The Daily Program / Statements by Members

Length of statements: Speaker’s discretion

February 29, 1988

Debates, p. 13224

On February 29, 1988, Mr. Jim Hawkes (Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister and President of the Privy Council) rose on a point of order to call attention to the fact that Members had a tendency to exceed the 60 seconds allotted for statements. Other Members also commented on this matter.^[1] The Speaker made an immediate ruling, most of which is reproduced below.

Decision of the Chair

The Speaker: I, of course, want to thank all honourable Members for their interventions. The rule does, of course, call for 60 seconds. If one looks back over an extended period of time one will see that while there have certainly been occasions when the Chair has allowed an honourable Member to extend that time, especially if, at least in the opinion of the Chair, the issue was of some considerable importance, at other times, of course, the Chair has been more exacting.

However, with regard to the intervention of the honourable Parliamentary Secretary, I would hope that all honourable Members on both sides would do as much as they can to constrain themselves to a minute or less in the interests of their colleagues who, of course, will be prevented from making their statements if a number of honourable Members exceed the time allotted to them.

However, I take some comfort from the comments of the honourable Member for Windsor West (Hon. Herb Gray), the honourable Member for Ottawa—Vanier (Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier), and the honourable member for Kamloops—Shuswap (Mr. Nelson Riis). Their position that there has to be some flexibility shown from time to time by the Speaker with regard to the absolute strict application of the rules is, I am sure, shared by the honourable Parliamentary Secretary…

I welcome the comments which have been made from both sides of the House. I am sure we will all strive mightily to ensure that we conduct ourselves in here in such a way that we are being as fair as is reasonable to all other honourable Members. I thank honourable Members for their interventions.

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1988-02-29