Parliamentary Privilege / Rights of the House

Contempt of the House: conviction on charges of election fraud; statutory disqualification on sitting and voting; right of the House to expel a Member; prima facie

November 4, 2014

Debates, p. 9183

On November 3, 2014, Peter Julian (Burnaby—New Westminster) rose on a question of privilege concerning the conviction of Dean Del Mastro (Peterborough) on several counts of violating the Canada Elections Act. While the Act stipulates that the Member should not continue to sit in the House, Mr. Julian maintained that it was the right of the House to manage its own membership and therefore asked the Speaker to find a prima facie question of privilege so that the House could determine whether to expel Mr. Del Mastro. Peter Van Loan (Leader of the Government in the House of Commons) subsequently rose on a similar question of privilege affirming the right of the House to determine its membership, but stated that the matter of suspending the Member should be dealt with by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. After hearing from other Members, the Speaker took the matter under advisement.^[1]

Resolution

The Speaker delivered his ruling on November 4, 2014. He confirmed the fundamental importance of the right of every Member to sit and vote in the House, as well as the authority of the House to determine matters concerning its membership. Accordingly, he concluded that there was a prima facie question of privilege. Since two Members had raised the same question of privilege, he invited the Member who raised it first, Mr. Julian, to move his motion.

Decision of the Chair

The Speaker: I am now prepared to rule on the question of privilege raised yesterday by the House Leader of the Official Opposition as well as the hon.  Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, regarding the right of the Member for Peterborough to sit and vote in the House.

I would like to thank the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. Leader of the Government in the House of Commons for having raised this, and the member for Winnipeg North for his intervention.

In raising this question of privilege, the Opposition House Leader explained that, on October 31, 2014, the Ontario Court of Justice found the Member for Peterborough guilty on four charges under the Canada Elections Act in connection with the 2008 federal election. Though the Act provides that the Member should therefore no longer sit in the House, the Opposition House Leader maintained that it was solely for the House to determine the composition of its membership, and as such, it should be seized of this important matter.

For his part, the hon. Government House Leader further affirmed the authority of the House in determining whether a Member may continue to sit and vote, and proposed an approach whereby the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs would study the matter.

As with any question of privilege, the Speaker’s role is to determine procedural matters, not matters of law, and is ultimately limited to determining whether, at first glance, the matter raised is of such significance as to warrant priority consideration over other House business.

The right of a Member to sit and vote in the House is of fundamental importance, as it is at the very core of the collective privileges of Members. As I stated in my ruling of June 18, 2013:

The right—in fact, the absolute need—for Members to be able to sit and vote in the House is so integral to their ability to fulfill their parliamentary duties that it would be difficult for the Chair to overstate the importance of this issue to Members individually and to the House as a whole.

Further, House of Commons Procedure and Practice, Second Edition, clearly states that it is only the House that can determine matters affecting its own membership. On pages 244 and 245, it states:

Once a person is elected to the House of Commons, there are no constitutional provisions and few statutory provisions for removal of that Member from office. The statutory provisions rendering a Member ineligible to sit or vote do not automatically cause the seat of that Member to become vacant. By virtue of parliamentary privilege, only the House has the inherent right to decide matters affecting its own membership. Indeed, the House decides for itself if a Member should be permitted to sit on committees, receive a salary or even be allowed to keep his or her seat.

As can be seen in this citation, the House reserves for itself a range of remedies it may wish to impose in a given situation.

In the present case, both Members who have raised what is essentially the same question of privilege have chosen to read into the record the motion they propose to move should I arrive at a finding of prima facie.

As always in matters of this kind, the Chair’s focus is on process, and my role is limited to making a determination of whether the matter is of sufficient gravity and importance to warrant being debated immediately.

In this light, it is evident to me that this is a prima facie case of privilege, and, as such, I have concluded that it merits immediate consideration by the House.

Given the rare and exceptional nature of the circumstances, I will leave it to the House to determine the nature of the remedies it wishes to explore.

Accordingly, as is the practice where two Members have raised the same question of privilege, I will now invite the hon. Opposition House Leader, who was the first to raise it, to move his motion.

Postscript

Mr. Julian moved that the House of Commons immediately suspend the rights of Mr. Del Mastro to sit and vote in the House, to sit on any committee, and to collect his sessional allowance as a Member of Parliament and that the matter of his status as a Member of Parliament be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.^[2]

On November 5, 2014, Mr. Del Mastro rose in the House of Commons and made a statement pursuant to Standing Order 20,^[3] during which he resigned as a Member of Parliament. The Speaker declared that further proceedings on the privilege motion were no longer necessary and it was dropped from the Order Paper.^[4]