SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 319 - May/28/24

May/28/24 10:13:35 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think we watched some of the events with absolute horror. No one in Canada can imagine that a cabinet minister, a House leader of all things, would walk into a legislature in this country, threaten the presiding officer and then concoct stories, alibis and fabrications to cover that up—

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Context: House Hansard - 319 - May/28/24

Mr. James Bezan (Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, CPC)

May/28/24 11:54:24 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I usually say I am honoured to be able to rise in this place and participate in debate, but I am discouraged and disappointed with the rhetoric and the deflection coming from members of the Liberal caucus, as well as from the NDP, their coalition cover-up partners, on this debate. We are dealing with a prima facie case of the violation of privilege in the House. I have been here for almost 20 years. I love this institution. I am incredibly honoured and still overwhelmed that the constituents of Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman have sent me here on seven different occasions. We see the government trying to deflect and protect the Speaker, who has now been found in a prima facie case of privilege on multiple occasions, and defend that behaviour. To me, that is disappointing to say the least. I am disgusted by it. I am such a parliamentary nerd. I read the House of Commons Procedure and Practice. We are on the third edition. I started off reading when it was O'Brien and Bosc, and now I am reading Bosc and Gagnon. I make sure that I read through the book at least once every session. At the beginning of every parliamentary sitting, in the fall, I reread chapter 20 in particular, but always chapter 3 as well because of committee operations and the work that we do. I am a vice-chair and I have to sit in committees. In chapter 3, which is on parliamentary privileges and immunity, the very first page says, “The rights accorded to the House and its Members to allow them to perform their parliamentary functions unimpeded are referred to as privileges or immunities.” The Deputy Speaker found in the case of the Speaker that he has violated members' privileges, a prima facie case that he violated our privileges. What did he violate? His impartiality. In chapter 7 titled, “The Speaker and Other Presiding Officers of the House”, under “Impartiality of the Chair”, on page 323, it states, “When in the Chair, the Speaker embodies the power and authority of the office, strengthened by rule and precedent. He or she must at all times show, and be seen to show, the impartiality required to sustain the trust and goodwill of the House.” That is why the Speaker is now in trouble, because he has not been able to maintain that impartiality. In fact, we have seen, on multiple occasions, we are talking six or seven times now, that the Speaker has been called out, caught and charged for not acting impartial. When it comes down to it, the Speaker is the guardian of the rights and privileges of all of us as members of the House of Commons, so that we can enjoy our free speech and other privileges that we have. On page 317, it says, “It is the responsibility of the Speaker to act as the guardian of the rights and privileges of Members and of the House as an institution.” It goes on to say the following: Freedom of speech may be the most important of the privileges accorded to Members of Parliament; it has been described as...a fundamental right without which they would be hampered in the performance of their duties. It permits them to speak in the House without inhibition, to refer to any matter or express any opinion as they see fit, to say what they feel needs to be said in the furtherance of the national interest and the aspirations of their constituents. When we talk about impartiality and when we talk about preserving our freedom of speech, we have the case we are dealing with right now. The Speaker held a fundraiser. It is not that he held a fundraiser that was in error because all of us, as parliamentarians, have to raise money to be able to fight elections. The Speaker has that right. The previous Speaker that the Liberals always refer to, the House leader of the Conservative Party, had that right as well. However, what was wrong in this case is that the Speaker's electoral district association advertised this as a meeting with the Speaker and used inflammatory, partisan language against the leader of the official opposition. It said that Conservatives would propose reckless policy, and would risk our health, safety and pocketbooks. That is where the prima facie case of privilege was violated, because they used inflammatory language. Again, that undermines the Speaker in his ability to maintain impartiality. We know also that he, in the issue of freedom of speech, not that long ago, threw out, first, the member for Lethbridge, who used unparliamentary language but withdrew that comment. It was in the blues. They may want to talk about it but it was in the blues and then it was edited out. We still need to get that ruling on who made that edit. The second thing is that, following that, he then threw out the leader of the official opposition, the leader of the Conservative Party, the member of Parliament for Carleton, because of inflammatory language, but did not apply that fairly, because even though the word “wacko” was used to describe the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister also, before that, had used inflammatory language, calling the leader “spineless”. There was no action, no withdrawal, no apology sought, no ejection from the chamber by the Speaker, again undermining and proving that our Speaker is not impartial. On those occasions, we talk about freedom of speech but we also have to talk about the maintenance of being non-partisan, of being impartial. It says, again, in chapter 7, under the roles of the Speaker, on page 324, that “in order to protect the impartiality of the office, the Speaker abstains from all partisan political activity”. This includes not going to caucus meetings, never mind attending Liberal fundraisers. The first time the Speaker got caught, he attended a fundraising dinner for a neighbouring Liberal. That is not allowed. He can attend his own, but he is not allowed to attend other Liberal fundraisers. He then, by video, addressed, in his robes, in full Speaker garb, the Ontario Liberal Party leadership convention. I filed a complaint with the procedure and House affairs committee, of misuse of government resources, of House resources, to further partisan activities, of which the Speaker was found guilty, and ordered to pay a fine. Again, here we go. He is supposed to be impartial. He was not. We also know that the Speaker went down to Washington on the taxpayer dime and gave a speech about being a young Liberal down in D.C.. The Speaker continues to do partisan activities, behaves from a partisan position when occupying the Chair, and undermines the individual rights, freedoms and immunities that all of us are supposed to enjoy. Instead of being the guardian of our rights, he has ejected Conservative members. He has given a pass to the Prime Minister. His overall, and I do not know what the appropriate term here would be, as I do not want to be unparliamentary, ongoing loyalty to the Liberal Party and not to this chamber is what has caused the situation we find ourselves in. Any other members in this House, from the Liberals or their coalition cover-up partners in the NDP, who stand here and say that this Speaker is impartial are sadly mistaken. I am so disappointed in the NDP. It has always stood on the grounds that they protect this institution. It is actually helping to undermine our democratic principles, the respect and honour that this chamber is supposed to hold, by continuing to support the Liberals in their ongoing reckless spending, as well as protect the Speaker, who is not up to the job. The House is seized with a question. The government has moved the motion to limit debate. The House, under the rules, is supposed to be seized with a question of privilege and rise here and discuss this and debate it and try to convince one another that we are right or wrong. It is unfortunate that the NDP and the Liberals are working together to protect the Speaker and his unparliamentary behaviour. I beg the Speaker: will he do the right thing and resign?

