Madam Speaker, I want to start by offering congratulations to my colleague, my hon. friend the deputy House leader, for putting forward Motion No. 38. She occupies the post of deputy House leader, which I occupied for the nine-year period between 2006 and 2015. Today, I will be drawing a little upon that experience in my comments.
My hon. colleague's long history of scientific research is well documented. As evidence of the timeliness of her concern, I draw the attention of the House to the fact that it was nearly 20 years ago that she published her book, Hunting the 1918 Flu, warning that we might need to prepare for the next time a similarly deadly virus stalked the globe. That turned out to be a very prescient book indeed.
Motion No. 38 would amend the Standing Orders to create a new House standing committee on science and research, which would take effect permanently at the beginning of the 44th Parliament. Specifically, Motion No. 38 would amend Standing Order 104(2), which lists the standing committees, or permanent committees, of the House. It would add a 25th committee to the list of 24 committees already therein.
In principle, I support the creation of such a committee, and the real question is why none has ever existed thus far, given the importance of the subject matter. However, my remarks today focus not on the merits of the committee itself, but on the merits of creating this change to the Standing Orders with a simple majority vote in the House of Commons. I want to focus not on the merits of the substance of Motion No. 38, but on the merits of the process being used to change the Standing Orders with the adoption by means of a simple majority vote.
At first glance one might ask how else do we get from here to there if what is needed is a change to the Standing Orders. In a sense, this is true. We cannot have a new committee without changing the Standing Orders, and we cannot change the Standing Orders without having a vote on which majority rules.
The other side of the issue is that there is a higher standard. In addition to the formal rule that Standing Orders are to be changed by means of a simple majority vote, a convention in the process of developing is that these rules should not be changed except by the consent of the House leadership of all the recognized parties. This is not quite the same thing as requiring unanimous consent, but it is in the same neighbourhood.
It may well be true that the proposed changes to the Standing Orders contemplated in Motion No. 38 should be treated as an exception to this convention, but if so, it is necessary for us to carefully distinguish how Motion No. 38 is different in nature from other proposed changes that have required all-party consent, and therefore how Motion No. 38 may be properly distinguished from the practice laid out in the convention.
I am drawing upon the term “distinguished” from the law. A court may find itself dealing with a case that shares many features with some prior case or a set of cases. The precedence established in those prior cases ought, under normal circumstances, to apply to the case then being considered.
However, it may be that the court concludes that there are materially different facts between the present case and the ones that had previously been considered. If so, the court makes it clear that the legal reasoning used in the preceding case does not apply to the present one, and the court forms its new ruling around a different set of reasonings, which appear to the court to be more appropriate to the current circumstances.
I will return to whether or not Motion No. 38 may or may not be properly distinguished from the general run of proposed amendments to the Standing Orders. However, first, I need to explain the reason why so many of us in this place take the need for all-party consent so seriously when Standing Order changes are being contemplated.
A number of changes to the Standing Orders that have in recent years either been contemplated or actually implemented have had the potential to change the power relations between the players in the House. Sometimes the decision has been for the rules to go into effect immediately, with the clear goal of increasing the ability of the government to control the legislative agenda or to strip away the power of the opposition to delay or challenge legislation.
There have been notable occasions on which the current government has been willing to move forward using its majority as a lever to change the Standing Orders without all-party consensus. My party and I have fought against this with all our might, and I am very proud of our record in this regard.
In March 1, 2017, the government proposed sweeping changes to the Standing Orders, which would have had the effect of altering the balance of power in the House. This was done by way of a government motion at the procedure and House affairs committee, to endorse a pre-written discussion paper, implementing a set of changes that would have greatly limited the procedural tools at the disposal of opposition parties.
