Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak about amending the Standing Orders. This is a golden opportunity to look at how we do the business of democracy in the House. Hopefully we can lower barriers and broaden participation and really use this opportunity to open the doors for Canadians just a bit wider.
In terms of amending the Standing Orders, I would first like to call attention to Standing Order 36 concerning petitions. Plummeting voter turnout and plunging levels of social capital means governments have to do all they can to improve participation in politics. One way for the public to provide input with respect to the business of Parliament is through petitions.
On this side of the House, we have called for large-scale reforms, such as electoral reform and abolishing the Senate. We also feel smaller changes made to business such as the Standing Orders could make a big difference in the lives of Canadians and how they interact with Parliament.
Today I proudly stood with three members of the Quebec caucus and announced an initiative to change the petitioning process, and I would like to outline that to the House.
Petitioning has a long parliamentary process. We really need to bring the petitioning practice in the House in to the 21st century. The current process is cumbersome and presents little payoff for constituents. Canadians wishing to present petitions use paper copies to gather signatures and present them to parliamentarians. Once 25 signatures have been gathered, the government must reply in 45 days.
The proposition we announced today is really two-fold. First, Canadians should have the ability to sign a petition electronically. This would not only improve access, but it would also allow us to more accurately gauge who has signed a petition. This is already being practised in the province of Quebec and in the U.K. parliament. We suggest that process be brought here.
More important, to bring us right in to the 21st century, we suggest that if a petition contains 50,000 signatures, the issue raised by the petitioners should be discussed in the House for one hour. This would be somewhat like private members' bills. It would allow debate in the House for an hour. This would give some strength to backbenchers, while taking a bit of power away from the partisan politics that seem to grip the House at times. It would also give citizens more of a say in their own governance.
My colleagues and I are working to secure cross-party support on this issue. We hope that the e-petition initiative becomes law.
In addition, I would like to call the House's attention to the excellent work we have also done concerning petitions in the House. Canadians living outside of Canada should be allowed access to petitions. Currently, petitions are limited by residency. An individual has to live in the country to sign a petition. We would like the committee to look at how Canadians living outside Canada could access petitions. E-petitions would perhaps facilitate this a little more.
I would like to move to another issue that we would like attended to concerning the Standing Orders. Standing Order 35(2) states “Upon presentation of a report accompanied by supplementary or dissenting opinions” the presenter also has a chance to explain the supplementary or dissenting opinion. We think this part of the Standing Orders could be revised to allow a representative of a party to make a statement for each dissenting opinion. At present, only a member of the official opposition can present on behalf of all of the dissenting opinion submissions. This works well for us now but this should be looked at again.
We also have another problem with this section. If the official opposition somehow supports the government, the third and fourth parties are left with no voice. We believe that if the third or fourth party objects and submits a dissenting opinion, there should be a mechanism in place that would allow those parties to have a chance to express a dissenting or supplementary opinion.
I also draw the House's attention to Standing Order 4(8)(a) which deals with the election of the Speaker of the House of Commons by secret ballot. There is a technical glitch where in the event of a tie two names are dropped off the list. For example, if a race included three candidates, and the first place candidate secured 40% of the vote, while the second and third candidates received 30% of the votes, the bottom two candidates would be eliminated from the race. Then the Speaker would be elected with 40% of the vote. We think this could perhaps be amended to prevent this kind of odd situation occurring where a Speaker is selected with just 40% of the vote.
I will move now to Standing Order 67.1(1)(a), which states:
When a motion has been proposed pursuant to Standing Order 57 or 78(3), there shall be a period of not more than thirty minutes during which time Members may put brief questions to the Minister responsible for the item...
We suggest that perhaps this 30 minutes question or comment period should be about the government's decision to use time allocation and closure on the bill at that stage and less about the merits of the bill itself. By allowing the minister to talk about the bill itself, we get distracted from the issue of closure. Amending the Standing Order to force the House leader to be the one answering the questions could, again, help us work through this issue.
I will now move to Standing Order 32(2), which states:
A Minister of the Crown, or a Parliamentary Secretary acting on behalf of a Minister, may, in his or her place in the House, state that he or she proposes to lay upon the Table of the House, any report or other paper dealing with a matter coming within the administrative responsibilities of the government, and, thereupon, the same shall be deemed for all purposes to have been laid before the House.
There has been a push in recent years to allow large documents to be tabled electronically and not in paper format. One example for this is the 2010-11 reports on plans or priorities, the blue books for each government department or agency. Those were not printed. They were available in electronic format only. We might want to look at this issue and see if it is actually working. We may want to see if, for example, all House business should be printed on paper, weighing for example the cost of printing and the effects on the environment.
Finally, I would draw attention to Standing Order 153. It states:
—shall make available to each Member...a list of the reports or other periodical statements...placing under the name of each officer or corporation a list of reports or returns required to be made...
Perhaps we should modernize the Standing Orders to be practical. It could be written, for example, as “The Law Clerk of the House shall make available to each member, in printed and electronic form”. Again, this is a chance to modernize how we present documents in the House, to weigh and to consider whether paper and electronic form, or perhaps both, are the way to move forward in making this information known to members and the public.
The priority for me in this list is to really consider the notion of opening petitions to the public and to allow the public better access to the House by guaranteeing a one hour debate for any electronic petition that receives over 50,000 signatures.
