SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 196 - May/12/23

Ms. Christine Normandin (Saint-Jean, BQ)

May/12/23 1:57:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Motion No. 79, moved by my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona, whom I thank, by the way, for his excellent speech. Despite the fact that I still consider myself a young politician, perhaps less so in age than in years of experience, I feel that I have learned a lot about procedural matters during my three and a half years in office. I had the pleasure of participating in the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, particularly when it came time to set up a hybrid Parliament during the pandemic. Although I stopped sitting regularly on the committee after that, I followed its work from a distance. Among that work was the study on proroguing Parliament during the summer of 2020. This was the first time that the government was required to justify its use of prorogation after the fact. As I will explain, this did not solve the problem of partisan use of prorogation. Today's motion just happens to touch on the framework of prorogation, along with the definition of a vote of confidence. I want to quickly review these two aspects of the motion, which are in some ways intertwined. With respect to prorogation, the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs had the opportunity to read and analyze the “Report on the Government's Report to Parliament: August 2020 Prorogation—COVID-19 Pandemic” and produce its own report on that report. That report noted the various times in history when the government has used prorogation for what could be described as partisan purposes. I would like to take a moment to read part of that report. It is rather enlightening. [In 1873,] Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald requested and received a prorogation from Governor General Lord Dufferin when facing a loss of support in the House of Commons during a political scandal that would be dubbed the Pacific scandal. The Committee heard that the 1873 prorogation ended a committee inquiry into the matter but that the controversy over the scandal resumed during the subsequent parliamentary session. Sir John resigned a few weeks after Parliament resumed. [More recently, in 2002,] Prime Minister Jean Chrétien requested and received a prorogation from Governor General Adrienne Clarkson at a time when details were emerging of a political scandal that would be dubbed the sponsorship scandal. The prorogation prevented a report from the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts on the sponsorship scandal from being presented in the House. [One year later, in 2003,] Mr. Chrétien prorogued Parliament until February 2004. This delayed the tabling of the Auditor General’s report on the sponsorship scandal, which was due to be tabled that November, until after Mr. Chrétien left office. Prime Minister Stephen Harper requested and received a prorogation from Governor General Michaëlle Jean in December 2008. The prorogation occurred at a time when a global financial crisis had recently begun. However, the prorogation also enabled the government to postpone a non-confidence vote in the House that was being sought by the Liberal Party, the New Democratic Party, who had proposed a coalition, and the Bloc Québécois, who had agreed to support the coalition under a supply and confidence agreement. It was noted that the Governor General granted the request for prorogation but only after several hours of reflection. By the time the House resumed sitting in January 2009, the opposition coalition had collapsed. One witness referred to these circumstances as being driven by a breakdown in good governance within the Liberal caucus. [En 2010,] Prime Minister Harper requested and received a prorogation from Governor General Michaëlle Jean, from January 2010 to March 2010. The reason for the three-month duration of the prorogation was to allow Parliament to recess for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. However, the prorogation also postponed the examination by the House of Commons Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan into alleged mistreatment of Afghan detainees while in custody. The 2020 prorogation was no exception to the list of prorogations that were requested for partisan purposes. Although the government invoked the pandemic as a reason, in the eyes of several witnesses who appeared before the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, there was some doubt about that justification. The fact that the government was mired in the WE scandal, that the prorogation lasted for a long time, five weeks, and that the government's report