Mr. Speaker, I am rising to add to the intervention made by the member for the New Westminster—Burnaby on Wednesday, May 1, in relation to respect for the authority of the Chair.
Page 311 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, in relation to functions performed by the Speaker with respect to enforcing the rules that guide the work of this place, states, “the Speaker presides over debate in the House and is responsible for enforcing and interpreting all rules and practices and for the preservation of order and decorum in the proceedings of the House.”
The Speaker has the ultimate authority regarding the interpretation and application of the rules of the House and its Standing Orders. The Speaker is the final authority on these matters. Since 1965, Speakers' rulings have been closed to appeals. They are final.
Page 319 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, in relation to the rulings by the Speaker, states, “Once the Speaker has ruled, the matter is no longer open to debate or discussion.” This applies not only to procedural matters, but also to questions for the maintenance of order and decorum. Our procedural authorities are definitive on this particular point.
Page 319 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, in relation to addressing the maintenance of order and decorum, also states:
The Speaker can call to order any Member whose conduct is disruptive to the order of the House. For example, if it is a question of unparliamentary language, the Speaker usually asks the Member to rephrase or withdraw the word or expression.
If the Speaker has found it necessary to intervene in order to call a Member to order, he or she may then choose to recognize another Member, thus declining to give the floor back to the offending Member.... The most severe sanction available to the Speaker for maintaining order in the House is “naming”, a disciplinary measure reserved for Members who persistently disregard the authority of the Chair.
It is both unusual and unfortunate that the Speaker has had to invoke this sanction. We need to be mindful that these extreme situations do not become normalized in our proceedings.
Finally, I would like to address the allegations of bias on the part of the Speaker that have been raised by some members in the House and outside the House.
Page 323 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, on the impartiality of the Chair, states:
Reflections on the character or actions of the Speaker (an allegation of bias, for example) could be taken by the House as breaches of privilege and punished accordingly.
On two occasions, newspaper editorials were found to contain libellous reflections on the Speaker and were declared by the House in one instance to be a contempt of its privileges and in the other a gross breach of its privileges.
In 1981, a Minister complained that remarks directed to Speaker Sauvé by the Leader of the Opposition constituted an attack on the former’s authority and impartiality. The following day, the Minister rose on a question of privilege calling for the matter to be referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections. However, the Leader of the Opposition withdrew his remarks and the matter was taken no further.
Despite this clear precedent, we have seen many recent examples of Conservative MPs engaging in exactly this conduct, including numerous tweets that can be found on X from April 30. In one day alone, the Leader of the Opposition referred to the “Liberal Speaker”; the member for Edmonton Manning also referred to the “Liberal Speaker” and stated, “The speaker is doing [the Prime Minister's] bidding”, and so on; the member for Edmonton West referred to “The shamelessly partisan Liberal Speaker”; and the member for Kelowna—Lake Country referred to the “Liberal Speaker” and repeated this in a video that she also posted on X.