It was indeed a shameful thing.
Mr. Speaker, up until now, there has been a lot of discussion about this, but I do not think there have been real proposals to try to do something about it. It is difficult to do something about it because, in our Constitution, dissolving or proroguing Parliament is said to be a power of the monarch, of the Queen, or now the King. Really, it is a power of the Prime Minister because it is only on the Prime Minister's advice that this is done. Because this is a power that is granted to the monarchy, we need a constitutional amendment to do anything about it, or so we have been told.
Let us consider all the important institutions that make up the very foundation of Canadian government. We could think about the monarch, the executive or the government, and we could think about the House of Commons, the judiciary and the Senate.
Actually, only one of those is directly elected by Canadians, and that is the House of Commons. The monarch certainly is not elected; we have all been bearing witness to that process recently. The Senate is not elected. Judges are not elected, and I do not think that is a bad thing; we need accountability in the process of their appointment, so they are not elected. The executive is not directly elected; it is actually the House of Commons that ultimately decides who sits in the Prime Minister's chair, or not, based on what happens at election time.
I think that the House of Commons, both as the democratically elected component of the Canadian government and as the institution with the job of holding the government to account, should be the one to decide whether the work here is paused in a prorogation. The House of Commons, as the democratically elected chamber, should be the one to decide if we are done before fixed election date laws say we would be done and to have an early election. No simple motion in the House of Commons can change the Constitution, which is as it should be. Therefore, within the constitutional context that we are in, this motion would allow us, the members of this place, to assert our rightful role in having a much bigger say on when our work begins, when it ends and whether it is stopped or paused by a prime minister. That is a decision that should be in the hands of Canadians.
If we want to talk about gatekeeping in Canada, one of the biggest gatekeeping powers that exists is the power of the Prime Minister to get out of accountability to Parliament. Anyone who is concerned about fighting inappropriate gatekeeping in Canada should be concerned to constrain that power by the Prime Minister.
That is what this motion is really about. It is about making it more difficult for prime ministers to prorogue Parliament to get out of facing accountability on a confidence vote. It is about making it more difficult for prime ministers to get out of accountability for scandals like the WE Charity scandal or the question of Afghan detainees by telling members of this Parliament to go back to their ridings and not come back until the Prime Minister decides he is okay with having them back. It is about ensuring that the Prime Minister does not get to inappropriately influence votes in this place by suddenly declaring something that has nothing to do with confidence and everything to do with covering his own behind or a special pet project in order to try to force members to vote for something that they would not otherwise vote for. That is what this motion is about, and that is why it is so important that this motion pass.
It is about time that the House of Commons started pushing back on those other unelected parts of the Canadian governance structure and assert its own authority and its own decision-making power, especially in regard to our ability to sit in this place and to hold governments to account.
How would it constrain the power of the Prime Minister? As I said, there is no perfect solution without a constitutional amendment. However, it would mean that a prime minister who wanted to prorogue would have the option of first having a confidence vote in the House of Commons before a prorogation. If the Prime Minister did not do that, it would guarantee that the first order of business when parliamentarians came back would not be the Prime Minister's Speech from the Throne, where they get to frame the issues however they like; it would be a debate and a vote of confidence in the government after it made a decision to prorogue.
I say that would have been especially important in the case of the Harper prorogation, because he prorogued in order to avoid a confidence vote. We know that the next way for opposition parties at that time to have a confidence vote would have been on an opposition day motion. Who decides when to have opposition day motions? The government decides when to have an opposition day motion. Therefore, that does not really work as an accountability mechanism. If the Prime Minister can prorogue for as long as they want and then delay an opposition day motion for just about as long as they like after we come back, then opposition parties do not have the ability to hold the government to account in the appropriate way.
What this motion would guarantee is that there would be a moment of accountability at the beginning of every Parliament, with a confidence vote. There would be a possibility of a prime minister doing the right thing and testing the confidence of the chamber before prorogation; if they do not, it would guarantee that the first order of business when we came back would be a confidence vote to have that accountability for the House of Commons. It makes it clear for members how they can go about initiating a confidence vote. It lays out a process for that. I will spare folks the details; they are in the motion.
Another thing it does, which is also quite important, is that it specifically says what votes would be votes of confidence. Traditionally, by convention, the Speech from the Throne is a vote of confidence. This motion would simply add that into the Standing Orders so that it would no longer be a question for which we have to call in a whole bunch of constitutional experts who have studied the history of Canada since 1867 to weigh in on it. We would know because it would be written in the Standing Orders that it is a vote of confidence. We would know that the budget vote is a vote of confidence because it would be written down in the Standing Orders.
We would know that the main vote on estimates is a confidence motion. That matters because there have been many times where we have voted all night on the estimates, on every line item, and it is always a debate. We see the media questioning if the government could fall on any vote. Some people say it could. Others say that it cannot; it is complicated; maybe it would; maybe it would not; maybe it would lose that vote and the next day it would have to come to the House for a more explicitly worded motion of confidence; or maybe the Prime Minister would decide.
We are a 21st-century democracy. How is it so unclear whether the only elected chamber, the only elected part of our Constitution, would sit or not sit, have confidence or not have confidence, have an election or not have an election? These are things we should be able to put our heads together on to sort out so it is crystal clear to Canadians, who should not have to get a Ph.D. in Canadian constitutional history to understand what the heck is going on in this place. It is something we should be able to teach in a grade 12 civics class and be proud of. The idea behind this motion is to make it a heck of a lot more clear so that we can do exactly that. To have a lack of clarity around these issues that are so central to the proper functioning of our democracy is to invite the kind of toxic debates and intractable disputes that we see too often now in western democracies about whether this was a power grab or if the government acted appropriately or not. The way to defend this is to seek the maximum amount of clarity before we are in a crisis.
Already this year, there has been speculation in the media about whether a motion in the House would be a confidence or non-confidence vote. The government House leader refused to comment, so it hung in the air. It should not be that way. We should know clearly whether something is or is not a vote of confidence.
There have been rumours around prorogation already in this Parliament. We should know that, if a prime minister is going to prorogue and we think it is a bad decision, the House of Commons itself will have the opportunity to pronounce on whether the government is making an acceptable decision or not. That is something the House ought to be able to do because we are the only ones who are elected with a mandate to make those kinds of decisions.
It is not the Prime Minister or anybody else. It is certainly not a King or Queen who has the ability to make that decision. It is not a decision for the Senate, where senators who have all been appointed by previous prime ministers to make that decision. This is the place that decision ought to be made. That is how we put democracy before gatekeeping. That is what this motion is about. That is why I encourage all members of the House to give their support to this motion.