37th Parliament, 1st Session
EDITED HANSARD • NUMBER 033
CONTENTS
Wednesday, March 21, 2001
1400
| STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS
|
| HOUSING
|
| Mr. Peter Adams |
| SOFTWOOD LUMBER
|
| Ms. Val Meredith |
1405
| SUMMER GAMES
|
| Mrs. Sue Barnes |
| NOROUZ
|
| Mr. Derek Lee |
| WORLD POETRY DAY
|
| Ms. Hélène Scherrer |
| HOUSE OF COMMONS
|
| Mrs. Diane Ablonczy |
| SUPPLY MANAGEMENT
|
| Mr. Murray Calder |
1410
| WORLD POETRY DAY
|
| Ms. Christiane Gagnon |
| RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
|
| Ms. Raymonde Folco |
| FRENCH CULTURE
|
| Mr. John Williams |
| MULTICULTURALISM
|
| Mr. Stan Dromisky |
| MULTICULTURALISM
|
| Ms. Libby Davies |
1415
| DRUG USE IN AMATEUR SPORT
|
| Mr. Robert Lanctôt |
| LUMBER
|
| Mr. John Herron |
| ORAL QUESTION PERIOD
|
| ETHICS COUNSELLOR
|
| Mr. Stockwell Day |
| Hon. Brian Tobin |
| Mr. Stockwell Day |
| Hon. Brian Tobin |
1420
| Mr. Stockwell Day |
| Hon. Brian Tobin |
| Mr. Stockwell Day |
| Hon. Brian Tobin |
| Mr. Stockwell Day |
| Hon. Brian Tobin |
| Mr. Gilles Duceppe |
| Right Hon. Jean Chrétien |
1425
| Mr. Gilles Duceppe |
| Right Hon. Jean Chrétien |
| Mr. Michel Gauthier |
| Right Hon. Jean Chrétien |
| Mr. Michel Gauthier |
| Right Hon. Jean Chrétien |
| TRADE
|
| Ms. Alexa McDonough |
1430
| Right Hon. Jean Chrétien |
| Ms. Alexa McDonough |
| Hon. Pierre Pettigrew |
| ETHICS COUNSELLOR
|
| Right Hon. Joe Clark |
| Hon. Brian Tobin |
| Right Hon. Joe Clark |
| Hon. Brian Tobin |
| Miss Deborah Grey |
1435
| Hon. Brian Tobin |
| Miss Deborah Grey |
| Hon. Brian Tobin |
| SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS
|
| Mr. Pierre Paquette |
| Hon. Pierre Pettigrew |
| Mr. Pierre Paquette |
| Hon. Pierre Pettigrew |
1440
| ETHICS COUNSELLOR
|
| Ms. Val Meredith |
| Hon. Brian Tobin |
| Ms. Val Meredith |
| Hon. Brian Tobin |
| FREE TRADE AREA OF THE AMERICAS
|
| Ms. Francine Lalonde |
| Hon. Pierre Pettigrew |
| Ms. Francine Lalonde |
| Hon. Pierre Pettigrew |
| THE ECONOMY
|
| Mr. Jason Kenney |
1445
| Hon. Paul Martin |
| Mr. Jason Kenney |
| Hon. Paul Martin |
| MULTICULTURALISM
|
| Mr. Larry Bagnell |
| Hon. Hedy Fry |
| PUBLISHING INDUSTRY
|
| Ms. Wendy Lill |
| Hon. Brian Tobin |
1450
| PHARMACEUTICALS
|
| Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis |
| Mr. Yvon Charbonneau |
| NATIONAL DEFENCE
|
| Mrs. Elsie Wayne |
| Hon. Art Eggleton |
| Mrs. Elsie Wayne |
| Hon. Art Eggleton |
| HEALTH
|
| Mr. Art Hanger |
| Hon. Art Eggleton |
| Mr. Art Hanger |
1455
| Hon. Art Eggleton |
| FREE TRADE AREA OF THE AMERICAS
|
| Mr. Bernard Bigras |
| Hon. Pierre Pettigrew |
| DRUG LEGALIZATION
|
| Mr. Michel Bellehumeur |
| Hon. Anne McLellan |
| CANADIAN FORCES
|
| Mr. Leon Benoit |
| Hon. Art Eggleton |
| Mr. Leon Benoit |
| Hon. Art Eggleton |
1500
| FOREIGN AFFAIRS
|
| Mr. Gurbax Malhi |
| Hon. Rey Pagtakhan |
| AGRICULTURE
|
| Mr. Werner Schmidt |
| Hon. Lyle Vanclief |
| PRESENCE IN GALLERY
|
| The Speaker |
1505
| POINTS OF ORDER
|
| Statements by Members
|
| Mr. Peter Goldring |
| Minister of Foreign Affairs
|
| Mr. Bill Casey |
| The Speaker |
1510
| Oral Question Period
|
| Mr. Richard Harris |
| Hon. Don Boudria |
| Mrs. Elsie Wayne |
| PRIVILEGE
|
| Ethics Counsellor
|
| Mr. Chuck Strahl |
1515
1520
| Ms. Susan Whelan |
| Mr. Bill Blaikie |
1525
| Mr. Peter MacKay |
| The Speaker |
| ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS
|
| GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO PETITIONS
|
| Mr. Paul Szabo |
| INCOME TAX AMENDMENTS ACT, 2000
|
| Bill C-22. Introduction and first reading
|
| Hon. Jim Peterson |
1530
| INDIAN ACT
|
| Bill C-307. Introduction and first reading
|
| Mr. Leon Benoit |
| PETITIONS
|
| Canada Post
|
| Mr. Janko Peric |
| Poison Control
|
| Mr. Maurice Vellacott |
| STARRED QUESTIONS
|
| Mr. Derek Lee |
| Mr. Derek Lee: |
| Mr. Greg Thompson |
1535
| MOTIONS FOR PAPERS
|
| Mr. Derek Lee |
| BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
|
| Summit of the Americas
|
| Hon. Don Boudria |
| Motion
|
| Report Stage Motions
|
| The Speaker |
1540
1545
1550
| GOVERNMENT ORDERS
|
| MODERNIZATION OF HOUSE OF COMMONS PROCEDURE
|
| Hon. Don Boudria |
| Motion
|
1555
1600
1605
1610
1615
1620
| BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
|
| MODERNIZATION OF HOUSE OF COMMONS PROCEDURE
|
| Motion
|
| Mr. Stockwell Day |
1625
1630
1635
| Mr. Chuck Strahl |
1640
1645
1650
| Mr. Michel Gauthier |
1655
1700
1705
1710
| Mr. Paul Szabo |
1715
| Mr. Bill Blaikie |
1720
1725
1730
1735
| POINTS OF ORDER
|
| Oral Question Period
|
| Hon. Hedy Fry |
1740
| Right Hon. Joe Clark |
| Miss Deborah Grey |
| Mr. Vic Toews |
| MODERNIZATION OF HOUSE OF COMMONS PROCEDURE
|
| Motion
|
| Mr. Paul Szabo |
1745
| Mr. Peter MacKay |
1750
| Mr. Peter Stoffer |
| Right Hon. Joe Clark |
1755
1800
1805
| Mr. Myron Thompson |
1810
| Mr. Paul Szabo |
| Mr. Peter MacKay |
1815
1820
1825
| Mr. Paul Szabo |
1830
| Mr. Myron Thompson |
| Mr. Reg Alcock |
1835
1840
| Mr. Dennis Mills |
1845
| Mr. Grant McNally |
1850
1855
| Mr. John Bryden |
| Ms. Carolyn Bennett |
1900
1905
1910
| Mr. John Bryden |
| Mr. Stéphane Bergeron |
1915
1920
1925
1930
| Mrs. Bev Desjarlais |
1935
| Mr. John Bryden |
1940
1945
| Mr. Scott Reid |
| Mr. Peter Stoffer |
1950
| Mr. Scott Reid |
1955
2000
| Mr. Peter Stoffer |
2005
| Mr. Steve Mahoney |
2010
2015
| Mr. Scott Reid |
2020
| Hon. Lorne Nystrom |
2025
2030
| Mr. Yvon Godin |
2035
| Mr. Clifford Lincoln |
2040
2045
2050
| Mr. Ken Epp |
| Mr. Rick Borotsik |
2055
| Mr. Bill Casey |
2100
| Mr. Rick Borotsik |
| Mr. Loyola Hearn |
2105
2110
| Mr. James Rajotte |
| Mr. Dennis Mills |
2115
2120
| Mr. Peter MacKay |
| Mr. Ken Epp |
2125
| Mr. Rob Merrifield |
2130
2135
| Mr. Wayne Easter |
| Mr. Dan McTeague |
2140
| Mr. Dan McTeague |
2145
2150
| Mr. James Rajotte |
2155
| Mr. Peter MacKay |
| Mr. John Williams |
2200
2205
| Mr. Dan McTeague |
2210
| Hon. Charles Caccia |
2215
2220
| Mr. Bill Blaikie |
2225
| Ms. Caroline St-Hilaire |
2230
2235
| Mr. Paul Szabo |
2240
2245
| Mr. Peter MacKay |
2250
| Mr. Kevin Sorenson |
2255
2300
| Mr. Greg Thompson |
2305
| Mr. Rick Laliberte |
2310
2315
| Mr. Larry Bagnell |
2320
| Mrs. Suzanne Tremblay |
2325
2330
| Mr. Rick Laliberte |
2335
| Mr. Chuck Cadman |
2340
2345
| Mr. Peter MacKay |
| Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis |
2350
2355
2400
| Mr. Paul Szabo |
2405
| Mr. Gurmant Grewal |
2410
2415
| Mr. Peter Stoffer |
| Mr. Jason Kenney |
2420
| Mr. Greg Thompson |
2425
2430
| Mr. Larry Bagnell |
| Mr. Peter Stoffer |
2435
| Mr. Ken Epp |
2440
2445
| Mr. James Rajotte |
2450
| Mr. Peter Stoffer |
2455
2500
| Mr. Ken Epp |
| Mr. Larry Bagnell |
2505
| Mr. James Rajotte |
2510
2515
| Mr. Peter Stoffer |
| Mr. Ken Epp |
2520
| Mr. Jason Kenney |
2525
2530
| Mr. Larry Bagnell |
| Mr. James Rajotte |
2535
(Official Version)
EDITED HANSARD • NUMBER 033
HOUSE OF COMMONS
Wednesday, March 21, 2001
The House met at 2 p.m.
Prayers
1400
[English]
The Speaker: As is our practice on Wednesday we will now
sing O Canada, and we will be led by the hon. member for
Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore.
[Editor's Note: Members sang the national anthem]
STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS
[English]
HOUSING
Mr. Peter Adams (Peterborough, Lib.): Mr. Speaker,
through the supporting community partnerships and $305 million,
the federal government is assisting community groups with
problems of homelessness. The government pays 50% of project
costs, matched by local money, volunteers and time. In
Peterborough, this amounts to almost half a million dollars.
Equally important, the government is working to help the
homeless directly. For example, in Peterborough various federal
programs have supported the John Howard Society and its work for
unemployed youth. The CMHC works with it providing permanent and
temporary shelter, and the federal co-ops and the first nations
groups continue their fine work.
As another example, HRDC has been able to assist with forums on
homelessness and with a local housing resource centre.
Homelessness is not simply a matter of lack of shelter. Of
course every person should have a roof over his or her head, but
while providing shelter we should work hard to solve the various
problems that cause people to live on the streets. Let us
continue to make this a national priority.
* * *
SOFTWOOD LUMBER
Ms. Val Meredith (South Surrey—White Rock—Langley, Canadian
Alliance): Mr. Speaker, Senator Max Baucus of Montana, who
has led the attack on the Canadian softwood lumber industry, now
claims that lax Canadian forestry practices and environmental
protection amount to a subsidy for Canadian producers.
Canada does not have to take a back seat to anyone in the world
in forest management. Unlike their American counterparts, our
foresters can actually light a controlled fire without burning
the entire state of New Mexico. Did anyone hear Senator Baucus
object when imported Canadian firefighters spent last summer
saving the forests in his home state?
As for the environment, not only does British Columbia contain
designated parkland that is almost the size of the entire state
of Montana, we have many species of wildlife, which have been
driven to extinction in the American west. If Senator Baucus is
truly concerned about endangered species, perhaps he should try—
The Speaker: The hon. member for London West.
* * *
1405
SUMMER GAMES
Mrs. Sue Barnes (London West, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, this
August the cities of London, St. Thomas and Woodstock, along with
the village of Grand Bend and the University of Western Ontario,
will hold the first Canada Summer Games of the new millennium.
It is expected that 5,000 athletes, coaches, managers and
technical officials from 650 different Canadian communities will
take part in the summer games. They will compete as members of
13 teams representing our 10 provinces and three territories. We
will welcome Nunavut for the first time into the Canada games
family.
In full collaboration with a number of partners, including the
Government of Canada, and building on the experience of previous
game hosts and the community itself, the London Alliance will
advance the Canada games legacy of building Canadian unity,
fostering personal excellence through sport and enriching
community life.
I would like to wish all involved the best and to congratulate
them on their hard work and preparation. I welcome Canadians to
London, Ontario, and different venues in my region.
* * *
NOROUZ
Mr. Derek Lee (Scarborough—Rouge River, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, Norouz, which means new day, marks the beginning of
the Iranian New Year, celebrated on March 21. Norouz has
always begun precisely with the passing of the sun into the
vernal equinox and marks the arrival of spring.
Historically, Norouz was introduced and celebrated by an
ancient Persian emperor, Jamshid. Others have credited the
Achaemenid Persian dynasty in 12 BC for the festival. Today it
is celebrated as New Year's Day by millions of Canadians,
regardless of their religious beliefs. Iranian, Afghani, Parsi,
Ismaili and other communities all celebrate it.
There is much we can learn from such an ancient and wonderful
tradition still celebrated after 3,000 years. Joy and happiness
were always regarded as major forces defeating the hostile
spirits and Norouz has always been considered a time of change
and renewal.
This day of celebration forms part of the heritage of millions
of Canadians of many cultures. Perhaps March 21 should be called
Norouz Heritage Day. Let me say happy new year to everyone and
invite them to enjoy the festival.
* * *
[Translation]
WORLD POETRY DAY
Ms. Hélène Scherrer (Louis-Hébert, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, UNESCO has
designated today as World Poetry Day.
I wish to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the great
poets who have left their mark on our literary history. I am
thinking of Émile Nelligan, Alain Grandbois, Saint-Denys Garneau,
Anne Hébert and Marie-Claire Blais, to name just a few.
This is the perfect opportunity for us to rediscover this art,
this creative use of words. I urge everyone to renew their
acquaintance with our poets. Their poetry has marked our
history and continues to mark the era in which we live.
I urge people to discover or rediscover their poems, and laugh,
cry, reminisce and reflect.
I would also like to take this opportunity to encourage
Canadians to express their feelings through the medium of words.
I and my colleagues hope that this day will also highlight
Canadian art generally. The works of our artists help to
strengthen our feeling of belonging to Canada, and our pride in
who we are.
* * *
[English]
HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mrs. Diane Ablonczy (Calgary—Nose Hill, Canadian
Alliance): Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw the attention of
all hon. members to a special person in our West Block post
office, Mr. J.P. Leblanc. J.P. has just achieved 35 years of
service on the Hill.
J.P. began his career on Parliament Hill in 1966 as a page in
the House of Commons and at the same time attended school to
complete his education. He then transferred to the committees
and private legislation branch, during which he travelled
extensively across Canada.
J.P. moved to the post office branch in 1973, where he became
well respected for his courteous and friendly manner toward
everyone. If he could do it all over again, would he choose to
work on the Hill? J.P. says that he definitely would.
He represents the best of the many dedicated and hard-working
staff who help ensure that the Parliament of Canada functions
smoothly. I would like to say best wishes to J.P. and tell him
that we wish him well as he continues his excellent work for the
House of Commons.
* * *
SUPPLY MANAGEMENT
Mr. Murray Calder (Dufferin—Peel—Wellington—Grey,
Lib.): Mr. Speaker, as a chicken farmer I want to commend our
Liberal government for its steadfast support of supply
management, a system that provides many family farms in my riding
and across Canada with stability and profitability.
The stable environment provided by supply management encourages
investment and research into better production practices.
Consumers benefit from top quality chicken, eggs and dairy
products at a very reasonable price. Supply management works.
Canada has defended its system of supply management at the
international level and won. I call upon the government to
continue its support for supply management and to ensure a bright
future for our family farms and the top quality products they
produce.
* * *
1410
[Translation]
WORLD POETRY DAY
Ms. Christiane Gagnon (Québec, BQ): Mr. Speaker, in 1999 UNESCO
designated March 21 as World Poetry Day, a day on which to give
fresh recognition to international poetry movements.
Although there are many forms of artistic expression, painting,
song, film, photography, writing, sculpting with clay, everyone
would agree that there is no art without poetry, as the
celebrated French painter Eugène Delacroix was so fond of
saying.
One of the ways in which culture is expressed is through words.
Poetry is one of the mediums available to us for expressing who
we are, what we are experiencing and feeling, and particularly
what we wish to become.
Who better than our poets to illustrate the truth of this?
Gilles Vigneault captured it very well:
Avec nos mots, nos jeux, nos travaux et nos danses
Nos joies et nos chagrins aussi
Quatre cents ans de foi, d'amour et d'espérance
Avec ceux qui vivaient ici
Nos miroirs et nos différences
Nous sommes devenus ce peuple et ce pays.
* * *
RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
Ms. Raymonde Folco (Laval West, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, today is the
International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
The day was created to raise public awareness and to overcome
racism in all of its forms. It enables us to change a page of
our history and move forward from the centuries of conflict and
suffering caused by racism and intolerance throughout the world.
Despite the fact that countries everywhere admire Canada for the
open-mindedness and respect Canadians have for each other, we
still need to continue to take steps against racism.
Laws may have changed, but the battle is not yet won. One need
only think of the aboriginal people and visible minorities to
realize this.
I call upon members of this House to reaffirm their convictions
about the equality of all human beings and their support of
Canadian multiculturalism.
* * *
FRENCH CULTURE
Mr. John Williams (St. Albert, Canadian Alliance): Mr. Speaker,
French culture is in good health in western Canada and the
residents of Legal in my riding are celebrating its richness.
When Canadians think about the francophonie, their thoughts turn
to the east and the French culture of Quebec and New Brunswick.
There is, however, a flourishing culture in Canada's west, in
Alberta and in Legal, Alberta, in particular.
The pride its people take toward their heritage is such that
they have undertaken to make their city Canada's capital of
French mural art.
Murals on French culture have begun to appear on the walls of
numerous buildings. The citizens of Legal invite francophones
and all Canadians to come and celebrate their heritage with
them.
Bravo to the city of Legal and its murals.
* * *
[English]
MULTICULTURALISM
Mr. Stan Dromisky (Thunder Bay—Atikokan, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, March 21 is International Day for the Elimination of
Racial Discrimination. In order to commemorate this day, the
Regional Multicultural Youth Council from my riding of Thunder
Bay—Atikokan has provided each member of parliament with a
multicultural bow, much like the one I am wearing at the present
time.
These coloured ribbons symbolize the human race and the beauty
created when diverse peoples unite. This is one of the youth
council's many initiatives to promote racial harmony and
celebrate unity.
We must work together to make society fairer and more
democratic. The government's involvement in the March 21
campaign strengthens our commitment to multiculturalism and is an
acknowledgement that different races enrich our heritage.
I invite all members of the House to wear this ribbon with pride
and to pledge commitment to racial equality.
* * *
MULTICULTURALISM
Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP): Mr. Speaker,
March 21 is International Day for the Elimination of Racism. On
this day we in the federal NDP stand in solidarity with all
people in a commitment to eliminate all forms of racism in our
workplaces, communities, schools and institutions and in
government and public policies.
We are part of a growing human rights movement that affirms the
worth, dignity and equality of all people and recognizes that our
civic, political, social and economic human rights are part of
this struggle.
As we approach the world conference against racism in South
Africa, we call on the federal government to take concrete steps
to eliminate racism within Canada and internationally. For
example, the government must act now to implement the
recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and
to bring justice to the victims of racist policies at residential
schools.
1415
We call on the government to eliminate the hated head tax on
immigrants and provide redress for the racist head tax imposed on
Chinese immigrants at the turn of the century.
* * *
[Translation]
DRUG USE IN AMATEUR SPORT
Mr. Robert Lanctôt (Châteauguay, BQ): Mr. Speaker, the
conference on the use of drugs in amateur sport was held
recently in Montreal. The aim of this event was to make the
public aware of the very serious problems of drug use in amateur
sport and to define ways to reduce the incidence.
The conclusions and recommendations of the conference were
unanimous. We must start fighting this devastating epidemic
now.
All the participants, including the government of Quebec and the
federal government, agreed on a partnership project focusing on
education, information and prevention and receiving proper
funding to ensure these objectives are achieved.
The Bloc Quebecois congratulates the organization on the success
of this forum and more specifically Dr. Christiane Ayotte, the
honourary chair of the conference and a world renowned expert in
drug use in sports, of whom we are very proud.
* * *
[English]
LUMBER
Mr. John Herron (Fundy—Royal, PC): Mr. Speaker, if a
Canadian softwood tree falls in the forest the Americans will be
there to hear it fall.
On March 31 the softwood lumber agreement will expire and so
will the maritime accord which exempts producers in the four
Atlantic provinces from the quotas applied through the agreement.
As the four premiers of Atlantic Canada stated in a letter given
to the Prime Minister, “failure to continue the current
agreement would have a devastating impact on our region's
softwood lumber industry”.
Atlantic Canada has not been targeted in the softwood lumber war
with the U.S. on every occasion since 1987. Why? Because
maritime timber is sold competitively in an open market and is
harvested from private, not crown, lands.
Even certain U.S. congressional leaders have said and understand
that a Canadian solution to the softwood lumber issue should
incorporate Canadian regional circumstances.
I urge the Government of Canada to renew the maritime accord and
to hear the chorus of provincial maritime ministers, like Peter
Mesheau of New Brunswick, calling for action to protect maritime
softwood lumber.
ORAL QUESTION PERIOD
[English]
ETHICS COUNSELLOR
Mr. Stockwell Day (Leader of the Opposition, Canadian
Alliance): Mr. Speaker, yesterday a letter was released from
the Grand-Mère Golf Club's lawyers by the Prime Minister's
personal ethics trainer.
The Liberals claim that the letter, which of course was written
and paid for by the Prime Minister's former business partners,
clears him. Actually it proves nothing. The only way we will
get to the bottom of this Grand-Mère affair is if all of the
relevant documents are released.
Why is the Minister of Industry still refusing to release the
names that appear on the shareholder registry that shows who was
the fourth shareholder between 1996 and 1999? Why will he not
just release it?
Hon. Brian Tobin (Minister of Industry, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition has been part of a demand
for the ethics counsellor to investigate this matter. The ethics
counsellor has done so and, as recently as yesterday, said
clearly again that the Prime Minister was not in any conflict.
The Leader of the Opposition was part of a demand for the RCMP
to investigate this matter. The RCMP did investigate and closed
the books because there was no basis for an investigation. The
Leader of the Opposition asked that the company release the names
of the shareholders and, by the way, independent verification is
being sought today with respect to that list. That information
is forthcoming.
I say it is time for the Leader of the Opposition to get back to
the real business of Canada.
Mr. Stockwell Day (Leader of the Opposition, Canadian
Alliance): Mr. Speaker, to use his own phraseology, I do not
want the Minister of Industry to get his shorts and his socks in
a knot. I am just asking a basic question.
We never asked that these names be released by the company. We
asked that the ethics trainer for the Prime Minister release from
the corporate registry the names of the shareholders. We still
do not have them. Whose names were on there between 1996 and
1999? That is all we are asking.
Hon. Brian Tobin (Minister of Industry, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, it was not the Leader of the Opposition's shorts that he
got in a knot when he got sued for $800,000 for making sarcastic,
wrong and false comments about another individual.
The gentleman talks about ethics, but it was his party that paid
$50,000 to bring about a byelection and still has not produced
the money. It is that party that accepted $70,000 from a law
firm that benefited from the very suit for which the member was
found guilty. The member has no room to lecture this Prime
Minister on ethics, none whatsoever.
1420
Mr. Stockwell Day (Leader of the Opposition, Canadian
Alliance): Mr. Speaker, he is upset because he must still
carry the Prime Minister's baggage on this, and that will hurt
his leadership challenge. He has a leadership race to face and
he is carrying some weight on his back.
[Translation]
In his public statement on his assets that were to be reported,
the Prime Minister wrote that his portfolio, and I quote:
If the Prime Minister had no control over his shares, why did he
call his ethics counsellor in January?
[English]
Hon. Brian Tobin (Minister of Industry, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, it does not matter how many times the Leader of the
Opposition—Leader of the Opposition for the moment—continues to
ask these kinds of questions. These kinds of questions will not
save his leadership.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh.
The Speaker: Order, please. I realize and all hon.
members know it is Wednesday, but that is no excuse for the
bedlam that is occurring at the moment. A little order would
be helpful.
Mr. Stockwell Day (Leader of the Opposition, Canadian
Alliance): Mr. Speaker, we still cannot get an answer and the
Prime Minister will not stand up and give an answer. Why can we
not get the information? He said that the shares were in a blind
trust and yet he phoned the ethics trainer in 1996 to say that
the sale of the shares had not gone through.
We have been asking the same question. We just want a simple
answer. Whose names were on that registry between 1996 and 1999?
Answer the question.
Hon. Brian Tobin (Minister of Industry, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, all the information required was provided yesterday in a
letter that was tabled before the industry committee.
Let me quote from what the ethics counsellor said yesterday,
less than 24 hours ago. He said:
I am satisfied that the prime minister had no personal interest
at stake when he assisted the auberge in its applications before
the Business Development Bank.
He went on to say that the golf course ceased to have an
interest in the auberge in mid-1993 and that the Prime Minister
ceased to have a financial interest in the golf course in
November 1993.
Most people could understand that, even the Leader of the
Opposition.
Mr. Stockwell Day (Leader of the Opposition, Canadian
Alliance): Mr. Speaker, the question is very simple: Whose
names were on the registry between 1996 and 1999?
The Prime Minister is shaking his head. He wishes this would go
away. The future hopeful leader is wishing it would go away.
That is a lot of baggage to carry.
The only question we are asking is whose names were on the
registry between 1996 and 1999? That is all we are asking.
Hon. Brian Tobin (Minister of Industry, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, apparently the Leader of the Opposition is having great
trouble with the simple, hard, disappointing reality that the
Prime Minister's name was not on the registry after 1993 because
he was not a shareholder.
[Translation]
Mr. Gilles Duceppe (Laurier—Sainte-Marie, BQ): Mr. Speaker,
yesterday at the Standing Committee on Industry, when I asked
the ethics counsellor if the Prime Minister was involved in
negotiations to obtain payment of his shares in the Grand-Mère
golf course, he clearly and distinctly replied
“Oh, yes”.
Does the Prime Minister admit that he was directly involved in
the negotiations and that he personally ensured he would
get paid for his shares in the Grand-Mère golf course?
Right Hon. Jean Chrétien (Prime Minister, Lib.): Mr. Speaker,
the ethics counsellor is there to provide advice on ethical
issues to all those who need to have trustees. All ministers,
including the Prime Minister, have the right to consult the
ethics counsellor.
So, under the circumstances, I spoke to him about my personal
affairs, as ministers must do when they have problems, and it is
his duty to provide advice to us.
1425
The ethics counsellor said that everything had been done
properly and that my trustee had given him all the information
and had fully co-operated, and he delivered to us a certificate
confirming that everything was in order.
Mr. Gilles Duceppe (Laurier—Sainte-Marie, BQ): Mr. Speaker, the
ethics counsellor said that the Prime Minister was personally
involved and that he had mandated his lawyer to negotiate. He
added that the Prime Minister clearly had an interest in getting paid
what he was owed.
Does the Prime Minister recognize, as his ethics counsellor did
yesterday, that he had an interest in getting paid for his
shares in the Grand-Mère golf course, and that he had a financial
interest, when he was involved in negotiating what is called a
“financial interest”?
Right Hon. Jean Chrétien (Prime Minister, Lib.): Mr. Speaker,
we did not have shares in that company since November 1993.
Someone owed money to us and I wanted to get paid. Since I earn
less than the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, who
gets $160,000 in addition to his salary as party leader and
member of the House, I wanted my money back, which is perfectly
normal.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh.
The Speaker: The hon. member for Roberval.
Mr. Michel Gauthier (Roberval, BQ): Mr. Speaker, yesterday the
ethics counsellor confirmed that the Prime Minister had every
interest in getting paid for his shares, and the Prime Minister
has just confirmed this.
Is the Prime Minister going to admit that his personal interests
were served by the business development bank loan to Auberge
Grand-Mère, since the financial health of that hotel was tied to
the value of the golf course, and this could not do otherwise
than to help him find another purchaser?
Right Hon. Jean Chrétien (Prime Minister, Lib.): Mr. Speaker,
money was owed to me, and I had no interest whatsoever in either
the golf course or the hotel. I did, however, want the money
owing me to be paid. That is completely normal.
They are making accusations, but the RCMP has looked into the
matter, the ethics counsellor has done the same, and the
Minister of Industry has stated that I did not own shares. That
should be clear to everyone.
In my opinion, when people rise in the House, when everyone says
there is no conflict of interest, then—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh.
The Speaker: Order, please. The hon. member for Roberval.
Mr. Michel Gauthier (Roberval, BQ): Mr. Speaker, we understand
each other very well; that is what we have been saying from the
beginning. The Prime Minister wanted to get paid.
He wanted his money when he made approaches to get help for
Auberge Grand-Mère, to obtain a loan despite the unfavourable
opinion of the Business Development Bank of Canada. It was in
his personal interests to do so, as he just confirmed.
Well, then let him take the floor and tell us otherwise.
Right Hon. Jean Chrétien (Prime Minister, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I
have always said the same thing. I have said from the start
that I was owed money.
What I also said, and what people are forgetting, is that
it was my duty to work to ensure that jobs were created in a
riding where there was 19% unemployment.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh.
Right Hon. Jean Chrétien: This business in fact employs 50 people today,
which is 20 more than in 1996. It was my duty to
help create jobs in the riding of Saint-Maurice and I do not—
The Speaker: Order, please. The hon. member for Halifax.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh.
[English]
The Speaker: Order, please. The Chair has to be able to
hear the questions and hon. members will want to hear the
questions. The hon. member for Halifax has the floor.
* * *
TRADE
Ms. Alexa McDonough (Halifax, NDP): Mr. Speaker,
yesterday the Prime Minister vehemently denied that the
government is selling privileged access to FTAA leaders. Let us
consider carefully what the government's own tender call for
corporate sponsorship said.
It advertised a sponsor leaders' welcoming reception. What do
they get? They get a potential speaking opportunity. It
advertised a sponsor networking breakfast to address delegates.
It also advertised a keynote luncheon with priority seating and a
closing reception, a networking opportunity.
1430
It sounds a lot like privileged access to me, or is the
government just engaging in false advertising?
Right Hon. Jean Chrétien (Prime Minister, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, I explained yesterday that we have invited Canadian
business people who have major interests in all these countries
to show them that they are good Canadian citizens, that they are
well known in Canada, and that they are welcoming these leaders
to Canada so that they can conclude they are good investors in
their countries.
I think it is good public relations in the best interest of
improving trade between Canada and the 33 other nations.
Ms. Alexa McDonough (Halifax, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I wish
the government would be as transparent with the negotiating text
as it is with its corporate access program. It is plain for all
to see that access to FTAA leaders is for sale. We even know the
price tag. We also know that corporations have access to the
negotiating text.
My question is for the Prime Minister. How much did the
corporations pay for the negotiating text, or was it just a
freebie for them?
Hon. Pierre Pettigrew (Minister for International Trade,
Lib.): Mr. Speaker, it is completely ludicrous to pretend
that the business people have access to the negotiating text. As
a responsible government leading these negotiations we obviously
consult. We consult trade unions. We consult business. We
consult universities. We consult people all over the place, but
they do not have access to the special negotiation text.
I remind the House that the government stands for making these
texts public as soon as possible, but we need the consensus of
the rest of the Americas to do it.
* * *
ETHICS COUNSELLOR
Right Hon. Joe Clark (Calgary Centre, PC): Mr. Speaker,
in Hansard of March 23, 1999, the Prime Minister said:
I sold the shares of that company in 1993. After that I had
nothing to do with either the golf course or the hotel...The debt
that was owed to me...was in the hands of a blind trust. I have
nothing to do with it.
However yesterday Mr. Wilson said that the Prime Minister was
implicated in the negotiations to dispose of the shares for three
long years.
Was the counsellor wrong? Did he mislead the committee? What
kind of blind trust allows the Prime Minister to be actively
involved in negotiations?
Hon. Brian Tobin (Minister of Industry, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, a few weeks ago the leader of the fifth party said he
would engage in a little fishing on this issue. It is time for
the leader of the fifth party to recognize that the river is dry.
He should take his pole and go back home. There is no more
fishing on this subject.
Right Hon. Joe Clark (Calgary Centre, PC): Mr. Speaker,
the carefully crafted letter of evasion tabled yesterday is most
significant for what it hides. It says that a transfer of shares
was approved. It carefully does not say that a transfer of
shares occurred. In fact, it affirms that the so-called
purchaser, Akimbo, was never listed as an owner of the shares.
What concrete proof can the Prime Minister offer the House that
a transfer of shares actually occurred? If he has any proof at
all of an actual transfer, will he agree to table it so that
Canadians can judge the actual documents themselves?
Hon. Brian Tobin (Minister of Industry, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, the ethics counsellor has judged this issue. The RCMP
has judged this issue and Canadians are judging this leader.
This is a leader who failed to see a conspiracy all around him
with regard to his leadership, when what was really happening was
foreign money was being brought into the Conservative Party. He
could not see what was happening but imagines a conspiracy where
none exists.
It is time for this leader to get back to the real business of
Canadians, not accusations, not smear and not false and malicious
innuendoes with respect to the Prime Minister.
Miss Deborah Grey (Edmonton North, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, it is funny; the weaker the point, the louder they yell.
We have some pretty basic questions about the evasion and
deception that is going on.
Yesterday, Howard Wilson sat through an entire committee hearing
on this subject, dodging questions like a well trained seal. It
was only at the very end of that meeting that he quietly slipped
the committee chairman a copy of the lawyer's letter.
I would like to ask the Prime Minister or the industry minister
who told Wilson what to say and when to say it.
1435
Hon. Brian Tobin (Minister of Industry, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, nobody told the ethics counsellor what to say or when to
say it. It is tragic that members opposite use the immunity of
the House. Some say things inside the House but have no courage
outside the House. Others attack civil servants, who are
distinguished and doing their jobs, by abusing the immunity of
the House.
This is a distinguished public servant acting in an honourable
fashion, more honourable than the member who said “I will never
take a pension” and then soaked it up at the first opportunity.
Miss Deborah Grey (Edmonton North, Canadian Alliance):
Mr. Speaker, it is funny that the industry minister tried to slip
that very letter in last night by tabling it under documents,
when in fact it was a ministerial statement.
Mr. Wilson stonewalled questions from the opposition yesterday,
but he answered Liberal softballs like a well rehearsed actor.
Then he slipped the letter to the committee chairman after that
entire section on the golf course was finished and they were on
to another topic.
When exactly did the Minister of Industry receive that letter,
and why was it released only after Wilson was out of the hot
seat?
Hon. Brian Tobin (Minister of Industry, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, first, that presumes that getting questions from the
Leader of the Opposition would put someone in the hot seat. Of
course that is a presumption that no one should ever make in this
place. Legal—
Miss Deborah Grey: When did you get that letter?
Hon. Brian Tobin: I am going to tell you exactly if you
will listen. Legal consent was given—
The Speaker: Order, please. The minister of course will
want to direct his remarks to the Chair. It does help maintain a
bit of order in the House, although there is some difficulty in
that regard today. The hon. Minister of Industry has the floor.
Hon. Brian Tobin: Mr. Speaker, through you, I would like
to advise the House, because in fact I checked in anticipation of
this question, that legal consent was given yesterday at 4.30
p.m. at the request of the ethics counsellor. The letter was
faxed to his office, and he tabled it at 5.10 p.m. before the
industry committee.
* * *
[Translation]
SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS
Mr. Pierre Paquette (Joliette, BQ): Mr. Speaker, distrust of
globalization is growing. It is growing because just about
everyone is being excluded from the discussions on the free
trade area of the Americas with the exception, it appears, of
the rich and famous.
Does the Minister for International Trade realize that, by
giving such broad and privileged access to the huge
multinationals by having them buy sponsorships, he is broadening
this distrust of globalization and the current negotiations?
Hon. Pierre Pettigrew (Minister for International Trade, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to see that the members for
Lac-Saint-Jean and Joliette have settled their differences and
that the member for Joliette has given in to pressure by the
member for Lac-Saint-Jean and taken a more negative approach to
free trade and the phenomenon of globalization, which surprises
me on the part of the Bloc.
Now, I can assure the House of one thing. The consultations on
the summit of the Americas the consultations we are holding on
the free trade area of the Americas and the receptions
sponsored by the business community will include representatives
of civil society from unions, non governmental organizations and
people from the—
The Speaker: The hon. member for Joliette.
Mr. Pierre Paquette (Joliette, BQ): Mr. Speaker, not many
besides the Minister for International Trade really believe that
consultations are being held in Canada and Quebec on the free
trade area of the Americas.
To get this government to listen, it costs between $75,000 and
$1.5 million.
Does the Prime Minister not find it insulting that the big
companies that pay, that have access to the government through
the businessmen's forum, can have access to the summit of the
Americas, whereas the premier of Quebec is excluded and cannot
make himself heard?
Hon. Pierre Pettigrew (Minister for International Trade, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, on March 27 we will hold an exploratory debate in
this parliament on the free trade area of the Americas and on
the Quebec summit.
Last week, I appeared with my colleague the Minister of Foreign
Affairs before the standing committee, where the member for
Joliette was himself present and where we discussed all of these
matters.
To say we are listening only to the business people is
irresponsible. We will also meet people from the unions, NGOs
and, of course, we are consulting all of Canadian society for
the benefit of these—
The Speaker: The hon. member for South Surrey—White Rock—Langley.
* * *
1440
[English]
ETHICS COUNSELLOR
Ms. Val Meredith (South Surrey—White Rock—Langley, Canadian
Alliance): Mr. Speaker, yesterday the ethics counsellor
received clearance, as he put it, to release the letter from the
lawyer, coincidentally right at the end of the meeting yesterday.
However he had the letter in hand during the meeting. He even
had time to have it translated and have copies made. How
convenient that the ethics counsellor was instructed to release
the letter at the end of the meeting. Was the tabling of the
letter orchestrated by the Prime Minister or by the Minister of
Industry?
Hon. Brian Tobin (Minister of Industry, Lib.): No, Mr.
Speaker, there was no orchestration whatsoever, but if I had my
druthers the letter would have been available first thing at that
meeting.
The blunt reality is that it takes the legal consent of the
partners involved and a law firm on behalf of that group to
release that letter. That consent was received, because I
checked this morning, at 4.30 p.m.
In response to an early request from the ethics counsellor, the
letter was faxed to his office, sent across to him obviously at
the committee and was tabled at the committee. There is no
mystery here. It is all very straightforward.
Ms. Val Meredith (South Surrey—White Rock—Langley,
Canadian Alliance): Mr. Speaker, I would like to know why
there were cheap theatrics last night when the minister tried to
interrupt and disrupt the voting for this letter.
I would like to know how it was possible for this letter to be
translated and for copies to be made if it was received in the
timeframe the minister gave us.
Hon. Brian Tobin (Minister of Industry, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, I was making the information available to the whole
House at the earliest opportunity. I resent the statement that
it was cheap theatrics. I thought the theatrics were fine. If
it were cheap theatrics I would have been wearing a wetsuit, and
I was not.
Some hon. members: Hear, hear.
The Speaker: Order, please. We are losing a lot of time
today in question period.
* * *
[Translation]
FREE TRADE AREA OF THE AMERICAS
Ms. Francine Lalonde (Mercier, BQ): Mr. Speaker, we are still
unable to find out what is on the FTAA negotiating table, and a
number of concerns are being expressed.
In committee yesterday, I asked one of our witnesses, Canada's
former chief negotiator for the MAI, if he thought that day care
for $5, the private not for profit network funded largely by the
government, could be wiped out by the FTAA. His response was
“Yes, absolutely”.
Will the minister tell us whether the proposed agreement under
services excludes or protects the social economy, particularly in
the area of—
The Speaker: The Minister for International Trade.
Hon. Pierre Pettigrew (Minister for International Trade, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, Canada has always protected in the past, is
protecting right now and will protect in the future, as long as
our government is at the helm, the room to manoeuvre of the
Government of Canada and of the provinces when it comes to
health and public education, as well as social services.
Ms. Francine Lalonde (Mercier, BQ): Mr. Speaker, this answer is
worrying because in the Quebec model there are a number of
areas in which the government has formed partnerships with the
private sector and is providing it with subsidies.
Mr. Dymond's answer is extremely worrying as well. Does the
minister realize that the only way of reassuring us as to the
fate in store for public services, whether delivered by the
government or by the private sector, is to give us access to the
negotiating texts, documents he is still keeping from us?
Hon. Pierre Pettigrew (Minister for International Trade, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, the Government of Canada's position is very clear,
and I have lost track of the number of times I have repeated it
in the House. We would like to make these texts public but they
are not exclusively ours. They are not the property of Canada
alone. They are consolidations of positions which belong to the
whole hemisphere.
Unlike the Bloc Quebecois, Canada is assuming its
responsibilities. We are going to respect our partners. The
Bloc Quebecois may very well say “We will not respect the rest
of the hemisphere, and we are going to do as we please and
publish texts which you do not wish us to publish”. Our
government will be responsible and will treat our partners in
the rest of the hemisphere with respect.
* * *
[English]
THE ECONOMY
Mr. Jason Kenney (Calgary Southeast, Canadian Alliance):
Mr. Speaker, the Canadian dollar has dropped by half a cent again
today and inflation has moved up to the top of the band allowed
by the Bank of Canada.
This means the bank's ability to match yesterday's U.S. interest
rate cuts is very limited.
1445
Economists are saying that all the burden is being placed on the
shoulders of the governor of the bank to shore up our dollar and
our economy. When will the finance minister finally begin to do
his part by bringing in a spring budget with fiscal stimulus,
that is a long term plan to pay down our debt and make our
economy more competitive?
Hon. Paul Martin (Minister of Finance, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, we have said that we will bring in an economic update in
the spring. Overwhelmingly the vast majority of economic opinion
in the country says that is what is required.
The hon. member ought to know, and I will say it again for the
nth time, that Canada has brought in the greatest amount of
fiscal stimulus of any industrial country.
Mr. Jason Kenney (Calgary Southeast, Canadian Alliance):
Mr. Speaker, the minister can repeat that fantasy as often as he
likes, but the reality is that we continue to have the highest
income taxes in the G-7; the highest corporate income taxes in
the OECD, says the OECD; and the second highest level of debt in
the OECD, says the OECD. After the Bush tax cuts go through we
will be losing, not gaining, ground with the Americans in terms
of competitiveness.
With the 63 cent dollar today and with inflation creeping up,
how could the finance minister continue to keep his head in the
sand? Why does he not bring in a real budget with real fiscal
stimulus that saves our dollar and our economy?
Hon. Paul Martin (Minister of Finance, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, why does the finance critic for the Alliance not simply
wake up and take a look at the facts? He is wrong on every
instance. Our tax burden is not the highest. Our corporate
taxes are lower. Our capital gains taxes are lower.
We have the largest debt reduction of any industrial country. We
have created more jobs over the last four years than any
industrial country.
The fact is that Canada in those areas is doing very well. Yes,
there is global volatility and yes, we are concerned, but Canada
is better prepared to weather that storm than any other
industrial country.
* * *
MULTICULTURALISM
Mr. Larry Bagnell (Yukon, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, every year
for the last 40 years we have been celebrating March 21. We take
the cultural mosaic in Canada for granted. Could the Secretary
of State for Multiculturalism elaborate for the House why it is
as important as ever to continue to celebrate March 21,
international day for the elimination of racism?
Hon. Hedy Fry (Secretary of State (Multiculturalism)(Status
of Women), Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for
that question. March 21 remembers the Sharpeville massacre in
South Africa in 1960 when innocent people were killed protesting
apartheid.
We only have to look around the world today at Kosovo, at
Macedonia and at Northern Ireland to know that people are still
discriminated against in the world because of their race, their
religion and their culture. We do not have to go too far.
We could just go to Prince George, British Columbia, where
crosses are being burned on lawns as we speak. It is very
important we recognize that race, religion and culture in this
country are part of our strengths and that we must keep every day
to ensure that we will—
The Speaker: The hon. member for Dartmouth.
* * *
PUBLISHING INDUSTRY
Ms. Wendy Lill (Dartmouth, NDP): Mr. Speaker, my question
is for the Minister of Industry. Monopoly booksellers have
gained a stranglehold on the book industry in Canada. Yesterday
we learned that more publishers were in need of emergency
bailouts, were cutting titles, dumping new authors and nervously
awaiting what the proposed takeover of Chapters by Indigo will
mean to their fragile existence.
Will the government consider instituting a new set of rigorous
cultural criteria within the Competition Act to review cultural
industry mergers such as this one, criteria that will provide
strong public safeguards for our writers, publishers and
booksellers?
Hon. Brian Tobin (Minister of Industry, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, the Government of Canada is concerned that we maintain
vibrant and dynamic cultural industries within the country, and
in particular an environment that nurtures the tremendous work of
Canadian authors and writers across the country.
The specific question to which the hon. member refers is now
before the Competition Bureau, and as is appropriate the bureau
is doing its work. It would be inappropriate for me at this
juncture to try to foreshadow an outcome prior to the process
being completed.
* * *
1450
PHARMACEUTICALS
Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North Centre, NDP): Mr.
Speaker, the death of Vanessa Young is deeply disturbing, made
even more tragic by the fact that it may have been prevented.
Vanessa died on March 19, 2000, of complications associated with
Prepulsid.
On May 31, Health Canada issued a warning citing 44 reports of
heart problems associated with the drug, including 10 deaths in
Canada. It took Health Canada until August 7, 2000, to stop the
sale of Prepulsid. How could this have happened? How many
needless deaths occurred? Why was Prepulsid not pulled the
minute problems associated with it first came to light?
[Translation]
Mr. Yvon Charbonneau (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of
Health, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, a coroner's inquest has been
launched regarding the death to which the hon. member is
referring. We must wait for the results of that inquest before
dealing with all the details relating to this issue.
I should also point out that a class action suit has been filed
regarding this issue. This is another reason not to make
detailed comments before the House.
However, I will say that many warnings were issued to health
care professionals in 1999 and 2000 regarding this—
The Speaker: The hon. member for Saint John.
* * *
[English]
NATIONAL DEFENCE
Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, PC): Mr. Speaker, last
Thursday I quoted directly from a Federal Court of Appeal
judgment relating to the maritime helicopter program. At that
time the Minister of National Defence stated that what I read was
“not true”. An attempt to table the decision was then blocked
by a government member.
Is the minister now prepared to admit that he was wrong? Will
he table the court decision himself? Will he finally agree with
the court that there could have been political interference?
Hon. Art Eggleton (Minister of National Defence, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member continues to have it all wrong. She
said that the court called this patent politicization within the
Department of National Defence, that the three judges said it.
That is not true at all. Certainly the citation by the people
who took the case to court was to that effect, but the judges did
not find that at all. They dismissed the case.
Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, PC): Mr. Speaker, the
court's decision is clear. Paragraph 16 of the decision is very
clear. The court raised the prospect that “the procurement
procedures suffered from patent politicization within the
Department of National Defence”.
The minister has a duty and an obligation to ask the judge
advocate general to investigate the matter. Will he commit to
doing it today?
Hon. Art Eggleton (Minister of National Defence, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member conveniently leaves out certain
parts. I have the document here too. That is not what it says
at all.
In effect, what these judges did quite clearly was dismiss the
case. They said a case had not been made. There was an
allegation. The case was not made. That is the end of it.
* * *
HEALTH
Mr. Art Hanger (Calgary Northeast, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, British army troops now training at CFB Wainwright and
Suffield came from the same agricultural heartland in the United
Kingdom now ravaged by foot and mouth disease.
These military units tasked with the clean up of dead animals in
the United Kingdom have been exposed to this disease in extreme
ways. Their clothing, equipment, food supplies, and even the
soldiers themselves could very well be contaminated.
What extraordinary measures has the minister taken to protect
Canada's livestock from contamination?
Hon. Art Eggleton (Minister of National Defence, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, the Canadian forces and the Department of National
Defence have been working very closely and very co-operatively
with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to make sure everything
is done to prevent this disease from coming into the country.
Everything we could possibly do is being done.
Upon disembarkation from any aircraft passengers must be clean
and disinfected including their footwear. A procedure is carried
out. There is a complete procedure involved to make sure that we
do everything possible to prevent that disease from coming into
the country.
Mr. Art Hanger (Calgary Northeast, Canadian Alliance):
Mr. Speaker, this disease is actually destroying an agricultural
industry in the United Kingdom. There is a threat to any country
when products, equipment or personnel leave England that could
very well spread the disease quickly.
The minister's office was contacted on March 16 and seemed to
know very little about what was happening to this end. There is
a potential arrival of troops coming from England in the next few
weeks, or they may be on their way now. I am asking the minister
what steps—
The Speaker: The hon. Minister of National Defence.
1455
Hon. Art Eggleton (Minister of National Defence, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, I do not know what the hon. member does not
understand about it. I have made it very clear that there is a
procedure in place. We are ensuring disinfection is carried out
thoroughly to make sure we do everything possible to prevent the
disease from coming into the country.
If we have to prevent aircraft or people from coming here to
make sure of that, we will do that as well. We are making sure
that there is a thorough disinfection of any aircraft coming from
the U.K. or anywhere else.
* * *
[Translation]
FREE TRADE AREA OF THE AMERICAS
Mr. Bernard Bigras (Rosemont—Petite-Patrie, BQ): Mr. Speaker, it
was the government's intention to negotiate related agreements
on the environment with its partners in the free trade area of
the Americas.
However, Latin American countries are opposed to linking trade
and the environment, while the United States supports the idea.
As for Canada, it remains silent.
If the environment is a government priority, could the minister
inform us of Canada's position and tell us what he intends to do
regarding the environment in the FTAA negotiations?
Hon. Pierre Pettigrew (Minister for International Trade, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is well aware that several
countries from the southern hemisphere feel that including the
environment in a free trade agreement is an indirect way of
engaging in protectionism, of keeping southern countries behind
and of imposing on them a way of doing things that slows down
their economic development.
We feel that, through trade, we must allow these countries to
improve their access to the global economy, thus strengthening
their own economic development. However, we must also make
progress regarding the environment as well as labour standards.
We want.
The Speaker: The hon. member for Berthier—Montcalm.
* * *
DRUG LEGALIZATION
Mr. Michel Bellehumeur (Berthier—Montcalm, BQ): Mr. Speaker, it
is believed that at the Summit of the Americas Uruguay may
raise the issue of drug legalization. In fact, Mexico's
president, Vicente Fox, feels that legalization is the only way
to lead an effective international war against organized crime,
as it relates to the trade of illicit drugs.
Could the Minister of Justice tell us whether Canada intends to
support the approach advocated by the Mexican president?
[English]
Hon. Anne McLellan (Minister of Justice and Attorney General
of Canada, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I can inform the House that at
this time the government has no plans to legalize the possession
of marijuana. The hon. member knows that the whole issue around
drug enforcement is a complex one. It is a health issue. It is
a legal issue. It is an international law issue. It is a law
enforcement issue.
I wish there were simple and easy answers to this question.
Canada's approach again reflects the balance that is required. It
is an integrated approach, working both internationally and
domestically, treating it not only as an issue of law enforcement
but as an issue of health treatment.
* * *
CANADIAN FORCES
Mr. Leon Benoit (Lakeland, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, when the Liberals were elected in 1993 the Canadian
forces consisted of 90,000 members. An internal document states
that the military now faces a significant shortfall below the
government commitment of 60,000 and still dropping.
Will the minister tell the House today, first, how many members
there are in the Canadian forces on the active list? Second,
what will Canada's military needs be in terms of personnel over
the next five years?
Hon. Art Eggleton (Minister of National Defence, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, the defence white paper of 1994 calls for 60,000
regular force troops, plus a number of other civilians and a
number of others in the reserve force. We intend to continue to
work toward that level and try to maintain that level.
We have a shortage now because of attrition. We are in fact
going on a recruitment campaign to make up those numbers.
Mr. Leon Benoit (Lakeland, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, the minister's answer conflicts with a recent study
which said that in fact Canada's military is now 4,000 short, but
it will be a startling 17,000 members short by the end of 2002 if
the current trend continues.
The minister will go down in history as the man responsible for
killing Canada's military through funding cuts, through delayed
equipment replacement, and now through a critical shortage of
personnel. Is the reason for this critical loss in personnel the
weakness of the minister, or is it a deliberate plan on the part
of the government to destroy Canada's military?
Hon. Art Eggleton (Minister of National Defence, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has his numbers all wrong, as he
usually does. He is extrapolating very extreme cases where there
is no intention of the government to see that happen at all.
The government has made a very clear commitment that we want to
make sure we keep the Canadian forces in a position where they
are able to contribute to international peace and security and to
carry out the will of the government and the people of this
country in their desire to create peace and security in the
world. We will continue to do that. We will continue to follow
the white paper defence policy of parliament.
