Government Motion 8
April 17, 2008 - Changes to Standing Orders
Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Well, in this whole process I certainly notice what a difference a day makes.
Before March 3 we had the Premier of the governing party talking about how important private members’ business was, no night sittings, how we were going to be more democratic, how it was going to be more family friendly. One day – and that day was March 3 – and everything changes. Now we’re looking at changes to our standing orders that bring back night sittings. There’s no opportunity for members to go back to their constituencies and give their constituents the attention and value that we think they deserve. Very interesting to me what an enormous difference a day makes.
We have the Premier promising and saying one thing on the 2nd of March, and an entirely different thing is coming off that front bench on the day after the election. Let’s have a look here at what we’re talking about. I had gone into the House leaders’ negotiations, that extended over a three month period of time in January, February, and March of last year, that resulted in the temporary standing orders. There were three objectives that I had brought to the table, and for the most part there was agreement. They were to enhance private members’ business so that we would have a more democratic and predictable process, that there would be a better quality of life – what I kept saying: more humane, a more humane way of approaching the business that we do in this Assembly – and an improved budget process. So it’s very interesting to me to see the choices that the government has decided to put back on the table.
As I was saying, Mr. Speaker, we met for three months. The House leaders negotiated with great good faith, and I believe we had developed a very good number of changes and improvements and updates, modernizations to the standing orders. Those were tabled before this Assembly in the form of a signed House leaders’ agreement, and then we had our stalwart Parliamentary Counsel turn all of that into a government motion which came before the House and was open for a debate and, in fact, did have debate. Part of that was that at the end of the spring session, over the summer, the Committee on Privileges and Elections, Standing Orders and Printing was to meet and make some recommendations specific to the budget process to come back in the fall and then, further, was to meet again to review the entire temporary standing orders.What we ended up having happen is that the committee did in fact meet. I’ve reviewed the Hansard from that. Very interesting, the things that the committee raised and the things that they didn’t raise, Mr. Speaker. I would recommend highly to everyone that they get out the Hansard from November 26 and December 3, 2007, and read the Hansard from the Privileges and Elections, Standing Orders and Printing Committee meetings.
In the end there was a motion, in fact, sponsored by the hon. Member for Edmonton-Whitemud, that the temporary standing orders be extended to the end of 2008. The discussion that preceded that was that we felt these were actually doing pretty well and that we wanted to give them another test run, run them through another spring and another fall session, to the end of 2008. Imagine my surprise, Mr. Speaker, when we came back after the election. Again, the difference that one day made in all those promises about democracy and humanity and friendliness. One little day. We came back after that, and lo and behold, everything was wiped off the table. Then there are things from the government that they would like to put back on. It’s interesting to me what’s been put back on the table, what wasn’t put back on the table, and what was not allowed to be put on the table by the Opposition House Leader and by the House leader of the third party. You know, the government clearly has total control of the agenda of this House. For the backbenchers that are listening, keep that in mind because as much as they like to tell you that we somehow have this mighty power to destroy your lives and keep you away from your families, wrong. Total control over there. If you have a problem with when you’re getting out, take it to your friends on the front bench over there because they’re the ones that are controlling the agenda. They choose when the budget comes in. They choose how long we’re going to spend on it. They choose things like what these standing orders changes are going to be. They choose when the throne speech is. They choose all of it.
What we have being put back on the table here are things like policy field committees. Okay. I can see that with the increased number of people in the government backbench, there’s a need to have a bit more work for all those folks to do. And, oh, there’d be five of them instead of four, so that’d be one more position for which somebody on the government side manages to get paid. Very interesting with that. Also, the whole budget agreement. What I’d heard was that they didn’t like that budget agreement and the whole thing was probably going to get tossed. Well, no. In fact, we go back to the argument about how many hours of debate. Keep in mind that Saskatchewan, absolutely reviled by most members of the government and dismissed and trivialized and demeaned for being so backwards...
Mr. Mason: Not anymore.
Ms Blakeman: Members of the government, careful. Little old Saskatchewan spends 100 hours on their budget debates – 100 hours of debate. We were managing to look at 75 hours of debate in this Assembly, a whole whopping 75 hours of debate. Now we’re back to talking about 60 hours of debate as though that were a great gift to all of us. My goodness, isn’t it interesting what a difference a day makes. When I want to look at some of the other things that are no longer here, what’s been omitted? Well, one of the things that got omitted was the protection of private members’ business. It was important to me that we protect private members’ business. There are a lot of private members on the backbenches. What has happened is that private members’ business is only done on Monday afternoons and now under these new old orders for an hour on Monday night, but if for any reason something comes up and the private members don’t get their opportunity, that’s it. It’s gone for the week until next week. We already lose a number of private members’ Mondays because of statutory holidays, so it was important to me to protect that private members’ business. Guess what’s not back on the table. So if something happens that interferes with the private members’ business on Mondays, there’s no protection to bring it back on Thursday, which is what had been negotiated in those previous temporary standing orders. Very interesting what a difference a day makes.