was biased, led the committee to conclude that reforms around the prorogation of the House and votes of confidence needed to be clarified. Essentially, while the legislative change in 2017 was intended to make the use of prorogation more transparent after the fact, the goal was not met. In a way, the purpose of Motion No. 79 is to make the use of prorogation transparent upstream instead of downstream, after the fact, when it is too late. Essentially, Motion No. 79 would allow, prior to a prorogation of the House and after the Prime Minister expresses an intention to recommend such a prorogation, a motion of confidence to be moved, in which case the motion should meet a range of criteria. It will have to be tabled with four days' notice and to be signed by 20 members of the House representing more than one recognized party, which removes some of the partisanship from the initiative. To avoid abuse, there are safeguards in place. Only one such motion can be placed on notice per supply period and only one can be sponsored or signed by the same member of the House in a session of a Parliament. The text of the motion can either be, “That the House has lost confidence in the government” or “That the House has confidence in the government”. Both are quite clear and unambiguous. It cannot be amended. The time of the debate is limited to a maximum of one ordinary sitting day and a maximum of 20 minutes per member and 10 minutes for questions and answers. Consequently, no stalling tactics are possible. Once the four days have passed after notice was given, the motion takes precedence over all other business of the House. It is debated and then voted on. Linking prorogation to a confidence vote will hopefully make a government that wants to use it not only think twice about the risk of being defeated and triggering a general election, but also consider whether it has the grounds to seek prorogation with the assent of other parties in the House. We must remember that the prorogation of a session puts an end to all the business of Parliament, with some exceptions. Every committee, with the exception of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, stops its work when prorogation occurs. Every time there is a partisan prorogation, it is the taxpayers, the citizens, who pay the price, since many bills that affect their daily life die on the Order Paper. In a political context where we can expect more and more governments to be elected with a minority, making prorogation increasingly likely, Motion No. 79 provides a framework that is entirely justified and welcome. As for the confidence vote aspect, how does a confidence vote work? How do we define what constitutes a confidence vote? Actually, it is not always particularly clear. I would refer members to what the parliamentary website tells us. Currently, matters of confidence are regulated by constitutional convention. The website states: As the confidence convention is an unwritten parliamentary practice, it is not always clear what constitutes a question of confidence. Motions that clearly state that the House of Commons has lost confidence in the government, motions concerning the government’s budgetary policy, motions for the granting of supply, motions in relation to the Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne, and motions the government clearly identifies as questions of confidence are usually recognized as such. This convention is subject to interpretation, so some uncertainty needs to be cleared up in terms of the definition of “vote of confidence”. That is what Motion No. 79 seeks to do. Professor Hugo Cyr had this to say to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs: It is essential to understand that it is up to the House of Commons itself to determine whether it gives and maintains its confidence in the government. There is sometimes confusion in this respect, as prime ministers sometimes state that a vote on a particular bill or issue will be a confidence vote. This undue pressure on parliamentarians could be considered a form of blackmail, and that has no place in a democracy. The government should never be able to hold an opposition responsible for defeating a government, for example, on an issue that should never have been a matter of confidence. For all these reasons, both with respect to prorogation and the framework for votes of confidence, I commend the work of the member for Elmwood—Transcona on Motion No. 79. It lines up with the recommendations the Bloc Québécois made during the drafting of the report on the prorogation of the summer of 2020. I hope, despite what I just heard in the last two speeches in the House, that Motion No. 79 will receive the support of the House.

