Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a question of privilege, and I regret having to do that.
I am raising this question of privilege today on yet another instance of public display of partisanship on the part of our Speaker, following the promotion of a Liberal Party of Canada event with the Speaker as a featured guest, combined with very partisan, inflammatory language bashing the official opposition, the Conservative Party.
Normally this is where I would lay out the facts and then argue how they meet or differ from the relevant authorities and precedents that are on point. However, in the present instance, I think it is important for us to address up front the importance of raising this matter in the manner in which I am doing so, as a question of privilege, and your authority to rule on the same. I will then revert to the facts of the present matter and how they amount to, in my view, a contempt of the House.
In your December 5, 2023, ruling at page 19501 of the Debates, when the House was last confronted with the Speaker's public display of partisanship, you said, “if members wish to take issue with the conduct of the Speaker, rather than raising points of order or questions of privilege, I would instead direct them to place a substantive motion on notice.”
This is, it is fair to say, an attempt to give expression of the statement found at page 620 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, that reads, “Only by means of a substantive motion, for which 48 hours’ written notice has been given, may the actions of the Chair be challenged, criticized and debated.” However, I would argue that the statement requires a narrower interpretation of addressing the actions of the Chair, which is to say, the actions or omissions of the Speaker or any other chair occupant here within the chamber.
I would have you consider the following factors for the analysis. First, as you yourself said in your December 2023 ruling, there are two past examples, from June 1956 and March 2000, where dissatisfaction with the procedural rulings was vented through a question of privilege but was steered towards a substantive motion being placed before the House. I underline here that those examples involved procedural rulings of the Chair.
Second, and on the other hand, another precedent, which was referred to in the arguments before you in December but which did not receive any treatment in your ruling, was Speaker Fraser's March 9, 1993, ruling at page 16685 of the Debates concerning the then Deputy Speaker's appointment as Chair of her party's leadership convention. In ruling against the question of privilege, Speaker Fraser did so on the merits of the case before him; that is to say, he did not dismiss it on the technicality of preferring for it to proceed by way of a substantive motion. Indeed, to that later point, the Chair said:
Normally the Chair would not allow comment on the conduct of a Chair occupant to come before the House in such a manner. There is a formal and well-established procedure whereby Chair occupants can be [censured]. I allowed the discussion because the hon. member insisted on proceeding forthwith and pointed out, as subsequently also did [another member], that the Deputy Speaker's performance in the House was above any reproach and was not in question.
In the precedent's case, as much as has been said about the current Speaker's performance in the House, I will restrain myself from doing so and will focus squarely on his publicly partisan conduct outside the chamber, which is of course not a procedural ruling's being objected to.
Third, you yourself declined to dismiss the December 2023 question of privilege on this technicality. If the requirement for a substantive motion were truly a hard and fast rule, it would have been invoked by the Chair at the time. Indeed, I believe that all of the precedents speak to the viewpoint of the limitation of using only a substantive motion concerning a chair occupant's conduct within the chamber, such as rulings, and not external conduct, which reflects on the institution of the Chair or the House as a whole.
Fourth, the statements from Bosc and Gagnon, as well as your December rulings, must now be viewed through the constraints that were subsequently imposed by the Assistant Deputy Speaker's December 15, 2023, ruling at page 20180 of the Debates, whereby such a substantive motion moved during routine proceedings cannot be treated as a privileged motion but is instead subject to the following practice, described at page 469 of Bosc and Gagnon: “When debate on any motion considered during Routine Proceedings is adjourned or interrupted...the order for resumption of the debate is transferred to the Order Paper under Government Orders”.
In fact, that has been the fate of the motion of non-confidence that my House leader moved for debate on December 15, 2023. It has sat on the Order Paper ever since, as Government Motion No. 33. It has never been called for further debate. It has never been put up for a vote, despite the words of the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader on May 8: “The motion did not find consensus, and as such, the matter is closed”. What all of this means is that a handful of members could in essence protect a Speaker from a majority decision by exercising a short filibuster to prevent a substantive motion from coming to a vote.
