On March 16, 2000, the Bloc Québécois moved a motion of non-confidence in the Speaker. Bill Blaikie made the following speech in the House about this motion. In it, he discusses the role of the Speaker and the Opposition's right to delay and debate legislation before Parliament.

From the House of Commons - March 16, 2000:

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I rise today to oppose the motion that is before the House and to make an argument as to why I think the motion should not only be opposed but why it is inappropriate.

It is obvious that there is a disagreement between the movers of the motion and the Chair and this is not unusual in parliamentary life. Mr. Speaker may recall that I have had the odd disagreement with the Chair myself over the years, both with the current occupant of the Chair and previous occupants of the Chair. I recall finding myself very disagreed with, shall we say, by Speaker Fraser at a time when I urged him to intervene to prevent time allocation on a motion having to do with free trade. He took a different view of what his responsibilities and capabilities were under the rules at that time. That was a ruling which very much favoured the government.

The fact is that what I had urged the Speaker to do on that occasion, if it had been done, would have frustrated the will of the government. However, the Speaker made a decision on the basis of what he thought were the rules, the precedents and the responsibilities of the Chair which had the byproduct of being favourable to the government. I do not believe the decision was made with the intention of being favourable to the government, but all decisions taken by the Chair have a byproduct. They either suit person A's strategy or person B's strategy. They suit the strategy of the government, of a particular opposition party or whatever and that cannot be avoided.

To suggest that because a particular ruling favours one party over another or one side of the House over the other and that is in itself prima facie evidence of partiality, is to either misunderstand the notion of impartiality or trying to make an entirely different sort of political point in the guise of challenging the impartiality of the Chair.

I think the motion is ill-advised. These motions should occur rarely and they do occur rarely. It is very rare indeed that there is an authentic feeling of the Chair having acted in a way that is not impartial and that would fully justify such a motion. There have been occasions in the past but they have been very rare, and I think they should be rarer still; that is to say, I think we would have been better off without this motion.

A point has been made and it is worthy of discussion. What we have before us is in some respects not just a particular strategy of a particular political party on this side of the House, but I think it is fair to say that what we have here is a manifestation of a growing frustration in the House with the way things have operated around here for the last little while.

The opposition House leader spoke at some length, almost to the point of having to be brought to relevance by the Chair, about many of the things that have frustrated the opposition in this parliament. However, they are relevant to explaining for the sake of the Chair why it is that this motion is before the House. In that sense there is some relevance because we do seem to be developing a parliamentary culture in which we can no longer delay the passage of legislation by debating legislation.

Delay has an important political function. Delay has the important political function of getting in the way of a government that may want to be doing something so fast that the public does not catch on to what it is doing until it is over. Getting in the way of the government may have the legitimate political function of getting in the way of a government that wants something to happen in a way that does not permit those in a civil society who are opposed to what it is doing, to have their say before the bill is passed either before committee or in all the other various ways that people find to make their views known.

Delay is a very important function of what it is that opposition parties do. At a previous time, when there was much more opportunity to delay by debate, it was a bit of parliamentary chicken being played with public opinion: Were opposition members holding up the thing too long? Was it finally time for them to shut up and let the thing go or did the opposition have a point, and should it continue to be debated in the hope that the government will change its mind?

Both opposition and government had to gauge public opinion. The opposition might have said that it had its say on it and that it should let it go, or the government might have said, no, it needed to let the opposition keep talking because a lot of people out there were really upset and a full airing of the issue was needed. We do not have that any more. We do not have the game of what I refer to as parliamentary chicken with public opinion.

We have developed a parliamentary culture where if something is really important we have time allocation right away; by right away, I mean within two or three days. A couple of examples come to mind because frankly this has not been a parliament in which we have had a lot of really significant legislation. It has been kind of parliamentary light. We have had changes to the Canada pension plan, Bill C-20 and a couple of other significant pieces of legislation. The first thing the government did was move time allocation after a couple of days of debate.

You are in a kind of catch-22, Mr. Speaker, that is very problematic for the opposition. If we know that the government has the intention or at least the habit of moving time allocation, then some opposition parties are driven to other forms of obstruction. We then have the government saying that we are obstructing the bill and that we do not really want to debate the bill so it brings in time allocation. If we debate the bill for a couple of days, it says "Well, we have had lots of time to debate the bill" and it moves time allocation. We kind of lose either way.

This is the kind of frustration that is now being visited upon you, Mr. Speaker, and unfairly. You are the prisoner of the rules of the House. You have to act according to the rules of the House and, unfortunately, the rules of the House are not always devised by the House in the best sense of the word. Many of the rules that the opposition parties find most frustrating and distasteful are not rules that were devised by the House in the best sense of the word, that is to say, by all party agreement. They are rules that have been imposed on the House by this government and by previous governments in the interest of achieving a certain amount of advantage for the government over the opposition.

This has a cumulative effect and you, Mr. Speaker, have to enforce these rules, and we have what we have here today.