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

May/12/23 2:07:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, let me start off by thanking the member for Elmwood—Transcona for bringing forward this motion. When we are allotted our private member's business, it is done by lottery. I say this to make sure viewers understand. He was fortunate enough to be up near the top, and he has generously donated his time and his space to give parliamentarians this important opportunity. I really see this as important because I think this is an opportunity for colleagues from all parties in the House to start really, truly thinking about what it means to be a member of the House. We are members of Parliament, first and foremost, no matter what position we hold. We got to this place legitimately because we captured the attention and the confidence of our constituents in our respective ridings. Every person in this House has earned their spot because of the democratic mandate given to them by the people of their constituency. That comes before all else, whether one holds a position as Leader of the Opposition or a parliamentary secretary or one is promoted to become a minister of cabinet. First and foremost, one is a member of the House. I see today's debate on Motion No. 79 as an opportunity to reassert ourselves as members of the House and to more clearly understand the rules by which we operate. Today's motion, of course, is centring on the confidence convention. For constituents of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford who may be watching today's debate, when we start talking about procedure and the Standing Orders, I know it starts to sound like inside baseball. However, there is a reason these debates are important. The Standing Orders and how they are interpreted, how they are written and how they operate allow an elected member of Parliament to do their job properly. The government has all kinds of resources at its disposal, but for members of the opposition in particular, the rules of the House put us on an equal footing with the government. The rules are particularly important to members of the opposition because of that very fact. When it comes to the confidence convention, we know that, generally speaking, confidence votes come in a few different forms, but they have never really been clearly spelled out. We are attempting to spell them out today. We know that, for example, anything involving the spending of funds, whether it is a budget implementation act or appropriation bills, would be a motion of confidence. Also by convention, anything else that the government states is a matter of confidence can be interpreted in the same way. This entire conversation is also rooted in the conversation that we need to have about responsible government. This is because, of course, in our Westminster system, responsible government means that the executive branch owes its responsibility to Parliament and not to the monarch. We have to understand that we went through centuries of turmoil and fighting to arrive at this democratic ideal. If we look at the history of England, especially during the 1600s, the civil wars, the establishment of the Commonwealth, the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution were all taking place. It was a tumultuous time. Here in our own country of Canada, as well, we have had rebellions. We had the Durham report, which resulted in a pathway towards responsible government. These are important concepts that we have to understand. In the Standing Orders, there have been references to the confidence convention in the past. It was mentioned back in the 1960s, but through the 1970s and, again, in the 1980s, the provisions were modified several times so that those provisions were actually removed. Let us turn now to Motion No. 79. Boiling it down, it would essentially require that we hold a confidence vote to take place at the start of every new Parliament or following an expression of intent by the Prime Minister before that person prorogues. There are two very important things here. It would essentially establish, for members of Parliament, for the benefit of members of the House and for the general public, a standardized, streamlined format. One of the things that we look at when we look at Motion No. 79 is, for example, the requirement that, if a member of the House were to bring forward a motion of confidence or non-confidence, it would have to be signed by 20 of his or her peers, and they would have to be representatives of more than one party. This makes sense because, if a confidence or non-confidence vote is going to succeed, it is obviously going to take more than one party. This would take away from anything frivolous happening. The motion would place this in the existing Standing Orders right after section 53(1), the chapter that outlines how special debates are to happen. I have heard members of Parliament from the Liberals and the Conservatives, in preceding speeches, wondering about how this would impact the prerogative of the Crown. They need only look at the preamble of the motion, which states right away that it is a prerogative of the Crown to prorogue and dissolve Parliament at its pleasure. We cannot take away from that fact. However, what we can do, as members of the House, is amend our own Standing Orders to provide for a road map on how the House can formally voice its opinion on whether the government of the day continues to have the confidence of the House. This is extremely important because prime ministers have abused that power. I look at the previous Conservative speaker's speech on this when he said that he could not support this motion because it deserved further study. It is quite shocking that apparently the Conservatives need to study the issue at the procedure and House affairs committee to figure out if they need to limit the prime minister's power.

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Constituency

Mr. Alistair MacGregor

May/12/23 2:15:02 p.m.
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It is highly suspicious. Mr. Speaker, what we are seeing here with the Liberals and the Conservatives, if they do end up voting against this motion, is their own naked self-interest because, for them, the current system works. They are the status quo parties, and we are not going to see a meaningful push for reform against the Standing Orders because they want to have the opportunity for their executive to use that power and to not in any way be constrained. Therefore, I implore all members of the House to remember how I started my speech. First and foremost, members are a member of the House, and this is a real opportunity to stand up not only for their rights in this place but also for the rights of the constituents who sent them here, to codify that and to make sure that we have a clear pathway laid out for how confidence is tested in this place. I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to speak. I want to thank again the member for Elmwood—Transcona for giving us the opportunity to debate this. I very much hope that members will find it in their conscience to support this important amendment to our Standing Orders.

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The Deputy Speaker

May/12/23 2:15:02 p.m.
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The time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired, and the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the Order Paper. It being 2:15 p.m., the House stands adjourned until next Monday at 11 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1). (The House adjourned at 2:15 p.m.)

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Mr. Peter Julian

May/12/23 2:15:02 p.m.
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Highly suspicious.

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