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Context: House Hansard - 319 - May/28/24

Hon. Michelle Rempel Garner (Calgary Nose Hill, CPC)

May/28/24 6:19:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this place, the House of Commons, is the seat, arguably, of democracy in Canada, one of the most important seats and, arguably, it is also the only thing that prevents Canadians from settling their disagreements through violent conflict. Our tradition in here of solving our problems through discourse is what makes Canada Canada. What makes this place this place is the Speaker's role. It is the Speaker's charge under our Standing Orders and under our traditions to maintain impartiality. That has not happened. I want to try to implore some of my colleagues from other political parties to think about why the Speaker needs to go, in concrete terms, with regard to each of the Speaker's three roles. However, before I do that, I want to briefly comment on the deputy leader of the opposition's point that was made about trust. The current occupant of the Speaker's chair had a big trust deficit to overcome with the House, because, historically, Parliament has never had someone who had a government appointment take on the role of Speaker in that same Parliament. Not only did he have a minor government appointment; he had the most partisan appointment of all: parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister. That is like the Prime Minister's defence guy on any topic. So, there was a trust deficit to overcome. What happened, now that we are on the third incident, the third case of privilege where the Speaker has demonstrated partisan behaviour, is that it is very clear that impartiality has been breached. Now it is not just about this place; it is about Canadians' faith in this place being able to fairly and neutrally function as a place where their voices can be heard, because if the Speaker is being partisan for the Liberal Party, then the 120,000 people I represent do not have fair hearing in this House automatically. We can respect each other as partisan for our ability to be partisan, but I implore the Speaker to resign on his own accord, because his legacy is now having breached that impartiality, to the point where any decision he makes, any ruling he makes, is going to be viewed through that lens, and that degrades Canadian democracy. So, when we are talking about wasting House time, the Speaker should have resigned already. That is the right thing to do. That is what he should have done. Now, how does this impact his three roles? First of all, “the Speaker presides over debate in the House and is responsible for enforcing and interpreting all rules...of the House.” Already, the Speaker, outside of the three instances, has had to recuse himself on questions regarding the government withholding information in Order Paper questions or misleading the House. Why? It is because they were Order Paper questions he signed off on in his role as parliamentary secretary, which is problematic in and of itself. Then, with this partisanship, not just allegations, but a clear case of privilege being found, which is why we are debating this right now, when he makes the decision to remove someone, it is going to be debated through a partisan lens automatically because of this partisan finding, and he has already lost the confidence of a significant number in the House. Many opinion columns have been written, and rightly so, asking how the Speaker can continue on in his role when two of the major political parties say that he has lost confidence. This is not something that is par for the course. This does not happen every Parliament. This is the first time it has happened. It is a remarkable decline in Parliament, and he is presiding over it. If we are going to talk about people wasting the time of the House, he should have resigned already of his own accord, which is the honourable thing that he should have done. So, he cannot do his first role as he cannot neutrally preside over the proceedings of this place. His second duty is as the chief administrative officer of the House. I did raise this issue in committee, in PROC, today. I also raised this with the House leader of the NDP in debate today, respectfully, but he did not answer the question, which is this: Honestly, how, given these partisan allegations, can the Speaker be the presiding officer over the House of Commons' harassment policy? How is that possible? Let us put everything aside for a minute. This is really serious. If we look through the