44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 2, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie for his speech and especially for having once again raised the issue of our current voting system. I, too, was a member of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform.
I was particularly amused to hear the hon. member recall the weird survey the government did, called “vox populi”. It turned out that even when it tried to torque the questions to get the answers it wanted, the survey was never clear, because no one ever had a chance to just mark down “I want proportional representation.” It was very twisted. We did find out that 70% of Canadians who did the survey said they would rather see a lot of smaller parties work together, even if it takes longer, to come to decisions in a co-operative fashion by consensus. Our system here is way too adversarial and way too partisan, and it is not necessary.
Can the hon. member imagine a time when we can get rid of the perverse voting system we have here? We have been promised it over and over again by the Liberals, but it was snatched away from us.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right.
If we look at the number of members that the parties get elected and the number of votes they get nationally, it creates distortions, as I was saying earlier. There was one election where it took an average of 35,000 votes to elect a Liberal member, 40,000 votes to elect a Conservative member, 80,000 votes to elect an NDP member and practically 300,000 votes to elect a Green Party member. It is completely unfair to the voters.
I think that we do indeed need to work together, collaborate on finding a better system that will be fairer for everyone and will likely produce governments that will have to work together. A proportional voting system is not just more respectful of the voters; it also changes the political culture.
I know that my colleague is keen on that notion and that idea. It creates parliaments that are less aggressive and confrontational with a lot more dialogue and consensus building. I think that is best for our democracy and it is also what people want from us.
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Madam Speaker, I am going to take the liberty of passing the puck to my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie. He can decide whether it lands on his stick or his skate; it depends how he takes it.
We are trying to make the Liberals understand that the Bloc Québécois does not want to pick a fight. We just want to maintain Quebec's political weight and representation in Parliament. That is the rationale for the 25% representation that Quebec is requesting, which is the same ratio that was entrenched in the Charlottetown accord, as my colleague mentioned.
When asked about this, the Liberals repeat that they have already given Quebec what it wanted, 78 seats. However, they set that number without considering representation, which is still at risk based on demographics and the gradual increase in the number of House seats.
I would like to hear my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie offer his opinion and expertise on the Liberals' attitude. They do not understand what we are trying to say when we demand that Quebec's political weight be maintained in Parliament.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Drummond for his question.
I am not yet sure if his pass will hit my stick or my skates; it depends on how fast I can get to the puck.
My colleague asked an excellent question. I find it hard to understand the Liberals' stubbornness in refusing to discuss this. I am very proud that we were able to get the government to protect the 78 seats in Quebec. However, that is not the end of the discussion, or the end of the story.
I think we need to be open to this discussion, and I do not understand why the Liberal members from Quebec are not. They probably need to discuss it within their caucus. Why are they not showing more support for this motion so that we can discuss it in committee and determine next steps?
We protected 78 seats, and I think that this first step was absolutely necessary. However, this is not the end of this story or of this historic demand from Quebec.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time.
This really is quite incredible. There is one day in the entire life of Parliament set aside for debate about the state of our democracy, and in particular the rules of order that govern this place. Unfortunately, we see other parties that want to debate a different motion and therefore overwhelm the time set aside for this important debate on the health of Parliament and the health of our democracy.
In particular, the member for Winnipeg North, who seems to be the only person speaking most of the time in the government caucus, has already eaten 40 minutes of the day that would otherwise have been set aside for this conversation on the Standing Orders, the rules of Parliament, and the state of our democracy.
It is very clear why the Liberals do not want to have a debate about the state of our democracy and the rules that govern it. The sad truth is that ours is a Parliament in decline. This is evident to many of us and is shown in the objective metrics of the health of our democracy. Under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the use of time allocation and prorogation of Parliament provoked conniptions from Liberals and from the commentariat concerned that such measures were hurting democracy by curtailing debate and limiting the ability of other parties to hold the government accountable.
