Don Boudria

[Supply, February 21st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by the member across the way, the motion today proposes to give to the House the possibility of voting on petitions. All of that too exists now.

I say to the hon. member, read Beauchesne, read the standing orders, read the Order Paper and then members who propose initiatives like this will know that those tools exist already.

Finally, it is wrong for us to pretend in a motion or otherwise that the standing orders of the House are the standing orders of the government. That is wrong. The standing orders of the House belong to the House.

I sat in opposition for a very long time and defended the privileges of this House on numerous occasions. When it was the government trying to run roughshod over the rights of MPs never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that an opposition member would be asking for those things that normally government members do not even dare to ask.

Members of the House should vote against this motion. They should soundly defeat a motion that pretends that the standing orders of the House are the orders of the government and not the standing orders of Parliament. Members should vote to change the rules pursuant to reports from the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. A member of the Reform Party sits on that committee.

We have just started our work. We have done good work as a committee.

If a report from such a committee proposes to change the rules of the House and the report of the committee is not even unanimous, we will see, mark my words, that the same members who are now proposing that the government change the standing orders would rise in their seats in defiance if the government even tried to do that with all members of the committee except one who was perhaps dissident on a report.

That is the irony of what we see today.

The motion before us today should not be adopted.

I conclude by reiterating that it is not the same thing, and all the members of this House should be aware of the difference, to say that the previous government had lost the confidence of the Canadian people as to say that Parliament, as an institution, does not work.

This is one of the greatest freedoms that we have, to have an institution like this which has evolved from time immemorial, from the days prior to the Norman invasion of Britain. As my colleague the historian will know, there was even a form of representative institution in the days of the Witan, prior to the Norman invasion of Britain. This institution has evolved for perhaps 1,500 years.

Just like when I sat across the way, as I now sit in government I want the changes to the rules to be changes that are acceptable to the House, to make us respond better to the wishes of our constituents, and to make us as well better equipped to make wise and sound decisions for those who have sent us here to speak on their behalf.

[Supply, February 21st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I rest my case about people learning about the rules of this place. When members purport to claim a point of order because they disagree with the content of the speech of another member it is not a point of order. In most cases-

[Supply, February 21st, 1994]

What did I do? I put a bill on the Order Paper asking to do just that, Bill C-203 if members will read their Order Paper again. Bill C-203 proposes to ban the importation of that product by modifying the Criminal Code. Those 150,000 signatures I will be tabling plus the 50,000 I have tabled already are a testimony to the kind of support that initiative has.

Therefore, I can ask my colleagues to vote on this. I will be using the mechanisms of petition to demonstrate that which I am proposing is worth while.

What is the motion we are debating today supposed to do? It is supposed to give us an opportunity to vote on such things as the Young Offenders Act. That act requires no royal recommendation, so any private member can have a bill to change it. Any member can introduce a private member's motion to deal with a petition. Finally, on the issue of the serial killer cards, I have a parallel initiative right now on the Order Paper of this House.

So, as you can see Mr. Speaker, it is not all to present motions because someone who perhaps was not too familiar with the procedure of this House could be led to believe that Parliament presently has none of the tools mentioned in this particular motion, while in fact it is quite the contrary. All these tools that the hon. member form the Reform Party for Edmonton Southwest is requesting are already available to the House. All of them without any exception already exist as described in his motion.

Today the member for Beaver River introduced something new. She said: we should have recall mechanisms. That has nothing to do with this motion of course, although I profoundly disagree with it.

[Supply, February 21st, 1994]

Yes, yes, it is true. None of them does.

Does the member realize that she and her colleagues can take the contents of a petition and put it up for debate through this mechanism? It is at page IV of the Order Paper. The process already exists. We can put a motion on any subject and ask that it be debated in the House, including the subject of a petition.

I have put a motion on the Order Paper that reads:

That this House affirm its support for Section 241 of the Criminal Code of Canada which forbids the counselling, procuring, aiding, or abetting of a person to commit suicide-

I do not think we should change that provision. The member and I can disagree on that point when we can debate it. We can debate whether the point originated in a petition or elsewhere and we will vote on it in the House. That provision exists right now pursuant to our rules.

Why are we offered this suggestion today? We already have the means to do it.

The hon. member tells us that she wants the Young Offenders Act changed, but did she put a bill on the Order Paper asking for such a change? As you know, all the members of this House can put forward private members' bills, bills which will then be debated and voted on by this House. Is there a need to create some new mechanism? Not at all. Mechanisms already exist and all these tools are already available to this House.

No, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps our rules need to be changed and modified. I sit on the committee that deals with such matters, along with my colleague from Kingston and the Island, our colleague across the way and others. Many of them have done good work. However, some people are sucking and blowing at the same time.

On Friday we proposed to change the prayer that we say in this House. Who was the first to complain? A member of the Reform Party said we should not touch it. It was a unanimous report of the committee voted on by the House. Even that was seen as being inappropriate even though it had the consent of virtually everyone.

When members across the way talk about changing our institution, we agree. We have made it part of our red book. However, we want those changes to occur based on the consent of members of the House for the betterment of this institution, not just in a way to sell the doctrine to the people back in the riding that some have come here to Ottawa to turn this place upside down.

The right to petition Parliament that has been talked about today existed in British parliamentary democracy since 1669. It has been a very important tool. I have used it. I have tabled petitions in this House. On Thursday I will be tabling 100,000 signatures on petitions asking for the banning the importation of the serial killer board game.

