[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
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[English]
The Chair: Order.
Mr. Bryden, I'm surprised you didn't pass Mr. Langlois on the stairs.
Mr. John Bryden, MP (Hamilton - Wentworth): He must have his own secret stairway.
I don't know whether I have much more to contribute to the committee than I did before, except that I'd like to emphasize a point I made when I last appeared before you. I think it is very important that whatever this committee decides to do with private member's business, it give a role for private member's business that is a real role such that something actually does result from the private member's activities.
The difficulty of trying to give it too much of a role in the context of what I was saying about the government's spending power is that the government will have to defend itself if private members' bills in any way supplant the role of government in creating legislation based on its spending power. That's a very fundamental aspect of our parliamentary democracy that goes back many years. I think it's an integral part of the correct functioning of the system that we elect a government based on the party system, which derives its ability to create legislation from the spending power granted by Parliament as a result of the budget motions and budget bills.
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I don't think private members' business should intervene in that area. I'm very much afraid - and I've heard some of the other testimony - that in our zeal to give private members a greater role, we might give them, again, more of a symbolic role than a real role. I think the Canadian public will be very quick to perceive if we give them a role of creating legislation that doesn't go all the way, or has very little chance of going all the way.
So I come back to my original point, that this principle of a private member's bill not costing the government anything be a fundamental principle of whether it be votable or not. If votable, then it should be subject to the possibility of going right through the entire process, directed primarily under those circumstances to amendments to existing legislation rather than creating new legislation that would cost the taxpayer money.
That's basically all I have to say.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
In fact, Robert Marleau agrees with you. The chief clerk has given us a process whereby, to save the legislative writers a lot of time and effort and detail, we do something that's like a ways and means approach, where it is an amendment to existing legislation; it's a ballpark type of motion. Then when it gets serious consideration in the House and a lot of support, it goes on into more detailed writing. So you and he seem to be on the same wavelength on that one.
Are there any questions of Mr. Bryden from the other two members of the committee?
[Translation]
Mr. Langlois (Bellechasse): I have no questions about this directly. Mr. Bryden, you have heard the testimony of other members during previous meetings. Certain members have suggested that, if a bill had the support of many petitioners - whether it's 25,000 people or 250,000, as some have proposed - , it should be allowed to skip a stage and be declared votable since it would fit in with a trend, a movement in society that has to be debated. What do you think of that idea?
[English]
Mr. Bryden: I don't think very much of it, simply because each member of Parliament represents the people who voted that person to Parliament, and I wouldn't like to see government bills subject to this type of constituency support or popular referendum or whatever you called it. If it wouldn't work for the government it shouldn't work for private members, and I don't think it needs to, because I think the counter-proposal that covers off that proposal very well is this idea of a member who has an important private member's bill getting the support of, say, 60 or 80 fellow MPs that he can bring before this committee. That is endorsement enough to make it jump the process of the lottery, perhaps, and make it into a votable bill.
So you don't have to - and I don't think you should - take the process of creating legislation or deciding upon legislation outside the House.
[Translation]
Mr. Langlois: If, for example, 60 members of the parties represented in the House support a bill, that bill should become automatically votable and not be subjected to the lottery process or other negotiations. What do you think of that principle?
[English]
Mr. Bryden: Yes, I think it may have been I who suggested it. I don't know whether 60 is the correct number. That's something for discussion. But I think there should be some process whereby the lottery process can be circumvented, where if some initial support is gotten from the House, then it should supersede the lottery process.
I'd like to make another comment, though, that pertains to that indirectly. Another thing I feel very strongly about in this whole process you're deliberating upon is that I wouldn't want to see the process of private members' business be too easy. I do believe we have to have some sort of competitive climate in the development of private members' business.
If a member feels very strongly with respect to a bill, he should be prepared to go to considerable lengths for that bill. If you make it too easy, then all kinds of MPs will be putting in frivolous bills or bills they don't work upon, to the detriment of all of us.
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Make it hard, make it competitive. There's no problem with respect to that. If we can fight for election, if we can fight in our ridings to maintain our seats, then we can also fight for legislation we believe in.
The Chair: You're a scrappier person than you appear to be.
Jack, do you have anything?
Mr. Frazer (Saanich - Gulf Islands): John, with regard to your 60 members, did you intend that to cross party lines? That is, would you require all-party support among those 60 members?
Mr. Bryden: Not all-party support. I think you're going to have to work on that, because it would have to be more than one party. Otherwise, your private members' business would fall into partisan politics.
I think an important principle here is that this is an opportunity for private members of all parties to be their own entity in working on legislation. Some formula needs to be found whereby it's, say, 60 members, but a sampling from each party. Now, how you want to determine that sample is something I think you really need to debate among yourselves.
A more important principle here is that it's a bill that's coming from the hearts and souls of the individual members of the House of Commons. It gives us a very genuine role to debate among ourselves the various possibilities for amending existing legislation.
That again gets around this problem of competing directly against government. Because we are a party system, government will always defend itself. Say the Bloc Québécois or the Reform Party members were to come with a private member's bill or motion. If it's exclusively coming from them only, there's always this imperative of government MPs wanting to defend the government against the motion no matter what its merit.
So you'll have to find a way to get the support for an individual bill that crosses party lines. I know this is heresy, actually.
The Chair: Thank you very much, John, as always.
Mr. Bryden: My pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.
The Chair: We're going in camera now, because the lawyers are going to answer some of our questions.
[Proceedings continue in camera]