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House Hansard - 330

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 12, 2024 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 330 - Jun/12/24
Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Kingston and the Islands, Lib.)
  • Jun/12/24 5:45:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the previous speaker clearly has a selective memory. He must be forgetting the time that he, along with the NDP and the Green Party voted in favour of a motion to change the Standing Orders, on an opposition day nonetheless. That was to change the Standing Orders to allot each of those parties one more supply day in the supply period, so it is very interesting that my colleague is selectively choosing what he decides to remember about trying to change the Standing Orders in this House. I am glad to say that, like my colleague from Edmonton, we are going to vote in favour of this, because it is a really good proposal. There must be something in the Kingston water that encourages those from the area to present fair and reasonable solutions in this House, and that is what we are seeing here today. I want to congratulate my colleague from my neighbouring riding, the member for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, for introducing this motion because I think that it is really important that PROC look at this issue. There are things that are happening. We need to make changes to our Standing Orders, like the member for St. Albert—Edmonton mentioned before me, with respect to a hybrid Parliament. He went on to say that people are skipping work. I would disagree with that. I would say that people are not present for various reasons, including those who are on maternity leave, which I know has happened on all sides of the House. A hybrid Parliament gives an opportunity for members of Parliament to be reflective of the Canadian population, for it not to be a man's sport, as it was 50 years ago, but to be more inclusive and to encourage more people to be members of Parliament. What we are seeing here with this motion is that it is asking PROC to study the changes that can be made. I look forward to inviting experts to PROC, as I sit on the committee, to hear some of the best practices on how we could move forward in a way that tries to take some of the partisanship out of the procedures. I come from a place where I believe that the procedures we have set up in this House should require unanimous consent in order to to be changed. The reality is, what we have seen over the years, or at least what I have witnessed and clearly I have a bias because I am going to reflect more on what I see from across the aisle, is delay tactics and tactics that are used in order to change procedure and allow things to occur. Not allowing opposition parties to, at will on a supply day when they are presenting an opposition motion, change the Standing Orders, like the Conservatives did with the help of the NDP and the Green Party a number of years ago, I think better serves our democracy and the functioning of this place. I hope we can all be reflective of the fact that changes need to occur when we are talking about inclusivity, trying to be more diverse as a Parliament and looking for ways to encourage more people to get involved. Whether that is a hybrid Parliament, which the previous speaker spoke so negatively about, or different Standing Order changes that allow us to better reflect the times we are in now, there needs to be a proper process in place to get us from where we are to there, hopefully removing a lot of the partisanship out of it. I do not need to fill the full 10 minutes today on this, believe it or not. I know people hear enough from me, so I will leave it at that. I thank my colleague from the neighbouring riding of Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston for bringing this forward. I think what he has proposed is reasonable. He has given good timelines to PROC in order to look into this. If we do get to vote on this and see it pass by next week, by my math that puts us somewhere around February for changes to be reported back from PROC. I think we could better serve Canadians and indeed the way this House functions by supporting this motion, so I will certainly be voting in favour of it.
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