The Liberal government has proposed significant and controversial changes to Parliament, including something called the “Prime Minister’s Question Period,” where the prime minister will be obliged to attend question period in the House of Commons at least one day a week and then answer all questions from all MPs, CTV News has learned.
The Liberal government has proposed significant and controversial changes to Parliament, including something called the “Prime Minister’s Question Period,” where the prime minister will be obliged to attend question period in the House of Commons at least one day a week and then answer all questions from all MPs, CTV News has learned.
The Liberal government has proposed significant and controversial changes to Parliament, including something called the “Prime Minister’s Question Period,” where the prime minister will be obliged to attend question period in the House of Commons at least one day a week and then answer all questions from all MPs, CTV News has learned.
The Liberal government has proposed significant and controversial changes to Parliament, including something called the “Prime Minister’s Question Period,” where the prime minister will be obliged to attend question period in the House of Commons at least one day a week and then answer all questions from all MPs, CTV News has learned.
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‘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.”
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