Opposition day motions tilt toward campaigning, away from oversight
Supply days increasingly spent furthering partisan agendas rather than holding government to account
It has become a weekly, sometimes daily, Commons ritual: An opposition MP implores Speaker Andrew Scheer to schedule an emergency debate on a matter of urgent public business — the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, say, or a particularly persistent supply chain problem affecting grain farmers in Western Canada.
After allowing the MP a few minutes to make his or her case, Scheer informs the House, in regretful but resolute tones, that the issue, while clearly a matter of deep concern, fails to meet the criteria for an emergency debate. He invariably suggests the member's party instead use its next "opposition day" to give the issue the attention they clearly feel it deserves.
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Cue the grumbling and muttered accusations of bias, at least in the more partisan corners of the Canadian political universe.
But while it's fair to say Scheer takes a particularly strict interpretation of the rules on emergency debates, he does have a point: opposition parties have designated days on which they get to set the topic for discussion.
These days, however, the Liberals and NDP seem far more interested in using them to turn the Commons into an extension of the campaign trail.
Tradition goes back to Sir John A's day
First, a (mercifully brief, I promise) history lesson: Although we usually refer to them as "opposition days," they were originally — and are still, officially — called "allotted" or "supply" days, for the remarkably simple reason that their very existence was linked to the House financial cycle and the business of supply.
Supply of what, you ask? Money, pure and simple: specifically, money requested by the government to run the country, as laid out in the main and supplementary estimates.
Back in the day — Sir John A. Macdonald's day — before the House would agree to release those funds, the opposition had the opportunity to present its case for rejecting the request, either in part, by objecting to a particular proposed budgetary allocation, or in general, through a motion withdrawing confidence in the government.
During that debate, "the rules pertaining to relevance were relaxed," according to "House of Commons Procedure and Practice," or as it is affectionately known on the Hill, O'Brien and Bosc.
"Members used amendments to the motion as the mechanism to raise their issues and debate them in the House," it notes.
"In addition, the opposition could use the threat of delaying supply to obtain concessions from the executive."
Owing to a "great latitude" on the amendments and debate, and a lack of time limits, this practice "reflected the ancient tenet of parliamentary government, which held that the Crown should respond to the grievances of the people before the people granted supply."
But, as O'Brien and Bosc acknowledge, it also resulted in the debate over the estimates themselves being squeezed out, raising concerns over a lack of oversight on government expenditure.
In 1913, the rules were changed to eliminate those pre-estimates debates, thus drastically curtailing the ability of the opposition to use them as a platform to critique the government.
It wasn't until 1968 that the House established the process that exists today, which divides the parliamentary calendar into three supply periods and designates a certain number of days — between 7 and 8, depending on the length — to be divvied up among opposition parties based on the number of seats they hold.
(In the current supply cycle, which ends March 26, the NDP gets five days, the Liberals two.)
During the recent minority era, those supply days were anticipated with a mixture of excitement and dread, depending on how eager one was to fight (or cover) a snap election.
After all, each and every opposition day offered the possibility a motion of non-confidence would be put forward, thus plunging the Hill into yet another "will they or won't they" psychodrama.
With a comfortable majority, the Conservatives (and media) no longer have that concern.
Opposition campaign preparations?
The opposition parties, however, increasingly seem to be moving away from using supply days to hold the government to account, instead turning them into one-day showcases to trumpet their own policies and competing visions for the country.
The House spent last Friday debating whether or not the prime minister should hold an annual First Ministers Conference, thanks to a Liberal motion coinciding with that day's premiers meeting in Ottawa.
For the Liberals, that doomed proposal apparently trumped an alternate motion that would have proposed weekly televised briefings to the House defence and foreign affairs committees on the status of Canada's military mission in Iraq.
If the Third Party had gone with that motion, it would have forced the government to either support it — thus bolstering the existing mechanisms for parliamentary oversight — or explain why it wasn't willing to provide such a guarantee.
Also, such a proposal, if worded correctly, could theoretically have been binding on the government, unlike most opposition motions, as it deals with matters exclusively within the purview of the House: namely, committee business.
The New Democrats arguably made better use of their first opposition day last Tuesday. While it was doubtful Finance Minister Joe Oliver would agree to deliver an update on the nation's books, that's precisely the sort of concession an effective opposition party should demand. But then they spent Monday using the Commons as backdrop for a thinly veiled campaign to shore up their lacklustre re-election chances in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Given all of the above, it's fair to say that although the Speaker could take a more expansive view when deciding whether to grant an emergency debate, he's also entirely correct to point out the opposition parties have regular opportunities to set the House agenda.
If they choose to focus their allotted time on furthering electoral and political strategies, they have no one but themselves to blame if some issues fail to make it to the Commons floor.
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