The motion, introduced in the House today, would change the rules to extend the same rules to Question Period regarding irrelevant or repetitive comments that are in place for all other debates in the House of Commons. Currently the rules allow the speaker to determine if a question is irrelevant to Parliamentary business, but he can’t play a role to determine if an answer is irrelevant or repetitive.
The motion arose after an uproar last week which resulted in Conservative MP Paul Calandra delivering a tearful apology for giving an irrelevant, non-answer to a question in the House about the length of Canada’s planned military deployment in Iraq.
The exchange between Calandra and NDP Leader Tom Mulcair saw a frustrated Mulcair accuse Speaker Andrew Scheer of not being impartial for allowing Calandra to go on three times about a profanity-laced anti-Israel Facebook rant from an NDP fundraiser instead of responding to the question about the military in Iraq. Scheer then cut off Mulcair from asking further questions, and the next day, delivered a speech in which he said his hands were tied to rule on answers in question period and if MPs wanted that to change they had to change it.
So the NDP stepped forward with today’s motion which the government plans to use its majority to defeat.
Government House Leader Peter Van Loan said the motion is one-sided and would prevent the government from even mentioning opposition party policies in an answer.
"It would be a one-sided free event to punch the government with its hands tied behind its back," said Van Loan.
Van Loan also said the Speaker would find it difficult to rule on relevancy and it would result in endless points of order and debate over whether an answer was relevant or not.
"This place will grind to a halt," said Van Loan.
He accused the NDP of changing the rules for the government but not for the opposition.
"The Leader of the Opposition wants to make question period a one-way street," said Van Loan.
The NDP immediately countered by pointing out there are already rules in place that require questions to be relevant to Parliamentary business. Scheer has ruled questions out of order, including from Mulcair earlier this year when he asked about the Senate spending scandal.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said she was shocked at Van Loan’s response. She said question period is intended to hold the government – via the prime minister and cabinet ministers – to account.
Original Article
Source: winnipegfreepress.com/
Author: By: Mia Rabson
No comments:
Post a Comment