44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 12, 2023 10:00AM
- May/12/23 1:18:33 p.m.
- Watch
moved:
That:
(a) the House recognize that,
(i) it is a prerogative of the Crown to prorogue or dissolve Parliament at its pleasure,
(ii) the circumstances surrounding a prorogation of the House may bear on whether the government enjoys the confidence of the House,
(iii) the confidence convention is an important cornerstone of the Canadian political system,
(iv) the confidence convention has never been clearly codified and this has sometimes led to confusion among members and the general public as to the nature and significance of certain votes,
(v) governments have sometimes abused the confidence convention to reinforce party discipline or influence the outcome of a vote that is not explicitly a matter of confidence or that would not be considered a matter of confidence by convention;
(b) in the opinion of the House,
(i) the House itself, not the Prime Minister, should be the final authority as to whether the government of the day enjoys the confidence of the House,
(ii) when the House assembles following a general election, the government shall be called upon to demonstrate it enjoys the confidence of the House,
(iii) before a prorogation occurs, the House ought to have an opportunity to express its confidence in the government,
(iv) the means by which the House may pronounce itself on a question of confidence should be explicit, clear and predictable so that all members know well in advance when and how the confidence of the House will be tested,
(v) once the House has determined such means in its Standing Orders or in legislation, the government should not seek to circumvent the process established by the House by declaring a vote to be a matter of confidence if the rules of the House would not otherwise designate that vote as a matter of confidence, and any attempt to do so constitutes a contempt of Parliament,
(vi) a question of confidence is a serious matter and should not be used as a pretext for dilatory tactics by either side of the House;
(c) effective from the 20th sitting day after the adoption of this motion or at the beginning of the next Parliament, whichever comes first, the Standing Orders be amended as follows:
(i) by adding, after Standing Order 53.1, the following new standing order:
“53.2(1) The government must enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons. The House may express its confidence, or lack thereof, in the government by adopting a confidence motion in one of the following forms:
(a) “That the House has lost confidence in the government”;
(b) “That the House has confidence in the government”.
(2)(a) Notice of a confidence motion pursuant to section (1) of this standing order shall meet the requirements of Standing Order 54, provided that four sitting days shall be given prior to the motion being placed on the Order Paper. Such notice shall be signed by the sponsor and 20 other members representing more than one of the recognized parties.
(b) Notwithstanding Standing Order 18, the House may pronounce itself on the motions listed in section (1) of this standing order more than once.
(c) Only one confidence motion pursuant to section (1) of this standing order:
(i) may be placed on notice in each supply period;
(ii) shall be sponsored or signed by the same member of the House in a session of a Parliament.
(3) At the expiry of the notice period pursuant to section (2) of this standing order, an order of the day for the consideration of a confidence motion shall be placed on the Order Paper, be considered at the next sitting of the House and take precedence over all other business of the House, with the exception of a debate on a motion arising from a question of privilege.
(4) When the order of the day on a confidence motion is called, it must stand as the first order of the day. The confidence motion is deemed to have been moved and seconded and shall not be subject to any amendment.
(5) Private Members’ Business shall be suspended on a day any such motion is debated.
(6) No dilatory motion shall be received during debate on a confidence motion pursuant to section (1) of this standing order and the provisions of Standing Orders 62 and 63 shall be suspended.
(7) The proceedings on the order of the day on a confidence motion proposed thereto shall not exceed one sitting day.
(8) No member shall speak for more than 20 minutes at a time in the debate on a confidence motion. Following the speech of each member, a period not exceeding 10 minutes shall be made available, if required, to allow members to ask questions and comment briefly on matters relevant to the speech and to allow responses thereto. Any period of debate of 20 minutes may be divided in two pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 43(2).
(9) When no further member rises to speak, or at the ordinary hour of daily adjournment, whichever is earlier, the Speaker shall interrupt the proceedings and the question shall be put and forthwith disposed of, notwithstanding Standing Order 45.
(10) Any matter of confidence so designated beyond those provided for in Standing Orders 50(8), 53.2(1), 81(18)(e), and 84(6)(b) may be called to the attention of the Chair and the member may ask that the matter be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. As the case may be, the matter shall automatically be referred to the said committee.”,
(ii) by adding, after Standing Order 53.2, the following new standing order:
“53.3(1) Following an expression of intent by the Prime Minister to recommend prorogation to the Crown, a minister of the Crown may place a confidence motion on notice that does not count for the purposes of Standing Order 53.2(2)(c).
(2) This motion shall proceed pursuant to Standing Order 53.2, except that the notice period required by Standing Order 53.2(2)(a) shall be one sitting day, instead of four, and the notice need only be signed by a minister of the Crown.
