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Member of Parliament

Pat Kelly

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • Conservative
  • Calgary Rocky Ridge
  • Alberta
  • Voting Attendance: 64%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $131,868.27

  • Government Page
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.
1294 words
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