SoVote

Mr. Scott Reid (Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, CPC)

Dec/6/23 6:08:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, of course, I would never suggest that my hon. colleague was deliberately misleading the House. I am sure it was an unintentional error with regard to the riding in which our esteemed former speaker, Peter Milliken, resides. I will just make an observation about having views on a subject and then sending them off to a committee such as procedure and House affairs to have them studied. Of course, we all come here with views. It would be very strange if we did not have some kind of view formed. For some people, it is more than tentative; for others, it might only be tentative. The point is this: If we are serious about being members of Parliament with open minds, then we must be serious about the idea that, when we send it to a place such as procedure and House affairs, our minds might be changed. The member knows full well that there was a previous matter that went before procedure and House affairs relating to an Ethics Commissioner's report, in which everybody voted on partisan lines, but I did not, based upon a PROC proposal. One can break party lines. One can work against simply following party lines on a matter that is of importance to the whole House. I have done it myself; he knows that. The possibility exists, and that is a really good reason for sending this to procedure and House affairs. Does he not agree?

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Context: House Hansard - 263 - Dec/6/23

Mr. Scott Reid (Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, CPC)

Dec/6/23 6:33:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it seems to me that what is being referred to, and I am looking for my colleague's input on this, by both the member for Elmwood—Transcona and, most recently, the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, is a convention which does exist in the United Kingdom. In the U.K., when one is elected Speaker, the expectation is that they shed their partisan identity. They can choose to run again as an independent, if the parties choose not to run candidates against them, and they fill out the rest of their career. This is the capstone of their career, and they leave the House of Commons as Speaker. Upon their leaving the House of Commons, they go to the House of Lords in retirement and serve there on the crossbench. That is the expectation. It has been explored in a committee. This convention was built out in a committee, which is their parallel to the procedure and House affairs committee. It is an interesting convention, and one that may have many merits. I actually discussed the idea of adopting this in Canada with the previous speaker when he was running for Speaker following the last election. However, it does not exist right now, because we have not discussed it, at least in my opinion. I wonder if the member for St. Albert—Edmonton agrees with my assessment of things.

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Context: House Hansard - 263 - Dec/6/23

Mr. Scott Reid (Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, CPC)

Dec/6/23 6:35:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, never has the Kingston part of my riding name been more important than today, as my colleague from Kingston and the Islands and I wrestle over whose riding is home to the illustrious former Speaker of the House Peter Milliken. He is a man who served with great distinction for many years and who will make, if this goes to the procedure and House affairs committee, an excellent witness providing some information as to how we have done things in the past and how Speakers have behaved in the past. There are many, many parallels to draw upon here. There have been many Speakers in this House and in all of our 10 provincial assemblies over a period of well over a century. There are parallels not only in the Parliament in the United Kingdom but also at the House of Representatives in Australia, in the one in New Zealand, in the various Australian states, in the world's largest democracy in India and in a number of African and Caribbean countries. The parallels here are enormous. The precedents are significant. If the behaviour of the Speaker is such that it would warrant our judgment that he has been acting inappropriately, or acting outside of what is the normal expectation of the Office of the Speaker, there is no better place to determine that than the procedure and House affairs committee. If the reverse turns out to be true, then there is no better place to establish that than the procedure and House affairs committee as well. I want to deal with a few of the things that the procedure and House affairs committee ought to consider in its deliberations on this subject. The committee will have limited time, so it will have to structure its sittings with some care. I say all of this as someone who served on the procedure and House affairs committee for 15 years. Although I am no longer on that committee, I believe that still stands as not merely a record for serving on that committee, but for the length of service on any House of Commons committee for any member of Parliament in the course of the 21st century. There is no question that the procedure and House affairs committee is the right place to go. It looks at technical issues. We think of the procedure and House affairs committee as dealing with, for example, proposed changes to the Standing Orders. That is the right place to consider those changes. It is also the right place to consider and discuss conventions. We sometimes think that conventions or unwritten rules are literally unwritten, that they exist only in the ether, and we have a common understanding that is inchoate and for which there is no language. That is not actually what conventions in the Westminster tradition look like, whether they are the constitutional conventions of the British constitution, which have a reflection in some unwritten parts of our own Constitution. There is the convention, for example, that there is a prime minister, who serves as the voice of the House of Commons to the sovereign, and that cabinet speaks with a single voice. These are conventions, and they are embodied in a few very important words in the preamble of the Constitution Act, 1867, which says “the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick” being desirous of “a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom”. All that is contained in that wording. If we dig into that word, we find that that “convention” has built out considerably from there and there is a considerable amount of written material that was around at that time that explained exactly what the fathers of Confederation had in mind when they wrote that wording. I say all of this by way of saying that conventions are the product of usage, but they are also the product of discussion and deliberation and are to be found in places such as committee reports. Therefore, we have an opportunity to deal with some of the issues that are being discussed here. Is it the case, on a go-forward basis for example, that we ought to be looking at some aspects of the U.K.'s practice, in which the Speaker is expected to take a certain course of action upon retiring from the role of Speaker? Where is that not appropriate? In the past, we have not had such a limitation, and the result has been that Speakers have become Governor General and they have become ambassadors. The potential exists, in theory if not in practice, that it can influence how Speakers behave. It was with exactly this kind of consideration in mind that the Fathers of Confederation, when dealing with the issue of senators, who, they felt, might be subject to similar pressures, had to —

