SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 330 - Jun/12/24

Jun/12/24 3:46:29 p.m.
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I wish to inform the House that because of the deferred recorded divisions, Government Orders will be extended by 24 minutes.

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Context: House Hansard - 330 - Jun/12/24

Mr. Chris Bittle (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, Lib.)

Jun/12/24 4:26:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if the government's responses to Questions Nos. 2584 to 2589, 2591 to 2595 and 2598 could be made orders for return, these returns would be tabled immediately in an electronic format.

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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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Context: House Hansard - 330 - Jun/12/24

Mr. Alistair MacGregor (Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, NDP)

Jun/12/24 5:50:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be rising in the House today to share a few remarks on Motion No. 109, put forward by my colleague from Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston. This motion specifically looks at the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. For constituents in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford who might be watching this debate, I realize that whenever we talk about the Standing Orders, to people outside of this place it is a bit of inside baseball. However, the Standing Orders are extremely important, not only to the members who serve in this House but also to our constituents, because they are essentially the bylaws by which we operate. They spell out the procedure and practice of this place and set up the rules for debate, how voting can occur, how motions can be presented, and so on and so forth. They are extremely important, because while many Canadians may not be intimately aware of them or familiar with them, they are very important to allow me, as a member, and all of my colleagues to do our jobs in this place. Those rules are important because, in order to do our job properly, we need those rules. I have to be able to effectively represent the constituents of my riding, as every member does. The Standing Orders are important, and probably even more so for opposition members. When I was first elected to the House of Commons in 2015, my first four years in this place were in opposition to a majority government. The incredible amount of power that a majority government wields is quite awesome to behold because, of course, it has the votes to win on every motion and every bill. As the opposition, when we are faced with a majority government, knowing it has the votes necessary to prevail in every instance, the only thing we have left is the rules of the House, the Standing Orders. Majority governments have to walk a fine line. They cannot just barge their way through everything, because the opposition can use the Standing Orders of the House to create a real logjam. For every action, there can be an equal and opposite reaction. I recall that frequently, during those first four years of my time in the House of Commons, when the Liberal majority government behaved too much like a bully, there would be a reaction where we could tie up the House of Commons in procedural shenanigans. That is one of the options that an opposition can use to make its displeasure felt. One of the biggest instances of that would be back in 2017, which, of course, was the famous filibuster at the procedure and House affairs committee. At that time, the government was trying to unilaterally change the Standing Orders. We have often tried to change them based on a consensus model, but the changes that the Liberals were proposing to the Standing Orders at the time would have, effectively, neutered the opposition's powers to hold the government to account in this place. Of course, it was a non-starter for all of the opposition parties. One of the ways in which we protested against these proposed changes to the Standing Orders was to use the Standing Orders to launch our protest. I remember that, at that time, the procedure and House affairs committee went through a filibuster that lasted, I think, over 50 hours. There were frequent times in the House of Commons when the legislative agenda of the day was interrupted through dilatory motions and vote calls. It was all in an effort to make the opposition's displeasure known to the government. The Liberals did eventually back down, so the Standing Orders are quite important. I will now get to Motion No. 109 and what is being proposed by the member for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston. Essentially, several changes are being proposed in this motion, but it is really about improving the way the House can amend the Standing Orders by making it harder for the majority of the House to impose its will on the minority. It comes down to the model where a consensus is important. I am proud to support this motion. This is a very legitimate and proper motion being proposed on the Standing Order changes. We fundamentally believe that no one party should be doing this without the consent of the opposition. Let us go through some of the details here. One of the first parts is that the government cannot use a provision that gives a minister the right to move a motion for which unanimous consent was denied. The government would not be able to use closure. A previous question could not be moved in order to prevent the tabling of amendments. The motion would also increase the amount of time in debate for concurrence of a committee report that contains changes to the Standing Orders. The motion would change how the House deals with private members' motions and opposition motions that propose amendments to the Standing Orders. Instead of the House voting on the motion, the vote would be on referral of the matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, otherwise known as PROC, which would then have 75 sitting days to report on the matter. Motion No. 109 itself is going to be referred to PROC to study these changes and report to the House on the matter within that time frame. Again, all in all, this is a very reasonable proposal. For all the reasons I outlined, it is something that I am going to support. I realize that, for anyone listening to this debate, this is very much inside baseball. However, I can assure people outside the House of Commons that these kinds of changes are extremely important. They allow us to do our job, and I think that this is an important injection of fairness into how we amend the future.

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