Elizabeth May

“I want the House to vote against this motion. Committee seats should be shared fairly to reflect how Canadians voted. Smaller parties and independents should get seats on committees too, but the government is shutting us out.”

“Mr. Speaker, what I am putting forward is entirely on point with respect to the motion we have before us. The assumption that underlies what the government is doing with this motion is that it was beyond even consideration that there should be seats on the committee for members of the New Democratic Party or the Green Party or any members who happen to sit in this place as independents. There is no rule against it. I think most members of Parliament, if I gave a pop quiz, would be surprised to hear that we are the only Westminster parliamentary democracy that uses this concept of a recognized party at all. Beyond that, when we look at the results after an election, if we are looking at proportionality, which is at the essence of the government’s position in Motion No. 9 because it now has a majority of representation in this place, we want committees to actually reflect the way people voted, with the number of seats at committee reflecting the number of votes obtained in an election, to reflect the democracy of this House into each committee. I think it would have been worthwhile, although I note that it was not considered by the Liberal benches, to consider that proportionality would include the approximately or somewhat under 8% of Canadians who did not vote for any of the recognized parties. That would be some representation on committees, which the Liberals could still have considered when putting forward Motion No. 9, and I think they should have considered it. As I said, I wrote the Prime Minister about the composition of committees at the very beginning of his mandate to suggest that we want committees to work and that experienced parliamentarians from any party should be considered for full membership because it offends no rule at all, and it reflects more of the principles on which we believe this place to be founded in a Westminster parliamentary democracy. We are all equal, and each and every one of us has the same rights, the same powers and the same tools to find solutions for Canadians. When I speak to the motion, it actually is important and directly on point to point out that the recognized party law has been misunderstood for many decades now, and it would be a good time, when we are in this unprecedented transition, to go back to what our House of Commons stands for. That is the reason that it is not an offence under parliamentary rules for someone elected as a Conservative to decide to go sit with the Liberal Party, any more than it was for a Liberal member of Parliament from Paul Martin’s immediately deceased cabinet. David Emerson comes to mind. He was elected as a Liberal, and when former prime minister Stephen Harper swore in his new cabinet, there were jaws dropping all over the place as the limos pulled up in front of Rideau Hall and famous Liberal David Emerson got out to be sworn in as a member of Stephen Harper’s cabinet. This is a perpetual problem in Parliament. It is really awkward, because most people have short memories and forget they are living in a glass house. When someone lives in a glass house, it is not a good idea to throw stones. We can say many things about floor crossing, but it is not against our rules, and it is certainly not a surprise, depending on who has just gained the person who crossed the floor. I lost a dear friend. She is still a friend, but I lost a friend when the member for Fredericton, elected as a Green, went and sat with the Liberals. I never said a single mean or nasty thing about her. Her reasons were her own. Under our system of Westminster parliamentary democracy, we do not put forward candidates to act as cardboard cutouts, as proxy representatives of the leader who cannot be present everywhere, with a recorder button that we can push to hear the voice on some kind of cassette tape. I am using a very old-fashioned reference. I am sure that, with all the social media and AI that we have, we could get a hologram leader of a party to travel around with every candidate and actually seem to be speaking to their constituents. However, the point is that we run as individuals. We are elected in our ridings by our constituents, and the only place we can find a job description for what we are supposed to do as members of Parliament, because there is not a very handy job description, is in our Constitution. All it says is that members of Parliament represent constituencies. Back to Motion No. 9, what we are doing here is not a big surprise, but I do think there have been cogent arguments made by a number of opposition members as to why this is not a good idea and would create a precedent that the Liberals today may regret having put in place for a future occasion. I found particularly compelling the argument from the member for Saint-Jean. The member for Saint-Jean contributed additional data to today’s debate. She did some research and presented evidence showing that committees do not have a strong track record when it comes to creating barriers. The member for Saint-Jean pointed out with evidence that in the last number of years, parliamentary committees have not been blocking government legislation. Sometimes it has actually been Liberals in control of Parliament who have filibustered their own legislation. In fact, right before the last election, we had a long period of time when the whole House of Commons was caught up in a Conservative motion on a matter of privilege before committee. All of us who were serving at that time will remember it as sort of a long and painful version of Groundhog Day, where every day we debated the same thing, and every time the Conservatives amended their own motion, they reset the clock and every Conservative member could speak to the same thing again and again. Therefore, the filibustering of one’s own motion is not unheard of. Filibustering in committee, even for one’s own bill, is not unheard of. Committees need to function well, and for them to function well, there needs to be a basis of trust and respect in this place. Since I was first elected, I have seen it deteriorate. One thing that deteriorates trust and respect in this place is when members of Parliament are bulldozed by the party with more power. I have experienced, just for the record, more bulldozing since the April 28 general election in this place as a member of Parliament for the Green Party. I feel sort of more physical pain from the bulldozing that took place to get through Bill C-5 very quickly, with full Conservative Party support, no obstruction and no interfering with the Liberal government’s agenda. Things were moving with a lot of co-operation, except for those of us who objected, and those of us who are not in recognized parties, as I said, have fewer rights today than I had when I was elected in 2011, because I can no longer stand with four other members of Parliament and insist on a recorded vote, which I was able to do from 2011 until the COVID outbreak. I know that the debate is going to come to an end very shortly. I do not want to use my full time allotted, because I think my points have been made pretty clearly at this point. I would ask, and I hope, that when we look at this again, PROC will be engaged to study committee membership. I hope we will actually have a proper study and discussion of why we have misinterpreted the recognized party rules to such an extent that there are two tiers. It does get very Orwellian. All MPs are equal, but some are more equal than others. With that, I urge this place to defeat the motion before us and attempt, if we possibly can, not to build this place on “might makes right” or “numbers rule all”, but get to a place where we have real conversations and real study and respect democracy and the people who sent us here.”

