Opposition MPs argue proposed parliament changes threaten democracy

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Opposition MPs are pushing back on the Liberal government's proposed changes to rules in the House of Commons.

They say the move is a thinly-veiled power grab.

The sweeping changes include everything from eliminating Friday sittings in the House and restricting omnibus legislation, to limiting speeches in committee and prohibiting the opposition from stalling, delaying or even completely preventing a vote — in other words  — no more filibustering.

Trudeau on changing the rules of the Commons

8 years ago

Duration 1:10

Trudeau on changing the rules of the Commons

But opposition parties aren't backing down.

"We believe that we can modernize this place. But we will not give a veto to the Conservatives over our campaign commitments,"  said Liberal government house leader Bardish Chagger in Question Period, April 4.

Liberal MP for Newfoundland and Labrador riding of Coast of Bays Central-Notre Dame, Scott Simms tells The Current's guest host Piya Chattopadhyay that one of the proposals is to have the prime minister dedicated to one day a week for questions.

"And that doesn't preclude him from going to the rest either. And that was the whole point ...  we talked about having him accountable, and future prime ministers accountable for that duration."

Simms explains why the Liberals think eliminating half-day Friday sittings from the House of Commons.

"We want either one of two things. We either want to make Fridays a constituency day and you allot the hours missed, those three or four hours to other parts of the week or month, or you make Friday a full day and make it a useful one."

House Leader for the NDP Murray Rankin argues one of the main issues is the process of how these changes were presented.

"Virtually always when you change the rules of democracy you do so with the support and consent of the other parties. It's that which is really problematic here."

Rankin says there are ideas worth discussion but others he says are "nothing more than centralizing power for the government of the day." 

"For example, one idea would be to have the parliamentary secretary who is essentially almost  cabinet minister be a member of the committees."  

Rankin tells Chattopadhyay "the devil's in the details of these changes."

"This isn't just government policy like whether we're going to continue mail delivery or the like, this is about the rules of our democracy."

Conservative MP for Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston, Ont., Scott Reid takes real issue with reducing the amount of power available to the opposition parties in order to slow down the process of approving government measures.

He questions the wisdom of reducing the amount of time one can address an issue in committee to 10 minutes.

"The idea that the government can say 'look the legislation must pass through each of its stages including committee within a certain amount of time, which is effectively automatic-time -allocation on every step of every bill and measure ... would be extremely problematic."

For critics who want to see a change in pace on government business, Reid argues the role of parliament is not to speed up legislation.

"If the public is sympathetic to what the opposition is doing as it slows things down, that will be a strong signal to the government to back off a bit," Reid tells Chattopadhyay.

"And if the public says 'no the opposition is being abusive of its powers to slow things down',  the public will react to that and the opposition will back off."

Listen to the full segment at the top of this web post.

This segment was produced by The Current's Kristin Nelson and Samira Mohyeddin.