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Context: House Hansard - 263 - Dec/6/23

Mr. Scott Reid

Dec/6/23 6:40:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was actually thinking of making the exact same observation. Even I am having trouble hearing myself right now. I was talking about how the Fathers of Confederation tried to incorporate unwritten conventions in a written instrument, or by reference to incorporate them. To understand this instrument, we have to go back and look at what was said at the Quebec Conference at the so-called Confederation debates that took place in the ancestor of this chamber in 1865, 900 pages' worth of which are recorded. It is interesting that those who ran the Parliament of the Province of Canada thought it was important enough that they, though there was no Hansard in those days, should have a special Hansard recorded of that debate so the general public could read and understand all of the aspects of the constitutional deal they were making that would not be written down. The same kind of rules ought to apply to the internal governance of this place. Those offices have their powers and authority largely due to convention, as well as due, to some degree, to what is written in the Standing Orders. That would be very profitable. PROC is the master of its own proceedings, within the parameters of the motions presented to it; however, I do not think it is appropriate to start by asking whether the Speaker was aware of exactly where the video would be used, and whether he is therefore guilty in the sense that one is found guilty in a criminal trial. He is not on trial for a crime, so mens rea is not actually a relevant consideration. It is equally possible he could simply have been exercising bad judgment, a sign of an inability to consistently make wise judgments, or of a weakness in the way he chooses to conduct himself, that makes him, although an honourable member and an honourable person, simply an inappropriate occupant of the chair. The fact is that many people would be inappropriate occupants of the chair. In fact, a majority of the people in this room, I suspect, if asked, would say, “I am not the right occupant for the chair”, for one reason or another. It has nothing to do with their character; it has to do with the fact that they are unilingual or they have to be away from this place because of family considerations, so can participate online, but not here. The Speaker should be here. There is a whole range of reasons; perhaps someone may not have the attention span or the energy they used to have when they were a younger person, and cannot sit for all those hours. One feature of being a Speaker is having a certain degree of stamina. They cannot drift off, and some debates are kind of dull. The Assistant Deputy Speaker even agrees with me. These are considerations that are relevant to a hearing of this sort. It is really a question of determining what the standards are and doing a reset so we can all be clear that these are the standards we regard as being reasonable and acceptable. We either do or do not think that the incumbent in the role of Speaker is fitting in with those expectations, now that we have had a chance to examine them in more detail. I hope that, on that basis, we will go forward and decide to vote in favour of the motion, we will trust PROC to make an intelligent report back to us, and we will have a chance to consider its report and to vote on the report in the House of Commons. It would come back to us. I have indicated in the past that I think it is best, when dealing with PROC reports, that we try to do so on a non-partisan basis. I would encourage that to happen here. I do not control that, but I think that at least one committee should be treated as being non-partisan as much as possible, both in its own behaviour and in how the House responds to its reports. That, by the way, was exactly the approach it took when a motion I proposed was considered by PROC a few years ago to change the way the Speaker is elected. I think that was beneficial. I hope we can all do the same thing here.

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Context: House Hansard - 263 - Dec/6/23

Mr. Scott Reid

Dec/6/23 6:46:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, actually, in my remarks, I had meant to mention the issue of conflicts of interest and the appearance of a conflict of interest. I was going to say that the Speaker must be impartial and must be seen to be impartial, which is somewhat like a conflict of interest versus the appearance of a conflict of interest. In this case, I do not think that is what is going on, if we are talking about members of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. I think it would be more accurate to say that there is the appearance of having an opinion. I cannot think of a subject out there, from professional hockey to astrophysics, on which I do not personally have some kind of opinion. I also hope that I am in a position where I can be convinced by the evidence to think differently at the end of the process than I started out thinking. Sometimes I think that is unlikely, quite frankly, but I do not know how one gets around the fact that everybody has opinions. Some would be more valuable in expressing their opinions than others. All I can say is that if the member is this concerned, he could suggest to people that they recuse themselves, I suppose, although I have to say that if I were invited to recuse myself by someone from another party, I would probably say, “Thanks, but I am going to stay here.”

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Context: House Hansard - 263 - Dec/6/23

Mr. Scott Reid

Dec/6/23 6:49:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the first thing I would say with regard to whether a convention of that nature exists is that the man who invented the concept of constitutional convention was Albert Venn Dicey. In his outstanding work, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, which everybody should have at their bedside, by the way, he says that there is a way of testing whether a convention exists, and that is to see whether one watches, in their actions, whether the two major parties in the House are both in agreement. He lived in a time when there were two major parties in the United Kingdom. He points to the confidence convention's development during the period of Disraeli and Gladstone as being the example. Before that, one could lose what we would regard as a confidence vote in the House and carry on. I think that this is the way one judges whether a convention exists. I would say, based on that and the fact that it was uncontroversial that our House leader was the leader of the party after being speaker, that no convention existed. It might be starting to gel. It is possible. To answer the question that was specifically asked about what the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs should study, I would say that, among other things, the British practice of having a Speaker shed the partisan energy in the expectation that they can run again and will run again as an independent has some merit. It was tried here once, by the way, in Canada. As we may know, Speaker Lamoureux did that. I suspect it might have stuck had some other accidental things not come along. It is very much worthwhile to consider that for the future.

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