When I look at the comparison between what is being put back on the table now and what was in the previous temporary standing orders, one of the other interesting things that has gone missing is tabling answers to questions in Committee of Supply. We had worked out a whole roster of how after we’d debated each ministry and we’d asked a number of questions – and this is a long-running concern of mine. We would be expected to vote on the budget and I still didn’t have answers to the questions that I’d asked in budget debate months earlier, literally four or five or six weeks before that. We quite reasonably had worked out a process by which within two weeks of a budget being up for debate, there would be an expectation that the answers to the questions that had been asked would be tabled and would be provided to the member that asked them, except for those ministries that were debated in the two weeks immediately prior to the budget. Obviously, if you were the day before the budget, there was no expectation on my part that you would have to, you know, turn around and do instant responses. We expected these to be thorough and carefully thought out and all of that. We wanted substantive responses, and this was to assist in that. Interestingly enough, that’s gone. So now once again we will be asked to vote on a budget, and there’s no guarantee whatsoever that we will have had responses to the questions that we asked in good faith in this House of ministers of the Crown. There’s no expectation.
There’s nothing in these new standing orders that says that you have to answer those questions before we actually vote on every one of those different ministries.
Another thing that disappeared, again, you know, something that was near and dear to my heart, was minority reports. This is part of: how much do we respect the position of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition and any other possible opposition parties in this House?
We heard a lot from the Premier before the election. The difference one little day makes: gone. The opportunity for minority reports or any other report to be included in any reports from the policy field committees: gone. It’s a way of the government being able to make sure that no other voice makes it onto this Assembly floor as part of official tablings and reports from committees. Very interesting: the choices that were made about what got on the table and what didn’t get on the table. I hear the House leader say that he hopes that all the House leaders can get together and continue to negotiate this. You know, I’m just the tiniest – no, not the tiniest; I’m mightily offended by that, actually, Mr. Speaker, because we had an agreement, a House leaders’ agreement, that came before this House. It appeared as a government motion. It was accepted into temporary standing orders. There was an agreement that a committee would look at this. The committee met, they made a motion, and then the government made sure that the report, which would have made it have effect until the end of 2008, could not be tabled in the Assembly. Now there’s an idea that somehow, having done all of that work last year and then it all got thrown out, we’re going to be just so keen to do this all over again. Frankly, I think that it also offends the members of Privileges and Elections, Standing Orders and Printing because that committee met twice and almost met a third time.
Dr. Taft: The first time in how long?
Ms Blakeman: Oh, the first time in 15 or 20 years. Those members all did due diligence. They all came with their concerns. They brought them up. The work of that committee has now been swept off the table. Nope, nobody wanted to carry forward the wishes of that committee.
One of the other things that the House leader had also promised to do was to meet with me and the House leader from the third party and meet with the Speaker to talk about QP, and we saw the result of that. Let me look at some of the other changes that are actually happening here. Now, I did talk about the out clauses. For those of you that are following along, if you look at that very beginning section under 2008 Fall Sitting, for the backbenchers that are new here, you start to get a feel for exactly how much the government can actually control the agenda here. This is about when there’d be a fall sitting. If they want to call it sooner, they can; if they want to call it later, they can; and if they want to cancel and get out of it sooner, they can do that too. All of those kinds of things are included in that section under 3 and 3.1 and the subclauses under that.
Then in the government motion under section 2, which refers to Standing Order 4 being amended, what we have is very interesting as well. What we have is that instead of starting the evening sitting – remember, we weren’t going to have evening sittings; it was supposed to be more humane and family friendly. Yeah. Well, those evening sittings that we weren’t going to have are the ones that we’re now going to start at 7:30 at night rather than at 8. Now, I don’t care one way or another; I can easily accommodate. But I know that for a number of other people you’ve now got a break that goes from 5:30 to 7:30. So you’ve got a two-hour break instead of a two and a half hour break. Some people may have been able to get home, spend some time with their families, eat dinner with their kids, certainly the people that are centred in Edmonton or around here. For those that had families visiting from elsewhere, you would have had a nice enough break. Now, two hours. You’re short by half an hour, and that makes quite a difference when you’re looking at breaks like that. So much for family friendly.