“All members of Parliament should have equal rights. The government wants to change who sits on committees to give itself a majority. Members from smaller, unrecognized parties are being shut out of committees and debates. No law says smaller parties cannot sit on committees, and we need to stop treating them like second-class members.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak today. It is always an honour to rise in the House. I am speaking today as part of the debate on a key issue, specifically government Motion No. 9. The purpose of this motion is to introduce changes that could be described as innovative. These are unprecedented changes aimed at altering the composition of committees. We know what the topic is before us. It is certainly unprecedented because the situation is unprecedented. We have never had in this place a change after an election where the composition of committees is to be changed because, according to the government, there are now more Liberal MPs than there were after the election. There is no question regarding the numbers: the result is that we have moved from a minority Parliament to a majority Parliament. It gives me an opportunity to get to some of the basics that we very rarely get to talk about in this place, which is assumptions that are made about the nature of committees and the rights of individual members. Unquestioned, in the way this motion is put forward, is the notion I wrote to the Prime Minister about, after the election. I said, “Please do not forget to include, when they are considering committee makeup, the very respected and experienced parliamentarians who happen at the moment to be in an unrecognized party.” I was speaking not of myself and the Green Party, but of, at that point, seven New Democratic Party MPs who were experienced, thoughtful parliamentarians who all had good experience on committees. We knew we had a lot of new MPs. We have seen problems where committees can become overtaken by an effort to filibuster, but it is not always the case. Certainly, experienced MPs with committee experience are worth consideration to put on committees. That certainly is not immediately the issue at hand with the numbers and rejigging the numbers to ensure that there is a Liberal majority of members on those committees. I am unfortunately in a position where I cannot say what the Prime Minister thought about my proposal because, although I put a lot of thought and effort into that letter, I did not get so much as a courtesy reply, “We have received your letter and we will get back to you at some point when we have absolutely nothing better to do and can consider it.” I went through the research to confirm what I understood to be the case, which is the status of every member of Parliament. I put it the other day to the hon. government House leader, who agreed with me. “Oh yes indeed, all members are equal in this place. Oh yes indeed, we all have equal rights,” said the hon. leader of the government in the House. Obviously, yes, that is our fiction, but our reality is somewhat different. I had more rights in this place when I was first elected in May 2011 than I have today. As is always the case, larger and more powerful parties spend a great deal of effort to reduce the rights of smaller parties. Smaller parties and opposition parties spend a lot of effort trying to scupper what a larger party wants to do when it is in government. It is kind of an endless cycle and it is not really in the interest of democracy. It is also not what happens in other Westminster parliamentary systems around the world. I am going to spend a bit of time now going back through the recognized party rules. What does it mean to be a member of a recognized party? What are their rights in that situation? I double-checked with our Clerk before I wrote the letter to the Prime Minister, to say, “Am I right? Is it the case?” I just wanted to double-check that nothing has changed in our rules. In 1963, Parliament passed a law that created the concept of a recognized party. Without any self-interest, the members of the larger parties decided larger parties should by right have money in order to support their work in Parliament. Because larger parties have so much more work than smaller parties, goes the fiction, they need public funds to do the work of MPs in Parliament. That is the recognized party law from 1963. It has been unchanged. It says that if they have 12 members, they get money. That is all it says. It does not say anywhere that if the party has fewer than 12 members, they do not get as many questions in question period. It does not say anywhere that if they have fewer than 12 members, they have no right to be a full member of any standing committee. I double-checked with the clerk. I suggested to the clerk, and I hope the clerk does not mind me recounting the conversation, as I do not think it was terribly private, that this constitutes a really bad habit, this practice of saying that the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands cannot sit on any committee and would get one question once a week at the end of question period, etc. That is not part of the recognized party law. That is a bad habit. The clerk put it into more parliamentary language: It is a practice of long standing. In other words, I did not have it wrong. There is no law or rule that says members of Parliament from whatever size party cannot be full members of a standing committee. It offends no rule. It offends no law. It just ignores a practice of long standing. However, it adheres far more closely to our beautiful fiction that all members of Parliament are equal to every other member of Parliament and that the Prime Minister is merely primus inter pares, first among equals. We know that when the recognized party rule was created, it created two tiers of MPs. One is those from larger, recognized parties. For citizens who may be watching this discussion, the minute we get 12 members of Parliament, we get about $1 million in extra resources from the parliamentary budget to support our parliamentary work. We have had cases, and I will not mention them, where parties have used the money they get for parliamentary work quite inappropriately, and I would say illegally, for partisan purposes. However, that is a separate question. The money is the only thing the 1963 recognized party law is about. Rights to participate in committees are not a part of that, nor are rights in question period, etc. Then we go to this: How far and wide is this practice in Westminster parliamentary democracy? How much did this Canadian idea of recognized parties catch on? The answer is, not at all, not anywhere. We are the only Westminster parliamentary democracy that ever created the idea that there are two tiers, that larger party MPs or their parties get money—”