* * *
1500
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Mr. Gurbax Malhi (Bramalea—Gore—Malton—Springdale,
Lib.): Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of Foreign Affairs
announced that Canada had decided to restore formal relations
with India.
Why has the Government of Canada changed its policy and
announced a re-engagement with India? What does the announcement
mean for Canada-India relations?
Hon. Rey Pagtakhan (Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific),
Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his
question. Canada's re-engagement with India recognizes the fact
that a better climate now exists which allows us to pursue an
effective dialogue for all aspects of our relationship.
Canada is committed to pursuing the broadest political, cultural
and economic relationship with India. We will continue to call
upon India to renounce its nuclear weapons program.
Moreover, re-engagement through full ministerial visits and full
restoration of CIDA programming, as well as support for cultural
exchanges, will enrich our political relationship.
* * *
AGRICULTURE
Mr. Werner Schmidt (Kelowna, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, my question is for the minister of agriculture. For
three consecutive years B.C. fruit growers have suffered setbacks
on the basis of hail, heat stress and the collapse of their
export market in the last year. NISA helps a few. AIDA does not
help them at all.
The minister of agriculture knows that B.C. fruit growers are in
an emergency situation which requires special action. What is
the minister prepared to do to deal with the emergency situation?
Hon. Lyle Vanclief (Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food,
Lib.): Mr. Speaker, with the support of crop insurance, NISA
and the Canadian farm income program last week, the province of
British Columbia will get its portion of the $500 million.
It will add its 40% to that in order to assist producers
according to the way the provincial government wishes to direct
those funds. That will certainly be there to help the producers
to which the hon. member refers.
* * *
PRESENCE IN GALLERY
The Speaker: I draw the attention of hon. members to
the presence in the gallery of His Excellency Tomas Duenas,
Minister of Foreign Trade for Costa Rica.
Some hon. members: Hear, hear.
* * *
1505
POINTS OF ORDER
STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS
Mr. Peter Goldring (Edmonton Centre-East, Canadian
Alliance): Mr. Speaker, I believe my moment of atonement has
arrived. I am referring to my recent standing order
transgression for which I apologize not only to you, Mr. Speaker,
but also to the House and to the nation whose interests I serve.
While certainly I meant no disrespect in my action, all
infractions of order do have consequences. In the House, even
minor infractions are potentially serious in their longer term
effects.
Parliament's rules are to be respected because they are written
by all, for all.
I hereby submit my person to the penance of the Chair, and ask
for leniency and appeal for clemency under the circumstances. I
certainly do not stand here to challenge, nor do I seek changes
to, the rules. My hope is to be forgiven by the Chair, before
the witnesses in the House, and in front of my colleagues. The
essence of the House is honour. I would never intentionally
dishonour the House or its procedures.
The Speaker: Of course the Chair is anxious to forgive
any transgressions that hon. members make, but I want to draw to
the attention of all hon. members the provision in our rules that
deals with the recognition of visitors in the gallery.
On page 239 of Marleau and Montpetit, which I know almost
everyone keeps under his or her pillow, it states:
Only from the Speaker's gallery can distinguished visitors (such
as heads of state, heads of government and parliamentary
delegations invited to Canada) be recognized and introduced to
the House by the Speaker.
On page 278 of the same work, it states:
During a sitting, the Speaker may draw the attention of the House
to the presence of distinguished visitors seated in the gallery
of the House. Generally, this takes place immediately following
Question Period, though the Speaker has also recognized visitors
prior to Question Period and even during Question Period.
I will not read all that at length but I do refer hon. members
to the footnote on page 278, footnote 166, which states:
Other Members who have attempted to direct the attention of the
House to the presence of visitors have been ruled out of order.
There are various examples cited but I will not bore the House
with the dates. It also states:
It has been departed from on occasion. The hon. member for
Edmonton Center-East did depart from the practice on one occasion. I
indicated that he had incurred the displeasure of the Chair. He
is now back in the pleasure of the Chair and I am sure the whole
House is grateful for his withdrawal.
MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland—Colchester, PC): Mr. Speaker,
yesterday the Minister of Foreign Affairs announced in London,
England a fundamental change in foreign policy for Canada. In
question period today the parliamentary secretary confirmed it to
members of the House of Commons.
No advance notice was given to members of parliament and no
notification was given to the foreign affairs committee. It
continues to be the ongoing practice to notify the media before
notifying members of parliament.
I take objection to this and, if you, Mr. Speaker, find a bona
fide breach of privilege, I am prepared to move the appropriate
motion to discontinue this practice.
The Speaker: I must say to the hon. member that
ministers make speeches here, there and everywhere, and so do
hon. members. Some of us travel and make speeches in some places
and there is always the risk that there might be an announcement
in one of our speeches about something or other that is not made
in the House first.
I do not want the point of order I dealt with the other day to
be misconstrued. It was quite specific and dealt with a press
conference held before the introduction of a bill that was to be
tabled in the House. However statements by ministers can be made
outside the House, and have been made outside the House, and have
not incurred the displeasure of the Chair.
I know the hon. member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough is an
expert on the subject. He has raised these kind of points
frequently in the House. Perhaps he and the member for
Cumberland—Colchester can consult on the point because I think
the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough is thoroughly
familiar with the views of the Chair on the issue. I have ruled
on several of his points of order already and I do not think
there is a question of privilege or a point of order in the issue
raised today.
1510
ORAL QUESTION PERIOD
Mr. Richard Harris (Prince George—Bulkley Valley, Canadian
Alliance): Mr. Speaker, during question period the Secretary
of State for Multiculturalism and the Status of Women, a person
well-known for her intolerance of anyone who does not agree with
her point of view, made a vicious comment by saying that if
people want to know about racism and hatred they should go to
British Columbia.
She further went on to say they are burning crosses in Prince
George as we speak.
Prince George is where I have lived for more than 40 years. My
colleague, the hon. member for Prince George—Peace River,
represents the good, decent, honest people of that city. It is
revolting that the minister would cast such vicious and
mean-spirited aspersions on the people of Prince George, British
Columbia.
I ask that the minister be called on to withdraw the statement
and to apologize to the House, to the people of Prince George
and, indeed, to all Canadians for such a vicious comment.
Hon. Don Boudria (Leader of the Government in the House of
Commons, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the secretary of state of course
has spoken extensively on issues of racism.
Some hon. members: Yes, she has.
Hon. Don Boudria: Yes, she has probably been a victim of
intolerance. She has spoken about the issue at length.
I will endeavour to reach her later this afternoon. As we
speak, she is making an announcement about racism before a group
of Canadians of various ethnic origins. As soon as that is
completed, I will attempt to have her return to the House to
respond to what the hon. member has raised.
The Speaker: It is clear the minister is not here to
answer the question raised by the hon. member. The Chair will
review the blues. The government House leader has given an
undertaking in respect to the minister's presence. We will leave
the issue at that. We cannot do anything else at this point. We
will wait to hear later.
Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, PC): Mr. Speaker, once
again today I referred to the Federal Court of Appeal's decision
with regard to the replacement of the EH-101, and the minister
referred to it as well.
Therefore I would ask for the right to table the document to
show that the quotes I gave in the House during question period
were accurate and correct.
The Speaker: Is there unanimous consent to allow the hon.
member to table the document?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
Some hon. members: No.
* * *
PRIVILEGE
ETHICS COUNSELLOR
Mr. Chuck Strahl (Fraser Valley, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, my question of privilege is in regard to another case
where the media was given preferential treatment of information
intended for parliamentarians.
I would also argue that the timing of the release of the
information resulted in impeding the work of members of
parliament.
My question of privilege charges the ethics counsellor with
contempt of parliament for releasing information in a way that
impeded members of the industry committee and of the House. The
Minister of Industry tabled the same information in the House
after the media had an opportunity to examine it. This contempt
occurred yesterday.
While I recognize that the Speaker is reluctant to intervene in
a committee matter, the circumstances in this case are
extraordinary and have a direct link to the proceedings of the
House.
Joseph Maingot's Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, on
page 70, defines a proceeding in parliament:
Since two of Parliament's constituent elements, the House of
Commons and the Senate, were established for the enactment of
laws, those events necessarily incidental to the enactment of
laws are part of the “proceedings in Parliament”. However,
Parliament has also always been a forum to receive petitions, and
the Crown's satisfying the grievances of members before granting
supply eventually led to straightforward requests for
information. Therefore, the events necessarily incidental to
petitions, questions, and notices of motions in Parliament in the
seventeenth century and today are all events which are part of
“proceedings in Parliament”.
Mr. Maingot went on to say:
Privilege of Parliament is founded on necessity, and is those
rights that are “absolutely necessary for the due execution of
its powers.” Necessity then should be a basis for any claim
that an event was part of a “proceeding in Parliament,” i.e.,
what is claimed to be part of a “proceeding in Parliament” and
thus protected should be necessarily incidental to a “proceeding
in Parliament.”
1515
On page 72 of a 1939 report from the Select Committee on the
Official Secrets Act, it states:
The House has been seeking for two years, through the daily
question period, evidence regarding the Prime Minister's stake in
161341 Canada Inc. The Minister of Industry promised members of
the House that the information was coming. The appearance of the
ethics counsellor at the Standing Committee on Industry yesterday
was used as a follow up to the questions in the House and to the
promise given by the industry minister.
The Leader of the Opposition asked the ethics counsellor:
Will the Corporations Directorate be communicating to the
minister, and to you, the name of any fourth shareholder, whether
it's Jonas Prince, whether it's the Prime Minister himself,
whether it's some other person? Will they actually be
communicating that to you so that the House can determine if the
Prime Minister had a conflict of interest or not?
To which the ethics counsellor replied:
I expect that the Corporations Directorate will be responding to
my letter. I'm not sure exactly when that will take place. But
what my intention is, as I indicated to you in my interim reply,
once I have that in hand, I will be responding directly to you
and I am quite confident that will remove any lingering
uncertainties.
Mr. Speaker, in the dying minutes of that committee meeting,
after the ethics counsellor was finished as a witness—and you
will find this in the last line of the minutes of the committee
meeting—he tabled with the chairman the letter he claimed he
would give to the Leader of the Opposition directly when he had
it in hand. The ethics counsellor then marched over to the
media, released the letter to the media and conducted interviews
regarding the same letter.
That information should have been tabled as soon as he had it
and it should have been part of the proceedings of that meeting.
He had promised the Leader of the Opposition earlier that the
moment he had it he would give it to the Leader of the Opposition
but he withheld that information. It was contemptuous when he
had that, not to have delivered what was asked of him. It was
useless for the committee to release it at the very end when the
questioning was over. It was as if he attempted to meet the
criteria on some purely technical basis on the notion that the
letter should have been tabled with members before the media.
However I would argue that what the ethics counsellor did was
essentially give the media the first opportunity to scrutinize
the letter and to do an interview with him. This was an indirect
act that impeded the committee. The entire time the questioning
was going on he withheld that critical information about what was
in the letter which dealt with the question that the Leader of
the Opposition had put to him.
Erskine May describes contempt as:
—any act or omission which obstructs or impedes either House of
Parliament in the performance of its functions, or which
obstructs or impedes any Member or officer of such House in the
discharge of his duty, or which has a tendency, directly or
indirectly, to produce such results may be treated as a contempt
even though there is no precedent of the offence.
When the Minister of Industry tabled the letter in the House
later, he too was guilty of contempt when he promised he would
deliver it the moment he had it.
On March 20, the Speaker ruled that:
With respect to material to be placed before parliament, the
House takes precedence.... To deny to members information
concerning business that is about to come before the House, while
at the same time providing such information to media that will
likely be questioning members about that business, is a situation
that the Chair cannot condone...I have concluded that this
constitutes a prima facie contempt of the House.
I would argue that an act that has the same results
as what you pointed out in your ruling is also contempt. This is
what the authorities on parliamentary procedure would have us
believe.
Mr. Speaker, I ask that you examine the committee minutes.
The committee was divided into two parts: a question and comment
period about the ethics counsellor and his role as the ethics
counsellor, and a meeting concerning the Lobbyists Registration
Act.
Mr. Speaker, as you go through those minutes you will find there
is nothing about the letter that he tabled at the end of the
meeting. There are no comments and no questions because we did
not know the letter existed, even though he obviously had it in
the pocket of his jacket.
Mr. Speaker, if you read the papers this morning you will see
much discussion on the details of that letter but once again the
media came before parliamentarians.
1520
The House did not see the letter until much later that same day.
The ethics counsellor may not report to directly to parliament
but he has now put himself in a situation where parliament must
deal with him directly.
The ethics counsellor must be held accountable for his actions.
He knew full well that he had the letter in his pocket. He
denied that information to the Leader of the Opposition when he
was asked directly when that information would be available. He
denied he had it. He said he would make it available as soon as
it was in his possession. It was in the pocket of his jacket the
entire time. He denied information to members of parliament that
was germane to the subject matter and critical for us to do our
job. He is in contempt of parliament.
I would ask, Mr. Speaker, that you find a prima facie case
against him and I am prepared to move the appropriate motion.
Ms. Susan Whelan (Essex, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, as chair of
the Standing Committee on Industry I wish to clarify exactly what
took place at committee yesterday afternoon.
The meeting continued on after the first round of questions.
During the second round there were questions about the Lobbyist
Registration Act. During that time period, at approximately 5.12
p.m., Mr. Wilson notified me that he had just received a letter
in both English and French. I thought, mistakenly, and the blues
will show, that it was from Industry Canada. I suggested that
Mr. Wilson should speak to it in between the questioning of
witnesses by the member for Burlington and the member for
Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough.
During that time period Mr. Wilson explained that he did not
want to be excessively dramatic. He had just been given
clearance to give the committee a letter. It was an original in
French, with translations from Pierre Paquette, the lawyer that
represents the golf club, who has written to Industry Canada. He
apologized that it was not available earlier but there it was. He
hoped that the representatives would get it to their party
leaders.
The committee then continued for approximately 15 minutes during
which time no one raised the question of the letter. If we go
back, the earlier comment was with regard to the corporations
directorate. This is a different letter from the lawyer for the
corporation.
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker,
I was not at the committee meeting. I am not sure whether the
official opposition House leader was either, but I just wanted to
say on the matter that it does seem to me a bit odd that this
letter should have been released at the time that it was to the
committee.
I have heard conflicting reports as to whether or not the ethics
counsellor may or may not have had the letter on his person all
the time that he was there, or whether he received it some time
later in the meeting, as the chairman of the committee contends
and as I heard from someone else.
It does not really matter whether or not he actually had it on
him when he was answering the Leader of the Opposition or whether
he received it later, although if he had it on him it sort of
compounds the problem.
Given the preoccupation of the House with this issue, and it is
not always a preoccupation that those of us in my party have been
able to share because we have decided to devote our few questions
to other issues, I have listened carefully to what has gone on
between various opposition members and the government on this.
I have to say that this is the first time, given the behaviour
of the ethics counsellor yesterday in the committee with respect
to the release of the letter, I have had an inkling or a feeling
that perhaps the ethics counsellor was more than just a guy
caught in a very difficult situation, trapped by the limits of
his mandate, by the limits of whom he appoints, whom he reports
to, who appointed him, and by the limits of the current conflict
of interest guidelines the Prime Minister and others operate
within.
Until yesterday it never occurred to me that the ethics
counsellor might actually be acting in a way that was favourable
to one side or the other of the argument. However, I have to say
I think the ethics counsellor owes the House an explanation at
this point. I am still not prepared to say that he was taking
sides, but it sure looks like it when he released that letter at
the point in time in the life of that committee meeting when he
did.
1525
I would think that an explanation should be forthcoming from the
ethics counsellor and, if there is not an appropriate
explanation, it may well be that he was acting in contempt of the
House.
Mr. Peter MacKay (Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, PC):
Mr. Speaker, I have listened with great interest to the point
that has been raised by the hon. House leader for the official
opposition. I have also listened to the input of other members.
I was present at the committee. As the chair of the committee
has indicated, it was just before I was to commence my line of
questioning that I noticed Mr. Wilson conferring with someone I
presumed to be a staff person, and then pre-empting the committee
by the statement. I can verify that it was along the lines, as
the chair of the committee said, that he did not mean to be
dramatic or overly dramatic, and then he proceeded to divulge the
contents or the gist of the letter.
It is important to note that as indicated previously there were
two distinct points in time in which members of the committee
were permitted to ask questions on a certain subject matter,
namely the Grand-Mère file. That was limited by the chair of the
committee and it was directly related to the
Shawinigan-Grand-Mère file to which this letter pertained.
Most of the main questioners on the particular subject matter
had left by the time the letter was divulged. If they were
present or if members of the committee generally wanted to
question the witness at that time about the letter, I strongly
suggest that we would not have been permitted to in any event,
given the parameters that were placed on the committee by the
chair. The timing is highly suspect.
The Speaker: I have heard a fair bit on this point.
What is apparent at this point, from everything that I have
heard, is that this is a matter relating to the proceedings in
this committee.
There is no question that there were proceedings ongoing in this
committee. No one has denied that the committee meeting was
taking place. It now appears that everyone says the letter was
produced during that meeting. Whether or not it was discussed,
whether it was made public, whether it was tabled, or whether
there was some allegation of wrongdoing, is a matter surely for
the industry committee to decide.
I must say that at the conclusion of the remarks of the hon.
House leader for the official opposition I thought it was an
excellent presentation to make before the committee chair. The
matter has to be dealt with, with great respect to hon. members,
in the committee and not here in the House.
I have not heard a thing that suggests there has been a breach
of the privileges of the House itself. There may have been
something go wrong in the committee, but until the committee
reports to the House and has dealt with the issue, and it has not
met since, as I understand it, we are at a bit of an impasse
here.
Could I suggest we leave the issue at this point and have the
industry committee deal with it, because that is where the matter
ought to be raised, at least in a preliminary way. It appears to
me that it has not been raised there.
Until there has been some decision by the committee, and it may
wish to hear more testimony on the issue, it is premature for me
to interfere in any way. Indeed, as hon. members know, it is very
unusual for the Chair to involve itself in committee proceedings
anyway. I believe that this is a matter that should be dealt
with there and I respectfully request hon. members to raise the
issue in the industry committee at this point.
ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS
[Translation]
GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO PETITIONS
Mr. Paul Szabo (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Public
Works and Government Services, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, pursuant to
Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both
official languages, the government's response to three
petitions.
* * *
[English]
INCOME TAX AMENDMENTS ACT, 2000
Hon. Jim Peterson (for the Minister of Finance) moved for
leave to introduce Bill C-22, an act to amend the Income Tax Act,
the Income Tax Application Rules, certain acts related to the
Income Tax Act, the Canada Pension Plan, the Customs Act, the
Excise Tax Act, the Modernization of Benefits and Obligations Act
and another act related to the Excise Tax Act.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and
printed)
* * *
1530
INDIAN ACT
Mr. Leon Benoit (Lakeland, Canadian Alliance) moved for
leave to introduce Bill C-307, an act to amend the Indian Act
(election of chiefs and councils).
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am indeed delighted to introduce this
bill which would ensure that Elections Canada monitors elections
of chiefs and councils on reserves right across the country. Many
people who live on reserves have expressed to me a concern about
the elections of chiefs and councils on their reserves. All the
bill would do is ensure that elections would be fair and votes
would be respected, and it would do so in a logical way by having
Elections Canada monitor the elections.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and
printed)
* * *
PETITIONS
CANADA POST
Mr. Janko Peric (Cambridge, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, pursuant
to Standing Order 36 I have the privilege to present to the House
a petition with some 30 signatures from concerned citizens. The
petition is to draw to the attention of parliament the fact that
rural route mail couriers have not been allowed to bargain
collectively to improve their wages and working conditions.
Since workers who deliver mail in cities have collective
bargaining rights, the petitioners request that parliament repeal
section 13(5) of the Canada Post Corporation Act to permit rural
mail couriers to bargain collectively, like urban mail workers.
POISON CONTROL
Mr. Maurice Vellacott (Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, Canadian
Alliance): Mr. Speaker, I have in hand a petition with
several hundred names of individuals from across Saskatchewan.
Farmers across the province of Saskatchewan want the federal
government to give them the necessary tools to fight a severe
infestation of gophers. The petition is calling on the federal
government to amend regulations to permit the sale of
concentrated liquid strychnine to registered farmers until an
effective alternative can be found.
Gophers are destroying hundreds of acres of pasture and grain
land every year and, to a great extent, farmers are powerless to
stop them. Crop and hay land damage caused by this infestation
of gophers is very costly to the farmer in lost productivity,
equipment repairs and injury to livestock.
It is the hope of these petitioners that the petition will
convince the federal government to relax the restrictions on
strychnine poison so that farmers can get the gopher problem
under control.
We appreciate the opportunity to bring this grave and serious
problem to the attention of the House.
* * *
STARRED QUESTIONS
Mr. Derek Lee (Parlementary Secretary to Leaderr of the
Government in the House of Commons, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, would
you be so kind as to call Starred Question No. 9. I ask that the
question and answer be printed in Hansard as if read.
The Speaker: Is it agreed that the question and answer be
printed as read?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
.[Text]
*Question No. 9—Mr. Norman Doyle:
Regarding Fort Townshend in St. John's, Newfoundland: (a) has
the Government of Canada made any representations to the
government of Newfoundland regarding the preservation of the
archeological integrity of Fort Townshend; and (b) does the
Government of Canada support the destruction of the Fort
Townshend ruins?
Mr. Derek Lee: (a) Parks Canada
officials have visited the
Fort Townshend site and met with provincial officials. The
government of Newfoundland and Labrador has been encouraged to
consider the importance of the archaeological remains at Fort
shend National Historic Site of Canada in the planning and
construction of the new cultural and heritage facility. These
actions by the federal government are consistent with the Parks
Canada guiding principles and operational policies in its
application to national historic sites not administered by Parks
Canada.
(b) Parks Canada encourages and supports the protection and
presentation of all national historic sites, including those not
administered by the agency. This position was affirmed in the
national historic sites of Canada system plan announced in the
fall of 2000.
[English]
Mr. Speaker, I also ask that the remaining questions be allowed
to stand.
Mr. Greg Thompson (New Brunswick Southwest, PC): Mr.
Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I presume the parliamentary
secretary's response is in relation to the questions I had put on
the order paper last June.
Is it not? That is helpful.
I would like to point out to the House that the parliamentary
secretary has been very helpful to me on a personal basis in
regard to responding to a question put on the order paper last
June, and subsequently put on the order paper when parliament was
recalled, regarding the sale of 40 Huey helicopters. This is
very important to the House, because the issue of those
helicopters falling into the wrong hands in terms of Colombian
terrorists and so on has been raised in the House on a number of
occasions.
We want those questions answered.
1535
Further, last week I was attempting to get answers to these
questions which have been on the order paper too long in my
opinion and I think in the opinion of most members of the House.
Also at that time I put on the order paper questions relating to
the sale of 10 Challenger aircraft owned by the Government of
Canada. These were brokered through an aviation firm called
Lancaster Aviation—
The Speaker: Perhaps the hon. member could come to his
point. I do not think we need to hear all the details of the
questions.
Mr. Greg Thompson: Mr. Speaker, with due respect, if I do
not provide details we will never know, because for some reason
the government simply does not want to answer.
In addition to the question on the 40 Huey helicopters, I also
had questions on the order paper going back to last June and
subsequently re-entered when the new parliament resumed, on the
sale of 10 Challenger aircraft by the Government of Canada
through the same brokerage firm, Lancaster Aviation.
When will we get answers to that set of questions in addition to
the Huey helicopters question? They are important issues. I
think the Canadian people have a right to know.
Mr. Derek Lee: Mr. Speaker, to be technical, I suppose,
the government will treat the two questions the hon. member has
on the order paper as new questions beginning in this parliament.
I have reviewed a draft answer to one question with the hon.
member. I can say that I felt the question deserved a more full
response than was originally drafted. I have asked that the
government do so. The member is aware of that.
The second question is in process. I am sure an answer will be
forthcoming very shortly.
The Speaker: Shall the remaining questions stand?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
* * *
MOTIONS FOR PAPERS
Mr. Derek Lee (Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the
Government in the House of Commons, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I ask
that all Notices of Motions for the Production of Papers be
allowed to stand.
The Speaker: Is that agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
* * *
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS
Hon. Don Boudria (Leader of the Government in the House of
Commons, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
There have been consultations among all parties in the House, and
I believe you would find unanimous consent for the following
motion:
That, on Tuesday, March 27, 2001, no proceedings pursuant to
Standing Order 38 shall take place, but, at 6.30 p.m. on that
day, the House shall proceed to consider a motion “That the
House take note of the Summit of the Americas”, which shall be
disposed of as follows:
1. No Member shall speak for more than twenty minutes, with a
ten minute period for question and comments, provided that two
Members may split a twenty minute period between them;
2. During the debate thereon, the Chair shall not receive any
quorum calls, dilatory motions or requests for unanimous consent
to propose any other motion;
3. When no Member rises to speak, the House shall adjourn to
the next sitting day.
The Speaker: Does the hon. government House leader have
unanimous consent of the House to propose the motion?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Speaker: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the
motion?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
(Motion agreed to)
REPORT STAGE MOTIONS
The Speaker: Before I call orders of the day, I would
like to make a statement on a matter that may be of interest
during the course of the debate that is to take place later this
afternoon.
As all hon. members are aware, recently the House has given
guidance to the Speaker on the selection of report stage motions.
This occurred on February 27, 2001, when the House adopted the
following note to Standing Orders 76 and 76.1:
For greater clarity, the Speaker will not select for debate a
motion or series of motions of a repetitive, frivolous or
vexatious nature or of a nature that would serve merely to
prolong unnecessarily proceedings at the report stage and, in
exercising this power of selection, the Speaker shall be guided
by the practice followed in the House of Commons of the United
Kingdom.
[Translation]
On March 15, in a ruling on a point of order raised by the hon.
member for Richmond—Arthabaska, I undertook to return to the
House with a statement on how this note will be interpreted.
Today, I would like to take a moment to provide the House with
this interpretation.
Before I begin, I want to mention that from time to time when
the House adopts new procedures, Speakers have seen fit to
address the manner in which they will be implemented. Often
this occurs when a certain amount of latitude or discretion is
given to the Chair.
In enforcing new procedures, the Speaker acts as a servant of
the House, not as its master.
1540
Therefore, in order that these new procedures function properly,
I see it as my duty to make a statement on their operation now,
before the House is seized with a bill at report stage.
[English]
In 1968, rules concerning the selection of report stage
amendments were established. At that time, the House first
undertook a thorough revision of its legislative process which
resulted in our modern rules where bills are sent to committee
for detailed examination, followed by an opportunity for
consideration in the House in what is known as report stage. As
House of Commons Procedure and Practice explains on page
663:
In recommending that report stage be revived, the 1968 Special
Committee on Procedure considered that stage to be essential in
order to provide all Members of the House, and not merely members
of the committee, with an opportunity to express their views on
the bills under consideration and to propose amendments, where
appropriate. However, the intent of the Committee was not for
this stage to become a repetition of committee stage. Unlike
committee stage where the bill is considered clause by clause,
there was not to be any debate at report stage unless notices of
amendment were given, and then debate would have to be strictly
relevant to those proposed amendments.
In order to prevent report stage from becoming merely a
repetition of committee stage, the Speaker was given the
authority to select and group motions of amendment for debate.
Over the past 30 years, a large body of practice has grown on how
this important legislative stage is conducted.
Let me briefly review how it works today. When notice of a
motion of amendment is given by a member, the Speaker has a
number of issues to address. First of all, the Speaker must
judge the procedural admissibility of the motion; if the motion
does not meet the time-tested rules of practice, it will not be
deemed admissible and therefore will not be accepted for
publication on the notice paper.
Once a motion passes the basic test of admissibility, the
Speaker must then determine whether the motion can be selected
for debate. For guidance, the House has given the Speaker
certain criteria to apply, for example, motions already defeated
in committee are not normally selected. Once the Speaker has
selected the motions that will be debated, a decision is made on
grouping them for debate with other motions that have a similar
theme or purpose. Finally, the Speaker determines how the
motions should be voted on, for example, whether one vote applies
to several motions, or whether the adoption of one motion
obviates the need to vote on another motion. When all of these
questions—admissibility, selection, grouping, voting
pattern—have been addressed, the Speaker provides the House with
the report stage ruling.
The first two tests which the Speaker applies to motions, those
of admissibility and selection, are the most important in our
discussion today. I would refer the House to Marleau and
Montpetit, pages 649 to 669, for a detailed discussion of our
rules and practice in this regard.
With regard to admissibility, the Speaker must strictly apply a
number of rules of procedure. Does the motion go beyond the
scope of the bill? Is it relevant to the bill? Or is the motion
incomplete? Either the motion is inadmissible and is returned to
the member, or it is admissible and proceeds to the next test,
that is, the test of selection.
[Translation]
With regard to selection, the Speaker in 1968 was given a
greater amount of flexibility and discretion. In the last 30
years, as practice evolved, successive Speakers were encouraged
to exercise more rigour in the selection of motions in
amendment.
[English]
In 1985, the third report of the all party Special Committee on
Reform of the House of Commons, the McGrath committee, recommended
that the Speaker use existing powers to select as well as combine
amendments at the report stage. The committee suggested certain
principles to guide the Speaker on how this could be done. To
quote from the report:
An amendment disposed of in committee should not be revived
unless it is of exceptional significance. Amendments ruled out
of order in committee should not be reconsidered unless there are
reasonable grounds for doing so. Amendments proposed to
implement government undertakings should be selected
automatically. In selecting other amendments, the Speaker should
seek guidance through consultation. The Speaker should
determine, in consultation with the House leaders, which
amendments are regarded as the most important from the party
point of view.
1545
The report proceeded to list several other guidelines. It is
evident that this was a very tall order for any Speaker. The
committee recognized the significance of such discretionary
powers in the hands of the Speaker and commented that, in their
view, successive Speakers had hesitated to use to its fullest the
power to select without further direction from the House.
[Translation]
The House sought to provide such direction in 1986 when
amendments to the standing orders included for the first time
the note to the present Standing Order 76. This note took up
some, but not all, of the criteria contained in the McGrath
Committee report.
From that point on, our practices have evolved to where they are
today and in reviewing those practices, I was struck by the
reluctance of my predecessors to use the powers of selection in
any but the most generous manner, giving members the benefit of
the doubt in most instances.
In the last parliament, the House was faced with several bills
(i.e., Nisga'a, clarity, young offenders) where, at report
stage, hundreds of motions in amendment were placed on the
notice paper.
The most recent attempt to address the situation occurred last
February 27, 2001 when, by adopting Government Motion No. 2, the
House again sought to provide the Speaker with more guidance on
the manner of selection of report stage amendments.
Here again, as so often in the troubled history of report stage,
we see the hope that a more interventionist approach by the
Chair will resolve difficulties that are being experienced.
It is not for me as your Speaker to interpret the confluence of
events that led up to the unprecedented gridlock the House faced
at report stage in the last parliament.
However, even if one grants that the Chair has, in the past,
been too reticent in the exercise of its power of selection, I
would argue that this abundance of caution, if such we may call
it, is only one of the circumstances that have contributed to
the potential crisis that we face at the report stage.
As your Speaker, I am ready to shoulder the report stage
responsibilities that the House has spelled out for me.
However, I think it would be naive to hope that the frustrations
implicit in the putting on notice of hundreds of motions in
amendment of a bill will somehow be answered by bringing greater
rigour to the Speaker's process of selection.
[English]
On that cautionary note, I want now to outline my approach with
regard to the selection of report stage amendments for debate in
view of this most recent directive from the House.
First, past selection practices not affected by this latest
directive will continue to apply. For example, motions and
amendments that were presented in committee will not be selected,
nor will motions ruled out of order in committee. Motions
defeated in committee will only be selected if the Speaker judges
them to be of exceptional significance. I refer hon. members to
pages 667 to 669 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice
for a fuller discussion of these practices.
[Translation]
Second, regarding the new guidelines, I will apply the tests of
repetition, frivolity, vexatiousness and unnecessary
prolongation of report stage proceedings insofar as it is
possible to do so in the particular circumstances with which the
Chair is faced.
It is in regard to these four criteria alone that I will have
reference to the practice followed in the House of Commons of
the United Kingdom, and not to the wider practice surrounding
what is called “consideration stage” of bills at Westminster,
which practice is not relevant to our own traditions and not
helpful to their clarification.
1550
[English]
I intend to apply these four criteria to all amendments at
report stage no matter which side of the House they come from. I
also intend to apply those criteria in the original note, whose
validity has been endorsed by the adoption of government Motion
No. 2. Specifically, motions in amendment that could have been
presented in committee will not be selected.
Accordingly, I would strongly urge all members and all parties
to avail themselves fully of the opportunity to propose
amendments during committee stage so that the report stage can
return to the purpose for which it was created, namely for the
House to consider the committee report and the work the committee
has done, and to do such further work as it deems necessary to
complete detailed consideration of the bill.
That being said, I believe that this approach will result in the
Speaker's selection of amendments at report stage being a far
more rigorous exercise than it has been to date, no matter how
challenging such an exercise may be.
[Translation]
Finally, the Chair intends to maintain its current practice of
not providing justification for the selection of amendments, or
reasons for the non-selection of amendments at the time of a
report stage ruling.
However, in exceptional circumstances, the Chair may expand this
usual approach and explain its reasons where this shall be
deemed necessary or appropriate.
May I end my remarks by reminding members that at the conclusion
of today's debate, the House will have adopted a motion creating
a special committee to make recommendations on the modernization
and improvement of its procedures.
Without anticipating what the committee may decide to recommend,
it is entirely possible that the House may at some future date
be seized with proposals that may have an impact on my statement
today.
Naturally, as your servant, I will continue to be guided by
whatever rules the House may, in its wisdom, decide upon to
conduct its business.
[English]
I want to thank all hon. members for their attention to this
ruling which I hope has clarified the situation somewhat for hon.
members. For those who found it more confusing, we will have it
wait and see what happens on the first report stage.
Mr. Ken Epp: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Am
I permitted to ask you a question of clarification respecting
your statement?
The Speaker: I think what the hon. member should do is
read the statement later. I am sure after reading it he will not
have any questions. It would be better if he approached the
Chair without asking questions in the House. There is not really
a question period for Speakers. I thank the hon. member for his
interest.
GOVERNMENT ORDERS
[English]
MODERNIZATION OF HOUSE OF COMMONS PROCEDURE
Hon. Don Boudria (Leader of the Government in the House of
Commons, Lib.) moved:
That a special committee of the
House be appointed to consider and make recommendations on
the modernization and improvement of the procedures of the
House of Commons;
That the Members of the committee shall be the Deputy
Speaker and the House Leaders of each of the officially
recognized parties, provided that substitutions may be made
from time to time, if required, in the manner provided for
in Standing Order 114(2);
That, notwithstanding any Standing Order, the Chair of
the committee shall be the Deputy Speaker and the Vice-
Chairs shall be the Leader of the Government in the House of
Commons and the House Leader of the Official Opposition;
That the committee shall have all of the powers granted
to Standing Committees in Standing Order 108;
That the committee shall not adopt any report without
the unanimous agreement of all the Members of the committee;
That the committee may recommend to the House texts of
new or amended Standing Orders;
That the committee may make recommendations for changes
to relevant statutes and, if it does so, such
recommendations shall be deemed to have been made pursuant
to an Order adopted pursuant to Standing Order 68(4); and
That the committee shall present its final report no
later than Friday, June 1, 2001.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today about
government Motion No. 3. I will not read the motion now but,
I will concentrate my time on talking
about what I see as modernization of House rules.
1555
I would like to begin my comments by outlining the parliamentary
initiatives that have already taken place since November 2000,
since the last election.
I will begin with measures that have recently been approved by
the Board of Internal Economy. Funds for political parties
represented in the House have been reallocated to take into
account the new standings in the House following the last
election. This provided an additional $900,000 in funds which
would have otherwise lapsed for items such as party research,
caucus services, whips' offices and so on.
Members office budgets have been increased by $20,000 per member
of parliament to cover items such as additional staff salary
expenses, office rents and so on.
The members of parliament housing allowance has been improved by
$3,000 to cover higher accommodation costs that MPs face in the
Ottawa housing market, which is of course very tight. Hon.
members were having some difficulty making ends meet with the
previous budget.
The motion before us today builds on these improvements and
follows up on the commitment made in the Speech from the Throne
to strengthen the institution of parliament.
I will mention two initiatives that have already been addressed,
namely the resolution of the report stage issue just clarified
before the House of Commons by Mr. Speaker, and the announcement
I made together with the leader of the government in the other
place some days ago about increasing the research capacity for
the Library of Parliament by an amount of $986,000 per year. All
of these are improvements to strengthen this institution.
Today's motion proposes to implement a commitment in the Speech
from the Throne to improve the rules of the House of Commons. The
terms of the modernization committee are set in the motion that
was read by Your Honour moments ago.
The Chair and hon. members will have noticed that this committee
will only report on items where we have unanimous agreement. In
other words, where we agree there will be a change. Where we do
not, it will be the end of the discussion. That is an excellent
formula. It was not one that I thought of myself. I give credit
to other hon. members with whom I have consulted. Members across
the way proposed this formula for reporting. For that, I
congratulate them.
I also want to thank all hon. members for accepting to put this
motion before the House in the terms that we have today.
Finally, the committee will report no later than June 1 in order
to enable the House to deal with the matter expeditiously.
I am one who believes we can only make large changes, if we
achieve them they will be large changes, in the initial part of a
parliament. After that it is simply too difficult to do so. As
we get near an election it is effectively impossible to change
the rules of parliament. I have been in enough parliaments to
know that the older a parliament gets the more difficult it is to
modernize the institution. Therefore, these changes must be
undertaken at the beginning of parliament.
I and other members of the proposed modernization committee will
be interested in what members of the House have to say on the
proposed changes. From my part, I would be willing to support a
further debate in the House on an evening. As a matter of fact,
all House leaders have already been consulted on this and have
informally agreed to do just that.
As members will know from experience, the House of Commons has
had five political parties since 1997. Some members may recall
that the so-called pundits of parliament in 1997 alleged that the
House would not be able to function at all. They called it the
pizza parliament, the House divided, divided into several
parties. They said it would be chaotic and unproductive. They
have been wrong, thanks in large measure, to the co-operation
that I have received from House leaders on all sides of the
House, through the excellent chairmanship of this institution,
through the excellent staff supporting us and, it is never said
around here, largely through the good and constructive behaviour
of members of parliament on all sides of the House.
1600
The House has worked well in the last two elections. I submit
that we have made dozens and dozens of changes to the standing
orders, proof that the House simply could not function under five
parties.
There were not provisions for five parties when I became the
government leader in the House in 1997. We all had to sit down,
which we did, and we made the changes necessary to reflect
existing conditions in the House.
At the risk of quoting myself in my first meeting with my
opposition counterparts in 1997, I told them that we had been
elected to make parliament work and that nobody had been elected
to make parliament not work. I am glad to say that I truly
believe that is the attitude they all took.
That is one of the reasons a modernization committee, which
includes House leaders of all parties as well as the Deputy
Speaker, has good prospects for agreeing to further improvements
to House rules. Of course, ultimately everyone has a veto if
anything is proposed that they do not like. A modernization
committee of House rules will be successful because all House
leaders have worked closely with their caucuses and they all have
excellent records of achievement.
I have already met with interested members of the government
caucus, and I intend to do so again throughout the modernization
committee's mandate between now and June.
To review this, I would like to have another debate like this a
few weeks hence in the House as members gather their thoughts on
the subject. I would also like to have another meeting with my
own caucus colleagues, plus of course all the informal meetings
we have with one another around here.
Another reason I am confident about the committee is that it
draws on the very successful work of a very similar committee,
practically identical as a matter of fact, in the United Kingdom.
The official opposition leader and I were privileged to appear
before what they call the U.K. modernization committee earlier
this year. We both testified before that committee. We were
impressed by the U.K. committee's organization and by the quality
of its work. I hope we are equally successful in this House.
Let me identify and offer for comment some changes I would like
to see. Perhaps some members will argue that many of the things
I am about to suggest would be more beneficial for the
government, although not everything I say will do that. Everyone
should enter the debate with an open mind and enumerate things
that they think will work better for them and hopefully for the
other side of the House. As we sit together, after listening to
several hours of contributions from members, we should be able to
improve the rules.
Let me give the House a few ideas to start. First, we have at
present a committee room with television facilities. I
understand that we have the equipment and facilities ready for a
second one. Why not have another room on Parliament Hill fully
available with television facilities for the benefit of members
of parliamentary committees who want to avail themselves of it?
With two such committee rooms and proper scheduling, I am quite
confident that virtually any committee that wants to have its
proceedings televised will be able to do so.
Second, why can we not have greater use of committee
teleconferencing? Every time we have committee teleconferencing
now, the committee must come and ask the House to do it. I do
not believe that is necessary. In 2001, with the excellent
committee chairs and vice-chairs that we have, committees should
be able to decide whether they want to teleconference with
witnesses throughout Canada.
1605
Canada is the second largest country in the world and the most
technologically advanced country in the world, if I can brag a
bit. There is no reason we cannot make it easier for Canadians
to have video teleconferencing and to testify before
parliamentary committees. It would enable committees to work
better.
Let me touch a bit on the estimate process. In 1993 the
government announced it wanted to work with members of parliament
to improve the estimate process. In addition to the estimates we
now have a provision whereby we identify the propose future years
expenditures. Together with my colleague the President of the
Treasury Board, I would improve on future years expenditures to
ensure more information is made available to members of
parliament. Hopefully, then, greater use would be made of it by
hon. members.
[Translation]
I would now like to turn to interparliamentary relations, which
are very important. We have close relationships, of course,
with the parliamentary associations of a number of countries,
and I encourage all hon. members be involved with these
associations.
I for one believe we should never have to apologize for our
relationships with other countries. If this means being
criticized occasionally by the media for flying off to some
other country, that is too bad. It goes with the territory.
We live in a country that depends on international trade, that
depends on international relations, a country that believes in
multilateralism, so let us then participate in
interparliamentary relations with other countries.
It is high time as well for us to think of entering into
interparliamentary relations with the provinces, something not
much developed in the past. Why are there no interparliamentary
relations between Ottawa and Quebec City, between Ottawa and
Toronto, between Ottawa and the other provinces? One of my
party's backbenchers made that suggestion to me a few days ago,
and I thank him for it.
[English]
I will talk about changing some of the rules of the House.
[Translation]
The Leader of the Official Opposition in the House proposed that
candidates for the position of House of Commons' Speaker at the
start of a session have a chance to speak before the House prior
to a vote. Why not? I would be prepared to develop a similar
idea, which was suggested by the leaders of the opposition in
the House.
Another suggestion, this time is one of my own. We have Standing
Order 57, called closure or time allocation motion. To date we have
had to vote at 11 p.m. under this standing order.
It is outdated and a holdover from when parliament sat until 11
p.m. every evening. It is not modern. It does not reflect the
fact that the committees sit early in the morning. It should be
modernized, as we did at report stage not long ago.
Why not say 8 p.m., 8.30 p.m., 10 p.m., but definitely not 11 p.m.,
the present time. It is much too late and does not serve any
purpose. The members are not productive at that hour and it
does not improve the quality of the debate to sit until 11 p.m.,
when members have been here since 7 a.m.
[English]
I will talk briefly about concurrence motions for committee
reports. We could consider restricting committee report
concurrence motions. Right now they are moved in a rather
haphazard way and do not seem to do very much. Why not have a
measure to restrict concurrence motions until after the
government has responded to a committee report? How can we
concur in a report if we have asked the government to respond to
it? If we concur in it there is no need for the response. There
is a contradiction in the rule which needs to be clarified.
Sometimes an hon. member will ask for concurrence in a committee
report when the committee itself never asked that the report be
concurred in. That is another contradiction that needs to be
modernized.
With regard to committees, just so that members do not think I
want all this to be to the advantage of the government, we have
right now a provision where the government has 150 days to
respond to a committee report. That is too long. Some 150 days
later no one here even remembers what the original committee
report was about. I therefore propose to shorten that.
1610
I should like to offer the following thought. Why not make it
120 days or 75 sitting days, whichever is less, because it could
sometimes cover the summer period in which we do not sit for many
months? By having the shorter of the two provisions we would
reduce the time for responding by as much as one-third.
Why not make routine procedural committee concurrences votable
but not debatable? I am referring to such issues as committee
travel. If a committee wants to travel to hear witnesses in
British Columbia, Newfoundland or anywhere else, right now we
virtually need unanimous consent of the House. That is not
reasonable and it is not modern. Why can we not have a measure
where we could vote on it?
If we need a higher threshold than a simple majority we could
use a reverse vote, such as the measure we have for extending
hours where 20 or 25 or whatever number of members can rise and
prevent it if they want.
Right now effectively any one member has the ability to stop a
committee from doing its work if it must go outside Ottawa to
hear witnesses. We can modernize that. I have offered two or
three different formulas.
I will talk about opposition day motions. I notice the Leader
of the Opposition is with us. I invite him, and others of
course, to think about the following because it affects the
official opposition more than anyone else. It affects all
oppositions parties, albeit to a lesser degree.
Why not examine whether the mover should be able to split the
time on an opposition motion and produce an amendment that makes
the motion unamendable? That was started by way of a loophole in
1994. It did not exist before that. I do not believe it
advances debate. We used to be able to amend a motion over here
and make it acceptable to a greater number of members and thereby
pass it. It is very difficult to do that now.
Another thing is the notice provision. Right now it is 6 p.m.
Hon. members want us all to have an intelligent debate on
important issues facing the nation, yet we are informed at 5.45
p.m. that we must discuss the future of agriculture in Canada or
the future of criminal justice or the future of anything else. We
then have about 12 hours to get the entire bureaucracy and the
government ministers and everyone else organized to respond to
issues so important to the nation.
If we are serious about dealing with issues that way, hopefully
we could back up that time and make it, say, 10 o'clock in the
morning. Whenever the House meets in the morning it could be
tabled at exactly that time so that all members would know at
once and could prepare to respond on the following day. These
are just ideas, but they could advance debate.
I will introduce a few more. We could update the procedures for
reinstating government bills in a new session. We do not have
that now. We did adopt it for private members' bills. It was an
initiative by the former House leader of the then Reform Party.
However we did not do it for government bills at the time. I
think it should be the same for both cases.
We also need to address the issue of programming the work at
committee to ensure that committees are able to function better.
The referral of estimates from the House to committee is a
votable motion right now. It does not do anything. If we did
not vote for it, it presumably would mean that we would deal with
the estimates on the floor of the House, as if we could do that.
It is left over from a bygone era.
Why not look at the time for the leadoff speeches? Is it the
modern way of doing it?
Right now we have a curious situation in the parliamentary
calendar. We have one week off in March, which means most
members do not have March break at the same time as their
families. If we came back one week earlier and took two weeks
off in March, most provinces would probably coincide with it
three years out of four, or something like that. What would be
wrong with that? We would not lose any House time; it would make
things work better.
With respect to deferring the votes, we defer them now until
usually the end of government orders.
1615
Why do we not have votes at exactly 3 o'clock on Tuesdays when
most members are already here? We could add whatever time is
lost, perhaps 10 or 15 minutes, to the end of the day. As all
members would already be here, the whips could just walk in. At
the end of the day, members could do everything else that they
have to do when the House adjourns. If members had committees or
other business to attend to, they would then not need to return
to the House at the end of the day to vote.
Why not formalize the procedure whereby whips supply votes for
their colleagues in the House? Again, it requires unanimous
consent within a party, but we could formalize that procedure.
Hon. colleagues on the other side of the House have looked at
having a mini question period immediately before the government
House leader, or any other minister for that matter but generally
speaking it is I who does it, invokes time allocation. This could
be a 10 minute period where members could ask the government to
explain its decision to invoke time allocation. In the mix of
all that, I do not object to doing that. It is accountability.
It has been suggested by the opposition House leader that the
appointment of the Clerk of the House could be subject to a vote
in the House. I would not object to that. Right now it is a
government appointment made under my recommendation.
With regard to question period, the British house has thematic
question periods three days a week: Mondays, Tuesdays and
Thursdays. It would be a radical change around here, but we
could at least try a thematic question period one day a week,
perhaps on Fridays. Members from both sides of the House could
reduce their numbers, if they wanted to. We could have differing
themes each Friday, such as industry, treasury board, finance and
so on. The themes would always be designated by the opposition in
a way similar to the designation of opposition days and with the
same apportionment for political parties. Each party would be
allowed to choose a theme. It is an idea that I am willing to
discuss with colleagues.
A second chamber has been proposed for discussing other issues.
Australia and the United Kingdom have done that. Australia's is
called the main committee and the United Kingdom's is called
Westminster hall. They both deal with local and private members'
issues. They have adjournment debates that are similar to the
ones we have at the end of the day, except that they do not
necessarily require a question to have been raised previously.
They only require a notice to be put on the order paper. Their
members can discuss issues important to their constituents but
perhaps not always important enough to make it to the national
agenda. It is important for us as local members to be able to do
that.
[Translation]
As for private members' business, the committee could examine
the conclusions of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House
Affairs on the subject. At present, members of parliament wonder
which items should be votable and non-votable.
Some feel that every item from private members' business should
be a votable item, while others disagree. If we make them
votable, that will mean that fewer members will see their
particular items come before the House, of course, because
votable items require longer debates than non-votable ones.
I would like the Standing Committee on Procedure and House
Affairs to provide advice to us. We could then refer the issue
to the modernization committee for further review.
[English]
I have given a few ideas to kick-start the debate in the House.
No, I have not talked about the constitutional convention of
supply. No, I have not reformed the Senate today. No, I have
not rewritten the constitution in the last 20 minutes. I am not
proposing to and I never said that I would. What constitutes
confidence will not be discussed here by me. Others can, if they
so choose, but that is a constitutional issue and has nothing to
do with the rules of the House. That is outside the parameters
of what is here.
I have kept my remarks to what I think will be constructive in
starting the debate on improving how this institution works. I
hope all hon. members will do the same during the rest of this
day. In the next few minutes I will probably have to leave the
Chamber for a few minutes, but I intend to be here for several
hours later this day to listen to the contributions from all
honourable members on this subject.
1620
I am looking forward to the work of the committee. I am looking
forward to a second debate a few weeks hence in the House. I am
looking forward to meeting with my own caucus colleagues. If
caucus colleagues of other parties would want me to listen to
their ideas, I would make myself available to do that too.
I hope to be able to contribute something between now and June
1, along with everyone else, to make this place work better. That
being said, the House is not hopelessly defective. It is a grand
institution. It works well but it can work better. I ask all
colleagues to work together with me so that we can contribute to
making this great institution even better than it already is.
The Deputy Speaker: I see the hon. member for
Winnipeg—Transcona rising. A question and comment period is not
provided for in the rules of debate at this time. However,
should the member, through the Chair, seek unanimous consent, I
would put the request to the House.
Mr. Bill Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of
order. The motion we adopted earlier has everyone speaking for
20 minutes with 10 minutes for questions and comments.
The Deputy Speaker: I certainly do not want to engage in
debate. I am only working with what I have before me, the
Projected Order of Business for Wednesday, March 21. Under
government orders, Government Business No. 3 reads:
Length of speeches, pursuant to Standing Order 43—
The Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the Minister
moving the motion and the Member replying immediately after the
Minister—unlimited time.
The following three Members—20 minutes maximum and speeches are
subject to a 10 minute question and comment period.
All other Members—10 minutes maximum and speeches are subject
to a 5 minute question and comment period.
Is there unanimous consent for the member to ask a question?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
Some hon. members: No.
* * *
[Translation]
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
The Deputy Speaker: The hon. member for
Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques will not be
present in the House to introduce his bill under private
members' business according to the notice given in today's
notice paper.
[English]
Accordingly the bill will be dropped to the bottom of the order
of precedence on the order paper and the House will continue with
the business before it prior to private members' hour.
* * *
MODERNIZATION OF HOUSE OF COMMONS PROCEDURE
The House resumed consideration of the motion.
Mr. Stockwell Day (Leader of the Opposition, Canadian
Alliance): Mr. Speaker, if you seek unanimous consent, I
believe you would find agreement for me to split my time with the
member for Fraser Valley.
The Deputy Speaker: I will need help from the Leader of
the Opposition in this regard because, as he knows, the rules
provide for him to have unlimited time.
The Chair has some difficulty on how to apportion or divide the
unlimited time. The hon. member might help the Chair by
indicating if we are talking about splitting a block of time, for
instance 20 minutes or 30 minutes. We should have some type of
indication.
Mr. Stockwell Day: Mr. Speaker, I can give assurance that
my remarks will be no more than 15 minutes at the most. The
remarks of the member for Fraser Valley would be approximately 10
minutes. We will definitely work toward that.
The Deputy Speaker: The House has heard the terms of the
proposal of the Leader of the Opposition. Is there agreement?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
Mr. Stockwell Day: Mr. Speaker, I thank hon. members for
their agreement. I stand in the House today in support of the
motion to create this special committee to recommend ways to
modernize and improve procedures in the House. It is a step in
the right direction. The Canadian Alliance and I hope it will
signal the beginning of a very worthwhile journey.
Being somewhat skeptical, I have to say that we do not want to
prejudge where the journey will finally take us but we do hope it
leads to an enhanced sense of democracy, not just in the House
but also in the country. In the last election only 61% of
registered voters even bothered going to the polls. It was the
lowest turnout in recent Canadian history.
1625
Of those who did vote we know that 41% supported the Liberals,
giving them a majority in the House of Commons. When we take a
closer look and include all the registered voters who did not
bother to cast their ballots, we see that the present government
has the support of about 25% of Canadians. That is a sobering
thought and a sobering reality.
What do these numbers tell us? One of the things the polls show
us is that Canadians are becoming increasingly cynical about
politics and about whether their votes mean anything. As a
matter of fact they are feeling increasingly alienated from the
whole process of government itself. That is a disturbing
situation and the results of the committee could actually have
something to do with remedying that. That is why we look forward
with hope, although I say that with some scepticism, to the final
results.
