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House Hansard - 237

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 23, 2023 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 237 - Oct/23/23
Mr. John Nater (Perth—Wellington, CPC)
  • Oct/23/23 11:15:54 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege and honour to rise in the House to speak to Motion No. 79, as introduced by the member for Elmwood—Transcona in an effort to amend the Standing Orders of this place. It certainly is an intriguing motion. I will be quite honest: I enjoyed reading it and have enjoyed following the debate that has thus far taken place in this House. While I give credit to the member for introducing the motion and precipitating this debate, I find myself in a position to speak against it. That is not to say that it is not a worthwhile conversation, because it is. Rather, it is the fact that this is not the way the Standing Orders of this House ought to be amended. As I have said in this place and elsewhere, such as at the procedure and House affairs committee, changes to the Standing Orders should only be done after a broad consensus has been found among the recognized political parties. In this case, that consensus has not been found. I would point to my own opposition to this during the March to May 2017 standing order standoff at the procedure and House affairs committee. At the time, my friend from Waterloo was the government House leader and tried to unilaterally force massive changes to the Standing Orders of this House, to the opposition of Conservative, Bloc and NDP members of Parliament. In fact, we had a full consensus among the opposition parties: We were in opposition to that. Members will know that this is not the first time actions have been precipitated unilaterally to amend our Standing Orders. Members of the Liberal backbench tried to do so with Motion No. 231 in a previous parliament when they were upset and frustrated by years of Liberal leadership preventing them from speaking their minds. We also all know that the current government unilaterally, with the support of its coalition partners in the NDP, made changes to the Standing Orders this past June, not only without consensus but with the direct opposition of both the Conservative and Bloc members. This motion deals with a number of issues. Among them is prorogation. I need not remind this House, but I will anyway, that the 2015 Liberal platform stated, “we will not use prorogation to avoid difficult political circumstances.” What happened? In 2020, the WE Charity scandal happened, and as the former finance minister was forced to resign, the Prime Minister himself was implicated in that scandal and prorogued Parliament to avoid responsibility for his actions, which was another promise broken. In the very short time that I have, less than 10 minutes, I certainly cannot go through the entire history of the confidence convention, though I know colleagues would be interested in hearing that, but there is a certain amount of nuance and ambiguity that surrounds it, and I do not believe this motion will effectively clarify that much-needed nuance. At its essence, the confidence convention requires that the prime minister of the day hold the confidence of the House of Commons, meaning a majority of members in this place. It has of course been contentious over time, having a number of challenges. I cannot go into the history over the last 45 parliaments, but one important precedent that must be noted is that of the King-Byng affair. We must also look at provincial examples and the 1968 vote in this House, where there was a subsequent vote noting that a previous vote was not in fact a confidence motion. I am a strong believer in what has traditionally been seen as the three categories that make up a confidence motion. The first category is that the budget or financial bills of a budgetary nature are clear expressions of the confidence or lack of confidence of the House of Commons. The second category is what would be expressed through an opposition day motion or what we also know as a supply day motion. The third category is the Speech from the Throne at the beginning of each session of Parliament, which clearly lays out the government's agenda and proposals for that session. As the House will know, one of the great experts in this country on parliamentary procedure and the confidence convention is the late Hon. Eugene Forsey, who was a Liberal senator and a CCF activist prior to his appointment to the other place. In his report, which he co-authored with G.C. Eglington, entitled “The Question of Confidence in Responsible Government”, he wrote: Once in the Standing Orders a convention would suffer from the worst of all defects. It would be inflexible and cast in one form of words. But it would not be enforceable by the Courts. We also beg to doubt whether it would be constitutionally lawful under Part V of the Constitution Act, 1982 to state many of the conventions in the Standing Orders of one House of the Parliament. I encourage all members to reflect on these words from the late Senator Forsey as we debate this motion. The confidence convention is indeed constitutional. I would draw the attention of the House to the Constitution Act, 1867 with these short 12 words, “with a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom.” With those 12 words, much of the structure of our Constitution, of our Parliament is developed. The Standing Orders, however, are a matter of procedure, not necessarily constitutionality. In this place, we rely on a number of authorities to guide the procedure of the House. I would draw the House's attention to Bosc and Gagnon, page 49, where it is written: The Speaker does not decide what constitutes a matter of confidence. Successive Speakers have stated that it is not for the Chair to interfere to prevent debate, or a vote, on a question relating to the issue of confidence, unless the motion being put forward is clearly out of order on procedural grounds. We would be asking, through this motion, for the Speaker to enforce a standing order relating to confidence, while at the same time not deciding what would constitute a question of confidence. Similarly, we all have our favourite authorities in this place. My personal favourite is Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms, sixth edition, and I would draw the House's attention to paragraph 168, where it is written: The determination of the issue of confidence in the government is not a question of procedure or order, and does not involve the interpretive responsibilities of the Speaker. Following the recommendations of the Special Committee on Standing Orders and Procedure as well as those of the Special Committee on the Reform of the Bouse of Commons..., the House removed references in the Standing Orders which described votable motions on allotted days as questions of confidence. The committees concluded that matters of confidence should at ail times be clearly subject to political determination. Motions of no-confidence should not be prescribed in the rules. I would draw the House's attention to that very specific report of the McGrath committee. It says, “We repeat that a question of confidence should be expressed in precise terms in the motion, and not be prescribed as such by the Standing Orders.” I agree with the work of the McGrath committee, and I agree with the determination that this is inherently a political decision, a political matter and not one that ought to be left to the determination of the inflexible Standing Orders. I would note as well, when we talk about prorogation, that the rules that already exist related to prorogation are not being followed anyway. As colleagues will know, following the last prorogation, the procedure and House affairs committee undertook a study of that prorogation. At every single turn, the Liberal government prevented us from having a meaningful report on that matter. In fact, the Liberal government filibustered that committee for 100 days to prevent us hearing from the Prime Minister, who was the one and only person who knew in his own mind why prorogation happened and who was unwilling to do so. I respect the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona in bringing forward this motion, because it is indeed a debate that must happen. I would enjoy a conversation with the member in another venue, perhaps over a hot coffee or a cold beverage, to discuss this matter further. However, I would repeat the words of the late Senator Forsey, “Questions of confidence, and their definition, are best kept out of the Standing Orders al together.”
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