SoVote

Jun/2/23 10:45:03 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would welcome the members who have returned. The programming motion did not mention an exclusion of subamendments. I, as a member of Parliament, believe that it is consistent with my privileges to be able to propose some amendments at the committee stage. The right to move subamendments flows from what is referenced in Standing Order 116, namely that “the Standing Orders shall apply so far as may be applicable”. That is Standing Order 116(1). This is the first violation of privilege. Standing Order 116(1), which prescribes the right of members being applicable from the House in committee, was not applied in the process of the determinations made at committee, and the Chair made a ruling to not allow subamendments, which were not mentioned in the motion. Having read and reviewed the motion in detail, it makes no mention of whether subamendments could be moved. In another respect, we saw a violation of privilege in members' right to speak around the ability of members to raise points of order. Although the ability to raise points of order are distinct from points of debate, a member's ability to raise points of order, to identify violations of order that have occurred at committee, can be reasonably seen to flow from the provisions established in 116(2)(a). It says that the Chair may not limit the ability of members' right to speak and that violations of such right may be brought to the attention of the Speaker. This was also a matter that was violated. Further, we saw a violation of privilege in the rights of members to vote. The sacredness of the rights of members to vote is well established. Every time members have faced impediments in their ability to vote or have been blocked in their ability to vote, and we have seen various instances of this have been raised, including things that are on their face trivial, such as limits to transportation, that have obstructed the ability of members to get to the House, the House has ruled in favour of members in the importance of their privilege and of their right to vote. At committee, we saw it happen at approximately 3:15 p.m. on Tuesday during considerations of the budget bill. What we saw—

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Subamendments

Context: House Hansard - 205 - Jun/2/23

Mr. Garnett Genuis

Jun/2/23 10:56:48 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I just want to be able to finish this third point. It is the final point and I will wrap it up as quickly as I can. The issue is that I sent six distinct subamendments to the House of Commons drafting service and I asked that these be generated as report stage amendments, which was a request that I sent in as soon as I was able to, following the announcement of the change in the timeline. At that point, I expected to be able to receive that information back from our legislative staff at least by 6 p.m. so that I could put them on notice by the deadline, by 6 p.m., so that we could get the report stage amendments in and that at that point they would be on notice so that they could be moved. I did, in fact, send a letter to the Speaker making my argument. I did all the things that I could within the very tight timeline that I had. However, of those six subamendments that were submitted to the legislative staff, I only got one of them back. Therefore, my request for drafting was only honoured in one out of six cases. I want to be very clear that I am not criticizing the staff. The staff here work very hard; they do their best within very tight parameters but it is a question of how many staff were available and it is a question of the resourcing that was available. These raise questions of privilege for members who should be entitled to move those report stage amendments. I wanted to move those report stage amendments—

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Context: House Hansard - 205 - Jun/2/23

Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)

Jun/2/23 1:47:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will try not to be more than a few minutes, but I did want to contribute to the question of privilege that was raised by the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan. I took him to have raised three separate questions of privilege, and it may be that he wants to subdivide those a bit more. I do not know, but I am going to respond to what I think were the three major themes of his intervention. One had to do with his ability to move subamendments; another had to do with a vote that was taken on a particular clause that was at issue at committee; and the final one was about drafting for report stage amendments. With respect to his ability to move subamendments, I think it is important for the Speaker to know the following as this question of privilege is deliberated. The member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan did mention that the committee had adopted a programming motion by unanimous consent. It was very clear that there was to be no debate during the votes after 4:30 this past Monday. That means that no member was able to get the floor to move a subamendment, so I think it was pretty clear by the terms of the motion. It should not have been a surprise to the member that there would not have been the ability to move subamendments. I think that was foreseen by all members of the committee when they agreed to that programming motion. I would also say that there was, in fact, time to move subamendments, which I think is an important thing to consider with this question of privilege. The committee met last week for about 10 hours to consider clause by clause. During that time, Conservative members of the committee chose to filibuster on a motion they had presented, and that ate up all the time we had to discuss the amendments that had already been presented according to the deadline or to move subamendments to those amendments. That was a choice by members, and the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan substituted in on the committee to be part of that filibuster at one point. There had been warnings. I intervened at the committee to say that we were risking losing the time we had, not only to debate amendments, but also to move subamendments, so I would say, in this respect, the member's question of privilege is a bit like a member who tied themselves to a chair in their own home and then claimed they were physically obstructed from getting to the House of Commons. It may be true, but it is superficially true, and I do not think it is really a matter of concern for the House. I would note also, as the member did, that he submitted his amendments, to the extent he did, after the deadline. On the report stage amendments, he said that he was not aware that the bill would be called for debate today until it was announced in the Thursday question. However, I would say that members should know, and perhaps the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan does not know, in which case that would be tragic and he should be informed, members can contact drafters and ask to have amendments drafted well in advance of the bill being called for debate. All of us who were following the progress of that bill at committee knew that it had passed out of committee on Tuesday night. We knew that it had been reported to the House on Wednesday. There was nothing stopping that particular member from contacting drafters earlier in the process to ensure he had those amendments drafted and ready to go for when the bill was ultimately called. Of course, we knew that, with a bill being reported back to the House from committee on a Wednesday, the first day eligible for debate would be a Friday, so I respectfully submit that the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan knew, or ought to have known, that the bill could be called Friday and had ample opportunity to prepare his amendments. In respect of the missed vote on a clause at committee, there was certainly a lot of disorder in the room going on at that time. I think if we were to go check the video, we would find that the proximate cause of that disorder was the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan when he opened his microphone, took an electronic device and held it to the microphone. He was playing question period into the microphone. One of the reasons that caused so much disorder was, as we know and as we have been told many times, this causes harm to the interpreters. We are not to hold electronic devices playing sound of any kind to the microphone because it hurts people and it is a workplace safety and health issue for the interpreters. There was no reason for the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan to do that. He could have made his point in many other ways, ones that were not damaging to the people who support our work in the House of Commons. The chair asked him to stop. He would not stop, and disorder ensued. I will not belabour that point any further. All that is to say that this was part of what was going on, so there is a reasonable question as to whether the Chair ought to have tried to call a vote in the midst of that level of disorder. However, I would note, and I think it is important for the Speaker to know when deliberating on this question of privilege, that when the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan raised this as a question of privilege at the committee level, the committee agreed, by unanimous consent, to go back and redo the vote on that clause, ensuring that everyone knew we were voting on that particular clause and that they were paying attention during the vote to ensure that all those votes were cast. Those are things that I think are really important for the Speaker to note while deliberating on these points of order. I think the member is referring to certain things that if they had played out some other way might have been quite serious, but the committee was very willing to entertain the legitimate concerns the member raised. I think that is evidenced by our providing unanimous consent to go back to the vote and I think it is evidenced by the programming motion that is at issue in all of this having been agreed to by unanimous consent after being negotiated between Liberals and Conservatives and then being presented to the committee. I think those are all things that really ought to be taken into account, and I suspect they may be things that the member himself may want to contemplate for future instances.

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