(3) During an adjournment period, when a confidence motion is put on notice pursuant to paragraph 3(1) of this standing order, the Speaker shall recall the House to meet at an earlier time, and thereupon the House shall meet to transact its business as if it had been duly adjourned to that time, provided that at least 48 hours’ notice shall be given for any sitting held pursuant to this paragraph.
(4) In the event of a prorogation occurring prior to the question being put on a confidence motion, the House shall, as its first item of business of a new session, consider a confidence motion pursuant to Standing Order 53.2, which shall be deemed placed on the Order Paper for that purpose.
53.4 At the opening of every Parliament, immediately after the Speaker has reported on the attendance of the Commons to the Senate, a motion pursuant to Standing Order 53.2(1)(b) shall be deemed moved and seconded, and be otherwise governed pursuant to Standing Orders 53.2(6), (7), (8) and (9).
(iii) in Standing Order 45(6)(a), by adding, after the words “An exception to this rule is”, the following: “the division on a confidence motion pursuant to Standing Order 53.2(9) and”,
(iv) by adding, after Standing Order 50(7), the following:
“(8) If the main motion is defeated, the government has lost the confidence of the House.”,
(v) by adding, after Standing Order 67(1)(p), the following:
“(q) for the consideration of a confidence motion”,
(vi) in Standing Order 81(13), by adding the following:
“They cannot contain explicitly worded expressions of confidence in the government.”,
(vii) by adding, after Standing Order 81(18)(d), the following:
“(e) After having disposed of any opposed item, if the motion to concur in the main estimates is defeated, the government has lost the confidence of the House.”,
(viii) by renumbering Standing Order 84(6) as Standing Order 84(6)(a),
(ix) by adding, after Standing Order 84(6)(a), the following:
“(b) If the main motion is defeated, the government has lost the confidence of the House.”,
(x) in Standing Order 99(1), by adding, after “52(14),”, the following: “53.2(5),”; and
(d) the Clerk of the House be authorized to make any required editorial and consequential alterations to the Standing Orders, including to the marginal notes, as well as such changes to the Order Paper and Notice Paper, as may be required.
He said: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is one of the most powerful people in the country, and that is a function of the Prime Minister's Office, which includes a number of serious powers.
Foremost among those is the power to decide, at any time, that Parliament is done, that the work of Parliament is finished and that we are going to have an election. It is the power to decide that Parliament's work can be put on pause, and the important work that is happening at committee could be, not just put on pause, but stopped. It would have to start up again in another session of Parliament.
We have seen this power used appropriately over the course of Canadian history, and we have also seen it be abused. One of the most recent examples of the abuse of this power was in the summer of 2020, when the government was embroiled in the WE charity scandal, with many committees studying what had happened. They were calling for witnesses for, and papers and evidence about, what was going on in the government and how the scandal arose. The Prime Minister decided to say that Parliament was prorogued. All that work stopped. Members of Parliament were not able to come to this place or to work together to do the work that we are elected to do, which is to hold the government to account.
We saw that happen in the summer of 2020. It was a controversial decision to prorogue. I think many Canadians were rightly upset about that. I was part of an effort at the procedure and House affairs committee to get to the bottom of why it was the Prime Minister chose to prorogue. One of the real frustrations in that sitting was that the Prime Minister himself refused to come to that study. In fact, we watched Liberal members on that committee filibuster for months on end to avoid a simple invitation to the Prime Minister to come to explain his own actions.
That was certainly an example where we saw the power of prorogation abused. I would say, arguably, just the next year, in 2021, we saw the same Prime Minister abuse a similar power, which was to dissolve Parliament and declare our work finished, and then we went to the polls. We have fixed election date laws in Canada. Unfortunately, there is no way to punish prime ministers for ignoring those laws, as the Prime Minister did in the fall of 2021 when he called an election while we were still in the midst of a pandemic. In fact, the procedure and House affairs committee was in the process of looking at a government bill designed to make accommodations for the pandemic at election time.
Instead of respecting the work of that committee and the many voices across the country who were saying that Canada was not ready to have an election during a pandemic, the Prime Minister pulled the plug and held the election anyway. It was an election that no one but him wanted, and that was very clear. It was made very clear to all of us on the doorsteps over the course of that election. Nevertheless, it was the Prime Minister, through the power of his office, who was able to do that, without any meaningful accountability.