Today the Liberals, with the NPD's support, not only regularly use time allocation to limit debate but have normalized the routine use of programming motions that completely skip over whole stages of deliberation on bills, including blocking all committee study and preventing opportunities for amendment. These parties have gone from being apoplectic about any limiting of time at a particular stage of a bill, to passing motions to wholesale skip stages of consideration.
This Parliament has also spent substantial portions of the past few years suspended, and when it is sits, it is partially reduced to a Zoom call. Duly elected members of Parliament and their staff are barred from entering Parliament because of personal health choices, even while those same people mix unmasked and unvaccinated with staff and MPs at receptions only a block away.
Many of the same people who decried time allocation under Stephen Harper now defend the wholesale running over of the normal functioning of this institution on multiple fronts as allegedly necessary to prevent the so-called playing of partisan games and delay tactics, as if members of Parliament were obliged to do everything possible to pass government legislation quickly without serious review.
Today we have Motion No. 11, which is another attack on democracy. It allows the government to change the adjournment time at will without any notice and without a vote, which makes it extremely difficult, by design, for opposition politicians to do their jobs.
We are not just a Parliament in decline; we are a democracy in decline. To observe as much is not to say that we have ceased to be a democracy, but that our democracy is weakening and we need to act in response. The globally recognized authority on democracy measurement is called IDEA: the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. It is based in Stockholm.
IDEA recognizes that democracy is not an absolute: It is a measure of a country's performance across a series of metrics, such as representative government, impartial institutions and fundamental rights. According to IDEA, Canada's performance on key variables of checks on government and effective Parliament are in sharp decline. Our performance, in terms of checks on government, is at .68. That is lower than the United States and any nation in western Europe. Our score for effective Parliament has dropped precipitously from .73 in 2015 to .59 now. It is just barely above the world average.
It is not just Conservatives who say our Parliament is in decline. It is the world-leading experts responsible for measuring the health of parliaments and parliamentary democracies who say that we are a Parliament in decline.
Unfortunately, I do not have time to do a complete analysis of democratic decline in Canada, but I want to talk about what we should be talking about today, which is how the proper functioning of the Standing Orders provides tools for us to resist democratic decline. As the rules of the House of Commons, the Standing Orders have a particular role to play in trying to help preserve the vitality of our institutions.
The purpose of Parliament is to bring Canadians together who are chosen by and speak for the experience of different localities, to deliberate about the common good of the whole nation and pass laws in accordance with it. Within that, the role of the Standing Orders is to prescribe the form of that deliberation, such as who gets to speak, for how long and in what ways on what subjects. This balances the need to hear from a multiplicity of perspectives with a need to proceed with legislation in a reasonable amount of time.
The Standing Orders and traditions of this place are finely tuned to achieve that necessary balance. Ultimately, in a democracy the majority should have its way. The rules of the House exist, to some extent, to slow down the majority and to give other points of view the opportunity to be heard and to create space for the minority to try to persuade the majority.
Democracy is the idea that the majority should rule, but not that the majority is always right. Majorities can get vital issues wrong. In particular, since the dawn of democracy, thinkers have worried about how the stimulation of short-term passions in the majority can make for a kind of mob rule mentality and lead to bad decision-making. Even unanimous decisions stirred up around short-term impulses and passions can be deeply regretted afterward when the tyranny of the moment has passed.
The framers of modern democracies perceived these risks. They have noted that the world's first democracy killed the world's first known philosopher. Modern democracy has sought to improve on ancient mob rule by liberating the people from both the tyranny of elites and the tyranny of short-term thinking, and has thus sought to stimulate decision-making based on the considered judgment of the people over time.
The majority should rule, but should still be expected to hear contrary points of view and to sleep on decisions before finalizing them. Such requirements still do not provide a guarantee of right decision-making, but they do improve the chances.
Individuals and collectives make better decisions when they think about those decisions first. It is a key function of Parliament in general, and of the Standing Orders in particular, to create the time and space required for authentic, deliberative democracy and for the considered judgment of the people over time.
