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Hon. Andrew Scheer

Member of Parliament
Member of the Board of Internal Economy House leader of the official opposition
Conservative

Regina—Qu'Appelle
Saskatchewan
Voting Attendance: 64%
Expenses Last Quarter: $172,932.98

Government Page

Context: House Hansard - 211 - Jun/12/23

Jun/12/23 7:58:35 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, her main point is that this is a massive overhaul to the Standing Orders. The House of Commons has been operating pretty much the way it has been, in terms of members being physically present and how we conduct votes, through two world wars, the Great Depression, the turbulent sixties and seventies, and everything else, including a terrorist shooting here on the precinct itself. Our point is this: When we are making this level of changes and we are going to make them permanent, we have to do it by consensus. We would have agreed. We would have said that we have our reservations for hybrid participation in the House but that we would go along with it if we enacted a sunset clause, where we know that there would be time for the unintended consequences to be determined and that a future Parliament could say it would not renew them or it could amend them. We could have had that consensus. We were willing to set aside some of our reservations for the very points that some other colleagues have raised, as long as there were that safety valve of a sunset clause to make sure that something that has a negative impact on the way parliamentarians fulfill their duties does not get entrenched, making it so difficult to change back.

224 words

Context: House Hansard - 211 - Jun/12/23

Hon. Andrew Scheer

Jun/12/23 7:50:39 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I can answer very simply no. I really appreciate my colleague's perspective on this. We have a lot of differences between our two parties and there is a lot we disagree on, but we both recognize that, when a government is going to come in to change the rules of the game, we really do need consensus. Members can imagine a scenario in a sports league where one team has an advantage and then tries to get the lead commissioner to change the nature of the sport or the action to benefit one team over the rest of the teams. That is analogous to what is being done here. Right from the get-go, this was presented as a fait accompli. The government had already secured what it wanted with the NDP, and it is a take-it-or-leave-it type of proposal. We were told right upfront that, if we were trying to take away any of the things around remote participation in the chamber or other ancillary aspects, it was going to go ahead with it anyway. That is not the way to bring parties together for the betterment of this institution.

198 words

Context: House Hansard - 211 - Jun/12/23

Hon. Andrew Scheer (Regina—Qu'Appelle, CPC)

Jun/12/23 6:57:12 p.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, I just want to draw out a point the government House leader made and challenge him on it. He used a few times in his speech language about unanimity and consensus when it came to drastically overhauling and changing the Standing Orders of this House. It is a very important point, because historically and traditionally, major changes to the Standing Orders have come through consensus and often unanimity. What the government has done today, though, is break with that tradition, because there are many things within this package of Standing Order reforms that the official opposition objects to. In the spirit of finding consensus, we would have agreed with some of the points we might not have preferred to have in there if there had been a sunset clause in this package. We are entering into a new world. Even though we have been operating under many of these provisions for some time now, it still remains to be seen what the long-term impacts of these major changes will be. Our proposal was to agree to this package but have a sunset clause so that after the next election, within about a year, we would require a positive action for the House to continue with this. I wonder why the government House leader chose to ignore the very reasonable request to have this package expire and to force a future House to make a positive decision about whether to continue with these changes.

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Member of the Board of Internal Economy House leader of the official opposition

Hon. Andrew Scheer