Commentary: Commons Speaker needs to resign

On Monday, Andrew Scheer, Speaker of the House of Commons, killed a vote to extend hate crime protection to transgender people, citing an obscure parliamentary rule.

On Tuesday, Scheer ignored an obscure parliamentary rule as he allowed a government MP to make a mockery of question period.

As the House’s referee, it is the Speaker’s job to interpret and enforce many obscure rules. Scheer is a soft-spoken, amiable and utterly likable guy. And what he has allowed to happen under his watch is a travesty.

The House of Commons right now is too often an embarrassment. Every day, MPs and ministers rise to mindlessly read talking points without ever engaging in actual debate.

Except for Stephen Harper, Scheer has more power than any other person to improve the health of Canada’s democracy.

But he consistently refuses to step in. According to the Speaker, as long as there is some response — say, repeating the ABCs or singing a Miley Cyrus song — the question is deemed to have been answered. It is not his job to judge the quality of the answer.

Things finally came to a head Tuesday in question period, the daily chance for opposition MPs to hold government to account.

In response to questions about Iraq, Paul Calandra, the parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, repeatedly answered with non sequiturs about supporting Israel.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair pleaded with Scheer to keep Calandra, the Conservative MP for Oak Ridges-Markham, in line.

“Mr. Speaker, there are rules in the book about question period,” Mulcair said. “You are our arbiter. We ask you to enforce the rules.”

When Scheer refused to intervene, Mulcair called the Speaker out.

“Well, Mr. Speaker, that does not speak very favourably about your neutrality in this House,” he said. Scheer then cut off Mulcair’s questions for the day.

Although Scheer is a Conservative MP, he is supposed to be neutral in his role as Speaker. The rules forbid questioning his integrity.

But Mulcair had a point. Scheer blatantly ignores standing order 11(2), which says the Speaker can shut down any MP persisting in irrelevance or repetition. Reading scripted answers is also against the rules, but that is also ignored.

This is not the only way Scheer allows the government to duck accountability. In a series of rulings since 2011, the Speaker has refused to uphold the levers of accountability.

Back in June of 2012, Irwin Cotler, the Liberal MP for Mount Royal in Quebec, tabled a written question to the Finance Department about who it consulted for the budget. The response Cotler got was a glib reply of “countless” organizations.

“If this were allowed as a response, it would make a mockery of our written question process,” said Cotler.

But Scheer struck down his complaint.

That same month, he struck down a point of order from Green Leader Elizabeth May, who wanted to split the government’s massive omnibus budget bill. The Speaker ruled the government can throw whatever it wants into one massive piece of legislation, regardless of whether the sections are related.

Scheer shot down a series of points of privilege by former NDP House leader Nathan Cullen. One Cullen motion argued Parliament could not hold government to account because departments refused to give program-cut details to the Parliamentary Budget Office. Scheer ruled the motion out of order.

He has taken a strictly minimalist interpretation of his job. On Monday, the Speaker wouldn’t even allow a vote on hate crimes protection for transgender people because, technically, the House would be repeating itself. The House had already approved this policy, but it is stalled in the Senate. So Randall Garrison, the NDP MP for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, tried another route: adding it to the government’s omnibus cyberbullying bill.

But Conservative MPs voted that down during committee study and Scheer ruled that an open vote would duplicate the work of the committee. The Speaker could have allowed a vote using an “exceptional significance” exemption, but he deemed the matter unworthy.

Scheer defended his approach Wednesday, saying previous Speakers have ruled that they have no authority over the content of what politicians say, and he is bound by that precedent. His view of the evolving role of Speaker is apparently so strict that he believes he has no right to evolve it further.

Parliament has become a sideshow. If the Paul Calandras of the world refuse to act like adults, Canada needs a Speaker who will force them to. If Scheer doesn’t want to be that person, he should resign and let someone else be the saviour of common sense.

Original Article
Source: thechronicleherald.ca/
Author: BY PAUL MCLEOD