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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 211

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 12, 2023 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 211 - Jun/12/23
Hon. Andrew Scheer
  • Jun/12/23 7:58:35 p.m.
  • Watch
Mr. Speaker, her main point is that this is a massive overhaul to the Standing Orders. The House of Commons has been operating pretty much the way it has been, in terms of members being physically present and how we conduct votes, through two world wars, the Great Depression, the turbulent sixties and seventies, and everything else, including a terrorist shooting here on the precinct itself. Our point is this: When we are making this level of changes and we are going to make them permanent, we have to do it by consensus. We would have agreed. We would have said that we have our reservations for hybrid participation in the House but that we would go along with it if we enacted a sunset clause, where we know that there would be time for the unintended consequences to be determined and that a future Parliament could say it would not renew them or it could amend them. We could have had that consensus. We were willing to set aside some of our reservations for the very points that some other colleagues have raised, as long as there were that safety valve of a sunset clause to make sure that something that has a negative impact on the way parliamentarians fulfill their duties does not get entrenched, making it so difficult to change back.
224 words
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