Madam Speaker, as part of the debate on the Standing Orders, which takes place once in every Parliament pursuant to Standing Order 51(1), I will today be making a suggestion as to how to address the growing misuse of unanimous consent motions, or, more accurately, the growing number of disingenuous requests to seek the unanimous consent of the House by members who know that no such assent will actually be happening.
I will give an outline of the problem momentarily, but first I want to state that it is my view that the solution to the problem lies not in changing the Standing Orders but rather in the Speaker taking the initiative to determine more precisely what the will of the House is with regard to any particular request for unanimous consent prior to, rather than after, permitting the member who is requesting the consent to present to the House the content of the motion for which unanimous consent is being sought.
Let me start with a caveat. The process of seeking and frequently of granting the unanimous consent of all members is an important mechanism that is applied quite literally on a daily basis, and sometimes hourly, in order to bypass the time-consuming formalities of debate and voting on matters when we are all in agreement.
To select a few examples from a very long list of useful applications, unanimous consent is a useful tool in such things as allowing a member to request a correction to Hansard; allowing the House to see the clock, as we like to say, at a later time than it truly is in order to advance the time at which we can adjourn for the evening; making changes to the membership of the procedure and House affairs committee, for which the consent of the House is required; and concurring in committee reports when these are supported by a broad consensus.
The seeking and granting of unanimous consent is also beneficial when one member believes there may be universal consent to a substantive or policy-related motion and, before rising in the House, has first sought out behind the scenes the support of the House leaders of the various parties, and only then presents the agreed-to motion in the House. When prior consent has been sought, the reading of the motion in the House is a final step confirming that the motion has the support of every single MP then in attendance, including every independent MP and also any MPs who might on that occasion be choosing to act independently of their own party's House leader.
Much good can be done via policy-oriented motions that are approved in such a manner. I am, for example, particularly proud of the motion that I proposed, which was, following behind-the-scenes negotiations, adopted by unanimous consent on October 24, 2002. This motion, which called on the prime minister to request the release by China of a dozen Falun Gong practitioners, enabled Jean Chrétien to make this request more effectively than he could have done, and in the end, all of the prisoners were eventually released and came to Canada, where they have been model citizens.
Now let me turn to the misuse of requests for unanimous consent. Members will frequently rise in this place, particularly in the hour just after question period, when the media are most likely to be present in the gallery, and will request the unanimous consent of the House for motions that have not been consented to in advance by the House leaders of the recognized parties. Sometimes this has happened after a failed attempt to win this support and sometimes it happens when no meaningful attempt at all has been made at consultation, and certainly with too little time for the House leaders to consult with the members of the caucuses on whose behalf they speak.
Here is how this works. A member will rise and typically, although not universally, give a preamble that without quite passing the point at which the member would be regarded as misleading the House—which is of course a severe offence, with real consequences—gives the false impression that the right kind of consultation has taken place. The preamble typically goes like this: “Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions among the parties, and if you seek it, I believe you will find unanimous consent to adopt the following motion.”
Because the Speaker cannot be sure that the member is stretching the truth, the whole House therefore is compelled to listen to the member giving a policy statement at a time when other business was scheduled for discussion. As the text of the motion becomes clear to the whole House, other members will sometimes call out their opposition to the motion, and only at that point is the Speaker empowered to interrupt and silence the MP who moved the motion.
The various chair occupants are clearly frustrated by this. Here is what the Deputy Speaker said two weeks ago on May 16. As some members called out “no”, the Deputy Speaker rose and said, “I am already hearing some nays”, and there was no consent. Then later the Deputy Speaker added:
I want to make one comment on this....
Unanimous consent motions are being abused in the House of Commons. ... I urge each and every member of the House of Commons to use Statements by Members to get their points across rather than using unanimous consent motions as they are being used today.
If the Speaker was frustrated on that day, I can only imagine what he must have felt on May 3, when, starting at 3:15 in the afternoon, a series of 11 requests for unanimous consent were presented and rejected by various MPs, which wasted a considerable amount of time. Finally, on that day, the Deputy Speaker rose and expressed his frustration at the fact that prior consent was being implied when none had actually been achieved and encouraged the respective House leaders to discuss the subject at their weekly in camera meeting later that afternoon.
Based on what we have seen since May 3, it seems safe to assume that the House leaders have not been able to resolve the matter internally, so now let me suggest a solution that could be implemented unilaterally by the Speaker, a solution that would augment the Speaker’s ability to carry out his or her vital role of serving as the most immediate or proximate vehicle by which the House can express its will.
It would work like this. Number one, a member rises and begins the usual formulaic statement of “Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions among the parties, and if you seek it, I believe you will find unanimous consent to adopt the following motion.”
Number two, rather than allowing the member to proceed further, the Speaker would at this point interrupt and say, “Is it the case that the hon. member has gained the consent of the House leaders of all recognized parties to the exact wording that the member is about to propose?”
Number three, at that point, any member who has actually won this support could truthfully say yes and simply carry on, as at present. However, number four, any member who has not yet won the support of all House leaders would need to say no, at which point the Speaker would state, “In that case, I encourage the member to seek the consent and to return to the House when the support of the House leaders has been achieved.” The Speaker would then simply move on to other business.
Number five, of course, is that in theory the member could lie and claim the consent of the House leaders had been achieved, but this would be an unambiguous attempt to mislead the House, and the penalties for so doing are so severe and so immediate that no sane member would attempt this tactic. Even an insane member would do it only once.
Members could also, I suppose, attempt to dodge the Speaker’s question by waffling and not quite saying yes or no, but this too will fail as long as the Speaker stops them sooner or later by stating, “It is not the practice in this House for requests for unanimous consent on substantive motions to proceed unless the mover first clearly states that he or she has received the prior consent of the House leaders of all recognized parties.”
The key point here is to prevent the member from reading out the substance of the motion unless the member has truthfully stated that the triggering condition has been met.
Once it is clear that the ability to read out an out-of-order policy statement has been lost, I predict two things will happen. One is that most such attempts will simply stop. The second is that in order to avoid being interrupted by the inevitable question from the Speaker, members who actually do have the required level of support from the House leaders will learn to say something along these lines: “Madam Speaker, I rise to seek the unanimous consent of the House to the following motion, which has been agreed to, in the following words, and in both official languages, by the House leaders of all recognized parties”, or something like that.
Let me now state an important caveat. For this process to work, and also to not hinder the appropriate use of motions to seek unanimous consent, it would need to remain possible for any member to continue to rise, as at present, to seek the unanimous consent of the House on a purely procedural matter, such as seeing the clock, correcting a factual error in Hansard and so on. Such interventions are easily distinguished from attempts to gain the consent of the House to a policy statement, so there is no need to make any change to how the Speaker responds when a procedural matter is raised by a member. It is also impossible, in practice, to start by pretending to raise a procedural matter and then switch over to a request for unanimous consent on a motion regarding a substantive policy issue without triggering the formula I proposed.
I look forward to answering questions on this proposal.
