Chris Charlton

[Gasoline Prices, February 17th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, we voted against the Conservative budget because it did not get the job done.

Let me be clear. Building more prisons is not going to put food on the table or help pay the bills. Here is just one example. Gas prices are 6.8%, driving up inflation and making it even harder for families to make ends meet.

When are the Conservatives going to take action on gas prices? Why will they not pass my Bill C-336 so drivers will not be hosed at the pumps?

[Government Priorities, February 17th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I know why the minister does not want to answer questions about cuts, but the reality is Statistics Canada today announced that inflation rose at an annual rate of 2.5%, higher than expected.

Canadians need a break in the next budget, but all they are seeing are cuts to old age security and to the services on which they rely.

Why are the Conservatives cutting help to average Canadians when what they really need is a break?

[Standing Orders and Procedure, February 17th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, the member for Malpeque raises a really good point. Obviously, as I said, it is one of the two areas that is of primary concern to those of us on this side of the House. Committees are an opportunity for the public to be heard with respect to legislation. We value that input and want to make sure it is reflected in the bills that get reported back to the House. Yet the Conservatives want all of that to happen behind closed doors.

The Prime Minister is notorious for wanting to silence his backbenchers. I have been trying to figure out why there is such urgency to go in camera and it finally came to me. I think it is because the Prime Minister is fundamentally afraid of what his backbenchers might say. He does not want that to be on record, so he prefers to move everything behind closed doors.

[Standing Orders and Procedure, February 17th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, clearly we do not have a problem having 25 members on this side of the House, which is why the government has only been able to use Standing Order 56.1 once.

The other point is that the government has not had to resort to using Standing Order 56.1 very often because it has brought down the hammer and has used time allocation over and over again. For those who are watching, time allocation is a bit of insider baseball, but it shuts down debate on a piece of public legislation. The Conservatives have used it in the House before debate has even begun on a bill.

Canadians have a right to have their voices heard. They have influence into the public policy process through the debates that happen in this chamber through us their representatives. Their voices must be heard in the chamber. Their issues cannot be time allocated, closed off and ignored by the government. That is why this debate is so important to the future of this institution. Frankly, Canadians deserve better than having time allocation invoked before debates have even begun.

[Standing Orders and Procedure, February 17th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in this special debate provided for in the rules of the House to address our concerns with respect to the procedures and Standing Orders that govern our business here in the House of Commons.

I will begin by pointing out that the rule which allows a debate such as this to happen has been around since 1982. Yet, in all of those 30 years, members of Parliament have only felt it necessary to engage in this debate twice before, once in 1998 and once in 2005. That is very telling.

What it says to me is that, on the whole, our rules of procedure have served the institution of Parliament well. When applied as intended, they have preserved the important balance of giving the government the authority, funds and resources necessary to govern the country while, at the same time, ensuring that the opposition parties can fulfill their roles as watchdog and proponents of alternatives to the government of the day. In the balance hangs the principle of representation through which the views of Canadians are brought to bear on the important issues of the day.

Clearly, the fact that members feel it necessary to review the rules of procedure now implies that something has changed, that the way the rules are currently being applied no longer serves the public well. I would go so far as to suggest that we are experiencing a democratic deficit in the House that must be exposed and addressed.

I concede that normally tuning in to debates about rules of procedure would be akin to watching paint dry for most Canadians but this time it is more than insider baseball. It is about ensuring that the voices of Canadians are heard and listened to in the single most important democratic institution in this country. It is about ensuring that Canadians can hold their government to account. It is about ensuring that the Canadian public does not become vulnerable to a parliamentary dictatorship.

It is for all of those reasons that even the media have begun to pay attention to the procedural games played by the government. In particular, it has focused on the rules that currently allow the government to cut off debate on subjects of its choosing and rules that allow the government to escape accountability by avoiding transparency and holding critical debates in closed door meetings.

I will get right to the heart of those issues.

Currently, our Standing Orders provide that the rules governing committee procedures are the same as govern the House. The only exceptions are the rules governing the election of the Speaker, seconding of motions, limiting the number of times of speaking and the length of speeches. The Compendium of Procedure elaborates by pointing out that:

On occasion, a committee may decide to hold an in camera meeting to deal with administrative matters, to consider a draft report or to receive a background briefing. Committees also meet in camera to deal with subject matters requiring confidentiality, such as national security.

Both in Standing Order 116 and in the compendium, it is therefore clear that in camera meetings are to be the exception, not the rule.

However, under the current Conservative government, some government members have moved that the entire proceedings of particular committees be conducted behind closed doors, shutting out both the public and the media from deliberations on what, in the end, are questions of public policy. How absurd is that? When the issue is raised with the Speaker, he or she consistently falls back on the principle that committees are the masters of their own proceedings.

While technically correct, we must give the Speaker the tools to uphold the independence of committees while insisting that they cannot subvert the democratic principles of transparency and accountability that underpin the Westminster model of Parliament. To do otherwise is to turn the Speaker into a parliamentary eunuch at best, or more likely a government patsy, particularly during majority governments. In either case, the Speaker will be hamstrung in fulfilling his or her role as the principal officer of the House of Commons, the guardian of its privileges and the protector of the rights of all members. Clearly, that must change. We should be examining how to allow the Speaker to overturn anti-democratic behaviour at committee while respecting the principle of committee autonomy.

Similarly, the Speaker must be able to play a more active role in maintaining the balance between the right of the government to pass its legislative agenda and the right of the opposition to examine and debate proposals in the House of Commons.