The so-called genesis of the motion, the dispute about the limits of confidentiality and whether solicitor-client relationship pertains just between the member and the legal counsel they are dealing with, or whether it is between the member of parliament and the whole team, are things that need to be sorted out. It is not a question of assuming that the way things operate now in that respect are totally correct.

As a parliament and as a House we need to have a good look at that because obviously some members have some problems. They feel there should be watertight compartments where there is a great deal of leakage from one person to another or one element of the system to another. There seems to be no consensus as to whether or not that sharing of information between legal counsel and the table and clerks of committees is in violation of some principle or not or whether it is a practice that has grown without much scrutiny but which sometimes has negative consequences. All these things need to be looked at.

What is really happening here today is the result of the cumulative frustration felt by opposition parties.

Mr. Speaker, you have heard me make the point before that you are a prisoner of the rules of the House. Certainly what almost happened a week ago would have put you in solitary confinement, to extend the metaphor. Motion No. 8, under the guise of appearing to give you more power over what amendments would or would not be accepted at report stage, would have given you a certain power. It would have said that you had the power but that you could only use it that much. You would have been in an even tougher position than you sometimes find yourself in now. I know the Chair cannot say so, but it is not hard to imagine that the Chair shared the relief of the opposition when the motion was withdrawn.

I think you, Mr. Speaker, should actually have more power than you do. As I say, you have heard me make this argument before, but what is needed in the House is for the Chair to have more power, even more power over amendments at report stage, not more power over amendments at report stage as delineated by the government but according to your own judgment as to what is appropriate at report stage. You should also have more power over time allocation.

If we could arrive, as a parliament, at a place where we could agree that the Speaker should have that kind of power, then the opposition, it seems to me, would feel much better about this House than we do if we knew that in times when the government was abusing its power, that you as the Chair felt you had the power to step in and protect the opposition from illegitimate or ill-advised use of the power of time allocation.

I say with respect that was not the particular intention. What I am saying is in keeping with the spirit of the intention of the McGrath committee when we recommended back in 1984-85 that the Speaker be elected by secret ballot of the House of Commons. That first happened in 1986 when Speaker Fraser was elected after 13 ballots.

The idea of making the Speaker the creation of the whole House as opposed to an appointee of the government was so that the Speaker would be able to have more power than Speakers previously have had. I would say not out of any criticism of the Chair at this time but as a general point which I have made not just to you, Mr. Speaker, but to a previous Speaker, that I do not think that intention behind the secret ballot has been completely seized.

Speakers have argued, as you have and as Speaker Fraser did, that they need to receive more instruction from the House, that there needs to be more of a consensus from the House if that is the way the Chair is going to act. I respect that although I would still argue to the contrary.

I would hope that given that this is the consistent position of the Chair on this matter, that at some point as a House or through a recommendation from the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, or however it comes about, we could arrive at a position where the Speaker would have more power to protect the rights and privileges of opposition parties not to have debate shut down. I would hope that we could arrive at a place where delay is seen as legitimate and is permitted to happen in the form of debate rather than in the form of finding whatever procedural loophole can be found and carrying it to the point of the ridiculous just to call attention to the plight of the opposition with respect to any particular bill.

That calls into disrepute the whole House. It calls into disrepute the democratic process. We do not do anyone any favours by looking like a bunch of people who cannot manage their own affairs or who have to vote for 48 hours continuously and that sort of thing. This does not do anyone any good as far as I am concerned.

There is another point that I would like to make before I sit down. Unfortunately it is those kinds of parliamentary antics that get the attention of the media. We do not belong to just a parliamentary culture, we belong to a certain kind of media culture.

If we were debating something intelligently day in and day out, would there be anyone in the galleries or anyone paying any kind of attention? Would anyone say that a good point was made about a bill and then someone else would make a counterpoint? That would actually inform the public about what was going on in parliament, what good ideas were being exchanged and what the opposing arguments were. We could do that until the cows came home and no one would pay any attention whatsoever, but boy, if we vote all night or we have some kind of procedural spat, then we are all out there in the foyer talking about it.

The media thinks this is the democratic equivalent of worldwide wrestling or something. I have always liked wrestling but I do not like this kind. I would rather that we conducted ourselves in a way that was superior to the way that we have been conducting ourselves and that we had the assurance that some attention would be paid when we do conduct ourselves as I think we should. That is something that is far beyond the power of the Chair to change and seems far beyond my power to change. It is something that all of us can continue to work on.

In the meantime I think this motion is ill advised. Perhaps a reference at some point or a spontaneous initiative on the part of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs could look at the whole process of how amendments are dealt with when they are being drafted and whom they are shared with, where confidentiality lies, where solicitor-client relationship obtains, et cetera. That is all worthy of discussion, but it has nothing to do with whether or not you are acting impartially, Mr. Speaker. Therefore we in the NDP intend to vote against this motion.