44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 5, 2023 11:00AM
The Chair will begin by addressing the concerns raised by the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, before turning to the question of selection and grouping of report stage motions.
In his intervention, the member claimed that his privileges were breached during the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill by the Standing Committee on Finance. His concerns centred on the contention that his right to vote, to move subamendments, to speak and raise points of order were unfairly limited by the committee chair. He argued that Standing Order 116(2)(a) had not been respected. Furthermore, the member alleged that the scheduling of the bill last Friday by the government had limited his ability to have report stage motions drafted and submitted in time for publication in the Notice Paper.
Standing Order 116(2)(a) makes clear that a committee can set time limits in relation to its own proceedings. The standing order reads:
Unless a time limit has been adopted by the committee or by the House, the Chair of a standing, special or legislative, committee may not bring a debate to an end while there are members present who still wish to participate.
This also applies during the consideration of legislation.
It is an established practice that a committee can adopt its own orders, set its own deadlines to submit amendments or limit debate during its clause-by-clause consideration of bills. This appears to be what occurred in this case, where the committee adopted a motion to restrict the time for considering Bill C-47. Given that the committee made such a decision, as the Standing Orders allow, I do not believe that the Speaker has any cause to invalidate its proceedings nor to consider them a breach of privilege.
As to the other matters raised by the member, Speakers generally will not address procedural concerns from committees without first having a report outlining what procedural irregularities may have occurred. This was stated by the Assistant Deputy Speaker on Friday and I too see no reason to deviate from this well-established practice in this case.
As to the contention that the scheduling of the bill for consideration in the House last Friday limited members’ ability to submit report stage amendments, I would refer members to Standing Order 76.1(1), and I quote:
The report stage of any bill reported by any standing, special or legislative committee after the bill has been read a second time shall not be taken into consideration prior to the second sitting day following the presentation of the said report, unless otherwise ordered by the House.
The report in question was presented on Wednesday, May 31, 2023. It could therefore be called for debate as early as Friday, June 2, 2023.
This two-sitting imperative, combined with the 24-hour notice requirement to submit report stage motions, is standard and usually provides enough time to have motions drafted and submitted.
As such, members who wish to receive support in the drafting of report stage motions should contact the capable staff in the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel as soon as possible with clear drafting instructions. If members wait to see when the bill will be called, they run the risk of not having their motions drafted in time.
For all these reasons, the Chair fails to see how the rights and privileges of the member were breached.
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- Jun/5/23 12:16:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order to draw attention to a procedural matter related to Question No. 1337, which I submitted on March 21.
In this Order Paper question, I asked for a detailed breakdown of spending from the mission cultural fund. For the sake of time, I will spare reading the text of the question into the record, but my point of order relates to a passage found on page 523 of Bosc and Gagnon, which states:
While oral questions are posed without notice on matters considered to be of an urgent nature, written questions are placed on the Order Paper after due notice, with the intent of seeking from the Ministry detailed, lengthy or technical information related to “public affairs”...Members may request that the Ministry respond within 45 calendar days, generally by adding a sentence to that effect either before or after the text of the question, or by so indicating to the Clerk when submitting the question.
With regard to Question No. 1337, the government stated as follows:
Global Affairs Canada manages an extensive network of 176 missions in 110 countries worldwide. The department undertook an extensive preliminary search in order to determine the amount of information that would fall within the scope of the question and the amount of time that would be required to prepare a comprehensive response. The department concluded that producing and validating a comprehensive response to this question would require a collection of information that is not possible in the time allotted...
To restate, the government has stated it could not respond to the question in the 45 allotted days. As such, it did not answer the question, as required by the Standing Orders, within the allotted time. That is because Standing Order 39(5)(b) states:
If such a question remains unanswered at the expiration of the said period of 45 days, the matter of the failure of the ministry to respond shall be deemed referred to the appropriate standing committee. Within five sitting days of such a referral the Chair of the committee shall convene a meeting of the committee to consider the matter of the failure of the ministry to respond.
The key word here is “unanswered”. I have indicated my desire to have the question answered in 45 days, per the Standing Orders, and the government has now stated that the question could not be answered within that timeline. Due to this, per the Standing Orders, after 45 days my question remains open without a response.
Before (5)(b) of Standing Order 39 came into effect in 2001, governments routinely ignored the 45-day deadline to answer questions. Following the adoption of this rule, the government began to respect the 45-day deadline. However, it appears that the government is attempting to circumvent this rule to thwart the intended protection offered to members of Parliament by Standing Order 39(5)(b). That is, it stated on the matter of the question that the government cannot respond within the time allotted.
I think it hopes that would hold water with the Speaker, and that is why this point of order requires a different level of scrutiny and response than previous rulings made on related matters in the past. The Speaker often cites how what cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. The government's acknowledgement that it did not answer Question No. 1337 by saying it could not produce the information in the time allotted is an example of that principle.
The Speaker's rulings have established that access to information from the government is a fundamental privilege of a parliamentarian. It is also a critical aspect of the functioning of our system of democracy. When the government flouts its responsibility to provide this information, the system fails. That is why, in a related matter, many members of the press gallery are raising concerns about the breakdown of the access to information system.
The government has also begun to argue in its responses that time allotted to respond to questions could lead to incomplete and misleading information. That too is a contravention of the Standing Orders.
I ask the Speaker to consider this. If the government does not have the processes in place to answer questions, it is incumbent upon it to change those processes, not to contravene the Standing Orders. I ask that the Speaker respect this principle in their ruling. If the Speaker rules that the government can satisfy the Standing Orders by saying that it cannot respond to the question in the time allotted, then none of us should bother submitting Order Paper questions anymore.