It is up to every elected member in the House to win back the
trust of the Canadian people. People will be watching the
committee. It will be reported on quite properly, and it is up
to us to prove to citizens everywhere that democracy is alive and
well and living in Ottawa in these halls and in this Chamber.
That will be the challenge for the committee.
We are seeing some signs that change is in the air. These signs
are fragile. They are like the first green shoots of the
crocuses and the daffodils. We hope that these changes will
prove to be as inevitable as the first signs of spring. We hope
that happens.
We applaud the Speaker's ruling on a question of privilege
concerning the justice minister, where the Speaker deemed that
the justice minister had in fact acted inappropriately in
releasing certain documents to the media before members of
parliament had the opportunity to view those important papers.
We applaud the independence of the Chair in making that ruling.
It gives us hope. It speaks to a regard for the highest
principles and not partisanship. The power to effect real
democratic change rests with every member of the House, but the
ability to exercise that power will at times take courage and a
willingness to stand on principle.
Canadians are really not seeing members of parliament exercising
the power we have been granted constitutionally. They see power
concentrated in the hands of a few, mostly unelected advisers in
the Prime Minister's Office. That is what most Canadians see.
They see the MPs who are elected to represent them voting the
government line.
We see government MPs being referred to by the Prime Minister in
the most cynical of terms as terra cotta warriors that stand in
line and vote the way they are told. That is a denigrating way,
in my view, of treating one's own colleagues and one's members of
parliament. It must sting when Liberal MPs read that about
themselves and they see what their Prime Minister is calling
them.
I have said before and I will say it again that the Prime
Minister and the Liberal government treat parliament as a rubber
stamp for the plans which are drawn up in back rooms. It is
clearly too often the case and that is not right. The House of
Commons should be a place where real debate takes place and real
action takes place on that debate. Debate that originates in the
living rooms, kitchens, coffee shops and workshops of the country
should be brought to the House.
As a recent example, we know that many members of parliament on
the government side share our concern about the plight of farmers
in Canada. Yesterday those members buckled to pressure from the
Prime Minister's Office and they actually voted down a motion
which would have given aid to farmers. Yet we know many of those
members, had they been able to stand for their constituents,
would have supported that aid.
Hon. Charles Caccia: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of
order. If I heard the Leader of the Opposition correctly, he was
commenting on a vote that took place in the House yesterday in a
derogatory manner with respect to those who voted against the
motion proposed by the official opposition.
I would respectfully submit that the hon. Leader of the
Opposition is out of order when making such comments on a vote
that has taken place in the House.
1630
The Deputy Speaker: I feel confident that in fact the
intervention and the interpretation by our colleague from
Davenport is correct. I just ask the Leader of the Opposition to
be guided in fact by those remarks which, in my humble
estimation, are correct. The House should not reflect on a vote
previously taken by it.
Mr. Stockwell Day: Mr. Speaker, that is an interesting
ruling which I respect, although I am not familiar with it. I
will just make observations and not reflect pejoratively in any
sense.
The nation observed a motion by opposition members to endorse
something that was proposed at one point. That something was a
promise by the Prime Minister and the government that we would
have an ethics commissioner. It was a promise taken from the red
book. We took the words verbatim because we agreed with the
proposal. I have said as opposition leader that where possible
we will agree with and support the government on things that are
good for our nation. We took that promise verbatim and made it a
motion because we agreed. We wanted MPs to be able to vote
freely. I will just make the observation that the Liberal MPs
voted down their own promise.
That is the type of freedom that we are looking for in the House
of Commons to restore the confidence of Canadians.
[Translation]
The concentration of powers in the PMO is not irremediable. It
is not part of the Canadian Constitution. It has developed as a
convention, a disciplinary habit that has diminished the role of
all duly elected MPs.
This concentration undermines democracy and the respect the
Canadian population has always had for its elected
representatives. Each member of this House has the
responsibility to stand up and be heard, to show that the
principles of democracy are dear to him or her.
MPs have a duty to show that democratic principles are more
important than the carrot and the stick, than reward and
punishment.
[English]
These things are more important. Standing for democracy is more
important.
When the parliament opened, our first task was the duty of
electing a Speaker. It makes a big difference to the House of
Commons and to the Canadian people when the Speaker is perceived
as someone who is fair to all parties. We believe that is the
case here. The election of a Speaker by members of the House is
something that most Canadians have taken for granted, even though
it is actually a fairly recent convention.
There is a story from our past concerning the election of
Speaker that I believe serves as an example to the members of the
House of Commons. It is a story that shows that members are not,
and do not have to be, helpless pawns in a parliament ruled by
the Prime Minister's office. It was back in 1827. I know, Mr.
Speaker, that you would be familiar with this not because you
were ever near that particular era, but because you are a student
of these things. It was the Assembly of Lower Canada that
elected Louis-Joseph Papineau to be its Speaker.
[Translation]
When Papineau asked the governor for official approval, the
governor refused to confirm his appointment. The members of the
Assembly of Lower Canada did not submit humbly to this. They
refused to elect anyone else and they stuck to their guns. It
was difficult, and it took courage.
The government had to interrupt its activities. Nothing
happened for a year, but eventually democracy prevailed. A new
governor confirmed Louis-Joseph Papineau as Speaker.
[English]
The Prime Minister and others might argue that the machinery of
government control is more important than the members of
parliament themselves. However we have to remember that these
constituents whom we represent are more important than the
so-called machinery that comes out of the office of the Prime
Minister. The people of Canada are more important than the
machinery. Government should be for people, not people for
government. Sometimes and too often in this assembly, it is the
other way around.
We hope the creation of a special committee to make
recommendations on modernizing and improving these procedures
will be a first step. However, the real change we are calling
for demands far more than what a committee can deliver and more
than what a committee can recommend. What we are asking for, I
believe, is going to demand character and virtues like courage.
1635
We could wait for three or four years until the Canadian people
decide to change the government, but we know that in that period
of time many more Canadians will be asking themselves why they
should bother to vote when their MPs cannot even speak for them
once they arrive in Ottawa.
[Translation]
We can wait for the next election or we can act as MPs ought to
act, and start exercising the power that is ours, in order to
get some changes made.
If we show that we really want to do our job here in Ottawa, the
Canadian public will understand.
[English]
We need more free votes in the House of Commons. We have to
abandon the convention, and this is not a constitutional issue,
that any losing vote for the government is a vote of
non-confidence. We need to address that.
Let us give real power to committees and allow members of
committees to elect their own chairs instead of having the Prime
Minister make the appointment. Let us have the chairs and the
vice chairs elected by secret ballot, just as the Speaker is now
elected. It is good for the Speaker, it should be good for the
chairs.
Let us allow private members to bring bills that actually come
to a vote without having to pass through a party dominated
committee process.
I know many of my colleagues from across the aisle share my
concerns. They would like democratic reform to proceed just as
we do. The MP from Toronto—Danforth, as a good upstanding
Liberal MP, said “Parliament does not work. It is broken. It
is like a car motor working on two cylinders”. Another Liberal
MP and former Quebec cabinet minister said “Being in the
backbench we are typecast as if we are all stupid. We are just
supposed to be voting machines”.
We need to change that. If these MPs have the bravery and the
courage to talk about change like that then we need to embrace
that change.
Government members and opposition members alike know that the
people of Canada want us to do better. They want us to deliver
true change and real democracy. We have a list of things that
have to be done.
When the hon. member talked about the changes he wanted to see,
I was waiting expectantly. I was thinking he was going to make
some recommendations for change would break the ground for
democracy and usher in fresh breezes of freedom to the House of
Commons. I thought that when Canadians heard the Liberal House
leader speak they would say “That's fantastic”. He unleashed to
the Chamber just moments ago the waves of freedom which would
cause us to surge onto the beaches of democracy. Let us listen
to those.
He wants to move closure from 11 p.m. to 8 p.m. Now there is a
democracy breaking move. How about this? He said “Let us deal
with restricting a committee report concurrence motion”. I
wonder if he said that when he was out on the hustings. Did he
stand before constituents who were talking about freedom and say
“We will bring something in to restrict a committee report
concurrence motion?”
I am not trying to diminish these tiny moves but they should
just be mere shadows of changes that are far more monumental, the
shadows of changes that will bring true democracy into the House
and restore for Canadians the sense that they own this place.
I close with the words a wise person said to me the first time I
was elected. I was quite jubilant that particular night. As I
was leaving the party which was going on, he said “I want to
know if you know the definition of the word instant”. I asked
him what the definition was. He said “Usually it is the time it
takes an elected member to go from representing his or her
constituents to representing the government”.
We need to remember that. We need to think of our constituents
and think of freedom and democracy in this place.
I agreed to share my time, and I thank members for agreeing,
with the member for Fraser Valley who has also been a leader in
the area of true democratic reform which will vitalise the
process in Canada and send a message to all Canadians, including
young people, that the government truly is here to work for them.
Mr. Chuck Strahl (Fraser Valley, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, I want to zero in specifically on why there needs to be
a special committee, which the motion we are debating today would
set up.
1640
The regular standing order review which is required under
Standing Order 51 is taking place this evening. We will be
debating which standing orders should be changed.
If we look at the mandate of the committee that will be
reviewing this, there are seven paragraphs in the standing orders
outlining the responsibilities of the committee. Parliamentary
reform is only one of those responsibilities. If parliamentary
reform is the priority which I think all members of the House
would like to make it, then the time is right for a special
committee dedicated to developing proposals to modernize this
place.
In the last parliament the process to reform the rules began
with a similar debate to this one, on April 21, 1998. The
Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs was supposed to
take the wisdom of the debate and come up with proposals to
reform the House. The committee did not get around to
considering parliamentary reform until October 2000. Then the
election came and time ran out. In other words, it just did not
happen. Not a single standing order change proposal came to
committee, made it through the House and became a change that we
could enjoy in this 37th parliament.
The last major reform done in the House of Commons was done by a
special committee chaired by James McGrath. The member for
Winnipeg—Transcona frequently refers to the work of that
committee. I am convinced a special committee is required
because a special job like modernizing parliament requires a
single focused committee to get the job done.
As a member of the proposed committee, I look forward to working
with a smaller committee. The McGrath committee emphasized and
recommended a smaller committee. The McGrath committee report
stated that the committee should focus more on the task at hand,
be less partisan and work toward consensus much easier.
I am convinced that a smaller group is more productive than a
larger group, as long as the committee reflects the proportionate
party representation when it comes to speaking time, questions
and comments, witnesses and so on. One of the recommendations I
hope we will eventually see is the creation of smaller committees
that look after the speaking time and weighted votes. I believe
this can be achieved in the days to come.
The other interesting aspect of this committee is the fact that
its report must be unanimous. If we are to reform parliament in
a meaningful way, and not just in a way that strengthens the
executive, both the opposition and government must buy into the
proposals. Ramming through changes under closure, as the
government did not so long ago, will not work in the long run.
This is inviting the opposition to find ways to get cranky with
the government. It also invites the opposition to find loopholes
in the standing orders to express its frustration. Surely that
is not what we should be spending our time doing.
We should be spending our time in this committee and in this
debate today trying to find ways to come to unanimity on
important changes that give power to all parliamentarians, not
just the executive branch.
I remember when the government's famous Motion No. 8 was on the
order paper in the last parliament. That was a knee-jerk
reaction by the government. The motion was not intended to
address opposition grievances. It was simply intended to punish
the opposition. The government House leader, who normally
enjoyed a co-operative opposition for the most part, faced a
revolt on this motion that even his skills and his majority could
not have handled. I believe the Speaker would likely have ruled
Motion No. 8 out of order if it had been debated.
That draconian measure eventually was dropped because of the
realization that we could not have meaningful reform in this
place if it was going to be done unilaterally. The House would
have been consumed with routine orders of procedure unless the
government had the co-operation of opposition parties. No one,
especially the government House leader, would have liked to see
that happen.
I also believe that the timing of this committee is right
because the spirit is right for change. My party has a number of
proposals already on the table. Our last batch of proposals were
released in a document entitled “Building Trust”. It has taken
me personally by considerable surprise because literally
thousands of people have requested copies of it. I cannot
believe there is that much interest in parliamentary reform.
1645
It is an indication that not only is the time right for members
of the House to begin fixing parliament, but Canadians are
calling for it and the media are willing to communicate it, for
maybe the first time. Members of parliament can actually get
cachet on this subject and can get traction on this subject back
home, where people are saying that parliamentary reform is long
overdue.
The latest series of proposals, which I will be releasing
tomorrow morning, builds on the original building trust document.
I will be contacting all members of parliament to get them to
talk about what I guess we can call “building trust plus”. It
is a series of proposals that includes everything I released in
January, plus much more. I would like to quickly go through some
of the specific proposals I hope to take to the committee.
Hopefully we can have unanimous consent to bring them back to the
House by June 1.
The building trust document talked about: free votes; the
ethics counsellor becoming a true officer of parliament; the
process of how the Speaker is elected; the creation of a new
privacy, access and ethics committee, which I think would be in
all of our interests; how the appointment of House officers is
done; and the appointment of the clerk as an appointment of the
House instead of an appointment of the executive, and so on.
There is a whole series of proposals which I think would
strengthen the role of parliament instead of just strengthening
the government.
There are other things I would like to throw into the mix. We
should have more of the opposition party members chairing
committees, like they do in England. When I told them in England
that virtually every single committee is chaired by the
government, they just could not believe it. In England, a third
of the chairs of committees are given to opposition members. This
would make committees so much better in the sense that people
would understand that our duty in committees is to discuss the
subject matter, not to have political diatribes. If the
government shafts one committee and the opposition is chairing
the other committee, it could be tit for tat. There is no value
in making committees dysfunctional because there is an interest
in making them work. Sharing the committee chairs with the
opposition means sharing some of the power, but it also means
balancing that power in a way that reflects the true
representation here in the House.
As well, we are keen to televise committees. I know eventually
we are going to have a new committee building in these precincts,
but in the meantime anything we can do to televise more
committees, to show members of parliament busily doing some of
the grunt work of parliament, is a good thing, and we should
encourage it.
In regard to the way the government responds to committee
reports, I know the government House leader would like to have an
automatic response, but I would point out to him that in the new
government of Nunavut, for example, when a committee tables a
report in its legislature and the minister does not respond
within a certain number of days, it is deemed adopted. Instead
of restricting the report, saying that concurrence is as if there
had already been a debate, and the government being given
unlimited time to respond, in Nunavut they say that the minister
has to do that report's bidding unless he or she tables a
response to do otherwise.
In other words, it is negative option billing on the minister.
He or she responds to the committee's recommendations or it is a
done deal. That strengthens the hands of committees. It
strengthens the value of the report. Ministers who say they will
just ignore reports will find out that their departments have
been given direction by the House if they have failed to react
within an appropriate time.
We have a lot of recommendations on closure. I have always said
that the government at times will use closure if some shenanigans
are going on in the opposition and it has to move that way. On
rare occasions it is understandable. However, in return, the
government should have to produce the minister to the House of
Commons for a period of questioning on why it has restricted
debate, on why it thinks debate has gone on long enough, on
whether it has encouraged enough diversity in debate, and on why
something is so time sensitive that it has to go through the
House in such a hurried fashion. In other words, a minister
should have to be accountable for bringing in a closure or time
allocation motion. We have some specific proposals on that
matter which I will be happy to bring forth.
1650
We also want to bring forward changes in how the estimates are
handled. There are good proposals from an all party committee on
how to improve the estimates process. Right now the estimates
are set in stone. The government brings them forward and members
cannot change anything. If members change anything the
government considers it a non-confidence vote. That is why the
all party committee, including the current government whip, has
proposed changes, which I agree with and which will allow members
of parliament to move funds around within a department, not to
spend more money but to allocate funds according to the
committee's wisdom.
That again strengthens the role of committees. It strengthens
the role of the Liberal backbenchers and allows estimates, the
real spending power of parliament, to be brought forward not just
for scrutiny like they are now, but for actual direction to the
government. What a breath of fresh air it would be for Liberal
backbenchers to actually have that kind of input.
We want to also talk about things like the order paper
questions. This is a technical thing on how those questions are
answered and how timely the answers are. I know that the
government House leader will be keen to do that.
We want to look at the parliamentary calendar. We want to
decide on what is the best use of our time here in Ottawa. Can
we make better use of Fridays? Instead of having attendance that
is in the 20% to 30% range on Fridays, can we make better use of
that time so the people who are in attendance in the House on
Fridays have meaningful debate on meaningful subjects? Perhaps
private members' business could have more pre-eminence. We can
make better use of our Fridays in the House and I look forward to
that debate as well.
On the subject of private members' business, in the Alliance
Party we want any private members' business drawn for debate in
the House to receive a vote. Too often people have put a lot of
time, energy and effort into bringing forward private members'
bills and, for whatever reasons, there are no votes. They are
debated for an hour and then go off into the ether and are never
heard of again. Members who have put time into a private
member's initiative should know that there will be a vote and a
decision at the end of it. We encourage all members to allow not
just the debate but a vote to occur on private members' business.
I think members on both sides of the House would look forward to
that.
Again I want to emphasize that it is my belief that smaller
committees will be more efficient committees. We need to look at
committee structure instead of expanding committee membership to
17 or 18. Sometimes a joint committee has 25 or 30 members. How
on earth can there be meaningful time for individual members on a
committee of that size? We need to reflect the proportionality
of the House, restrict the number of members on the committee,
and look after the questions of voting and question and comment
time. In other words, the time should reflect the
proportionality. Let us find ways to deal with this.
Let us not just make the committees ever bigger. They are
inefficient and a poor use of time and they do not do any better
job of reflecting the reality of the House as far as numbers go.
Often people get so discouraged that they quit attending because
they never get a chance to speak.
I look forward to this special committee. I am grateful for a
chance to sit on it. I look forward in the weeks ahead to all
members feeling free to talk to all House leaders about what is
on their minds in order to make this place work better for the
benefit of all of us and the Parliament of Canada.
[Translation]
The Deputy Speaker: I wish to remind the House that the
following three members will have a maximum of 20 minutes, and
their speeches may be the subject of questions and comments for
a period of ten minutes.
Mr. Michel Gauthier (Roberval, BQ): Mr. Speaker, I am
particularly happy to speak today on this question.
First, I find it especially interesting that we can have a
debate in this House in which all members may freely express
their views on the standing orders requiring change or
improvement in order to make our work in parliament more
effective.
In this regard, it is a debate without party lines as such.
Members may be creative, identify the irritants they see in the
standing orders and propose solutions. It is no doubt with
interest that the House leaders will consider what will happen
here, what the members will present, and this will no doubt be
very useful in improving our debates.
1655
Second, I want to thank the government House leader, who was
kind enough to guarantee that no change to the standing orders
would be made without unanimity among the House leaders. If
everyone, does not agrees on the benefit of a change, there will be no
change.
I have already seen changes to the standing orders not made
unanimously. It is extremely irritating to the members of a
party when the rules change unbeknownst to them, without their
having either the desire or the possibility of agreeing to the
change. I therefore thank the government House leader.
I am, however, of the opinion that we, the House leaders of
other parties, need to be responsible. There is always a
certain give and take involved.
Although the government House leader is offering us this
possibility of blocking changes that do not suit us, we must
still be reasonable and must sometimes make an effort to
compromise in order to obtain positive results, instead of
seeking the slightest pretext to never agree with anything and
end up with a reform that is really no reform at all.
We are all aware that the standing orders of the House of
Commons need to be improved. We are all aware that certain
avenues exist on which, I believe, we can reach agreement fairly
readily.
In this connection, I offer my co-operation in advance to the
hon. leader of the government in the House and I want him to
know that I will be pleased to try to contribute a great deal of
positivity and open-mindedness and in a spirit of respect and
promotion of the rights of all members of parliament, not on any
partisan basis but on the basis of what I would call respect for
the elected representatives that we are.
Certain principles, however, must underlie the reforms to the
standing orders with which we will be involved and the work of
the committee on which we will sit.
It must be understood that the standing orders of the House of
Commons do not exist in order to make people's lives difficult
and to stop them from expressing themselves. The rules that
govern a Chamber like this one, a parliament, are there to allow
a fair power relationship between the opposition and the
government.
A parliament where the government already enjoys an absolute
majority, as is the case here, is fully capable of making
decisions without having rules allowing it to do so without any
interference whatsoever.
Of course there are rules so that the government can
govern—and it is ultimately the objective pursued—but there are
also rules allowing the opposition to slow down the government
in its decision making process. When we feel that a decision is
bad, we can slow down the government, we can make things more
complicated for it, we can even question some bills on which
there is no consensus, particularly when opposition parties work
together and pool their resources.
If I say this, it is because it is significant.
Our colleagues must realize that when a parliament no longer
gives opposition parties an opportunity to prevent, through
extraordinary means, the government from quietly proceeding with
its bills and reforms, there is no parliament anymore. From the
moment that a government enjoys an absolute majority, there
would be nothing left to stop it, regardless of the initiatives
that it may take. Such a situation would not be good.
When the public realizes that parliament no longer allows its
elected representatives to slow down or block certain government
initiatives, the opposition organizes itself at another level.
Democracy moves to another sphere, because people realize that
it is game over in parliament. People organize themselves in the
streets, they hold rallies and use other means.
Whether we are government or opposition members, as is the case
on our side of the House, it is in everyone's interest to ensure
that the rules of the House give us some power to influence
things.
I also want to discuss the spirit of the debates that take place
in a parliament such as this one. We have been in a democratic
system for a long time and this is probably why we tend not to
realize the richness of democracy, because we have been using it
and sometimes abusing it.
1700
There is one vital problem, when the government enters a debate
in the House and the idea from the start is to carry the bill to
term. I cannot stress enough how important it is for the
government to listen to opposition members and to consider what
is proposed. I know no members in the House who do not want to
improve bills, in many respects, according to what their
constituents ask them to do.
All too often, unfortunately, the debate, the period between the
time the government introduces a bill and its passage and the
reading stages, second reading, report stage, third reading, are
viewed all too often by the government as a necessary evil.
The time between introduction and passage is a period of time
that varies in length. It should be considered an extremely
rich and fertile period to allow the government to improve its
bill.
We know that bills are not prepared by the members of the House.
They are prepared by impressive teams of officials. I am aware
of all the responsibility borne by the ministers and all the
teams and armies of officials, who come to them with
initiatives, bills of 100 or 150 pages, who explain their
initiatives and, finally, who try to promote their way of seeing
things.
Ministers are sometimes obliged, not only in this parliament, but
in all parliaments, to fight their own machine in order to say
“The government does not want to go so far with this particular
bill”.
There are epic battles between ministers and their own machines.
What needs to be understood is that government and opposition
members alike form a kind of team, which sometimes has to do
battle with armies of public servants. Our role is to make sure
that the concerns of our constituents are expressed in the House.
It is to take what the administrative machine proposes and say
“That does not make sense. That should be in a particular order,
or that should be done this way”. Our role is to amend.
The rules of debate which we are going to amend, the standing
orders, the practices and procedures will have to be amended
such that the period of exchanges between government members,
ministers and opposition members allows productive review,
improvement and adaptation of what an extremely powerful
administrative machine has pushed all the way through to
parliament. This is the spirit in which I intend to work.
Naturally, I would like to talk about time allocation motions.
If there is one thing which worries me, it is the extremely
frequent recourse to such motions. Whenever time allocation is
moved, I know that this is a convenient way for the government to
move things forward.
But should the government have the right to use a time
allocation motion if a bill has not been debated more than 12,
15 or even 20 hours at most? It is not normal for
the government to bring forward, after two or three hours of
debate, a time allocation motion. Really now. That makes no
sense. Is anyone ready to admit that there is nothing excessive
about debating an important bill for three hours? As I have
said, they are churned out by officials and we have to absorb
their content, take them apart, analyze them and express our
views on them.
The time we take here to debate bills gives the general public
the opportunity to find out about the ones that concern them, to
organize a lobby, to tell their MP “Hold on there, Mr. Member,
we want to meet with you because there is a bill before
parliament, before the House of Commons, and we want to see this
or that change to it, because it causes us this or that
problem”.
The time allowed for discussing a bill must, therefore, be
substantial if we are to do our jobs properly, if the public is
to have time to react if there is something about it that does
not suit it, and also if we are to demonstrate that the real
objective of government is to improve a bill.
1705
If this is not borne in mind, obviously things never move fast
enough; they will never move fast enough. Perhaps in a few
years the government will find an hour's debate on a bill too
long and will invoke time allocation. That makes no sense.
The government has to return to fairer proportions on this. It
must agree to the effort and sacrifice needed to allow members
to debate. I am going to try to convince my colleagues, the
leaders, that the government should not be able to bring forward
time allocation too quickly in order to ensure quicker passage.
This is perhaps one thing that needs to be looked at.
However it should not be used after three hours of debate, because
the government House leader is in a bad mood and knows debate
will probably be extended, so he brings forward a time
allocation motion. This is not what parliament is about, this is
not the point of a time allocation motion. However this is the way
they now use it, unfortunately. I do not want
to offend anyone and start a quarrel when we are having a
positive debate on the rules, but everyone knows that the number
of time allocation motions more than doubled from one government
to the next.
So, at some point, it is time to be reasonable too, and I think
that this is the time to have a look at this. I think the
government House leader, a generally reasonable man, should want
to look at this business honestly and give his opinion. I
intend to raise issues in any case.
Perhaps it should not be usable until a certain amount of
debating time has passed, and perhaps in exchange it could be
made easier to pass, not take so long, or some such thing.
There are some points that need looking into.
As for electronic voting, I do not want to come across as someone
who is opposed to change, since I am in favour of modernizing
the way we vote, but I do have certain reservations. That will
most certainly be discussed in that committee.
There is a certain nobility and an infinite democracy in the
fact that a member has to rise here in this House before the
cameras and say in essence “I, Michel Gauthier, the member for
Roberval, vote for or against this bill”. There is a
responsibility that goes with that.
So much so, that when a motion is presented that is an important
one, not that there are any that are unimportant, but one that
holds particular importance from a policy point of view, then
we, and all parties have all done so, require a member by member
vote, not applying one vote to another, as you specialized in at
the time you were whip of your party, Mr. Speaker. Things go
faster if that is done, and in many cases it is convenient for
everyone. In certain cases, however, members were required to
stand up.
I think we should find a system which would ensure that, to a
certain degree, the act of voting would be one of courage.
Otherwise, a member will become completely anonymous. We do not
yet know what the system will be but he will
come and press a button, or he will be in his office and vote
with a card—we do not yet know what the system will be—and it will
show “Michel Gauthier, Roberval”, “Yes or No”, or “For the
motion” or “Against the motion”, or whatever, and it will be
much less onerous for the member. It is this that worries me.
I know that we must move forward, but we must continue to
require that a member have the courage of his convictions and be
able to say publicly, “I voted for that, and I was not ashamed
to do so”. In certain cases, as we know only too well,
members are sometimes absent for certain votes. They prefer not
to be recorded as having voted for or against certain motions,
particularly when they must toe the party line.
This is because voting is an important act. If, when
modernizing voting, we decide on electronic voting, we must come
up with the best process possible, but it must be the one that
makes members of this House as accountable as possible.
In addition, there are certain standing orders I wish to touch
on briefly, because I see that my time is running out.
1710
I do not think that the standing orders should be changed if,
for instance, we do not have the support of two thirds of the
members. It seems to me that the rules which govern us are too
important to be passed by the government alone. That is the
problem. The problem is that sometimes the government majority
represents a large number of the members and there could be
changes to the standing orders which only the government, not
all opposition parties, wanted.
Perhaps it could be proportionate to the number of parties, or
whatever, so that a change to the standing orders would have to
reflect a certain consensus or unanimity in the House.
Finally, there is no point dreaming in technicolour. They
should talk about a consensus or a vote in each of the parties,
I do not know, but some mechanism must be found. This question
requires attention.
Opposition days are important to me. I am going to try to
convince my colleagues in this regard. There are not many
opposition days. When a party presents a motion, by regulatory
subterfuge, we have to prevent our motion from being diluted or
substantially changed. We are obliged to divide our time, to
present the motion, to speak ten minutes, to say “My colleague
will speak during the ten minutes I have left”. The other
colleague rises and presents an insignificant motion to prevent
the motion from being amended, diluted or transformed
significantly.
It seems to me that opposition days are held to enable each
party, and we all have our own days, to speak to an issue that interests
us.
I think, therefore, that the government should agree to allow an
opposition motion to be amended only by the party presenting it
so that there is no need to resort to subterfuge to protect a
motion. We do it indirectly, and that complicates things. Why
not be honest and let an opposition day belong to the
opposition, be it the Bloc Quebecois, the Canadian Alliance, the
NDP or the Progressive Conservative Party, and let each party be
master of its motion, which may no longer be amended at any
point during the debate. This is something to look at.
We are also going to talk about the coverage of debates and
about emergency debates that should, in my opinion, all be voted
on.
The reason a matter is discussed in this House during an
emergency debate is that it is something important. What could
be more natural than to ask parliament to decide? I think
this ought to be addressed as well.
In closing, as fair as the chairs and vice chairs of committees
are concerned, we should take a page from the book of the Quebec
national assembly. Half of all committees are headed by a member
of the government party, and the other half by someone from the
opposition. The vice chairs are the opposite. If a government
member chairs the committee, then the vice chair is from the
opposition and vice versa. This would provide more of a balance
for a healthy democracy.
I have already experienced this in the Quebec national assembly.
I can tell hon. members that it works very well, gets a large
number of MNAs involved, and gives rise to some extremely
interesting situations as far as the dynamism of the debate and
the operation of parliament are concerned. Instead of having all
but two committees chaired by someone from the party in power, I
would like to see a better balance.
These are some of the matters we will be looking at, but my
point was mainly to stress that we must approach all this within
a perspective of openness and intelligence, hoping to see
parliament operate better and better, and that all MPs, not just
those in government, will be able to do a more effective job in
this House.
That is the spirit which will govern my contribution.
[English]
Mr. Paul Szabo (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Public
Works and Government Services, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I
thank the member for his very positive intervention in the House.
I would like to ask the member a question on the issue of
chairing committees.
Under the present situation there is a designated number of
members from each party on committees. In the event an
opposition member became the chair of a committee, it would
appear to me that it would put the opposition at a further
disadvantage, in terms of having the sufficient numbers to pass
motions, because it would be giving up one more opposition spot.
1715
Is the member suggesting that, in addition to providing for more
opposition members, additional membership of opposition members
should have to be provided for to maintain the parody that they
presently have with regard to committee membership?
[Translation]
Mr. Michel Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I am not an expert on how
committees work, but it does not take much good faith to know
that the system is not unrealistic, because it does in fact
exist.
If the system did not exist, I would agree with the hon. member
that this would perhaps cause complications. However this system
already exists in the Quebec national assembly and has many
benefits, including that of making all members, including
opposition members, accountable.
I do not know by what means they manage to solve the problems
the member is raising, but I think that a reform such as the one
we are undertaking should get us thinking about what is done
elsewhere and what works well.
We have officers in the House, and I take this opportunity
to pay tribute to one who was formerly a member of the Quebec
national assembly. When I was a member, he was a committee
secretary, and a good one at that. He is much more familiar
with the way committees work than I am.
In my opinion, we have the resources and the opportunity to go
and see what is being done elsewhere, and it would be in our
interest to be open to such things. It is more motivating and
more interesting for everyone, and leads to good involvement in
the work of committees.
That having been said, implementing such a system could mean
some difficult times, but since nature abhors a mess and since
parliamentarians are intelligent beings, I imagine there will
be certain adjustments and amendments and gradually the
adjustment will be made.
On that score I would not worry. My suggestion to the hon.
member would be that we at least see how it is done elsewhere.
It would perhaps be in our interest to use this method here,
because it would perhaps be to everyone's benefit.
[English]
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker,
I am very pleased to participate in the debate. I hope that when
students of parliament look back on this day, or look back on the
committee that we are striking today, they will see it as the
beginning of a process which went some way toward reforming
parliament in the way that so many of us want parliament to be
reformed.
I deliberately used the word reform, even though I know the
official name of the committee is the committee to modernize
parliament. This is a conceptual concession that we all made to
the government House leader because he would rather talk about
modernizing the House of Commons than reforming it. I would
rather talk about reforming it than modernizing it.
One of the things that will be critical to the work of the
committee is the tension between modernization and reformation.
Modernization can have its own merits. There are things that we
can do more efficiently. There are things that we can change to
make our lives around here less awkward or irritating, but reform
of the House of Commons is another matter.
When I talk about the reform of the House of Commons, I am not
just talking about tinkering with the standing orders in order to
make things more efficient. I and I think a lot of members of
parliament are talking about redistributing power within the
parliamentary system and within the parliamentary culture.
1720
Any parliamentary reform worthy of its name will have as its
object and as its result the redistribution of power so that the
powerlessness which so many members of parliament feel, both
individually and collectively, will be adequately addressed. If
the committee fails to do that it will have failed miserably. It
may indeed fail totally because from where I sit and given the
fact that unanimous consent will be required for anything to come
forward from the committee, if there is not some redistribution
of power then there will not be any committee report.
There is only so much power one can redistribute by changing the
standing orders in any event. It will not be that there is some
big change we can make in this place by changing the standing
orders, but we can do a number of things both symbolically and
practically to give members of parliament, as individuals on
committees, collectively as committees, and individually and
collectively in the House of Commons, a bit more freedom, a bit
more distance from the influences which now often prevent them
from acting with the freedom many of their voters would like them
to exercise and which many members of parliament would like to
exercise themselves.
The first thing we need to do is to change our view of delay. It
seems to me we have been caught up in kind of a very modern
notion that everything should happen quickly and efficiently. One
of the things we have missed in all this is the importance of
delay.
Delay is not just obstruction. Delay is not just being
miserable or partisan. When something important is being done by
the government, delay is an important aspect of democracy so that
things can be dragged on in parliament, to use the pejorative.
Things drag on here until such time as the opposition, the media
and others can help Canadians to know what is going on here, what
the government is about to do, what the government is up to, so
that they can then respond and give some feedback. At a certain
point the opposition has to make judgments about whether the task
has been achieved or whether it is now overachieved and delay is
counterproductive.
All those kinds of judgments were operative when I got here in
many respects. They have been removed from this place. If
something is important, boom, we have time allocation within a
day or two. Then it is off to committee instead of letting the
debate go on, having the debate noticed by the media because it
is not always noticed right away, and playing a kind of
parliamentary chicken with public opinion. That has disappeared.
We have time allocation far too often and far too easily without
any thought being given to what it is doing to our parliamentary
culture.
On behalf of the NDP I will certainly be interested in a number
of ways in which we could restrict the use of time allocation or
make its use more beneficial to parliament. We could give the
Speaker more authority. We could have a system whereby time
allocation motions would have to be debated, as they were in the
past. We could have some special responsibility that the
government would have to exercise by having a minister explain
for 30 minutes, an hour or something why the government wanted to
move time allocation. There should be some price to be paid by
the government for use and particularly overuse of time
allocation.
By was of reaffirming the role of parliament and the role of
members of parliament, we need to restore the Chamber to its
proper place in the business of the nation. In recent days a
number of questions of privilege and points of order have been
raised having to do with the fact that so much takes place
outside the House, that the media are given special privileges in
terms of knowing about things before the House is notified,
before documents or legislation is revealed in the House.
We need to go back to a time when the House was used more often
for ministerial statements and was place where announcements were
made, where policy was announced.
1725
That happened in my parliamentary lifetime. It did not happen
enough. This is an old debate, but there was a time when
ministers made more ministerial statements than they do now and
the opposition was able to respond. The media and others came to
the House to find out what would happen on a particular issue,
for example, an announcement by the minister of external affairs.
I say that with due respect to my colleague on my left who is
now the leader of the Conservative Party. When he was the
minister of external affairs I remember him making these
ministerial statements in the House because I was his critic at
that time and I remember responding to them. That does not
happen very often any more and we need to have more of that.
That is related to another issue which perhaps the committee
cannot completely remedy on its own by just amending the standing
orders: the fact that this is one of the few parliaments in the
world where treaties are not ratified in any kind of mandatory or
regular way.
Canada is the only NATO country that had no debate on changes to
the NATO treaty which expanded NATO to include three other
countries. All other NATO countries, 14 out of 15, had debates
in their national parliaments, but in Canada it was by order in
council and that was it. That is not good enough.
We need to make this place a place where important decisions are
taken and ratified. These sorts of take note debates that we
have do not cut it. We will have one on the free trade agreement
of the Americas next week. We will debate it without the text.
We do not even know what we are debating. We could not get the
government to promise when there actually is an agreement, and
hopefully there will not be, that it will be debated and ratified
in the House. We need to restore the place of the House of
Commons in the life of the nation.
We also need to improve the standing committees of the House.
Here is where we can begin to chip away at the false culture of
confidence which the government and its members hide behind. They
were doing it the other day when they were giving explanations
for why they did not vote for the opposition day motion with
respect to agriculture.
I say, for heaven's sake, the McGrath committee recommended in
1985 that all language of confidence be taken out of the standing
orders because it used to be there with respect to opposition day
motions, and it was taken out. It was taken out 15 years ago.
Yet 15 years later we still have government members saying that
they would love to vote for a motion but they cannot because it
is a matter of confidence. That is procedural BS.
There is nothing in the standing orders that prohibits any
government member from voting for any opposition day motion. The
only thing that prevents them is the political culture which
exists within their own party and the political culture which
exists within the larger political culture. People do not want
to be blackballed. They do not want to put themselves in a
position of being disciplined or being set aside in terms of
career or whatever.
We could change the culture of confidence or the convention of
confidence, if we want to call it that. We could change it
tomorrow. If 25 members of the Liberal Party rose and voted
against the government on any given piece of legislation or
opposition day motion, as long as it was not a budget or a throne
speech debate, we would have the Prime Minister in here the next
day explaining parliamentary freedom.
He would be explaining about how it was not a motion of
confidence, how they were to move a motion of confidence later
that afternoon and how the bill that was defeated would have to
be revisited at another time or be redrafted. This happens in
other parliaments. It happened in this parliament years and
years ago. There was a very good article in the newspaper today
by Jack McLeod who pointed out that this used to happen with some
regularity a long time ago in this parliament.
1730
We need to return to the kind of culture where prime ministers
do not regard each and every jot or tittle and piece of
legislation as critical to their parliamentary or political egos.
The same goes for opposition leaders. If we do not do that we
will not be addressing what the Canadian people find inadequate
about this place.
We could start in committee. We could start by going back to
the recommendations in the McGrath committee and saying that when
people are appointed to committee they are appointed for the
duration of a session or perhaps the whole parliament.
Let us start with a session. They could not be removed by their
party whip no matter how they voted. No matter how smart or
stupid or independent or whatever they were, they could not be
removed. They would have the power to replace themselves if they
were absent, but there would be no more parliamentary goon
squads. There would be no more pulling all government members
off committees and putting in a bunch of people who do not know
what they are doing and are just doing what the parliamentary
secretary gave them the nod to do.
That brings me to another matter: taking parliamentary
secretaries off committees. That was recommended by the McGrath
committee. It was tried for a while and then dropped because
governments did not like it.
Another is non-partisan secret ballot election of chairs, not
just government members for chairs but opposition members. We
all know who are the good chairpersons in parliament. Why can we
not elect those people to chair our committees? Why can we not
elect those people to make committees work the way people want
committees to work, instead of having the chairmanship of
committees sometimes regarded as a perk or a step on the way up
the government ladder?
That is not to say we do not have good chairs of committees. I
see the member for Davenport, who has always been an excellent
chair, but I have been on committees with some real losers too,
real losers who should never have chaired a committee no matter
what kind of committee it was.
We could start with the committee process by giving individual
members more freedom from their whips and by electing chairs at
the beginning of the life of committees that have the respect of
members of the committees.
When committee reports come to the House we need to show more
respect for the work of the committees. I have seen far too many
unanimous reports of committees absolutely ignored by government.
One report that comes to mind, which has always been a special
irritant for me, was from the standing committee on transport
which considered the VIA rail cuts of January 15, 1990, and came
back with a unanimous recommendation to the House that it was a
wrong and terrible thing to do. The Conservative government of
the day, just so the Liberals do not think I spend all my time on
them, ignored that unanimous recommendation of the committee
headed by Mr. Pat Nowlan. I think I have said enough about
committees for now.
We need to look at revising the standing orders to reflect the
fact that we have five parties in the House. This is more of a
caretaking thing, but it has been a number of years and we still
have not done it.
For instance, we have a routine with respect to the first round
of speeches. The standing order says what the first three
speeches will be. That is there because when the standing order
was written there were three parties. We now have five parties
in parliament. Is it not about time we adjusted the standing
order so that it now says five speeches because there are five
parties? A parliament that is not capable of updating of its
standing orders is hardly worth the name.
There are a number of other things having to do with amendments
and subamendments on motions, having to do with the throne
speech, the budget, et cetera, which do not make any provisions
for the fourth and fifth parties to contribute by way of
amendment. These things have to do with updating the reality of
a five party parliament.
Perhaps we could so amend the standing orders that we would not
have to change them to reflect the number of parties. I am sure
there is language that would allow the standing orders to be
interpreted from parliament to parliament, without having to be
changed, to give equality to all parties in respect of the things
I have mentioned.
Those are just a few things. We will bring many more things to
the committee process. I am very hopeful this will be the
beginning of something that in retrospect will be regarded as a
bit of a breakthrough, but I also remain skeptical.
1735
I hope the government House leader will try to look at the issue
a little deeper than he did today in his remarks. Most of what
he had to say was directed toward making this place more
efficient, more modern and more convenient for members. He
talked about televising committees and that sort of thing.
We will look at that sort of thing, but the quality of democracy
does not ride on whether we televise committees. The quality of
democracy in this place rides on the quality of what we are
televising, not on the fact that we are televising it. Of course
it is a moot point whether the broadcasting of committees will
increase the quality of what goes on in them or whether it will
reproduce the kind of silliness we see here in question period
when people are looking for the clip.
Much damage has been done to democracy in the country by looking
for the ever diminishing clip on the national news. Do we want
to reproduce that in committee, or do we want to think very hard
about changing our committee structure and our committee culture
first and then maybe having something that would be more worth
broadcasting?
On a matter that is critical to our discussion here the
government House leader said he did not want to talk about the
matter of confidence. He did say he was open to other
suggestions, which is fair enough. Nothing he raised would in
any way call into question the way the confidence convention is
interpreted on that side of the House or, for that matter,
interpreted generally sometimes. He said it was a constitutional
question, so he did not want to get into it.
I do not think it is a constitutional question. The only thing
that is constitutional is that the government must have the
confidence of the House. That is a constitutional matter, which
is fair enough, but within that constitutional stipulation there
is all kinds of room for interpretation and all kinds of
precedent because ultimately, 99 times out of 100, the matter of
confidence is a political matter, not a constitutional matter. It
is a political matter that can be changed by political agreement
and political action. If this committee can do anything to
change that it will have done Canada a great service. That will
certainly be one of the things I will be looking for.
* * *
POINTS OF ORDER
ORAL QUESTION PERIOD
Hon. Hedy Fry (Secretary of State (Multiculturalism)(Status
of Women), Lib.): Mr. Speaker, today in question period I made
reference in my answer to an incident in Prince George, British
Columbia. I would like to clarify it because I had to leave the
House early and was not here for the discussion. May I have the
opportunity to do so?
The Deputy Speaker: Is that agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
Hon. Hedy Fry: I am responding to the point of order. In
British Columbia there have been incidents of hate crime,
including cross burnings. I know of this because I was contacted
immediately that these incidents occurred by the mayor of Prince
George.
In my position as Secretary of State for Multiculturalism I
funded the mayor to set up a task force right away. The
community was duly concerned and duly appalled at the incident
and demanded to take immediate action, so I funded the mayor to
hold a task force. The task force met and came out with some
remarkable and courageous recommendations which the mayor is
implementing.
What I am highlighting is that these incidents occur. In my
role as secretary of state I am often very astounded at the
rapidity with which municipalities and communities take action
against such things. It is my role to sometimes assist them with
resources. I did so, so I know very clearly and personally of the
incident in Prince George.
I was recently in Prince George, where I met with the task force
and congratulated the mayor and the people of Prince George for
taking immediate action on incidents that could happen in
communities anywhere in Canada.
1740
Right Hon. Joe Clark (Calgary Centre, PC): Mr. Speaker, I
rise on the same point of order. I heard the minister speak in
the House. She referred to crosses burning as we speak. Her
response did not address that question.
It would be in the interest of everyone, and it certainly would
respect the spirit of this parliamentary debate, if she simply
apologized and withdrew that inaccurate remark.
Hon. Hedy Fry: Mr. Speaker, I would be very pleased to
remove the piece, as we speak. Sometimes when we speak in the
House of Commons we put some of our phrases before and after.
However this was a recent incident. What I meant to say was
that as we speak things are happening around the world and in
Canada and in Prince George that are changing things. I would be
very pleased to withdraw the phrase as we speak and say recent.
The Deputy Speaker: I accept that withdrawal.
Miss Deborah Grey (Edmonton North, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, the secretary of state talks about making sure racism
does not happen. We appreciate that because it is a dreadful
thing.
What she said today was very clearly that they were burning
crosses in Prince George as we speak. She has given some sort of
half-baked withdrawal, but she slammed—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh.
The Deputy Speaker: I consider the matter closed
following the withdrawal by the minister. If it is on another
issue and another point of order, the hon. member for Provencher
may rise.
Mr. Vic Toews (Provencher, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, I rise on a new point of order arising out of the
comments the hon. member made.
The hon. member may well have withdrawn, and I am not clear
whether she did in fact withdraw, the comment that crosses are
now burning in Prince George. However the issue is not simply a
matter of withdrawing the words. It is a matter of apologizing
to the community because she slammed the entire community and
that needs to be withdrawn.
The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. I still consider the
matter closed. We all take each other's words as being
honourable. When one of our members withdraws a statement, as
was the case here, then I accept the withdrawal. I am prepared
to move on to another matter as of now.
* * *
MODERNIZATION OF HOUSE OF COMMONS PROCEDURE
The House resumed consideration of the motion.
Mr. Paul Szabo (Parmiamentary Secretary to Minister of Public
Works and Government Service, Lib.): Mr. Speaker,
we just heard from the hon. member for Winnipeg—Transcona.
Members will probably know him well because of his long service
to the House, and in terms of a thermometer of earned respect he
has certainly earned a great deal here.
He raised an issue about chairs of committees. I would like him
to know, and I think most members in this place would agree, that
all parliamentarians win when we have good, solid chairs in our
committees. I tend to agree with his assessment.
He also postulated that delay is an important aspect of
democracy. I agree with him there as well. Even though he is
quite right that at this point that it looks like a process of
fine tuning and tinkering with standing orders, with the hon.
member participating on the committee I am sure important things
can happen and I hope he will pursue them.
My question for the member has to do with the spirit. He
started his speech by saying we should not be going through a
process of tinkering. What he said we should instead be doing,
and he was spot on, is talking about the issue of redistribution
of power.
1745
I believe the member is absolutely correct. That is exactly
what is on the minds of opposition parliamentarians. They want
to redistribute power, because in our parliamentary system,
constitutional obligations, et cetera, the power is vested in a
majority government elected to govern. The opposition has a role
to play—and maybe the hon. member will comment—and the role of
the opposition, in my view, is to deliver blows that would
tenderize a turtle. I do not believe they have a mandate to
govern, yet the member is quite right, and I know where he is
coming from: redistribution of power is the issue.
If constitutionally a majority government is required to deliver
on a mandate, would it in fact be in the best interests of our
parliamentary system to structure its affairs in such a way that
a government would be pre-empted in any way from delivering on a
mandate, which it was democratically elected to do?
Mr. Bill Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, I am not trying to be
nasty about it, but if this is the sort of level of insight about
parliament on the government backbench, it is no wonder we do not
have the rebellion that we should have over there.
I was not talking about redistribution of power between
government and opposition, although I think there is room for
that. I was talking about redistribution of power between the
PMO and the cabinet, the cabinet and the caucus, the government
and its own backbenchers, the executive and the House of Commons.
If all the member heard was me talking about redistributing power
between the government and the opposition, I have to go back and
read my speech, or perhaps he should go back and read my speech,
because that is certainly not what I was concentrating on.
To return to what I said at the beginning, real parliamentary
reform has to do with redistributing power in a number of ways
around here. One of those ways is between government and the
opposition, because over the years much more power has come to
reside with the government as opposed to the opposition than used
to be the case. I am not asking for something that never was or
never could be. I am asking for something that used to be. I am
asking for a return to some balance, where the opposition has
much more power to hold the government to account than it now
does. I do not think that is a violation of any kind of
constitutional theory about government.
The government is accountable to parliament. When people go to
the polls they do not just elect a government; they elect a
parliament. It is out of parliament that governments come. It
is not just majority governments. The member said in his
question to me that we must have a majority government in order
to fulfil this constitutional mandate. No, we do not. We just
need to have a government that has the confidence of the House,
and that could be a minority government, a coalition government
or a number of different combinations, many of which would be
much more sensitive to and responsive to the opinions of the
opposition and the opinions of the government backbench than what
we now have.
We need a situation in which the government does not have as
much power to punish its own members and to override the
opposition, so that there is some need there for agreement and
co-operation. That way other points of view get into the mix and
they get into amendments that are accepted rather than rejected.
We get better legislation and better policy as a result.
Mr. Peter MacKay (Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, PC):
Mr. Speaker, I commend the hon. member, the House leader for the
New Democratic Party. He always brings much logic and common
sense to the debate. He is a long serving member of the House.
That is not to infer he is long in the tooth. He is well
respected by all who know him.
My question to the hon. member is with respect to the
devolution, if you will, of some powers, even to the Speaker on
occasion. I specifically refer to instances where omnibus bills
are put before the House of Commons, where legislation is mixed
and mashed together in an incoherent fashion, where members of
the opposition most times—and this is equally applicable to
members of the backbench—are forced to vote against a bill they
are predominantly in favour of or, similarly, to vote for
something they cannot reconcile.
1750
Would it be fair to suggest that there are occasions when the
Speaker might be empowered to intervene and to divide omnibus
bills? Similarly, are there occasions when the Speaker might
also be empowered to have greater discretion to turn down the use
of closure or time allocation where it is not properly being
exercised by the government, or to at least to call for a debate
where the government should be called upon to justify the use of
time allocation or the use of closure? I wonder if the hon.
member would have comments on those suggestions.
Mr. Bill Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, in regard to the last two
suggestions made with respect to dealing with time allocation and
giving the Chair more power, I did mention them fleetingly in my
remarks about time allocation. It is one of the things I said in
the debate. The government is very eager to give the Chair power
over what amendments would be votable at report stage, but not so
eager to give the Speaker power to hear motions of time
allocation which, in the judgment of the Chair, come too early or
before adequate debate has taken place.
The first question was on omnibus bills. This is probably an
occasion for me to give a brief history lesson, without wanting
to look too long in the tooth. Perhaps the Minister of Transport
will remember this, and so would the leader of the Conservative
Party. It was out of an omnibus bill that a first good wave of
parliamentary reform came, with the bell ringing incident in 1982
that was in response to an omnibus piece of energy legislation.
The Lefebvre committee was created.
Contrary to what the government House leader said earlier, the
Lefebvre committee came at the end of a parliament. The
government House leader said he thought that reform always came
at the beginning of a parliament, but there was actually quite a
bit of reform that came at the end of the parliament of 1980 to
1984 as a result of the committee that was struck out of the bell
ringing incident.
The Minister of Transport was on that committee and will perhaps
confirm to the government House leader what a wonderful job he
did at that time in helping other members come forward with
parliamentary reforms. Those reforms were built on by the
McGrath committee. The first report of the McGrath committee
basically said to adopt the Lefebvre committee recommendations.
Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern
Shore, NDP): Mr. Speaker, one of the problems Canadians have
is the appointment of people, mostly political hacks, to very
sensitive positions within various departments in Canada. Would
the member agree that some of those people who are appointed
should appear before the respective committee, with their CVs,
for a peer review, in order for members to see if they truly are
qualified for the jobs or are just political appointments?
Mr. Bill Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, that was something I did
not get to. Again, I hate to sound like a broken record, but if
hon. members go back to the McGrath committee report they will
see what we recommended for a lot of appointments, such as
appointments of House officers and appointments to the National
Energy Board at the time, to the CRTC, to the CBC and to the
boards of crown corporations, both for chair and for board
members in some instances. We recommended that they be brought
before the appropriate parliamentary committees, not just for
questioning but in some cases actually for ratification, if I
remember the recommendations correctly. This would be another
way for members of parliament to become more involved.
Right Hon. Joe Clark (Calgary Centre, PC): Mr. Speaker, I
intend to share my time, if I can speak quickly enough, with my
colleague and House leader, the member of parliament for
Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough.
Let me be clear. I think this institution is in very
significant trouble. It is appropriate that we should look at
the procedural changes that are proposed here. We will try that.
I think the government should know, and I believe I am speaking
on behalf of private members of many parties, that if this
process does not work there is a growing will in the House to
find some other way that will work, because the status quo in the
House of Commons is no longer adequate. It does not attract the
respect and the sense of legitimacy that the House of Commons
needs. It is not accepted by the people of the country.
Increasingly, it is not accepted here.
1755
I want to start with what may be seen by some as a revolutionary
principle. I believe that if parliament works better, government
can work better. Of course there is going to be an adversarial
relationship between the House of Commons and the government, and
the member for Winnipeg—Transcona was absolutely right. What
people vote for is a parliament. They do not necessarily vote
for a government. What we are here to do is to hold a government
accountable and also to ensure that the government best reflects
the interests and the sensitivities of the country. That can be
done through a strong parliament.
