The Legislative Process

Introduction

One of the primary functions of Parliament, arguably its most important, is to enact and amend the laws which impact upon the functioning of government at the national and international levels and, indeed, upon many aspects of citizens’ daily lives. Since the First Session of the First Parliament, both the Rules of the Senate and the Standing Orders of the House of Commons have contained provisions governing the passage of public and private bills. These written rules have been augmented by clearly established practices which have withstood the test of time and, taken together, have provided a framework for the passage of both routine and contentious legislation.

Speaker Fraser, due partly to his legal background, was conscious of the necessity to adhere to the usual parliamentary manner of proceeding and clearly recognized the necessity to operate within the boundaries of precedent where reasonable. At the same time, he continually demonstrated in his rulings the flexibility to adapt to new parliamentary realities, including new Standing Orders, when touching upon questions of process. Indeed, on a number of occasions, he chose to suspend the sitting of the House to briefly revisit some of the issues, before pronouncing definitively on specific procedural points. On one occasion, at the urging of the House leaders, he agreed to render a decision one afternoon and to return the following day to state the full reasons for the decision.

During his term, a number of highly contentious bills were brought before the House. He was called upon to rule, among other matters, on intricate and minute aspects of the application of closure and time allocation to bills; on omnibus legislation; on routine housekeeping motions and on intricate Ways and Means motions; and on the selection and grouping of amendments at report stage. These key rulings form the basis for this chapter.

In some instances, his rulings were based on century-old precepts; in others, he relied on common sense and modern political and parliamentary realities. In all cases, however, he demonstrated an attention to detail and a concern for the points raised by the individual Members, and applied himself diligently to explaining to the Members and to the public the precise point on which his decision turned.