44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 2, 2022 11:00AM
- May/2/22 12:04:45 p.m.
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I am now ready to rule on the points of order raised on April 28, 2022, by the chief opposition whip and the House leader of the official opposition concerning, respectively, the admissibility and division of Government Business No. 11.
The chief opposition whip challenged the admissibility of subparagraph (b)(ii) of the motion which will prohibit quorum calls after 6:30 p.m. on extended sitting days. The member argued that a 20-member quorum is a constitutional requirement, explicitly stated in section 48 of the Constitution Act, 1867. To this I would add that this quorum obligation is also found in Standing Order 29. The member alleged that the motion would render this requirement meaningless, as there would be no means of enforcing it. He also suggested that the House cannot, by motion alone, alter a constitutional requirement in regard to the minimum presence of members.
For his part, the House leader of the official opposition maintained that Government Business No. 11 is an omnibus motion, consisting of several parts, each capable of standing on its own. In his view, the motion could be divided into seven separate questions, each debated and voted on individually, while noting that some parts could be grouped together for debate. Citing instances when this had happened, he asked the Chair to exercise its authority and divide the motion as per his suggestion.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the government House leader countered that the motion does not require any division since the unifying theme is to organize the business of the House for the remaining weeks before the summer adjournment. He submitted that similar motions containing many provisions relating to the business of the House have been adopted in the past, without being divided.
The Chair will begin by addressing the elements brought forward by the chief opposition whip. While he is correct in stating that certain elements of our procedure are provided for in the Constitution and are not subject to amendment or suspension by motion alone, the Chair does not believe that this is what the motion does. It instead prevents members from drawing the Chair’s attention to the absence of a quorum during a particular part of the sitting. As the chief opposition whip readily concedes, there is ample precedent for such motions, as they are regularly adopted by unanimous consent in relation to debates taking place in the evenings. I find it difficult to conclude that such motions are constitutional when adopted by unanimous consent, but unconstitutional if proposed in a debatable government motion.
Secondly, members will recognize that there are already circumstances during which quorum calls are not permitted. For example, Standing Order 29(5) authorizes the Speaker to take the chair when the Usher of the Black Rod is at the door whether quorum is present or not.
Moreover, it is a well-established practice that a quorum call is not permitted during Oral Questions, Statements by Members, Adjournment Proceedings or the taking of a recorded division. Therefore, in the Chair's view, this provision alone does not render Government Business No. 11 inadmissible.
As for the second matter concerning the division of the said motion, I would like to reiterate the ruling of one of my predecessors, cited by the House leader of the official opposition which can be found at page 65 of the Debates of October 17, 2013:
In adjudicating cases of this kind, the Chair must always be mindful to approach each new case with a fresh eye, taking into account the particular circumstances of the situation at hand. Often, there is little in the way of guidance for the speaker and a strict compliance with precedent is not always appropriate.
I would suggest, like my predecessors, that the Chair should exercise caution before intervening in the business of the House and, more precisely, before dividing a motion.
With this in mind, the Chair has considered the arguments put forward and reviewed the provisions of Government Business No. 11. There is indeed an overall theme to the motion, relating to the management of the House’s schedule and its business, and therefore the Chair does not believe it meets the threshold required to be divided for the purpose of individual debates. However, the Chair does agree that some provisions of the motion are sufficiently distinct to be the subject of a separate vote.
Therefore, I rule that the motion will be divided in three parts for the purpose of voting, which are as follows: part I, consisting of paragraphs (a), (b), (c) and (d), relating to the business of the House for the remaining sitting weeks until June 23; part II, consisting of paragraph (e), which relates to deadlines set for the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying; and part III, consisting of the last paragraph that seeks to permanently amend Standing Order 28(1), listing the days on which the House shall not meet.
I thank all members for their attention.
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- May/2/22 12:30:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I want to give the justice minister an opportunity, because I believe he did misspeak. Perhaps he did not understand that there is a constitutional obligation for quorum to be held in this place.
He said that this has happened before, but it only happens in take-note debates. It also happens in emergency debates when no vote on government legislation is held. In fact, this has never been held before. I would give the justice minister an opportunity to correct himself and not mislead the House.
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- May/2/22 6:36:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, may Gord rest in peace. We miss him here.
I will be splitting my time with my colleague for Battle River—Crowfoot.
I rise to oppose government Motion No. 11. It is not because we do not want to have more debate here; it is just that my colleague, who just spoke across the way, does not understand what the contents of his own motion are. He could not even answer a simple question from the Green Party MP about why there was an extension for the medical assistance in dying committee. He does not understand his own motion here, either.
Conservatives are ready to debate, but the issue before us is the wording of the motion in several places. One of the most egregious things that is in the motion is the ability for the government, a minister or the Prime Minister, at any point in time after Motion No. 11 is passed, if it is passed unamended, to simply adjourn the House. That is something that is reserved for the Speaker only, as we saw on that one day when the Speaker adjourned the House during the convoy when the police had moved in. There was supposed to be a debate on the Emergencies Act that day, but the House was adjourned so we had a reason why the Speaker took that particular prerogative.
Normally, when a prime minister wants to adjourn the House, he or she has to go through the process of prorogation to reset the political agenda. That would be the only reason. We have already agreed, as political parties here, what days we are going to sit. We have the parliamentary sitting calendar, so it is simply not true that Conservatives do not want to have a debate. We already have the parliamentary calendar set up. What is actually true is that the government, which is blaming Conservatives for being obstructionist when we are simply doing our job debating legislation, has already been able to pass eight of the 18 bills that it has introduced in this particular Parliament. Yes, Bill C-8 is taking some time, but it is billions of dollars in spending. Here is what the Liberals are not saying about Bill C-8.