Among the most undemocratic measures contained in the current Standing Orders is Standing Order 56.1. If the government has been denied unanimous consent for a routine motion, this Standing Order gives the government the right to put the same question again during routine proceedings without debate or amendment, and deems the motion to have carried unless 25 members stand in their places to oppose it. While I am sure that wording seemed benign to its original drafters, there appear to be very few procedural limits on what constitutes a routine motion.

As a result, governments now regularly use the Standing Order to curtail debate on bills and to accelerate the legislative process. Clearly, that was not the intent of the rule. In fact, former Speaker Milliken virtually begged the House to place limitations on the types of motions that would be considered routine and specifically suggested that no motion which furthers legislation can be considered routine. I would refer members of the House to Speaker Milliken's rulings of June 5, 2007, October 3, 2006, May 13, 2005 and September 18, 2001.

This may be a good time to look at how useful Standing Order 26.1 is as well, since it has the same regressive, negative option billing process where a motion is deemed passed unless 15 members of Parliament rise to oppose it. It is a procedural loophole that dates back a century. The government should not be able to use that anachronism to force a vote in the House.

It is not like the government needs any additional mechanisms to accelerate the parliamentary process. On the contrary, my NDP colleagues and I strongly believe that even the existing powers to time allocate debate must be reviewed and curtailed. It goes without saying that the time spent on a bill is a major source of conflict between governing and opposition parties. After all, time is the currency of parliamentary proceedings.

In 1987, Speaker Fraser was clear when he stated:

It is essential to our democratic system that controversial issues should be debated at reasonable length so that every reasonable opportunity shall be available to hear the arguments pro and con and that reasonable delaying tactics should be permissible to enable opponents of a measure to enlist public support for their point of view.

Although he put it slightly differently, the Prime Minister said the same thing on election night last year. He said, “For our part, we are intensely aware that we are and we must be the government of all Canadians, including those who did not vote for us”.

That is a far cry from what the Conservatives have been saying in the House ever since. Now they are saying over and over again that they received a majority mandate from Canadians and that all further consultation can therefore cease. They consulted during the campaign, after all. The arrogance of such statements is astounding and it has led to a gross overuse of tools to shut down debate in this House, whether it be through time allocation or formal closure motions. Those tools were initially designed to give the government the power to overcome deliberate filibusters by opposition parties where the public would ultimately judge which party's actions it supported in the subsequent election.

However, there are occasions now where there is widespread and objective concern that a government is resorting to time allocation too precipitously, and that there is genuine public interest in a full debate in the House. For such situations, it is important that the Standing Orders vest in the Speaker the right to rule a government motion for time allocation out of order or inadmissible.

It is right and proper for the Speaker to have the authority to stand in the way of a government that is prepared to use time allocation to stifle debate without any evidence of obstruction. Giving the Speaker such an authority, even if it were not used regularly, would create the healthy habit of circumspection before the government resorted to time allocation. Perhaps then we could move away from the practice of the now routine use of time allocation which really makes a mockery of the procedures of this House.

Just since the last election, the government has used time allocation 15 times. In one instance, notice of time allocation was given before debate had even started on the bill. When they were in opposition, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Public Safety, the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages and others decried such tactics and they have been quoted extensively on that in this House.

However, for me, the person who summed it best was the Minister of Finance when he reacted to a time allocation motion brought forward during his time at Queen's Park. He said:

This shows...the legislative incompetence on the other side of the House. They've been unable to manage their bills here, so they...have to time-allocate....

I could not agree more. Overreliance on time allocation is the sign of an incompetent government but such incompetence is no excuse for running roughshod over the institution of Parliament.

I look forward to discussing these issues further in committee so we can restore transparency and accountability to the parliamentary process on behalf of all those Canadians who sent us here to speak for them.

[Standing Orders and Procedure, February 17th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague's comments. We both sit on the procedure and House affairs committee so I know he cares passionately about the Standing Orders, as we all do.

I wonder if the member could tell me how he feels about the Standing Orders relating to time allocation in particular, as well as committee proceedings in camera, which are two of the issues that are of most concern to members on this side of the House.

[Business of Supply, February 16th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, discussions have taken place among all the parties and I believe that if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move:

That, at the conclusion of today's debate on the opposition motion in the name of the member for Manicouagan, all questions necessary to dispose of this motion be deemed put and a recorded division deemed requested and deferred until Monday, February 27, 2012 at the end of government orders.

[Copyright Modernization Act, February 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, NDP members will be voting no.

[Petitions, February 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition that is signed by the minimum 25 people required to have a petition tabled in the House of Commons. Some of the signatories are from my riding of Hamilton Mountain.

The petitioners call upon the government to restrict abortion to the greatest extent possible. While the rules of the House do not allow me to endorse or oppose the call for action on any petition, I think it is important for all constituents in my riding to know that, as their member of Parliament, I fully support the right of all citizens to have their voices heard in this chamber through the petition process, even in cases where I do not support the content of the petition itself. I will always stand up for the democratic right of all Canadians to express their views directly to the House of Commons by petitioning Parliament.

[Business of Supply, February 9th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions between the parties and I believe that if you seek it you would find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move:

That, at the conclusion of today's debate on the Opposition motion in the name of the Member from London--Fanshawe, all questions necessary to dispose of this motion be deemed put and a recorded division deemed requested and deferred until Monday, February 13th, 2012 at the end of Government Orders.