MPs want to limit the government’s power to use time allocation, and closed-door Commons committee meetings, and want to breathe new life into the rules of the game.
The House Affairs Committee will study the Standing Orders and report back to the House by May 18. A majority of MPs would have to approve every change in the Standing Orders, or House rules.
“This place is the single most important democratic institution in the country. Canadians have to have confidence that what happens here reflects their voices, their concerns. We’re here to represent them. That requires transparency and it requires accountability and if things happen behind closed doors Canadians absolutely no way of engaging in the politically process. That’s fundamentally wrong,” said NDP Whip Chris Charlton (Hamilton Mountain, Ont.) on Friday while debating possible changes to the House rules in order to strengthen Parliament.
According to the House Standing Orders, MPs must examine the Commons rules each time a new Parliament begins between the 60th and 90th sitting day. The House debated them last Friday.
“Several areas need to be considered and come to mind from the broadest subjects such as the operation of committees and the conduct of Question Period and right down to dare I say it, the colourful Thursday Statement,” Liberal House Leader Marc Garneau (Westmount-Ville Marie, Que.) said during debate on Friday. “I ask myself sometimes, as I’m sure many Canadians do, why this place often seems to grind to a complete halt. Is it because of the rules, or is it brought about by an abuse of the rules? I don’t mean to sound cynical, but the hyper-partisan nature of this place in recent years makes me wonder sometimes what needs to be changed.”
Mr. Garneau said the Conservatives have stifled debate by using their majority to shut down motions and proposals both in the House and at committees.
“The Conservatives have decided to go this route because it undermines our democratic institution as a whole,” he said and noted that committees should only go in camera in specific incidents, such as for protecting national security, to hear a private briefing, when putting together a draft report and when speaking about wages and salaries.
Mr. Garneau also said that Question Period rules should be reviewed in terms of who gets to speak, the length of the questions, decorum, asking ministers to provide substantive answers and implementing a Prime Minister’s Question Period, similar to what’s done in Britain.
Conservative MP Tom Lukiwski (Regina-Lumsden-Lake Centre, Sask.) said Mr. Garneau’s comments were the “height of hypocrisy” because the Liberals do the most heckling in the House during QP.
A former MP who did not want to be named told The Hill Times last week that while some changes need to be made, the state of Canadian politics is not as negative as it’s portrayed.
“When the government’s in majority, it certainly looks like they get what they want, because they know how to use their majority. There are legitimate reasons that committees go in camera. It’s not an absolute. It needs to be an instrument that’s used responsibly,” the former MP said. “Exceptions shouldn’t drive kneejerk reactions.”
The former MP said that if anything, MPs need to be more empowered to fulfill their oversight responsibility. MPs currently spend too much time in their constituencies acting as the complaints department for everything and anything, and their ability to oversee the executive branch is impeded, the former MP said, pointing to when the Standing Orders were changed for the estimates process to be “deemed” adopted past a certain date whether they were scrutinized or not.
In terms of the two main areas the NDP focused on—the use of time allocation and committees going in-camera as routine practice—Ms. Charlton said there was a “democratic deficit” in the House which is why it’s important to establish criteria for when time allocation is allowed.
The government has been using time allocation or closure on almost every stage of every bill it’s debated in the House since the fall. Before the House recessed in December and since, the government used time allocation and closure 16 times on a number of bills to move them through the House. Some of the bills included Bill C-18, Ending Wheat Board Monopoly Bill; C-20, Increasing Seats in the House of Commons Bill; and C-13, the Budget Implementation Bill and Bill C-10, the Omnibus Crime Bill. Most recently, the government has used it on the Long-gun Registry Bill, C-19; the Copyright Modernization Bill, C-11; and Foreign Ownership of Financial Institutions Bill, S-5.
The government argued the bills were priorities and needed to be passed before a certain time or that they had already been debated in the previous Parliament and therefore limited debate on them to move them through the legislative process quicker.
The government also argued that the opposition was attempting to delay the bills by either filibustering or introducing motions to not proceed with debate.
The government members on committees have also unilaterally moved committees in camera in order to deal with routine motions such as inviting witnesses to testify before the committee.
