- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Joint Interparliamentary Council
- Conservative
- St. Albert—Edmonton
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $119,185.60
- Government Page
- May/28/24 12:09:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, here we are again dealing with, for the second time in less than six months, a prima facie question of privilege from a ruling of the Deputy Speaker, arising from the partisan conduct of the Speaker of the House. This is truly unprecedented. When I spoke in December 2023 to the initial prima facie question of privilege, I never would have imagined that, in just a matter of months, I would be on my feet again with the Speaker's having engaged in a very similar transgression of engaging in partisan activities.
It is of fundamental importance that, in discharging the duties and responsibilities of Speaker, the Speaker not only be impartial but also be seen to be impartial. If follows, therefore, that the Speaker must refrain from partisan activities and engaging in partisan commentary both in the chamber and outside the chamber. As the leading procedural authority for this place, Bosc and Gagnon states, at pages 323 and 324, on this matter:
When in the Chair, the Speaker embodies the power and authority of the office, strengthened by rule and precedent. He or she must at all times show, and be seen to show, the impartiality required to sustain the trust and goodwill of the House....
In order to protect the impartiality of the office, the Speaker abstains from all partisan political activity....
Aside from the excerpt, I wish to elaborate on why a Speaker must be non-partisan, be seen to be non-partisan and avoid partisan activities. That is because the Speaker is, first and foremost, the Speaker of the House of Commons. He or she is the Speaker of the entire House and for all honourable members of the House, entrusted with significant powers and authority to rule not only on matters of procedure but also on matters that go to the heart of the rights and privileges of each hon. member of the august chamber.
The Speaker is like a referee or a judge. The Speaker's rulings are final. There is no appeal. As such, in order for Speakers to fulfill their responsibilities, they must retain the respect and confidence of members. In order to do so, the Speaker must rise above day-to-day partisanship.
I will add a few caveats to that. Each Speaker, generally, has arrived in this place after running for a political party. However, when they become the Speaker, they are expected to not engage in partisan activity, notwithstanding the fact that they would have had a partisan background; other than that, they continue to serve as a Liberal or Conservative MP, but not in sit in the Conservative or Liberal caucus or any political party's caucus. There is some limited flexibility for a Speaker, if they are running for re-election at election time, to run under their party's banner.
However, even in the context of an election, the Speaker, as has been the practice, has generally refrained from making overtly partisan statements or taking partisan positions, and has generally focused, in the context of a campaign, on local issues and the Speaker's representation as an individual member of Parliament.
With that context about why it is necessary for the Speaker to be non-partisan and to acknowledge the limited caveats to that which exist, as has been the practice, the current Speaker has repeatedly failed to fulfill the standard that is expected of the Speaker to refrain from partisanship and partisan activities. This is not a case of one lapse in judgment, a one-off, but rather is part of a pattern. Indeed, there have been at least six incidents in which the Speaker has engaged in partisan activities or made partisan comments in the eight short months that he has been Speaker, including three times between December 1 and December 5, 2023.
The first incident occurred on December 1, 2023, when the Speaker voluntarily set up an interview with Laura Stone of the Globe and Mail on the topic of the Ontario Liberal leader, John Fraser's, retiring, in which the Speaker heaped praise on the Ontario Liberal leader, a partisan figure, and referred to the Liberal Party of Ontario as “our party”. At the very least, it demonstrated a total lack of judgment on the part of the Speaker to set up an interview with a national newspaper reporter to engage in what amounted to partisan commentary praising a partisan political figure in Ontario.
One could say that maybe that was just a one-off, an error in judgment, but it did not end there. The very next day, a video was played of the Speaker, at the ultrapartisan venue of the Ontario Liberal Party leadership convention, providing a partisan message to a partisan political figure, namely the same outgoing Ontario Liberal Party leader, John Fraser. The Speaker in his message spoke about his own years of activism in the Liberal Party and how he worked hand in hand with John Fraser to help get Dalton McGuinty elected.
To make matters worse, the Speaker shot the video from the Speaker's office in the House of Commons, used parliamentary resources to convey a partisan message to be played at a partisan political convention and wore the non-partisan robes of the Speaker, to add insult to injury. As problematic as that was, the message on the video was a message from the Speaker of the House of Commons, played at the Ontario Liberal Convention. When it was reported and when people saw the video, there was general shock that the Speaker had done something that clearly had crossed a line.