The government's plan was to use its majority on the procedure and House affairs committee to cause the proposals in the discussion paper to be endorsed in a party-line vote at that committee and then have the House vote concurrence in the committee's report. My response, as the lead member of the Conservative Party on the committee, was to propose an amendment to the motion and then, with the capable assistance of some other MPs, debate the motion in a de facto filibuster [Technical difficulty—Editor]. This remains the longest filibuster in Canadian history and makes the point that there are many here who believe deeply that any change to the Standing Orders that alters the power relations between parties or, for that matter, any other set of power arrangements within the House of Commons, including those between party leaders and backbenchers, ought to be decided by means of all-party consensus.
In a minority government such as the present one, the use of force majeure is not available in the same way. In the present Parliament, we have seen more widespread use of all-party consensus mechanism than was the case in the past. The mechanism seeking all-party consent has been used for the numerous temporary adjustments to the Standing Orders adopted in the course of the 43rd Parliament that allow us to meet in a hybrid fashion, to alter the seating plan for reasons of personal safety and to suspend the [Technical difficulty—Editor], among other things. These changes have all been negotiated by the House leaders of the various parties behind closed doors.
I do not know how things work in the other parties, but in the case of my party, the House leader and whip have explained to our caucus at our regular caucus meetings what changes were being contemplated and have tried to ensure [Technical difficulty—Editor] change to the relevant Standing Orders take place without a mandate in the form of an internal party caucus [Technical difficulty—Editor]. This has made the negotiations slower than might have seemed ideal, but the arrangements that we have developed are vastly more inclusive than what existed at the start of the pandemic.
A similar process was [Technical difficulty—Editor] used in the 42nd Parliament to deal with my own proposal to amend the Standing Orders so as to elect the Speaker by preferential ballot. I mention this in part to make the point that the emerging consensus of all-party consent [Technical difficulty—Editor] that precedes a change of government. A convention is not truly a convention until it has survived a change [Technical difficulty—Editor] and continues to operate now that all players have changed their positions. The committee considered my proposed motion, and its report neither endorsed nor rejected the proposal. It was really a way of communicating to the House the committee's view that each party ought to allow its own members a free vote on that proposed change to the Standing Orders. A free vote followed. Some members of each party voted against, some [Technical difficulty—Editor] and the result was a change. The point is that the process itself was the product of a [Technical difficulty—Editor].
The purpose of the foregoing comments has been to clearly articulate the emerging convention regarding the requirement to seek and obtain the consent of all parties in the Commons before making changes to the Standing Orders. To allow an apparent exception to this rule without articulating why this particular case is different and why it is permissible to move forward on a simple up-down [Technical difficulty—Editor] would have the effect of weakening that convention by showing a willingness to casually set it aside. What is needed, and what I hope I am providing here, is a clear distinction between motions that amend the Standing Orders in ways that affect power relations and those that do not.
I turn to the final presentation. It is my view that Motion No. 38 may be properly distinguished from the kinds of proposed amendments to the Standing Orders that have given rise to the convention. Motion No. 38 is materially very different from the kinds of proposed amendments to the Standing Orders that have given rise to the convention. It does not change the way the House of Commons operates and it does not alter power arrangements among the various players in the House. For example, it does [Technical difficulty—Editor] the number of members at the standing committees, it does not change how members are selected for those committees or how the committees operate or how chairs and vice-chairs are elected, including for the new committee.
Additionally, Motion No. 38 [Technical difficulty—Editor] into effect during the life of the current Parliament, which means we cannot be certain which party will be in power and which ones will be in opposition, the placing of a Rawlsian veil of ignorance between ourselves and the answer to the question: Who will be in a position to populate this committee, and will the governing party have a majority on the committee or only a minority? The Rawlsian veil of ignorance that exists helps to ensure that this change to the Standing Orders does [Technical difficulty—Editor] predictably shift power in one direction or another.
For this reason, I state confidently that I support Motion No. 38, and also that my commitment remains to the emerging convention of all-party consensus with regard to any changes that would have the potential [Technical difficulty—Editor] power relations between the government—