Madam Speaker, I am very interested in this particular debate, because I have never gone through this before. I used to be an MNA in Quebec City, and there was no way to speak openly about proposals and amendments aimed at making parliamentary work more firmly rooted in the values of democracy that everyone seeks to defend. I want to make three very simple suggestions.
First of all, my colleague from Saint-Jean suggested something in her speech that I thought was very interesting, and I want to pick up on that. Friday could be a special day. Instead of the usual schedule, we could simply question two ministers, as we did during the special committee on the COVID-19 pandemic.
Between 9:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m., these discussions could take up to five minutes and include questions and answers of equal length. Since there are approximately 26 ministers and 26 weeks of parliamentary business, each minister would have his or her “required” turn. However, this should not be seen as arm-twisting. This would be about going over the ministers' main portfolios and asking them questions. Ministers could then tell us how they see the current and future situations and defend the government's positions. This would be very good for both sides of the House.
Then from noon until 1:30 p.m., after Oral Questions, we would question a minister chosen by the House leaders. This minister could come back a few times throughout the year, depending on the economic news. In the current situation, we would likely want to hear from the Minister of Public Services and Procurement, the Minister of Health and the Minister of Finance. Rather than asking questions and seeking answers in the oral question period format, we would have time to express our views, ask questions and hope for answers while engaging in a dialogue with the ministers to get to the bottom of things.
This is a similar model to the one used at the Parliament of Quebec, and it is referred to as an interpellation. A minister is chosen and is asked questions for two hours. This allows members to delve deeper into issues and to better understand the policies of the department and the minister in question. I find this to be a useful practice.
We could learn a lot from other parliaments. I have had the opportunity of working in Quebec City and now in Ottawa. My colleague from Orléans has mentioned that she was once an MPP in Ontario. It might be worth seeing how things are done elsewhere and drawing from those examples.
There was a lot of talk about prorogation this summer. This summer's extraordinary circumstances were terrible. Prorogation, during which Parliament is shut down, is a tool that is often, or mainly, used for political reasons. Some might say that it is always used as such, but I am not a historian.
I am a member of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, and we are studying this issue. Was this summer's prorogation what it was meant to be? Technically, prorogation refers to putting an end to a parliamentary session and starting from scratch. Normally, a government prorogues Parliament in response to extraordinary circumstances, because it wants to start fresh and send a clear message to people that the government is taking a new, or maybe even better, tack. The point of prorogation is to reset the clock, and there needs to be a clean break. That is how it is supposed to work.
That is why, when the government prorogued Parliament in August, everyone was expecting a lot of changes in the throne speech. That is what people want.
All kinds of theories emerged about why the Liberals prorogued Parliament: there were not enough differences between what was happening before prorogation and the government's throne speech; the WE affair put the government in an awkward position and people were saying the government was trying to put a lid on it; and so on.
I am not trying to play politics, and my colleagues know what I am talking about. We could go on and on about this. I know everyone here has already made up their mind. I am not going to keep talking about this, but my point is that we can change how we do things.
Right now, if a government wants to prorogue, it prorogues. It goes to the Governor General, when there is one, and says it is going to prorogue Parliament. The Governor General's job is to say fine, okay, unless the government is facing a confidence vote, which was the case in 2008 with the Harper government.
In this particular case, when a confidence motion is moved, the Governor General has the right not to be bound to the Prime Minister by telling him that he does not have, or does not appear to have, the confidence of his Parliament because a motion has been moved. The Governor General therefore has the freedom to choose whether he or she has confidence or not.
Personally, as the member for La Prairie and a member of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, I listened very carefully to Hugo Cyr, who really enlightened us with his vast knowledge. I would suggest that if the government wants to prorogue Parliament and wants to bind the Governor General to that prorogation, it must have the confidence of Parliament.
In the case where the government says it wants to prorogue Parliament, in the situation we are currently in, if we want to change how things are done, the government should have to ask the members of the House if they agree to prorogue Parliament. That should be a matter of debate.
If the House agrees and says yes, the Prime Minister goes before the Governor General and he or she would be bound by the will to prorogue Parliament. That way, our current Prime Minister could have said in August that he wanted to prorogue Parliament and say why. We would have discussed it and agreed or not to vote on whether that specific situation led us to believe that we should prorogue Parliament. That is one way of doing things. We could move forward with Hugo Cyr's suggestion, which I found very interesting.
I have one last point to make and it has to do with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. Going before the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner is not meant to be a walk in the park and is not supposed to happen often. It is supposed to be as rare as seeing a kangaroo on a trampoline. It is rare to see that, but the Prime Minister has been before the commissioner three times. He is on a first-name basis with him. That can only mean that the consequences are not significant enough and at most he gets a slap on the wrist, that is all. It is not enough punishment.
The Ethics Commissioner needs more power so that elected officials, regardless of who, never want to have to appear before him again and so that they understand that appearing before the commissioner is not a pleasant experience. That way, we can guarantee that MPs will be more careful about following the rules because more serious sanctions could be imposed on them by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, who will have the power to take more aggressive action.
That is another suggestion that I wanted to make. I am not trying to rewrite history or play politics. However, we know that the Prime Minister has appeared before the Ethics Commissioner three times. He was reprimanded twice and is going back again a third time. Eventually, it begins to seem as though appearing before the Ethics Commissioner really is not as bad as all that. I therefore think that we should give the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner more power. With that, I will conclude my speech.