First of all, the Prime Minister called an unnecessary election in August of last year, which used all of the sitting days that would have been available in September and October all the way up to November 22, which by my calculation is at least seven sitting weeks. That is 35 days of Parliament that we otherwise would have sat and we could have debated and discussed this legislation. Even more cynically, the Liberals tabled Bill C-8 on the very last day of the fall sitting, which was December 16, which means that they basically had not one day. They tabled the bill one day before the House adjourned in the fall. That means that the fall economic statement had zero days of debate in the fall.
If we fast forward, after weeks of Parliament being adjourned over the Christmas break, the Liberals' mismanagement, and the name-calling of Canadian citizens that resulted in a protest that sidetracked this place, here we find ourselves. Lo and behold, the Conservatives have only been speaking to Bill C-8 for a handful of days, and the bill has gone through committee and passed at second reading. It is now at report stage and is moving its way through third reading. All the Liberals had to do was simply ask their coalition dance partners in the NDP if they wanted to move this along.
We have legitimate concerns about the legislation. There are some things we may agree with on this side of the House, but there are also some things in there that we disagree with. It is our job to bring those matters to debate before the House of Commons. As I said, they have a supply and confidence motion, otherwise known as a coalition with the NDP. They simply had to ask their dance partners for approval to do this. For whatever reason they did not get it, so I do not know how much confidence the Liberals could have in what the NDP is supplying them, but I will leave that for the dance partners to talk about.
My point is that the mismanagement of the time of the House by the Liberals is what is actually the problem. They have been able to get bills passed, but we have a right and a constitutional responsibility to oppose legislation that we do not agree with. Even if we agree with bits and pieces of it, our job is to challenge the legislation that is before the House. The whole notion of how a democracy is supposed to work is through the cut and thrust of debate, the to and fro of debate. It is to have the best ideas from all sides of the House and all sides of the chamber, and all the people who voted in the last election have their ideas come together and bubble to the top.
The problem with the motion is the tone of the motion. This is what the Liberal and NDP members are trying to do. If a citizen is at home watching this and wondering what is actually going on, let me spell it out for them.
In a normal sitting of the House, there is this thing called “quorum”. The House must have at least 20 MPs here. Normally, the governing party, the party that is responsible for the legislation that is being discussed, has to be present to carry the debate. That would require, in addition to the Speaker, at least 19 Liberal members of Parliament, or Liberal-NDP members of Parliament if they are working in cahoots together, to be present for the debate.
In Motion No. 11, there is a clause that says the government will remove any ability to call quorum or to move a dilatory motion. People at home might wonder what a dilatory motion is. That is a motion to adjourn the House and end the debate. It ends what we are talking about or stops what we are doing at a particular point in time. It adjourns a meeting of the House of Commons.
It is the quorum part that matters. As Conservatives, we are willing to be here and debate. That is not a problem. On behalf of the millions of people who voted for us, we would expect that at least 20 Liberals would be in the House to listen. With the motion worded the way it is, the government is basically saying, to Conservatives and Bloc Québécois MPs, “Talk to the hand.” The government is going to pass an autopilot motion in the House of Commons that is normally reserved for debates, such as take-note debates or emergency debates, where there is no question, no vote, at the end of those debates.
At the end of Bill C-8, and at the end of Motion No. 11, there is going to be a vote. That is different. To put the House in that type of scenario is completely unacceptable. For those who are watching at home, this is the part that the Liberals and the NDP are not telling people. They are not telling Canadians that they are getting rid of the actual processes and procedures in the House of Commons: the Standing Orders that we normally operate by. They are getting rid of those things because they do not necessarily want to be here.
I am pretty sure the member for Kingston and the Islands will be here and my friend for Winnipeg North, who is always here in the House, will probably be here. There will be one if not two of them. I might see some of the other MPs from the Liberal Party, but I do not expect to hear from them because, frankly, I never do.
Notwithstanding any of that, for people who are watching at home, it is not just Conservatives who are opposed to this: it is members of the Bloc as well. I am pretty sure there are some members in the NDP who are very uncomfortable with what is happening: people who used to stand up for the working-class Canadians in this country, and people who used to actually stand up for transparency and accountability in this country, are looking at this and wondering what is going on as well.
To Canadians who are watching at home and listening to the talking points from the Liberal MPs who are speaking, this is the part that is egregious. They would simply take away the ability for the Prime Minister or the government of the day to just adjourn the House, so that when things get a little hot around here, if the Prime Minister was under another investigation, they would just shut down the House but they would not have to go through the embarrassment of calling a prorogation to do it. That is the first thing.
The second is quorum. “Talk to the hand,” is basically what they are saying to Conservative members of Parliament and the Bloc Québécois. The government just wants us to talk. We could just have a joint caucus meeting with the Bloc, according to the motion. We do not actually need to be here. There is no point in us sitting here debating if the government is not interested in listening.
If the government is not interested in listening, why not? Does the government not care about the millions of Canadians who did not vote for its members in the last election? Are there no good ideas from the official opposition? Is there no role for the official opposition? Is there no role for the people who voted for the Bloc Québécois to bring up the issues that are important to them?
Where are we in this democracy? This is the problem. To Canadians who are watching, this is the problem. This is why Conservatives are so adamant that Motion No. 11 is fundamentally flawed. We are okay to come to work. We want to come to work. I have been here for 16 years, and the last two weeks in June is the time when extended sitting hours are automatically in the calendar. If MPs in the governing caucus want to have extended hours, they do it. I have done it. As a matter of fact, I was a member of the Harper caucus when Harper was the prime minister. We had motions like this, but we would never dream of putting in an autopilot motion on government legislation.
It is egregious. It is an abuse of the powers of the House. What is shocking to me is that the NDP is going along with this. Where is the party of Tommy Douglas and Jack Layton?
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