However, the Speaker did not have the humility even to acknowledge that he had made a mistake. He dismissed his transgression as merely one of perception. When he came before the procedure and House affairs committee, he did not accept any real responsibility, just like his friend the Prime Minister. He said that it was a big misunderstanding and that the video was intended for a smaller private gathering. I do not suppose it makes it much better that the Speaker would use House of Commons resources conveying a partisan message to be played at a smaller partisan venue of Ontario Liberals, but that is the Speaker's logic. I would say it is illogic.
The Speaker's explanation, by the way, did not add up. The explanation was outright contradicted by other witnesses who came to committee and said that the request had been made from Mr. Fraser's wife to the Speaker's chief of staff, that the video had always been intended to be played at the Ontario Liberal convention and that there was no private, intimate event that occurred or that was ever planned. However, I digress.
As the Speaker was being called out for his partisan activities of shooting a partisan video played at a partisan convention, requiring the House to be seized of a matter of the first prima facie question of privilege, the Speaker, to demonstrate his contempt, while the House was sitting and while it was seized with the matter, took off to Washington, D.C. at taxpayers' expense to hobnob with a bunch of liberal D.C. elites, where the Speaker yet again engaged in partisanship. This was while he was under fire for two partisan transgressions. It is unbelievable.
The Speaker attended a reception for Claus Gramckow, who was retiring from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, a foundation closely connected with the Liberal Party of Canada's sister party in Germany. During the reception, the Speaker talked about his days as a Liberal youth president. The Speaker was essentially thumbing his nose at the House and demonstrating that in his mind the rules and the standards that apply to the Speaker of the House do not apply to him.
It should be noted that the Speaker did not get off scot-free for his transgression. The procedure and House affairs committee, in a report that was adopted by the House, ordered that the Speaker reimburse the House of Commons for any costs associated with the production of the video using House of Commons resources, as well as provide an apology to the House, which the Speaker initially refused to provide.
One would think that, after that, the Speaker might have learned his lesson, but it seems he did not, because we found out shortly afterwards that the Speaker had been engaging in other partisan activities. For example, the Speaker attended a Quebec Liberal Party political reception for the Quebec Liberal MNA for Gatineau. It was then reported in the National Post that within weeks of being elected as Speaker of the House, the Speaker contacted a former Liberal MP to write an op–ed praising him and attacking the official opposition.
The Speaker took it upon himself to orchestrate an op-ed attacking the Leader of the Opposition, using a friend to do so because he knew that he could not do so publicly. That is conduct completely unbecoming of a Speaker. It was calculated partisanship by the Speaker, and he hoped that he could do it in a hidden way using his friend, a former Liberal MP. However, he was caught as a result of a report in the National Post.
Now we have the latest transgression by the Speaker, which is that the Speaker's Liberal riding association of Hull—Aylmer organized an event, “A Summer Evening with the [Speaker]”. On its face, if it was simply an event hosted by his riding association and was simply billed as a summer evening with the hon. member, that would not be an issue. It has been the practice for Speakers to attend events in their riding, including events of their local association, and to do so in a way that is not overly partisan. However, that is not what happened in this case.
In fact, what was posted to promote the event was an ultrapartisan message. I think it is important to read that message, which was posted on the Liberal Party website for “A Summer Evening with the [Speaker].” It was an “opportunity to join fellow Liberals and talk about the ways we can continue to build a better future for all Canadians.” On top of that, it says, “While [the Leader of the Opposition] and the Conservatives propose reckless policies that would risk our health, safety, and pocketbooks, our Liberal team is focused on making life more affordable for Canadians”. It went on.
That is an overtly partisan message, and it is not one, two or three, but six times that the Speaker has crossed the line. It really comes down to this: How many times does this have to happen? It has happened six times in eight months. Enough is enough.
The Speaker has repeatedly fallen below the standard expected of a Speaker, a standard that has been adhered to by his predecessors. I say respectfully that if he truly had an appreciation and respect for the high office that he serves and the authority that it carries over the House, he would do the honourable thing and resign as Speaker of the House. However, seeing as he has not seen fit to do that, it leaves us no other choice, as put forward in this motion, but to vote non-confidence in the Speaker. He has lost the confidence of the official opposition and the Bloc Québécois and has demonstrated a repeated pattern of partisanship.
I urge the passage of this motion, but I hope that it does not come to that. I hope the Speaker finally does the right thing and resigns.
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- Dec/6/23 2:17:45 p.m.
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Mr. Deputy Speaker, the Speaker has lost the moral authority to preside over this House.
The role of Speaker requires impartiality and non-partisanship. The Speaker betrayed the trust of this House when he gave greetings at the Ontario Liberal convention—
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