Kingdom. He said in his book that the way to make a well-functioning democracy work is to ensure that members of the opposition are able to do their work. It was a government House leader saying that the right way to do it is to ensure that the opposition members have the ability to speak up and take the time they need to deliberate, debate, and contribute. They need to both be able to do it and feel that they can do it. One is the actual function and one is believing that they are able to do it. Both have to exist.
Mr. Prior, although he passed away in December 2016, wrote a fantastic book. By no means was he a great promoter of Lady Thatcher. She was prime minister of the United Kingdom after 1979. He served in her government as a cabinet minister, but he was considered one of the “wets”, while she obviously preferred the “dries” in her cabinet.
The matter before the House is on the Speaker's ruling that says there is a prima facie breach of privilege of two members of the House. It is definitive, insofar as it establishes that something went wrong and that the something is up for interpretation.
I am quoting from the Speaker's ruling and not the exact details that are then discussed based on the two reports that the Speaker received. Here is what appears to have happened. It “appears to have happened” does not mean that it has happened. It “appears to have happened”. Many Liberals have confused this statement. The member of Parliament for York—Simcoe quoted Speaker Milliken, and I am paraphrasing here, that it is not the role of the Speaker to be definitively involved in making a ruling every which way on matters of a breach of privilege.
There is a role for the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs here that must be undertaken. There must be a review. The matter of a breach of privilege must be reviewed, because it is serious. Imagine if this had been a deciding budget vote. We have had close votes in the House before. If it had come down to two votes going in any one direction, it could easily have been a much more tense, disruptive, and emotional debate in the House.
If a vote had been decided by one or two votes on that day, it would have been a far more serious matter. I am convinced that we would not even be having this debate. The issue would have been sent to committee immediately. There would be questions in question period about it to find out specific details. Thankfully that did not happen that day, but who knows what would happen in the future if members were obstructed from entering the chamber, whether direct entry to the chamber or by the bus service that gets us here from our offices.
The parliamentary precinct has grown over time. Some office locations have moved farther away. Members who are perhaps getting up in years, senior members, more experienced members who have mobility issues, take more time to get here. They all plan for that. All members, regardless of party affiliation, consider the time needed to travel from their offices. My precinct office recently moved, as have many others. We all judge how long it will take to get into the House to vote. This is one task of our jobs that no other job has. Voting is fundamental. It is critical. It is the one thing we do that no other job has as its most central role. If members do not like voting in the House, then they should not have decided to run for Parliament, because voting in the House is the most important thing that we do. It is the only thing that our constituents cannot do. Most parts of this job with respect to the functions and tasks that we do as members of Parliament can be done by somebody else, but only we, as elected members of Parliament, can enter the chamber to vote on behalf of our constituents. That is the most fundamental thing.
I have a Yiddish proverb here, and many members have heard it before. I like them and have used them at committee: “Nothing tastes more bitter than the truth.” With respect to the Speaker's ruling, the member for York—Simcoe said that this matter must go to the procedure and House affairs committee. It can go nowhere else. This is a breach of privilege as a result of the two votes that were not able to be cast. Voting is fundamental to the role of a member of Parliament, and as a result we have to look into what happened.
The Speaker's ruling is clear. It appears that something has happened. Members of Parliament on that committee will be able to review the contents of those reports, and I truly hope that they will be provided. They will perhaps be able to ask questions of the member for Milton and the member for Beauce. They will perhaps be able to ask questions of other members of the House from past instances, where they were perhaps delayed entering the House, or they feel that security or other measures are being introduced or being removed that impede their ability to get to the chamber as quickly as they need. They might have suggestions with respect to improvements, as well.
The Speaker's role is that of a servant of the House, a servant of all members of Parliament. That is why Speakers are elected in this chamber by preferential ballot. It ensures that one candidate has the most support required in order to fulfill the role. The Speaker is not necessarily here to render judgment as a justice among members of Parliament, because at the end of the day the Speaker is equal to all members of the House. All 338 of us, including the Speaker, are equals.
We do not expect the Speaker to render judgment on things like a breach of privilege, especially in this matter. What kind of servant would a Speaker be if his or her judgment on this would be considered the facts, that there would be no other consideration given, and that the committee could not consider it going forward? A servant of the House cannot tell the House what to do. The House renders judgment through the vote. The House makes a decision through the vote. The best decision in this matter would be to approve the amendments to the original motion in order to take this matter to committee, so it can receive a complete review, a complete study, with witnesses and members of Parliament giving it full consideration.
It is a matter that is more important at this time. “At this time” are words that the government House leader likes to use quite often. She used them this morning, referring to the changes to the Standing Orders she would like to make “at this time”. The government will not proceed with all of the ideas and changes that we on the opposition side find so reprehensible, and in some cases illogical. In the long term, it will hurt members of the Liberal government caucus when they some day return to opposition, some day soon I hope, in 2019.
That is a matter that the standing committee should review. The standing committee should review cases where there is a breach of privilege. The Speaker's ruling was clear. It appeared that certain things happened a certain way, based on two reports. I would very much prefer if a committee of members of Parliament were to review this. I have full confidence in the chair of the committee, the member for Yukon, and the other members who sit on the committee on a regular basis, to review this matter and render judgment, and then to get back to the House to instruct the House and the Speaker on the best way to avoid such instances in the future.