Those who have developed and refined Parliament as both an expression of, but also a check on, majoritarianism understood well that proportionate deliberation increases the chance that the majority will get both the big and the small questions right without unintended consequences.
The Standing Orders that we have are not perfect, but they are generally tuned to help strike this vital balance between majority rule and deliberation. A problem that is substantially driving the decline of our Parliament today is not so much the Standing Orders themselves, actually, but the casualness with which the rules contained therein are frequently abridged.
In principle, if rules are established and structures are as they should be, there is no need to abridge them, yet it is a veritable constant that we hear some delegate of the government rise in the House to propose that the House take some action notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House. Every time we accept this, we are choosing to act contrary to that long-standing wisdom and, as such, we should be very careful.
Unanimous consents, even on mundane procedural matters, involve the House derogating from established practice. I am certainly not against the limited use of this abridgement in such cases, but I still think we should acknowledge its risks.
What is much worse is what we see more and more of in this Parliament, which is the way that the House now frequently goes beyond rule abridgement by unanimous consent for procedural simplicity. We are now operating under a series of special rules, passed by a majority of the House over the objections of the minority, that have fundamentally changed our operating practices to limit opposition input and government accountability.
We have government programming motions, which I have already discussed. We have the routine efforts of members of the House to get the House to pronounce itself on substantive issues through unanimous consent, without notice, where members are asked to unanimously endorse something, oppose something, or even adopt a piece of legislation at all stages with no advance notice or debate.
The use of these unanimous consent motions does respond to a real problem: It is that members of Parliament do not, I think, have enough opportunity to put substantive proposals forward. I would support changes to our Standing Orders that expand the available opportunities for members to put forward substantive motions or private members' bills for debate.
I still suspect that even with those opportunities, we would see MPs stand up out of the blue and expect the entire House to pronounce itself on substantive matters without formal notice or debate, and we would still see government motions that try to abridge long-established Standing Orders.
Those who obsessively use unanimous consent motions are, perhaps unwittingly, seeking to abridge vital checks and balances and bring us back to democratic mob rule, where the tyranny of the moment, instead of the considered judgment of the people over time, is what rules. I oppose these efforts to roll the clock back to a purely majoritarian democracy instead of a functioning, deliberative democracy.
The use of unanimous consent motions also lends itself to significant gamesmanship: efforts to move such motions when particular members are out of the House, or to actively engage certain members in conversation so that they will not notice that a motion is being moved. It is a given, with committee assignments and other responsibilities, that all members are not able to be in the House all day.
This is why we have, for instance, bells before votes. Unanimous consent motions override the rights of members who are not present. The Standing Orders and the Speaker should work to preserve and protect the rights of members and the health of our deliberative democracy by constraining these kinds of Standing Order—
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- Jun/2/22 12:46:50 p.m.
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Order. The member for Drummond on a point of order.
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Madam Speaker, I have two quick points that I feel are valid.
I could have been handsome or intelligent. Unfortunately, I am neither. I am trying to see the link between the passionate speech by my colleague from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan and the Bloc Québécois's proposal to broaden the scope of Bill C-14 and study it at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. There may be a link, but I need some clarification.
Second, I do not mean to be critical of my colleague's passionate style, but I would very respectfully like to point out that he is speaking very quickly and that the interpreters are sometimes having a hard time following. It is very important for us to be able to properly hear his comments.
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- Jun/2/22 12:47:41 p.m.
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I thank the hon. member for his intervention and I agree that this is an important point. The hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan is speaking very quickly, which makes it difficult for the interpreters to do their job. This is not the first time this issue has been raised in the House, not only in relation to that member, but to many other members too.
If members could slow down a little, that would help the interpreters. Perhaps the interpreters have a copy of the member's speech. If not, I would encourage members to provide the interpreters with a copy of their speeches.
With respect to the content of the speech, I just want to remind members that it is very important that the debates in the House focus on the issue at hand. That being said, we must also recognize that some flexibility is allowed in speeches. I am sure the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan will ensure that his arguments relate directly to the motion before the House.
The hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan has one minute and 16 seconds, and I would just ask him to slow down a bit during the rest of his speech.
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Madam Speaker, the Bloc members point out we are into a debate on a different motion than what was scheduled for today, which was the one day when we were supposed to be talking about the rules of the House and the impact on our democracy. I will endeavour to make the link.
The Standing Orders and the Speaker, I believe, should work to preserve and protect the rights of members and the health of our democracy by constraining these practices of Standing Order abridgment. Requests for unanimous consent motions should not be entertained outside of certain very narrow circumstances, and those circumstances should involve a required consultation with all elected members, not just three or four.
The Standing Orders should constrain the use of programming motions, such as through prohibiting the use of time allocation or closure on a programming motion. The deadly combination of a programming motion and closure is allowing the government to pass a bill at all stages in an afternoon.
By constraining their own abridgment, the Standing Orders could reduce these abuses that are weakening our Parliament and roll us back toward unconsidered mob rule. I have no desire to see our Parliament reduced to a body that ritualistically gives perfunctory approval to bills that ministers assure us are very good, while endorsing unconsidered motions simply because they sound nice at first hearing.
Our parliamentary democracy, providing the mechanisms for the people's representatives to genuinely debate about important ideas over a reasonable period of time, is worth defending and preserving, and that is the issue we need to be discussing today.
However, we have Liberal members, and one in particular, who want to talk for a great deal of time on a different Bloc motion: a motion that we are formally debating right now, but we could be debating at any time. They want to discuss it at great length to avoid this vital conversation about the health of our democracy, and that is shameful.
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- Jun/2/22 12:50:31 p.m.
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Again, I will remind the member that he needs to slow down a bit when he is speaking. I know he is very passionate, as was mentioned, but it is very difficult for the interpreters to follow. It is important that all the members within the House are able to understand the speech that is being delivered.
Questions and comments, the hon. parliamentary secretary.
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Madam Speaker, I guess it is in true form that Conservatives and the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan would somehow blame the government for the motion that we are debating today.
Nonetheless, during his speech, I heard him speak at length about the freedoms of democracy, and he mentioned that democracy is in decline in Canada. I would refer him to an organization called Freedom House. Freedom House has been around for 80 years now. It was developed toward the latter half of World War II.
It is an organization that enjoys bipartisan support in the United States and it rates freedoms throughout the world, specifically political and civil freedoms. Of the 210 countries that it rates, Canada comes in fifth. Canada gets a score of 40 out of 40 for political rights and 58 out of 60 for civil liberties.
How is it possible that the member is able to suggest that the freedoms in Canada and the democracy that relies on those freedoms is somehow in jeopardy, given that this organization—
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- Jun/2/22 12:52:17 p.m.
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I do have to allow for other questions. I find with the questions, there is a lot of preamble. I would ask members to shorten their preamble, and get straight to the questions and comments as quickly as possible.
The hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member did not listen or he did not want to listen. IDEA, the organization I referred to that ranks global democracies across a series of metrics, draws on various metrics, and Freedom House is part of the input data that IDEA uses.
IDEA ranks democratic performance across a range of metrics including civil liberties, checks on government, pluralism and other metrics. What I said is specifically on the metric of checks on government. I did not talk about civil liberties. There are issues there but I did not talk about them. On the issue of checks on government, our objective ranking is declining.
The member's question completely ignored my comment on how checks on government and metrics on effective Parliament are in decline. On checks on government and effective Parliament, we have dropped massively in international ranking since 2015. That is a different metric from civil liberties. It is an extremely important metric and the member should be aware of the difference.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, but I would very much like him to bring the discussion back to Bill C-14 and Quebec representation.
Where exactly does my colleague stand when it comes to the Charlottetown accord, which guaranteed Quebec 25% of the seats in the House of Commons?
