The Decision-Making Process

Introduction

Although the House of Commons is usually thought of as a deliberative assembly, it is fundamentally a decision-making body. Its rules and practices are designed to allow its Members to adopt or reject the proposals before it.

The will of the House is ascertained by means of a vote, which is the final step in the decision-making process. Once debate on a motion has concluded, the Speaker puts the question and the House pronounces itself on the motion. Some votes are recorded divisions, which occur if five or more Members rise to signal a demand for a recorded vote. Four of the six decisions presented in this chapter relate primarily to voting, particularly to recorded divisions, with one ruling pertaining to the proposed division of a motion and another to the moving of a motion.

The rules and conventions governing debate and the decision-making process ensure that the House can adopt or reject proposals under consideration in an orderly fashion. The Speaker and the Chair Occupants are, of course, responsible for maintaining order and decorum during the entire decision-making process, and for deciding all questions of order. A number of the decisions included in this chapter pertain to decorum during recorded divisions. In some of his decisions, Speaker Scheer reminded Members that, for their votes to be recorded, they must take their seats and remain seated until the results of the vote were announced.

Speaker Scheer used his casting vote one time – in favour of a motion at second reading and in keeping with tradition. The Speaker must be impartial at all times and cannot participate in debate or vote in the House but, in the rare instances of an equality of voices, must break the tie using the casting vote. When this occurs, the Speaker normally votes to maintain the status quo and may explain briefly why the vote was cast in the way that it was.