Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about a timely subject and that is decorum and etiquette in the House of Commons and committee meetings. I must admit that I am a new member. I have been in the House for a year. I was very surprised and disappointed to see how members behave in the House. I am not talking about one party or another. I am not talking about the opposition or the government. I am talking about all members. It is something that I find unacceptable and it has to change.

When I arrived here, I was so shocked by this bad behaviour that I would sidle up to one MP after another and ask what they thought about question period, and I would get two responses. If it were a new MP like me, the answer would be, “Oh, my gosh, it's incredible. It's unacceptable and I can't believe I'm in this environment”. If I sidled up to someone else who had been here a long time, the person would say, “Oh, Frank, it's not so bad”. They had become acclimatized. Human beings are capable of becoming acclimatized.

That happened to me at my first job. I worked at a one-storey building right beside the airport. A couple of days after I had started the job, one of the planes flew right over the building. I was talking on the phone and said that I had to go. I hung up the phone and ran out because there was such noise and the building was shaking. It was incredible. I did not know what was happening. The plane was so low, I could have thrown a rock and hit it. After six months of being in that job, I would be on the phone, ask the person to hold on a second, cover the handset, and six seconds later I would start talking again. I had become acclimatized.

During the summer break, I made a commitment to myself to refuse to become acclimatized to the behaviour in the House. What we saw today was one side claiming what the truth was. It is a fallacy that we can pretend to be true, but it is not true.

I have four ideas to improve decorum here. First, I was to support the idea of the member for Châteauguay—Lacolle, who said that we need to give more power to the Speaker, not to throw members out but to silence them, to take away an abuser's right to speak in the House of Commons. Whether that be for one sitting, two or 10, I do not know. That should be discussed, but a member should lose the right to speak due to bad behaviour.

My second point is that we are living in the age of technology. I would like to see two high-definition, wide-angle cameras installed, one facing the opposition benches and the other facing the government benches. These cameras would be strictly for the use of the Speaker of the House and they would be used in exactly the type of situation we are dealing with today and when there is a complaint. It would be a little bit like what we see in all sorts of sports, such as tennis, hockey, and football, where the referee has the right to look at the instant replay to check on something he missed. I suggest using that same approach in the House. That would mean that we would have two cameras strictly for the Speaker's use, to allow him or her to determine, when necessary, if there is an issue on which the Standing Orders must be enforced.

The third idea I propose would be extremely important because of what we saw today. I would like us to banish clapping during question period. That may seem funny to some members. However, we are a descendant of the House of Commons in Westminster and it is not allowed there. It is banned. The Government of Quebec, less than a year and a half ago, banned clapping in its legislature.

I actually like clapping, except that it is no longer done to support a good cause or statement. The behaviour is so inappropriate that I cannot see it being used properly. Therefore, I can only say it should be completely banned.

These are the three points I raise in the hope of bringing decorum to the House of Commons.

I will never allow myself to become acclimatized. If these measures do not pass this time, I will work inch by inch to make things different. As one member mentioned, this present testosterone-driven environment comes from a hundred years ago when women did not have the right to vote, when ethnic people did not have the right to vote, and it serves only one type of person. It is a tremendous deterrent to people of different cultures where rudeness is unacceptable. It is a tremendous deterrent to women and it must change.

The last point I would like to raise has to do with standing committees. I sit on the industry committee, and too many times when we have invited a guest, that guest has not been able to testify because they have been consistently interrupted by spurious motions, points of order, and no end of nonsense.

We have a precedent here in the House of Commons during question period. No one can interrupt that process for the hour. Members have the right to speak, they can move any motion afterward, they can rise on a point of order afterward. I propose out of respect, not even for ourselves but for the guests we invite and who come to committee, some of whom have travelled great distances with prepared speeches, that we owe these people the right to listen to them. It takes one hour and I am proposing that we use exactly the same rules there that we do here, that during that hour there will be no motions, no interruptions of any kind, no rising on a point of order, just as we do in question period. This is to show respect to outside guests.

Those are the four things I am proposing to try to bring a bit of decorum here.

I will end with a little anecdote. As I mentioned, I was shuffling up to people and talking to them. I would engage to try to find out where they landed. I have two daughters and a son. My middle daughter will tell people what is what. They were all proud of me when I was elected, and they told me so. I would like them to come here and visit some day. But I was thinking about it. If my middle daughter had sat up there and seen me, then she would not say she was proud of me. I have made a commitment to myself that I will not accept this. If she comes and sees this horrible behaviour, I can tell her I am fighting it.

This is what happened with the guy I sidled up to, who was not a member of our party. He looked at me, his head bowed, his chest caved in, and he said “Frank, my 17-year-old daughter was here two weeks ago and she walked out in disgust”. This is what we are doing. It must stop.

Frank Baylis

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