The government does love certainty. They do love certainty. They clutch it to their tiny little chests with balled up little fists. We have Oral Question Period starting at 1:50. So the government gets what it wants, but in these great House leaders’ negotiations nobody else gets to get anything on the table. We also have some issues around public bills being called. Oh, you know, the House leader had asked me: well, what were the things that I wanted that I didn’t get to talk about other than the things I’ve already noticed that were complete changes? Let me talk about a couple of the other things that I’ve continued to bring up in negotiations that we think are important on this side. We would like to see that there’s an adjustment to the private member’s bill draw because right now the opposition members are mixed in with all of the government backbenchers. I know how the Speaker likes to remind us that all private members are the same, but all private members are not the same. Certain private members don’t have access to, oh, say, government caucus meetings, cabinet meetings, standing policy committee meetings. We don’t have access in the same way that others do.
We think it’s important that the position of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition is recognized. I have often asked for the government to consider allocating the first private member’s bill to the Leader of the Official Opposition. I believe, if I may be so bold, that in negotiations I’ve been in in the past, the third party has also raised the possibility of having a bill for the third party in position 205, was my memory. That’s one suggestion that I had. Second is trying to get a better process for supplementary supply, which is sort of higgledy-piggledy. We kind of go on this odd general rule that if it’s over a billion, more than one day; under a billion, then one day of debate. One day, which is two hours of debate, for a billion dollars. How much does that come out to a minute or a second?
Mr. Snelgrove: One per cent.
Ms Blakeman: One per cent. Well, we have the President of the Treasury Board, who is very interested in getting involved in the debate, and I look forward to his contribution. We also have felt for a long time that question period should focus on Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition and questions from other opposition parties, not the government’s backbenchers reading questions that have been prepared for them by the ministry. I don’t see that that’s the point of question period, but clearly I differ with others in this House. There’s also a really interesting little section in here that I think should be deleted. That is in either old or new standing orders under 8(8), which is basically a kill option for a bill, which means that you can make a bill disappear out of thin air without ever bringing it to a vote. I think that section should be bowed out of these standing orders.
Essentially, it allows that before the mover of a motion for second or third reading of a public bill other than a government bill, so a private member’s bill, closes debate or the time limit is reached, the member can move a motion that isn’t subject to debate or amendment – nobody else can raise any problem with it; that saves them, right? – “that the votes necessary to conclude consideration at that stage be postponed for 10 sitting days or the first opportunity after that for the consideration of the Bill.” It’s a way to make that bill disappear into thin air. You tend to be in this stage of the reading on a private member’s bill toward the end of the sitting, and it’s a way of making it just disappear without there ever being a vote held on it. It’s a very interesting tactic. That should disappear, in my opinion, because if you’re going to vote something down, you should vote it down, not sneak it out of here under somebody’s coat. There’s a short list of some of the things that I think could be addressed or improved.
I know I have a number of colleagues who are eager to speak to this, but a number of other changes came through. For example, I know the government really finds written questions and motions for returns a nuisance, but for members of the opposition they’re an important opportunity for us to question the government. We can’t get answers out of them during question period. I’m often reminded that it’s question period, not answer period.
Dr. Taft: How many questions did we have today?
Ms Blakeman: I have no idea.
Mr. MacDonald: A hundred and six, wasn’t it?
Ms Blakeman: A hundred and six questions today done at rapid-fire pace, but none of them answered. We don’t get our letters with questions in them answered either. So written questions and motions for returns are a very important opportunity for us to actually pry some information out of the government’s clasped fists. There is an attempt here to manage those written question and motion for a return opportunities more by not allowing us to have debate any longer on questions that are going to be accepted but only on those that are going to be amended or defeated. Once again, the government has total control of what’s going on.
I also notice under section 6 a new escape clause which allows for the government to get reports tabled in here. Now, this one would have been handy because we actually could have had Privileges and Elections, Standing Orders and Printing Committee report into the Assembly in time to have it take effect.
Mr. MacDonald: Were you on that committee?
Ms Blakeman: I was on that committee. I presented to that committee. I’ve reviewed the Hansard of it, and I recommend that everybody else do that as well because, interestingly, what was raised with me as a severe problem was never raised once in those proceedings. Nobody raised that issue that is now such a terrible difficulty... [Ms Blakeman’s speaking time expired]
Thank you very much for the opportunity.
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