Mr. Speaker, I want to raise a question of privilege about your decision not to grant an additional question per week to the group of independent members.
After the 2015 election, you gave the 11 members from non-recognized parties in the House of Commons, meaning the 10 Bloc Québécois members and the one Green Party member, 11 questions to ask during question period.
Even after three more members joined our group, you maintained the same number of questions, stating that each member could ask one question a week. Two of the members were former Liberals, and one was a former New Democrat. This meant each of the 14 members got to ask one question a week, which kept things fair with regard to the number of questions asked each day during question period.
However, the arrival of a 15th member has changed the whole equation. You decided not to give this member a question. Instead, you asked the group of 14 members to share one of its questions with the member for Beauce.
This week, the Bloc Québécois caucus is losing a right it has enjoyed since the 2015 election, namely the right to one question per week per member. This decision is creating an unacceptable inequity between the independent members and those belonging to a recognized party. This inequity also takes away our right to ask one question a week each in the House, a right that we secured in December 2015.
Page 506 of the House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, which was published in 2017, clearly states that:
The general principle observed since the time of Speaker Milliken is that independent Members are entitled to their mathematical proportion of questions.
Furthermore, in the Hansard of June 7, 2007, page 10289 contains this statement from the then chief government whip:
I think the goal is to ensure that if we take that equation, the number of questions asked per day or the number of questions asked per week and divide it by all the opposition members and we get to how many questions that person would get in a week, then it should be the same whether the person is an independent member or in a party.
Based on this principle, each opposition member should get to ask 1.24 questions per week. Right now, out of the 300 questions asked in the House each week, 120 come from the Conservatives, 54 from the NDP, 15 from the Liberals, and 14 from the independent members. That adds up to 188 questions asked by the opposition.
Now let us look at the distortion caused by this recent decision.
It results in 1.25 questions per week per Conservative member, 1.29 questions per NDP member, and just 0.93 questions per week per independent member.
We believe that one question per week per independent member is a healthy balance to maintain in the House of Commons, continuing the tradition since 2011.
Based on your learned judgment and these democratic rules, which should always form the cornerstone of every member's parliamentary work, we therefore ask that you add a 15th question to preserve the ratio of one question per member.
In closing, I would like to note that I am raising this question of privilege at my earliest opportunity, given that this is the first time this fall that the Bloc Québécois has been penalized by your decision. This week, we only got to ask nine questions, which is one fewer than the number of Bloc Québécois members.