I hope that there will be some inspiration taken from the work
of the McGrath committee by the members of the committee here. I
want to speak for just a moment about legitimacy.
[Translation]
I think the success or failure of democratic systems depends on
the public's willingness to support or accept decisions made in
the name of democracy. Canadians are prepared to make difficult
decisions, but they want to shape them. To do so, they must have
confidence in their leaders.
Just as we need wealth in order to prosper, we need confidence
to govern. These days, both are lacking. Our objective in these
discussions must be to find the means to rebuild confidence in
public institutions, to revive a feeling of legitimacy that will
mobilize Canadians.
[English]
That is for three reasons. First, at the end of the day, the
House of Commons is our most important institution. It has power
over the courts, over cabinets and over constitutions. Let me in
passing dismiss the notion that there is something
unconstitutional about dealing with questions of confidence on
the floor of the House. Second, this is the only Canadian
institution to which each citizen in each corner of Canada feels
connected. Third, the House of Commons may be the last existing
pan-Canadian institution. More than ever, this diverse, blessed
and difficult community needs institutions it can respect and
hold in common and we in this House are losing that capacity now.
I believe the House is seriously broken and I want to make the
case that this is no government's fault. Perhaps the best way I
could do that is to identify three mistakes that were made, of
which I was part, at least three, and there were no doubt many
more. The most important, I think, had to do with the change
with regard to the control of estimates. Last night we sat
through a system where, in the twinkling of an eye, we approved
the spending of billions of dollars. That should not happen that
easily. That should not happen that automatically.
I was part of a parliament, an adviser to a leader of a party
who, in the name of efficiency, changed the rules of control by
Committee of the Whole. That was a mistake. We should recognize
that it was a mistake. We should not consider that because that
is the status quo now, we are somehow bound to accept it. We
have to go back to some control of spending or parliament will
never have any purpose. At the end of the day, if we do not have
the power to control spending, we have power over nothing at all.
Second, to come to a point raised by my colleague from
Winnipeg—Transcona, I was a member of a government—and we in
that government were wrong—that changed a decision we had
earlier taken and reinstated parliamentary secretaries to
committees. They should not be there. They threaten the
independence of the committee. The McGrath committee report,
which we briefly accepted at the time, was right.
I make this point not because I like to admit mistakes, but
because I think that if we are going to get anywhere in the
debate we have to recognize that the present state of the House
is not the fault of any one party. It is a collective fault and
the repair will come only if there is a collective will to try to
change the House.
When I was first sitting in the galleries and watching the
House, sitting right down about here were a couple a members of a
party that I think was then called the CCF. They used their
power with respect to divorce bills to deny unanimous consent to
the House of Commons to force a change in the law of divorce. It
was too sensitive for governments to deal with as a matter of
initiative, but those two members of parliament at the time, Mr.
William Peters and Mr. Frank Howard, used that power, which no
member of parliament now has, to deny unanimous consent on
individual members and to force a change in the law of Canada.
Did that incapacitate the Government of Canada? No. Did it
force it to respond to public current attitudes of the country?
Yes. What is parliament to do? It should be to force
governments to pay attention to where the people are.
1800
We have made mistakes in the past. We have to recognize that if
we are going to make this institution relevant. We have to be
prepared to admit those mistakes and make very fundamental
changes.
During my participation in the debate to the throne speech, I
outlined a way that I would deal with what I believed was one of
the most major of the recent failures of this parliament. It had
to do with committee of the whole House and control of government
spending.
My own view as to how we could do that may not work but I would
like it looked at. I would empower the Leader of Her Majesty's
Loyal Opposition to choose two departments a year. Their
estimates would be considered without any time limit and without
let or hindrance. There would not be any government spending
approved until every member of parliament had approved the
estimates of those two departments. It would be done in
committee of the whole House. It would be understood that the
choice by the Leader of the Opposition would not be made until
the day before the examination began so that every department
would have to prepare, assuming that it would be examined.
I believe that would work. If it would not work in committee of
the whole House, I believe some variant that would allow a
committee of supply to sit in an alternate Chamber would work.
We have to admit that four decades ago we made a mistake and
restore to the House some capacity for control of spending.
I want to speak very quickly on a matter which my colleagues
would make clear I speak only for myself. It involves a quite
significant change in the relationship between government and the
House of Commons.
It is time to challenge a central assumption about the House of
Commons, namely the assumption that the power to initiate
legislation should rest almost exclusively with cabinet and that
the principal role of the rest of parliament is simply to hold
cabinet accountable. In practical terms that means that cabinet
governs and the rest of parliament simply approves or
disapproves.
Cabinet is at the centre of the decisions and the rest of
parliament is at the margins, whether as members of a government
caucus who can often change the details of a proposal but rarely
change its substance, or as members of an opposition party whose
amendments or criticisms can sometimes, but not very often, bring
a change. We do not have parliamentary government. We have
cabinet government in a parliamentary system. We have to make
some very significant moves away from that. One way would be
through more free votes.
On the question of cabinet government, let me quote from a
recent article by Eric Kierans, a distinguished former member of
the House and a former member of the Trudeau government. He was
commenting on events 30 years ago, but current today. He said:
Canada today is run by the Prime Minister's Office and Privy
Council Office, whose mandarins instruct the elected members as
to what they should do and say, and what opinions they must
support.
The notion that the prime minister is primus inter pares—first
among equals—which appears in every textbook on political
science, has become a lame joke. The prime minister has no
equals, nor any who can remotely aspire to be equal except by
taking over the job.
The position is more like a president than a prime minister, but
within a system not designed for such overwhelming centralized
control, and in a regionalized nation where such control is not
merely awkward, but dangerous to the public weal.
So spoke Eric Kierans. He is absolutely right. We have to take
account of the extraordinary dangerous power that any prime
minister, whether a prime minister from Shawinigan or a prime
minister from Calgary Centre, holds. That simply has to be
changed if this system is going to be valid again.
I would ask the House to consider a concept. Let us distinguish
between two broad categories of the policy questions the House of
Commons considers. One set involves issues which are without
question life and death issues to a modern nation in a
competitive world and where a government must be able to act
quickly and decisively. Those would include economic and fiscal
policy, trade policy, federal-provincial-territorial relations,
basic foreign policy, some legal matters and some others. The
list would have to be drawn very carefully. An accountable
government responsible to parliament should be the principal
source and author of policy on those questions.
However there is a second category of issues which, while
unquestionably important, are not at the core of a government's
ability to lead and protect the nation. Moreover, in some of
these fields more imaginative and more appropriate policy may
come from sources outside government. That could be the case,
for example, with issues relating to Indian affairs, the
environment, the fishery, agriculture and to other policy fields.
In those cases a principal source and author of policy should be
an all-party committee of the House of Commons empowered to work
directly with public servants and to call upon the best advice of
the community.
Indeed a process like that may yield better and more pertinent
legislation than would a government which regards those issues as
simply secondary to its mandate.
1805
In effect we already distinguish between issues which are more
important to a government and issues which are less. In lower
priority ministries, if good ideas come forward from the public
servants of parliament they are more likely to be shunted aside
in the privacy of the Prime Minister's office. Moreover, as I
know from experience, governments fall on large issues like
budgets, not on more ordinary questions. So we already
distinguish between categories of issues.
This proposal would make much better use of the talent and
experience of the men and women chosen by their neighbours to
serve in the House of Commons. We are wasting that talent and
experience today, and we have been for some time. In my
consistent experience in the House of Commons in government and
in opposition, any senior official in Ottawa has more influence
over public policy than any elected member of parliament who is
not in cabinet. That is wrong in our system. There has to be
some very basic reforms undertaken if we are going to change that
system.
I do not think that breaks the traditions of the application of
modern parliamentary democracy to a modern society. Those are
the sorts of things we have to look at.
Let me go to more specific matters. I am conscious of my time
and do not want to intrude too much on my colleague.
I take the distinction made by my colleague from
Winnipeg—Transcona. We are talking about reform here if we are
talking about anything sensible, but modernization is also
allowable. We should start by giving consideration for example
to petitions that come by e-mail. The standing order requiring
25 signatures on a petition should be abandoned. There is no
reason to be that exclusive. There is no reason why all motions
on private members' and supply days should not be votable. What
is the House about if we are not going to have the opportunity to
vote?
There is no question that we need a stronger cadre of law with
respect to the auditor general, the privacy commissioner, the
information commissioner and the language commissioner. They
should all have the status of being permanent witnesses to all
committees and should be entitled to automatically comment on
items of business before committees.
To go back to a matter raised a moment ago, the Speaker should
have the power to refuse a closure motion and time allocation
motions when the Speaker is of the opinion that the rights of a
minority are being infringed upon. That is done in the United
Kingdom. There is no reason why it cannot be done here. If we
are interested in following the British example, let us follow
the good examples that would empower parliament more than is the
case now.
I would like to see more elections in the House. You, sir, as
Deputy Speaker, should be elected. Other presiding officers
should be elected in the same way that Mr. Speaker is elected.
There are a range of other specific changes that have to be
undertaken. As someone who has been in government and who has
been in opposition, as the only member on the opposition's side
of the House who has been a Prime Minister and who has sat in the
cabinet of Canada, I believe the Government of Canada has nothing
to fear from the Parliament of Canada. Members who sit in
cabinet have nothing to fear from the members of parliament who
do not sit in cabinet.
If we respect the fundamental rights of individual members of
parliament and if we shake our rules to reflect that respect, we
will not only have a government what could command more
legitimacy, that would be more in tune with the concerns of the
people in the country, we will have a parliament that will draw
out the better natures, not the darker natures, of the members of
parliament here.
Mr. Myron Thompson (Wild Rose, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, I appreciated the message I just heard. In 1993, when I
was elected and came here for the first time, I knew things just
were not right. After a couple of years I realized just how
serious an effect the situation was having on good governance in
the country.
I certainly concur with everything the hon. member has just
indicated. For the life of me I cannot understand why, for
example, on 74 occasions with Bill C-68 there were regulations
and changes made by order in council. Was that what order in
council was all about, to make off the cuff changes whenever it
felt like it? Was there not a better purpose for that kind of
situation to exist?
Is judicial activism a result of the way this place has been
operating over the years or did it come about by other reasons?
1810
He talked about free votes. I would like to hear his comments
on referendum, one of the most effective measures used in many
democratic countries in the world. I would also like him to
relate just a little more on free votes. I cannot for the life
of me understand why a person who is elected to this place would
stand in tears and vote against hepatitis C victims, as I saw in
this place. What a disgrace to have to do that. I know they did
not want to that.
I hope the hon. member takes no offence, but having been a
conservative all my life and being part of the organization that
helped elect Brian Mulroney in 1984, surely some of these things
were beginning to become obvious. After nine years, why was
something not done about it?
Right Hon. Joe Clark: Mr. Speaker, I could take partisan
offence to the question, but I will not because it is a very good
question. Part of the reason is, when we come to government we
put on the clothes of government. Perhaps one of the
perspectives I can bring to the House of Commons is as someone
who has served in both government and in opposition, and has had
an opportunity to look back on the attitudes that we bring in.
We feared free votes too much as a government. This government
fears free votes too much. Free votes, in my judgment, among
other things, impose an obligation upon individual members to act
responsibly. My sense of the House is that if we treat members
as being irresponsible they will act irresponsibly. My sense
also is that if we treat members responsibly they will respond in
a positive way. The attitude that we brought in, that
governments bring in, fundamentally has to change.
I will say in our defence, we introduced the McGrath Committee.
We undertook attempts to try to change things at the time. We
also made significant mistakes. Unless this process begun today
is prepared to take a look at root and branch changes, it will
make another serious mistake. To quote the leader of the hon.
member's party earlier today in the debate, what we will see is a
continuing slide of public opinion with respect to this
institution.
Canadians respect parliament less now than they did before. That
is because this parliament has less power than it used to have or
than it does in the textbooks that we use to teach Canadians. We
have to change that.
Mr. Paul Szabo (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Public
Works and Government Services, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I
could the right hon. member briefly comment again on the aspect
of redistribution of power and maybe try to bring some
specificity or focus to the elements of power, which the member
for Winnipeg—Transcona and he talked about, that would make
these changes he is advocating.
Right Hon. Joe Clark: Mr. Speaker, first, there should be
more free votes. That would provide more power to individual
members of parliament.
Second, and a more radical idea, we should look very seriously
at the idea of empowering standing committees in some fields with
direct access to public service and professional advice so they
can recommend policy on a much more regular basis in a category
of issues that are not life and death issues to the government.
That would give significantly more power.
Third, we cannot continue situations where, not to touch a raw
nerve, an ethics counsellor does not report to this whole House.
Officers of parliament should report to the whole parliament.
There is a range of areas in which the power of parliament, as a
practical matter, could be increased without threatening the
capacity of the government to establish its mandate on the
central issues for which it was elected.
Mr. Peter MacKay (Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, PC):
Mr. Speaker, I must say it is an intimidating task to follow the
right hon. member for Calgary Centre. The tone he has set, his
wisdom and the wisdom of other members that have been brought
forward is very encouraging, particularly the commentary with
respect to the recognition that all previous parliaments must
shoulder the blame and responsibility for where we are today.
Both good and bad changes have come about as part of the
evolution of parliament. That is natural. We are a parliament
that was borne out of the Westminster model. We have much that
we can learn from the evolution that has occurred there, as well
as in other models.
1815
We all know that cynicism exists in some sectors, particularly
among Canadians generally but also among many members of
parliament, about the legitimacy of this exercise. As a
committee, of which I will be a member, we will have to be
mindful of that cynicism and produce good results.
We are off to a good start in terms of this debate. I
congratulate the hon. House leader for the governing party for
initiating this, for giving us this opportunity and for
indicating that there could be more. That may very well come to
pass.
This is a very important time because Canadians have begun to
question not only the effectiveness of parliament but its
relevance as well. It is a very serious condemnation of what we
are here to do, which is to represent Canadians.
At the outset I want to indicate and put a caveat on some of the
ideas that I will be putting before the House. When we go into
this committee, it is to be understood that we are to improve
upon, to hear from one another and to modify ideas that may be
brought to the forefront.
Canada is struggling with this process of modernization, or
reform. We are looking for ways to engage Canadians. One way we
can do that, and one part and parcel step in the right direction,
is to modernize parliament in terms of our use of technology.
The hon. member for Winnipeg South has a great interest in this
issue.
The hon. member for Calgary Centre referred to the filing of
petitions through e-mail as a way in which we could engage
Canadians in a full and open fashion.
Electronic records of the House should contain hyperlinks to
those documents cited that are electronically available. We
should try to increase this access if we are to engage Canadians
and inform them about the important work that is done by their
parliament. This would also help improve accountability.
Canadians would be informed and they could observe and critique,
in an open fashion, the workings of parliament. Surely this
would improve upon the relevancy, upon their perception and upon
the real importance that is placed on the work that is done.
There are some who think that parliamentarians themselves are
losing their ability to be instruments of change. I do not
believe that. I still believe in my heart of hearts that the
originality and innovation that individuals could bring to
parliament in their efforts and attempts to represent their
constituents in an effective way can be enhanced and rewarding.
We have seen occasions where individual members have done yeoman
service, in terms of bringing forward a private member's bill,
and speaking out on occasion on an issue that may put them
offside with their government or within their own parties, and it
becomes a huge issue of consternation. Other members have spoken
to the issue of how bad behaviour is sometimes put under the
spotlight and, therefore, there is perhaps too much emphasis
put on dissent. Of all the things that happen in the House of
Commons, dissent should not be something that is foreign or
necessarily frowned upon.
An hon. member: Encouraged.
Mr. Peter MacKay: The hon. member says encouraged and I
agree with that.
When we talk about free votes and, the suggestion many have put
forward, of having all private members' business made votable,
these could be achieved by releasing some of the whipping tactics
that are brought to bear on members by party whips. The
government could also abandon its practice of putting confidence
votes behind issues that really do not have to be confidence
votes. Members should be allowed freer expression on issues that
carry particularly moral implications for not only those members
but for their constituents.
1820
If we are to empower members to have the ability to command this
respect, we have to give them actual practical access to those
levers. If we are to energize and invigorate parliament, we have
to take practical steps in that direction. I would suggest that
there will be a number of very positive and innovative
suggestions that will come forward not only in this debate but in
the committee as well.
I will talk very briefly about the committee itself. There is
some scepticism because it is comprised strictly of House
officers in this instance and it will soon become known as the
Kilger committee. Mr. Speaker, you will be presiding over it. We
are to encourage the ideas, the House leader has expressed that
spirit, and the inclusion of members in this process. The
committee, I would suggest, if it is to have legitimacy, should
be a reflection of all members and all parties.
The idea of wiring this place would allow greater public access.
House records that should be in the public forum would certainly
be more available if they were on the Internet at all times. We
should be wiring to the max.
Another clear example would be the ability to have Debates
and committee proceedings made more readily available. The
technology is there. It is a costly exercise but it is one that
would bear fruit long into the future. We are slipping behind in
the area of technology and the use that we make of it in
parliament. We should be a shining example for other countries
and other companies that are doing great things. We could learn
from the technological advances that are being made in our
country and in Silicon Valley not far from here. We have
businesses that are competing in the highest leagues of the world
and we should be engaging them to help us to make greater use of
technology.
I have some specific recommendations I want to put on
record. I know we will have a chance in committee to delve into
them in more detail. One recommendation would be that we abolish
the limit of four written questions per member. We should be
allowed a greater number of questions on the order paper.
Another recommendation would be to put time limits back in place
for the government to respond to those questions. It should be
required to respond within a relatively short time, 15 or 30
days. It should not be the prolonged, dragged out affair that we
have seen this exercise slide into.
The Speaker himself, as indicated earlier, should be given more
powers on occasion to refuse closure motions or time allocation.
The Speaker should also have the ability to ensure that the
minority rights of members of parliament are being protected.
I agree with the comments made earlier that the Deputy Speaker
should be elected by all members of the House of Commons, as
should, on many occasions, chairmen of committees. Perhaps we
should not elect all chairmen, but it is an exercise we could
enter into gradually. Having chairmen elected would be a greater
reflection of the neutrality and the non-partisanship of the
committee, which is very much the spirit that should exist in the
committee, away from the carnival atmosphere that we have seen
question period become.
Another issue that I fully believe has to be explored is the
issue of a code of conduct for members of parliament. It is a
broad issue in and of itself, but if we are to expect a high
standard, there are occasions where we will have to call to task
bad behaviour and, in some instances, to have some teeth to
punish. For example, if a member is suspended, and it is a rare
occasion that it happens, their salary should be suspended to
show that there is some discipline and some deterrent for bad
behaviour.
There are many other examples that would enhance the credibility
of parliamentarians. We should have an ethics committee. If we
are to have an ethics counsellor, we should have a sitting
committee with an elected chair that would examine breaches of a
code of conduct.
With respect to officers of the House, who are there to serve
all parliamentarians and to act on behalf of Canadians, such as
the auditor general, the privacy commissioner, the information
commissioner, the language commissioner, the ethics counsellor,
they should all have a permanent status as witnesses on
committees. They should be automatically commanded to appear
before committees to give testimony on their important findings
and deliberations.
1825
With respect to witnesses on committees, we should consider
having all witnesses give sworn testimony or affirm when they
come before a committee. This would add greater relevancy and
greater importance. It would stress the need for honesty,
openness and integrity when witnesses come before a committee,
not unlike what we see in the courts across the country.
Perhaps there are occasions when we should look at expanding the
hours in which we sit. It was not uncommon in days gone by that
the House of Commons would sit late into the night. We have done
so in emergency situations. When we have crises in agriculture
such as the ongoing potato wart epidemic in Prince Edward Island,
as small as it is in terms of the actual epidemic but in terms of
the ramifications which are causing such problems for those
farmers, we should be able to sit late into the night if
necessary to deliberate and talk about solutions.
There are many ways that we can improve upon the framework that
parliament has embraced and come to practise in its important
deliberations. We have to improve upon the framework that is
there and build upon the foundation that has been laid down. We
can do so in a non-partisan way.
The spirit exists and the time is right. I look forward to
participating in the committee work. I will do my best on behalf
of the members of my party and all members to bring original and
honest ideas to this process.
Mr. Paul Szabo (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of
Public Works and Government Services, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I
thank the member for his input into the debate. He is quite
right in terms of the House leaders again taking the lead role. I
am a backbencher and I am here because now is my chance to put my
two cents in on some issues that are important to me.
If I had to pick one, it would be private members' business. The
member talked about being agents of change. Private members'
business seems to be an opportunity lost. Quite frankly it has
been since 1993, since I have been here.
The House was once seized with an issue where the resources
available to private members were tremendously strained because
so many members were bringing in bills. They were being drafted,
researched and all the other things but were never tabled, even
at first reading.
I wonder why we did not resolve that effectively. No matter how
expeditiously we bring in a bill after it has been selected, we
could not possibly get 10 bills through. Why do we allow members
to put 10 bills on the order paper when it is not possible to get
them through? Why can members reserve a subject matter and
restrict the opportunity of another member who has the same kind
of idea but cannot bring it forward because someone got it in the
day before? Why is it that we do not have questions and comments
on private members' debate?
When I am on duty just before the late show, why do I have to
sit here and listen to designated people speak when somebody may
have twigged on something that I want to know more about, or they
may have said something that is quite frankly outrageous and I
want to say so?
If he wants to be an agent of change, I hope he gives us the
undertaking right now that when he goes to the committee of House
leaders he will in fact be an agent of change himself. Maybe he
will pick up the ball for all of us on private members' business
and get it out of the damned committee over there.
We should make sure we have a process that would allow ordinary
backbench members of parliament to feel that their ideas have a
fair and equitable opportunity to come forward, even it means
that I will come forward during the first hour to make my little
speech. I will stand here and take questions and answers from my
colleagues before any other debate, and we will have a quick vote
on whether members want to proceed any further with it. Then it
becomes the decision of this place, not of a committee.
Mr. Peter MacKay: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate very much the
question and the opportunity to respond. I fully agree that
first and foremost it sends the wrong signal that it is again the
House leaders who are meeting in private to perhaps have these
deliberations and discussions.
As a precursor to that, we are getting an opportunity to hear
from all members. I appreciate what he said about the importance
of private members' business. I fully agree that private
members' hour should also be subject to questions and comments.
If we have to expand that time to two hours, we should make
greater use of unanimous consent to do so on occasion.
We should make greater use of the opportunity, when a member
comes forward with an idea, to engage other members to find out,
as he has said, if the idea should go further.
1830
Surely if a person has the inner fortitude, and has taken the
time to draft a bill or motion and put it forward for selection
and deliberation, they should be able to stand on their hind legs
and defend it. I have no difficulty with that suggestion
whatsoever.
I hope the matter of private members' bills will be an area of
deliberation in the committee that will get a very broad shrift
and thorough examination as to how we can improve it, how we can
engage more members and how we can bring more subject matter
forward. I disagree that there should be any delineation of
property over good ideas. If we can expand the ability of
members to put ideas forward then we should do everything in our
power to do so.
Mr. Myron Thompson (Wild Rose, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, in 1993 the government of the day was the hon. member's
party. About six months, give or take, before the election the
Conservative government made the decision to open the borders to
barley sales and to have an open continental barley market. It
was an excellent decision. Farmers benefited like they had never
benefited before. Profits were good and everyone was happy. The
wheat board even had record sales because it had decided there
was competition going on and that it had better get off its duff
and get to work. It was a great decision.
Not long after the election, the market was closed. I asked the
leader of the hon. member's party if he could remember and relate
to me why the policy was discontinued. What do we need to do to
keep good things going for Canadians? Why was the mechanism so
easy to shut down and why, seven or eight years later, am I still
not able to find out why? Why was it shut down? I do not know.
Mr. Peter MacKay: Mr. Speaker, I will not be able to
respond off the cuff. I will certainly look into the matter and
try to find an answer for the hon. member. He deserves an
answer.
Often policy decisions are made by incoming governments. I am
not saying that is what happened here, but we all know the
position that was taken on the issue, for example, of free trade
by the current government with respect to the efforts of the
Mulroney administration to bring that policy forward.
Mr. Myron Thompson: But should we be able to provide
answers?
Mr. Peter MacKay: Mr. Speaker, by all means, information
should be available. I will undertake to find out what happened
in that instance since it was the Progressive Conservative
government of the day that put the policy in place. I will do my
best to get back to the hon. member as quickly as possible.
The Deputy Speaker: Before resuming debate I will inform
the House that all members now have 10 minutes maximum for their
speeches, subject to a five minute question and comment period.
Mr. Reg Alcock (Winnipeg South, Lib.): Mr. Speaker,
trying to fit my thoughts into 10 minutes will be a bit of a
trick, so I hope members in the ensuing five minutes will help me
clarify my thinking with some of their questions.
The House is everything that members in the debate today have
said it is. It is an enormously important place in the life of
the country and in the lives of Canadians. It is the place where
citizens have a voice. It is the place where rights are decided
and arbitrated. It is the place where power is balanced and
mitigated. It is the place where authority is exercised on
behalf of all Canadians.
I am quite excited about the debate and quite pleased we are
headed down this road. Frankly, I like the device that has been
chosen. I want to thank all House leaders for the vehicle they
have created because I have a lot of respect for them. They have
a lot of knowledge about this place and they are applying
themselves to the task. I hope we will have opportunities for
members to meet with the committee and to present ideas that are
hard to fit into a 10 minute speech.
I will step back a bit from the specifics of some of the rule
changes that have been discussed today. I will try to position
the debate in a somewhat different context.
A friend recommended I spend time preparing for the debate by
reading the annotated rules of the House. They are a fascinating
read. Rules are normally not terribly interesting to read.
1835
When the rules that govern this Chamber were first created in
1867 and they were trying to figure out how they worked, they
brought in a clause that existed for a long time which said that
if they did not have a rule to cover something then the rules of
the mother of parliaments would apply.
As we read this we also see the evolution of our society. The
Chamber is a reflection of what we are as Canadians. The rules
were written before my province, Manitoba, existed as a province
and had representation in the House, and before Alberta and
Saskatchewan were formally provinces. The rules existed before
the advent of the automobile, the airplane or the telephone, and
certainly before the fax machine and the Internet.
Each time changes in the external community put pressure on this
place and made changes to the environment that the citizens we
represent live in, the House had to adapt. It has adapted, and
tracing that adaptation is an interesting read.
The question I raise today, though, is whether we are at a point
in time on which we will look back in 20 or 30 years and say it
was a far more revolutionary period than perhaps we ever
realized.
Canadians have some advantages. Some of the foundational
research on communications, communication theory and
communication policy has come out of the work of Canadians. One
of my favourites was an economist by the name of Harold A. Innis
who, during the last century, started writing about the economy
of the country and was drawn into the question of the power of
communication.
Innis wrote a book called The Bias of Communication. He
delivered a lecture in 1947 to the Royal Society of Canada
regarding his research. He started the lecture by saying:
I have attempted to suggest that western civilization has been
profoundly influenced by communication and that marked changes in
communications have had important implications.
What Harold Innis was saying, if I can translate it to the year
2001, is that the Internet changes everything. His research
dated to the early days of clay and cuneiform and traced how, as
successive civilizations acquired the ability to assemble
information and extract knowledge from it, the ruling classes
were able to monopolize the information. Then a new technology
would come along and disturb the system and a new power structure
or a new elite would emerge.
Historically these things have happened in dramatic fashion
through wars and revolutions, but also in other ways. The rise
of the modern democracy was built largely around the printing
press and the availability of information, which has enabled
people to develop the intellectual tools and knowledge necessary
to participate in the management of their country.
When we were concerned in the 1970s about dictatorships in
Central and South America, there was a fellow who said to send
them books instead of guns because an educated populace demands a
democratic solution.
Why are we here today feeling that this instrument of democracy
no longer functions, when Canada has an educated populace?
Canadians are literate, well read and engaged with their
government. Why are we concerned about a loss of credibility of
this place?
I will give another reference, an American reference. It is
from a fellow by the name of Jerry Mechling who said the same
concern is being raised in democracies around the world. It is
not just a Canadian problem. The issue arises throughout the
industrialized world where democracies exist. By the way, Jerry
Mechling will be speaking in Ottawa next Wednesday night. Here
is how he begins one of his pieces on the changes brought about
by communications:
We are entering a period of historical change comparable to the
one that inspired Hamilton, Madison and Jay to pen The
Federalist Papers in the late 1780s. Their task was to define
a constitutional vision for a new kind of political community: a
federal democratic republic. The challenge for leaders today is
to define an economic, social and political vision for a new kind
of society, a knowledge based society, and leadership will be
crucial.
1840
I have thought about that a lot. I certainly support a lot of
the suggestions people have made here about the changes that
could be made to the rules to shift the power balance between the
executive and the House. I agree with the leader of the
Conservative Party when he says that when parliament works well
government works well. Accountability is an important part of
the functioning of any good organization.
I also agree with the analysis that says authority has over time
moved to the executive. However I will put that in context.
There is a tendency here to personalize that, to say it was
something the current Prime Minister or the past Prime Minister
did, or that it was part of some invidious plan on the part of
somebody. I do not believe that is true at all.
I offer this analysis. The pace of change in society has been
accelerating throughout the lifetime of mankind but never as
rapidly as in the last few decades. Bill Gates, in his recent
book, talks about this decade as the decade of velocity. The
most important challenge in our society is trying to manage the
rate of change and deal with the incredible decisions placed upon
us not just as a government but as a society.
If we look at what has happened with large organizations, many
large companies that were in existence a decade or two ago no
longer exist today. A number of the largest companies in the
world today did not exist in 1980. The rate of change is
enormous. One response to the incredible velocity in the
external community has been for governments to remove
decision-making from the floor of the House. They have done so
not for malicious reasons but to facilitate decisions and serve
citizens because this place moves too slowly.
When I was director of child welfare in Manitoba, we wrote
clauses enabling regulation because it was the most efficient way
to get changes to reflect the changing needs of our citizens. I
am not saying it was the best solution, but it was the only
solution available. The shift in power from the House to the
executive has been, in most cases, an attempt to meet the
challenge imposed by those whom we serve.
The challenge is not to simply revert to an earlier stage. It
is to figure out how this place can reform so that it moves in
pace with the rest of society. In achieving this reform,
therefore, the critical issues are those of electronic services,
of getting information out earlier and of more efficiently and
effectively interacting with the community we serve.
The rule changes being debated here are also important and they
are like the rule changes we find in the annotated history. They
need to be done. The process is a competent one and I am
delighted that it runs by consensus. However the bigger change,
the one we must all get our minds around, is how to make this
place work at the same speed at which our citizens move. How do
we make this place respond to the pace of life in the communities
we represent?
Mr. Dennis Mills (Toronto—Danforth, Lib.): Mr. Speaker,
just a short congratulations to you on your appointment to chair
the committee. In time, when you look back on your political
legacy, your chairing of this committee has the potential to be a
defining moment for you.
I wish we could have another hour of the member for Winnipeg
South here tonight because he has spent thousands of hours
working on the linkage of electronic government, which is where
we as a service agency touch the general public. It is critical
in this parliamentary reform that the service to the public, the
linkage of what we do here, is transmitted to the people on the
street, our constituents, from coast to coast. Right now they
ask us as MPs to do things. It seems we never give them the
answers they want, or that we give them the answers six weeks,
two months or a year later.
I have a question for the member for Winnipeg South, who has
touched on a critical issue here, electronic government. How
does he envisage electronic government enhancing service to the
public? That ultimately is what parliamentary reform is all
about, and what ultimately will earn respect for the service we
are supposed to provide in the House.
1845
Mr. Reg Alcock: Mr. Speaker, if I could have leave to
have the rest of the week we could really get into this.
The problem with the very important question the member has
asked, and one which I thank him for, is that we get caught up in
the tools: the electronics, the fancy colours and the fancy
websites. However, the tools are not the issue. The tools are
important to get information.
One of the things this does really well is it acts as a huge
values clarification exercise for the nation where I, as a
westerner dealing with the economy and interests of Winnipeg,
have to confront the issue of bilingualism, which is not
something that is driven as hard in my community as it is here,
or the cod fishery. Together we come and forge through the
exercises that go on in this incredibly wonderful country called
Canada. We are really skilful at that.
How do we maintain that but get this beast moving at the same
pace as the community it has to serve? The community goes around
it because it cannot respond fast enough. That is why we have
lost authority and our debates have become trivial. They have
become liar-liar kind of debates. What does that do for anybody?
The debates need to be substantive and real debates about the
conditions that are affecting the people in our communities. We
are not there because they pass us by all the time. I will try
to give a more detailed answer in a presentation to the
committee, which I will be allowed to do.
Mr. Grant McNally (Dewdney—Alouette, Canadian Alliance):
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to participate in the debate on
parliamentary reform.
As members of the Alliance, and previously as members of the
Reform Party, parliamentary reform is something for which we have
become known. We are glad to see that we are having a debate in
the House this evening on such an important topic. It is of
course something that has been near and dear to our hearts for a
very long time.
We hope that the debate and the committee that has been struck
thinks big and has the vision and courage to move ahead in the
face of those who would argue to maintain the status quo. We
must move forward together because where we will end up will be a
better place than from where we started.
In any debate that we have, in any consideration of moving
forward on any topic, we need to have a clear understanding of
why we need to move forward.
In terms of parliamentary reform, the public, those to whom we
are responsible and accountable, are telling us that they want to
see change in this place. It is incumbent upon us as leaders of
this nation to move forward and to show, with our actions, that
we are willing to listen and that we are willing to do more than
simply have a debate one day in parliament and then move ahead as
though nothing had happened. I am encouraged by this committee
and this opportunity to explore these very important issues
because the time is right to move forward.
It is interesting that one of the only constants that we will
experience in our lives is change. What is now will never be
again and we will be moving continually forward.
Generally speaking, there seems to be two attitudes that people
have toward change. The first one, which is the more natural
inclination, is to resist change because change takes us down a
new path to somewhere where we are perhaps a little uncertain as
to where we will arrive. It is understandable that some people
and, I would argue, many people are resistant to change.
We could have a vision of where we are going. We could bring
people along to understand that there is a compelling reason to
move forward to a new destination, to a better place. We could
take into consideration people's honest concerns about making
those changes. We could have a clear airing of being able to
present ideas that are holding others back from wanting to go
forward with change. I think we could do those things.
1850
We could go down that road and end up in a better place.
Unfortunately there will be no rest for those who are involved in
change, because once we get to the better place there will be
others who will suggest further change.
Change is constant. We must grapple with that concept and
understand that when we are talking about parliamentary reform
the initiatives that we may move forward on will not be the end
of the ball game. In many ways they will just be the beginning.
We certainly need to go down that road. We certainly need to
work together in the House in ways we are sometimes unaccustomed
to working. We need to work with members of all parties. We
need to work together as government and opposition members to
achieve some goals and a vision of ending up in a better place.
It is not for ourselves but for this institution and for those
who will come after us to govern.
We will have our names on a plaque in the basement of this hall
one day. Apart from our families and personal acquaintances,
very few might ever remember that we were honoured to grace these
halls. However we will remember and cherish the moments we had
to make a difference in Canada. It is incumbent upon us to make
the most of this opportunity, to do what we can for this place
here and now, so that those who come behind us in the future will
carry that torch for us with that notion of change.
This place cannot be a static environment. The House cannot be
a place where the rules are cast in stone. It cannot be a place
where the ideas and innovations of those who lead this nation are
unable to make it to the forefront. It has to be a place where
all those ideas and issues are brought to bear. This is the
place where we have been sent to do the nation's business for the
period of time we are honoured to serve here.
That is why I am encouraged by this opportunity. It is a great
honour to serve here. We need to give hope to our citizens that
those who are leading are also listening and acting on the will
of our citizens.
If we take these actions it will provide an opportunity to send
a signal or message to the 40% or so of our citizens who chose
not to vote in the last election. Many individuals who did not
vote in the last election have said that the government and
members of parliament are not listening, that it did not matter
who was sent here, that nothing would change. We need to signal
to our citizens that we are willing to change.
Many proposals have been put forward by members in the House
today. I appreciate what they have had to say. I would not
agree with all the suggestions and it is good to have the debate.
I pay tribute to my colleague from Calgary Southwest who
announced today that he would be leaving public life and
returning to the private sector. He has been a leader on these
issues for many years: before he got to the House and as he
served in the House and will continue to serve until the end of
this year.
His vision was one that we are now grappling with in the House.
One of the things he brought forward was the issue of free votes
in the House of Commons. There is no reason we cannot move
forward on that initiative without any legislative change or any
change to the standing orders. We could do it simply by allowing
members to vote the wishes of their constituents.
Government members could support an opposition motion or a bill
and opposition members could support a government bill or motion.
We could work together on areas where there is commonality. We
could bridge that gap, the partisan divide that seems to be very
much a part of this place. We will never erase that totally, but
there are many opportunities for us to work together for change,
and free votes is one of them.
1855
I was encouraged by the Minister for International Trade the
other day. It was a small item but it was a gesture of good
will. When we had a debate on softwood lumber in this place last
week, the minister consented to stay beyond the regular time for
questions. In fact that was initiated, Mr. Speaker, by your
asking the House if there would be consent for such an item, and
there was.
The minister stayed and he answered questions from opposition
members for perhaps another 10 minutes. Although that was such a
small item it sent a message of good will to members of the
opposition that there was a minister who was willing to entertain
questions. It was a very small change, but let us imagine if we
were to incorporate that as a rule change or something we would
do on a regular basis. That would help to break down the walls
of partisanship. It would build a deposit of political capital
for ministers of the government. It would be good for all
members of the House.
With regard to private members' business, all bills should be
votable. We could find ways to work around the current schedule
to make that happen so that members could bring forward their
items.
I know that my time is drawing short on this topic, so I will
conclude by saying that I sincerely hope we spend time putting
these changes into action. I hope we do not just have a debate,
put it on the shelf and ignore what we have discussed here. We
should move forward together in this place in a spirit of
co-operation to make it a better place, not only for us but for
future generations. Then we would have a responsive parliament
which reflects the will and the wishes of those who have sent us
here to govern.
Mr. John Bryden (Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot,
Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member opposite on his
comments. I was particularly interested in his support for
making private members' bills votable.
There is a technical problem to that. There are an awful lot of
private members' bills that are always on the roster at any given
time and there is a whole problem with respect to how they should
be selected by lottery or whatever.
I would like to make a suggestion to him for his comment that
was raised by the member for London North Centre. That was the
possibility of every member of parliament during a session, from
the time of an election to the next time the writ is dropped,
being entitled to have one bill made votable. The actual lottery
or the selection of the bill would be based simply on the order
that the members' bills would come up. Every member would have
at least one bill during a session that was votable. I wonder
what the member thinks of that idea.
Mr. Grant McNally: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the
question. I think it is a good idea. Certainly we would be in
agreement that all items should be made votable. We would have
to make some changes to the way we do business in private
members' business in terms of the scheduling of those items.
Perhaps we need to consider the idea of every member having a
votable item.
I would support that notion or any other ideas members may have
to involve more members and to focus on the main part of the
member's request that all items be made votable. That is a very
important thing that we need to do.
Ms. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I
congratulate you this evening as the chair of the special
committee on the modernization of House of Commons procedure.
There is no one better for the challenge of trying to obtain
consensus. For us to move forward, it was interesting to hear
that not only the government would have a veto on this committee.
Everyone on the committee would have a veto, so I hope there will
be lots of opportunity for compromise, change and getting good
ideas through.
In every organization there must be ongoing efforts to make
things better. In the private sector it is called CQI,
continuous quality improvement, or TQM, total quality management.
In government it is called parliamentary reform, a phrase that
seems to mean something different to everyone.
1900
We need to make sure that people understand this is not about a
revolution from the backbench MPs. It should actually be an
ongoing process by which we discover the optimal practices of the
301 citizens who come to Ottawa to try to best represent the 30
million citizens. It is about ensuring the public good by
identifying the obstacles and sharing the solutions. Today's
special committee is an extraordinarily important step.
One of my heroes, Ursula Franklin, talked about good government
as being fair, transparent and taking people seriously. It has
been worrying to a lot of us over the past several months that
somehow the public has become disengaged. If one went to Israel
and saw six million politicians discussing what happened
yesterday in the Knesset, it would be understood why we here
worried on a daily basis about the cynicism and apathy of
Canadians. We have to always look at what we can do. Each of us
has a responsibility to hand on democracy at least as thick as we
received it, if not a tiny bit thicker.
People feel Canadian democracy needs some reintegration. The
most obvious symptom of the need for reform was the steep fall in
the election turnout on November 27. After drifting down an
average of 2.7% per election, turnout dropped more than 5% for
the 2000 election. This confirmed years of academic admonitions,
politician's anecdotes and pollsters findings that Canadians were
indeed disengaging.
In 1984 the national average was a 75.3% turnout in a federal
election of which we were always very proud. Last year it was
61.18%, and even lower in Ontario. It means that we have to see
what we can do.
Today's special committee is an important first step. The idea
that we can move forward by consensus is of huge importance to us
collaborating on this important challenge.
It is clear that rules are not enough. Changing only the rules
of parliament will not change what happens here. As Robert
Marleau said to the rookie school of the new members of
parliament, we can change all the rules we want but it is the
culture of the place that really matters.
I wear four different hats in trying to make a difference and in
trying to make sure that things change. The first is in the
House and in committees. The second is within our caucus, in
trying to make sure that the culture is one that is respectful of
the kinds of changes that people want to make. The third is in
my riding. The fourth is within the Liberal Party of Canada. We
need to work on all four fronts if we are going to have the
desired effect that Canadians again begin to engage.
It is extraordinarily important that the caucus has evolved a
parallel process in which we can also look at all the things that
have been done and the telephone books full of papers that have
been written on the topic of parliamentary reform. We should
start to look not at reinventing the wheel but going forward with
Canadians at our side.
As a caucus we need to be able to look at the party options, the
role of parliament, the role of parliamentarians, as well as what
this very important committee will do in terms of how the House
of Commons operates, its procedures, standing orders, question
period and all of those things. Private members' business has
been discussed and will be an important part of the deliberations
of this committee.
It is also extraordinarily important that we look, as the member
from Winnipeg South said, at the role of technology and make sure
that if we are indeed modernizing parliament that we do it with
all the citizens as engaged as possible, both at committees and
with members in their offices.
It has a huge ability to create the new kind of deliberative
democracy that I think we are looking for. I was heartened to
hear the minister of Indian affairs, who came to women's caucus
today, talk about his amazing project in terms of his
technological ability to be in contact with the bands and the
schools in order to do his job.
1905
We know we have to have a look at standing committees. There
are ones that are working extraordinarily well in a very
non-partisan way and with its eye on the goal. Others have been
rendered dysfunctional. We need to figure out why that is. It
is important that we look at standing committees. It is
important that they deal with horizontal issues across
parliament. Chapter 20 of the auditor general's report said how
difficult that was. We look at having the standing committees can
help us with that.
I as chair and members of the subcommittee on disabilities were
thrilled that the auditor general thought our committee, which
looked at the issue of disabilities across all ministries, had
been helpful in that management.
When we look at caucus committees and their culture, it is
important for us to look at, like the English and French
parliamentarians, the purpose for us being here is not to try to
get into cabinet. That culture of careerism has to stop. There
are important things that people can do. Look at some of the
ministers in other countries who actually give up their
administrative roles in order to be able to do an important
project. It is a culture problem. We need to make sure that
people are not paralyzed by some fantasy of a role at cabinet.
It is really important that we look at the accountability of
government. This is not just about what money we spend, but
whether we get good value for it. With the chairman of the
public accounts committee, I was thrilled to chair these round
tables on societal indicators. We discussed how we could use the
estimate process in a better way to make sure we were funding
programs that worked and ones which would ensure we had safer
streets, healthier populations and cleaner air. We also
discussed how we could measure that and use that to build back
the credibility of Canadians so they would know we were spending
their money wisely. There are extraordinarily interesting things
that can happen in terms of the accountability of our government
and building back the faith.
It is also important that there be good supports. Above all
things, the most interesting to me in parliamentary reform is the
relationship we need to build with the citizens of Canada so they
see this institution as relevant.
St. Paul's is an amazing riding. Forty per cent of the people
have a university education. We have an amazing ability to
engage. However, one thing I adored doing over this last month
or so was taking the problem of cynicism and apathy of Canadians
to the students of grade 10 in all the ridings. This was related
to the citizenship engagement award. I asked them what they
thought the problem was in terms of cynicism and apathy and what
they thought we in the government could do differently to help
them. I did this understanding that their knowledge of the
technology was much better than mine and that maybe they could
find us some web based solutions on which we could move forward.
It is clear that in all of the Ekos polling, Canadians believed
that if we as parliamentarians could take the national problems
to the people at the grassroots, we would solve most of our big
national problems. We must figure out a better way of doing
that. It was quite clear that Canadians felt the media, senior
business leaders, lobbyists and interest groups had too much
power. The Ekos poll noted that Canadians felt that
parliamentarians had little power and that the average citizen
had way too little power.
The challenge of democracy between elections is what we need to
see. We need to see that it is not just about going to the
polls. If we are not engaging citizens between elections they
stop going to the polls.
[Translation]
In conclusion, the people of Canada have an enormous
contribution to make in the development of public policy. We
must try to involve them in a grassroots movement for democratic
reform, which will produce lasting results.
1910
[English]
Mr. John Bryden (Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot,
Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her excellent
dissertation. I wonder if she could comment a little further on
the political culture, that is the context in which we seek
parliamentary reform, the relationship between the backbench on
the government side, for example, and the sometimes lack of
opportunity of expression because they are government
backbenchers.
Ms. Carolyn Bennett: Mr. Speaker, some of what the hon.
member is talking about is actually perception. I was thrilled
at the last election to write single spaced on one page what I
thought I had been able to do here.
The committees I had the privilege to sit on, whether it was the
national health products committee, the committee on custody and
access or the finance committee, was one of the best abilities
for the government to go out to real Canadians and harvest good
ideas. It was been extremely satisfying. We got to push the
issues we wanted. It was like any board that one might sit on.
In caucus we fight for the things we really care about. We do
not win all the battles but we go out as a united front. It was
the same as any other board I sat on.
There is so much to do around here. There are so many issues
that require real champions. It is quite clear that when the
stakeholders and the citizens of Canada who must work in concert
with us as politicians to sometimes work through a bureaucracy
that has too much on its plate, we get to shine the light and
move those things through.
I am hugely optimistic. I think the frustration is real, but
there are serious ways that we can make a difference here.
[Translation]
Mr. Stéphane Bergeron (Verchères—Les-Patriotes, BQ): Mr.
Speaker, I am very pleased to take part in this debate pursuant
to Standing Order 51(1). Its purpose is to ensure that we are
able to debate in this House any matter relating to the reform of
the standing orders, consolidate the achievements that we deem
appropriate and make the changes we feel it would be advisable to
make so that this House can be a modern parliamentary institution
and meet the expectations of our fellow citizens.
In that regard, I would say that we are becoming increasingly
aware of a certain cynicism among the public, a loss of
confidence in political institutions and, more generally, in the
men and women chosen to sit in this very House.
Consequently, it is certainly appropriate for us to give
ourselves a kind of shock treatment to jolt our political
institutions more into line with the expectations of our fellow
citizens.
Let us recall that, on April 21, 1998, a similar debate was held
in this House under the same Standing Order 51(1). Unfortunately,
it did not result in any changes to the standing orders.
This time I trust the debate will not be in vain, that it will
not be pointless and that we will be able to see a sensible
outcome leading to substantial amendments to the standing orders
such that they will, as I have said, be brought more into line
with the expectations of the people of Canada and of Quebec about
what a representative political institution should be.
Unfortunately, we have not used the standing orders to make the
changes to the electoral and parliamentary system we ought to
have made. It is to be hoped that the process put in place
through this committee will produce some results. I hope that
this committee will show the necessary transparency to enable us
to achieve results fulfilling not only the expectations of our
fellow citizens but also the wishes expressed here in this House.
I will just go quickly through my shopping list, in the light of
comments I have heard from both sides of the House as an ordinary
member. In my role as party whip, I have also had the
opportunity to hear my colleagues defend various points of view,
and those of our constituents, the people we have the duty and
honour of representing here in the House.
1915
First, with respect to committee chairs, if we want to ensure
that committees can operate in as non-partisan a manner as
possible, with the maximum consensus, something must be done to
eliminate to the greatest extent possible partisan comments
within committees.
Obviously, I would first recommend that there be a better
distribution of chairs and vice chairs between the opposition and
the government, and that it not be exclusively government members
who are assigned as committee chairs.
There are many examples of committees that operate this way,
including in the national assembly in Quebec City and in the
house of commons in London, and all signs are that this approach
is very useful, very productive and very positive.
Ultimately, the current standing orders notwithstanding, the
Speaker of the House will have to be able to intervene when a
serious problem arises in committee. Unfortunately, when
decisions taken in committee run counter to the standing orders,
common sense and the very interest of democracy, members need to
have a court of last appeal.
In the circumstances, I believe that the Speaker of the House
would be ideal for this purpose, because he is elected by all
members of the House. He could therefore not be accused of any
favouritism.
He should therefore be an impartial judge, who could, as need
be, produce a final ruling that is both equitable and just.
I think the public expects members of the House of Commons to be
able to vote more often according to the interests of their
riding and according to their conscience rather than along party
lines. Too often, the public has the impression that their
members have become more instruments of their political party
than representatives of their riding in the House of Commons, in
parliament.
Members will have to be allowed more flexibility, so that they
can vote freely not only on moral issues, but also on a host of
government management issues. To do so, the notion of
confidence must be redefined.
Every time we vote, the government must not necessarily feel
that a vote of confidence is being held.
Apart from budget issues, perhaps we could create a mechanism
whereby, if the government were defeated in the House, the very
next day it could put a motion to the House to find out whether
it still enjoys its confidence. In such a case, the government
would not fall automatically when it is defeated on a particular
measure. It would simply be required to ask the House whether
it still enjoys its confidence.
We have seen a harmful and unfortunate tendency in recent years,
which the government follows increasingly frequently, that of
imposing closure and time allocation motions.
A mechanism has to be set to require the government to justify
and explain its reasons for the measure, which should be
exceptional.
The standing orders provide for this. Indeed, Standing Order 78
provides that it must be as a last resort. Just as the standing
orders refer to the concept of abuse of parliamentary practice,
perhaps we could, as we did with Motion No. 2, allow the Speaker
to rule whether House practices are being abused.
If the Speaker is considered able to rule on the repetitive,
frivolous or vexatious nature of amendments introduced by
members, I think it should also be provided that the Speaker may
rule on the vexatious nature of the government's excessive use
of time allocation and closure motions.
1920
To avoid the very unpleasant and embarrassing situation in which
we found ourselves during the last parliament at third reading of
Bill C-20, on reform of the Elections Act, we should allow at
least one representative from each recognized political party in
this House to speak at each stage of the review of a bill or
during each debate.
We must not find ourselves in the same situation as the one we
experienced during third reading of Bill C-20, to amend the
Elections Act, when only two of the five political parties in the
House were allowed to express their views through their
spokespersons.
It would be appropriate, I believe, to allow all political
parties to express their views at least once on any issue brought
to the attention of the House.
In my opinion, all the issues brought to the attention of
parliamentarians should be votable items. I am referring to
private members' business, to emergency debates and to take note
debates. Of course we will have to devise a new process to select
the bills that will be reviewed by the House. However, once the
House looks at a bill or a motion, particularly a bill or a
motion proposed by parliamentarians, it would be more than
appropriate for members to vote on them.
We must design a process whereby the House would be asked to
formally ratify international treaties signed by the Government
of Canada, as is done in most democracies. Canada is an exception
to the rule and not necessarily a good one. Under the current
system, the government does not have to ask parliament to ratify
the treaties it signs. This is an anachronism that should be
corrected.
It is also important to change the parliamentary calendar. The
government House leader likes to pick and choose when deciding
which Westminster rules are important or relevant for the House
of Commons in Canada. There are a number of practices in London
that do not necessarily suit his needs, so he does not talk about
them.
The parliamentary calendar was modified in London some years
ago. They took a number of factors into consideration and
lightened the calendar. Doing so would not mean that we would
sit any fewer hours; they would just be distributed differently.
Friday sittings would not necessarily be abolished, but they
would be changed. We could, for example, look at private
members' business on Fridays. We could, as they do in London and
in Quebec City, have an inquiry mechanism which would require us
to go into a specific matter in greater depth with the minister
responsible.
It is important to realize that, with the exception of Ontario,
all ridings represented by the members of this House are larger
than their counterparts in the provincial legislative assemblies
and in the national assembly. They are, therefore, ridings with
far larger populations. The fact is that the members of the
House of Commons sit far longer, and far more often, than their
counterparts in the various provinces and in Quebec. As a
result, we have far less time to cover our far larger ridings and
to serve our far greater numbers of constituents.
I think we ought to address this reality, particularly since we
need to take increasingly into consideration the expectations of
our fellow citizens in this respect, as well as the fact that
members of parliament have families. We need to be able to
reconcile politics and a family life, particularly if we want to
attract more women to politics.
There are therefore grounds for reassessing the parliamentary
calendar, reworking things so that all members, or at least most
of them, can spend at least one day a week in their riding, not
including weekends of course, to do the work of their riding
office and look after the needs of their fellow citizens.
1925
Over the years, as a result of custom, of the various Speakers'
rulings, and of the work done in the Standing Committee on
Procedure and House Affairs and in similar committees in previous
parliaments, we have seen an erosion, as it were, of
parliamentary privilege.
It would perhaps be appropriate to reinforce the notion of
parliamentary privilege such that it can be effectively applied.
There has, of course, been an extension of privilege in committee
work, but there has been a erosion of privilege per se, and this
needs to be revisited.
