Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure, as always, to rise in this place and add to the debate, this time on Motion No. 18, a motion to amend the Standing Orders of the House of Commons.
Here we are. We are on the second day of debate on this motion and we are on the fourth-last scheduled sitting day of the session, under extended sitting hours, and talking about the changes to the Standing Orders. How did this happen and how did we get here? In order to explain the position that I am going to take on this motion and how I am going to use my vote and my voice on behalf of my constituents of Calgary Rocky Ridge, I am going to explain a bit of the context behind this motion for the benefit of constituents watching at home.
At the time of dissolution of the last Parliament, the Liberals were the third party in the House. They had 30-odd seats. They had a new untested leader. They had little to lose and they came up with an idealistic platform that included many promises that were designed to capture the imagination of Canadians, in contrast to a government that was very familiar to Canadians by virtue of its having won three consecutive elections and governing for nearly 10 years. Therefore, one might go so far as to say that the Liberals' 2015 platform perhaps was designed more to improve from the third-party status than to be a serious platform under which to govern.
It contained a lot of promises, including a modest deficit of $10 billion, and a stimulatory and not structural deficit that would result in immediate GDP growth and a swift return to balance. Obviously that did not happen. It also contained a promise to change the voting system within the first 18 months. That also did not happen.
The Liberals also had a promise to modernize the House of Commons, and what that meant was fairly vague. They threw out some idealistic buzzwords and mused about whether the House of Commons could be made more family friendly, a worthy ideal for many of us. I am a husband and a father of three children, so I am all for family friendliness.
The Liberals really only had four specific promises related to the Standing Orders. They promised that they would amend the Standing Orders to prevent omnibus bills; they promised not to use prorogation; they promised they would instill a British-style prime minister's question period, compelling the Prime Minister to answer all the questions one day a week; and they promised that they would change the estimates process so that the main estimates would reflect the current budget.
We know that Canadians took the current government at its word in the election and elected them on the strength of these and many other idealistic promises. However, soon enough the Liberals began to discover that reality is a tough place, an unforgiving place, and, once elected, reality is inescapable. One by one, the Liberal promises have been broken, set aside, or just plain abandoned. The Liberals' first attempt at what they called modernizing the House of Commons could be more properly called muzzling the opposition and disenfranchising the millions of Canadians who elected the 154 members of the opposition parties on this side of the House. It happened last year when Motion No. 6 tried to impose limits on debate and give members of the government additional powers over the House. That motion fortunately was abandoned on the night of the long elbows last May.
After that, the government expended enormous amounts of political capital, committee time, public money, and teasing the activist base whose support they stole from the NDP in the last election on their failed electoral reform agenda. Following that, the government then took its second stab at fulfilling its election promise on Standing Orders reform with its absurdly called “discussion paper”, delivered after hours on a Friday in March, followed by a motion with a deadline at the procedure and House affairs committee the next week. That motion and the so-called discussion paper called for all kinds of draconian and thoroughly undemocratic measures, including limiting debate through giving the government the power to pre-allocate time in the House of Commons, limiting debate at committees; and reducing the number of sitting days each week, thus reducing the number of days that the government would be compelled to be accountable to Canadians by facing the opposition in the House, especially during question period.
The reaction by the opposition parties was swift and predictable. Recognizing what was at stake, the Conservatives and the NDP used every means available under the existing Standing Orders to prevent the government from proceeding. At the height of the Standing Orders debacle at PROC, The Globe and Mail wrote an editorial that pointed out that in a majority Parliament when a government can pass any law or motion it wants, the opposition really only has two weapons at its disposal: moral suasion and the power to delay.
Both of those weapons were used to maximum effect, and eventually the government realized that the opposition would go to any lengths to prevent it from changing the Standing Orders without all-party consent, something that no other government has had the arrogance or contempt for the opposition to attempt before. That perhaps is wherein lies the rub. The Liberals seem quite sincere in their belief that whatever makes it easier and more convenient for the government and limits the ability of the opposition to hold it accountable is somehow democratic.
Members on the government side seem to sincerely believe that the opposition should merely act as spectators. It has been said before by me and by many of my colleagues that we are not an audience. We are the opposition. We were elected to this place just as each member on the other side was. We were elected by people who do not support the government's agenda and expect us to speak on their behalf. They expect us to demand accountability. They expect us to examine proposed expenditures. They do not expect us to simply act as mere spectators. They expect vigorous debate and robust daily question periods attended by the Prime Minister. They certainly do not expect us to surrender the very limited tools that we possess to do the job we were elected to do.
This brings me to the present and the details of the motion before us.
At first glance, the motion might appear not unreasonable, a compromise perhaps compared with the outrageous Motion No. 6, with the machinations that happened at PROC and the absurd statements that the government House leader has been making for months. In fact, one might for a moment be tempted to even give credit to the government for abandoning nearly all of the draconian changes signalled by its March so-called discussion paper and its Motion No. 6 of last year. Before doing that, however, let us consider what the motion would do and how it stacks up to the Liberals' supposedly sacrosanct commitment to delivering on the specific election promises related to Standing Orders and so-called modernization of the House of Commons.
With this motion, the government has abandoned its promise to change the Standing Orders for a prime minister's question period. Perhaps it has finally realized that this is something it could have done all along without a change to the Standing Orders, or perhaps it has realized just how poorly the present Prime Minister performs, so it is no longer so keen on the idea of a prime minister's question period.
The motion's so-called modernization of the estimates process would reduce the amount of time for committees to review the estimates, thereby reducing accountability.
Giving the Speaker the power to split a bill, not a budget-related bill and only for this Parliament, really is a joke within the context of the Liberals' promise and their past objections to omnibus legislation. The number of omnibus bills they have already tabled makes this part of the motion hilariously cynical.
The requirement to table a prorogation press release is also ridiculous, given the Liberals' promises and their past statements on this subject.
In short, despite the fact that this appears now to be merely token lip service to Standing Orders reform, I could never support the motion, because to do so would be to reward the government for its cynicism and for its spectacular incompetence. There is no way that we will let the Liberals claim that their grotesque mismanagement of this file has somehow ended in all-party support, all-party support that they have never seriously tried to obtain.