Committees / Committee Reports

Procedural acceptability; limits on debate; time allocation; regularity of proceedings; rights of the minority; rights of the majority; non-interference by the Speaker in committee proceedings; conduct of committee chair; definition of precedent

April 2, 1990

Debates, pp. 10074-6

On March 30, 1990, the Standing Committee on Finance presented to the House its Report on Bill C-62, An Act to implement the Goods and Services Tax.^[1] Later that day, Mr. Nelson Riis (Kamloops) rose on a point of order to challenge the procedural acceptability of the Report, which, he claimed, was based on procedurally dubious Committee proceedings.^[2] The Member reminded the House of the question of privilege raised on March 21, 1990, regarding the conduct of the Committee Chairman, Mr. Don Blenkam (Mississauga South), and of the Speaker's ruling of March 26, 1990, on the question.^[3] He then put the following questions to the Speaker: Had a precedent been set by the Chairman of the Finance Committee in his ruling of March 20, 1990, imposing time allocation? Do committee chairmen have the right to impose closure or time allocation without debate or the committee's consent? Was the review by the Finance Committee of Bill C-62 tainted by irregularity as a result of the Chairman's March 20 ruling? Was the Report of the Committee still receivable by the House?

A number of Members spoke. Some challenged Mr. Riis' view of procedural acceptability with respect to the Committee Report, while others questioned the procedural validity of several of the Committee Chairman's actions and discussed the conflict between the rights of the minority and those of the majority. The Acting Speaker (Hon. Steven Paproski) took the matter under advisement. On April 2, 1990, the Speaker handed down a ruling, which is reproduced in extenso below.

Decision of the Chair

Mr. Speaker: On March 30, 1990 the honourable Member for Kamloops rose on a point of order to express his concern about the procedural acceptability of the Finance Committee's Report on Bill C-62, the Goods and Services Tax Bill.

The honourable Member recalled that on March 21, the actions of the Chairman of the Standing Committee on Finance, the honourable Member for Mississauga South, were raised in the House as a possible breach of privilege. These were dealt with by the Chair in the ruling of March 26.

The honourable Member indicated that since the Committee's Report and evidence was now formally before the House this was the appropriate time to challenge the procedural acceptability of the report which he alleges is based on irregular proceedings.

In his comments the honourable Member for Kamloops addressed a number of serious issues. Many other honourable Members from both sides of the House also presented strong arguments on different aspects of the situation. As your Speaker, I am aware of the deep concern surrounding this matter and the events which transpired in the Finance Committee on the night of March 20, 1990.

One side of the House argues that while the opposition has the right to oppose, the Government has the right and indeed the responsibility to govern and to advance its legislative agenda. From that perspective the Parliamentary Secretary to the Government House Leader (Mr. Albert Cooper) contended that the Chairman of the Finance Committee had the obligation to maintain order by ending an opposition filibuster and so permitting the Committee to consider and vote on each clause of the Bill and to report the Bill back to the House as it had been mandated to do.

The other side of the House argues that the majority has the right to govern, but that right is not absolutely unfettered. As the honourable Member for Kamloops and others have argued, through the rules it has adopted for the conduct of business, the House itself places certain limitations on the right of the majority and so ensures that the rights of the minority are protected. They contend that certain actions taken by the Chairman of the Finance Committee were in violation of these established rules and that the Report of the Committee should therefore be ruled procedurally irreceivable thus firmly establishing a precedent whereby committee chairmen cannot make arbitrary rulings.

Your Speaker is acutely aware of the sensitive nature of the questions raised by this case and of the message which this ruling will send to other Committees, both in this Parliament and future Parliaments.

I ask honourable Members to bear with me as I give you the perspective of the Chair on the procedural implications of the case before us.

First, a comment which I made in my ruling on March 26, [1990] at page 9756 of Hansard bears repeating:

The Speaker has often informed the House that matters and procedural issues that arise in committee ought to be settled in committee unless the committee reports them first to the House. I have, however, said to the House that this practice is not an absolute one and that in very serious and special circumstances the Speaker may have to pronounce on a committee matter without the committee having reported to the House.

For the record I wish to indicate that the Finance Committee has not reported on an alleged breach of privilege or on some other irregularity. It simply reported Bill C-62 with amendments.