Thought needs to be given to making the prescribed form for the
presentation of petitions more flexible. This poses a serious
problem with our constituents who are not necessarily up on all
the parliamentary jargon and who may spontaneously circulate a
petition on a matter of public interest and submit it to their
member, only to be told that it is not in the prescribed form and
cannot be presented in the House.
This goes against the very principle whereby citizens should be
able to submit petitions to the Parliament of Canada. Something
must therefore be done to make this prescribed form naturally
accessible to citizens.
In order to avoid embarrassing situations such as those we saw
prior to 1994 and those we have seen in recent years, the rules
must be changed to make opposition motions non-amendable, if I
may put it that way.
Something has to be done so that committee work may be televised
much more easily, in keeping naturally with the guidelines set
by the House Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
You will recall, Mr. Speaker, since you were on the Standing
Committee on Procedure and House Affairs at the time, that these
guidelines concern the rules established for broadcasting the
debates of this House.
The rules for allowing emergency debates must also be made more
flexible. Very often we have different experiences in the
various regions of Canada and Quebec, which we would like to draw
to the attention of the Chair. It may, for a variety of
perfectly legitimate reasons, not recognize the importance of
issues raised by members. Accordingly, it would be important for
us to be able to ease the rules on emergency debates, especially
since they do not impinge on regular hours set aside for the
business of the House.
As they do not affect the business of the House, the
government's legislative agenda, private members' business or the
regular operations of the House, I argue in favour of an easing
of the rules on the acceptance of emergency debates, so that this
House may respond in a timely way to the various situations that
may arise in the regions of Canada and Quebec. As members can
see, the subject is vast and many changes may be made.
I note with considerable satisfaction, I must say, and with
great pleasure that the government House leader is still with us
this evening to listen to what we have to say.
I hope he will not merely listen, but that he will also
follow up on the comments made by his colleagues here today, so
that we can, as I said at the beginning, amend the standing
orders to allow our fellow citizens to identify with our
parliamentary system.
For the benefit of the government House leader but, as I
mentioned at the very beginning of my speech, we cannot take this
issue casually. In view of voter turnout at the last election, we
must recognize that our fellow citizens are losing interest in
public affairs.
1930
This compels us to question the electoral process as well as the
political and parliamentary institutions. We must modernize our
institution so that our fellow citizens can identify with it.
These reforms must be such that Canadians feel that we members of
parliament are not mere instruments of political parties or
voting machines, but are here to represent them, to protect their
interests and to voice their concerns.
[English]
Mrs. Bev Desjarlais (Churchill, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I
have two brief comments before I ask my question. First, dealing
with the democratic process within the House and committees is an
important effort parliamentarians are making. After a short time
here—one term and now into my second—I will say that it has
been a very frustrating process. Those members who have gone on
year after year dealing within this process are to be
congratulated and should all be nominated for the Order of Canada
just for surviving what has sometimes been so frustrating that we
wonder why we come to the House each day. I want to congratulate
all those who have worked so hard to have this issue brought to
the forefront. Hopefully in a non-partisan manner we will all
continue to work to make this a more democratic House.
Second, I would like to tell the member from the Bloc that I was
very disappointed with his comment that women need to spend time
on family matters. A number of women are already being
criticized for becoming actively involved in the political
process because they neglect their families. I know that men as
well as women want family time and want to be very much a part of
it. I had to get that comment in because I do not want women
feeling that they are neglecting their families in any way, shape
or form by becoming involved in the political process.
Often what happens in a country where there is a lack of
democracy in parliament is that there is also a lack of democracy
within the country. I wonder how my hon. colleague from Quebec
feels. Does he see the people of Quebec and Canada as feeling
very much part of a very undemocratic country today?
[Translation]
Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: Mr. Speaker, in connection with the
comment by my colleague, I would like to make sure she understood
my point of view clearly.
I was not referring specifically to women when I spoke of family
life. What I was saying was that, if we want to get more people
interested in public life, more women in particular, interested
in public life, or a career in politics, perhaps we should make
it possible for a life in politics to leave more room for family
life.
I do not wish to imply in any way that we are neglecting our
families, but perhaps a more sustained physical presence in our
ridings might enable us to better meet the expectations of our
fellow citizens as far as serving the public is concerned.
Perhaps in some cases changes to the calendar might also make it
possible for us, and the men and women who will make up this
House in future, to better meet the expectations of our family
members. I do not know if this reply responds better to the
concerns of my colleague.
As for the sense of being part of a democratic society in
connection with what goes on here, that of course is not even
addressed by this debate. Since she has asked, however, I would
tell my hon. colleague that a number of my fellow citizens view
with some perplexity the fact that this parliament is composed of
two chambers: one elected, with all the difficulties, constraints
and vicissitudes that surround election to this House and to its
operations, and the second appointed, made up of unelected
individuals who are, to all intents and purposes, chosen by the
government of the day.
For a so-called modern democracy like Canada, whose electoral
legislation most certainly could do with some modernization and
whose parliament contains one chamber composed of people who are
not elected, there is indeed a rather common perception that
Canada's democratic institutions may be a bit out of date and
perhaps need some of the cobwebs dusted off.
Perhaps the entire matter of parliamentary reform numbers among
the concerns of a large part of the population about our public
and political institutions.
1935
[English]
Mr. John Bryden (Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot,
Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I rise in the debate not to argue for
more opportunities for backbench MPs, but to plead with you
specifically, Mr. Speaker, to help us retain as backbenchers the
little opportunity that we still have.
Mr. Speaker, I was alarmed today when I sat in this House and I
heard your statement pertaining to Motion No. 2 that was passed
in the House on February 27. Motion No. 2 referred to the
streamlining of report stage, because it was perceived by all
sides of the House that report stage was sometimes utilized in an
abusive manner, and Motion No. 2, which was passed by the House,
was designed to correct this problem.
I will read. Motion No. 2 says:
—the Speaker will not select for debate a motion or series of
motions of a repetitive, frivolous or vexatious nature or of a
nature that would serve merely to prolong unnecessarily
proceedings at the report stage and, in exercising this power of
selection, the Speaker shall be guided by the practice followed
in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.
Mr. Speaker, today in replying—in making your statement to that
motion that was passed, as I say, already by the House—you said,
I intend to apply these four criteria to all amendments at report
stage, no matter which side of the House they come from.
And by that, Mr. Speaker, we understood you to mean that you
would not select those amendments for report stage that were
repetitive, frivolous, abusive or would unusually prolong debate
in the House. But then, Mr. Speaker, you went on. You said:
I also intend to apply those criteria in the original note whose
validity has been endorsed by the adoption of government Motion
No. 2. Specifically, motions in amendment that could have been
presented in committee will not be selected.
Let me just repeat that: “Specifically, motions
in amendment that could have been presented in committee will not
be selected” by you.
In supporting Motion No. 2 I never felt that I was
supporting that proposition because, if I understand that
proposition broadly, what it means is that any amendment that a
member could have put in committee will not be selected by you.
But, Mr. Speaker, that happens all the time. I am not at all
committees. Sometimes I want to submit amendments at report
stage and I am not a member of the committee. This would suggest
that any report stage amendment that I submitted, if I could have
put it in committee—and of course, as MPs we can always put an
amendment in a committee—you would not select it.
Mr. Speaker, you go on and you seem to add to this proposition
because what you say, you make a recommendation to MPs like
myself, backbench MPs, and you say:
—I would strongly urge all members and all parties to avail
themselves fully of the opportunity to propose amendments during
committee stage so that the report stage can return to the
purpose for which it was created, namely for the House to
consider the committee report and the work the committee has
done.
That is not my vision of report stage at all.
Report stage, I always understood, existed to give members an
opportunity who were not on committee, who had a differing
opinion of what was going on in committee, our opportunity to
propose an amendment in the House and to stimulate debate.
Indeed, Mr. Speaker, in your own speech you make allusion to the
1968 special committee on procedure which said that it considered
that report stage to be:
While I can only believe, Mr. Speaker, that you will interpret,
or I should interpret your words very narrowly because I can
assure you on this side of the House, the government House leader
and the leadership of my party assured we backbenchers that the
Motion No. 2 would in no way restrict our opportunity to express
ourselves at report stage, Mr. Speaker, and with good reason.
1940
The reality, particularly as a government backbencher, is that
in committee the government dominates. If we as backbench MPs
want to move some kind of amendment that is not in keeping with
what may be the government's direction of things, then we are not
given an opportunity to push our amendment forward.
I can give you a classic example. In 1995 I was on the lobbyist
registration committee—or the committee of industry studying the
lobbyist registration act—and I made it known to the whip that I
was interested in supporting an amendment that was being proposed
by my opposition colleagues on the committee.
What happened was that when it came to clause by clause, the
whip withdrew my voting privileges on that committee and
substituted someone else. So the only way under those
circumstances for me to advance the amendment I believed in would
have been to submit it as a report stage amendment.
Furthermore, sometimes one wishes as a backbench
government MP to utilize report stage to submit one's own
amendment because one knows full well that the government will
not support it. You know full well that the amendment will not
pass. However, report stage gives a backbench MP an opportunity
to present his thoughts, his concerns shall we say, before the
entire House and before the entire nation.
The reality is that if we make a speech in front of committee,
sadly even the Hansard of that committee is not available to the
public until sometimes many weeks after the statement has been
made, and indeed the media normally does not follow the debates
in committee unless there is some incredibly important thing that
is occurring which is of great media interest.
It becomes absolutely, dreadfully important to have this
opportunity at report stage to draw the attention of the public
to one's deep concerns as a backbench MP to some aspect of
legislation.
For example, in the citizenship bill last year I proposed at
report stage an amendment to the oath of citizenship. The
committee and the minister made it very clear that they were not
prepared to entertain a change in the oath of citizenship as it
was in the legislation. I had to use report stage to actually
get what I deeply, deeply believed in before the public.
I would like to believe, Mr. Speaker, that you are going to
interpret the need to submit an amendment to committee very, very
narrowly. I would assume that if you do want to give backbench
MPs like myself as much opportunity for debate as possible, what
you may choose to do is interpret what you said in your own
words, perhaps interpret it as referring only to those members of
committee.
If members of the committee do not
propose amendments then perhaps there is a reasonable argument
that they should not be allowed to then do it in report stage
separately, but backbench MPs cannot be in more than one place at
the same time.
I track the work of a number of committees and I can tell you
for instance, Mr. Speaker, I have a possible report stage
amendment for Bill C-9, the Canada Elections Act amendments, that
I know the government will not like. If I put it in committee it
will die instantly. If I put it in report stage then I put it
for all the House to see and consider. I have not decided yet
whether I want to do it but it is an essential privilege as a
backbench MP. And if, in your interpretation of Motion No. 2,
you deprive me of the opportunity to move report stage amendments
as a backbench MP—if you confine me only to moving those
amendments in committee—Mr. Speaker, you will have absolutely
eroded the very essence of my role here as a backbench MP.
Quite frankly I do not know what I would do if that is the way
you rule but, Mr. Speaker, I look forward to the next time we go
to report stage. I will be looking closely at how you do select
amendments for report stage. I hope, Mr. Speaker, you will
remember my words that I said when I spoke to Motion No. 2. If I
may read them, these were my concluding words before we passed
the motion.
I said, “But I end with one caution, because I remind you, Mr.
Speaker, that whatever you do, you must protect the rights of the
backbench MPs and the opposition MPs to have their say in debate
on legislation at report stage”.
1945
Mr. Speaker, it is not the government House leader. It is not an
opposition leader. It is your responsibility to protect my
opportunities and my rights as a backbench MP.
Mr. Scott Reid (Lanark—Carleton, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his quite alarming comments.
We will soon find out whether his concerns will be realized.
Tomorrow I will be attending the committee dealing with Bill C-9
where I will be putting forward some amendments. Report stage
will be next week and I will be watching, with as much interest
as he, to see whether further proposed amendments can be brought
forward at that time. I do hope that his concerns are unfounded,
although I fear they are not.
What is the member's proposed or preferred method of dealing
with report stage?. Would it simply be a return to the status
quo ante, or would he make some other suggestion for change?
Mr. John Bryden: Mr. Speaker, what we understood we were
agreeing to on this side, in order to support the government's
Motion No. 2, was that the Speaker should put limitations on
vexatious and frivolous amendments.
If the hon. member will recall, progress in the House was
delayed because of hundreds of amendments of a frivolous nature
pertaining to certain bills. That is fine, but unfortunately
what seems to have happened, if I read Motion No. 2 correctly, it
says that the Speaker will also be guided by practice in the
British parliament.
Unfortunately, none of us know what is meant by being guided by
practice in the British parliament. It would appear, from what
the Speaker has said, and I cite it here, that he is making an
allusion to Motion No. 2 and something that was endorsed by
Motion No. 2, and I can only believe it was the guidelines that
were cited in the original motion. He is using that, it would
appear, to justify saying that only motions presented in
committee will be selected.
I hope that is not the case because the reality around here is
that we have to trust our leadership, on this side and on the
member's side, in getting our support for legislation or a
motion, that it will not introduce something into the wording of
the legislation or the motion that it knows that we as backbench
MPs will not have the opportunity or the expertise to check.
I make my appeal to the Speaker and tell him most emphatically
that never did I understand, nor do I think the vast majority of
the backbench MPs on the Liberal side understand, that the
Speaker would confine amendments to be selected only to those
that were proposed in committee. In other words, if we were to
follow the Speaker's reasoning as we see it, what we would find
is that the only committee amendments that would appear at report
stage would be government amendments. If that is the case, then
there would be no point in debate. The debate would have
occurred at committee.
Never did I ever believe that what was proposed by Motion No. 2
would make it impossible for me to submit my amendments as a
backbench MP to anything other than the committee. I need to
have the right to submit my amendments at report stage in this
House if I am not a member of the committee.
Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern
Shore, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I have a very basic question to ask
my hon. colleague. One of the problems the country has is when
the government, the privy council or some other agency makes
appointments to various boards.
1950
For example, the former member from Coquitlam is a member of the
citizen immigration board. The former member for St. John's West
is a member of the veterans appeals board, and the former member
for Egmont is a member of the transportation safety board. All
we are really asking, and these are good men, is whether they are
the best people available for those positions.
Would the hon. member not agree that their c.v.'s and the
details of their positions should be forwarded to the appropriate
committee for further discussion to see if they are the most
appropriate people for those sensitive positions?
Mr. John Bryden: Mr. Speaker, I can only confine my reply
to the nature of my speech. I have to say that I have absolute
faith in you and in the independence of your decisions. The
House has absolute confidence in you, that you will exercise your
heavy responsibilities with absolute impartiality and always look
to the best interests of all the MPs because, as you are fond of
saying, you are a servant of the House.
That is why I did get a little impassioned there. In fact, I
have full confidence that you will interpret the power that
Motion No. 2 has given you in a way in which the opportunities of
backbench MPs to submit amendments at report stage will be
preserved. In fact I do not expect you to follow literally the
suggestion that motions in amendment that could have been
presented in committee will not be selected. I am sure that you
intend that to be exercised extremely narrowly. I have full
confidence in you.
Mr. Scott Reid (Lanark—Carleton, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, I thank the hon. member who has just spoken for bringing
a very serious matter to the attention of the House.
It will be a very interesting test when Bill C-9 comes before
the House. The hon. government House leader is also the minister
sponsoring Bill C-9. It will be the first bill back which will
apply the recently adopted motion. We will see him occupying
several roles I guess. We will watch with great interest to see
how enthusiastic he is about allowing for a full range of debate
in this place on potential amendments that were not brought
forward in committee.
We will also be able to get a sense of the sincerity with which
he is intending to apply the motion we are currently debating. To
what degree is the motion sincere as opposed to the degree to
which it is meant as window dressing, merely to divert attention
from the ongoing erosion of democracy. That erosion is contained
in Bill C-9 and the series of rather pernicious laws, of which it
is merely the latest, designed to limit access of third parties
during an election.
Bill C-9 is intended to restrict the ability of Canadians to
participate fully in referendum campaigns, which can only be
called at any rate at the behest of the government, and to limit
the ability in the case of this law of small parties to
participate in election campaigns on an equal footing with those
larger parties represented in the Chamber. I hope we will
discover that the government House leader is very sincere. I
fear we may find the opposite, but we will find out and we will
be watching with great attention.
The last member to speak did so on a very narrow but important
topic. It is my intention to draw from some of the same themes
but to speak in a very broad sense. I will also dwell upon some
of the broad themes of democracy that the motion addresses or
hopes to address.
1955
I am thinking here of the spirit that motivates the 1867
Constitution of Canada and the words found in its preamble. It
begins “...with a Constitution similar in Principle to that of
the United Kingdom—”. The Constitution of Canada is a written
constitution, whereas that of Britain is not. The Constitution of
Canada is federal and Britain is a quasi-unitary state and was
entirely unitary in 1867. There were no regional assemblies in
Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
The essence that was being captured in that preamble was the
notion that Canada would be similar to the United Kingdom in
having certain understandings as to how Canadians would be
treated by their government. It was an idea conceptualized in
the imperial parliament at that time in a law called the Colonial
Laws Validity Act, which attempted to make clear limitations on
what colonial assemblies, including Canada at the time, could do
in terms of restricting the rights of their citizens.
Any law that was repugnant would be repugnant to the laws of
England as applied in England and would also be invalid in a
colonial legislature. That was used with limited success as an
argument against racist laws in Australia that were meant to
exclude non-whites from immigration from other parts of what was
then the British Empire.
The preamble was also meant to make it clear that Canada would
be adopting many of the conventions that existed in Britain. The
most important of those conventions was the party system which at
that time was starting to gel in Britain. The convention that
the ministry was responsible to, its House of Commons, and this
had already taken place to some degree in Canada in the form of
responsible governments. We are being true to our own
independently developed traditions which paralleled those which
developed in Britain.
This empiricist tradition is at the base of our political system
and is the basis of the great success of our democracy or, as I
like to say and have said on other occasions in this place, of
our republic. I mean republic in the traditional Aristotelian
sense; a mixed government in which there is a monarchial element,
an aristocratic element and a democratic element. This is the
basis of the success of our system and I worry when I see it
eroding.
An alternative system has been used widely in the west and has
done a great deal of damage over the past two centuries. This is
the tradition that developed through Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This
is the concept of a general will which is expressed not through
institutions such as this one, not through rules of order and not
mediated at all, but a will which is expressed. It is different
from the mass of individual wills. It is, in some respect, a
common will felt by the people which is interpreted almost
intuitively by a leader who is in mystical union with the people.
We saw this developed by Rousseau and saw it actualized in
France in the regime of Napoleon Bonaparte and later on by
Napoleon III. We have also seen it in action in other countries.
In Argentina, it was known as Peronism. We saw it develop into a
cult of personality in a number of countries like fascist Italy,
Portugal and Spain.
The danger is that these institutions, which have been developed
so carefully in Canada and in countries like the United Kingdom,
Australia and New Zealand, and also which in a very different way
were jelled and set down in constitutional stone in the United
States following its revolution, will erode over time. The
American founding fathers worried a great deal that the natural
course of things is for power to centralize in the hands of a few
or eventually of one ruler.
The tendency has been for power over time, in the absence of
some sort of cataclysm which resets everything back at its
republican origins, to centralize.
2000
We see this developing in the United States, for example, in the
so-called imperial presidency in which to some degree, to a minor
degree but to a growing degree, we have seen effectively an
elected monarch with a four year periodic election of that
monarch. This is something we have seen drawn to the public
attention at various times. The phrase “the imperial
presidency” comes from the time of Richard Nixon.
In Canada we see the centralization of power in the Prime
Minister's Office and in the hands of the Prime Minister. We
even see, to some degree, members of cabinet, except for those
very central members of the inner cabinet, frozen out from power.
We also see the House being turned into what amounts to an
electoral college in perpetual session simply reaffirming the
Prime Minister, who is in a very genuine sense simply our elected
king, reaffirming him in office periodically through these forced
votes.
This is something which absolutely must be fought against. Of
course the first step in doing this is to try to create more
democracy in the House. This is of course why I feel so strongly
and why I do hope that the motion here is meant sincerely, that
the committee will come back with some very practical suggestions
which will indeed return some autonomy to the House so that it
serves as the democratic check on the monarchical power
represented by the Prime Minister.
As well of course, we would like to see the Senate turned into
an aristocracy as it was originally meant, that is to say a
natural aristocracy, the best among us selected to represent the
wisdom by which the decisions made here are mediated before they
become the law of the land.
Very briefly, because I know I have just a few moments left, I
want to draw the attention of the House to one possibility that I
think the committee should consider as it meets to decide how it
will change the way in which this place operates, and that is the
secret ballot. The secret ballot, of course, is used here only
for the election of the Speaker. I think all members are happy
with that system. I think it works well.
I wonder if we could not broaden the system and use it as well
for electing the Deputy Speaker, chairs of committees and also
commissioners reporting to parliament, who are after all, at
least nominally, to represent the will of parliament and to be
responsible to us as opposed to the government.
I also wonder if we could not perhaps solve the problem of
supreme court justices being non-representative if they were to
be elected by secret ballot in parliament from perhaps a list
nominated by the government or proposed by some other method.
Finally, I wonder if patronage appointments could not be
ratified, perhaps in groupings, by means of secret ballot.
I would suggest that if we do this we consider using some means
of voting that is a little more expeditious than the method used
in the election of the Speaker, that is to say something that
takes less than a day to execute. Perhaps electronic voting is
appropriate. Perhaps a single transferable ballot is
appropriate.
I simply present those options for your consideration, Mr.
Speaker, and for the consideration of the House.
Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern
Shore, NDP): Mr. Speaker, my previous question was completely
forgotten or ignored by the Liberal backbencher, so I will ask it
of my hon. colleague from the Alliance Party.
A lot of appointments are made to various boards and agencies
throughout the country. We in our party are very concerned, as
are most Canadians, that the right person is appointed for that
particular position. In most cases we assume they are either
friends of the Prime Minister or friends of the current
government.
Would the member or his party support the idea that when people
are appointed to boards such as the immigration board, the
pension appeals board for veterans, and the transportation safety
board, that at least their CVs are presented to the appropriate
committee for review? Would the member also support the idea
that, if possible, individuals be brought before committees to be
asked questions about their experience and their knowledge of the
particular board they are on?
At least that way, at least in my belief, Canadians would then
know that the person appointed to that position is the best
person available and not just necessarily a political
appointment.
Mr. Scott Reid: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member raises a
good point. I do not think that the exact method is necessarily
the important thing. It is some form of review prior to, as
opposed to after, appointments have been made, some form of
questioning, that would be profitable. Committees are certainly
a good place to start.
2005
There is always a problem with these things when the votes take
place openly because then we get, effectively, some kind of party
discipline or pressure being applied to the decisions that are
made and to the questions that come up. However, I am afraid
this is probably all that is available to us and it is a good
starting point.
I have struggled with the question of how we deal with patronage
appointments, ensuring that they are in fact based on merit.
Absent the presence of a philosopher king who always chooses
exclusively on merit and who is virtually omniscient in being
able to choose the best people, we need to have some form of
delegation. I would think that the nominations going forward to
whoever is doing the review ought to as well be coming from a bit
broader source than merely the Prime Minister's Office.
I say this with some reservation, because there may be problems
with this, but I think that perhaps we should consider the
possibility of excluding certain classes of people from patronage
appointments, such as people who are defeated candidates for a
party in the prior election until a period of time has passed, or
people who have perhaps donated more than a certain amount of
money to a governing party, or people who have served in some
other capacity that would make them obvious candidates, unless
they go through some sort of special further review to ensure
that they really are being chosen on their merits and that their
political allegiance is purely coincidental.
Mr. Steve Mahoney (Mississauga West, Lib.): Mr. Speaker,
I am delighted to see that some of my supposed friends have
arrived in this place.
I find it interesting. I suspect we are heading into an
opportunity lost. I commend my House leader for attempting to
put forward some ideas and some recommended changes. I think
they are good and they will make our lives as MPs and our ability
to represent our constituents a little easier.
This will simply change the rules, but frankly I am sure that
the types of changes that we are hearing opposite will not change
the nature of this place. I hear people over there saying we do
not live in a democracy. Democracy, or the lack thereof, should
not be confused with acquiescence to one's ideas or to the ideas
of one party or another. If the fact that we do not agree on
something upsets someone over there, or even over here, it seems
to me wrong, by its very nature, to stand up and say that is not
democratic, to say that because people are going to do it their
way because they were elected to do it that way and others cannot
change their minds about it means they are not democrats. That
in its very nature is just wrong-headed.
Frankly, the real true test of democracy in the country happens
in the electoral system.
I hear the member opposite using an interesting phrase. He says
this place is like an electoral college in perpetual session. I
am sure people at home are watching this and asking what the heck
he is talking about or asking what a lot of these people are
talking about when they talk about change.
The real issue is, do we respect one another or do we even
respect the role that we are expected to play as
parliamentarians? Or do we simply want to use our partisan
position to somehow denigrate the work of others in this place
and therefore play into the hands of the naysayers and the people
who would say that this place is not democratic? To paraphrase
Winston Churchill, he basically said that this may not be the
best system in the world but it is a long way ahead of whatever
is in second place.
Does that mean we should not have change? Does that mean we
should not perhaps change the way our committees operate?
I heard my hon. colleague from this side of the House arguing in
favour of having the ability to place amendments on the floor at
report stage in this Chamber and not be restricted to committee.
I think that is a good idea, again, as long as it is not abused.
2010
We have seen members opposite put in place as many as 3,000
amendments. We have been through this debate. Changing a comma
to a semicolon: is that democracy? Does that make any sense
whatsoever? Is that the appropriate use of even the lighting
that it takes to keep this place operating, never mind the staff
and all the support services in this building? The Canadian
people who, by the way, do not live in the little beltway that we
live in, who watch all of this on the 11 o'clock news or read it
in the morning, are saying “Why are those guys fighting all the
time?”
The real essence of this place and this system is that we indeed
can disagree. I have said this before. Some people would say
this is scary, but our weapons are our minds and our words and
our thoughts are our ammunition. We fight with one another in
this place in a very democratic way. We go to the people and say
to the people, here is what we believe in as Liberals or here is
what we believe in as Alliance members or Tories or NDP or Bloc,
so please vote for us, and they do.
It is interesting to me that we arrived here in the numbers that
we did and what happened? Those who did not win government
immediately jumped up and said they want parliamentary reform. I
wonder why. At least the House leader for the New Democratic
Party made an honest statement in the House earlier tonight when
he said this is not about changing the rules.
Many rule changes have been put forward. In fact, the committee
is called the modernization committee on House rules and that is
terrific. Let us modernize the rules around this place. However,
it is really much more than that. The New Democratic Party
member said that it is not about changing the rules but about
changing the balance of power. He used that word, power, and
that is true.
What we are seeing here is people who are unable to obtain power
through the democratic process and now want to do it through some
form of subterfuge called parliamentary reform. I do not think
that is what they want at all. Every time a member over here
stands up and gives an honest opinion, such as my colleague who
talked about having the ability to place amendments at report
stage, what happens? An opposition member jumps up and says
there is a member on the backbench over there who has just said
something that is really important and is it not awful, oh my,
and those guys are dictators and they will not free up their
backbench, like “free my people”. What is that? It is
nonsense.
In my opinion, people here who denigrate the work of any member
on any side denigrate themselves. We can disagree on policy and
we should. We can fight over the direction we believe the
country should take and we should. However, we should all carry
a message that the vast majority of the men and women who arrive
in this place—as they have for decades—are honest, dedicated,
hard-working people who come here to make a difference.
That does not mean we should be opposed to change. However, to
suggest that it is not democratic in this place is just playing
politics with a system that has survived the true test of time.
Let us make some improvements at committee. I find it
interesting that people say one of the ways in which we can
democratize parliament is to televise our committee procedures.
Let us examine what happens when that occurs. The citizenship
and immigration committee, of which I am a member, is currently
dealing with amendments to the Immigration Act. It has not been
dealt with in 40 years. It is very controversial.
Immigration brings out tremendous debate. Some think we have too
much. Some think we do not have enough. We do not like certain
problems that occur. We hear about people who come to the
country and commit crime. It gets very emotional.
2015
We decided as a committee that we would televise hearings, and
we did. We met in the railway room off the Hall of Honour and we
were on television. On the first day of the meeting the Leader
of the Opposition showed up. Would the Leader of the Opposition
have been there if it were not on television? The industry
committee had the ethics counsellor on television. Who showed
up? The leaders of all opposition parties showed up. Would they
have been there if it were not televised? Maybe they would and
maybe they would not.
If it really is important that the Canadian public can watch
CPAC, and I am sure Canadians are delighted to do that with a
bowl of popcorn, then let us televise it. If it will make the
process more open, accessible and transparent to the Canadian
public, and if it will really make a difference to democracy in
the country, then let us televise it all.
If all it will do is provide the opportunity for people to come
in to attack, criticize and denigrate individuals in this place,
then it works much more toward anarchy than democracy.
If we want to reform parliament we should do it. However as I
said in my opening remarks, I fear this will be an opportunity
lost. I have served on both sides of the legislative system, in
opposition and in government, and I believe opposition members
can have the greatest influence in reforming the way parliament
does business.
If we really want to change let us take a look at how some of
our committees work. Let us look at public accounts. It works
tremendously well. A member of the opposition chairs that
committee and there is no partisanship. We work extremely well.
When there is not too much attention from the public, the
immigration committee can work extremely well. We should try to
work together and respect the work we all do as parliamentarians.
That would be the greatest reform. Changing the rules is not a
problem. Reforming the mentality of this place so that we
respect one another would be an accomplishment. It would show
the Canadian public that we respect them and the democratic
choice they made in the last election. We can reform parliament
by reforming attitudes.
Mr. Scott Reid (Lanark—Carleton, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, the hon. member talked about how this place is very
democratic and how he worries that, and I believe these are his
words, there would be anarchy if we did not have the status quo.
I may be wrong but that is my understanding of what he said.
I will make a few observations about this place and then talk
about some other places that do not have the kind of party
discipline that exists here.
To date I have seen very few occasions on which members on any
side of the House, and that would include Liberal and opposition
sides, have not voted the will of their party. There have been
very few. It is our understanding that there was pressure
applied yesterday to a member on the opposite side to make sure
he voted with the government, because he has voted against the
government too often and it has become an embarrassment. We all
know there are tremendous pressures put on members by the party
whips. I wonder how that can be described as democratic.
When we had a system of open votes in Canada there was
tremendous pressure on people to vote with the governing party.
Sometimes people were paid by being given alcohol. That is why
liquor sales were prohibited on voting day. It was the first
attempt to deal with the problem. The secret ballot was
introduced, but methods were found to ensure voters would still
reveal their ballot.
2020
Someone might have been given a ballot by one of the parties as
he or she went into the poll. The pre-marked ballot would be
handed in and the ballot that had been issued upon entering the
poll would be returned to the party operative waiting outside. A
bottle of liquor would be given as a reward.
Counterfoils such as numbered ballot sheets and so on were
developed to promote genuine democracy by creating a system of
fairness and secrecy. That seems far superior to what we have
here.
Literally thousands of other legislative bodies in the country
do not have party discipline or parties, and there is no anarchy
there at all. I am thinking of our municipal governments. I
fail to see any anarchy there.
Looking at the 10 municipal governments plus a county council
that exist in my own riding of Lanark—Carleton, I see that they
are far more efficient, collegial, effective and frugal bodies
than is this place and this government.
I look as well at the governments in two of our territories,
which are run not on a partisan basis but on a collegial basis.
That seems superior to the method in which the House is run. When
I look at Britain's parliament in the 19th century, the golden
age of parliament, although there was a party system it was in
fact a very loose system.
I wonder if the hon. member would agree that perhaps there are
alternative models that are superior to this one and that perhaps
our model is not quite the paradise he has painted it as being.
Mr. Steve Mahoney: Mr. Speaker, I almost rest my case
because the member has reacted, typically, by saying I have
somehow argued for the status quo. That attitude is what stifles
true discussion in this place. The member says that unless a
person is prepared to stand and buy into the line that the whole
system is rotten, that we must change it and that we are all
trained seals, then supposedly somehow he is in favour of the
status quo. It is just not true. We can, should and will make
changes to the system.
We cannot compare the situation of parliament to that of
municipalities. I served in municipal government for 10 years.
There was no partisanship, and there was no one sitting ready to
attack and denigrate and criticize our every move. There is not
much partisanship about roads and potholes and things of that
nature in building municipal communities. It is a different
scenario.
We literally have a situation where it does not matter what one
does in government, whether one is a Liberal or a Tory or what
have you. It does not matter. The system is that the opposition
attacks and opposes. That is the only thing it is here for.
If we want to make parliamentary change we should try working
within the committee system to support some of the activities the
government is dealing with. Members on all sides would then have
an opportunity to have input. It is a double-edged sword. Simply
throwing it all on this side and saying it is not democracy
shows, frankly, inexperience in someone who has not served on
both sides of the House.
Hon. Lorne Nystrom (Regina—Qu'Appelle, NDP): Mr.
Speaker, I will say a few words in the debate as someone who has
been in the House for quite a while. I was first elected in
1968. This is my ninth mandate in the House of Commons, having
missed the period from 1993 to 1997. I have seen a lot of
differences, and I think many of the differences are negative in
terms of the lack of seriousness and respect the present
government shows toward parliament.
A friend said to me a few minutes ago in the lobby that the
government does not really have respect for the House of Commons.
I think there is a lot of truth in that. In 1968, for example,
there were a lot of great parliamentarians. I remember John
Diefenbaker, Allan MacEachen, Ged Baldwin, Stanley Knowles, Tommy
Douglas, David Lewis, Réal Caouette, and people of that sort.
In those days there seemed to be more respect for the House by
the government and a lot more real debates would take place. I
do not think a serious announcement was made by the government in
the late 1960s and early 1970s that was not made on the floor of
the House of Commons. The minister would come to the House, he
or she would make a statement, and the response would come from
the opposition parties.
2025
Gradually over time that practice changed. I think it changed
more radically after the election in 1993 of the government that
now sits across the way. Even in the days of Brian Mulroney and
the Tories there seemed to be more give and take in this place.
In those days I sat on the finance committee which was chaired by
Mr. Blenkarn. It was one of many committees that had a semblance
of independence about it, a certain arm's length relationship
with the government.
There should be a certain amount of creative tension between the
executive and parliament. Parliament should hold the executive
to account. We do not have that today. That is one reason our
politics have descended into a vortex of great negativity which
is getting more and more negative all the time.
It does not mean that in the former days it was not positive.
The member for Winnipeg—Transcona was here in 1979, I believe,
and on. It was not any less partisan in those days. It was
still very partisan. If we ever want to see somebody partisan,
watch a John Diefenbaker or a Tommy Douglas or an Allan
MacEachen. They were really partisan individuals and great
parliamentarians. However there was great debate in those days
and parliament really meant something. It was the centre of
activity in terms of public policy in the country. Much of that
is gone now.
We are heading toward a crisis in terms of this institution and
the respect that it does not have across the country. Today we
are having a debate in the House. As I speak I hear about 10 to
12 members speaking in the House, and that is normal. Even the
members do not take this place very seriously. During the day,
of course, committees are meeting at the same time. This place
is getting more and more irrelevant in terms of decision-making
and in terms of having a real impact. We need to take a serious
look at real parliamentary reform.
In addition, we need electoral reform. We must look at the idea
of bringing in a measure of proportional representation. We must
do something about the Senate. I believe we should abolish it. A
lot of people believe we should reform it. In the polls only 5%
of the Canadian people support the existing undemocratic,
unelected Senate, yet parliamentarians have continued decade
after decade to support that institution across the way. We must
do some of these things and do them soon.
In the House we start with the idea of confidence votes. We
have far too many confidence votes in the House of Commons. We
are the most handcuffed parliamentary system in the world. We
model ourselves after the British parliament. It is common to
have a bill defeated in the British House of Commons.
The Blair government was exceedingly popular in its first three
or four years and is still popular. It has had many bills
defeated by its own backbenchers. It was the same in the days of
the Thatcher Conservatives. Margaret Thatcher was extremely
popular, had great control over the country in terms of her
agenda and her vision, and changed that country dramatically.
Despite that, there were several occasions when she lost votes in
the House of Commons on certain bills. I say so what? All the
better. All the more democratic.
I meet government backbenchers every day who are horrendously
frustrated. At least in opposition one can get up and make a
speech and criticize a policy or advocate a new vision or
direction. Government members cannot do that to the extent they
should because of the power of the Prime Minister's Office. The
PMO and the PCO have the power to appoint cabinet ministers,
committee chairs and parliamentary secretaries. They decide
different trips, appointments and positions of influence.
That system must end. It must change if parliament is to be
more relevant in the future. We need fewer confidence votes. The
only confidence votes should be on budget bills, money bills, and
things of importance like the throne speech which lays out the
vision of the government for the next parliamentary session.
Those things must change.
Committees must have more independence. We elect the Speaker of
the House of Commons by secret ballot and the whips are not on.
We have now had at least two Speakers who were probably not the
favourite of the Prime Minister of the day. I am not talking
just about this Prime Minister, but former Prime Minister Brian
Mulroney. Members voted freely for the person they thought could
best fill the duties of the Chair.
We cannot even take that principle to committees of the House of
Commons and freely and secretly elect the person we think should
chair the committee. My God, how timid we are in the House of
Commons.
I will give another example. Just yesterday in the finance
committee we were studying Bill C-8. It is the most voluminous
bill in the history of the country. It the financial
institutions bill. It has 900 pages and affects about 1,400
pages of statues. It is a very big bill and a very complicated
bill. One of its recommendations is to set up a new consumer
agency.
There is supposed to be a commissioner of that consumer agency
appointed by the Minister of Finance.
2030
I moved a tiny amendment that said before the appointment of
that commissioner of the agency, the name should be referred to
the finance committee to have a look at that, not to ratify it,
but to have a look at it and express an opinion. Every single
government member voted no. Every single opposition member voted
yes. We could not even empower ourselves to have a look at the
minister's suggestion before the minister appointed that person.
What a minuscule almost irrelevant piece of parliamentary reform,
and yet we have the stupidity in this place to be so polarized.
Where the Prime Minister's office cannot control each and every
thing that happens, then it is no good. I saw intelligent and
highly educated men and women who went to that committee
yesterday and voted nine to zip in opposition of that minuscule
step. I know that probably seven of those nine would have liked
to have taken that little step to reform this parliamentary
institution, but they could not because of the kind of system we
are locked into.
The only way it will change is if government backbenchers
empower themselves and if we opposition parliamentarians empower
ourselves and say no to the government from time to time, like
they do in Great Britain and like they do in almost every other
democratic country around the world.
There is no reason why parliamentary committees should not have
more independence to initiate legislation and the independence in
timetable of legislation. There is no reason why a parliamentary
secretary has to come to a standing committee as a member of that
particular committee and dictate how to vote on each and every
single amendment.
The bill we talked about yesterday, Bill C-8, is a big bill.
Hon. members should ask the member for Elk Island how long it
took the finance committee to consider it yesterday. It took
maybe an hour and a half. It was a futile exercise, because
every single amendment that the opposition proposed, the
parliamentary secretary, who was the first person recognized,
would say no. All the government members voted no. All the
opposition voted yes. The only amendments that were accepted
were government amendments. Again, only the parliamentary
secretary spoke to them. What kind of parliamentary system is
this?
We have to change the system to make it more relevant. No
wonder people are growing frustrated. No wonder they are not
voting or participating. They rank politicians close to the
bottom of the totem pole in terms of respect in this country.
These are the kinds of things we should look at.
We should look at more permanent membership on parliamentary
committees. We see this revolving door on these committees,
mostly on the government side but not exclusively on that side.
We need more permanent membership so people develop some
expertise, some independence, some backbone and some gall.
I look at my friend across the way who was a respected member of
the national assembly. I know he has a strong feeling about
reforming this place. I know that from all the articles which
were written about him two or three weeks ago in the press about
making this place more meaningful. If people would think like he
does and then put into action the feelings that he has, we could
make some meaningful reforms in this institution.
In my last minute I want to talk about the whole question of
appointments. I do not think there is any democratic country in
the world where the prime minister has so much power. The Prime
Minister appoints the head of the national police, the RCMP. He
appoints all the justices of the supreme court. He appoints the
head of the military. He appoints all the cabinet ministers. He
appoints all the senators. He appoints all the heads of the
crown corporations. He appoints all the heads of the important
boards and agencies. He appoints all the lieutenant governors.
In addition to that, he appoints thousands and thousands of
people to boards and agencies.
As a result, we often get a lot of people who should not be
sitting on those particular boards and agencies. There is no
vetting or venting of the process by a parliamentary committee.
In many cases a parliamentary committee should have the authority
to either ratify or reject the nomination of the Government of
Canada. What is so radical about that? At the very least, the
Parliament of Canada, through a relevant committee, should review
many more of these appointments.
Parliament itself should have more timetables. We should have
a timetable to set throne speeches, set budgets and a fixed
election date to take that power away from the executive and the
Prime Minister of Canada, and put more power back into the hands
of the people through their elected representatives, the people
elected in all parties in this House.
[Translation]
Mr. Yvon Godin (Acadie—Bathurst, NDP): Mr. Speaker, first I
would like to make a comment and then ask a question.
The hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle has a lot of experience
in the House of Commons, because he has been here for many years.
2035
Let me give an example. This evening, I attended a meeting
of the parliamentary committee on employment insurance dealing
with Bill C-2. Parliamentarians, those whom we call backbenchers,
even on the government side, would have had an opportunity to
express themselves democratically, to propose changes and
amendments to the employment insurance program.
It is as if these people had been told by the minister “No,
there must not be any amendment from the opposition. That is
unacceptable”. We have a supposedly democratic process. Yet, in
committee, it is so obvious that all opposition members vote one
way, while all government members vote the other way. It is as if
there was no justice.
This is where I find there is no democracy. There is no
democracy at all in committee or in the House. I see Liberal
backbenchers complain and moan because they never have an
opportunity to express their views. But when they do, sometimes
they do not seize it. Has this been going on only since 1993 or
for a longer time?
Hon. Lorne Nystrom: Mr. Speaker, it is worse now than it was
20 or 30 years ago. I well remember in 1968, when I was first
elected, that there was greater respect for the Parliament of
Canada. In the days of Mr. Diefenbaker, Mr. Douglas, Mr. Al
MacEachen, and Mr. Ged Baldwin, there were many great
parliamentarians.
As I said, any ministerial statement was made here in the House
of Commons. This was the place that was the most important back
then, but in the last 15 or 25 years, a lack of respect for the
Parliament of Canada has gradually set in.
I think that this system has very quickly changed with the
present government, which was elected in 1993. Under the
Mulroney government, there was greater respect for parliamentary
committees. I clearly remember the Standing Committee on
Finance, which was chaired by Mr. Blenkarn. I also have very
clear memories of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and
International Trade, which was chaired by another Progressive
Conservative member.
The finance and foreign affairs committees had a certain
independence, as did many parliamentary committees. That was 8,
9, 10 or 15 years ago.
Now, however, committees are often playpens for government
backbenchers. This is not right. This is not a good
parliamentary system. We need democracy in the House of Commons.
We need an important role for members from all regions of
Canada.
It is very important to have parliamentary reform, to have real
democracy here. Even in England, there have been a number of
occasions where the government was defeated by its own
backbenchers. This was a reality for Mr. Blair. It was a reality
for Margaret Thatcher and for John Major. This was a reality in
England.
In our country, everyone must vote with the party.
This is not right, this in no way resembles a real parliamentary
system. This is not a system that is good for the collective
health of Canadians.
Mr. Clifford Lincoln (Lac-Saint-Louis, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the
most traditional institutions, churches and monarchies, are becoming
democratic today because they realize they have to be closer to
the people. They have to live with the times. However, our
parliament here is so stuck in tradition it is ridiculous.
Here is one small example. When the Speaker rises, the three
pages required to sit at his feet rise as well. If he sits, they
sit. What is the point of all this? Has it improved the life of
the pages? I think it is symptomatic of a tradition that, today,
is completely outmoded, undemocratic and does not improve the
life of the pages who come here.
I think about all our colleagues here. Do we call them by their
name? No. We speak of “the hon. member for
Bellechasse—Etchemins—Montmagny—L'Islet” or of “the hon.
member for Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington”.
2040
[English]
Just five minutes ago one of his colleagues from the same party
could not remember the member's riding. Does this help
parliamentarians to get to know each other?
I have been to many parliaments where people call each other by
their names. It is no sin to call someone Smith or Tremblay.
They get to know each other. The irony of this place is that in
here I am an hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis. When I get to a
committee I am no longer hon. I am Lincoln. What sense does
that make? If it is good for a committee, why should it not be
good here?
I find that in committee I can put a name and a face to people.
There is a certain human bond that develops, while here there is
this sterile thing. I pity your job, Mr. Speaker, you have to
remember all these quaint names, sometimes four or five in a row.
That should be changed. We should live in our times. I would
like to be able to call the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle by
name. It would be far friendlier than calling him by his riding
name.
As for votes, I really believe very deeply that our system of
calling all votes confidence votes, with free votes being the
exception, should be reversed. All votes should be free votes
except for confidence votes. They should become the exception.
I will just give a few figures from the British house which I
gleaned some time ago. In the British house of commons,
dissenting votes have been a significant fact of life for a long
time. In the seventies dissenting votes accounted for 25% of all
voting divisions in the British parliament. In the first session
of 1983-1987, when the Tories were in power, 62 divisions took
place in which 137 Tory backbenchers cast a total of 416 votes
against the government.
Here that would be viewed as heresy because any type of
expression that is contrary to the wish of the government is seen
as disloyalty. I do not see it as disloyalty. I see it as
intelligence. I see it as being accountable to my conscience and
to my electors. I separate completely confidence votes, which
are a fact of life and must be in a government, from the rest of
the votes where we could vote very freely and the government
would carry on all the same, and be no worse for it.
With regard to a code of ethics, in 1997 the present Speaker,
the member for Kingston and the Islands, was co-chair of a
committee that produced a code of official conduct for senators
and members of parliament. Some of the members here were part of
that committee. The report is still lying on the shelf. Why can
we not institute that code of official conduct for all members
and for senators? Why can we not make this official? Why can we
not have a counsellor responsible to the Parliament of Canada? I
do not see any reason why this should not become a part of our
rules that govern our conduct as parliamentarians. That should
be an essential and a prompt reform to institute.
When we talk about private members' bills, for six years I have
had private members' bills that have just stayed in there.
Recently I won. By magic my name got drawn, like the 649. Then
I appeared before a committee and it decided that the bill was
not important enough to be votable. So for one hour I had a
little debate here and the bill died.
I look again at what happens in the British parliament. The
differences are striking. In the British parliament, during the
years 1983-1987, out of 415 private members' bills introduced in
the British House, 70 of them were given royal assent, or 17%.
In our parliament, between May 13, 1991 to February 2, 1996,
four and three quarter years, 428 private members' bills were
introduced. Out of those, 163 were selected and only eight
became statutes. Only 5% of bills were selected and a mere 2%
became statutes.
These bills made lacrosse and hockey national games and silly
things like that. Very few items of substance are ever made into
statutes.
2045
The British house had 70 bills that became statutes, which gave
a feeling of dignity and a feeling of empowerment to members of
parliament who were otherwise viewed as backbenchers only good
for coming to vote.
This reform needs to be carried out very promptly. All private
members' bills should be made votable. We should have enough
help to put private members' bills through. Admittedly let us
have a limit on private members' bills. It could be one per
member. I do not care. However let us have a chance to debate
them.
If the majority of our colleagues vote against it, I will be the
first to agree. Let us give a chance for them to be debated so
that a measure which we feel is good enough to be debated by our
colleagues has at least a slight chance of becoming a statute.
Otherwise, why have it at all?
I also believe that committees should be much freer to vote. I
am quite happy as the chair of a committee today to see my
position being voted in by my colleagues. I also believe that
during the examination of legislation committees should be very
free and open. Parliamentary secretaries should sit as expert
witnesses for committees rather than be part of a committee.
I was in the National Assembly of Quebec as a minister. I had to
appear as a minister to defend my legislation right through. I
know the task of ministers is sometimes impossible. Therefore
let the parliamentary secretary take over that function rather
than sit as a member of the committee during the study of
legislation.
I also believe the Board of Internal Economy in the House of
Commons should be made more open. Certainly I do not disparage
the members, including you, Mr. Speaker, who sit on the board
with great diligence and conscience. However it should be made
far more open.
Committee chairs from day to day do not quite know how their
budgets will be met. Halfway through the year they have to beg
for another travel allowance. It should be far more open, far
more transparent. There should be far more input by members of
the committees, chairs of the committees and House members.
We have a lot of reform to do. I would love to talk about other
items such as electoral reform and the powers of the executive
office, but I sincerely believe we have to start somewhere.
Within the standing orders I think we can make reforms to
parliament that will not make me less a Liberal, less a part of a
government or less a part of an opposition if I were voted into
opposition.
I will fight very hard for the things I believe in. At the same
time I will feel empowered. I will feel dignified as a member of
parliament. I will feel that the little intelligence I have been
given, the little creative powers I have been given, have a
chance to be expressed and find their way forward rather than
just be there for duty times, be there for votes when I am
supposed to vote a certain way, and be there always as a
backbencher.
How can we be hon. members and backbenchers at the same time? It
does not make any sense to me. There is a contradiction in
terms. I would rather be a plain mister but have some powers. I
would rather be a plain mister and feel that I can make much more
of a contribution to this place than I do today.
The rules deserve to be reopened and looked at again. We should
look at what the Finns do, what the Swedes do and what the Brits
do. Then we could say that surely there must be a way to improve
this place which is not against traditions, against rules,
against the government or against the opposition. It will make
the place better, not only for all of us but for all Canadians.
2050
Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, I am delighted to acknowledge that I have total respect,
looking at the Liberal side, for every member in his or her seat
over there. That has to be taken in the context of the present
situation. I will not go any further because I know the rules of
the House. We have many silly rules, and everyone here knows
what I am talking about.
I have exceptionally high respect for the member who just spoke.
I agreed with much of what he said. I was intrigued with his
statements with respect to free votes, confidence votes. I
believe very strongly that democracy would be strengthened and
the rules in this august Chamber which apply to all citizens of
the country would be enhanced. We would have better legislation.
We would make better laws if we were able sometimes to defeat or
improve a faulty motion or amendment.
My question for the member is very specific. We are dealing
today with changes to the standing orders. I know he has a lot
of knowledge in this area. How would he specifically propose a
change to the standing orders that would allow for more
non-confidence votes? How would he change the standing orders,
or is it strictly a matter within each party's purview to
implement?
Mr. Clifford Lincoln: Mr. Speaker, the question of
declaring which votes are confidence and which votes are
non-confidence depends primarily on the executive. I do not
think the standing orders would establish that. It would be left
to the executive.
It would be part of the overall reform of parliament if we had a
broadly based task force, working group or whatever. It would
include House leaders and MPs from all sectors who believe
passionately in parliamentary reform in a constructive fashion.
We could arrive at some sort of modus vivendi which included
issues like the way we vote.
We could arrive at it the way the Brits did: by trial and error.
I do not know who started it, whether it was members of the
Labour Party or of the Conservative Party, but they started it at
one point by saying that cross voting was quite acceptable. They
started a tradition of goals: one week goals, two week goals and
three week goals. They decided among themselves to establish a
tradition on grading legislation including confidence votes.
Now it is a given that dissenting votes in Britain do not mean
that a Conservative is less conservative or that a Labour Party
member is less a member of labour. They established a tradition
whereby they respect the rules and confidence votes are binding.
I think we could establish that here without too many problems.
Mr. Rick Borotsik (Brandon—Souris, PC): I like the
change to the rules already, Mr. Speaker. I too agree. I have a
lot of respect for the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis and I
listened to what he had to say with great respect.
In my short tenure in the House I have found when legislation
comes forward and is placed on the floor of the House it is
almost a fait accompli. The ministers, the bureaucrats and the
departments have gone through the whole process, come forward
with a piece of legislation, dumped it on the floor and did not
listen to any other ideas on changes to the legislation to make
it better. They do not listen to backbench members in private
members' business who might have some pretty good legislative
ideas.
Does the member agree that there should be more influence from
members with respect to the presentation of legislation? Does
the member agree that perhaps private members should have the
opportunity of putting forward legislation or helping implement
legislation that comes forward to the House without the minister
of the particular department interfering with the legislation?
2055
Mr. Clifford Lincoln: Mr. Speaker, I might be viewed by
some as radical. I do not think I am a radical, but at the same
time I believe I am here to use my brain in the best way I can to
try improve legislation if I feel it should be improved.
If somebody from the opposition has a better idea than I have, I
am prepared to accept it. If a matter arises where the
legislation would be better if an amendment were made to it by
the government or the opposition, we should be open to look at
it. That is the way I have always done it either as a member of
the House or the chair of a committee.
The more we do this, the more it will build mutual respect, if
it were on the basis that members of the opposition understood
that government members had constraints just like they do.
Eventually trust is built. Sometimes a hard line is taken and
people accept it because they know it is part of the system. At
the same time fairness and openness are used to the greatest
degree possible. That is the way it should go.
The Deputy Speaker: I understand two colleagues would be
interested in splitting a 10 minute block. Is that agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland—Colchester, PC): Mr. Speaker,
there are lots of moments in the House when one is not proud to
be part of if, but tonight I feel we are here to improve the
House and its functions. It is quite refreshing and quite
exciting. I hope we are successful in achieving the goal of
improving the effectiveness of members of parliament and the
effectiveness of parliament itself.
From my point of view as a member of parliament who has been
here on and off since 1988, the first and most important thing
that could be changed is the committee system. We have a circus
in committees right now. The chairs are predetermined and
selected by ministers. Voting is distorted and contorted. It is
set up so that only one person can win the chair of a committee.