In response to a question from Christine Normandin

“I agree with the member. Her numbers show that committees do not slow down our work in the House. I want to know if she has anything else to add.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Saint‑Jean for her excellent speech. I completely agree with her. She raised some points and shared new figures. Well, they were new to me, at least. The member showed that the committees are not an obstacle to progress here in the House. I thank her for that. Was there anything else my colleague wanted to add?”

• Little substance
  ?

  Question or comment in debate

  Signal 39 of 100

  Much of this statement went to praise, blame, greetings, routine procedure or general stories rather than reasons, requests or specific points.

  See full analysis →

“I want the member to tell us more about the government trying to recruit her to switch parties. The government said they never tried to do that to anyone.”

“Mr. Speaker, this is the first time I have heard publicly that the member was specifically courted and that there was an attempt to recruit her to cross the floor. I wonder if she could expand on that and confirm whether it is true. It is the first time I have heard it, and it is indeed shocking because we have been assured by the government benches that they never tried to recruit anyone.”

“I want to give a speech on this bill before the debate ends.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am sorry. I had to get my headset back on. I know I am late to say that I would like to give a speech on Bill C-25. If it is not too late, before debate collapses—”

“We should bring back the rule that gave political parties public money for each vote they received. This will encourage more Canadians to vote, even if they live in an area where their party usually loses.”

“Mr. Speaker, does it not occur to my friend from Vaudreuil that it is time to revisit what Jean Chrétien put forward as the most advanced financing laws in Canada, and there have been other points made by other members, to encourage Canadians to vote and to give people a reason to vote, even if they are in a so-called safe riding for a party they do not favour, and restore the per vote support?”