If the House adopts a motion to adjourn the debate or even to proceed to Orders of the Day, that would at least reflect in some fashion the will of the majority in the moment, but that is not what happened on December 15, 2023, nor is it what our procedures would require at any other time. Of course, a government seeking to shield an openly pro-government Speaker would in turn have no interest in calling a motion that would be placed under Government Orders to allow it to be further debated.
Combining these two factors during the tenure of a minority government, like the one we are in today, it would be very easy for a government to protect its guardian Speaker from a non-confidence motion's ever coming to a vote, despite the sentiments of the majority of the House. Then, on the basis of little, a short speech or two, it could be dismissed as a matter having been, as the parliamentary secretary said, “closed” because it “did not find consensus”, thereby depriving the House of the ability to purge itself of a festering controversy over its Speaker and to clear the air in either direction. That is, I would submit, the predicament that we find ourselves in today.
In Canada, no one is above the law. Likewise, in the House, no one should be above the rules and the practices, certainly not the Speaker, who is called upon to enforce them. That is why I would urge you to interpret the requirements of censuring the Speaker by way of a substantive motion as being properly limited to procedural rulings to which objection is taken.
Having addressed the matter of the receivability of my question of privilege, I will turn now to the substance of the present concern. It has come to light that the Liberal Party of Canada is advertising “a summer evening with the Honourable [Speaker]”, scheduled to be held on the evening of June 4 in the shadow of Parliament Hill at a location adjacent to the Gatineau bank of the Ottawa River, less than a kilometre over my right shoulder.
The promotional material of the event used very partisan, inflammatory language concerning the Conservative Party and the leader of the official opposition. Allow me to read just some of it for the benefit of the whole House: “Join us for an event in your community—you don't want to miss it. It's an opportunity to join fellow Liberals to talk about ways we can continue to build a better future for all Canadians—because a better future starts with you.”
It goes on to say this:
While [the Leader of the Opposition] and his Conservatives propose reckless policies that would our risk the health, safety, and pocketbooks our Liberal team is focused on making life more affordable for Canadians and moving forward with our bold plan to grow an economy that works for everybody, protects our environment, keeps our communities safe, and so much more. Especially in a minority Parliament, we can never take our progress for granted. Together, with your hope and hard work, we can keep Canada moving forward.
The Speaker's event is being promoted by attacking the very same leader, on whom he recently used his authority to kick out of the House of Commons, allegedly for his choice of wording in the middle of question period, when the Liberal Prime Minister, merely seconds before, had used equivocally questionable language and had been given a pass for it.
A footnote beneath the promotional rhetoric explains, “Team [Prime Minister's name] events are posted by local volunteer teams”. That means, I would submit, that the Speaker must take personal responsibility for what his local team, the Hull—Aylmer Federal Liberal Association, whose past president, I would add, is the Speaker's chief of staff, has organized and published.
The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs noted in its 55th report, “Today, an expectation exists among members of the House, and the wider public, that the Speaker’s duties ought to be carried out with scrupulous impartiality and independence.... The Speaker must be fair and impartial.” The House concurred in this report on January 30, lending its endorsement to that position, and it is a position that the Speaker has yet again fallen short of. Moreover, it is an established standard that has not been lived up to.
Our leading procedural guide, Bosc and Gagnon, on page 323, says, “When in the Chair, the Speaker embodies the power and authority of the office, strengthened by rule and precedent. He or she must at all times show, and be seen to show, the impartiality required to sustain the trust and goodwill of the House.” When he was elected Speaker, his extensive partisan history, from being the president of Young Liberals, to being national director for the Liberal Party, to being parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, among other offices, gave many members of the House pause about lending their trust and goodwill to him. Regrettably, his subsequent actions have done nothing to dispel these concerns. If anything, they have only been heightened.
During the seven months as Speaker, he has repeatedly engaged in questionable partisan behaviour, including in October when he called a former Liberal member of Parliament and opinion writer and asked him to pen an op-ed slamming the official opposition for its efforts to hold the government to account. In November, he attended and spoke at a cocktail militant, where donations were solicited in support of the provincial Pontiac Federal Liberal Association.