The Chair must again reiterate that under normal circumstances the House is only seized with matters occurring in Committees when those matters are reported to the House. I refer honourable Members to Citation 76 of Beauchesne Fifth Edition and to illustrate this practice to the report of the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Committee tabled on April 28, 1987.^[4]

However, as I explained on March 26, 1990, the Chair is prepared to deal with extraordinary situations which may occur in Committees without a formal report on the occurrence.

First, let us deal with the primary practical issue the Chair is being asked to resolve, namely, whether or not the report of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-62 is receivable. I have carefully reviewed the arguments presented by the honourable Member for Kamloops and the comments made by the honourable Member for Kingston and the Islands (Mr. Peter Milliken) and the honourable Member for Edmonton East (Mr. Ross Harvey). I have examined as well a ruling referred to by the honourable Member for Kamloops, a ruling which was made some 70 years ago pertaining to the authority of the Speaker to go back to the proceedings of a committee in order to judge whether a report is in order. On July 1, 1919, Speaker Rhodes states at page 4313 of Hansard, and I quote:

The point of order as to the proceedings in the committee should be raised in the committee. The House is only seized of the proceedings of the committee from the report that it gets from the committee. There is no reference in the report whatever to any question having been raised in committee [and] therefore my ruling is that it is not competent for this House to go back [to] the report which is in its possession. The report of the committee is regular on its face [and] I therefore rule that the point of order is not well taken and that we are governed by the report of the committee as it appears before us.

I reflected at length on the Speaker's right to reach back beyond the report to the House and to the actual proceedings of the committee, and like Speaker Rhodes, I have concluded that it is not competent for the Chair to do soon a report whose regularity is not itself in question. It is important for honourable Members and the viewing public to note that none of the complaints raised focus on the Report of the Committee per se. In the present case, no one has complained that the amendments or the Bill were not passed on majority votes.

Despite pressing invitations to do so by honourable Members aggrieved by the events in the Committee, the Chair must resist the temptation to go behind the Report and ascertain whether or not other procedures were questionable. This would only invite a deterioration of the long-standing practice that Committees are masters of their own proceedings. It would place the Speaker in the untenable position of standing in appeal to any decision of a chairman of standing, special and legislative Committees, particularly in cases of high controversy and vigorous political debate like this one. This is not foreseen in our rules nor does our practice anywhere provide such a role for the Speaker. That being said I can only repeat the position I took on March 26.

Like the Speaker, a Chairman is the servant of the body that elected him or her. The Chairman is accountable to the committee, and that committee should be the usual venue where his or her conduct is pronounced upon.

That is the tradition of the Canadian House of Commons. If l am to respect that tradition, I should therefore avoid any comment on the conduct of the honourable Member for Mississauga South and let the Committee deal further with the matter if it so desires.

The majority of the Committee has decided not to report its dilemma to the House, and I cannot substitute my judgment for theirs.

However, on the matter of whether this case constitutes a precedent, I want to be perfectly clear. Norman Wilding and Philip Laundy 's work entitled An Encyclopedia of Parliament defines a precedent as:

A previous decision by the Chair, or a well-established procedure or usage which serves as an authority or guide when a similar point or circumstance arises in Parliament.^[5]

In the ruling of March 26 [1990, at page 9757 of the Debates] I addressed the question of whether a 1984 incident in the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee constituted a precedent in the following manner, and I quote:

What occurred was the series of events and decisions made by a majority in a committee. Neither this House nor the Speaker gave the incidents any value whatsoever in procedural terms. One must exercise caution in attaching guiding procedural flags to such incidents and happenings.

The same reasoning applies to the present case. The majority of members in a standing committee supported a decision of the Chairman. The ensuing controversy which continues to preoccupy the House and your Speaker cannot lead us to describe this incident as a "well established procedure." If the current rules do not adequately provide for the consideration of business, then of course, honourable Members know that there are avenues available for reviewing those rules and recommending changes.

On April 30, 1990, the Standing Committee on Finance tabled its Fourth Report, in which it recommended that the "question of Committees' rules and procedures as they relate to the limiting of debate in cases where a Committee has reached an impasse be referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections." The Report was concurred in the same day^[6] and, accordingly, the Privileges and Elections Committee studied the matter. The Twenty-Fifth Report of the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections entitled "Procedures relating to the limiting of debate in Committees" was tabled in the House on March 20, 1991, but was never concurred in.^[7]

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1990-04-02