Madam Speaker, before question period, I was talking about reverting to the practice of voice votes. Right now, the Chair simply asks whether a member of a recognized party wishes for a motion to carry or carry on division, or wishes to request a recorded vote. Then, the Chair looks to the officers of the governing party, the whip, or if the whip is not there, perhaps the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader. This is rather than members expressing through a voice vote, yea or nay, on the motion, which allows the Speaker to then make a call based on the voices. It further allows, if five members stand, to proceed to a recorded vote.
That system of voice voting and standing five enabled all members to have equal weight in the process, so a member who is independent, or a member of a party without twelve members, could say yea or nay. They could choose to rise or not rise. Under the rules now, which the Liberals changed, they once again give more focus and weight to party leadership than to members. This is disenfranchising unaffiliated members of the House.
We all represent our constituents equally, so the process of determining how a vote should go should be done with every member having an equal opportunity. It is less confusing. It is quite a bit less confusing than the current system when the person who catches the eye of the Speaker, who is always going to be the House leadership of the governing side, wants something to carry on division, but somebody else wants a recorded vote. I understand the standing order permits that, but it is awkward and confusing. We want a simple yea or nay, stand five or not stand five, to deal with whether something is going to pass unanimously, pass on division or be put to a recorded vote. I strongly think that this is an important and subtle change that we should revert to.
The change was made while dealing with virtual Parliament, which went along with the voting application. I do not care for the voting app. I do not care for votes in the House of Commons being reduced to participation in the world's least fun video game, but we will set that aside and assume that the voting app shall remain. The argument has been made that we must have a virtual system, if we have the voting app, to deal with technical problems, and I do not connect those two.
If a member has a technical problem with the application, and if the application is a convenience to members so they can not be in the House of Commons, which is the primary place where members face each other in debate and for votes, it should be used at the members' risk. If we are in a vote that is so important that it cannot be left to risking a technical problem, then the members should be in the House. We have seen, when a person has a technical problem with the app, they usually also have a technical problem with virtual participation.
Controversies arise when the chair occupant has to make a call on somebody's voting intention while they are struggling with internet connectivity. The answer to that is that the voting app could be used, but if it fails, it fails, such that if there were a confidence vote, a vote that is particularly important to the member, then they ought to be in the chamber.
Where else should a member be when there is a vote? That is the primary obligation of a member of Parliament. It is the purpose of this place. They should not be out meeting with lobbyists in the lobby, going out for dinner, being at a reception or anything like that and just voting. They ought to be in the chamber.
I can hear the howls of protest from those who will say, “What if an MP is sick? What if an MP is attending to a family emergency?”
If a member is unwell or in medical treatment, the last thing they should be worrying about is fumbling around trying to vote electronically from their sickbed. They should be paired. There are always ill members and members struggling with a family emergency in all caucuses. They could be paired so that, when people are attending to their health or attending to an emergency in their family, such as the death of a parent or the birth of a child, they do not feel obligated to be on top of their phone during these times.
It could be done with a signed pair book on the table, signed by whips or by members, that cannot be broken. These are ways we can deal with the what-ifs when a member cannot be present in the chamber.
I do not see any need to still have virtual participation. Members rarely try to participate virtually, other than to clarify a vote when they are sitting on an airplane and cannot get a strong enough Internet connection to upload a picture. I strongly think that, if this is going to be our place, MPs should attend in person, speak to each other and have to see each other across the hall. The public asks why MPs cannot work more productively together. I ask how siloed we want to make things with our rules, to enable people to silo themselves off even from their own colleagues by non-attendance to debate in the House.
The third point I want to make is about debate. In the House, we have debates where we spend twice as much time on the speech as we do on the questions and comments. I would suggest that we invert that. When debate is 20 minutes of speech plus 10 minutes of questions and comments, or 10 minutes and five minutes, the order should be reversed. A member should speak for five minutes and then entertain 10 minutes of questions and comments. It would be a move toward the Westminster parliamentary system. When a member engages back and forth in debate there and yields the floor to their opponents or their own colleagues, their time is added to the other member's time. The system encourages debate by giving a member more time.
The easy way to do that would be to expand greatly the time spent on questions and comments, so that we would have real debates in this place, not reading a 10-minute canned speech and then hearing one question from each of the three parties. We could really have much more engagement on legislation. We could have much better debates in the House.
I strongly recommend these three changes: we revert to voice voting to give more and equal power to members of Parliament; we dispense with virtual participation in Parliament; and we improve our debate by actually having more debate.
This debate is interesting to members who are interested in parliamentary procedure, but only when the committee on parliamentary affairs, PROC, reviews these suggestions carefully and reports back to the House with recommendations that MPs can support can we change the Standing Orders instead of just talking about changing the Standing Orders.