Mr. Speaker, I am rising to supplement my initial response to the point of order raised just before the constituency week by the hon. House leader of the official opposition concerning the February 26 meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

First, the record of the meeting has now been published on the Internet. I know that my counterpart had tried to seek unanimous consent to have a report deemed presented from the committee, and now he has a supply day motion on notice to that effect. If anything, that goes to show transparently the contempt he has for the view that committees ought to be the masters of their own proceedings.

Glancing at the evidence for the meeting, I see that at about 1:30 p.m. that afternoon, the committee chair, the hon. member for Prince Edward—Hastings, said in response to a point of order:

The only recommendation that I would make is the later and later we go, the longer and longer we go, the shorter the fuse the chair will have for areas in which there are going to be challenges....

“Short fuse” might have been an apt expression because during the subsequent debate, until about 4:30 p.m., I understand that there were about a dozen more points of order respecting the relevance and repetitiveness of interventions, even including a point of order by the NDP's deputy public safety critic about the remarks of the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Public Safety.

The usefulness of the debate was clearly petering out, which is not surprising given that before 10 a.m. the NDP public safety critic, the hon. member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, said on behalf of his party, “we will be voting against this subamendment”. Even though everyone's voting position had been confirmed very early on, we saw hours and hours of NDP filibustering. Uninspired though it was, it was full of irrelevance and repetition which led to many points of order.

It was, of course, the last point of order that was consequential. Let me quote briefly from the minutes of the proceedings:

The committee resumed consideration of the subamendment of [the parliamentary secretary].

A point of order was raised regarding repetition, and [the member for Northumberland—Quinte West] requested the Chair decide to put the question on the subamendment, the amendment, and the main motion under consideration.

We then go on to read that there was a ruling, which in turn was appealed, and that a majority on the committee agreed with the appeal.

I wanted to make reference to this in order to confirm that the entire factual premise of the NDP House leader's point of order simply did not happen. He said that the hon. member for Northumberland—Quinte West moved a motion for the previous question. The member simply did not, and the records of the committee prove it. It was instead a challenge respecting relevance and repetition, matters that are addressed by our Standing Orders and are thus applicable to committees. They are matters that may be ruled upon by committee chairs “subject to an appeal to the committee”, as Standing Order 117 provides.

As I also said on February 27, having two members arguing about proceedings of a committee on which neither of them sits proves a sound premise for leaving committees' procedural disputes where they belong, in committees.

Of course, I am confident that the hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster, a senior officer of the House, would not have intended to mislead the House, so I imagine that he will come back to correct the record so that the House does not persist under any misapprehension of the facts.

Previously I quoted a number of rulings by Mr. Speaker Milliken, but I have found one more that I want to add. This comes from page 3678 of the Debates for June 10, 2010. He said:

All members who have intervened in this matter have acknowledged that the Speaker does not sit as a court of appeal to adjudicate procedural issues that arise in the course of committee proceedings. Indeed, on numerous occasions, Speakers have restated the cardinal rule that committees are masters of their own proceedings and any alleged irregularities occurring in committees can be taken up in the House only following a report from the committee itself. There have been very few exceptions to this rule.

He then went on to say:

However, having reviewed the evidence submitted, there is little to suggest that in the case before us the circumstances warrant the chair breaking with the entrenched practice of allowing committees to settle issues related to their proceedings, particularly since the member himself stated that “the chair had the support of the majority of the members of the committee”.

Who was the member that Speaker Milliken was referring to who had raised the point of order in that earlier case? It was the member for Burnaby—New Westminster. He should clearly understand that a majority decision at committee should not be appealed here to the Speaker. He has tried it before. Apparently unsatisfied, he is trying it again. I hope that he will learn his lesson.

Finally, I will close by quoting Mr. Speaker Lamoureux's ruling, at page 1397 of the Journals for July 24, 1969, and his view of the chair's role when called upon to sit in appeal of committee proceedings, just as the NDP House leader would have you do today, Mr. Speaker.

This is the Speaker's ruling that I am quoting from:

The Speaker is a servant of the house. Hon. members may want me to be the master of the house today, but tomorrow, when, perhaps in other circumstances I might claim this privilege, they might have a different opinion.

It would make me a hero, I suppose, if I were to adopt the attitude that I could judge political situations such as this and substitute my judgment for that of certain hon. members, either a majority or, perhaps, sometimes a minority. But I do not believe that is the role of the Speaker under our system. I am not prepared...to take this responsibility on my shoulders. I think it is my duty to rule on such matters in accordance with the rules, regulations and Standing Orders which hon. members themselves have turned over to the Speaker to administer.

That concludes my supplementary submissions.

Peter Van Loan

Transcript

Routine Proceedings

Discussions (0)