The Speaker's ruling, and this is something that the member for York—Simcoe brought up, said that the two reports provided an excellent minute-by-minute summary of events and were supplemented by witness statements. I know that the Speaker at the time he made the ruling did not refer to specific witnesses in this report, or outside of the report. It is not very clear, based on the Speaker's ruling. I would very much like to see the Standing Committee on Procedure and House affairs consider this matter, who the witnesses were and whether we could hear from them once again.
The nice thing about a standing committee is that all of us can attend. We can all participate by being there and listening to the conversation. I have been to these late sittings of the procedures and House affairs committee, even though I was not a full member. I was a fourth or fifth member on the Conservative side, sitting, participating, listening, having conversations, along with other members there, and at times, when I was substituted in, providing for a point of order. Then I contributed with some observations I had made, based on what I had heard at committee and read in the transcripts as well.
That line in the Speaker's ruling about “what appears to have happened” is critical to the entire matter before the House today. What appears to have happened is not a determination of fact; it is simply a collection of views provided to the House by the Speaker. It is not an instruction to the House on the facts of the matter. The standing committee can determine the facts and then return to the House.
Generally, though, we have heard many members speak about the problems that the government is having, and I do not mean the government caucus but the front bench, the members of the executive council, in pushing through the government's agenda. Many members have mentioned before that the government seems to be having a very difficult time in proceeding with its agenda.
It is having a great deal of difficulty passing legislation and following through with its platform promises. Some of it is simply because it does not have the public support it thought it had, such as on electoral reform. In other matters, the government is simply in no rush. Sometimes the government gets to decide the business of the day, to decide what we debate during the day, and sometimes I see legislation that, in my mind, should not be such a priority. A priority should be border security or taxation.
I hear a great deal of things from constituents. I held an open house on Thursday in my constituency. The primary concern for people in Calgary Shepard is jobs, pipelines, oil and gas industry jobs, getting people back to work, and making sure we have the right policies to assure industry that it can hire workers again and proceed with the construction of large energy infrastructure projects. None of that exists right now, and I do not see that as a priority on that side.
We also saw the government push through Motion No. 6, which was dropped because of public pressure. We see the continuation of a filibuster at the procedure and House affairs committee at this point. I do not know how long that will continue, based on what we heard from the government House leader this morning.
The Senate changes are being rammed through the Senate, which are very similar to the ones being proposed in the House. We cannot forget the other chamber. We form Parliament together; we are not a unitary form of government. We have another chamber that does good work in reviewing the government's legislation.
What about the Prime Minister's obstruction of a New Democrat and the manhandling of our opposition whip last year? It is a trend. It is a pattern of behaviour, and it is typical of how the government has been run. Liberals say the nice things and use all the right words, buzzwords especially, but consultation is not a shield for incompetence. If they are incapable and do not know how to pass legislation and push it through the process, perhaps consideration should be given to standing aside and letting another member of the executive council take a shot at it. There are Liberal backbenchers who could perhaps do a better job than the government House leader.
I have another proverb: “A trick is clever only once.” I have listed all of these patterns of behaviour. Motion No. 6, what Liberals are doing in the Senate, and what they have tried to do at the procedure and House affairs committee are not consultations, not discussions, not nice ways to talk about things. At the committee, the government discussion paper and the motion were moved on a Friday. One only drops bad news on a Friday. That is a general joke made by the media, by members of Parliament, by public servants. It is very common. One does not just drop a discussion paper that needs a thorough discussion. Liberals should not surprise members this way on a Friday, which is exactly what the government House leader has done. Now the Liberals do not even want to sit on Fridays.
Having a conversation is not a replacement for doing something, for going through the motions of passing their agenda, actually following through on what they intend to do. The motion moved by the member for Milton, with amendments by the member for Beauce, is reasonable and logical. It ensures protection of our privileges that protect members of Parliament primarily from the government and the crown. The obstruction of a member or breach of privilege goes beyond simply blocking a member. I am going to refer to page 111 of O'Brien and Bosc, chapter 3, “Privileges and Immunities”, which expands on what constitutes a prima facie case of breach of privilege. It also includes damaging a member's reputation, “the usurpation of the title of Member of Parliament, the intimidation of Members and their staff and of witnesses before committees, and the provision of misleading information.”
I mention these things because it goes beyond obstructing members from entering the chamber to vote. It includes a whole slew of rights, as the member from the New Democrats just spoke on, going all the way back to the Magna Carta. All of these inheritances we have, these traditions we have picked up from the mother parliament here in Canada are valuable to protecting future members of Parliament. Our role as parliamentarians, both in opposition and on the government side, should be to protect them as best we can. The only way we can do that is to take this matter directly to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
Some members of the government have implied that the members for Beauce and Milton have misled, or attributed the breach of privilege against them on the Prime Minister. We are told that MPs are not to imply or say that another member is lying. I am not implying that any member here is lying. I believe every statement made here by a member is truthful, in as far as they believe it to be true. I absolutely believe that. Speakers have brought to order many members who have implied that another member has lied in some way. I am not implying that in any way. I believe the facts as they were said by the member for Beauce. He believes, based on what security said, that it was the Prime Minister's vehicles that were blocking the way.
Parliamentarians make the rules, and we give the Speaker the role of arbitrator, deciding on the rules. We cannot decide the rules and clarify the rights and privileges of a member without this going to the standing committee. That is what we need to remember, and that is where the discussion needs to go. It is fundamental to the chamber that matters of breach of privilege are questions of equality that the members enjoy. We should deal with this expeditiously and send it to committee so it can in a detailed way look at the evidence and call witnesses.