transcript of the day in May 2016 when the Prime Minister elbowed former NDP MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau in the chest, I draw the attention of the House to the comments of the member for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, as well as the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke. The member for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski said, “if we apply a gendered lens, it is very important that we recognize that young women in this place need to feel safe to come here, to work here”. She gave a whole detailed account of what happened. The Speaker jumped up, right after the member for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski spoke these words, and said, “if one wants to exaggerate the situation and to make this into something that it was not, or make it reminiscent of a dive in the 2006 World Cup, perhaps we can go on.” He said, “I think [it] might have been exaggerated”. He was not only denigrating Ruth Ellen Brosseau, but he was also denigrating the account of harassment from the member for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski. Then he goes on to say, “What happened was exactly as the Prime Minister had described it.” These two women had experienced it differently. Now, putting partisanship aside for a second, we are being asked in this place to suspend our disbelief that the Speaker can somehow magically go from that to being the neutral arbiter of the House of Commons harassment policy. He now has three strikes of partisanship against him. How do we or any staff member know that vexatious complaints are not going to be made? How do I know that I could go there and not have that leaked to the Liberal whip and have it go to the media? He has effectively put a chill on anybody wanting to talk about harassment in this place, and yet the NDP is propping him up. Why? Again, this boggles my mind. It is fundamentally wrong. The last thing is that the Speaker is “the representative or spokesperson for the House in its relations with authorities...outside Parliament.” Yet, the Speaker was in his robes, talking about being a young Liberal, in this capacity, in Washington, D.C. His international relation is now as a spokesperson for the Liberal Party. Come on. He just needs to resign. That would make everything easier. I have no idea what is going on in the NDP caucus right now. It boggles my mind. I have no idea how they are supporting him. It really boggles my mind. A supply and confidence agreement with the government should not include an agreement to cover up and support the partisan activities of the Speaker of the House of Commons. Then, the deputy House leader is saying that it was the Liberal Party, and the Speaker could not have possibly known about it. I would like to quote something that the leader of the Liberal Party, the CEO, the executive-in-chief of the Liberal Party said when allegations about former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and the whole SNC-Lavalin scandal came out. The first thing that the chief operating officer, the person in charge of the Liberal Party today, said was that the story in the Globe was “false”. How many times have we heard the Liberal Party, the commander-in-chief of the Liberal Party, say, “Oh no, it is false. That is not what happened.” I have respect for every person in this House. I would like to think I actually have a good relationship with many people in this House. Out of self-respect, how can somebody stand up here and ask this of the House? How are we supposed to believe that the Speaker did not know about this, and that we are just to take the Liberal Party's word, after nine years of hearing that the story in the Globe is false. This is just amateur hour. The Speaker should just resign. If he is watching this, he should resign. He should stop the debate and just resign. There are many other people in this House, not me, who could do this job in an impartial way. There are people who have stood up against their party from time to time, who have shown some independence in this place, who could do this job and respect the democratic traditions that this is based upon. Yet here we are, for the third time, debating this. When we are talking about a waste of time, it is not a waste of time to protect Canadian democracy, but the Speaker is sure wasting the House's time, and that is a shame.

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Presiding

Context: House Hansard - 319 - May/28/24

Mr. Pat Kelly (Calgary Rocky Ridge, CPC)