While I suspect the government would not much mind that outcome, the House is governed by rules that allow parliamentarians to access information necessary to do their job for a reason. In this instance, the government's decision to flout the Standing Orders severely hampered my ability, as a parliamentarian, to scrutinize a government expenditure that has been in the news for many weeks. I hope you consider this impact in your ruling and I would like to explain why.
This question related to expenses in the mission cultural fund. Every year, the government spends millions of dollars on this fund that purportedly assists with Canada's diplomatic efforts abroad. Given the current state of geopolitics, this could be a reasonable expenditure.
The problem is that I and, by virtue of me not having this information, Canadians have no real way of knowing because there is precious little information regarding how this particular fund selects project and is managed and how success is measured. The government's decision to flout the Standing Orders has made this situation worse.
I require a response to this question because last year, the foreign affairs minister made blunt comments emphasizing Canada's lack of military power. She stressed that the federal government's current strategy is to continue to rely on soft power as the government's primary tool to influence other nations.
The concept of cultural diplomacy is the formal term for a notion that soft power can be exerted through sharing values like food, visual arts, music and literature. One of the government's primary vehicles regarding cultural diplomacy is the opaque and, frankly, questionably managed mission cultural fund.
Much has already been recently reported about the value for money that Canadian taxpayers may or may not get from this fund. More has been written about the provocative nature of some of the events that have been funded.
The bigger issue, and the issue I ask the Chair to rule on, is the government's muted and closed-door response to both of these issues. That is because you should not rule that the government's statement that it cannot provide this information in the time allotted is a satisfaction of the Standing Orders.
Very little has been said by the Liberal government to defend the program or describe how the fund is furthering broader diplomatic goals. How can I, as a parliamentarian, ascertain value for money if the government flouts, in the Standing Orders, questions about the matter?
For a government that loves nothing more than to loudly honk about spending money, the statement regarding my question raises many other questions. If the fund is not yielding impressive results, why hide them? Why not brag about how much has been spent, as it does with so many other programs? Why not disclose where the expenditures remain and what they accomplished? What criteria was used to select projects and the recipients of contracts?
Coming back to the matter at hand, my point of order simply asks you to rule that when the government substantively ignores much of the substance of an Order Paper question by saying it cannot respond within the time allotted, it should be considered an open question and it could also be considered a failure to answer for the purposes of Standing Order 39(5)(b).
That way the government's refusal to answer a written question can be referred to a committee for review. It is unacceptable for the government to state that it cannot provide the information in the 45-day time period. That is not my problem. I ask the Chair to rule in my favour that this question remains open.
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- Jun/5/23 12:25:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, like the previous member, I stand today to address some of what I believe are very serious challenges when it comes to the questions posed related to the Order Paper questions.
I would read from the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. This is the September 2021 edition where 39(5)(b) states:
If such a question remains unanswered at the expiration of the said period of 45 days, the matter of the failure of the ministry to respond shall be deemed referred to the appropriate standing committee. Within five sitting days of such a referral the Chair of the committee shall convene a meeting of the committee to consider the matter of the failure of the ministry to respond. The question shall be designated as referred to committee on the Order Paper and, notwithstanding Standing Order 39(4), the member may submit one further question for each question so designated. The member who put the question may rise in the House under Questions on the Order Paper and give notice that he or she intends to transfer the question and raise the subject matter thereof on the adjournment of the House, and the order referring the matter to committee is thereby discharged.
There is a growing trend when it comes to the responses that the government has brought forward to Order Paper questions that I have seen and with the questions that I have brought forward to this House.
I would specifically refer to Question No. 604 put forward by me, which was signed by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence. The information provided in that answer varies differently from information that was both reported in the public and information that I received via members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
For context, for the Speaker and for those watching, this has to do with a number of Canadian Armed Forces personnel who were put on leave due to their choice of not—
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- Jun/5/23 12:31:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on the same point of order. I just want to respond to the deputy House leader's assertion that I did not like the response.
For your information, and for that of the table staff who are perhaps providing you information, the point is that the government said that it could not respond to the question in the time allotted. Therefore, it has stated that it could not respond.
Whether or not I like that or the government likes that is immaterial; the reality is, the government, by its own admission, said that it could not respond to the question in the time allotted. Ergo, the question remains open. Ergo, the Standing Orders have been violated, and I ask you to review that similarly.
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- Jun/5/23 12:36:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am trying to get there.
To put this in context, when the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader surprised the House with a motion to proceed to orders of the day, a non-debatable motion, the Liberals triggered a vote on short notice, catching many members off guard, and we—
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- Jun/5/23 12:53:22 p.m.
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Again, I do not need the details of questions. I have an idea of the question that has been put forward. I would just encourage greater co-operation between members and ministers in their exchange of information and correspondence. This is all part of what has been discussed.
I am going to go to orders of the day.
I have a question of privilege. The hon. member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes.
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- Jun/5/23 6:57:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, furthermore, if the government's responses to Questions Nos. 1399, 1401 to 1408, 1410 to 1412, 1414, 1415, 1417 and 1419 could be made orders for return, these would be tabled immediately.
The Deputy Speaker: Is that agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
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- Jun/5/23 7:02:21 p.m.
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I thank the hon. member for his intervention. However, in the Chair's opinion the request does not meet the requirements of the Standing Orders.
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