[Supply, February 21st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate this afternoon in the debate on an opposition motion. The opposition, at least the third party in this Parliament, starts off with the premise that Parliament, as an institution, is broken. Parliament is not broken.

Yes, the previous government lost the trust of the Canadian people. Yes, it was defeated because it lost that trust. However, that is not to say the institution itself is wrong. I say that to both parties across the way. I see that in their speeches, in their comments and elsewhere.

When I hear from members of the Reform Party that Parliament as an institution needs to be turned completely upside down and changed because it does not work, I say they are wrong. When members of the Bloc Quebecois say that they think the country should separate because people disliked the previous government, I say they too are wrong. What was wrong was not Parliament. What was wrong was not this great institution. What was wrong was the public office holders of the last Parliament and that is not the same. It is high time we started to think on those terms.

I read this motion today. Listen to it, Mr. Speaker, you who are so knowledgeable in all our rules. It states:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider the advisability of amending the Standing Orders-

Whoever heard of anything so preposterous. The government does not have standing orders, the House has standing orders. I say to my colleagues across the way, many of whom have not been members very long, surely they could learn that the rules of the House are the rules of the House and not the rules of the government. Changing the rules is not done by the government. If the government decided to change the rules arbitrarily they would be the first to criticize.

The standing orders of this House are amended by and on the advice of a parliamentary committee which usually presents a unanimous report to the House. This committee report is tabled in the House and adopted by the House and then the rules of procedure are changed.

Some members will remember in the last Parliament when the then government took a report from a standing committee on amending the rules and chose to adopt only some of the rule changes. It was condemned by everyone, not because it had changed rules unilaterally but because it had not changed all of the rules at once as recommended in the unanimous report. It had upset the balance which is so vital to ensuring that the government can govern and that the opposition can hold the government to account. That was seen as wrong.

The member across the way and her colleagues are proposing that the government on its own change the standing orders of the House. With due respect, it is absurd. It is completely absurd that a government would try to do that.

The member wants the government, in changing the rules unilaterally, perhaps even against the wishes of the oppositions, to produce some sort of a formula to debate and to vote on petitions.

I bring members' attention to today's Order Paper of the House of Commons. I highly recommend it to members of Parliament. It is a very useful document. It tells how this place works.

Like many other members, I have Motion M-218 on today's Order Paper.

I can see for instance that the hon. member for Laurier-Sainte-Marie has one, and so does the hon. member for Anjou--

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Rivière-des-Prairies. It is unusual that not one member from the Reform Party has a motion on the Order Paper of the House. None, not one member from the Reform Party.

[Supply, February 21st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the comments of our colleague across the way. Many of the things he is trying to achieve are certainly not impossible and are not contrary to some things I believe in.

However, we are dealing with a motion today that asks the government to amend the standing orders. At last count those were the standing orders of the House, not of the government. Apart from all other things that are wrong with the motion, Mr. Speaker, you would be offended if the government unilaterally tried to change the standing orders.

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All of us in Parliament in the last session were objecting because the government of that time decided to change the standing orders pursuant to a recommendation of the parliamentary committee but chose only to amend some of the things the parliamentary committee had asked for, thereby creating an imbalance in the House which was felt to be objectionable to the opposition; in other words, it could not pick and choose from the report. I do not know of anything before the committee that recommends a change of the standing orders. At least nothing has been proposed by the hon. member's party to do that which is asked in the motion today.

[Rural Post Offices, February 18th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, February 17 will be remembered as a great day for rural Canada. It is the day that the ill-conceived Tory plan to shut down all rural post offices was finally put to rest.

Rural Canada will be able to breathe again. Rural post offices will be the heart of our small communities as they have been in the past.

The minister responsible for Canada Post and the Prime Minister and indeed all of cabinet deserve our praise. I am sure all rural Canadians are grateful.

Now let us turn to the next postal issue. Let us all join together to convince Canada Post to stop harassing rural mail contractors and to provide rural mail contractors with some kind of dignity, the kind of dignity they had in their employment under previous Liberal governments.

[Canada Post, February 17th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister responsible for Canada Post.

As a result of the previous government's policies, some 1,300 rural post offices were shut down between 1986 and 1993. The minister announced a temporary freeze last November on such closures.

Will the minister now tell us what he will do to keep rural post offices open in Canada.

[supply, February 11th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly did not want us to run out of speakers towards at the end, and since I saw no one else who wished to speak, I thought I would take this opportunity to put to my colleague some questions about the motion before us today.

We talked about a lot of things, I mean all kinds of things, but it doest not change the fact that we have before us a motion of about 1,000 words that just calls on the government, and I quote:

• to demonstrate its commitment to accountability and to the efficient and effective use of public funds by reporting to the House, no later than the first week of June each year, what measures have been taken-

to review the deficiencies in various departments.

Does our colleague know that, according to current parliamentary procedure, we do have a framework within which we are able to undertake every year a complete review of the budget estimates of every department, particularly as, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), any parliamentary committee can undertake a detailed study on any matter, without asking anyone's permission, as long as the committee does not travel outside the national capital region?

Third, if expenditures are incurred, the public accounts committee is enpowered to examine all previous expenditures, including the report of the Auditor General.

I did not want to miss this opportunity to raise the following question: Are the members opposite trying to do what the members from the Bloc did yesterday, that is, create even more duplication and overlap, contrary to what they are supposedly advocating?

[supply, February 11th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. I would seek to indicate to the Chair that it was our intention that the time of the hon. minister who has just spoken be shared with the member for Scarborough West.