Mr. Speaker, let me start off by thanking the member for Elmwood—Transcona for bringing forward this motion. When we are allotted our private member's business, it is done by lottery. I say this to make sure viewers understand. He was fortunate enough to be up near the top, and he has generously donated his time and his space to give parliamentarians this important opportunity. I really see this as important because I think this is an opportunity for colleagues from all parties in the House to start really, truly thinking about what it means to be a member of the House.
We are members of Parliament, first and foremost, no matter what position we hold. We got to this place legitimately because we captured the attention and the confidence of our constituents in our respective ridings. Every person in this House has earned their spot because of the democratic mandate given to them by the people of their constituency.
That comes before all else, whether one holds a position as Leader of the Opposition or a parliamentary secretary or one is promoted to become a minister of cabinet. First and foremost, one is a member of the House. I see today's debate on Motion No. 79 as an opportunity to reassert ourselves as members of the House and to more clearly understand the rules by which we operate.
Today's motion, of course, is centring on the confidence convention. For constituents of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford who may be watching today's debate, when we start talking about procedure and the Standing Orders, I know it starts to sound like inside baseball. However, there is a reason these debates are important. The Standing Orders and how they are interpreted, how they are written and how they operate allow an elected member of Parliament to do their job properly.
The government has all kinds of resources at its disposal, but for members of the opposition in particular, the rules of the House put us on an equal footing with the government. The rules are particularly important to members of the opposition because of that very fact.
When it comes to the confidence convention, we know that, generally speaking, confidence votes come in a few different forms, but they have never really been clearly spelled out. We are attempting to spell them out today. We know that, for example, anything involving the spending of funds, whether it is a budget implementation act or appropriation bills, would be a motion of confidence. Also by convention, anything else that the government states is a matter of confidence can be interpreted in the same way.
This entire conversation is also rooted in the conversation that we need to have about responsible government. This is because, of course, in our Westminster system, responsible government means that the executive branch owes its responsibility to Parliament and not to the monarch.
We have to understand that we went through centuries of turmoil and fighting to arrive at this democratic ideal. If we look at the history of England, especially during the 1600s, the civil wars, the establishment of the Commonwealth, the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution were all taking place. It was a tumultuous time. Here in our own country of Canada, as well, we have had rebellions. We had the Durham report, which resulted in a pathway towards responsible government. These are important concepts that we have to understand.
In the Standing Orders, there have been references to the confidence convention in the past. It was mentioned back in the 1960s, but through the 1970s and, again, in the 1980s, the provisions were modified several times so that those provisions were actually removed.
Let us turn now to Motion No. 79. Boiling it down, it would essentially require that we hold a confidence vote to take place at the start of every new Parliament or following an expression of intent by the Prime Minister before that person prorogues. There are two very important things here. It would essentially establish, for members of Parliament, for the benefit of members of the House and for the general public, a standardized, streamlined format.
One of the things that we look at when we look at Motion No. 79 is, for example, the requirement that, if a member of the House were to bring forward a motion of confidence or non-confidence, it would have to be signed by 20 of his or her peers, and they would have to be representatives of more than one party. This makes sense because, if a confidence or non-confidence vote is going to succeed, it is obviously going to take more than one party. This would take away from anything frivolous happening. The motion would place this in the existing Standing Orders right after section 53(1), the chapter that outlines how special debates are to happen.
I have heard members of Parliament from the Liberals and the Conservatives, in preceding speeches, wondering about how this would impact the prerogative of the Crown. They need only look at the preamble of the motion, which states right away that it is a prerogative of the Crown to prorogue and dissolve Parliament at its pleasure. We cannot take away from that fact. However, what we can do, as members of the House, is amend our own Standing Orders to provide for a road map on how the House can formally voice its opinion on whether the government of the day continues to have the confidence of the House. This is extremely important because prime ministers have abused that power.
I look at the previous Conservative speaker's speech on this when he said that he could not support this motion because it deserved further study. It is quite shocking that apparently the Conservatives need to study the issue at the procedure and House affairs committee to figure out if they need to limit the prime minister's power.
