Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, slavery having been abolished in Canada, no one, not even parliamentarians, can be compelled to be in government if they do not wish to be. If the government says, “This measure must pass”, whatever it is, and it does not, then it is in the power of the government to resign.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, sir.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Perhaps, if you don't mind, I'll speak to this question of penalties. I don't think we have much time. Probably one of the things I feel most strongly about is that you would be making a very big mistake to establish penalties in these rules. Just to restate my argument, I think the risk you run is that a penalty will become the cost of doing business in this game, and that the result will be that instead of reinforcing the fundamentals of responsible government and the central power of Parliament, you will have trivialized it.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  My answer is that I think in this matter we should have faith in our fundamental system of government and in the role of the crown and the Governor General. I think if Parliament speaks clearly and without ambiguity, without weasel words, without conditions and without such penalties that raise questions of doubt and complexity into it, and says that when a vote of confidence is before the House, you shall not prorogue in any circumstances, period--in clear language similar to what you find in this constitutional language that I referred to--then I would be quite surprised if the Governor General permitted that to happen.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Of course, you're taking us to the King-Byng debate and the issue of whether a Governor General can call on the second party in the House when the party with the most seats reports that it does not enjoy the confidence of the House. My view is that Governor General Byng was absolutely right and that Prime Minister King was absolutely wrong.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That is a very interesting question. In fact, most of the instructions that pertain to limiting the Governor General's power were written by the executive. So it would seem that, when the Prime Minister requests that Parliament be prorogued, the Governor General has to grant his request, regardless of the circumstance, even in the event of a confidence vote in the House.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, my first comment is that as a member of Parliament, I'm sure you appreciate better than I do that what is before Parliament is extremely complex, and the way it is going to unfold over time is hard to predict. It is very hard to write rules now that are going to be appropriate in every circumstance for the next 50 to 100 years.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Of course, the defeat of a throne speech is a confidence matter, and would have got us to the world we're in here, which is a debate about who a new ministry should be. If you're inquiring into the political circumstances at the time, as opposed to the constitutional issues, I guess my answer is that the government had not made a terrible blunder yet that had united the opposition and created the political circumstances permitting such an act, which is my point that you have to make a difference between the constitutional rules and political realities.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I didn't do a constitutional study in Germany, Spain, or Hungary of their prorogation language, although I think it would be an interesting exercise to get the parliamentary library to do. I do have a comment on prorogation, if you like.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Our government has routinely used prorogation in the functioning of our legislature, as you will find in all legislatures. We routinely brought our parliamentary program to the end, roughly every mid- to late June, essentially every year, so we could do a throne speech and a new budget the following year.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Very good. I do agree with some of your witnesses that you need to be a little bit careful about this issue and know that prorogation is a broader tool. In my comments today, I call on you to focus on the issue of when prorogation is used to prevent the House from performing its fundamental constitutional responsibility.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I agree with your analysis and your findings.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I agree with your analysis and your findings. So let's get back to the issue. Given that we will probably have a minority government for some time to come—you are absolutely right, but this is politics, so who knows—the most important thing to do is to define the rules to establish who represents the government, precisely because we have minority governments.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Holy smokes. Well, in the time you likely have, let me just offer you a few comments. I think democracy is a vulnerable thing and the privileges of Parliament are vulnerable things. One of the good things that could come out of the politics of this Parliament would be a commitment by all parties to leave what is constitutional as constitutional and leave what is political as political.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I definitely agree with the principle of increasing Parliament's authority and limiting that of the executive. Mr. Savoie and many other students have written books and done studies that are very convincing on the phenomenon and the fact that this parliamentary system, within its British context, is the subject of a power struggle in every country where it exists.