That in itself sets the tone of the committee and makes it far
less effective.
Committees would be much more effective if we had secret ballots
in the same way as we choose the Speaker. It is just as
important to have secret ballots on the agenda.
On the transport committee in the last parliament we went
through a series of determinations of important issues to be
discussed. We went from 15 issues to 8 to 6 to 2. Just as we
were to decide which one we would take up next, the minister
announced that he wanted us to do something else. All government
members agreed with him and that is what we did. It was not on
the list. It was not what we were to do.
If the agendas of the committees could be set by secret ballot
they would be much more effective and productive.
Parliamentary secretaries are like policemen at committees. They
are there to ensure government members fall in line and do
exactly what they are supposed to do. They should not be there.
If they are there, they should be there as witnesses.
We should have the power to initiate legislation and the freedom
to make amendments much more in line with what is appropriate for
the particular issue.
We should have transcripts from committees much faster. It
takes weeks and weeks for the public to get a transcript from a
committee, at which time the bill could have gone through final
reading in the House and have been passed. What is the point of
having a transcript so much later?
In Britain there is a limit of two weeks for transcripts to get
out to the public, and that is the way it should be here. There
is no reason it cannot be done.
2100
Access to information is a thorn in my side. I have seen my
ability to do my job weakened by changes in the access to
information application and government policy. When I apply for
access to information I usually get a number of pages, half of
which have nothing on them and some of which are all blanked out,
with the important parts taken out. It distorts the whole
purpose of the access to information system. It could be
extremely effective and helpful to us in doing our job. First we
are stalled. Then we get abridged versions and distorted
versions. In fact, in many cases they are just simply useless.
Another thing that is happening is that as the government
divests operations we are losing access to information. A good
example is NavCan, the system that controls air traffic control.
When it was under Transport Canada we could access information on
air traffic controller incident reports, their complaints and
concerns. We could access structural reports on air traffic
control towers. We can no longer do that because it is divested
to NavCan.
Confidence votes are almost the rule and they should not be. We
should have free votes on many more issues than we have.
Everything is confidence now, even trivial issues. Government
members are told to stay in line or they will pay a huge price.
Questions on the order paper take too long to get answered. We
could use questions on the order paper much more to our advantage
and to the advantage of the Canadian people if there were a
shorter time limit. Why does it take more than seven days to
answer a question on the order paper? There is no reason. That
is something that should be addressed.
Yesterday the Minister of Foreign Affairs announced in London,
England, that we had changed our policy toward India. That is an
abuse of parliament. He should come here and make that
announcement.
We should have more access to committees and much more effective
committees. I only hope the exercise we are about to go through
is not smoke and mirrors. We have the opportunity to improve
things, and I hope we do.
Mr. Ken Epp: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. If
the member goes over his time we should arrange it so that the
other person's time is reduced by the same amount so that
together they get 15 minutes.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Lincoln): The member has two and
a half minutes for questions and comments.
Mr. Rick Borotsik (Brandon—Souris, PC): Mr. Speaker, I
will not take the full two and a half minutes, so perhaps it
could be tacked on to the intervention of my colleague from St.
John's West.
I have one very quick question and the member just briefly
touched on it. As one member across the way said, it is contempt
of parliament. Recently we have talked about ministers who
prefer to go to the news media, to a press conference, and to
outside organizations to make policy announcements that should be
made in the House.
Could the member expand on that a little? The time for
questions and comments could then go to my good friend from St.
John's West.
Mr. Bill Casey: Mr. Speaker, I will just use the example
I mentioned. Yesterday the Minister of Foreign Affairs announced
a change in our policy toward India. That affects the foreign
affairs committee but we were not told.
We were not given any advance notice. We were not given any
opportunity to comment, question, criticize, advise or maybe make
improvements to the policy. It did not come to parliament. We
had no opportunity to deal with the issue in the House.
It has become pervasive. The government does it more and more.
It makes announcements in the media. It does not bring them to
the House. It does not give us a chance to comment. It is a very
serious issue. It is moving away from tradition and precedence.
Mr. Loyola Hearn (St. John's West, PC): Mr. Speaker, I am
delighted to participate in such a discussion this evening. It
is a pleasure to partake in such an interesting exercise. Today
is a great day to have such a debate because it is international
day for the elimination of discrimination.
2105
Many of us are wearing multicoloured ribbons representing the
different nations within our country. I wonder, as many of
Canadians watch the debate this evening, what they are saying
about us? What do they say about us every day when they watch
this honourable House? We must remember that people outside the
Chamber only see what is portrayed on television and only hear
news reports. Quite often it is not very pretty.
It was an honour this evening, Mr. Speaker, to listen to you, to
listen to my leader earlier, and to listen to the member for
Regina—Qu'Appelle. If my French serves me right, qu'appelle
means what calls. The question we might ask is what is calling
us to be here tonight? Unfortunately there are not too many of
us, but why are we here?
An hon. member: You are whipped.
Mr. Loyola Hearn: It is not because of our whip, with all
due respect to my colleague. Some of us who are in the Chamber
at this late hour, and some who will stay even later, believe in
the institution. We also believe that perhaps tonight we can
make some difference.
What concerns us is who is not here. I know we cannot draw
attention to individuals but let us draw attention to classes.
The people who hold the power may not have the same concerns
about what happens in this great Chamber as those who perhaps are
abused by the power that some people hold.
Mr. Dennis Mills: They are listening.
Mr. Loyola Hearn: We hope they are listening and we hope
that they learn. All of us have learned tonight from all
those who have participated.
We could ask for many things to be changed. Practically all of
them are on the record already. We could talk about ministerial
statements that should be made in the House so that there is a
chance to respond and people across the country understand what
has been announced, particularly if those statements refer to
policy and financial items.
We should see ministers here during the late show when we have
questions but are not satisfied with the answers we receive. We
ask for more deliberation so that they can understand what we are
talking about. We should not have their parliamentary
secretaries rushing in with a prepared text to slough off members
with an answer prepared by someone else. That is not learning
about the problems which confront the country and problems which
they as government ministers should be doing something about.
We are also looking at the time it takes to pass legislation and
comparing it to the time wasted in this honourable Chamber.
Tonight I returned from having dinner with a group of young
students who are here in a forum of young Canadians. I asked
them as they sat at my table what they thought of their visit to
the House. They were impressed, as anyone would be who comes
here, but they also said that the decorum is certainly not what
it should be and that we waste a lot of time.
Prior to the dissolution of the House when the election was
called I saw all the bills that died on the order paper,
particularly bills like the employment insurance one that left a
lot of people in dire straits for the fall and winter. I wonder
how many of these bills could have been passed if we did not
procrastinate.
I know my time is short but let me say that despite all the
suggestions being made by everyone in relation to the work of the
committees, the performance of ministers, the methods and
mechanisms of pushing through legislation, if we are to attain
change in this honourable Chamber it has to come from the heart
of each and every one of us.
We need the intelligence and the imagination to envision what
this Chamber should be and what it can do. If each and every one
of us, elected by our constituents, does what we were elected to
do, we will not have to worry about parliamentary change. It
will happen automatically.
2110
Mr. James Rajotte (Edmonton Southwest, Canadian
Alliance): Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the hon. member on a
wonderful speech. What really deserves credit is the fact that
he described his affection for parliament. That is very
important.
It is very important for those who do not want parliamentary
reform to understand that those who want parliamentary reform do
it from an affection, a love and a respect for this place. We do
not do it because we do not respect parliament. It is in fact
the exact opposite. We respect and love this place and want it
to be what it should be. That is why we ask for parliamentary
reform. I very much appreciated that comment in the hon.
member's speech.
I want to ask him a specific question about quorum. He
mentioned that we should probably increase quorum so that we have
more members in the House and the debates are livelier and more
deliberative. This place should be a national debating body. The
whole notion of deliberation, of give and take, of debate back
and forth, and of the tension between the opposition and the
government side, is what produces good governance. Would he
comment on whether we should increase the quorum requirements of
the House of Commons?
Mr. Loyola Hearn: Mr. Speaker, a number of years ago I
came from the government side of a legislature where our leader
gave us a fair amount of flexibility. I then spent three years
in opposition where I saw premier number one pull the plug on
Meech Lake despite the wishes of the majority.
I also came from the same legislature where I saw the same
leader lead a vote of non-confidence in the speaker because he
was caught short on quorum. I have seen many people try to make
good speeches and nobody listened. That was unfortunate. How
can we individually react and do anything about the problems in
the country or parliamentary reform if we are not even listening
or we are not even concerned with what is going on?
I agree with the hon. member that we should always have a large
number in the House so that the give and take will lead to
positive results.
Mr. Dennis Mills (Toronto—Danforth, Lib.): Mr. Speaker,
I was inspired to come to this community and ultimately
participate in electoral politics back in 1980 by the Right Hon.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau. I remember one day in debate in 1983
when we were chatting about certain issues. He stood in the
House and said that the essence of the Chamber was to speak for
those who did not have a voice and that the essence of our work
was to support those who needed our help when they needed it
most. That has been my compass.
Before I get into my direct comments on why this place needs to
be more effective, Mr. Speaker, your courage and your inspiration
are very similar to those of Mr. Trudeau. Your speech earlier
tonight in the House of Commons on how we need to reform to make
this place more effective and more relevant very much reminded me
of Mr. Trudeau.
On June 5, 2000, I wrote an article for the Hill Times in
which I talked about parliamentary democracy. I know a couple of
times today I have been quoted on the fact that we are nothing
more than voting machines, that the place is irrelevant and that
it is a car with a broken engine. I stand by everything I said
on June 5.
Tonight I celebrate the fact that the leadership of all
parties has finally made a public confession that it is time to
take the engine of this place into the repair shop and make it
more relevant. That is a great thing.
2115
When I stand here tonight I think of my constituents. They are
kind wondering about committees, special motions and all the
different rules of the House. They do not understand any of
that. They elected me to come here and work on the issues that I
ran on in the last election.
One of those issues, for example, is the whole struggle that we
are having to get more affordable housing in the downtown Toronto
area. I know it is a national problem but I am speaking to my
constituents tonight. They wonder what is going on, that after I
ran on a certain issue, the government ran on a certain issue,
the Prime Minister takes a lead on a certain issue, I was elected
on November 27 and then I come up here and nothing happens. They
do not get it. They cannot figure it out. I have to confess
that I also cannot figure it out and I have been here for 13
years.
To be brutally frank, and I say this to all members of the
House, I am totally fed up with the current system. I am not fed
up because it will make any difference to me personally. What
bothers me is the contempt that the entire machinery of
government has toward each and every member of the House of
Commons. I do not care what party it is, it is contempt. Those
are strong words but I stand by them.
I have, through access to information, documents in my
possession showing that departments of government have passed on
memos saying what they will feed up to the minister or to the MPs
so that they will stop bothering them. That happened when I
tried to serve my constituents.
Mr. Speaker, we go back 13 years. I pray and hope that under
your watch we can make this House of Commons work the way it is
supposed to work. It has to start. I worked my guts out in 1984
to help the Prime Minister become not only the leader of my party
but the Prime Minister of Canada. I have immense love and
respect for him, but I do not have respect for the 800 men and
women in the Privy Council Office who, in no way shape or form,
reflect the experience of the populist approach that the Prime
Minister has had throughout his 35 years of serving parliament
and the country.
I support all the recommendations from my colleague for
Lac-Saint-Louis but I want one other amendment to come to
parliamentary reform. I want one day a week, or maybe one day a
month if that is all we can get, to be contempt for parliament
day, a day where MPs can bring to the House examples of where
they have tried to serve their constituents on issues that are
government policy but could not get a response, of where they
tried to get service for their constituents but the bureaucrat's
response was that they should call the minister's office. Does
that mean that a public or city councillor can call the
bureaucrat but a member of parliament cannot call him or her and
get service without going through a minister's office?
That is crap. That is not the way to run a country.
2120
I do not think parliamentary reform will ever take root until we
create an environment where the machinery of government, the
public service, responds to all of us as we try to serve the
public and our constituents. I submit to the House that this is
not happening today.
Mr. Peter MacKay (Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, PC):
Mr. Speaker, it is good to see you in the chair. I know that
parliamentary reform is something that is very much on your mind
and on the minds of many members here tonight. Throughout the
coming days and weeks I am hoping that we can keep this spirit
alive.
Many members have engaged in the debate throughout the past
number of hours. I commend the hon. member from Edmonton who has
a long career ahead of him as a parliamentarian and has shown a
great many insights already that will serve us well.
I would like to put a question to the hon. member for
Toronto—Danforth. As he has pointed out, he is a long serving
member and he has expressed very eloquently a frustration that
many members feel from all corners and all parties. He has
focused in on one of the key problems that we are wrestling with
and finding some difficulty in articulating, the bureaucratic
influence that exists.
It appears that the levers of powers given to elected
representatives have somehow been stripped away, watered down or
diminished. A simple example the member used was of a member
being able to access information on behalf of a constituent. It
would normally take weeks or months to get a response. We would
normally punch in a telephone number of one department only to be
sent off to another department or to another province. We may
have called our local office only to get another city in another
province. He knows the problem. He has encountered it as have
many of the members here.
How do we change this institutionalized attitude that appears to
exist? It is a non-partisan issue because it has evolved, as
have a lot of the problems, but how do we change the mindset or
the attitude that seems to exist within the bureaucracy? Should
we limit terms for members and senior civil servants? Is there a
way we can police the bureaucracy more effectively?
Mr. Dennis Mills: Mr. Speaker, my recommendation in our
list of parliamentary reforms is that we have a contempt for
parliament day. On that day, the clerk of the Privy Council
would sit here and be responsible for the complaints on behalf of
constituents that come to the clerk. He could then fan them out
to his deputies. We could then get a better service to the
public. I do not see it any other way.
Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, I am intrigued by the speech that the hon. member has
just given. Without being personal, I will make this statement
so general that it will not attack an individual member here.
Surely he must agree that the way things work around here, and
specifically with respect to the PMO and Privy Council, that this
is a function of the executive branch of government. It has to
be within their ability to change that and to reign it in.
Is that not where we should be working in the House of Commons
instead of blaming bureaucrats?
2125
Mr. Dennis Mills: Mr. Speaker, we are not here tonight
blaming anyone. We are here tonight renewing ourselves. All of
us in the House have to blame ourselves for the way we have
allowed the pendulum to swing away from us. I put myself at the
top of the list. I have turned the other cheek too many times on
behalf of my constituents. I should have been tougher many years
ago.
There is one thing all my colleagues must learn, which I learned
a long time ago when I used to work in the Prime Minister's
office. A highly respected senior bureaucrat once said that if
we allow resistance, we will get resistance. I must confess that
over the last number of years I have allowed too much resistance
when I should have been more forceful on behalf of my
constituents.
Mr. Rob Merrifield (Yellowhead, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, we are having an interesting debate today and it is
absolutely vital for me, as a new member in the House, to be able
to speak to it.
The House of Commons, as far as I am concerned, has to return to
the people of Canada. Parliamentary reform has taken far too
long and is long over. The rights and responsibilities of
members of parliament to represent the views of their
constituents has disappeared. The government seems much more
concerned about maintaining power than representing the will of
the people.
The House of Commons is the people's parliament. It is the
voice of the common people of Canada. We must make it responsive
to the people of Canada.
I took my seat here only a few short months ago and I have
already come to recognize, despite the efforts of hard-working
individuals from all sides of the House, that this place is no
more than a voting machine. Last night I witnessed 16 motions
being voted on in a few minutes, rubber stamp laws that were
mainly drawn up by unelected bureaucrats from the Prime
Minister's office.
It is up to the members of parliament, the government and the
opposition to take parliament back. We must take parliament
back.
I came believing that I could offer some constructive input on
pressing legislation and engage in serious debate on important
issues. Instead, I saw an example yesterday of where we turned
our back on a very important issue, an economic fibre of our
country, the agriculture crisis. Many members were not even
allowed to debate on it. However, we can go all night tonight on
this one.
The mechanism of government was inherited by a proven British
parliamentary system created by the Fathers of Confederation.
They answered the great question: Should the chief power of the
country be the king or parliament? They determined that they
would be governed by the people and not by the will of one man.
It is an illusion if one thinks that Canadians live in a
democracy. We are controlled by the Prime Minister.
My grandfather fought in both world wars. He went to war
defending the rights of democracy so that we could stand in the
House today to debate. He fought for freedom. Young men and
women, aged 18, 19 and 20 years old, gave up their lives so that
we could be here to debate. It is sad for me to think that the
people of Canada have been conquered by a dictator without a shot
being fired.
We can change that by free votes. We can work toward reforming
parliament. There are a lot of things that have been talked
about today, all of them very worthy of note, but for me the
greatest change would come with the free vote of every member in
the House, because it is up to us to vote the will of the people
who sent us here.
Have governments forgotten that only four short months ago the
citizens of the country elected each one of us into our seats? In
four short months we have forgotten who we represent. We need to
shift how government works and to be responsive to those who put
us here.
2130
As I see it, we are bribing Canadians with their own tax
dollars, and there is wasteful spending on unnecessary programs
and unaccountable government. Cabinet is barking to the tune of
the bureaucrats and special interest groups. Free votes will set
us on a path for parliamentary reform and that is a path that we
need to get on really quickly as far as I am concerned.
A real interesting concept is that government members believe
that if the government introduces a bill that is defeated or if
an opposition bill, motion or amendment is passed it would bring
down the government and they would have to resign. It is beyond
me where that idea comes from. It is archaic.
The Prime Minister coerces backbenchers into believing that
voting the will of the constituents would bring the government
down. That would not bring the government down at all. Voting
for their constituencies and constituents would make the
government stronger and Canada stronger.
Liberal backbenchers have been forced into something that the
Prime Minister wants. He has been bullying them around, sort of
like a schoolyard bully, but bullies are only powerful as long as
no one stands up to them and no one really challenges them or
thinks around their bullying.
I know that the hon. members across the way are truly hard
working people. I have talked to many of them. Now is their
chance to stand up. Not many of them but a few of them are in
the House right now. They can talk to their colleagues and do
something for Canada that is beyond anything they have done to
this point.
There are 301 members elected to the House of Commons. We have
the power to implement change. We set the rules. We were
entrusted to make the laws of this country. I am not asking
members to vote for something they do not believe in, but I will
not be holding my breath that the Prime Minister will come
through that door any time soon, unmuzzle the backbenchers over
there and allow free votes in this place.
As democratically elected members of parliament, we do have the
power to make the change. We could make it as early as tomorrow
morning, if we had the political will to do so, by passing a
motion that we truly have free votes in this place. All it would
take is 30 Liberal backbenchers to live up to their potential and
to influence government in a way they have never influenced it
before. That is all it would take. We could change Canada and
never go back. That is how easy it could be.
I do not believe in blaming the bureaucrats. I believe it is
our duty. We need to do something about it and we need to do it
soon. Backbench MPs have that potential to be more than just
voting machines. I would challenge them to do it, to be more,
because they owe it to themselves and they owe it to this
country.
I am proud that I can represent the people of Yellowhead who
have chosen me to be here as their representative in the House of
Commons. They trust me to inform them of the problems, seek
their opinions and vote their will. After being in parliament
for only a few months, I have already realized that my ability to
represent my constituents has been hampered by the Prime
Minister's obsession for power. If he were really interested in
creating the legacy he talks about, he would implement
parliamentary reform himself. However, we do not have to wait
for the Prime Minister. We can implement it now. We have the
power to do it and we should.
Right after the election of November 27, 2000, I came to Ottawa
with a few MPs for orientation. They were from all sides of the
House. We were excited. We had just been elected. We had just
been given the opportunity to change Canada, to lead Canada, to
make a difference in this country. I was excited about it and I
am still excited about it. As I talked to the other MPs, they
said they were excited about the concept of a free vote. They
thought it was something they could and should do.
It is interesting now to see how disappointing it is that they
have fallen victim to the system and have thrown away their
ideals and their principles. If these walls could speak, they
would tell us about the great leaders who have sat in these same
chairs and who have fought for a better Canada, who have done
what was right for their constituencies.
I am calling on every member of the House to live up to the
vision of the founding fathers and to vote for a motion to allow
free votes, because members owe it to this country. It is the
greatest country in the world and we need to protect it. We can
do it and we should do it now.
2135
Mr. Wayne Easter (Malpeque, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I wanted
to raise a point when the member for Toronto—Danforth made his
points. I just want to put on the record that I do agree with a
lot of what he said. We do not really need to change the system
in here; we need to change it totally, starting at the Privy
Council Office and on down.
However, the member who just spoke talked a lot about free
votes. I really think on that point that I look at every vote as
a free vote in the House. I vote my conscience. If I want to
vote against my party, I can.
The member mentioned that if these walls could speak, but if
these walls could speak they would tell us that there have been
more free votes since 1993 in the House than ever in its history.
Those are the facts. That is reality. There is not this great
restriction. In fact, we have seen more members vote different
from their party on this side of the House, the governing party,
than we have seen in the member's party, the Canadian Alliance,
over the last number of years.
I just want to point out that I agree with free votes, but they
are not the do all and end all in terms of changing everything in
this place. I was not able to be here for a lot of this evening,
but I listened to a fair bit of the debate on TV. I really like
what I see tonight. There is a good spirit in the House, with
good discussion, good debate and good ideas, and I think we need
to carry it further.
However, I just want to point out to the member opposite that
free votes in and of themselves will not be the do all and end
all in terms of changing how this place operates, because we have
had more free votes with this government than ever before in our
history, but it may not be enough.
Mr. Rob Merrifield: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member
for the question. I would just like to explain that in the time
I have been here, in the time that I have witnessed, I do not
have to go back very far to see that what the hon. member is
saying about free votes has been stifled very significantly. I
just have to go back one day, because yesterday we saw many of
the backbench Liberals vote against a bill that they honestly
believed should have been there. We know that from witnessing it
on agriculture, as he may have believed.
What I am suggesting is that the free vote is a place to start.
There has been a lot of good discussion here today and I
appreciate all of it. I agree with the hon. member that there
are some very good ideas about parliamentary reform. I also
believe that it has to start with the free vote. If we did that,
it would pave the way for everything to flow out of it. That is
what I am suggesting.
Mr. Dan McTeague (Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, I thank the member for Yellowhead. I appreciate his
candour. Of course he has certainly distinguished himself as a
new member of parliament and I am pleased to see him enter a
debate that I think is so important, not just to the essence of
what this place is but, more important, to what we are as
Canadians and what we share in common.
Earlier this evening we heard the hon. House leader talk about
the notion of at least being able to ensure that we have more
meaningful debate and opportunity for members on both sides of
the House to provide amendments to opposition day motions, the
so-called practice that has been around since 1994, with the hon.
member's previous party, in which the opposition splits its time
and as a result effectively forecloses on any opportunity for
meaningful debate by simply putting the word immediate after its
own motion.
Would the hon. member not agree, then, with the House leader's
position that perhaps we could encourage the very thing he is
looking for? We have members on this side like myself, who on
two occasions has tried to provide meaningful amendments. That
might allow members on this side of the House to join with the
members, as we might have yesterday, on a very important debate.
Mr. Rob Merrifield: Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of
different ideas about how reform should happen in this place. We
have talked a lot about them and we have heard almost all of them
today. I could get into the details of that one and many more.
I would prefer to keep my focus exactly on where I think we
should start.
2140
Where we should start is the free vote. We should start with
being able to do what our constituents want us to do and that is
to vote their will in the House. If we did that, then we would
bring meaningful debate into this place. Right now we do not
have that. I have not seen it. We can get into all those other
details, but I would rather not because I want to keep my focus
on where the fundamentals are and then work from there.
Mr. Dan McTeague (Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Yellowhead.
Part of the process of parliamentary reform perhaps includes
some of the more subtle parts of the ways in which the practices
of the House have evolved over the years and have been so
important in providing the kinds of routines that allow us to
discharge our functions day in and day out.
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for you to be in the chair this
evening, particularly as I give my perspective in terms of
parliamentary reform, because I think it is rather poignant that
a debate which took place some time ago, a contest that I am very
proud we both had an opportunity to run in, was really, in my
view, the beginning of a new phase with respect to the issue of
parliamentary reform. Some two months or a month and a half
after that deliberation, we now see ourselves, unlike other
parliaments, still continuing in the need to look at and study
the issue of improving the relationship that members of
parliament have with the House and, more important, with their
constituents.
The opportunity for us to speak today as a result of an
agreement by all House leaders is one that I believe is of
essential and extreme importance to all members of parliament.
Parliamentary reform is an issue that concerns many Canadians.
What we are in fact discussing today centres on the future
viability of parliament and the value of those who have been sent
here to represent the interests of their constituents.
One of the most interesting things that has happened, which has
been discussed by various members in the House this evening, has
been the question of the disconnect, to some extent, among
constituents, Canadians and their voting patterns. However, I
think the more disturbing trend might be encapsulated by those
who observe and who I believe do not do so with a political bias.
These are people such as Peter Dobell, who in his recent report
entitled Reforming Parliamentary Practice: The Views of
MPs, wrote:
In no other British-type legislature has the shift of power to
the executive proceeded further than in the Canadian federal
House of Commons.
There is obviously some tension with respect to this negative
view and the idea that perhaps the House of Commons may not be
able to continue to be relevant as long as power and decision
making is so intently focused in one area.
I believe we have been placed in the unenviable position of
trying to represent, as members of parliament, the views of
constituents to bring forth worthwhile ideas, while at the same
time realizing that very little can be done to accomplish this
without the approval of the executive.
One of the items that has not been discussed at great length
this evening and which I would like to touch upon is an area that
I think all members of parliament can readily agree with. That
is the notion of our private members' business. I look across
and I know there are members of parliament who have helped this
member in particular pass two pieces of legislation. One, Mr.
Speaker, was passed with your help in 1996 with respect to organ
donation. The other was with the help of members across the way,
including the Minister of Justice, with respect to the issue of
pursuit. It was the first change of the criminal code by a
backbencher.
There are changes that reflect the essence and the
meaningfulness of what members of parliament really must
challenge and must bring forth in the House of Commons beyond
question period in order to ensure that this place continues to
be ever more relevant.
However, there is a problem. Some of this issue can be solved
not simply with respect to the standing orders. I think all
members of parliament in the House would agree that private
members' business is something that is far more important. It
might give an opportunity to members of parliament to see their
positions effectively and, to some extent, properly addressed if
we were to make all private members' business votable. It is
reverse onus on members of parliament not to come forward with
frivolous propositions in terms of legislation.
2145
If members of parliament truly believe in what they are saying,
and they truly believe that what they are advocating on behalf of
their constituents is worthy enough of being on the floor of the
House of Commons, then we owe it to members of parliament and to
Canadians to ensure that members of parliament become accountable
not to their colleagues and peers, but to the Canadians which
they represent.
Each and every one of us has within our own right the privilege
of being here. It is with the private members' business that I
believe members of parliament can work with this side of the
House and vice versa, by working on issues over and above the
precious issues of the day that come up for 45 minutes, which you
are no doubt familiar with, Mr. Speaker, with respect to question
period. I believe we have an opportunity here to give members of
parliament the hand up that they need to pick one, maybe two
issues, in every parliament which they can broker and perhaps
broker successfully, assuming they can lobby other members of
parliament to tell them how important their issues are.
I have had some experience in winning a few bills. I have also
had some rather unsavoury experiences with losing a bill, and
particularly one dealing with predatory pricing. The House of
Commons is supreme, parliament is supreme and not a committee
that from time to time has usurped its authority to simply erase
the bill because it did not happen to like it or because it was
under particular instructions.
We all know that there are obligations on those committees.
Ultimately, no committee as an adjunct or an arm of the House of
Commons can assume a power which belongs to the House of Commons
alone. It is for that reason that if we are going to treat
private members' business seriously, when it goes to committee
the role of committee must be to improve that bill, not
extinguish it, not destroy it, not vandalize it and not remove it
from existence.
I am speaking to the idea that bills that are votable must be
treated with great respect. It has been a determination of the
House that they be treated in such a way. I ask for the
indulgence of members and the House leaders to consider that. If
they truly want to make the role of members of parliament that
much more relevant, that I believe is one area that we must work
much harder on.
More important, I appreciate the role of the House leader of
this party. I appreciate the role of the members who have had
plenty of experience in the House and, yes, our new members who
bring a very new perspective to what Canadians are saying to the
House of Commons. It is equally important for us as members of
parliament to be able to talk to members of parliament of the
Conservative Party, the Alliance Party, the Bloc Quebecois and
even other parties like the NDP.
[Translation]
In this context, it is important we have hope, pride and
confidence in members so they set partisan politics aside for a
while and ensure we are here to promote the interest of Canadians
and that we work toward that end.
I think it is clear that partisanship has a lot to do with the
effective operation of this House, but perhaps as well can on
occasion be a threat of confidence in this House. That is why I
implore members, and hope to have their support, to show
today in this debate that we can work together for the good of
our country, to ensure our country is running well and to offer
it a better future.
[English]
If we do nothing more than work together on the very valuable
proposals that are being put forward individually by members of
parliament, irrespective of their partisan affiliation, we will
have accomplished in this parliament what no other parliament has
done before.
Wracked by the internal internecine fights of “we have got to
make the point, we have to embarrass the government, the
government has to protect itself,” I believe we have an
opportunity which begins here this evening at ten to ten eastern
standard time, to provide Canadians an opportunity to understand
that what we do here is meaningful and important.
Many times we will see Americans and people from other countries
come into this famous House of Commons. They will find it
fascinating that less than two sword lengths apart people every
day, day in and day out, can see the most important issues of the
day debated. Some people call it a farce and some call it
theatre.
2150
We have an obligation to explain to Canadians what we are doing
here, but to also let Canadians know that we have the opportunity
and an advantage here this evening to do what no other parliament
has done before.
While there is only ten minutes for discussion in what is
otherwise a very worthwhile evening, there are issues of the
Board of Internal Economy and perhaps opening that up to members
of parliament, making decisions to members of parliament and to
make sure their needs are truly met. These are all part and
parcel of the much wider question of how we continue to reinvent
ourselves and modernize ourselves.
I compliment the government and the House leaders for having the
courage to go and visit this debate. We need to deal with
substantive issues. Let us work together to make this parliament
relevant and in so doing we will have honoured all Canadians.
Mr. James Rajotte (Edmonton Southwest, Canadian
Alliance): Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the member opposite's
speech. I thought it was very well done.
In terms of the certain issue of private members' bill, as a
member I fully concur that private members' bills should all be
votable. It simply does not make sense to have two-thirds of the
private members' bills that come up for debate for an hour not
votable and then they are off the order paper. That does not
make sense. I fully support the member in that.
I would also agree with him that it makes members more
responsible. If they introduce a private members' bill that does
not make sense, they will be the ones who are held accountable.
I would like to ask the member two questions. First, should the
House extend the hours for debate of private members' bills? If
we look at the parliament of Canada, for about the first 50 years
we had more time devoted toward private members' business. Since
about 1911 we have tended to move toward more government
business.
The second question is a genuine question for the member
opposite. In my short time here I have observed him and take him
to be an intelligent and independent member of the House. The
fact is we are hampered by a concentration of power in the Prime
Minister's office and the Privy Council Office. That hurts those
intelligent and independent members like himself.
There was a conference last year in Edmonton that was
co-sponsored by the previous member for Edmonton Southwest and
the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough. A member there
said that all that we needed was for the opposition parties to
join with a few backbench government members to say to the
executive that they were not going to tolerate the control they
had over parliament. He called it a backbenchers' bill of
rights.
Would it be possible for the backbench government members to
join opposition members and take back the rights from the
executive that all parliamentarians should have, and should we do
it right now?
Mr. Dan McTeague: Mr. Speaker, we are definitely
challenged by the tenacity and the acuity of new members of
parliament who seem to be very much on the ball, even at 38. I
have to apologize, I have grey hair now but I did not eight years
ago. The hon. member from Edmonton Southwest may know that in a
couple of months. Perhaps if he spends a bit of time as a
backbencher he will know what I am talking about.
To answer his first question, there is no doubt the hours should
be extended. I think there is common perspective on the notion
of extending the hours of debate in the House of Commons to
accommodate private members' business. Perhaps one of those
could be to devote the entire Friday to that end. That would be
important as long as the condition was that private members'
business was votable and that it would be taken more seriously,
so that more members of parliament would come to the House and
participate in those debates. That time should not extended on
non-votable bills because we basically talk out those bills.
His second question is even more important. I agree with him,
as have many academics and many others who have observed this
since about the time of Pearson and Trudeau. We have seen an
accretion of power to the centre. There are a number of reasons
for it including globalization and separation. Also, the media
has changed. Rather than looking for information in the
post-Watergate period, it has looked for the scandal. We have
certainly seen that in the past few days, and the member is not
unaware of that.
Would I agree to the notion that members of parliament can take
back the House of Commons? They can do it at any time.
I think it takes the collective will of members on both sides of
the House to work together on issues and principles, as long as
they can agree that there is a place and a time for partisanship.
2155
I refer to that in my few comments because the House tends to be
so rife with division based on party lines. We tend to have an
us versus them mentality. That is the very thing we have to try
to get around if we are going to go to the question of whether we
can restore the sovereignty of the House of Commons.
The Speaker: The member for
Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough; a brief question.
Mr. Peter MacKay (Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, PC):
Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the hon. member for
Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge. I know he brings an extraordinary
ability to identify important humanitarian non-partisan issues. I
have great respect for the work he does in this place.
I have a question along the same lines as the member from
Edmonton. I know this particular member has participated in
recent hearings on the impartiality of commissioners and
individuals who are to serve the House and serve the Canadian
public with an arm's length relationship.
Should we be looking at how the financial strings which are
attached to cabinet might influence its decisions? What I am
referring to is protection for the officers like the auditor
general, the privacy commissioner and the ethics counsellor.
Should we be looking in some way to distance the resources that
are made available to them through the treasury board and
cabinet? Maybe we should be tying it more to parliament.
While we are on the subject, should we not have an independent,
arm's length ethics counsellor to report directly to parliament?
I know the member has followed this issue. Would it not increase
public understanding and public—
The Speaker: I did ask the hon. member for a short
question. We are now going to have a short response from the
hon. member for Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge.
Mr. Dan McTeague: Mr. Speaker, I know you want to hear a
yes as an answer. I agree with and respect the hon. member for
Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough.
There is no doubt that in order to allow the House to function,
those who serve it must also be seen as being able to discharge
their function in a way that is at arm's length and in a way that
is above reproach. I think this is something that Canadians can
trust as being part and parcel of the importance of our
institution, which is to ensure that its officers function day in
and day out in a way that ensures the level of confidence we have
in our institutions, beyond the function of the members of
parliament. Everything must be done and seen to be done to do
just that.
Very briefly, we need to do this with respect to officers who
may have worked within various ministries, portfolios and
departments to ensure there is a cooling off period and to ensure
that Canadians have that accountability and that trust.
Mr. John Williams (St. Albert, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, I am certainly pleased to participate in this debate on
parliamentary reform. It has been something that has been near
and dear to my heart for a number of years.
When I first came to parliament, the 35th parliament from 1993
to 1997, I worked on a subcommittee chaired by what is now the
government whip. We produced a report that is called ”Business
of Supply: Completing the Circle of Control”, which was called
by the clerk of the House of Commons at that time one of the best
reports in 50 years on reforming the House of Commons. It was
unanimously adopted by all parties.
It was tabled in the House of Commons. We did not get a
response before the election was called in 1997, so we retabled
it in the 36th parliament. Even though it had all-party
agreement, the government said that there was nothing in it that
it wanted to adopt. That is why we are frustrated when it comes
to parliamentary reform. I will give some examples of what we
are talking about.
The procedure to handle the estimates is a process by which the
House approves the estimates and grants the government's supply
money to pay the bills of the government. Last night we approved
billions of dollars in 30 seconds flat. It is a crying shame.
There was no debate, just a pro forma, first reading, second
reading, committee of the whole, shall this clause carry on
division, shall this clause and this clause, shall it be reported
back to the Chair, all in favour, yeas and nays and it was a done
deal. We approved $16 billion that fast, without any
examination. That cannot be.
2200
If we are to have a parliament that will hold the government to
account, we need a real process to handle the approval of supply.
Mr. Speaker, you are one of the more learned members on the
issue of supply. For the edification of all Canadians, there is
a simple process. If a motion is being debated, it can be
amended. When an amendment is moved, we vote on it. If the
amendment carries, the motion is amended. A vote is then taken
on the main motion. When it comes to the estimates, the process
is reversed.
If I put a motion on the order paper to reduce an expenditure by
$100, $1,000, $1 million or to eliminate the expenditure
entirely, that causes the President of the Treasury Board to
reaffirm what she wants to spend. Her motion comes up before
mine. After she reaffirms what she wants to spend, how can she
say it is impossible to vote against my motion when she has just
reaffirmed what she wants to spend? It would be ludicrous to say
one thing and then say the opposite. The system is fixed to
ensure the government gets its way. This cannot be. That is why
we are totally frustrated with the process of the estimates.
In 1996 we talked about such things as evaluation. I
complimented the President of the Treasury Board when she
introduced a new policy on evaluation a month ago. It is along
those lines that we have been talking about.
The government will spend $170 billion this coming year but
most parliamentarians do not know what it will be
spent on. It spends this money through programs. Since 1996, I
have been asking that programs be evaluated by asking simple
fundamental questions, such as what is the program for and what
public policy is this program designed to address. If
there is a need for it, fine, but we should be told what it is.
Once we have figured out what the program is trying to do, the
second question would be quite simple: How well is it doing it?
We could then measure the success of the program. The next
questions could be: Are we doing it efficiently, and can we
achieve the same results in a better and more efficient way?
Let me take for example the program that the Minister of Finance
introduced just before the election. I am talking about the
heating fuel rebate which was paid out to prisoners, people in
graveyards and so on. He said that the government would
help low income people with their heating fuel bills. That is
fine. There is nothing wrong with that. However, he did not
tell us the methodology he would use to send out the $125
cheques.
As it turned out, people who live in apartments and do not pay
heating fuel bills received cheques. People in prison got
cheques even though they do not pay heating fuel bills. People
who recently died received cheques. They are in a graveyard and
cannot cash it. The money will go to the estate even though the
estate does not pay a heating fuel bill. It goes on and on. My
son who lives with me received his cheque and he does not pay a
heating fuel bill either.
What was the public policy? The public policy was to help low
income people with their fuel bills. That is okay. How well did
the program achieve that objective? As we can see, there was
gross waste in the program by virtue of the fact that far too
many people received a cheque even though they did not pay
a heating fuel bill.
In 2001, five years after the business of supply report was
brought down, the government said there was nothing in the report
that was worth adopting.
It finally slipped in the idea that maybe program evaluation was
not such a bad thing after all, that it might be able to do a
little pilot project to see if it could get the thing moving
forward. Why did it take five years? That is the point.
2205
On reallocation of funds we have heard about March madness: the
money has to be spent before the end of the fiscal year because
if it is not spent it will not be there for the next year.
Empires will get smaller. There will not be a big raise. There
will be staff reductions and maybe even transfers to different
departments.
Yesterday at the public accounts meeting we were dealing with
the billion dollar boondoggle in HRDC. It is still hanging
around. The auditor general had a chart that was the perfect
chart for March madness. It showed that $5 million to $8 million
a month was the average expenditure, and then in the month of
March it went right up to $50 million. In April it went down to
some $5 million to $7 million. That went on for a whole year. It
came to March of the following year and it went up again to $50
million and back down to some $5 million to $7 million. It
multiples by 10 in the month of March. Is that March madness?
We are saying that we should have the capacity to move money
from one budget to another. What does the government say? It
says it cannot have that, that it would never do and that it
would upset the protocol of budgets and so on. I cannot
understand why the government cannot see the sense in money being
transferred from one budget to another in this modern day and age
of computers, budgets, accountants, financial statements and all
these things.
We deal with another situation in public accounts. This is how
ludicrous it was. The Department of National Defence has a
budget to repair houses and it has a budget for new houses. It
needed some new houses but there was no money for new houses. It
still had some money in the repair budget. It would demolish
wrecks of houses but keep one little corner of the basement so
that it could build a new house on that corner of the basement
and call it a repair. It was a brand new house.
When we talk about statutory expenditures, it is $100 billion a
year that does not even get debated in the House. Let the
taxpayers know that $100 billion never gets debated but it is
spent, and that has to change.
The auditor general talked about the child tax credit. It is an
actual expenditure but it gets netted off on taxes and does not
show on the books. Loan guarantees do not show up until they are
bad. Once they are bad, what can be done? There should be a
process by which we can evaluate loan guarantees. I would love
to go on for an hour but I know my time has ended.
Mr. Dan McTeague (Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge, Lib.): Mr.
Speaker, I have a very simple question for the member for St.
Albert. I heard him talk about things that I know are near and
dear to his heart such as expenditures for the country. I
compliment him for his work on the public accounts as chairman
there. It is one of the only examples where there is an
opposition chair. This should be extended to other committees.
I was quite amazed that on the subject of parliamentary reform
he could not see the obvious in his own personage in terms of
being the chair of that committee.
I take some exception to the member's comments about home
heating fuel. I found them passing strange in that the premier
of his province had shown wisdom by extending a rebate to his
people, as did the federal government, particularly those who are
very poor. He talked about the boondoggles and concerns of
individuals with respect to the money being poorly spent. Yet
tens of millions have been spent properly for Canadians to help
alleviate what was arguably one of the coldest winters, certainly
in eastern Canada.
In the one or two minutes he has left, is he prepared to talk
about the subject of parliamentary reform, particularly in the
context of his knowledge with respect to whether we should have
a few more chairmen from the opposition chairing committees?
2210
Mr. John Williams: Why stop at a few, Mr. Speaker? We
could have all the committees chaired by the opposition. There
is no reason they cannot be. We are advocating a secret ballot,
so that could quite easily happen. There is nothing wrong with
that. Is there anything wrong with a parliamentary committee
being chaired by the opposition?
Some hon. members: No.
Mr. John Williams: Even the Liberals are agreeing that we
could have a secret ballot. He talked about the heating fuel
rebate in the province of Alberta. The money was paid directly
to the utility company who then took it off the bill. Those who
did not get utility bills did not get any rebate.
The Minister of Finance said that anybody with a low income
would get the rebate cheque. As I said, they are in the
graveyards and in the prisons. They are living in rental
accommodations or with their parents and they received the money.
Let us remember the four questions I asked. What is public
policy? I did not disagree with public policy. The second
question was about how well it was achieving that public policy.
The heating fuel rebate is a disastrous waste of money because
there was so much spillage over to people who did not pay utility
bills. The third question was whether it was being done
efficiently. Can we achieve the same results in a better way?
These are simple questions.
If we were to have committee chairs from the opposition, perhaps
we could have some real intelligent debates in committee where
these things could come forward rather than being rammed through.
I remember Bill C-78, which was several hundred pages long. If
I had not been there to try to filibuster the best I could, the
whole bill would have been dealt with in 30 seconds flat. That
is disgusting.
We are here to deliberate, to debate, to analyze, to assess and
to check to see that legislation is valid and proper. The
government would have taken 30 seconds in committee to deal with
a 200 page bill which took $30 billion out of the pension plan of
the public servants, the military, the RCMP and so on, money that
had been set aside for their retirement. The Minister of Finance
said that he needed the money to make his books look good and
took it, with no ifs, ands or buts. There was no debate.
It cannot be that way. That is why we want parliamentary
reform. Parliament is here to debate and to hold government
accountable. If it cannot do its job, the government will be the
worse off because of it.
Hon. Charles Caccia (Davenport, Lib.): Mr. Speaker,
because of the time limitation to which the hon. member for St.
Albert has already alluded, I will very quickly put forward a
proposal for consideration by the appropriate committee and then
dive into the main issues that have emerged in the course of this
afternoon and evening.
The rationale for the proposal I would like to put forward has
to do with the fact that debates in parliament tend to be focused
on pressing issues and controversies. They may be issues arising
from legislation coming through the system, debates in question
period, emerging debates, opposition days, et cetera. Rarely do
parliamentarians get the opportunity to engage in debates
addressing long term challenges, looking beyond the short term
horizon.
The proposal I am putting forward is to allow for one evening
debate per week on complex long term issues facing Canadians and
perhaps the globe. The purpose of this exercise would be to make
parliament more relevant, as it would extend its scope to analyze
emerging issues, to examine future challenges and to articulate
the public interest. Such debates would inform Canadians, would
allow parliamentarians to tackle difficult issues and would allow
for thinking outside the so-called box.
2215
Such debates would not deal with issues currently on the
legislative agenda, of course. They would likely not be subject
to party discipline. They would allow for non-partisan debate in
the House, constructive input by backbenchers at an early stage,
and they would perhaps provide guidance for the executive.
The procedure would be simple. A committee of parliamentarians,
one from each party, would review submissions of topics by
colleagues in parliament and by the public, and they would decide
the topic for debate. The topic would be presented in the form
of a question in order to prompt debate about future trends and
long term impact. CBC Radio does this frequently with a program
on Sundays called Cross Country Checkup, an open mike
program for listeners.
There are many examples of possible topics for discussion. They
could include the price of medications, the impact of
organizations, the relevance of economic indicators, regulating
the Internet, modernization of the United Nations and the
security council, Canada's role in peacekeeping, the electoral
system, the impact of changing demographics in Canada, the aging
population and our social services, and the demand and supply of
the energy market.
Daylight savings time could be debated. Food safety is very
topical, as is sustaining our forests and fisheries. We could
debate setting limits to economic growth. We could look at
trends in consumerism or the pace of technological change. The
speed of political change would be a fascinating topic to debate,
namely the race between the turtle and the hare. We could
examine things from reproductive technologies to genetic
engineering and the difficulties of the political system to catch
up with the speed of technological change.
We could have a debate on social cohesion in Canada, on
interprovincial trade, public transit, civil society, members of
parliament's salaries if that is the wish, federal-provincial
relations, the concentration of power in the media, and so on and
so forth. These are possible topics for consideration by the
appropriate committee.
Diving into the heart of the debate, which is quite interesting,
I agree with a number of observations made by previous speakers,
although time does not allow me to be more specific. Following
the member from Prince Albert, I will say that in order to engage
in thorough debate, particularly of estimates, we would need to
look at our own calendar. Examining expenditures at length and
in depth used to be the rule in the House until the late 1960s.
We would also need to change our patterns of attendance in
Ottawa and probably delete a number of the weeks we are currently
able to spend in our respective ridings. We would not be able to
do some of the things that have been suggested this evening
without changing our calendar.
Moving on to what has been said by those who want free votes and
who have expressed frustration, and this seems to have been
overlooked this afternoon and this evening, we operate in a party
system. We are not a municipal council where it is every man for
himself and where each person can vote and develop policy on the
fly, so to speak. We have party conventions, we have a party
program at every election, we have party associations, we have
party caucuses, we have a party leader and there is consistency
of policy in that respect. Therefore the vote is determined by
our party affiliation.
2220
That explains why there is party discipline. It explains why we
have a party whip. Sometimes we vote in a manner that we would
not do if we were freewheeling on a municipal council. That is
very true. However let me add that we can vote against the
government if we are on the government side.
We can vote against our party leader if we are on the opposition
side, if we see fit to do so. It is not a pleasant experience,
or something one lives with easily afterwards. However it can be
done, it has been done and it will be done. That does not mean
the system is bad. It is a party system. It is not a municipal
council. The system requires discipline to move ahead and get
things done.
I am sure every member of the opposition tonight, if they were
on this side of the House and we were on the other side, would
come to the same conclusion. There must be discipline,
particularly on the part of members of the party in power, in
order to move ahead and to govern.
Under Standing Order 108(2), committees can be the creators of
very interesting reports. Time does not permit me to provide the
titles of all of them. A report 20 years ago titled “Equality
Now” was a great success. Very recently there was one on
pesticides. If there is good will it is possible for a committee
to determine a topic and produce reports which, if timely, can
influence the course of action of governments.
The member for Winnipeg—Transcona made a number of very
interesting points. One of them, which I remember clearly, is
that he urged the House to introduce a measure whereby we would
debate the ratification of treaties. He is right. We must do
that. That is a shortcoming that needs to be corrected. He made
a number of observations about which I would love to comment in a
positive sense, but time does not permit me.
It is extremely important that we not lose sight of the role of
the committee in charge of statutory instruments. It now has a
different name but it nevertheless looks at regulations as they
are drawn from legislation that is passed by parliament. It is
an extremely important committee because a tremendous amount of
power is inherent in regulations when they are written and that
very often escapes the attention of parliamentarians. The
regulations sometimes run in a direction that is not the one
intended by the legislation from which they are drawn.
It is important for us, if we are interested in the exercise of
power, to ensure that committee is properly equipped, properly
staffed and that it has the resources necessary to examine the
regulation. The same applies for public accounts.
Someone else has already mentioned the importance of allowing
Canadians to see the candidates for the election of the Speaker.
I support that idea fully.
I will conclude with the golden rule, which is this. It is for
my party, since we are in power. In changing the rules of the
House we should not adopt any rule or measure with which we would
be uncomfortable and of which we would be critical one day when
we might be, perish the thought, in opposition.
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr.
Speaker, the member for Davenport said he did not have the time
to be as positive as he would have liked about some of the things
I had to say. I was tempted to get up and give him the time by
asking him to continue but I did not want to be that
self-serving.
The hon. member did speak properly about some of the committees
that have had a great deal of influence over the years.
He referred to the committee “Equality Now”, which was a
special committee of the House. At the time to which he is
referring there were a number of special committees of the House.
There were committees on equality, on the disabled and on
federal-provincial fiscal arrangements. I think there was one on
trade. A number of special committees were struck for specific
purposes. They had limited membership and they produced, not all
of them but a lot of them, reports that became the basis for
later policy decisions and policy development.
2225
I want to reinforce the point the member made because I remember
being on one such committee myself. They were called
parliamentary task forces in the early 1980s. I was on the one
for federal-provincial fiscal arrangements in 1981 which, in
trying to deal with some of the federal-provincial disputes over
the enforcement of the Medical Care Act, really laid the basis
for what later became the Canada Health Act.
Another committee which did a lot of good work, and which the
member and I served on, was the Special Committee on Acid Rain.
The member may have mentioned it in his speech. If he did, I
missed it because I did not hear everything he had to say.
If the member would like more time to reflect on the good
committee experiences of which he has been part, many of which
were good because he was part of them, then I afford him the
opportunity by inviting him to do so.
Hon. Charles Caccia: Mr. Speaker, we are running the
danger here of becoming a mutual admiration society. I can only
say that I appreciate the additions the hon. member for
Winnipeg-Transcona has made. Yes, he is quite right, the acid
rain committee is one that I failed to mention.
In the Trudeau era a number of innovative ideas were introduced.
Let the blossoms bloom was the spirit of the time. There was a
tremendous amount of parliamentary activity, and that could be
with us in this century, in this decade. There is no doubt that
the talents are in this House to permit the flourishing of
another crop of good initiatives, be they through the standing
committee or through special committees. There is not a fixed
route.
The important thing is to know that under the rules we have, and
perhaps by improving them, by moving them into the 21st century
and modernizing them, if you like, or reforming them, to use a
term the member for Winnipeg-Transcona used in his speech this
afternoon, we could move toward a very productive parliamentary
period in which we could eliminate the existing malaise and
frustration. We could do so as long as we remember that we
operate under a party system.
[Translation]
Ms. Caroline St-Hilaire (Longueuil, BQ): Mr. Speaker, despite the
late hour, I will try to keep your attention on the debate on
Motion No. 3, which reads as follows:
That a special committee of the House be appointed to consider
and make recommendations on the modernization and improvement of
the procedures of the House of Commons.
There are a number of reasons why I find this debate important
and interesting.
First, at a time when polls show that a majority of the public
believe parliament is operating with great difficulty and that
people are not pleased with how parliamentary business is being
conducted, we, as parliamentarians, must ask ourselves about the
current and future effectiveness of parliament.
The reason this debate is so important is that the public sees
parliament as a place of confrontation, rather than a forum
where its voice must be heard.
As we know, the outside world sees us as voting machines. People
feel that the government does as it pleases, that it imposes the
party line when things are too controversial. This, of course,
generates frustration not only among members of parliament, but
also among our fellow citizens.
2230
We must always keep in mind two terms that are found in the
motion, modernization and improvement.
The term modernization means to organize so as to meet current
needs, and the needs that we must meet are those of our fellow
citizens.
As for the term improvement, it means to make things better and
more satisfactory. Again, I believe it is our fellow citizens,
not the opposition or the government, who must be satisfied.
Any recommendation for modernization or improvement must, in my
opinion, always be made in the best interests of our fellow
citizens, so that their voices can be heard through us here in
this House.
That said, in recent years there have been a number of reforms.
The purpose of some of them was to increase the power of the
government to govern more effectively, and very often this was
at the expense of the ordinary MPs and watered down their
powers.
The outcome of all these reforms was that, while they indeed
speeded up the legislative work of parliament, they considerably
reduced the ability of members of parliament to make a personal
contribution. Examples of this are the reduction in time
allocated for private members' business, the increased use of
time allocation motions, and the time restrictions in question
period.
Today we need to look at what the government has in mind with
this parliamentary reform.
In my opinion, what is desirable is to maintain the balance
between the government and the opposition parties, the balance
between the government's right to govern and the right of the
opposition to oppose it.
The objective of the reform should be to enable the entire body
of MPs to perform their duties rapidly and effectively, and to
truly play their role as legislators. Our rules must guarantee
freedom of debate and protect the rights of all
parliamentarians.
Unfortunately, the philosophy of the current government tends
toward reducing more and more the role of parliamentarians, the
ordinary MPs.
The time allocation motions imposed by the Liberal government
are clear evidence of its guillotine philosophy, and this is
contributing to the decline of the legislative role played by
MPs.
