Mr. Speaker, I have been in this House now for approximately 10 years. In that decade, I have witnessed a couple of Speakers being elected, all by private ballot, and I thought the exercise was certainly necessary. It was revised back in the mid-1980s, as research tells us, and I would like to reflect back on the history of this House.

One of my Conservative colleagues mentioned earlier that we should never change the Standing Orders lightly. Even though the motion seems fairly modest in its reach, at the same time we have to be very careful. However, there is a long history to this.

In House of Commons Procedure and Practice, the version by Marleau and Montpetit, we can see the history of the election of the Speaker from 1867 up until 1985. Typically the convention was that a name was proposed by the prime minister and everyone voted. We could see who voted for whom in the election for the Speaker. Normally the nomination put forward by the prime minister, which in the early days was seconded by a leading minister, was usually accepted. Granted, there usually was a majority, but even in cases where there was a minority government, it seemed that the recommendation put forward by the prime minister and seconded by the leading minister of the day was accepted by the House and there was no tumultuous debate that followed.

In later conventions, although not written down, there was a consensus as to who the Speaker should be. The name was still brought forward by the prime minister, but by this convention it was seconded by the Leader of the Opposition, which is a far more beneficial way to bring respect to the House, and for all members, despite what party or caucus one might sit with.

This method made it much clearer as to who the Speaker should be, and there was no debate. If it was seconded by the Leader of the Opposition, then the vast majority of the House, not just the simple majority of the House, were in favour of a particular Speaker. However, we must bear in mind that this was all done through a recorded vote. Everyone was able to see where their member of Parliament or their colleague was on a vote.

In the 1980s, we realized that a vote would be better among colleagues as to who would be the most unbiased person and could administer the House as Speaker. It is not just speaking in the House and making sure the Standing Orders are followed, but there is the administration of the House over its functions and employees.

At the time it was thought that there should be a secret ballot, that we should not be coerced into voting because of what the leader of any particular party felt about who the Speaker should be. Therefore, the institution of secret ballot was brought in, and I think that was all for the better.

Recently there have been talks about having secret ballots for other positions, such as committee chairs, which by extension have the same type of job description when it comes to being unbiased. Members can see the pattern here. Any position that is assumed by a member of Parliament, such as the Speaker of the House, assistant Speaker, Deputy Speaker, or in the case of committees, the chairs or vice-chairs, it is the same sort of function. One cannot be biased towards any particular policy, and certainly not biased towards any particular party represented in this House. Therefore, a secret ballot is apt.

There was also a bill put forward and tabled in this House on the election of committee chairs by the same method, and I support that as well. I mean, if we are going to have a function of electing the Speaker by secret ballot, which has been our practice since the mid-1980s, then obviously the committee chairs, by extension, should have the same sort of thing.

History tells us that over the past while, we have not had a lot debate, but as my colleagues have pointed out, there has always been an election, with the exception of 2005, I think it was, when Speaker Milliken was acclaimed. We have had these elections, and they go on for a period of time. In the last election, when our current Speaker was elected, there were four candidates. It went on for quite some time, with the counting.

The procedure by which we do it is if a candidate does not gather a simple majority of the votes, another vote takes place. The person who finishes last, or who has the least number of votes, is dropped from the ballot. It is similar to the way parties elect leaders.

Speaking of parties, that has been the function of electing the leader of a party for quite some time, where someone needs a majority vote to attain the leadership. In positions as important as that, a simple first-past-the-post system would not suffice. There has to be a situation where someone gets the majority of the votes, which is more than 50%. That is a responsible way of looking at it.

As a matter of fact, I do not mind going on the record to say that maybe that is something we should consider for democratic reform. As the critic for democratic reform, something I support is the preferential ballot idea.

A lot of people ask what the preferential ballot is and how it works. The preferential ballot is something we have been using for years, but we have never used it in a preferential ballot way. Allow me to explain. We have always voted, and voted again if necessary, to achieve a simple majority, which is 50% plus one. Doing it by preferential ballot, however, means that we are doing all of our voting up front. For example, in a typical party leadership election, if someone does not get more than half the vote, whoever gets the fewest votes is dropped from the list, and we vote again. Once that person is dropped, we vote once more, so back to the ballot box we go to cast our vote. If our candidate is still in the race, chances are that we will vote for that candidate again. If our candidate has been dropped because that person finished last, we now have to vote for someone else, or we may choose not to vote at all. In most cases, obviously, we would vote again.

On a preferential ballot, we rank the candidates. If we were asked who we wanted to be the leader of our party, we would say, “I want this person. She is my choice”. If that person is not elected, is not successful, and is eliminated from the ballot, who would we like to be the leader after that? Basically, we are saying that if our preferred candidate, or first choice, is eliminated, we would choose the person who is our second choice.

Doing that saves a lot of time, because there is no going back to the ballot box, which takes quite some time. Even in a national election, it takes 12 hours. What we are saying is that all of this being done up front would save us a lot of time. In many cases, one's vote would not change. Does it mean that we would have to go over our second, third, and fourth choices? We could simply indicate one choice if we wished, but if our candidate were eliminated, our vote would no longer count. That is exactly what we have here.

I would like to congratulate the member for Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington for doing this. Some would say that it is a mild measure, but it is a measure that is necessary. Preferential ballots are becoming very popular within the scope of parties, so why can it not be within the scope of this House? By amending the Standing Orders, we would be allowing preferential balloting to take place.

I would like to say that we will be voting in support of this. Again, I thank the member for Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington for bringing it forward.

Scott Simms

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