I want to go back to an example from much earlier, but folks would be relieved to hear it is in this century. I am not going all the way back to the 19th century. In 2008, former prime minister Harper effected the most egregious abuse of the power of prorogation when he knew that opposition parties were going to bring a non-confidence motion forward to say that the members of this place did not believe that he should govern. Instead of facing the House and facing that vote, which would have been the honourable thing to do, he chose to abuse the powers of the Prime Minister's Office and prorogued parliament, so opposition members could not bring a motion of non-confidence to the House.
Some hon. members: Shame.
Mr. Daniel Blaikie: It was indeed a shameful thing.
Mr. Speaker, up until now, there has been a lot of discussion about this, but I do not think there have been real proposals to try to do something about it. It is difficult to do something about it because, in our Constitution, dissolving or proroguing Parliament is said to be a power of the monarch, of the Queen, or now the King. Really, it is a power of the Prime Minister because it is only on the Prime Minister's advice that this is done. Because this is a power that is granted to the monarchy, we need a constitutional amendment to do anything about it, or so we have been told.
Let us consider all the important institutions that make up the very foundation of Canadian government. We could think about the monarch, the executive or the government, and we could think about the House of Commons, the judiciary and the Senate.
Actually, only one of those is directly elected by Canadians, and that is the House of Commons. The monarch certainly is not elected; we have all been bearing witness to that process recently. The Senate is not elected. Judges are not elected, and I do not think that is a bad thing; we need accountability in the process of their appointment, so they are not elected. The executive is not directly elected; it is actually the House of Commons that ultimately decides who sits in the Prime Minister's chair, or not, based on what happens at election time.
I think that the House of Commons, both as the democratically elected component of the Canadian government and as the institution with the job of holding the government to account, should be the one to decide whether the work here is paused in a prorogation. The House of Commons, as the democratically elected chamber, should be the one to decide if we are done before fixed election date laws say we would be done and to have an early election. No simple motion in the House of Commons can change the Constitution, which is as it should be. Therefore, within the constitutional context that we are in, this motion would allow us, the members of this place, to assert our rightful role in having a much bigger say on when our work begins, when it ends and whether it is stopped or paused by a prime minister. That is a decision that should be in the hands of Canadians.
If we want to talk about gatekeeping in Canada, one of the biggest gatekeeping powers that exists is the power of the Prime Minister to get out of accountability to Parliament. Anyone who is concerned about fighting inappropriate gatekeeping in Canada should be concerned to constrain that power by the Prime Minister.
That is what this motion is really about. It is about making it more difficult for prime ministers to prorogue Parliament to get out of facing accountability on a confidence vote. It is about making it more difficult for prime ministers to get out of accountability for scandals like the WE Charity scandal or the question of Afghan detainees by telling members of this Parliament to go back to their ridings and not come back until the Prime Minister decides he is okay with having them back. It is about ensuring that the Prime Minister does not get to inappropriately influence votes in this place by suddenly declaring something that has nothing to do with confidence and everything to do with covering his own behind or a special pet project in order to try to force members to vote for something that they would not otherwise vote for. That is what this motion is about, and that is why it is so important that this motion pass.
It is about time that the House of Commons started pushing back on those other unelected parts of the Canadian governance structure and assert its own authority and its own decision-making power, especially in regard to our ability to sit in this place and to hold governments to account.
How would it constrain the power of the Prime Minister? As I said, there is no perfect solution without a constitutional amendment. However, it would mean that a prime minister who wanted to prorogue would have the option of first having a confidence vote in the House of Commons before a prorogation. If the Prime Minister did not do that, it would guarantee that the first order of business when parliamentarians came back would not be the Prime Minister's Speech from the Throne, where they get to frame the issues however they like; it would be a debate and a vote of confidence in the government after it made a decision to prorogue.
I say that would have been especially important in the case of the Harper prorogation, because he prorogued in order to avoid a confidence vote. We know that the next way for opposition parties at that time to have a confidence vote would have been on an opposition day motion. Who decides when to have opposition day motions? The government decides when to have an opposition day motion. Therefore, that does not really work as an accountability mechanism. If the Prime Minister can prorogue for as long as they want and then delay an opposition day motion for just about as long as they like after we come back, then opposition parties do not have the ability to hold the government to account in the appropriate way.
What this motion would guarantee is that there would be a moment of accountability at the beginning of every Parliament, with a confidence vote. There would be a possibility of a prime minister doing the right thing and testing the confidence of the chamber before prorogation; if they do not, it would guarantee that the first order of business when we came back would be a confidence vote to have that accountability for the House of Commons. It makes it clear for members how they can go about initiating a confidence vote. It lays out a process for that. I will spare folks the details; they are in the motion.
