Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. Having said that, it only leaves me 10 minutes to cover this issue and that is just not enough time. However, I will give it my best shot.
Motion No. 18 is actually a very encouraging and positive motion. I would encourage all members of this House to recognize the value of this particular motion. If we take a look at the five aspects that I want to highlight, one only needs to look back to the last federal election. The Prime Minister made it very clear that he wanted to implement changes to House rules inside the House of Commons and to make some changes that would ultimately ensure there is a higher sense of accountability and a higher sense of transparency.
What we find in Motion No. 18 are changes to our Standing Orders that will in fact improve the conditions in the House. One of the issues that the Prime Minister talked a great deal about was prorogation. We have had a number of members make reference to it. There is a reason why prorogation became a major issue. Others have commented on it. Suffice it to say that the most encouraging aspect of what we are doing with respect to that is that a prime minister will no longer be able to walk across the street to the Governor General's house, have a session prorogued, and have nothing ever come of it in terms of any sense of accountability.
Through this change, there will be an obligation for the procedure and House affairs committee to deal with the issue, if at any point in time in the future a prime minister goes to the Governor General and asks for prorogation. That is something that was committed to in the last federal election. That is something this Prime Minister and this House are being asked to put into place, which I would strongly encourage members to do.
We have talked about the inappropriateness of the use of omnibus bills. This is something that has been somewhat controversial. I have been quoted by members in the opposition on some of the words I said when I was in opposition, and rightfully so. While I was in opposition, there were budgets bills and other pieces of legislation in which we saw an abuse of the idea of what an omnibus bill was actually meant to do.
At times, omnibus bills are questionable, and that is one of the reasons why we are enabling the Speaker to have more authority to ensure there are opportunities for members to vote on different sections of these bills, if in fact the Speaker deems it.
I have heard members talk about our budget bill. The example they give is the infrastructure bank that is being established. They have been using that as their class one example of the government having an omnibus bill. I would suggest that, if members really look into it, they will find that it has a direct link to the budget. After all, even in the budget we talk about the importance of the billions of dollars that we are investing in infrastructure. We make reference to the infrastructure bank. It only stands to reason that we would have that in the budget implementation bill.
Having said that, we recognize that there needs to be more authority and power given to the Speaker in addressing issues of this nature. This would be a change in the Standing Orders. I would think that all members of the opposition would support that.
Then what we are doing is giving strength to our committees. The Prime Minister made a comment and commitment that we should not have parliamentary secretaries voting at our standing committees. I am a parliamentary secretary, and I believe that is a positive move. We are codifying that. We are saying, in the Standing Orders, that parliamentary secretaries will not be able to vote in the standing committees. They will have a role to play, but they are not going to be able to vote.
I would think the opposition members would see that as a positive thing and support it.
We are talking about improving financial oversight. I served in the Manitoba legislature for many years, where a budget was presented, and following that budget presentation we would go into the estimates. We are talking about doing something of a similar nature here, postponing the estimates until after the budget has been presented on the floor of the House. That is a way that we can ensure a higher sense of accountability with respect to the budget, if we know those debates and discussions will occur after the budget has been presented. I suggest to members that many Canadians might have thought that would have been the case. It is something that is long overdue, and has been talked about a great deal. Listening to the members opposite provide comment on that aspect, I would expect that all members would be voting in favour of that change.
Increasing accountability for question period was another commitment this Prime Minister made to Canadians. We are so appreciative of the fact that Canadians supported our platform commitments relating to change. This is one that I thought was something the opposition members would have jumped all over. The Prime Minister has said that he would answer all questions from beginning to end of that question period. However, the Conservatives have been saying they do not want the Prime Minister to show up only once a week. Not one Liberal MP has argued that the Prime Minister would be here only once a week; it is only the Conservatives who want to argue that. That surprises me. We believe that the Prime Minister is providing more accountability by doing that. We will respect what we are hearing from the opposition, and going forward this government will make that commitment because we believe it is a good, positive thing for the Prime Minister to not only answer the first question but also the last question as much as is possible. When I sat in opposition, I was never really afforded the opportunity for my question to be in the top nine questions, which were the questions that Stephen Harper would usually answer. With these changes, even if a member is the 20th person to ask a question, he or she can ask that question of the Prime Minister. I think that is a positive thing.
Although, we are not codifying that in the Standing Orders, I would like to hear more encouraging words from the opposition with respect to the benefits of that, because I believe that Canadians who truly have an understanding of what is taking place in the House would look at not only that change but also the changes to the rules that we are making and see them for what they are. It was a promise that was made in the last election, and by all accounts it is a promise that has been kept.
That leads me to the discussion paper. We have a government that was open to changing other rules. We had a discussion paper. Members can call it whatever they like, but I would suggest that this has been a government that has opened its doors, talked with members, and invited them to encourage a dialogue with respect to changing the Standing Orders, whether it was the government House leader or PROC members. What has been interesting is that, as I listened to many of the members today and yesterday, I had the sense that there was a bit of regret on their part that maybe we could have made some other changes. One member who had an infant asked about the voting rules and why we would have to sit at nine o'clock. Why did we not allow for that discussion to take place? We on this side of the House were prepared to do that. We wanted to look at ways in which we could improve the rules in our Standing Orders. It was the members of the joint opposition that made the decision that they did not want that. However, we as a government wanted to ensure that those commitments that were made to Canadians would be kept. That is the reason why we are debating Motion No. 18 today.
I would encourage all members of this House to respect what Canadians want and vote in favour of Motion No. 18.