SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Member of Parliament

Corey Tochor

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • Conservative
  • Saskatoon—University
  • Saskatchewan
  • Voting Attendance: 66%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $125,428.08

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 261 - Dec/4/23
Mr. Corey Tochor
  • Dec/4/23 12:55:22 p.m.
  • Watch
Mr. Speaker, I will make my remarks as short as possible, but they are important, because they boil down to what the issue is here today. When we explain what we do here and how Westminster democracy is supposed to work, we say it is through vigorous debate that we arrive at a conclusion and answer questions that face our country. How that debate is administered is through the impartial position of the Speaker. That is why Speakers have a distinctive look, a look that is different from that of other members. They have a uniform that identifies them as something different in this place. That is why pages have a uniform. That is why the officers at the table are wearing their robes, which signify how differently they need to act. The Speakers need to be the impartial rulers of our proceedings. That is one of the reasons they wear robes, the uniform. When school groups come here, we explain that in the process of debate, when the Speaker rises everyone should zip it because of the respect we have for whoever is in that position. After what we witnessed over the weekend, I do not know how we would explain to a school group on its next visit to this place how a Speaker can be impartial if they have taken part in a political partisan event. It is wrong. Everyone knows it is wrong. We talked about how this individual was a page at one time. There is a parliamentary tradition of trying to encourage the pages to take a side or give an opinion. I have been elected for two terms provincially and two terms federally and have not been able to get one partisan answer from any clerk or any page in both the legislature and the House of Commons because they take this seriously. When they go through training, they know they are not to partake in partisan activities because of the importance of their roles. For our Speaker to have this lapse in judgment and throw away hundreds of years of tradition to take part in a political event blows my mind. I will get into some new remarks on how I got to this location. As I was serving as the 25th Speaker of Saskatchewan, my country was hurting. Canada's direction was obviously taking us down a dark path. We could see this as early as 2018, and this is where—
411 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
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