In early December, a partisan tribute was broadcast at the Ontario Liberal Party's leadership convention, where he was seen in his full Speaker's trappings, heaping praise on the party's outgoing interim leader and current parliamentary leader, a man who is not actually retiring from politics, but fully intends to run as a candidate in the next provincial election. As we know, that led to an unprecedented ruling of prima facie contempt in the House, to a committee study and to a Board of Internal Economy penalty. Then, while the House was seized with the fallout of this scandalous video, and in the midst of a sitting week, he jetted off to Washington for a trip centred around a retirement party for a personal friend from international Liberal politics, where he made a speech reminiscing about his days as Young Liberals' president, and of course, we now have this summer rally for the Liberal Party of Canada.
As for the Speaker's events scheduled next month, I fully acknowledge that Speakers do not arrive in the chair through some form of immaculate conception. Speakers have all been politicians before being elected to the chair, and some have even gone on to further partisan service after serving in the chair.
Most Speakers have typically sought re-election to the House of Commons under their original party banner, which understandably requires the usual groundwork any member of Parliament places in his or her constituency association by engaging the support of volunteers and by ensuring adequate resources are available come election time.
That being said, long-standing tradition and custom in the Canadian House of Commons and in its sister legislatures across the Commonwealth all have the expectation of the Speaker's impartiality while in post. This varies from country to country, as was explained in greater detail by the official opposition leader of the Conservative Party in the December question of privilege concerning the Speaker's convention tribute when he quoted various procedural authorities in Quebec, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and India, for instance, and I would commend those texts to the Chair.
Our own Bosc and Gagnon reflects, on page 324, “In order to protect the impartiality of the office, the Speaker abstains from all partisan political activity (for example, by not attending caucus meetings)”.
In a campaigning context, the same authority adds, on page 314, “although the Speaker eschews partisan political activity, he or she does not make a complete break. When running for re-election, incumbent Speakers are usually careful to avoid partisan statements that might prejudice their perceived impartiality in the future.”
Reconciling these demands on the Speaker as a local member of Parliament and as a candidate for re-election is typically not that onerous. A Speaker can focus on local issues, promote his or her efforts on intentions they might want to undertake as a local member of Parliament, and build up local enthusiasm and resources, all without taking partisan statements that might prejudice their perceived impartiality. If those types of statements are considered inappropriate when Parliament is dissolved, then it must be even that much more inappropriate during an actively sitting Parliament.
Indeed, as my party House leaders told the House in December, in respect of the video controversy, if the Speaker openly engages in partisan conduct, it opens the door to public analysis of all partisan motivations underlying his rulings. That is exactly where his habits, with this month's event promotional material I quoted as an example, have led us.
It has simply become impossible to make any distinction now between the member for Hull—Aylmer, who also serves as the Speaker, and the Liberal member for Hull—Aylmer. Every ruling that is now given and, with hindsight, every ruling that he has ever given, will now be assumed to have been delivered with a red hint.
The Speaker has failed at showing, and at being seen to show, the impartiality required of a Speaker. In turn, he can no longer count on the trust and the goodwill of members from all corners of the House. That is not where the House ought to be. It is far from it, in fact.
Following the convention tribute video scandal, the Conservative and the Bloc Québécois caucuses lost confidence in the Speaker's continuing in his office.
Meanwhile, the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby, speaking to journalists, for the New Democratic Party, after the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs' review of the issue, said, “This cannot happen moving forward. From now on, you cannot have a Speaker engage in partisan activity.” He also said that, “if there was any derogation from that, in the weeks and months to come”, his party would join in voting “non-confidence” in the Speaker.
If the NDP House leader and his party were true to their word, there would now be a majority of members, representing the majority of parties in the House of Commons, who have lost confidence in the Speaker. For the good of the institution of Parliament and of the enduring interest of the House of Commons, I regret to say that the Speaker must go. Failing that, it is incumbent upon the House to take action immediately.
That is why I urge you to find in favour of my question of privilege establishing a prima facie contempt so that I may put forward a motion of remedy to vacate the chair and to schedule the election of a new Speaker.