When the Liberals formed the opposition during the Mulroney
era, they were fiercely opposed to the government's habit of
using time allocation, and they spoke out against its abuse of
power and affront to parliamentary democracy.
Furthermore, this was what was behind the Liberal party's
promise, made in its 1993 red book, to give political parties a
greater opportunity to criticize government bills.
At the time, the Liberals spoke about restoring parliamentary
integrity by governing with integrity. The red book said, and I
quote:
In the House of Commons, a Liberal government will give MPs a
greater role in drafting legislation—
For the information of the House and of members of the public
listening this evening, it was in this same section of the red
book that the Liberals promised to appoint an independent ethics
counsellor. We know what happened. They voted against their
own promise. It is this kind of attitude, this rigid party
line, that is causing citizens to lose interest in what we do.
With respect to time allocation motions, this measure which was
supposed to be the exception has now become the rule. Since
coming to power, the Liberals have not changed the way things
are done one bit. On the contrary, the situation has become
worse.
Since time allocation was added to the standing orders, and
despite its strong opposition to it during the Progressive
Conservatives' term of office, the Liberal government is the
government that has used it the most.
Here, now, in greater detail are certain recommendations I wish
to make to the committee.
My first recommendation concerns time allocation motions. I
have spoken of them, of course, but I stress the point, because
they must be used as a last resort, not just after a few hours'
debate and, most important, the Chair must intervene more to
prevent the government from making excessive use of them.
My second recommendation concerns the electronic vote. It is,
in my opinion, high time it was considered. Of course, the
votes have to be taken here in this House according to the will
of members of parliament, who will want votes to be taken by
recorded division in some instances.
My third recommendation concerns electronic petitions, which we
must consider too. In fact, we must remember that we are living
in a modern world and that parliament must reflect this fact.
2235
A fourth recommendation concerns private members' bills.
Despite what I heard from the government House leader a little
earlier, they should all be votable, as should the motions for
emergency debates.
Finally, it would be a good idea to amend the schedule of House
proceedings so that routine proceedings occurs always at the
opening of the sitting.
The success of parliamentary reform lies in the political will
of the government to improve things.
However, reforms of the past have taught us that, as a general
rule, the government is much more inclined to make changes
favourable to it and ones that do not limit its ability to act.
What is the point of advocating reform of parliamentary
procedure if there is no political will to adopt it? What is the
point of advocating reform of parliamentary procedure if the
government opposes any change that will put it at a
disadvantage? What is the point of advocating reform of
parliamentary procedure if the Liberal majority is not prepared
to do without the procedural tools that give it so much
latitude?
In conclusion, parliament must be modern, open and more
democratic. While the majority prevails, the minority must
be given the right to oppose and to express.
[English]
Mr. Paul Szabo (Parliamentery Secretary to Minister of Public
Woks and Government Services, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I
am pleased to participate in the debate concerning the new
committee on modernization of parliament or, as some would refer
to it, reform of parliament. I had the opportunity earlier to
participate to some extent through questions and comments, but I
want to take this opportunity to better frame a particular area,
that being private members' business.
As a member of parliament since 1993, one of the things that
really is very clear to me, and I suspect to most members, is
that listening to speeches is okay, but the questions and
comments, whether it be in the House or at committees, provide
the most stimulating activity for members of parliament.
I am also aware that in parliamentary tradition it is
inappropriate for a member of parliament to actually read a
speech. How many times have we seen the top of a member's head
as he or she continues to read a speech? I am aware that members
can certainly refer to notes where they are quoting or where
there perhaps was some detail that would be appropriate to ensure
accuracy on the record.
However, the following are the types of things I have heard
through this debate today. Members are seeking out ways to
ensure that the quality of debate in the House is improved, to
ensure that opportunities for members to participate are improved
and to ensure that we are making the best use of our time. I
know most members would admit that there is not enough time to do
all the work that we really would like to do and are asked to do.
As I only have 10 minutes to speak—and I do appreciate the
opportunity—I would like to move on to private members'
business, which to me represents an important opportunity for
backbench members of parliament to express themselves in terms of
the quality of their thinking and in terms of their opportunities
to advance issues and possibly even effect legislation.
Since 1993 when I was elected, private members' business has
been an important aspect of my work. I have had the opportunity
to present to the House some 20 or 25 private members' bills or
motions. That has allowed me to get very familiar with the
process we must go through. Quite frankly, I believe we can do
better.
Most members know that the process of a lottery and going
through a committee that has deliberations in camera to determine
votability means that the possibility of a private member's item
getting through, whether it be a bill or a motion, is actually
quite limited.
On top of that, in my experience there have been other things
that have concerned me.
For instance, at one time there was a substantial amount of
concern about the stretching of the resources available to
members for research purposes. Yet it was also disclosed at the
same time that the research personnel and the legal people were
being asked to do a lot of work on proposed bills by members, and
a large number of these bills were never introduced in the House.
2240
The cost of that is very exceptional in terms of monetary value,
but it is also significant in terms of utilizing resources that
other members could make use of. I would hope that the committee
would address the issue of the drafting of bills, the utilizing
of resources and the commitments that members make to follow
through and at least introduce those bills.
I also raise it because of another incident that happened to me.
An opportunity to reintroduce in the 36th parliament a matter I
had before the 35th parliament was denied to me because another
member had put that item in before I did. When we carry that to
its logical extension, we can see that it would be very easy for
a particular member to put in dozens of bills on issues which
possibly were not his or her own. The fact that the member
submitted them for drafting purposes means that all other members
would be restricted from having a same or similar bill.
That seems to be a pre-emptive move on behalf of members, to not
only be able to take another member's issue away from him, but
also to restrict other members from being able to do a very good
job on an issue that another member has no intention of ever
bringing through. That problem has to be dealt with.
There is the issue of being in the House of Commons, whether it
be on a Monday morning or after government orders on Tuesday
through Friday, for private members' business. Members know that
speakers for private members' business are generally arranged in
advance, although they do follow a party distribution for
speakers. However, other members who have House duty and who
must be here have no recourse but to sit on their hands and
listen to debate by other members on issues which may be of
interest to them. They cannot say anything. They cannot rise on
questions or comments. All they can do is listen.
It seems like a contradiction in terms to say that we call that
debate in this place when in fact debate is not really taking
place. It is a linear situation. Debate in this place should be
interactive.
Earlier today I asked a question of the member for
Winnipeg—Transcona. I am not as learned as he is on some of the
issues and I gave it my best shot. He answered with a couple of
things that I thought maybe indicated a small misunderstanding of
my question or my intent, but I did not have an opportunity to
rebut.
The question is whether members in committee find that the
questions and comments of witnesses, or among committee members
when dealing with committee in camera business, are more
effective or constructive when there is more than one question,
more than one comment and an opportunity for rebuttal? Today I
would have appreciated an opportunity to come back with a second
question or a rebuttal statement to the issues. Maybe, just
maybe, we should consider whether or not we are going to
reinstitute debate in this place. By debate I do not mean
speeches that people have not read beforehand because they have
been provided by someone else, but debate where people have an
opportunity for rebuttal and debate where we respect people's
time by not being redundant in the speeches. That could go a
long way.
The final item regarding private members' business that I would
like to remind the committee of, because this is my opportunity
to have input, is that there are on the order paper now about 140
private members' bills. Many of those bills are on the order
paper on behalf of a member of parliament and that member of
parliament has no possibility of having all of those bills dealt
with in the current session or in this parliament.
2245
It is sensible to me that there should be some reasonable limit
on the number of items that members could put on the table unless
they are prepared to withdraw something to put something else on.
If members come up with 100 bills so that they can include in a
piece of literature that they introduced that many bills at first
reading, I am not sure whether or not it is a good utilization of
the resources of the House or good utilization of a member's
time.
With regard to private members' business and as part of
parliamentary reform, we are looking at trying to improve the
ability of all members of parliament to participate in a variety
of ways to make good use of their time. We are looking at ways
to give them ample opportunity to express their views and to
allow them to leave their fingerprints on this place. We all
know that this is not a forever position. I am somewhat
concerned about other issues that I will not have time to get
into, but this is a good starting point.
I have heard a lot of talk about reform with regard to the
standing orders. The government House leader raised some issues
which the committee will have a opportunity to come to consensus
on. If this is a successful venture, it may be the starting
point for more expansive reform which all members of parliament
would support.
Mr. Peter MacKay (Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, PC):
Mr. Speaker, I commend the hon. member on his remarks. I know he
has been very active in the debate and follows it with a great
deal of interest and sincerity.
My question to him is with respect to private members' business.
He spoke of a system where members might be free to remove
certain bills. Would he also like to see a system where members
might be free to exchange bills between one another if the
occasion arose?
Something that has been broadly discussed throughout the evening
is having all private member's bills deemed votable so that there
would be an expression of the entire House when the bills came
before us. This would attach some particular significance to
bills. Would the hon. member comment on that?
Mr. Paul Szabo: Mr. Speaker, I agree with the first item
my colleague raised. I would also like to respond to his
question about making all bills votable.
I had a conversation earlier with the leader of his party about
good faith. We talked about all hon. members wanting to do good
things. If we presume that members are here in good faith to do
a good job, it would be easy to accept all matters as being
votable. However our recent history shows that when things go
wrong or get a little tight, people look for ways to be
disruptive or to delay issues, et cetera. I agree with the
member for Winnipeg—Transcona that delay is part of the
democratic process.
The member's presumption would have to be that members would not
abuse the opportunity and would not be frivolous in bringing
items forward. I would much prefer that private members' items
would have to qualify under the existing and maybe even stricter
basic criteria so that they would not be dealt with at all if
they had been previously dealt with.
Right now many bills and motions come forward which are very
close to being the same but are a bit different. People who
draft legislation say that if they change a couple of words in a
bill it can come forward. If the issue has been dealt with in
the House already there are also ways to do that.
As a compromise, I suggest that if a member is prepared to go
through whatever process is involved to get his or her bill
before the House, is prepared to give his or her presentation on
the merits of the bill and be subjected to scrutiny and
questioning by members of the House, there could be a preliminary
vote to determine whether the House has sufficient interest in
the matter going any further.
2250
That would deal with the problem of making everything votable.
It would have to be three hours and the number of members on it
would be restricted. There is an equal disincentive or negative
if we have ten excellent bills before the committee but only five
could be picked to be votable.
The member is quite right. The private members' issue has many
opportunities. We can already do swapping. The House has done
that in the past with consent. There are ways that can work but
the problem areas to address have to do with efficiency, equity,
fairness and transparency. Right now we do not meet all the
tests.
Mr. Kevin Sorenson (Crowfoot, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, I rise to speak in favour of parliamentary and
democratic reform. It is not the first time in the past six
months that we have spoken to parliamentary reform. We have
spoken about it a lot.
In the last general election we probably held close to 25 or 30
forums and public meetings where we spoke about issues such as
agriculture, fiscal responsibility and judicial reform. More
than anything else we spoke about parliamentary reform.
We spoke about the need to see certain reforms in the Senate. We
want to see an equal Senate. We want to see a Senate that is
effective and is elected. We talked a great deal about that in
the constituency of Crowfoot. We spoke about free votes. The
member for Yellowhead so eloquently this evening showed us the
need for free votes. I agree with his words. We spoke about
referenda, about recall and about citizen initiatives. All these
things are fundamental to the parliamentary reform we would like
to see.
Tonight we come to the House to discuss parliamentary reform. We
are talking about different minor things that can change in
certain technical aspects of bringing bills forward. They are
probably things that are very important. We are talking about
using notes or not using notes. In the past two months I have
been here I have heard a lot of people give speeches where they
should have used notes.
However, I want to speak about parliamentary reform. There is a
country that understands parliamentary reform, a country with a
population of less than seven million, with very few natural
resources. It has a harsh climate and 25% of its land mass is
covered by mountains. It has four official languages, many
ethnic subgroups, and large regional economic disparities.
One would think such a country would be riddled with economic
and social strife, division and troubles, but nothing could be
further from the truth. The country has had the highest standard
of living of any other country over the last 50 years. Never has
the country experienced more than 1.5% unemployment. Inflation is
never higher than 4% and interest rates are always close to 6%.
It has an extensive high quality health care, an excellent
education system, generous social services which I might add are
truly for the needy, and a social service program that looks
after those who are handicapped and in need. The country has a
world class transportation system.
In proportion to population the country has the smallest civil
service in Europe, the lowest tax rates and the smallest national
budget. Why does the country enjoy such economic and social
success? It is because Switzerland has a recipe for success. The
ingredient for success is called true democracy.
The Swiss truly have government of the people, by the people and
for the people. Power is literally in the hands of the people, a
concept that for far too long has escaped the imagination of
those who sit in power here and run this country.
2255
We in Canada have government of the politicians, by the
politicians and for the politicians. It is time for change. We
in Canada have top down rule. The tendency of this and previous
governments has been to increase their own power by employing
closed door policies. Only an exclusive few, the cabinet, the
executive of government and those influenced by special interest
groups and lobby groups, are the ones that come together to
decide policies and programs in Canada.
Canadian citizens have effectively been excluded from
participating in a forum that decides how their daily lives will
be conducted and affected. Effective communication between
citizens and their elected representatives has been cut off.
Politicians are no longer accountable to the electorate on a day
by day basis. Rather than thinking of gaining public confidence
through listening and accommodating public concerns, elected
officials have spent their time selling their government programs
and legislation to the people.
We have seen that in the last week. We have seen farm groups
and agricultural people who have come together to say that the
programs the government has put forward are insufficient. The
response of the government is to come out with hundreds of
thousand dollar advertising campaigns selling their programs back
to the people of Canada.
Rather than representing their constituents in Ottawa, our
federally elected officials are representing Ottawa back home to
their constituencies. My colleagues on this side of the House
and I are committed to changing this sad fact.
We talked about throughout the last general election. We are
committed to changing the autocratic means of decision making by
restoring power to the rightful owners, the people. Individuals
on the other side of the House are chuckling at the novel idea
that we would actually give people power in terms of programs and
representation.
Since my colleague speaking before me provided many
recommendations on modernizing and improving the procedures of
the House for the special committee to consider, I would like to
briefly speak about an Alliance recommendation for improving
democracy and it is recall. Recall, a procedure that allows the
voters to call their representatives to account before the end of
their term, is but one step in many to putting power back into
the hands of the people.
I do not know of any other job in Canada that will not allow the
removal of a person from the job for improper conduct or for not
doing his or her job, except for the positions occupied by
politicians. We on this side of the House believe the people of
Canada should have the right to fire the people that they have
hired.
As it stands now, elected officials cannot be fired by the very
people who hired them, except at election time. This leaves the
impression that politicians are above the rules and the
regulations that govern the average Canadian worker. Allowing an
elected official immunity for misconduct or incompetence is an
absurdity that is added to the current level of political apathy
as witnessed in the last federal election when only 51% of the
electorate decided it was really worth coming out to vote. Author
William Mishler says:
Political attitudes and behaviour are learned. The political
apathy and inactivity characteristic of large segments of the
Canadian public are not intrinsic to man's basic nature. They
are neither inevitable nor immutable. The decision to
participate in or abstain from politics is to a substantial
degree a conditioned response to the political environment.
Our political system has bred the attitude that the government
does not care what the people think or what the people want.
Those elected to parliament have lost touch with the people. The
political environment has produced a nation of cynics who hold
politicians in contempt. Recall would force elected
representatives to open the doors of communication with their
constituents, thereby enhancing the dialogue between them, a
dialogue that lies at the core of the representative process.
Recall would also help restore mutual respect between the
electorate and the politicians. It would put in place the
cheques and balances to remove the monopoly of power held by
parliament.
2300
Representatives would be forced to vote on legislation according
to the wishes of their constituents not according to party line.
We saw some of that on legislation that was been highly
contentious, such as same sex benefits and firearm laws.
The Swiss know that if democracy is to be meaningful, it has to
be a bottom-up system of popular or grassroots government. The
Swiss have had a system of initiative, referendum and recall
since 1874. The value of this process is seen in the prosperity
of the country.
The official opposition encourages the use of national
referendums to give Canadians the opportunity to voice their
opinions on issues of a moral or contentious nature. If all
members of the House believed in democracy, if they truly
believed that the majority ruled in this country, they too would
support the use of national referendums. They would support the
establishment of a special house committee, as recommended today.
We need to move forward in the House of Commons. We need to
move forward in a positive way, where the people would feel that
they had better representation, that when they sent their member
to Ottawa or to parliament he or she would speak their wishes. We
can do that through taking a very comprehensive look at what
parliamentary reform means. I suggest that we have heard far too
much of what it does not mean. It is time to look at changing a
system that is sadly in need of repair.
Mr. Greg Thompson (New Brunswick Southwest, PC): Mr.
Speaker, I was interested to hear the member's comments,
especially when he spoke about this subject of recall. I am not
sure what the member is thinking and how this would be triggered,
because we have heard this before.
One of his own members, as we all know, got himself into some
difficulty this week. That would be the member for
Edmonton—Strathcona. What would trigger that recall back home,
for example, in Edmonton—Strathcona?
We might even take the example of the member for Edmonton North,
who came into this House raging against pensions, then swallowed
herself completely whole on that issue and is now a pensionable
member of this House. She railed against it in the 1993
election, in the 1997 election and in the 2000 election, until
she entered the House well after the election and completely
reversed her position. Basically she has violated the very
people who elected her.
I would say those people would be subject to recall, if I am
listening to the member correctly. What are the rules of the
game? The only thing I agree with is the best recall in the
world is an election every four years, where people can measure
over that four year period.
Then there is the cost to the voter. If the member is serious
in what he is saying, two of his members should leave this
Chamber almost immediately if an election were held back in the
ridings today. Maybe Rick Mercer on This House Has 22
Minutes can do a better job on this issue than we could.
Remember the difficulty his own leader got himself into in the
election on an ill-thought out plan, in terms of referendum.
This is a road that the populace have gone done for years.
In all fairness to all members, we have to measured over
something more than a month or two months.
The other issue is that many of us come into this House elected
with a good strong vote. It is what we call a plurality not a
majority. For example, in the last election I won by something
in the order of 6,000 votes. That was about 49% of the vote in
my riding. It means, by definition, that 51% of the people back
in my riding did not vote for me.
That applies to at least 50% to 60% of the members in the House
now with five and six parties running elected by plurality. Has
the member really thought through this issue to its ultimate
conclusion?
2305
Mr. Kevin Sorenson: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the
question. I honestly knew that that one was coming.
I believe that when we have policy that it is policy we stand on
in the good times and in the bad times. It is policy of which we
can be proud. It is policy that brings what we would call, and
what perhaps is not understood in the House, accountability to
every to every member.
On this side we have a book that we like to term required
reading. It is called On the Take. If the hon. member has
not read it I would suggest he read it. It is excellent evening
reading. In that book he will find countless examples in 1993
and before 1993. It reminds me of Erik Nielsen and his many
concerns with the old Progressive Conservative times. He
absolutely felt betrayed. He felt that those people should step
down and move aside.
We had another former leader from that party who got himself
into some difficulty. I think he spoke to a judge at the time.
There are examples on every side of the House. It would bring
accountability back to this place. All parties need it.
I am quite proud of our referendum that the member was referring
to. In areas of contentious debate, where issues have been
brought forward, far too often we watched the Liberal government
members stand up like puppets, look at their the Prime Minister
and vote the way the he told them to vote. The people back home
said that was not the reason that they sent their member to
Ottawa. They sent the member to Ottawa to represent them.
There were people in the back rows on the government side with
tears in their eyes who they voted for the gun law when they knew
that their constituents were against it.
We have seen this so many countless times on all sides of the
House. It is time we look at a policy that would bring
accountability back to each member. I am proud to stand here and
say that this party believes in accountability. We believe in
recall. We look forward to parliamentary reform with some
substance and not the meandering kind that we have seen brought
forward here tonight.
Mr. Rick Laliberte (Churchill River, Lib.): Mr. Speaker,
it is certainly an honour to speak tonight.
I came to the House of Commons as a student. I was trying to
understand how the country governed itself. The way I understood
it was national sovereignty was before us. I must say the member
for Davenport is a member of the party structure.
When I came in 1997, there was a speech by the then leader of
the official opposition. He announced his intentions today to
resign and move on. However he left a mark on me. He said that
this place was like a vessel, and we had a captain that guided
this vessel on its journey.
We have to look at national sovereignty and our place in this
country as symbols. If we look at this vessel, it came from a
British parliamentary structure. A depth of tradition came with
this building. All these materials, structures and design came
from an honourable and noble intent. It is to govern the people
and their lands.
I bring with me here today two books. The first book is the
entitled “League of the Iroquois Confederacy”. I spoke earlier
this week on this. It is very fortunate, Mr. Speaker, you are
the one who was receiving the speech on Monday when I delivered
it. This existed before this building.
2310
The governance of this land is in these words. It is a story of
the Iroquois confederacy on these shores. It tells the story of
aboriginal people living in harmony among one another and
debating issues of the day for their survival on the land.
The second book is the treaties that the crown of Britain wrote
with the aboriginal people. All the numbered treaties are found
in here. That is what made the sovereignty of Canada. These two
stories created the story of our country. Today we have to
debate today where are we taking our children with the wisdom of
our elders, with the wisdom of our treasured homelands and our
connection to the land? That is what makes our country.
We cannot create this out on the ocean. This is created because
of the territories, what we call North America. It is called
turtle island in many stories. I look at it as a river system.
Look at the basin of the mighty St. Lawrence River system, the
Churchill River and the Hudson Bay, the Mackenzie, the Fraser and
the Yukon river systems. That is a vast tract of land. How do
we govern it?
This is the big challenge we have before us in parliament. How
do we capture the vision of a nation, identify its goals and
implement them? This is our challenge as parliamentarians in
this place and as parliamentarians in the other place, which we
call the Senate. In my view, that is the house of elders. It
plays a very honourable role in the tradition of the aboriginal
people and in the tradition of the Westminster houses.
Then we have parliamentary structures and legislatures in the
provinces, which came later. How we relate to them is very
crucial. Last night the estimates were approved. A lot of the
finances are given to the treasuries of the provinces. We enact
them into the local and the municipal governments, the schools,
health and the libraries. They are all connected.
This is what sustainable development is about. It is a belief
that we can look at the resources, the land, the environment, the
means, the food and the water of our people, our land and our
nation. We balance it with our thoughts of the people, the
culture, the knowledge, the wisdom and the languages. For many
people all over the world Canada is their home.
Then there is the economy and money. I still cannot believe
where money comes from sometimes. It is a means of transaction
that exists today in the world. At some point in time there were
beavers piled up at Hudson Bay stores, which were used to
purchase muskets, food, lard and bacon. Today it is plastic
cards in people's back pockets. These are used for transactions
and commerce. Three-quarters of our laws are based on commerce.
The whole context of a remarkable civil organization is
required. What do those three words mean? It means we left our
mark here and we were civil. This is an organization. A degree
of influence is expected of us by our constituents, the people
that we speak for. We leave our marks in words and in gestures.
This whole challenge of restructure is a happy time. I
witnessed candour here that is very seldom seen between the
member for Winnipeg—Transcona, a very noble statesman, heaped in
the history of the House, and the member for Davenport. The
candour that took place between the two members is rarely seen in
the House and it should be exemplified. We should have a sense
of humour, we should have a sense of appreciation of what we are
trying to do, and we should support each other for what we
believe in.
Look at this building. It is square. We are meant to fight.
They fight us, we fight them for this country. Why? We have
cultures. I have French blood in me. I may also have English
blood in me but I know I have Cree.
[Editor's Note: Member spoke in Cree]
2315
[English]
As an aboriginal person, I see it in a different light as well.
I see that we need to bring that strength from this journey. As
this vessel continues, we need to bring all our peoples together.
This is the time. This is the challenge.
The House of Commons, as we call it, is a place that represents
every corner of Canada. Every person, every neighbourhood and
every house should be represented here, every kitchen table. We
bring our thoughts and our ideas here and then we have the
ability to research. The parliamentary library is heaped with
research materials. If we have an idea, a specific challenge or
a question, people will guide us. In order us to make solid
decisions we need the research service, the committee work that
is done and the documentation.
I must thank the committee chairs who guided me in the previous
parliament. They showed me that we can all work together for a
common purpose and that we can challenge each other.
The work of the MP is unfinished. I would love to see a house
of representation of this House. Let us say that the
Saskatchewan legislature has 200 seats. Why could we not some
day send representatives of our House to the Saskatchewan
legislature, Quebec's national assembly or the Ontario
legislature as Queen's Park in Toronto to debate the issues? Why
could we not move around? This country is huge. We should not
try to govern ourselves like an island like England. We are not
an island that big. We are huge. We have to expand ourselves to
the reality of this country. That is why I beg for
restructuring.
Let us look in a respectful way to a new relationship with each
other. Maybe the library, as the sacred symbol of our unity,
should be a third House. Maybe representatives of the original
signatories of the treaties of the aboriginal nations should be
allowed to sit in parliament and guide this country. Maybe they
should hold the sacred responsibility of sustainable development
in the future. While we would manage the affairs of the day to
day issues, somebody would be taking care of the long term cycle
of the breathing, living organism we call Mother Earth, and this
country, Canada, is responsible for a big piece of Mother Earth.
I challenge Canada to take that responsibility to heart.
I wish all parliamentarians well. I recognize all the people
who have taken their seats here and the history that is heaped
behind us. Let us not forget it as we challenge the future.
Mr. Larry Bagnell (Yukon, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, as a new
member, I had not planned to speak tonight. I had planned to
just listen to the wisdom of others. However my colleague
brought in such new dimensions of interest that I would just like
him to go on a bit further.
The advantage of our pluralistic society is that there are other
systems that give us wisdom and knowledge. There is nothing to
say that our system has everything right, and I think we can
learn from that.
As a former president of Skookum Jim Friendship Centre, I was
quite interested in the comments of my colleague. I would like
him to elaborate on a couple of areas.
When the six first nations of Iroquois were originally warring
among themselves and then they came together and organized a
system of government, they often took longer to make decisions
than we do today. It was a different form of decision making
that could also have its benefits.
I wonder if the hon. member could comment on whether that system
of government or the systems of government of other first nations
in Canada, through the clan systems or through consensus decision
making, may have some type of models that we may incorporate in
some of the systems that we use here in the House of Commons.
2320
Mr. Rick Laliberte: Mr. Speaker, at the outset I think I
said I was a student. A study to understand the whole concept of
structure and symbolism must be looked at by this committee. If
we are going to strike a committee we must look at the basic
structures and the purpose for those structures, such as why the
House is designed this way. We have to look at those basic
needs. We have a huge budget to renovate everything on this
Hill, so we can afford to exercise exercise some wisdom and maybe
some adventure.
I think the symbol of a circle is sacred. It is unity. The
country needs unity in a big way. We have to unite our
communities and unite the country for the sake of our future.
This building is not designed for unity. It is designed to be
adversarial. We are designed not to get along. We are two sword
lengths away. We are like little kids who do not want to hurt
themselves. We need to become a unified force.
The territorial legislature of the Yukon transferred a new
design to the Northwest Territories and now Nunavut called the
new territorial governance legislature. It designed a consensual
form where everyone is elected with no party structure. The
Yukon is a little different, but in the other two territories we
all get elected as members representing our ridings and then we
decide who will be the government and the executive. Maybe that
is a challenge here. Maybe this executive that is elected here
should be accountable to the majority of the House. Maybe that is
where we should go.
However, we should look at the symbol of a circle. We have a
sacred symbol in the parliamentary library. It survived the fire
of 1916. Let us use it to keep the country together by putting
it in its rightful place with the rightful history, from the
Iroquois and all the nations of this country that existed here
before. If we put things in their rightful place, we will have
the right provisions in our vessel to make that journey into the
millenniums to come.
[Translation]
Mrs. Suzanne Tremblay (Rimouski—Neigette-et-la Mitis, BQ): Mr.
Speaker, in spite of the somewhat late hour, I am pleased to
take part in the debate on Motion No. 3, tabled by the government
House leader. The purpose of this motion is to create a special
committee of the House to consider and make recommendations on
the modernization and improvement of the procedures of the House
of Commons.
The motion deals, among other things, with the committee's
membership and powers, the unanimous agreement of its members on
the report to be submitted to the House, and its power to make
recommendations. The motion also provides that the committee
shall present its report no later than Friday, June 1, 2001.
From the outset, I want to insist on the terms modernization
and improvement. I hope these two terms will have the same
meaning for all committee members, otherwise the unanimity rule
might prevent us from having a parliament that operates like a
parliament should in the 21st century.
The Bloc Quebecois believes that any change to the standing
orders should be made for the purpose of improving a democracy
that can always be improved. These changes must be based on
principles designed to promote useful and constructive debates,
in a flexible framework where democracy takes precedence over
everything else, and where no one is the possessor of the
absolute truth.
At last we can say what changes we would like to see to the
standing orders that govern Canada's democratic life. We must
face a new reality and organize our parliamentary business
accordingly.
Canada has long had a biparty system. Sure, a third party would
sometimes manage to make its way into the House of Commons, but
the situation recently changed. Since the creation of the Bloc
Quebecois and the Reform Party, which became the Canadian
Alliance some months ago, regional Canada has made its way here.
Opposition parties in the House of Commons have represented and
continue to represent at least 60% of voters.
2325
However, unfortunately, the course of parliamentary proceedings
does not reflect this situation. In addition, it would appear
that, for many members, something has to be done to save
democracy largely compromised in the present context.
The changes sought must permit healthy debate and a constructive
exchange of ideas in a flexible context where democracy holds
sway.
In our parliamentary organization, the party winning the most
seats forms the government and manages the affairs of state. The
opposition, for its part, acts as watchdog to ensure public
affairs are managed fairly and democratically.
The government majority should not use its plurality of seats to
impose the initiatives it is proposing every time the
opportunity arises.
Let us take the example of government bills. At second reading,
each party expresses its opinion with respect to the bill under
study and announces the broad lines of the changes it would like
to make to the said bill. When the bill is referred to a
standing committee for study, the members hear public officials
and witnesses, if necessary, before proceeding to clause by
clause study of the bill.
I must regretfully inform the House that this whole operation is, in
most instances, totally useless. The debates are wasted.
The amendments proposed are very rarely incorporated, although
in many cases they would improve bills so they would
benefit the greatest possible number of people.
We must not lose sight of the fact that the role of the
opposition is to ensure that the legislation passed by
parliament serves the public, and that the exercise of power by
the government does not become a despotic tool for and by a
minority.
There is no denying that, since my arrival in the House of
Commons, amendments to the standing orders, along with the
Liberal Party's way of doing things, are far from advancing the
cause of democracy.
Time allocation motions pursuant to Standing Order 78, which are
commonly referred to as gag orders, should be exceptional
measures used as a last resort.
It is good for parliamentarians to take the necessary time to
discuss bills introduced in the House.
However the government does not want the media and the public to
realize that a bill being debated poses a problem. So gag
orders have become the norm and the government regularly invokes
them, because people must be objective enough to recognize that,
in fact, this is the main tool the government has for limiting
debate and the opposition's right to speak.
Before putting a time allocation motion to a vote in the House
of Commons, the Speaker should make sure that the motion does
not constitute an abuse of House procedure.
To help him reach a decision, the minister sponsoring a bill
affected by a time allocation motion should come before the
House and take part in a question and comment period not to
exceed 60 minutes in length, in order to justify why the time
allocation is worthwhile, if not actually necessary. It must be
kept in mind that this government has made excessive use of this
standing order since 1993, and the practice has become
commonplace. The government majority ought not to fear such a
measure.
It is regrettable that the government got Motion No. 2 passed
this last February 27, for that motion is totally anti-democratic
in character and gives the government effective control over the
opposition. In fact, the government has given the Chair a power
that is totally subjective, for it will henceforth be the one to
decide on such things as whether an amendment is frivolous or
too repetitive.
The opposition is therefore losing a basic tool for improving
bills. Its ability to do so is reduced to a bare minimum. This
motion muzzles the opposition parties and limits them to a flat
and toothless debate.
2330
Moving on to another issue, in the early summer of 2000, I had
the opportunity to travel to the United States, along with the
House leaders of the various political parties present in this
House, to observe the organization of the electronic voting
carried out in Washington and Boston, among other places. When
I realize that electronic voting has been in use for more than
30 years by our neighbours to the south, I tell myself just how
far behind we are.
The government House leader would have served democracy better
if he had shown some up to date thinking and proposed a way of
speeding up votes, instead of acting as a big bully with his
Motion No. 2 with just one object: limiting the introduction of
amendments.
The system in place in Boston keeps the significance of the vote
and the responsibility of the politicians intact. It is even
better than the system we use in the House when we want to speed
up the voting process and ask our whips to rise and indicate how
their party will vote. I do not doubt that, should electronic
voting become a reality here, the Board of Internal Economy
would ensure that such a system is absolutely reliable.
It is also important to preserve the unique character of
opposition days by providing that the motion that is debated
cannot be amended by the party that proposed it. Therefore,
Standing Order 85 should be amended accordingly.
When the Speaker authorizes an emergency debate under Standing
Order 52, the motion debated should always be voted on, for
reasons of transparency and democracy.
If it is deemed that a debate must urgently be held, then it is
appropriate that parliamentarians vote on that urgent matter.
The debate would then have a much greater significance than it
currently does. The criteria to help the Chair rule on the
admissibility of such a request should be made more flexible to
allow more of these debates.
No changes to the standing orders should result in a reduction
of the time given to members of parliament when reviewing
government bills at second and third reading.
The role of members of parliament is already quite watered down
and must not be reduced even more with the introduction of
measures that would allow, for example, the drafting of bills
following the tabling of a petition.
There would be many other points to mention or discuss. But
unfortunately my time is up. I do hope that this debate will
have a happy ending, that it will lead to transparency and a
greater desire to promote and increase the participation of
elected members to the democratic life of our parliament.
[English]
Mr. Rick Laliberte (Churchill River, Lib.): Mr. Speaker,
we see the technological change that is happening in our age. It
is like what the hon. member said before about the hare and the
turtle. There is the speed of the outside world while we are
going as slow as molasses. However, we are taking sure steps on
some careful decisions that we have to make here.
I ask the hon. member this: what vision does she see in terms
of leaving a mark from this time on? We have our system of
Houses, our parliamentary structure now. What should we leave
behind to keep the country vital for future generations?
[Translation]
Mrs. Suzanne Tremblay: Mr. Speaker, now there is an extremely
interesting question. We have entered the 21st century, but we
have brought all our old culture along with us.
Earlier, I heard the hon. member's speech, and I watched the
opening of the new parliament in Nunavut on television. I
realized that their culture and organization were completely
different from ours.
I wonder to what extent we would be capable, for instance, of
simply transforming this chamber into a semicircle.
How would we justify such an action? We would certainly have to
have a different vision of politics.
2335
It is often said that there should perhaps be a different
approach to politics, that the confrontation and violence should
be reduced, and that we should work more for the common good.
This certainly bears some thinking about. Although the
committee does not have a lot of time, I hope we will be
able to see evidence of this concern and that we will be allowed to
give careful thought to what we want to become as
parliamentarians.
There is no doubt that each and every one of us was elected to
represent the public.
We belong to a political party but, once elected, our job is to
represent all our constituents. The 301 members of parliament
represent the 30 million people in Canada, without exception.
Obviously, a major change could be made by trying to come up
with procedures that would allow us to work together, around a
table, developing a bill for the betterment of our community,
rather than having an authoritarian, majority government which
thinks it has all the answers, which has its own way of looking
at things, and which is completely insensitive to how opposition
members might see them, even though we represent, this time
around anyway, 60% of Canadian voters.
[English]
Mr. Chuck Cadman (Surrey North, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, it has been a long day, and I appreciate the opportunity
to speak on this very important issue of parliamentary reform. It
is the backbenchers who are most affected by the way this place
has been operating in the past while.
The fact that we are debating this issue at all is, I believe, a
strong indication of the frustration that we are facing in
attempting to represent our constituents in this place.
In an effort to place my individual concerns on the record, I
would like to take a few moments to outline how I have been
personally affected by what has been going on over the past few
years while I have had the fortune and the honour to represent
the constituency of Surrey North.
A couple of years ago, in carrying out my parliamentary duties
and my responsibilities, I was developing a number of amendments
to a government bill. It was my understanding that I was working
with the staff of the House of Commons in a confidential manner
in an effort to bring forth proposed amendments and changes to a
government initiative concerning its youth criminal justice law.
I found it more than a little disconcerting to discover that the
clerk of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights was
in possession of my amendments prior to my submitting them to the
committee for consideration.
I immediately embarked on a question of privilege in this place.
To make a long story short, it appears that there had been a
restructuring within the organization of the people whose
considerable expertise and valuable assistance we rely on to do
our jobs. I also note that after much debate and deliberation
the Speaker at the time ruled that my privileges were not harmed
by what had occurred.
The government side explained that the restructuring was
necessary to enhance and promote the team concept of providing
assistance to members of parliament. Let me be clear that I
certainly do not question the Speaker's ruling, as he could only
decide on the basis of the information that was provided to him
at that time. I would be remiss if I did not add that there was
subsequently quite an extensive debate and investigation by the
procedural and House affairs committee into this operational
change that had occurred without the consent or knowledge of the
members.
I also note that while everyone involved in the decision making
finally decided that nothing was wrong and the members of this
place were not disadvantaged by the change, we have since
reverted to our former status quo. In short, although it was
decided that nothing was broken, we decided to fix it anyway. It
is my understanding that now when I as a member employ
legislative counsel to draft proposed amendments, those
amendments will no longer be placed on a database for numerous
employees to use and potentially abuse.
The listener may well question these comments. One could
wonder, I suppose, just why I am raising the issue when
everything is back to normal and the battle appears to have been
won. My concern is that what should have been a fairly
straightforward example of breach of confidentiality of
lawyer-client privilege was never formally recognized as such.
Politics had come into play. The government, the ultimate
controller of the staff in this place, refused to accept that
harm had occurred and refused to hold anyone accountable for that
harm.
2340
We had a manager within this institution who unilaterally
changed the operation of the solicitor-client relationship
between a member of parliament and House legal counsel. That
person was able to avoid censure, and through the failure to
properly address what happened, I wonder when something similar
will again occur and which member of parliament will be on the
receiving end of it. I have had my turn, but I do not wish
anyone else to be similarly affected.
As an aside, I should point out that my relations with the clerk
of the justice committee at the time were somewhat negatively
affected by that situation. It was my sense that he took the
position that I was attacking him and trying to cause him some
grief for having access to my confidential amendments. I assure
members that nothing could have been further from the case. It
was the system as it was set up within the legal department of
the House of Commons that permitted, and for that matter
required, the clerk to become involved as he did. The clerk was
not responsible for that.
I would suggest that the standing orders include the concept of
solicitor-client privilege to protect the information that passes
between individual members of parliament and their assigned legal
counsel. Members of parliament are entitled to an expectation of
confidentiality with counsel in order to do their job, especially
in the political environment that exists in this place.
Another concern I have and would like to discuss has to do with
committee work. We hear time and time again about the importance
of our committees in threshing out the problems and nuances of
all forms of legislation before it comes up for a vote in the
Chamber.
I take my committee duties seriously, as I am sure all members
do. I am present at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human
Rights quite regularly. I also understand the importance of
presenting amendments through the committee so that its members
are provided with the opportunity to review and debate those
proposals. It is, after all, the committee members who are
tasked by parliament to conduct indepth review and analysis of
legislation through witness testimony, debate, proposing
amendments, et cetera. The committee members gain a more
thorough knowledge of the issues raised by the legislation and
use that gained experience to assist the House with improving the
legislation.
It is my opinion in the time that I have been here that some of
the best work of the justice committee was accomplished during
the time that the late Shaughnessy Cohen, rest her soul, occupied
the chair. While we did not always agree, as I am sure members
know, she was a most determined individual. I do believe that
she always tried to do what was right and what was fair. The fact
that the two parliamentary secretaries sat as members of the
committee did not appear to intimidate Ms. Cohen. She took
control of the committee's work.
Too often I can see that a committee chair can become
intimidated by the presence of a parliamentary secretary. Too
often I can see that the committee's work becomes a mere
formality. It is the parliamentary secretary who gives the
government members their marching orders on how to proceed and
ensures that no one strays from the government's agenda.
However, I understand that this particular issue will be
discussed further by others and perhaps even in another venue; of
course I am referring to the Standing Committee on Procedure and
House Affairs.
My real concern over committee work relates to what happened
during the last parliament with the Youth Criminal Justice Act,
Bill C-3. The committee conducted an indepth, extensive review
and heard from many witnesses. The committee members then
presented a number of amendments, approximately 250 in all, of
which about 150 came from the government itself. Instead of
dealing with those amendments, the committee sent the bill back
to the House unchanged.
To my mind, the committee failed the House, as it did not fulfil
its function. It spent a large number of tax dollars to hear
from witnesses. It occupied parliamentary staff and tied up
government officials for months on an important piece of
legislation, but in the end it essentially accomplished
absolutely nothing. The House was deprived of the position on
the bill from the very people it had tasked to review and return
with their advice and experience.
Surely there is something wrong here. Surely it is more than an
inconvenience. It is an abject failure. I fully appreciate that
there was a filibuster of sorts going on in the committee but
filibusters are nothing new in this place or in the committees.
They are addressed one way or another. We do not run away from
them. The government had the same type of majority on committee
as it does in this Chamber. It had a number of ways in which it
could have addressed that problem.
By abdicating its duties, the committee forced the
reintroduction of all those amendments in this Chamber and we are
all aware that the number of amendments then swelled, up into the
neighbourhood of 3,000, which had to be addressed by all members
of parliament. The actions of the committee made a bad situation
worse.
When members of the official opposition, the Progressive
Conservatives, the NDP and yes, even the government itself, lose
their amendments in the shuffle, so to speak, it is an injustice.
For the members of those parties to be denied the opportunity to
debate those amendments with their peers in committee is also
just not right.
2345
At times I left with the distinct impression that work done in
committees was merely a game or a sham. The government was going
through the motions to make it appear as though legislation was
thoroughly reviewed and analyzed. I regret feeling compelled to
adopt this attitude, and that is why I wanted to speak to this
important matter of parliamentary reform.
I implore all members to take a serious interest in improving
the way we do things around here. We have been elected to
represent Canadian citizens. At times the burden can become
heavy, but we knew that or we certainly should have known it
before coming here. There is much work to be done but we need
the right tools to do the job properly. We need significant
changes to our procedures to do just that.
Mr. Peter MacKay (Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, PC):
Mr. Speaker, I commend the hon. member on his remarks. He brings
a usual calm, deliberate approach to the debate. He has made a
number of graphic illustrations on how things have gone on a
dysfunctional track in many instances.
My question to the hon. member is about debate in the House in
terms of how we might improve the way we interact with one
another. We have had a number of occasions where we have looked
to the Speaker to be more interventionist and to act a bit more
like a referee if rules are being flouted, if closure is being
invoked too soon, or if omnibus legislation is deemed to be
improper. We have seen the theatre of the absurd in question
period with members of the government not answering questions.
When somebody is asked a direct question, particularly in debate
where members tend to interact on a more one to one basis,
sometimes the question is asked for partisan reasons but there is
a point behind it. The question is asked to illustrate something
that is perhaps difficult to reconcile, given the circumstances.
Does the hon. member favour having the Speaker try to keep
members more on topic and force them to be more relevant in the
way in which we interact in the Chamber?
Mr. Chuck Cadman: Speaking of referees, I imagine we
could give you a whistle, Mr. Speaker, and we would have this
place under control in a minute. I would have to agree with the
member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough that the Speaker
should be given more control.
I speak to lots of kids in high schools about their attitude
toward each other. I will use the same words that I use with
them. It boils down to having a bit of respect for each other in
this place. More than anything else, the bottom line is that we
need more respect for each other in this place. We can disagree
because that is what this is all about, but we need more respect
for each other. It would make the Speaker's job a lot easier if
we could bring that about.
Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North Centre, NDP): Mr.
Speaker, the hour is late and we are approaching midnight. The
fact that so many members are present and anxious to continue
debating this matter speaks a great deal to the passion and
determination on the part of parliamentarians from all parties in
the House about the need to change this place to make it more
functional and to regain the golden age of true parliamentary
tradition that many have spoken about today.
I feel an obligation this evening, no matter how late, to put
forward my thoughts and to repeat some of the concerns expressed
by my colleagues in the New Democratic Party. I feel that
compulsion in part because the seat I represent was held by two
of the greatest parliamentarians this place has ever seen.
I follow on the heels of Stanley Knowles and David Orlikow, two
individuals who devoted their entire lives to service on behalf
of the people they represented and in the interest of preserving
parliament and all its traditions.
2350
Those two individuals certainly taught me, and I am sure many
other members of the House, the importance of preserving and
respecting the role of the individual member of parliament and
always coming back to that driving force which caused all or us
to run for political life and to enter this place.
Stanley Knowles and David Orlikow epitomize the desire to serve
public office in order to represent and empower constituents. The
desire to pursue change, to devote our lives to using parliament
to make society a better place, from whatever perspective we come
from, from whatever political philosophy that is driving us and
encouraging us in our chosen career, and the desire to empower
the people we represent is surely the essence of the debate
tonight.
Some have suggested in the course of today's debate that there
are other motives, that in fact some of us are trying to grab
more power for the sake of having more power. Some have
questioned individual motives and intentions. I hope that is
just an indication of the frustration members are feeling about
this place in terms of it being a functional institution.
I believe there is not a person in the House who is seeking to
change the rules, to push for parliamentary reform, just to have
more power, just to wrest power from the government or just to
have more avenues to embarrass the government of the day. We are
all seeking and striving for parliamentary change to allow us to
be more effective members in doing what we sought to do when we
entered this very difficult career path.
As the hon. member for Winnipeg—Transcona said, this debate is
all about getting some balance in this place, about giving
members the ability to exercise the responsibilities they have
embarked upon. It is about living up to the notion of
independent minded elected representatives. It is about allowing
MPs to play a decisive role on legislation and to pursue the role
that electors expect of us, which is to be watchdogs of the
public purse.
We are desperately trying to rebalance power in this place and
to deal with the fact that power has shifted so much from
individual elected representatives, from members of parliament,
to forces outside the elected arena. It has shifted to forces
outside parliament, to forces with little accountability and
ability on the part of people to know that they have some
control, some power and some ability to influence the shape of
their own lives and the destiny of the country.
The debate is surely about trying to ensure that we can
participate in the democratic process to encourage the people we
represent to be more active in democratic institutions, in the
political process.
How do we deal with the sense that people have of being helpless
and hopeless in the face of many external factors when we start
feeling helpless and hopeless in this place? Could there be any
among us who do not feel helpless and hopeless from time to time
and sometimes more often than not?
2355
I entered this place in 1997 with great expectations,
anticipation and hopes about being able to exercise the
responsibilities handed to me by the electors of Winnipeg North
Centre. I held out great hopes and aspirations about being able
to influence the course of events and being able to pursue
change, the very force which caused me to enter politics in the
first place. I am not discouraged and I have not given up, but I
can say that my experience in this place has been much less than
I expected.
I made a deliberate decision to move from provincial politics to
the federal arena because I believed that there were traditions
and institutions, as a part of this place, that would allow me to
be an effective representative and to give me the opportunity to
pursue the kind of change that I thought my community needed.
It has been rather disappointing. I especially expected that
this place would offer an opportunity to pursue thorough
independent research and investigation through our process of
standing committees in the House of Commons. I expected that
because it is a process we do not have in the Manitoba
legislative assembly. We do not have standing committees that
function on an ongoing basis which allow for independent research
and investigation. Needless to say I have been very disappointed
by what I have experienced, at least with one committee in the
House.
Mr. Peter Stoffer: Not the health committee.
Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: My colleague says it for me, the
health committee. I want to say the health committee may be
unique in terms of being dysfunctional. However, based on what I
have heard today, it is not that out of character. We have a
systemic problem in terms of our committee system.
Our committees, and certainly the health committee, are used and
abused by the government of the day. We have problems with the
chairing of our meetings but our problems go much deeper. I have
said this before in the House. Our fundamental problem is that
the committee system has become a tool of the government to shape
its own agenda. We are used to keep busy, to rubber stamp
government programs without being allowed to pursue any kind of
independent research and thorough investigation.
I do not need to go into great detail tonight about all the
difficulties we have experienced on the health committee.
Suffice it to say, we have to change the system because we are
not doing our job as parliamentarians. We are not serving the
public on some of the key issues of the day.
When it comes to the health committee we have been used by the
government and directed in terms of our efforts as opposed to
being allowed to pursue what is clearly at the top of the minds
of Canadians. That certainly has to be at the heart of what we
do. We have to be allowed the ability and the resources to pursue
the issues that are at the top of the minds of Canadians.
In terms of all the issues being discussed today, if we can do
one thing, that is if we can reform the committee system and
allow members of parliament to do thorough independent
investigative research on issues that are at the top of the minds
of Canadians and need to be explored by parliamentarians, we will
have done parliament and the country a great service.
Mr. Ken Epp: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
Whereas it is now midnight, for all intents and purposes I wonder
whether we could give permission to the pages, if they wish, to
take their leave of this place. I am sure we could manage
without them for now and that they need to sleep so they can
study.
The Deputy Speaker: I do not see any opposition to the
suggestion by the hon. member for Elk Island. I suppose we could
call it a day for our pages and we will carry on.
Some hon. members: Agreed.
2400
Mr. Paul Szabo (parliament Secretary to Minister of Public
Works and Government Services, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I
believe the member who just spoke is too modest. She has a good
reputation in the House, and it is well earned, for being
prepared and doing the best that she can with the resources
available. I think all members would agree.
Let us not be too full of ourselves, though, because we all know
that 99.99% of the people in this place could never get elected
as an independent. Therefore, we cannot consider ourselves to be
members of parliament elected to come here to do a bunch of
things as members of parliament.
I believe the member would concede that we are elected primarily
as members of a parliamentary or political team. We run under a
banner with a leader, with policy. In fact, what the people are
voting for is a parliament. They are voting for members as
members of a team. If their team forms the government, they
expect them to work very hard to implement the platform they
brought to the House with them. If their team is not elected to
government, their role will be the role of the opposition.
We have the official opposition. We have the other parties of
the opposition. Their role is not to govern. It is to be the
opposition and to do it very well. It is to seek accountability
where there is none, to seek clarification where there is none,
to seek information where there is none, and to point out
deficiencies where there are deficiencies. It is a very
difficult job. Many backbenchers in a majority government would
say the opposition members have a better job because they have an
opportunity to become national figures. They ask the questions
they want to ask during question period.
Opposition MPs are different. Government MPs have a
responsibility to support the team and the platform on which they
ran and on which they were elected. They have a constitutional
obligation to follow through on the things they ran for. If as a
member of the government team I cannot support the government
platform, if I cannot stand here to vote in favour of it, I
should not be a member of that caucus. I should withdraw from
the caucus and sit as an independent or maybe even resign.
Perhaps the member would like to comment on anything I have
said. In fairness, it is how I feel about the different roles of
opposition members and government members.
Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: Mr. Speaker, in case my comments
were misinterpreted by the member, let me be clear that I was not
by any stretch of the imagination suggesting we leave aside our
political labels and forget about the party system. I am a firm
believer in responsible government and in the role of political
parties. I bring to this place my views as a New Democrat.
I want to be clear with the member that when I talked about
independent research at the committee level I was talking about
work that is independent and free of political manipulation by
the government of the day. That has been the experience of those
of us who have served on the health committee for the past four
years.
I am not sure if any other committee has experienced this, but
each and every time our committee sat down to determine the
agendas and the projects we wanted to undertake, the Minister of
Health sent a letter to the health committee suggesting the topic
of discussion and the Liberal members around that committee table
sat and said “Yes, sir; no, sir; three bags full, sir”.
That is the kind of difficulty I am talking about. I am not
talking about giving up our party philosophy and our commitment
to the beliefs that brought us here. I am talking about a
process, a system of committees that allows members to sit around
the table and reach some agreement based on the priorities of the
public and based on the issues of the day. We have not been
allowed to do that in the health committee.
I ask the member for Mississauga South to work with us to end
political manipulation and interference by the government in the
work of a standing committee of the House.
2405
Mr. Gurmant Grewal (Surrey Central, Canadian Alliance):
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the people of
Surrey Central to participate in the debate.
Members of parliament are supposed to be elected to come to this
place, to provide solutions to problems and to contribute to the
improvement of our nation's policies. What we have seen over the
last decade more than ever before is a significant growth in the
concentration of political power in the Prime Minister's Office.
As the executive branch of parliament gets stronger, our
legislative branch, the House, gets weaker. MPs find themselves
with less meaningful roles to play in our legislative process.
The opportunities for members of parliament to improve
legislation and participate in policy development is decreasing.
Members of parliament and Canadians become frustrated.
The long term objective of political parties is success in
elections. It is at the expense of or to the detriment of the
work we are supposed to do here. The government often chooses to
pass legislation as fast as possible. This thwarts the efforts
of the opposition parties to ensure that the House passes the
best possible legislation.
Opposition parties are not willing to let legislation pass
quickly for the sake of passing it, so they tend to slow down the
passage of legislation for the purpose of improving it. The
government uses time allocation and closure to curtail or even
shut down debate in the House to prevent the efforts of
opposition parties.
The weak Liberal government has an abysmal record when it comes
to using closure and time allocation to limit debate on the
business of the House. This results in a less co-operative
atmosphere and produces a more confrontational environment in the
House. The media dramatize and promote that confrontation. This
parliamentary battlefield prevents the House from pursuing its
mandate to be a forum that improves legislation and forms or
tests new policies. It causes debate to be redundant and
meaningless many times.
