difficult to accept as these changes are, it is the expansion of the whipped vote to include private member’s business that even many loyal partisans find particularly odious.[2] For centuries, it was the prerogative of a Member of Parliament to forward a legislative bill or motion and have it adjudicated by his or her parliamentary peers without the meddling of the party leadership.
This is traditional and logical. By definition, a matter cannot be a core or key government or party priority if the government has chosen not to table a bill or motion on that particular subject. Accordingly, it ought to be open to private members to put forward a policy idea where the government has chosen not to.
There are many examples to demonstrate that the party leadership will not allow private MPs that privilege. On June 5, 2013, Conservative members of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics were whipped into eviscerating C-461, a private member’s bill (which I sponsored) that would have allowed for specific salary disclosure for senior levels of the federal public service. The bill had widespread support in the CPC caucus until the government objected to allowing the public access to how much it is paying its senior people and disclosing how many civil servants were earning generous (six figure) performance bonuses.
When the government is able to whip its members to vote against a private member’s bill, predominately supported by those members, the government’s control over Parliament is complete. In the process, Parliament has surrendered its ability and role in holding government to account.
The focal point of the House of Commons’ day is between 2:15 and 3:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (11:15 a.m.–12:00 p.m. on Fridays). That is the holy grail of holding government to account: Question Period. QP is the forty-five minute period in the day when the House of Commons asks the executive to explain and defend its actions.
Although many commentators correctly observe that answers are provided only when the government wants to provide them, and that there are no rules against refusing to answer a question, making up your own question and then answering it, or uttering incoherent nonsense, eventually, with enough media attention, the government will pay a political price if it routinely attempts to evade important questions or to obfuscate when asked to defend its actions. For forty-five minutes, the Opposition is actually afforded a purposeful opportunity to live up to the expectations of holding government to account.
But holding government to account is Parliament’s prerogative; it is not the exclusive role of the Opposition. Accordingly, backbench members of the governing party are afforded three questions per day. Recalling that the current government prefers its backbenchers to be an extension of its Communication Branch, rather than to ask actual questions that might have the potential to embarrass the government, it is little wonder that these questions are scripted, planted, and designed exclusively for the purpose of allowing the government to get some message out.
“Mr. Speaker, the government just yesterday completed a historical trade deal with Country X. Can the hard-working Minister of International Trade please advise the House as to what this deal will mean for Canadians in terms of jobs and economic growth?”
It is not so much a question as an infomercial.
Even more egregious, planted questions will frequently be used to attack a member of the Opposition. “Mr. Speaker: yesterday the Leader of Party Y mused about legalizing small amounts of marijuana (or criticized ‘our’ government’s minimum mandatory sentences); can the Minister of Justice please tell this House why Party Y’s soft-on-crime policies are bad for law-abiding Canadians?”
Such a question should be disallowed. Commenting on somebody else’s statement or policy has nothing do with government business or policy; therefore, this type of “question” has no place in the forty-five important minutes allotted to the House to hold the government to account.
The use of government-planted questions from backbenchers is infantile, giving governments self-serving, leading opportunities, and allowing them even more avenues to practise their talking points. But worse, this practice denies the House of Commons three actual questions every day. That’s fifteen opportunities per week to hold the government to account squandered, in favour of self-serving blather. However, if it were ever proposed that the governing party lose the right to ask puffball questions during Question Period, rest assured the government would aggressively defend the practice, hypocritically citing the important role of the backbench MP as a justification for planted question continuation.
The fifteen minutes prior to Question Period are reserved for members’ statements. A time-honoured tradition, Standing Order 31 allows private members, members who are not part of the executive council, to speak on any topic for up to sixty seconds. Traditionally, the period has been used for members to congratulate a local sports champion, honour a milestone birthday of a local volunteer, or eulogize a local philanthropist.
However, in the last few years, all parties have decided to politicize the members’ statements (colloquially referred to as an SO 31). Generally, up to a third of these SO 31s will be used to attack an opposition member, or policy, or make a self-serving, free-standing political announcement. Countless CPC members’ statements refer to the supposed NDP $21 billion Carbon Tax. The Opposition is no better, with the leadership encouraging its members to use their infrequent members’ statements to chastise the government for its alleged complicity in the Senate Expenses Scandal.
Again, diverting members’ statements away from their intended purpose is an attack on the few rights that private members maintain. Sadly, members anxious to gain favour with their party leadership are only too happy to participate in this political manipulation of Standing Order 31. But it is the government and opposition party leaders’ vetting and approval of members’ statements, prepared by the members themselves, that is truly compromising members’ rights and establishing them as subservient to their leadership.
However, in the spring of 2013, there was a well-publicized and rare display of an MP standing up for himself. The MP for Langley raised a point of privilege, arguing that his rights as a Member of Parliament had been infringed upon in that he was denied his apportioned slot for an SO 31 member’s statement because the “topic had not been approved.” Without naming specifically who did not approve his member’s statement, Mark Warawa correctly stated that it is only the Speaker who can reject an SO 31. Standing Order 31 states: “A Member may be recognized, under the provisions of Standing Order 30 (5), to make a statement of not more than one minute,” and that “the Speaker may order a Member to resume his or her seat if in the Opinion of the Speaker improper use is made of this Standing Order.”
The practice of members submitting their proposed members’ statements to the House Leader’s Office for vetting has developed lately, and, strangely, it has for the most part gone unchallenged, at least on the government side. Why private members would require the approval of the executive is a mystery, but it is further evidence of party leadership micromanaging MPs and converting them from watchdogs into cheerleaders.
According to the rules, only the Speaker can determine if the contents of a proposed SO 31 are inappropriate or if the statement exceeds the allotted one minute. The rules are there to protect the integrity of the House and the rights and responsibilities of its members. Neither private members’ motions nor bills nor SO 31s are the prerogative of the whips or the House leaders; they are the prerogative of private members. The government controls so much of the parliamentary procedures and calendar, it is imperative that private members stand firm on defending the few rights and opportunities we maintain to raise matters of importance to our constituents.
Sadly,
