44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 2, 2022 10:00AM
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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Madam Speaker, why does the hon. member want to prevent this House from debating the Standing Orders on the one day per Parliament set aside for doing precisely that?
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Madam Speaker, this member speaks an awful lot in the House and I rarely enjoy what he has to say, but I have to say that the one time in every Parliament when we get a chance to speak on the Standing Orders is when that member is the most important. That is when that member speaks very intelligently and has an awful lot to say.
During his speech earlier, he had an awful lot of suggestions that I personally would love to have been hearing in a discussion on the Standing Orders. However, we are not there, because by watching how the Conservatives do it every day, the Bloc Québécois has figured out a way to delay the business of the House.
That member should take this up with the members of the Bloc.
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Madam Speaker, my friend called me the member for Halifax. There will be opportunities, when we are all back in the House, for the member for Halifax to maybe stroll across the aisle and have this question asked of him by the member from B.C.
This is a day where we need to be speaking about the Standing Orders, and we need to stop the delay tactics. The Bloc learned from the best, the best delay tactics party in Canada.
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- Jun/2/22 3:19:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my point of order relates to Standing Order 16 and Standing Order 18, and we will, at some point today, be discussing them. However, it grieved me to see a whole class of kids, probably grades three and four, from Oakville, Ontario, be subjected to the violations of those standing orders in a very raucous, rude, I suppose we would have to say on all sides, heckling and yelling back and forth.
I ask members to please, now that we are back in person in this place, consider the examples we set for school children who visit this place.
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- Jun/2/22 3:39:20 p.m.
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I wish to inform the House that because of the deferred recorded division, Government Orders will be extended by 11 minutes.
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- Jun/2/22 3:39:20 p.m.
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Pursuant to Standing Order 51(1), a motion that this House take note of the Standing Orders and the procedure of the House and its committees is now deemed to have been moved.
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- Jun/2/22 3:39:20 p.m.
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moved:
That this House take note of the Standing Orders and the procedure of the House and its committees.
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- Jun/2/22 4:19:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Beauport—Limoilou offered lots of suggestions for changes to the Standing Orders that could be codified in the House. I think we should not be too quick to change the rules of the House. It is very difficult to go back to a previous version that may have been better. Sometimes people try to change things without knowing for sure that it will make the work of the House easier.
I would like to ask my colleague what she thinks of making it so that any change to the Standing Orders must be done by unanimous consent of the members of Parliament, because these are the ground rules that all members and all parties will have to live with.
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- Jun/2/22 4:51:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague and I often compare notes regarding the Standing Orders. One area that the member did not touch on, which we looked at when we sat on the electoral reform committee, is work-life balance. If I remember correctly, she had suggested that perhaps we would sit three weeks in a row, then maybe have three weeks back in our riding, and then three weeks in a row here. Could the member elaborate a bit on the calendar? She did not mention that in her speech and I would like to give her an opportunity to do so.
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