Very few members of parliament attend the daily debate in the
House. Most MPs leave the Chamber immediately after question
period. Debate in the House should allow for passionate
arguments to provide political persuasion. Debate should be
free, open, fair and not subject to arbitrary limitations.
The proceedings of the House have become no more than a formal
exercise. Members of parliament, the media and the public in
general pay very little attention to debate in the House. On the
government side most of those speeches are scripted anyway.
The Prime Minister never attends debate in the House, while
cabinet ministers also very rarely—
The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. I remind members not
to reflect on the absence of members.
Mr. Gurmant Grewal: Mr. Speaker, thank you for the
intervention. I will take your advice. The purpose I was trying
to communicate was that debate should be meaningful and more
members should be listening and participating in debate in a
meaningful way.
Nothing in the contributions during debate changes what cabinet
has decided. The ministers adopt none of the recommendations
made by members of parliament in debate in the House.
The outcome of the votes in the House can be predetermined
because there are no free votes allowed by the government. Not
everything has to be a vote of confidence. In other words, what
I am saying is parliament has become a rubber stamp for the
agenda of the Prime Minister's Office and the passage of
legislation is reduced to a formality or a constitutional
requirement.
All MPs are in the House for question period anyway. Why will
the government not allow scheduled votes to take place
immediately following question period? It would save some time.
Speaking of question period, the defining moment each day in the
House is question period and it has become a circus. There are
virtually no informative answers given even to important
questions asked during question period.
2410
Private members' business is another example of where the
influence of individual members of parliament has been
diminished. Virtually none of the private members' bills or
motions are passed by the House. The very few that are passed
are usually killed in the Senate. All private members' business
should be votable.
The resources available at the House of Commons to assist
private members' business have either shrunk or dried up. This
includes legislative drafting lawyers. Private members' business
is just like a pacifier given to a baby. The baby quietly keeps
on working with it, in the hope that something will come out of
it. Despite a lot of hard work, nothing comes out of it. That
is what private members' business has become in the House.
Nothing comes out of it.
The committee system in this place has become more important
than the work in the House because that is where the field of
action has moved. Even the committees are stifled because of the
partisan nature in which they operate. Their membership is
dominated by a majority of government members who tightly control
the work of the committees. Government members often gang up on
opposition members.
The chairs of the committees are appointed or designated by the
PMO. They are not elected. Future business of the committee and
witnesses to appear before the committee are decided in a
partisan manner.
The government is also fighting to prevent committee hearings
from being televised. It knows that the way it runs committees
is a farce. Ministers just go there to introduce bills but do
not hear the witnesses, the debates or the amendments to
legislation with which the committees deal. Debates in
committees also become redundant and meaningless most of the
time.
Canadians engage in a great deal of time and effort preparing
petitions. After the submission of petitions in the House by
their representatives, the petitions are put on a shelf and a
small reply, which is meaningless most of the time, is issued
after a few months. The government takes no effective action on
petitions. Since I have been elected I have not seen any
significant action being taken by the government on petitions.
Whenever delegations from the Parliament of Canada travel
abroad, it should be a team effort. Many times opposition MPs
are denied briefings and are left out of some of the events and
meetings abroad.
The ethics counsellor should be appointed by parliament instead
of by the Prime Minister and only reporting to the Prime
Minister.
An additional standing committee should be created and chaired
by the opposition. Its mandate should be to review and report to
the House on all aspects of acts and reports of the privacy and
access commissioners and of the ethics counsellor.
The appointment of the clerk of the House, with due respect to
the clerk who is a very nice person, by the Prime Minister
defeats the purpose of election of the Speaker by the House. The
appointment of officers of parliament, for example the privacy
and access to information commissioners and auditor general, et
cetera, should receive a committee review before the motion is
presented to the House.
Most of the time too many government bills are empty of content.
They do not go far enough and are only window dressing. I am
talking about many bills. Too many government bills are followed
by a large number of regulations which are not debated in the
House. I consider that to be governing through the back door
because regulations which control the whole intent of bills are
not debated in the House.
An hon. member: You are speaking the truth.
Mr. Gurmant Grewal: Absolutely. The government prevents
the House from dealing properly with the expenditures of the
government. The supplementary and interim supply budgets are
hardly dealt with at all. Even the scrutiny of money spent by
the government, the real purpose of being here, does not occur in
the House most of the time.
2415
With the large number of MPs being re-elected and returning to
the 37th parliament, the time is ripe for change. MPs should be
considered as a resource, capable of adding value to the
legislation introduced by the government.
Committees should be used to test the soundness of policies in
different parts of Canada. This could help to bridge the gap
between regional differences that we saw in the last election.
Strengthening committees could also result in a more public or
transparent legislative process. It could also contribute to a
diffusing of the confrontational environment in our parliament.
This in turn would enhance the public's image of parliament.
The present parliamentary system is an assault on the rights of
the elected representatives of the Canadian people in the House.
This government must wake up to the needs of people in the new
millennium.
Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern
Shore, NDP): Mr. Speaker, it has come to light that members
of the Canadian Police Association were just on the Hill to
politely lobby all members of parliament to address some very
serious concerns that the security personnel of our country, our
front line enforcement officers, want to bring to the attention
of all members of parliament in a very serious manner.
To their surprise, they were advised that all the Liberal
members of parliament were given speaking notes by the Prime
Minister's office on what to say to them when they got here. It
is absolute nonsense when members of parliament cannot even speak
their own minds or freely offer an opinion.
Talk about manipulation 101. It is absolutely incredulous that
the government would even attempt to do that. I understand it
happens all the time.
Would my hon. colleague from the Canadian Alliance Party comment
on that, please?
Mr. Gurmant Grewal: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member,
who works very hard, like a few the other members in the House,
for his valid question and valid concern. It is not only of
concern to members of the House, it is also of concern to the
public.
This is the highest Chamber in the nation and we are honoured
and privileged to be here to represent our constituents.
However, when we are muted not to say what our constituents are
telling us to say in this Chamber, that is an affront to
democracy. In my opinion, it is not only anti-democratic, it is
a dictatorship in the House.
The hon. member noted one particular occasion where members were
given talking points and could not talk outside those talking
points. That is a shame. We need parliamentary reform in the
House so that members are able to speak their mind in the House.
Mr. Jason Kenney (Calgary Southeast, Canadian Alliance):
Mr. Speaker, I particularly want to pay homage to the member for
Surrey Central who, I suspect, if one were to analyze
Hansard, speaks more frequently on bills and motions than
any other member of this place, certainly of my party. One
exception might be the hon. member for
Pictou-Antigonish—Guysborough who has to carry about four
different portfolios.
The member for Surrey Central is profligate in his contribution
to debate here. He makes those many interventions precisely
because he does believe profoundly in the importance of the
deliberative function of this body. I know he has studied
political science and has travelled and seen parliaments in the
British system and other congressional systems abroad.
Perhaps he could reflect for a moment on whether he believes
that other parliaments take more seriously the sort of debate to
which he so frequently contributes than we do here in this
parliament and how we could perhaps emulate the more sober use of
parliamentary debate that other institutions use.
Mr. Gurmant Grewal: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank
the hon. member for his comments and compliments. He is a very
articulate member of the House when he speaks.
I always look forward to listening to him and to learning from
him when he speaks.
2420
Talking about other parliaments in the world, even smaller
democratic countries have made lots of progress.
When I was the co-chair of the scrutiny of regulations committee
I noticed that the regulations in Canada that had been
disallowed, were in the pipeline for the last 25 years. When the
committee contacted the ministers and other members of the
government, they stonewalled the committee. Those regulations
have been in the pipeline for 25 years. The number of those
regulations is about 800. That is one example of how the
government stonewalls its own committee.
Talking about private members' business in other parliaments, I
have visited parliaments in other countries. I was amazed at how
conducive the environment in other parliaments was when free
debate took place. I even think the environment in Quebec's
national assembly is more conducive for reasonable debate
compared to any other legislature in this country. The
committees have also made a lot of progress in that field.
I concur with the hon. member when he says that the government
should allow free debate in the House.
Mr. Greg Thompson (New Brunswick Southwest, PC): Mr.
Speaker, it is case of who is going to tire here first, you or
myself.
I think this is one of the few times when we could say that the
tone in the House tonight was more conversational than what it
normally is. Maybe we are a little more reflective which is what
comes, I guess, with the late night sessions. However it has
really been an interesting night.
I have a few comments that I want to make. The member of
parliament whom I replaced in the House was Fred McCain. He had
been a member of parliament for many years representing a riding
called Carleton—Charlotte, a riding that I first represented. He
was a great parliamentarian. Before him, there was a member of
parliament named Hugh John Flemming, the former premier of the
province of News Brunswick. I am following in some pretty big
footsteps.
One of the things Mr. McCain mentioned to me early in my
parliamentary career was that my constituents want to be proud of
me. That is so true. I think we all have seen that they really
do.
There are some obvious examples of that tonight here in the
House of Commons. We have a group of young Canadians with us. I
think every member who is presently here in the Chamber is or has
been involved with the Forum for Young Canadians. I know you,
Mr. Speaker, have been involved in that program where young
Canadians come to Ottawa and learn firsthand how parliament
works. They come to question period. I know as Speaker, you
have them come into the Chamber. They take seats in the House.
It is really educational. I know their teachers look forward to
having some of their students come to Ottawa. It is a really
well run program sponsored by certain corporations, as well as
the Parliament of Canada. Some very dedicated government
officials make sure this program works.
I had the pleasure of having supper with those students tonight,
because they always have a supper with members of parliament. I
know the member from Winnipeg, the member for
Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough and other members were also at
the supper. After supper we brought some of the young forum
members over to the House to watch tonight's late night session.
They were absolutely fascinated with the process of parliament.
Some of us went to the control room where they do all the filming
of the House with the cameras and all the technology that allows
us to be broadcast across the country.
2425
I actually took two of them into the East Block. One of these
young Canadians sat down in the very chair that our first prime
minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, sat in. The security guards
were generous enough to let us in. It was a real thrill for them
to be here. Truly, they are proud of their members of
parliament. It is something that I think we should do more of
with Canadians. We should engage Canadians in the process of how
government works and how well it can work when we can focus on
some of the big issues.
I want to specifically talk in terms of reinventing parliament
and talk about some of the things that we can do in this
institution that would help us a little. I think we are all
offering some advice here and there, some advice bigger than
others, but one of the particular things that concerns me, which
I guess our House leader often calls my hobby horse of the day or
my little pet peeve, is the questions we put on the order paper.
Members of parliament are entitled to four questions and four
questions only on the order paper. For the viewing public, if
there is anyone left out there watching us at this late hour, the
reason we have questions on the order paper is because we cannot
expect ministers, for example, to answer a very technical,
detailed question on the floor of the House of Commons. It is
impossible for them to do that. Some of the questions demand
more than a 35 second response, as in oral question period, to
which the ministers are restricted, so we put some of the
questions on the order paper. It is our belief, as opposition
members of parliament, and even as government members who
sometimes put questions on the order paper, that Canadians are
entitled to know questions of concern to them. They want the
answers.
As an example of how flawed the system of putting questions on
the order paper is, we are entitled to only four questions at a
time. Presently I have four questions on the order paper.
Unbelievable as it may sound, two of those questions will be
celebrating their first birthday in the House in the next 30
days. I can see the Speaker grinning. It is hard to believe
that a member of parliament could put questions to the government
in written form which have gone unanswered for an entire year. As
I said last week, I will be blowing out candles on their birthday
cake very shortly. It is very frustrating.
The difficulty is that it is, in some cases, in the government's
best interest not to answer those questions because sometimes it
is an embarrassment to the government. The government asks why
it should be in a hurry to answer questions from the member for
New Brunswick Southwest or the members from Winnipeg or South
Shore because if it answers those questions, more will be put on
the order paper. It then stalls, and if it does not have to
answer the questions, all the better because the member is
limited to four questions. That is the position I am in as a
member of parliament.
The questions are very serious in tone. One question has to do
with the selling of 40 Huey helicopters by the Government of
Canada. This was brokered out to a firm by the name of Lancaster
Aviation Inc. Those 40 helicopters were actually purchased by a
U.S. firm but our belief now is that these 40 Hueys have shown up
in Colombia. For what purpose? That is basically sidestepping
the rules that we have employed as a peacekeeping nation.
In addition to that, I have a question on 10 Challenger aircraft
that were auctioned off or brokered through that same company by
the name of Lancaster Aviation Inc. The question had to do with
where those Challenger aircraft wound up. Again, I think the
Canadian people have a right to know the answers to those
questions.
In the British parliament, the government has two weeks in which
to answer those questions.
2430
If the Prime Minister of Canada, tomorrow morning, wanted
answers to those same questions, would he have to wait a solid
year for them? I think he would have them in an hour.
The parliamentary secretary in charge of this file is completely
embarrassed, on a personal level, that members of parliament on
this side of the House have to wait a solid year for answers to
legitimate questions. The Canadian public does have a right to
know.
That is just one small example how this place could be reformed.
Some of it is common courtesy to the people we represent.
You could never get elected, Mr. Speaker, and you are a long
serving member in this House, as a member of parliament if you
went back to your constituency week after week for a solid year
without answering some of the questions and concerns of
constituents. That is the situation we find ourselves in.
All the government has to do is say that there will be a change
in attitude and in culture at the time, and it will not cost us
anything.
Mr. Larry Bagnell (Yukon, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, two of the
recent speakers, who are still in the House, spoke about the
great members of parliament who have served before them. This
gives me an opportunity to do something I have wanted to do for
some time, in a non-partisan and co-operative way.
I would like pay tribute to two of the great parliamentarians
who were in my riding Yukon before me. One person is Erik
Nielsen, who commented on the House in a book entitled House
is not a Home. The other person is Audrey McLaughlin, the
first woman to lead a political party in Canada. Those are two
great parliamentarians who partly shaped the history and the
changes in this House. I think as former Yukoners, we should all
pay tribute to them.
The member from the Conservative Party asked me where the
aircraft went. My father worked for A.V. Roe. I would like to
you to tell me where the Avro Arrow went?
The Deputy Speaker: I would like to make sure that we
have not forgotten about the Speaker. Please, when you are
directing your questions or your answers it might sometime be
handy to come through the Chair. The hon. member for New
Brunswick Southwest.
Mr. Greg Thompson: Mr. Speaker, I do not want to
resurrect Mr. Diefenbaker tonight. We will get the crystal ball
out or maybe the Ouija board and maybe John himself could answer
that.
Anyway, I do not know where the Avro Arrow is. It is a mystery
to me.
Mr. Peter MacKay: Where did the GST problems go?
Mr. Greg Thompson: Where did the GST problem go? I do
not know.
An hon. member: Was the landing on the moon a hoax?
Mr. Greg Thompson: The member from Winnipeg says was the
landing on the moon a hoax.
We are trying to arrive at some consensus in terms of how the
House can resolve some of the difficulties that we see, and truly
some of the difficulties that the viewing public sees. Believe
it or not people watch this on television. They take a serious
interest in democracy and they like to see it working. It is
incumbent upon us to make the system work. One small way in
which I think we can do that is to approve the way in which
questions on that order paper are answered.
Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern
Shore, NDP): Mr. Speaker, the hon. member knows that in the
last federal election 42% of Canadians who had a right to vote
decided to stay home.
If there are no changes to the way the House operates, or at
least given the perception that there is modern change to the way
we do our jobs, does he believe that the percentage of vote will
actually decrease even more and that more people will write us
off, stay home and forget to exercise their most democratic
right, which is their right to vote?
Mr. Greg Thompson: Mr. Speaker, that is a great question.
I think that people have to be engaged, that they have to be part
of a process, feel that their views are important and that
individual members of parliament are empowered or have the
ability to go on the floor of the House of Commons and present
that point of view.
I am not sure if I have answered that properly but I want to get
it in before my time expires.
2435
One of the things in which I am disappointed is the election
turnout. We do not want to get into the situation we see
happening south of the border where fewer Americans every
election are voting. It is now down to around 50%. We are
headed in the same direction.
Obviously one of the things we did was go to a permanent
elections list. There were huge problems with that in the last
election. However, enumeration is still an important part of the
process. People are reminded one-on-one when enumerators knock
on doors and say that their votes count, that they are entitled
to vote and where they will vote when polling day takes place.
We have to consider going back to that. I know it probably is a
step backwards in the minds of a lot of people. It is a human
touch to the whole process which I think has generated more
interest in our electoral system than some other nations.
The Americans, for example, have a permanent voters' list which
they have had for many years. It has been one of the reasons for
the lower turnout in the United States. It may be a little more
expensive to do it but it would be worth the price. I hope that
we can encourage more Canadians to vote.
It is a professional approach to this business of politics. The
openness and transparency that Canadians expect, would be the
greatest way we could generate enthusiasm, excitement and
interest that we would all like to see.
Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, Canadian Alliance): Mr. Speaker,
thank you for staying with us here so late this evening. Of
course thanks also to the people at the table, the other staff
who are here, including the interpreters and technical staff. It
is great that everyone here is participating in making it
possible for us to keep up the reputation of this place as the
place of many words.
I was reminded of a friend of mine who went back to what he
called his motherland. I will not mention what country it is
because it is not nice to pick on the people from Holland. He
said he went back to visit his relatives and there was one thing
that amazed him. Everybody spoke at the same time and no one was
listening. I hope that is not true here tonight.
I will be quite specific to the topic we are addressing tonight,
and that is the change in the standing orders. Right now it is
only about 10.40 p.m. back home in Alberta and only 9.40 p.m. in
British Columbia. That is why some of us who are from the west
are still feeling so energetic and ready to go for a couple more
hours.
However, if any of them are watching, and perhaps others, they
should know that the standing orders are the rules which
regulate, not only the debate in the House but also pretty well
the management of committees, and the way things are done around
here in terms of taking an idea through the process where it
actually becomes legislation.
In my intervention I would like to reinforce a few things and
perhaps come up with one or two ideas which members may not have
heard during the debate today.
First, I do not think this requires a change in the standing
orders since they already permit the television broadcast of
committees. However, it was mentioned by several that perhaps
there should be greater coverage of committees by television. I
would like to make a suggestion, and I am not sure it requires a
change in the orders as they are.
One thing that occurred to me was that there are probably
increasingly more people who have access to the Internet than who
have access to cable or satellite. With the new satellite
dishes, perhaps that will change. I do not know the exact
numbers, but I would like to recommend that a very inexpensive
way of making it possible for Canadian citizens to watch their
parliament at work would be to have an Internet where people
could go to the House of Commons. There would be a place to
click committees to view a committee.
Then they pick which committee they want to see and there it is
with the video streaming on the screen. We could enable I
imagine millions of people who would be glued to their computers
watching. Technically, it is quite possible to do that. It is
relatively inexpensive and does not cost any more. I know we are
putting up satellites in order to get Internet access to all
the remote parts of the country now. It could be a tremendous
unifying force for our country.
2440
An hon. member: Congress is already doing that.
Mr. Ken Epp: My colleague said that congress is already
doing that.
Second, I would like to mention petitions. Right now Standing
Order 36 says a member can submit a petition. As one of my
colleagues said earlier, nothing is ever done with them. When we
had the issue of child pornography in British Columbia, I believe
we had we had over 500,000 names on petitions, yet that evoked no
reaction from parliament.
One thing we could do to connect Canadian citizens to parliament
and increase the respect of the House, would be to have a plan of
action. If petitions came into the House in certain numbers,
using a threshold say of 100,000, 200,000 or whatever, and of
course would be up to the committee to decide, then it would
necessitate a motion being put before the House and debated for a
day with an action plan on how to deal with the petitioners'
request. I think that makes a lot of sense. Otherwise, the work
that citizens do to gather petitions really becomes a meaningless
exercise other than just to bring their issue to the fore and
into the conscience of more people.
In my remaining time I would like to talk primarily about
private members' business. There are other topics too. Many of
my colleagues and people from other parties have mentioned them
today so I will not repeat them. I agree with much of what has
gone on, but I want to talk about private members' business.
I happen to be one of those members who is not lucky. The only
time I have ever won anything in my life was when I was trucking.
There was one place where we used to stop to eat in Alberta. It
had what we call out west student scribblers or notebooks. It
had the numbers one to fifty written down the side. We signed it
whenever we bought a meal. When all the numbers had been signed
for, the restaurant would write one to fifty on pieces of paper,
put them in a little bowl and pick one. I won a free meal once
in my life. Other than that, I have not won a great deal other
than winning the hand of a beautiful woman in marriage many years
ago. We have been married 40 years. That is a major win.
However, I am not very lucky, and in this House I have bombed. I
have been here for seven years going on eight. I have not yet
been selected on private members' business. Therefore, I propose
a small change. Instead of having a random draw, I propose that
all members elected to a parliament be put in a random order. I
would be willing to provide my limited computer skills to do
that. I have taught that sort of thing when I was teaching at
the college. It could be computerized and the members would be
listed in order. That means that we would go down the order and
each one of those members would have the opportunity to have a
bill brought before the House. If they declined, that would be
fine. They would be moved to the bottom of the list and that
list. That list in that order would stay for the duration of the
parliament.
If members resigned, then of course their space would become
vacant. Any new members elected in a byelection would
automatically be put at the bottom of the list. If there were
four byelections on the same day, then those four members would
be put in random order at the bottom of the list. At least then
we would be able to move up.
I did a rough calculation. We could increase the number of
hours per week on private members from the present five to 10.
This could be accomplished, for example, by having another
private members' hour from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. If we had 10 hours
per week, then in a parliament which lasted more than three
years, of course with this current Prime Minister three and a
half years is more or less the norm, every member could have
their bill put forward and, if it were so arranged, there could
be three hours of debate on each bill.
2445
Then I propose that every bill be votable. It is useless to
come up with a good idea and simply talk about it for one hour
and then say it is dropped to the bottom of the order paper.
Actually it is dropped into the garbage can. It is dropped off
the order paper. Every member's bill should be votable.
I also would like to say that there is there are limited
resources that are wasted here. When we came back to this
parliament I had a couple of bills that I wanted to get into that
first draw to increase my odds. I know all about this math
stuff. When there are fewer people, the probability of being
chosen is higher. I could not get them in because the staff were
so overloaded they did not get to my bills. I did not get in on
that draw.
What I propose is that each member be limited to no more than
two bills or motions in the draw or at a time. That is fair,
because they can only pick one. It goes through the whole
rotation before there is a repeat of the list.
I have another consideration in regard to the standing orders
that does cause a bit of a problem. I propose that no member be
allowed to move an amendment to a private member's bill or motion
without the consent of the mover. Sometimes the movers can be
persuaded that they would have a better chance of getting it
passed if they would agree to an amendment. If that amendment is
not offensive, a member can choose to accept that amendment and
then the debate and the vote will be on the amended motion.
However, we have had several instances where a member's motion
has been totally gutted by amendment. Then the government, with
its majority, pushes it through and basically the private
member's business is stolen from the member who proposed it.
I have more ideas here that I could talk about but I should
respect the time. I will just mention one more item. I do not
favour the suggestion that perhaps Fridays could become private
members' days. I am worried about Fridays around here. I am one
of the members who always makes it a point when the House is in
session to be here the full week. I am often here on Fridays,
and without saying anything about anyone specifically, you and I
both know, Mr. Speaker, that the place is not exactly crowded on
Fridays.
I would be a little worried about having private members'
business relegated to Fridays, because its purpose is for the
debates to occur in order for us to be able to persuade by
reason, by argument and by good logic that a bill or a motion is
worthy of support.
I will close my speech by giving the following bizarre
suggestion, and that is that members' salaries would be paid for
the week only if they actually showed up for private members'
business on Friday.
Mr. James Rajotte (Edmonton Southwest, Canadian
Alliance): Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the hon. member for
Elk Island. I think it is fantastic that he waited over 10 hours
to give his speech on this very important subject and I certainly
commend him for that.
I was very interested in his comments on private members'
business. It is interesting that many members spoke very
generally about parliamentary reform while this member had some
very specific suggestions.
I would like to ask the hon. member if he has even more
suggestions to give to the committee in regard to what should be
implemented to make the House truly more democratic.
Mr. Ken Epp: I am certainly pleased to do that, Mr.
Speaker, and I thank my colleague for the opportunity.
Yes, there are a number of other specific amendments. There is
one, but I do not know if it can be put into the standing orders.
I asked a question earlier in debate about whether or not free
votes can actually be put into the standing orders. We have done
a bit of that with respect to private members' business by
changing the voting order. This was done in the last parliament.
Instead of starting with the frontbenches so that all of the
members can take their cue from how the cabinet is voting, we now
start the voting at the backbenches. That goes for both sides of
the House. I think we should be careful to retain that
particular provision.
Furthermore, we should have true free votes. I would like to
see that happen more often.
I do not mind. Let us say that I have a motion or a bill and put
it forward as private members' business and state the strongest
case that I can for my idea, which hopefully represents the
wishes of my constituents back home. I have a couple such bills
in the hopper right now, which I cannot get to vote on and cannot
even get to debate because they are not drawn.
2450
Let us say that I put that bill or motion forward and present my
strongest arguments in favour of it. If afterward the 300
members of the House of Commons say to me “hon. member for Elk
Island, that is a dumb idea and we are going to vote against
it”, well, I gave it my best shot. In their wisdom the members
said they would not vote for it. That is fine and I will accept
that. I did not have a strong enough argument. I did not
express it well. It is my problem.
However, if I am able to persuade them and they still vote
against it because of some implied instruction from someone else,
then I get a little upset, because I do not believe that our
country, our democracy and our citizens are well served when we
cannot, as a group of people in the largest council in the
country, vote totally freely. I would like to actually see a
standing order provision that would make it illegal, a breach of
the orders, for anyone voting against the wishes of his or her
party to ever be disciplined in any way by that party. I do not
know whether that is possible. It is something that perhaps the
committee would want to tackle.
Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern
Shore, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I want to comment on the fact that
if the government had really wanted to simplify the debate
tonight, all it had to do was listen to the speeches from my hon.
colleagues from Winnipeg—Transcona and Regina—Qu'appelle and go
on the advice of what those two very learned gentlemen have
brought forth to the House today. Then the government would
understand exactly what it needs to do to change the House of
Commons.
In earlier questioning I mentioned that 42% of Canadians, for
whatever reason, did not exercise their most democratic right,
which is their right to vote. There is a myriad of reasons as to
why they did that.
However, time and time again when I speak at schools or at a
forum of young Canadians or legions, wherever I go, I tell people
that although I was not born in this country I am very proud to
be a representative of my party in the House of Commons and to
represent the constituents of my riding.
There are 116,000 reasons why people must vote. Those are the
116,000 brave men and women, many of them just a little older
than some of the pages here, who are buried in over 60 countries
around the world. Those brave men and women fought and died in
the belief that this was the number one country in the world and
that our ideals, our viewpoints and our spirit of democracy
should be shared and respected with all other countries around
the world.
In relation to what we can do specifically to change parts of
the House, I want to mention five reports that I brought with me.
I was on the fisheries and oceans committee from 1997 to 2000. We
did 13 reports, 8 of them unanimous: the Nunavut report, the
east coast report, the central Canada fresh water fisheries
report, two west coast reports, the seal report, the Prince
Edward Island report, and so on. The unique thing about these
reports is that they were unanimous and produced not by three
parties but by five political parties in the House of Commons:
the old Reform Party, now the Alliance; the Bloc; the Liberals,
the governing party; the NDP; and the Conservatives.
As we know, in committee we struggle for the preamble and for
the recommendations. In order to make it unanimous, we all put a
little water in our wine and we all agree on what the report
should say based on the evidence we have heard. It takes an
awful lot of time to do that.
We spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars doing these
reports and going across the country listening to evidence from
the people most affected by the concerns and the recommendations
in these reports, only to have the government completely ignore
all of the reports. Every last one of them was ignored.
2455
I remember very clearly standing in the House of Commons trying
to move concurrence on the east coast report back in 1998. I was
shocked at what happened. I am naive and I will admit that, but
I did not believe that members of parliament could actually do
what they did, being the honourable people we are. When
concurrence is moved on a report it means that the government has
to move on those recommendations. The Liberal members who put
their names in the booklet and on the report stood up and voted
against their own report.
Just shortly before that we were in towns like Pouch Cove and La
Scie, Newfoundland, in Goose Bay, Labrador, in Halifax, Nova
Scotia, et cetera. Everyone on that committee, including the
government members, told those people who bared their hearts and
souls to us in their evidence about the concerns of the fishing
crisis they faced that we would go back to Ottawa, come up with a
unanimous report and try to help them.
Only a short while later, government members of the committee
stood up and voted against their own report. Why did we even
bother doing it? Why did we not stay in our little offices and
do exactly what the PMO or the ministers directed us to do? That
was a shock. I could not believe that could happen.
There was another thing that happened and again I base it on
ignorance of what can happen. If we really want to change
parliament, we as members of parliament have to change ourselves.
One of the better things we could do is to put a stop to this
crossing of the floor if a member has a falling out with his or
her party. Many members in the last parliament crossed the
floor.
I find it absolutely astonishing that I, as a member of
parliament for Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore,
elected as a New Democratic member, could just decide tomorrow
that I might want to join the Alliance Party or the Liberal
Party. All I have to do is go to the House leader of that party
and tell him I want to join and I would be welcomed with open
arms. Then, bang, I would be a member of that political party.
However, that is not what the constituents voted for.
I have a bill in the hopper that has not been drawn yet, so I
know what the member for Elk Island is going through, and it
basically says that if a member has a falling out with his or her
political party and wishes to leave, he or she would sit as an
independent or quit. A member would have to run in a byelection
under the new political banner and let the people of the riding
decide the member's political future. That is democracy. That
is being honest with constituents. If we are not honest with the
people who voted us into this most honourable Chamber in the
entire country, then we should not even be running for office.
Another example is the police association that is here in
Ottawa. It has very serious, legitimate concerns about what
police do for a living. The association wishes to bring those
concerns to the attention of each and every member. The
policemen and their association spend an incredible amount of
money from their membership dues to come to Ottawa and address
all members of parliament in a very formal manner about their
concerns.
What they do not want to have is 170 and some members all
singing from the same hymn book. They want to know exactly what
the member from the Yukon is thinking or what the member from
Mississauga is thinking and so on. They do not want to come to
Ottawa to see prepared speeches for all members of the government
which tell them what to say to the police association when the
police come to their offices to speak to them. I was shocked. I
beg the indulgence of the Speaker. I am amazed that I could be
so naive as to think that does not happen. When I came to Ottawa
to represent the constituency I did not believe that these
shenanigans could happen, but they do.
2500
One of the most shocking days I have ever had in the House of
Commons was on the hepatitis C vote. I know very well, through
private conversations, that a lot of backbench Liberals said they
did not support the government position and that the Prime
Minister had no right to make it a confidence vote.
One of the more respected members, a doctor, a wonderful woman,
ended up in tears after that vote. Why? Because one person
decided to make it a confidence vote.
Thousands of people in the country suffer from the terrible
disease of hepatitis C. It was a good motion, brought forward by
the Canadian Alliance. I believe it was the hon. member for
Macleod who brought it forward. We had a great debate to move it
forward and help those people, only to be turned down because one
person said no. All the others followed in line like a bunch of
sheep.
If we truly wish to change parliament we need to change
ourselves.
I know a lot of Canadians are switching off Mike Bullard to
watch this debate, so with that I would be more than willing to
accept questions or comments from members.
Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, of course they were switching channels during the
commercials and just happened to run across CPAC, and there was
an engaging speech so they stayed with it. I concur with that.
I have a specific question for the hon. member. The theme that
has come up over and over today is the whole question of free
votes versus making every vote a confidence vote. I am a little
puzzled by it. I know the standing orders probably as well as
the next member and I do not really know how we can, by changing
the standing orders, force the government to not put pressure on
its members or on any other party. I wonder if the hon. member
has any ideas as to how that could be done in the standing
orders.
To protect members, I suggested a rule that says if they vote
against their party they will not incur sanctions from the party
leadership. For example, the party cannot send the person to the
furthest office in the precincts as a form of punishment. That
is a rule I thought of. I wonder if the hon. member has any
specific concrete ideas as to how to handle that one.
Mr. Peter Stoffer: Mr. Speaker, I believe confidence
votes should only be on budgetary items or the throne speech.
Everything else should be open.
All we need to do is look at the former member for York
South—Weston, Mr. John Nunziata, who stood with principle and
voted against the government on the GST. The red book promised
to get rid of the GST. Only one member of the Liberal party
stood and said his constituents had sent him to the House, his
constituents had told him to vote against the GST and that was
exactly what he would do. Mr. Nunziata's reward: to be kicked
out of the Liberal caucus.
We must bear in mind that Mr. Nunziata was a member of the rat
pack, and that when the Liberals were down and the Conservatives
were up he did an awful lot of fighting to bring his party's
stature back up in the House of Commons and raise its profile.
His reward years later was to be kicked out of the Liberal caucus
because he voted with his conscience and with the wishes of his
constituents.
That can still happen today. The government has not learned
anything from that example.
Mr. Larry Bagnell (Yukon, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, it is past
1 a.m. here. However as the member for Elk Island said, it is
only 10 o'clock in the Yukon. I would like us all to remember
Yukoners in some of these individual differences. I know they
want to be heard, and I will try to keep trying to make them
heard.
In relation to the point the hon. member, a former Yukoner, made
about police talking points, I do not know what he is talking
about. I have never seen such points. I do not think that is a
fair comment.
The other point I will make relates to the point the hon. member
made that we are the best country in the world to live in, and
that is why many people sacrificed for us overseas.
I believe we have kept faith with them. This body, like any
body, reflects in its decision making processes complexities and
human frailties, but it is always open to change. We have had a
tremendous debate tonight in the spirit of that change. It will
move on and be improved and become better as a result of this
debate and of the continuing efforts of members.
2505
In spite of all that, in spite of the imperfections of a system
which tries to get 301 people to agree on anything, Canada is
still the best country in the world. I am proud of that. I
think the members who are part of making Canada the best country
in the world are proud of that. I do not think we have broken
faith, as John McCrae would say, with those who died for us. I
am proud that we still live in the best country in the world.
Mr. Peter Stoffer: Mr. Speaker, yes, I did live in Watson
Lake, Yukon for nine years. The hon. member for Yukon and I have
many mutual friends in Whitehorse.
First, on his speaking notes I ask the hon. member to check with
his staff because I have very solid information that every
Liberal member of parliament received those speaking notes.
Second, the hon. member is absolutely right. In my opinion, and
I am sure the opinion of many others here from all political
parties, this is indeed the number one country in the world.
However if he wants to know about our veterans he should speak to
merchant mariners about the battle they face in trying to get
compensation from the government after 56 years of struggle. They
have a lot of difficulty with what the government has been doing
in that regard.
In terms of this being the number one country in the world,
there is no question about it.
Mr. James Rajotte (Edmonton Southwest, Canadian Alliance):
Mr. Speaker, let me say good morning to you. I thank you
especially for staying here during the debate and I thank all the
House officers as well. I know they are all looking at us and
wondering what in God's name these parliamentarians are doing
here so late.
I am here because this issue is supremely important. It is very
important to all Canadians but in particular to the people of
Edmonton Southwest. In the first week of March I had a town hall
meeting in my riding. This was the most prominent issue that
came up again, again and again.
People in Edmonton feel powerless over what happens here and
over what the government does with their taxpayer dollars. They
want parliament to reassert itself, and private members to
reassert themselves, over the spending controls exercised by the
government. They essentially want to take back their government
and empower parliamentarians so that parliamentarians can act on
their behalf. However they want to empower themselves as
citizens so they will have more direct control over how they are
governed.
I will read the motion for the record. It states:
That a special committee of the House be appointed to consider
and make recommendations on the modernization and improvement of
the procedures of the House of Commons;
In the spirit of fairness I congratulate the government for
putting the motion forward and I would like to depart a bit. I
know we are not supposed to draw attention to members in the
House, but I would like to commend the hon. member for Yukon for
diligently partaking in the debate as a member of the government.
It is very much appreciated on this side of the House.
I am hopeful, yet somewhat sceptical, that we will be able to
make substantive changes to parliament so that we can more
effectively represent Canadians.
One of the things that has caused me great concern, before I
entered politics and certainly since then, has been the decline
of public confidence in politics in general and political
institutions in particular. That is a very disturbing and sad
trend. It is disturbing to me for two reasons. The first is
more for intellectual reasons and deals with the whole nature of
politics itself.
I come from a political science and political philosophy
background. If one examines what the word “politics” means and
where it comes from, it comes from the Greek word polis
meaning city. This means the city state, which was to
philosophers like Plato and Aristotle the classical form of
government. It was a form in which Aristotle said every citizen
knew the character of each and every other citizen. What that
allowed was a full and deliberative discussion within the city
and the political community so that people were self-governed and
governed better.
2510
This also points to the importance of rhetoric, the importance
of discussion, the importance of what Plato called the dialectic
between people who engage in a dialogue for the importance of
serving the truth or improving the nature of the community. That
is what the whole parliamentary system is about. We face each
other across the aisle not to shout and scream, but because the
government is supposed to propose and the opposition is supposed
to critique and hold the government accountable. It is that
tension between the government and the opposition that truly
provides for good governance.
I learned another thing about politics after attending the
dinner with the Forum for Young Canadians. Many of these
youthful people are very inspired with politics and want to
pursue it as a career. Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer
people who want to do that. The very essence of politics and
politicians themselves seems to be declining in public favour,
and that is tragic.
Referring to Aristotle, politics should be a noble calling. He
listed contemplation as the highest, but he had politics as the
second highest noble calling. We should all work toward
restoring that.
The second reason I would list beyond the intellectual would be
the personal. I have enjoyed the debate tonight because people
have relayed some personal stories, particularly the member for
Elk Island. My political mentor is really my father. I learned
politics at his knee. It is interesting that I am a member of
the Canadian Alliance today, yet he was a former Liberal who in
1968 helped elect a member in Edmonton named Hu Harries. He was
a very independent minded and intelligent member who came to
Ottawa. The system here did not utilize that member's talents.
That certainly disillusioned my father.
The more important lesson my father taught me was when he and I
disagreed, whether it was over the kitchen table or wherever, was
the importance of listening and of respecting someone else's
point of view. He taught me that we should not impugn motive to
people who disagree us, we should challenge their ideas, policies
and what they say, but not who they are. I think that sense of
respect has to be restored to parliament.
Unfortunately, I have seen some incidents in the past week and a
half that were especially disturbing to me. I am not going to go
into them, but those sorts of incidents destroy deliberative
debate in the House and they must be dealt with severely.
One of the reasons I ran for parliament was to raise the level
of debate in the House and the level of political discourse in
Canada. Raising the respect and decorum in the House is the
first way we must do this. We must ensure that arguments are
carried and that decisions are made based on the reason of
arguments rather than the loudness of our voices.
I want to take some time to make some specific recommendations.
The first one, and the government house leader mentioned this
today, would be to have votes following question period on
Tuesday. I certainly encourage him to do that. That is
certainly one example of a recommendation that would improve the
House.
In terms of question period, it was mentioned that the U.K.
parliament had a thematic question period in one day. From what
I have heard from people who have observed the British
parliament, it is certainly an improvement. It allows for a more
engaging discussion.
In terms of omnibus bills, we had a recent bill from the
Minister of Justice. Comparing our political system to that in
the United States, Tip O'Neill was the master of this, he would
throw everything into one bill. It was a hodgepodge. That is
against the legislative process. A bill should be limited to a
specific issue and ideal.
In terms of committees, we should have the election of chairmen
and vice chairmen by secret ballot. We should also not have
chairmen removed for a year by the Prime Minister or the whip of
the party.
There is another thing I recommend. As new MPs, we were
privileged to have an orientation by some past members of
parliament. One member in particular, Daniel Turp who used to be
a member for the Bloc Quebecois, suggested having committees not
sit when the House was sitting. He said it would improve the
number of people who could then attend parliament, as well as
improving the attendance at committees.
In terms of speeches in the House of Commons, I am going to make
a suggestion that my former employer, Ian McClelland, made. He is
certainly a good friend of yours, Mr. Speaker. He suggested that
we possibly shorten the length of speeches in the House and
lengthen the period of time for questions and comments. It would
improve the discussion and debate across the sides of the House,
even between different opposition parties.
2515
In terms of the power of appointment, all government
appointments should go through a committee or a parliamentary
review. In terms of private members' bills, we must make them
votable. We referred to former member John Nunziata who stated:
Let members bring their ideas forward. If it is not a good idea,
that member will be held accountable for that bad idea by his
constituents. Let the House itself view this bill. If it is not
a good idea it will be rejected.
In conclusion, the whole notion of the confidence convention is
the most fundamental change that must be made here. It was
interesting listening to the government House leader when he said
that he was not here to change the constitution and that he was
not here to completely revamp Canada.
The fact is that if we do not change the way the confidence
convention is applied in the House we will not truly make the
necessary democratic reforms. We must ensure that a vote on a
specific bill is just that, a vote on that specific bill. The
confidence convention must be removed so that if a particular
bill is defeated we can then call for a confidence convention and
the government can vote a second time on whether there is
confidence in the government. That seems entirely reasonable to
me.
I wish to refer to the relationship between parliament and the
judiciary that was mentioned earlier by the member for
Toronto—Danforth. I know they are likely outside the scope of
this committee, but I would like hon. members to consider that
important relationship to ensure the House truly becomes the
parliamentary institution it needs to be.
Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern
Shore, NDP): Mr. Speaker, when growing up and studying
history I always thought that Aristotle and Plato were social
democrats, and now that has been confirmed by the hon. member
from Edmonton. I thank him for that.
The member alluded to the behaviour of MPs in terms of respect
for other MPs. Speaking for my party and I, we tend to have a
good rapport with all members of parliament and good working
relations with other staff within the House of Commons.
Would he not agree that in order to change parliament we as
individual members of parliament need to change the way we
interact with one another?
Mr. James Rajotte: Mr. Speaker, I should note that he was
one of the first members to approach me as a new member and
welcome me to the House, and I appreciate that.
He also said something very similar to what my father would say:
discuss, debate and challenge each other on ideas but at the end
of the day go together and have what he called a pop, relax and
be friends. If we all had that sort of attitude about our place
here, the House would be a much better place.
It is so necessary and it is something that I know the Speaker
is trying to encourage through increasing the assembly of members
of parliament as people who represent Canadians in a less
partisan way. That would certainly be one way to improve the
relationship of members in the House and the functioning of the
House itself.
Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, Canadian Alliance): Mr.
Speaker, presuming the motion passes, and I am sure it will, you
will be the chairman of the committee that will be looking at
these changes, and I really welcome that.
I want to present an argument in favour of something my
colleague mentioned about saving time of the House by conducting
votes whenever possible right after question period when all the
members are already here. I am sure the committee will want to
look at whether there should be a change in how long the bells
ring.
One very strong argument which I have not heard today with
respect to changing the vote time is that it would not interrupt
committees, particularly when we have witnesses. I find it so
disconcerting to have witnesses come from various parts of
Canada, sometimes from far away, and lo and behold the bells
start ringing and we give them the rush. We tell them to hurry
because we have to go and vote. Then we do not go back to them.
Many of them have had their presentations truncated because of
that.
That is a very strong argument for one of the things that my
colleague presented.
2520
With respect to the general decorum in the House, I agree with
him 100%. We should debate the issues, put forth our arguments
and argue them in the way a lawyer argues in court. I have been
to court very seldom, and each time it was just to observe. When
I was there I never heard a lawyer yelling at a judge or at other
lawyers. They do not do that.
They are there to present their case and to allow an opportunity
for reason to prevail. I really miss that in this place, as my
colleague said. Perhaps he wants to comment more. My
intervention is more a comment than a question.
Mr. James Rajotte: Mr. Speaker, that is the key, letting
reason prevail. If there is no reason in what we do, we are
irrational animals and the fact is that is what truly defines us.
That is truly what enables us to achieve what we have certainly
achieved in the history of humanity. That is what we need in the
House. We need respect and decorum on both sides and we must let
reason carry the day.
Mr. Jason Kenney (Calgary Southeast, Canadian Alliance):
Mr. Speaker, thank you for your forbearance in the chair. I
believe I am the last sheet to be hung here. I commend you. I
suspect you will be chair of the committee contemplated in the
motion and I gather the deputy clerk is slated to be clerk as
well. Your presence late this evening indicates your commitment
to this process.
I am also pleased to have seen the general quality of the debate
and the spontaneity of most of the interventions contra the
normal practice of too many members reading scripted speeches.
Let me just say as a parenthetical remark that one parliamentary
reform we ought to consider is the adoption of the rule of the
Westminster mother parliament prohibiting verbatim reference to
scripts for speech making in the House and allowing members to
speak from their minds and not those of bureaucrats or their
staff.
I wish to say at the outset that one of the reasons I chose to
run, to represent my constituents and to serve in this place, for
which I have enormous respect as something of an amateur student
of parliamentary history, is precisely my great concern about the
deterioration of democracy in Canada and the vitality of this
institution.
There has been much commented on today but scholars such as
Donald Savoie, a leading political scientist at the University of
Moncton, three years ago published a book called Governing
from the Centre: the Concentration of Power in Canadian
Politics in which he quoted an anonymous member of this
current government's cabinet as saying that the cabinet was
nothing more than a focus group for the Prime Minister's Office.
He said that the House of Commons was nothing more than a
talking shop. In a sense he confirmed what we have always known,
what the late Right Hon. Pierre Elliott Trudeau said, that
members of parliament are nobodies 50 feet off the Hill. I
suspect that many people would agree that members of parliament
outside the executive branch are essentially nobodies on the Hill
today.
For that reason I want to very pointedly argue that this has led
to a kind of cynicism about this institution and, as my colleague
before said, political institutions in general. Cynicism is a
very corrosive thing when applied to institutions in a political
culture that require trust and active involvement on the part of
the citizenry.
As long as people, voters, taxpayers and citizens regard this
institution as a futile talking shop, a de facto electoral
college for the executive branch, their faith in democracy and
democratic institutions will be undermined and we will see the
consequences of that.
2525
In other words, we cannot take democracy for granted. It is a
system that has evolved. This constitutional monarchy, with a
democratic legislature and a representative legislature, is a
system that has evolved over centuries of struggle. It did not
arrive overnight.
There is nothing to guarantee that it will exist in perpetuity.
Neither a written constitution nor a judiciary filled with good
intentions will preserve the democratic spirit of this
constitutional monarchy. All that will guarantee that in
perpetuity is the will of the citizenry, and we corrode that with
the kind of centralization of power which exists today.
In an historical perspective, for centuries the commoners in
this tradition fought the crown to obtain the power to represent
their interests, particularly the power of the purse. Over
centuries, from the 14th century right through to the 20th
century, that power was devolved from the crown into the
legislature, into the Commons.
In the latter half of the last century in this parliament we
have seen the delineation between the crown and the legislature
blurred. Essentially the ancient power and prerogatives of the
medieval crown which were exercised with great authoritarian zeal
in British monarchies have now been usurped by the prime
minister. The prime minister, who acts in the name of the crown,
has become a modern monarch for all intents and purposes.
For that reason I am very concerned about the terms of reference
and the title of this committee which calls for recommendations
on the modernization and improvement of the procedures of the
House of Commons.
Virtually all changes in the standing orders over the years
which have diminished the prerogatives and powers of individual
members and the opposition parties to delay bills, to force
further consideration of them, to add amendments, have occurred
in the name of modernization, efficiency and improvement.
The one mention in the throne speech of modernizing
parliamentary practice was electronic voting. What I heard was
the government whip, a position with which you, Mr. Speaker, have
some familiarity, wanting to reduce the time it takes for members
to vote so as to remove from the opposition parties one of the
few opportunities they yet have to filibuster government bills to
which they are strenuously opposed, a tactic which has been
employed by this and other opposition parties.
With electronic voting, a modernization, an efficiency measure,
we would take less time to vote. That is precisely the problem.
Time is one of the very few levers at the disposal of the
opposition to slow down the otherwise unrestrained juggernaut of
government legislation.
I send out a very strong caution to my colleagues at the outset
of this committee. We do not need to modernize this place. We
need to rediscover the ancient prerogatives which reside in this
place that we have allowed to be diminished by the executive
branch amending the standing orders year after year, decade after
decade, and by convention centralizing power in the hands of the
executive at the expense of this legislature.
We do not need to modernize this place. We need to reform it,
and reform it in a radical way. The Latin root of radical is
actually roots. We need to go back to our roots. Radical reform
means going back to our history, and that means understanding
that we are individual actors, individual moral actors in this
place as legislators, and not cogs in some wheel created by the
executive branch.
One of the principal ways we could do this is by ending the
absurd charade of the confidence convention. I heard the
government House leader say that it would require an amendment to
the constitution. That is absolute nonsense.
2530
The topical issue even in today's National Post by
professor emeritus of political science Jack McLeod, says:
It is a mistake to believe the power of party discipline is
carved in constitutional stone. Parties were not mentioned in
the original BNA Act of 1867. For that matter, neither was the
nature of the Cabinet, the powers of the prime minister, or in
fact the basic principle of responsible government.
There is absolutely no reason why the government could not, as
previous governments have in the past 20 years, regard motions or
bills defeated as simply motions and bills defeated, and not as
measures of confidence in the government. It is a ruse by which
the whip maintains otherwise total control of his or her caucus
and it is an aberration amongst the parliamentary forms of
government, our sister parliaments in the Commonwealth. Even our
mother parliament allows far greater latitude in freedom of
voting than we do in this place.
My colleagues and the official opposition have outlined a whole
series of potential reforms, 21 to be precise. I will not be
exhaustive in listing all those, except to say that the power of
the free vote would be the most significant to wield.
In closing, I also hope that the special committee will not
limit its purview so narrowly as to preclude consideration of
broader democratic reforms which would require the involvement of
the House, such as the adoption of recall measures, citizen
initiated referenda measures and electoral reform, so that we
could have a lower house that would actually reflect the
plurality and diversity of political views in the country.
If we seize this opportunity with courage, we may actually be
able to see a revival of the democratic spirit in this place.
That is my hope. Unfortunately, based on history, that is not my
expectation.
Mr. Larry Bagnell (Yukon, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, a couple
of members opposite have mentioned their families and I would
like to take this time to pay tribute to my mother, Mabel Evelyn
Bagnell. Without her I would not be here today. I also thank
members opposite for staying this late. It is 1.30 in the
morning and I will probably be the last speaker.
The previous speaker talked about pride in this institution and
how important it is for our democracy. I wish to go on record
saying that I will always have pride in any contribution that I
can make to this institution.
The previous two speakers talked about a lack of power. I will
close by saying that, regardless of how many reforms we can get
through, people should not lose faith or courage. I remember
back to what someone said tonight about the great parliamentarian
Shaughnessy Cohen and what she accomplished under difficult
circumstances. We all have constraints in our lives.
I think of Joan and Doug Craig, who fought for years for a
windmill, which now exists on a mountain in the Yukon. I think
of Ross Findlater and George Green who, without any authority
created an anti-poverty coalition, which has done great things in
the Yukon.
I think of the thousands of volunteers who, with no paid job or
any authority and in this year of the volunteer, have moved
mountains and created great things in the Yukon.
I think of Mother Teresa who, without a seat in any parliament
or without any legislative authority, created great things in the
world.
Finally, I think of the Chinese student who stood in front of
that tank in the great film clip.
We in the House and all Canadians should take power because we
can make a difference.
Mr. Jason Kenney: Mr. Speaker, I am overwhelmed. I do
not know what to say, but I thank the member for his
intervention.
Mr. James Rajotte (Edmonton Southwest, Canadian
Alliance): Mr. Speaker, I was very interested in what the
member was saying. I know he has very extensive knowledge of how
parliaments work and parliamentary history. I know he referenced
the famous book Governing from the Centre: the Concentration
of Power in Canadian Politics by Donald Savoie.
He and other parliamentary historians have talked about how, for
the first 50 years of our nation, we had great involvement by
private members. It was really a parliamentary democracy at that
point and then it moved into more of a cabinet democracy,
particularly in the 1950s.
Today, here and now in the 21st century, we basically have what
he calls court government, which is exactly as the hon. member
described. We are almost back to having a monarch again. We are
almost in pre-Magna Carta times.
2535
I fully agree that we should not modernize this place. We must
democratize this place. I agree the confidence convention and
the free vote are the most important aspects of democratizing
this place. Besides the confidence convention and the free vote,
what other suggestions would the hon. member make to really
restore this place to true parliamentary democracy?
Mr. Jason Kenney: Mr. Speaker, the notion of increasing
the votability of private members' bills would tremendously
empower MPs as independent legislators. Yet again, because there
is something of a convention of quasi free votes on those
matters, I think we would see many good ideas coming forth.
However, I also think it is time for us to seriously consider
complementing what is best about this institution and reviving it
by taking power that exists in the Prime Minister's Office and
giving it to people. I am a cynic. I am a pessimist. We could
change the standing orders of this place, but the conventions
exist. The centralization of power exists not because of the
standing orders but because of politics and power and because of
ambition and the desire of people to get into cabinet, to get
parliamentary secretaryships or even to take trifling trips
abroad. As long as those carrots and sticks exist in the Prime
Minister's Office I am afraid that amendments to the standing
orders such as those contemplated by this committee will not be
sufficient.
For that reason I would like to empower directly the people
through measures such as citizen initiated referenda, where the
people could bring forward measures for the consideration of this
parliament and the electorate as a whole which government or the
legislature is unwilling or unable to consider itself. That, I
think, would also be an effective check and balance against the
increasing centralization of political power in the hands of the
courts, a matter which is of grave concern to myself and my
colleagues as well.
The Deputy Speaker: There being no further members
rising, pursuant to order made Thursday, March 15, the motion is
deemed adopted.
(Motion agreed to)
The Deputy Speaker: Accordingly the House stands
adjourned until later this day at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing
Order 24.
(The House adjourned at 1.40 a.m.)