“My question to them is always what do you have to hide? What are you afraid of? I think the prime minister is so worried about what his backbenchers might say that he would prefer to have everything happen behind closed doors and that’s wrong,” Ms. Charlton told The Hill Times.
Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro (Peterborough, Ont.), who put forward a motion last week five minutes into the legislative committee on Bill C-11 to go in camera to discuss witnesses, said that it’s the NDP who are playing games and being undemocratic.
“The NDP’s goal it seems is to try to obstruct and delay and get in the way of anything progressing in Parliament and it’s the government’s objective to make sure that we are getting things done for Canadian,” Mr. Del Mastro said. “I think what the NDP is doing is undemocratic. I think the NDP behaves very undemocratically. They act as though 100 per cent voted for them to obstruct Parliament and unfortunately, that’s not the mandate they were given and I think that ultimately Canadians need the government to stay focused on jobs and growth, they need us getting things done on their behalf and the government is determined to get real results for Canadians.”
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.) said, however, that while it’s up to each individual committee to decide how it handles its time, “it’s clear” the recent moves to go in camera aren’t “some sort of spontaneous decision of multiple committees without any coordination that suddenly they want to move more of their meetings in camera, or that every bill’s progress gets time allocation over and over again so it would be good to find a way to have those limited to protect the institution of Parliament.”
Ms. May said the rules need to be reviewed and potentially changed in order to have a check on powerful prime ministers with no self restraint.
“The health of democracy in really large ways has always depended on the prime minister … having self restraint, recognizing ‘I could prorogue Parliament to avoid a vote I’m going to lose but no one would do that because it would be wrong.’ When you have a Prime Minister who doesn’t care or respect the traditions and has no sense of self restraint in the exercise of power, then we have to as individual MPs figure out how to enforce some sort of checks and balances against a Prime Minister who behaves in unilateral and dictatorial ways.”
Other Standing Orders were discussed as well.
Ms. Charlton said the idea of modernizing the House is also important.
“We have a rule here where petitions have to be handwritten and hand-signed. There is no way, for example, that electronic petitions can be tabled in this House yet so many Canadians engage in the political process in online petitions,” Ms. Charlton told The Hill Times.
Another issue that will be addressed is allowing babies into the House, after NDP MP Sana Hassainia (Verchères-Les Patriotes, Que.) had to bring her three-month-old, Skander-Jack Kochlef, into the House for a vote when she couldn’t find her husband to take care of him.
According to a Standing Order, there are no “strangers” allowed in the House. A controversy erupted because Ms. Hassainia said she was asked to “remove the stranger” but House Speaker Andrew Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.) said there was a disruption because MPs were taking photos of the baby rather than settling down for the vote.
Bloc Québécois MP Maria Mourani (Ahuntsic, Que.) raised a point of privilege to clarify whether MPs are in fact allowed to bring babies in the House. Mr. Scheer made a ruling last Thursday saying that the issue was not a matter of privilege, but that he sympathizes with the situation because he’s a father of four children under seven.
“It is important to recall that in the case at hand several Members were flouting the rules by taking photographs in the Chamber, and it was this disturbance to which the Chair’s attention was drawn. So let me take this opportunity to suggest to Members that it would be of great assistance if Members advised the Chair privately, in advance where they can, of a particular difficulty they are facing. I believe this would help us to avoid the kinds of disturbances that were witnessed [Feb. 7], which in turn led to the events which have given rise to this ruling,” Mr. Scheer said.
He noted also that given the House’s and the Procedure and House Affairs Committee’s review of the Standing Orders, MPs could make the changes necessary to explicitly allow babies in the House if they were inclined to do so.
“The Chair would welcome the collective wisdom and guidance of the Standing Committee in this admittedly nebulous area,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ms. May said that while changing the Standing Orders won’t single handedly change the culture in Parliament, they’re an important first step. “We don’t have the votes to make it change. I think over time it will change because we’ll reach the breaking point. In order for it to change it will have to be a lot of Conservatives who also agree they’ve reached the breaking point,” she said.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Bea Vongdouangchanh
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