Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think what I was trying to convey is that in some political systems prorogation is simply a matter of routine. It's not a matter of controversy at all; it's just simply done on an annual basis in Great Britain. Here, in Canadian Parliament, up until the 1980s, prorogation appea

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You are quite right to distinguish between trying to set legal or formal limits on the Prime Minister's prorogation powers and talking about the moral constraints. We've operated until recently on those moral constraints. The constitutional conventions that had built up, the in

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Absolutely. I think it's essential that some exception is made for emergency situations. There's no doubt that something terrible could happen and Parliament simply could not meet, or if it were to meet, it would have to fundamentally reorder itself. Prorogation then is essential

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Ultimately, I'm skeptical of the value of prorogation. I think there are certain circumstances in which it is useful to reset the parliamentary agenda and start a new session, but they are rare, so maybe the compromise would be to have set sessions so there is no issue of manipul

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. There's a number of issues in your comments.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's a very good question.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Let me start with perhaps the more interesting one, and one that's been debated in some of your previous testimony, and that is the ability of the Speaker to be in contact with the Governor General, shall we say. I think it is in fact a clear and ancient right of the Speaker to h

Procedure and House Affairs committee  What I know from history is that it was the Commons Speaker who consistently asserted that right. One would think so, because out of the British traditions, the Speaker of the House of Lords is in fact a cabinet minister and a member of the Privy Council. So one would assume that

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That would be very interesting.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not aware of deliberate attempts to try to change the powers to prorogue. The closest one can come to it is in New Zealand, where they've simply abandoned the notion of sessions, and recent Parliaments have one session for the whole Parliament. To the extent that there's be

Procedure and House Affairs committee  As you've heard before, the real stumbling block is the requirement for unanimous consent dealing with amendments to the office of Governor General. There are a number of constitutional scholars who believe that the office of Governor General includes all the powers of the Govern

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There's one that this committee looked at a few years back when it came to the fixed election date legislation and looking at dissolution. We commonly talk about dissolution being a prerogative of the crown. What we know of dissolution is that it is actually three different acts:

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Do you mean on the ability to legislate on prorogation and length of sessions?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. First I want to thank you for inviting me. It's a great pleasure to be here in the nation's capital and to visit from the west coast. There is a range of topics you've already covered in your previous meetings that I'd be delighted to discuss in the ques