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Madam Speaker, with respect to these issues of representation, the Conservatives supported the bill saying that no province's number of seats should drop, and I think I have been clear about that. I also think the principle of representation by population is an important principle in our democracy. We need to recognize that Quebec's identity is important, Alberta's identity is important and British Columbia's identity is important, and that every person in this country needs their voice to be heard in the House. That is my view.
However, if Parliament is not functioning properly and is not the mechanism through which individual MPs can actually be heard, check the power of government and debate legislation, the Standing Orders are not working properly. If Parliament is not working properly, then it barely matters who is here, because Parliament is prevented from doing its job. Even prior to the issues the member is raising is the question of whether Parliament is able to be that deliberative assembly of one nation. That is what I think is really important.
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Madam Speaker, the member makes reference to unanimous consent motions, and for the most part I agree with what he is saying. However, does he believe that the Speaker has some authority to use discretion, as we have been witnessing over the last little while, to clamp down on UC motions? There should be an expectation of discussions and approvals prior to a member's standing up and introducing one. What are the member's thoughts on that?
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Madam Speaker, I have no choice but to find myself in violent agreement with the member that there should be proper consultations. I would just emphasize that those consultations should be with members of the House, not just with House leaders of recognized parties.
When there is a unanimous consent motion, the idea is that the House as a whole is expressing itself. There needs to be a mechanism for all members of the House to be properly and officially informed prior, just as we have with bells and the normal notice procedure. That is extremely important for protecting the rights not just of parties, but of all members.
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Madam Speaker, as always, it is an honour to stand in this place and talk about the issues that are pressing to our nation. Certainly, I find it interesting that today a mechanism is being used for a motion the Bloc has brought forward to share some of the priorities of Bloc members. They have highlighted and shared what has come from their constituents.
Over the course of the next nine and a half minutes or so, I hope to discuss some of the substance of the motion and the overall realities that this place faces, in what I hope will be a productive conversation surrounding the importance of the institution that is Parliament and some of the rules and procedures that are associated with it. As will be no surprise to members who have had a chance to listen to some of my interventions in the past, I have a great deal of concern, because we are seeing what I would suggest is a decline in democracy in our nation.
I will highlight as well, when it comes to the motion, that there are questions and concerns surrounding representation for certain provinces with distinct cultures. Coming from Alberta, I know what it is like to be under-represented in this place in terms of the number of seats. It is, I believe, meant to be representation by population in Canada's lower house of our bicameral legislature. We also have a severe under-representation in our upper house. In our conversation around ensuring that our democratic infrastructure is responsive to the realities of our future, that needs to be part of the conversation.
Over the course of COVID, a massive effect has taken place that has impacted Parliament. Especially in the 43rd Parliament, I never thought I would have to fight so hard as a newly elected member of Parliament to simply do my job. There are many aspects of doing that job that have a clear relationship with the Standing Orders and rules we have, which govern the conduct of this place.
Over the course of the last number of months since the election and over the last two Parliaments, there has been a very different look and feel to Parliament. Although this is necessitated by COVID, I note that Canada lagged far behind in terms of Parliament's ability to be reactive and responsive in ensuring that democracy was an essential service in the midst of what is a global pandemic. I hope we can learn the lessons, some of which have been learned, that ensure we can get the functioning of this place back to what I would call a standard of normalcy and ensure there is clear representation. I will touch on Motion No. 11 in a moment, but I will note that over the course of the pandemic, we have seen that accountability can hide behind a computer screen. I know the House leader of the official opposition has brought forward what is an eminently reasonable series of proposals to get the functioning of this place back to normal.
I would like to highlight Motion No. 11. There are some very concerning aspects to it. As I said when discussing Motion No. 11, I can only imagine that had a Conservative prime minister, such as former prime minister Stephen Harper, even contemplated bringing forward something like Motion No. 11, there would have been an outcry by politicos and politicians from different political parties. The government eliminated quorum calls and preprogrammed the ability of a minister of the Crown to extend sittings, without consultation other than with a coalition partner, adding stress on resources. I have done a great deal of research into the matter, and I suggest that the consequences of Motion No. 11 may bring into question the constitutionality of the debate that is taking place.
