Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • Government House Leader Bardish Chagger's Letter To Her Opposition Counterparts

    Uploaded by

    kady23
    957 views4 pages
    Sent April 30, 2017

    Original Title

    Government House Leader Bardish Chagger's letter to her opposition counterparts

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Report this Document
    Sent April 30, 2017

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    Download as pdf
    957 views4 pages

    Government House Leader Bardish Chagger's Letter To Her Opposition Counterparts

    Uploaded by

    kady23
    Sent April 30, 2017

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    Download as pdf
    of 4
    Lends Goromat Yad: ganar VseareesStcomas Ge) ANGLAIS rine ‘April 30, 2017 Honourable Candice Bergen, P.C, MP. Official Opposition House Leader ‘Murray Rankin, MP. NDP House Leader Dear colleagues: Thank you for your letter of April 5, 2017, regarding changes to the House of Commons Standing Orders. Last election, we promised to bring real change to Parliament, and Canadians elected us with a ‘mandate to deliver on that pledge. We are committed to fuliling that promise and making the House of Commons more efficient, open and transparent, so that MPs from all parties can better serve the Canadians they represent. This Government has committed to modernize the rules of the House uf Curnmons in order to make Parliament more relevant for Canadians and ‘make it a better place to work ‘That is why our election platform made spectic commitments on the use of prorogation, the inappropriate use of omnibus bils, the strengthening of committees, improving financial ‘oversight and increasing accountability in Question Period. | have included the full details of these campaign commitments as background to this leter. These commitments directy responded to the abuse of Parliament by Stephen Harper and his Conservative government. We will not give the Conservative party a veto on the promises we made to Canadians. Before the summer, we will introduce a government motion in the House of Commons to implement these commitments. Cn the issue of changing the current half day that the House sts on Friday toa full constituency dy, and re-apportioning those hours to other days and/or to additional sitting weeks, we will hold additional consultations with our caucus. We expect that you will want to do the same. Should Friday sittings be e-apportioned to allow for an additional constituency day, it would be Important to reallocate those hours of debate to other days and/or weeks 2 Canada ‘As an alternative to time allocation, we had put forward the concept of legislative programming to better manage time to debate legislation. As you know, the United Kingdom Parliament uses this model, and a 2013 Procedure Committee report in the United Kingdom stated that programming strengthens the scrutiny of legislation. The adoption of this procedure in Canada ‘would have eliminated the need for time allocation, which disrupts the business of the House ‘and ts committees. Canadians elected us to deliver an ambitious agenda, so Its with regret, but fll transparency, that I want to inform you that, under the circumstances, the Government will need to use time allocation more often in order to implement the eal change we promised. ‘There were other, new ideas inthe discussion paper I released on March 10th. We offered these ideas in good faith to foster a dialogue on addtional ways that we could modernize the operations of the House of Commons. The Government does not intend to move forward on these items atthe present time, and we have informed the Liberal Members of the Procedure and House Affairs committee ofthis decision. Going forward, I remain committed to dialogue ‘among House Leaders on how we can explore these ideas and, as always, | welcome any additional ideas you may have. | sincerely hope that we can all work together to improve the tone in the House of Commons, and find new ways of making it more effective at addressing government and private member's business. Most importantly, |hope that we can make the House of Commons more accountable to Canadians, Sincerely, (Soret la Leader of the Government in the House of Commons ‘COMMITMENTS MADE TO CANADIANS rogation and Omnibus bills We will not resort to legislative tricks to avoid scrutiny. ‘Stephen Harper has used prorogation to avoid dificult political circumstances. We will not. ‘Stephen Harper has also used omnibus bills to prevent Parlioment from properly reviewing and debating his propesals, We will change the House of Commons Standing ‘Orders to bring an end to this undemocratic practice.* liamentary Commit We will strengthen Parliamentary committees so that they can better scrutinize legislation. Better government starts with better ideas. We will ensure that Parliamentary committees are properly resourced to bring in expert witnesses, and are sufficiently staffed to continue to provide rellable, non-partisan research To increase accountability, we will strengthen the role of Parliomentary committee chairs, including etecions by secret baot. We will oso change the rules so that Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries no longer hhave @ vote on committees.” Financial Oversight We will provide better oversight of taxpayer dollars. Canadians understand the importance of saving, spending, and borrowing responsibly. Our government should hold itself to the same standard. We will change Parliament's financial processes so that government accounting is more consistent and clear. We will ensure accounting consistency between the Estimates and the Public Accounts, prove costing analysis for oll proposed legislation, and require the ‘government to receive Parliament's opprovel on borrowing plans.” "jew plan fora strong middle clos, 30, hte bra c/wp-

    You might also like