Another thing it does, which is also quite important, is that it specifically says what votes would be votes of confidence. Traditionally, by convention, the Speech from the Throne is a vote of confidence. This motion would simply add that into the Standing Orders so that it would no longer be a question for which we have to call in a whole bunch of constitutional experts who have studied the history of Canada since 1867 to weigh in on it. We would know because it would be written in the Standing Orders that it is a vote of confidence. We would know that the budget vote is a vote of confidence because it would be written down in the Standing Orders.
We would know that the main vote on estimates is a confidence motion. That matters because there have been many times where we have voted all night on the estimates, on every line item, and it is always a debate. We see the media questioning if the government could fall on any vote. Some people say it could. Others say that it cannot; it is complicated; maybe it would; maybe it would not; maybe it would lose that vote and the next day it would have to come to the House for a more explicitly worded motion of confidence; or maybe the Prime Minister would decide.
We are a 21st-century democracy. How is it so unclear whether the only elected chamber, the only elected part of our Constitution, would sit or not sit, have confidence or not have confidence, have an election or not have an election? These are things we should be able to put our heads together on to sort out so it is crystal clear to Canadians, who should not have to get a Ph.D. in Canadian constitutional history to understand what the heck is going on in this place. It is something we should be able to teach in a grade 12 civics class and be proud of. The idea behind this motion is to make it a heck of a lot more clear so that we can do exactly that. To have a lack of clarity around these issues that are so central to the proper functioning of our democracy is to invite the kind of toxic debates and intractable disputes that we see too often now in western democracies about whether this was a power grab or if the government acted appropriately or not. The way to defend this is to seek the maximum amount of clarity before we are in a crisis.
Already this year, there has been speculation in the media about whether a motion in the House would be a confidence or non-confidence vote. The government House leader refused to comment, so it hung in the air. It should not be that way. We should know clearly whether something is or is not a vote of confidence.
There have been rumours around prorogation already in this Parliament. We should know that, if a prime minister is going to prorogue and we think it is a bad decision, the House of Commons itself will have the opportunity to pronounce on whether the government is making an acceptable decision or not. That is something the House ought to be able to do because we are the only ones who are elected with a mandate to make those kinds of decisions.
It is not the Prime Minister or anybody else. It is certainly not a King or Queen who has the ability to make that decision. It is not a decision for the Senate, where senators who have all been appointed by previous prime ministers to make that decision. This is the place that decision ought to be made. That is how we put democracy before gatekeeping. That is what this motion is about. That is why I encourage all members of the House to give their support to this motion.
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- May/12/23 1:32:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think Canadians would agree that politicians are often disappointing and find ways to abuse things that ought not to be abused, so I certainly would not make the claim that anything that comes out of this place is beyond abuse. One hopes that it has enough clarity and instruction behind it that folks would find it hard to abuse.
One of the ways I was concerned this new way of presenting a confidence motion might be abused is as a dilatory tactic, so one of the provisions in this motion is that, to move a motion of non-confidence or confidence, as the case may be, there are two ways to present those motions. One would need a mover and 20 other members from at least two recognized political parties to sign onto it. That is one way I have sought to ensure this new type of motion would not be used continuously as a dilatory tactic.
I can say more about that. If members read the motion in its entirety, they will find that there are some other guardrails in there as well because of that. In fact, what the Speaker read in the guiding principles is exactly that, that this should not be seen as a dilatory tactic or some other way to conduct funny business. What we want is for members of Parliament to have lots of notice when votes of confidence are coming, a full day of debate and a vote at the end of that day so that it is a clear process that is hopefully not open to abuse.
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- May/12/23 1:35:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the issue of confidence has been studied a number of times. It has been studied in the House and outside the House. The reasons why I chose not to refer it to the procedure and House affairs committee are twofold.
The first is out of respect for the work that it is doing currently on foreign interference and a number of important issues, and an issue of privilege, actually, after the last day, with respect to the member for Wellington—Halton Hills.
The other reason is that I think it is high time we just got this done. I do think there is enough time to examine the content of the motion. I think that this would be a significant improvement on the current state of affairs.
I want to make change and one cannot make change without doing something novel. I do not hide from the fact that there are novel ideas in here. I think they are good ideas and I welcome the debate that is to come.
I hope that members here will fall on the side of asserting the power of the House of Commons over these decisions and making a change to something that has been open to abuse now since Confederation and that it is high time we did something about.
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- May/12/23 1:37:42 p.m.
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I do believe that all too often, the government does not take the work that we do in the House of Commons and its committees seriously. That is why I think that we as members of Parliament must take measures to ask for that respect. This is about targeting the Prime Minister's important powers and saying the elected chamber should have more say in these decisions. We can get the federal government to take us much more seriously.
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