As I referenced in a point of order earlier this year, the second edition of Parliamentary Privilege in Canada says, “the courts might be effective in ensuring the observance of procedural requirements imposed by the constitution with respect to the enactment of legislation.” Quorum in this place is a constitutional requirement. I would certainly like to hear from members of the government and their partners in the NDP whether they have acknowledged that there may be some constitutional implications to the debates that take place.
Furthermore, I call into question the confidence and supply motion. Through Motion No. 11 and other methods, the government has shown that it does not really want an opposition in this place; it simply wants an audience, whether that means the Conservatives, the Bloc or even the Greens. Although the Greens do not have official standing in this Parliament as a party, they have made their stand. However, the government's confidence and supply agreement, which clearly Canadians did not vote for, and the collaboration that can take place actually circumvent the role that Parliament is supposed to play.
I would also like to talk about the vaccine mandate that exists, which I suggest violates the privileges of members of the House. There is a larger conversation about the thousands of Canadians who have been fired due to the Liberal Prime Minister. What we just learned regarding 1,600 armed forces members, at a time when there is a huge shortage of personnel in our military, is that the government fired those individuals. That is unacceptable. Leadership needs to come from the top to adjust. Let us understand that imposing these sorts of things have consequences for our country. We need to ensure that the rules and procedures we follow respect the fact that we will have disagreements. We cannot weaponize things, as we have seen the Prime Minister do. We cannot weaponize something like a vaccine mandate to silence political opponents.
I will now touch on, as the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan did before me, unanimous consent motions. We have seen a troubling divide grow between the executive government and administration and Parliament. Unanimous consent motions are one of the ways in which we see that.
We have seen unanimous consent motions pass in this place that have not been followed and have allocated or said to allocate significant funds from the treasury without consequence. I suggest that when it comes to anything other than administrative procedures or dilatory motions, the current process works fine. However, when it comes to policy or political matters, there has to be an adjustment. There has to be a change to ensure that the spirit and use of these motions do not inhibit the ability of this place to function effectively and properly.
I suggest that when it comes to a path forward for UC motions, if they are not, as I mentioned, administrative, procedural or dilatory, consent needs to be provided for a member to even present a unanimous consent motion. That would be a practical solution. Consent should have to be obtained. However, as an idea for those who will contemplate these important decisions, I suggest that if the House leaders of every registered political party were to agree, it would be perfectly reasonable for a unanimous consent motion to go forward, showing that there had been fulsome consultations. If not, they would need consent to simply proceed from there.
In my last minute, I would like to touch on a couple of additional things. I will share that one has to ensure that the role of this place holds a parallel line with the administration managed by the executive of government. The only reason that government exists is Parliament. That is how it works in a parliamentary democracy.
I hope there has been a connection between the debate at hand and the Standing Orders debate to come, and I hope I have been able to effectively bring some items of relevance that will help in the debate in this place.
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Madam Speaker, as I indicated to the previous speaker, on the idea of unanimous consent motions, I concur with many of the member's thoughts.
Does the member concur, failing an agreement among the House leaders, that the Speaker does have the authority and control, based on what they observe, if a motion does not seem to have unanimous consent and there were no consultations, to rule it out three words into it?
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Madam Speaker, I would agree. That is why I would suggest that, other than administrative, procedural or dilatory items, consent needs to be acquired before even entering into a unanimous consent motion, and unless all four House leaders, in the case of this Parliament, were in agreement that a unanimous consent motion could go forward. Although, there are some unanimous consent motions, which I have seen before, that I would wholeheartedly agree with, but that the government did not appear to have followed through on, and so the question of confidence, I believe, can be brought into question.
Certainly, we have to take seriously the decisions that this place makes in terms of their implication on the public purse, in terms of their implication on policy, and ensure that we find the right process and procedure to respect the spirit of what UC motions are, and need to be, but also the debate that needs to take place on important items that we have put before us.
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