May/28/24 6:50:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this evening, participating in this debate gives me no joy whatsoever. However, it is always an honour, including at this moment, to speak in the House of Commons. The matter before us is the the motion of the member for Grande Prairie—Mackenzie, which notes: ...the Speaker's ongoing and repetitive partisan conduct outside of the Chamber is a betrayal of the traditions and expectations of his office and a breach of the trust required to discharge his duties and responsibilities, all of which this House judges to be a serious contempt and, therefore, declares that the office of Speaker shall be vacated.... I cannot believe this is the second time in six months that this chamber has had to come to a halt to debate and ultimately rule on the fitness of the Speaker to continue. The impartiality of the Speaker is fundamental to this institution. This House is where 338 members of Parliament, elected to represent the people of Canada, come to legislate the laws of Canada. This is where vigorous debate occurs on bills proposed most of the time by the government, but also by private members and those from the other place. This is where the most powerful people in Canada are held to account. The votes in this place determine the continuation of the government. This is where, on a day-to-day basis, the most powerful people in Canada come to face an opposition. It is where their ideas have to be tested. When bills are brought into this place, the process of debate is designed to be adversarial. It is designed to be partisan. If the government is going to propose a bill to change the laws of Canada and impose law on Canada, it has to be tested by an opposition. The only way the democratic privileges of Canadians can be protected is through an impartial Speaker whose impartiality is absolutely beyond reproach, yet here we are, for the second time in six months, debating whether that is the case with the current Speaker. I bring members to the latest issue and question of the impartiality of the Speaker, wherein the Speaker's Liberal electoral district association advertised a “Summer Evening with the [Speaker]” and talked about “fellow Liberals” joining with the Speaker to discuss issues. I will not repeat or read the portion of this invitation that had a very aggressive attack on the Leader of the Opposition and the Conservative Party. Anybody who read this invitation could see that this was an absolutely unpardonable departure from the norm of the Speaker's impartiality. As the member before me talked about, the impartiality of the Speaker has been well understood since the mid-17th century. This is not something new, and the entire system relies on this impartiality, so the invitation to this event alone is a departure from that. We have heard all day the speakers from the government say that this does not have anything to do with the Speaker at all and that this is from the Liberal Party. Really? There is a date on it. Are we left to believe that the Speaker did not know about this event that was advertised with his name on it on a particular date in his riding? Of course he had to have known about this. However, that may even be beside the point. Once a Speaker is elected, would not one of the very first things that any newly elected Speaker do be to sit down with the officials of the electoral district association for their party and tell them that they cannot advertise fundraising with the Speaker's name? They cannot do that. Everybody knows this. It is so simple. There is no excuse for it. The Liberal Party may want to claim responsibility for this to deflect from the Speaker, but no reasonable person would buy that the date in question had not been communicated to the Speaker. Is the EDA really going to have a fundraiser and put the Speaker's name on it to advertise it without checking to see if he is going to be available to attend? Of course they must have done that. The fact that this happened is why we are here today, but even if we could say this was a mistake, a one-off, by somebody who did not know better, the problem is that the Speaker has had a history of these types of events and no longer gets the benefit of the doubt. He does not get the benefit of the doubt when the House has already gone through a protracted question of privilege over his filming of a video in his Speaker's robes in the Speaker's office, which was played at a Liberal Party convention. He does not get the benefit of the doubt when this has already happened. When the debate on that earlier question was under way, the Speaker was in Washington attending another event, where he waxed nostalgic about his history of Liberal activism in a celebrity crowd of international Liberals. I want to set that aside for a minute and ask what the Speaker was doing in Washington that week. That was a sitting week of the House of Commons. To the Speaker of the House of Commons, no other business is more important than a meeting of the House of Commons. Presiding over question period, presiding over important votes and presiding over the procedural issues that come up in Routine Proceedings each day are core responsibilities of the Speaker. There is no excuse for the Speaker to not be in the chair for these moments, other than incapacity and illness. If a Speaker is well enough to get out of bed and go out for the day, they are well enough to be in the chair when the House is sitting. We have seen this over and over again. We have seen travel. We have seen the Speaker vacating the chair, probably, I am told, for diplomatic functions or meetings in the lounge. There is no excuse for these things. The Speaker ran on a platform to be Speaker, saying that nobody pays to see the ref; it is all about the players. However, under this Speaker, it has been about the Speaker, and that is just as offensive as the constant partisanship. We have other examples of his partisanship. He attended an event for the Liberal member of the National Assembly in his riding. He got a former Liberal MP to write an op-ed to prop up his own standing and attack the Conservatives. Again, it is partisan attacks. The Speaker's job is not to care what the press gallery thinks or what the school kids in the gallery think or what anybody out there thinks of their conduct. The Speaker's role is to protect the privileges of members of the House of Commons. It is about protecting members. It is about ensuring that all of the people who elected the 338 members of the House of Commons have the tools and ability to hold the government to account and express their democratic will. That is the role of the Speaker, not hanging out with diplomats, not flying off to Washington and not any of the other things. Despite the Speaker's role of protecting members' privileges, we are still waiting for a ruling. Four weeks ago, a question of privilege was raised over the alteration of Hansard, and the Speaker still has not ruled on it. It is about time that we had a Speaker that will uphold the privileges of members of the House of Commons in an impartial fashion.

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