The House and Its Members / Miscellaneous

Status in the House: Progressive Conservative Party/Democratic Representative Caucus Coalition

September 24, 2001

Debates, pp. 5489-92

On September 19, 2001, Peter MacKay (Pictou–Antigonish–Guysborough) rose on a point of order to request that the Speaker recognize the 20 Members of the Progressive Conservative Party/Democratic Representative Coalition (PC/DR) (12 Members of the Progressive Conservative Party and 8 independent Members, formerly with the Canadian Alliance) as the “fourth largest political entity” in the House with the privileges and rights associated with recognized party status. After hearing from other Members, the Speaker took the matter under advisement.^[1]

On September 24, 2001, the Speaker delivered his ruling. He cited procedural authorities that defined “party” and “recognized party” as a group of Members that satisfied certain criteria—namely: a minimum of 12 Members; a slate of House Officers as official spokespersons; that they work as a cohesive unit, and that they serve under the same banner. He confirmed that since the Progressive Conservatives retained their status as a recognized party, the PC/DR Coalition would continue to enjoy the precedence afforded to the Progressive Conservatives. He added that the officers named by the PC/DR Coalition would be recognized as the Coalition’s spokespersons in the usual operations of the House and its committees, and that he could not find any procedural objection to the request that Members be seated together in the House. He noted, however, that the Coalition had declined to present itself as a party in the Chamber, and ruled that, in the absence of this, questions of precedence and allotment of time would be matters for negotiation between the Coalition and the four recognized parties. He concluded that he could not grant full party recognition to a group which disavowed that title and which was clearly an amalgam of a party and a group of independent MPs.

Decision of the Chair

The Speaker: I am now prepared to rule on the point of order raised by the hon. Member for Pictou–Antigonish–Guysborough concerning the status in the House of the Progressive Conservative/Democratic Representative Coalition.

First, though, I want to thank all hon. Members for their gracious cooperation with the Chair when the House met last week. This cooperation made it possible to make appropriate interim arrangements without prejudice to any decision on this matter, and facilitated the orderly conduct of urgent business by postponing to an opportune time full consideration of this point of order.

The hon. Member for Pictou–Antigonish–Guysborough referred to a letter he had written to me concerning the establishment of the 20-member Progressive Conservative/Democratic Representative Coalition, its member­ship and the appointment of its officers. Meant to function, as he says, “within the machinery of the House of Commons”, the Coalition seeks to be recognized officially in the House for certain procedural purposes. It is requesting “all of the privileges and rights” associated with recognition as the “fourth largest political entity” in the House, namely with respect to seating in the House, precedence and the allocation of time in all deliberations.

I thank the hon. Member for Pictou–Antigonish–Guysborough for having raised the matter on behalf of the Coalition. I would also like to thank the House Leader of the Official Opposition, the House Leader for the Bloc Québécois, the Government House Leader, the House Leader of the New Democratic Party and the hon. Member for Fraser Valley for their contributions to the discussion.

As various Members and many pundits have pointed out, the situation facing us is, in many ways, unprecedented, and I would ask for the House’s indulgence as I try to untangle the skeins of argument that have been presented.

Let me deal first with the suggestion that this is perhaps a matter better decided by the House than by the Speaker. In this regard, Members have referred to the 1963 ruling by Mr. Speaker Macnaughton concerning the fragmentation of the Social Credit Party and the resulting claims of the Ralliement des créditistes. That ruling is of some assistance and I will return to it later in my remarks but, like so many other references, it is not entirely on point. In the almost four decades since that ruling, our practice has evolved and I do not believe that it is inappropriate for the Chair in the present case to consider the matters that have been laid before it. Indeed, I believe that to do otherwise would be to shirk the Chair’s undoubted responsibility to protect the rights of all minorities in the House.

Thus, I find it difficult to understand why, if it was appropriate for the New Democratic Party to argue for recognition before the Speaker in 1994, it is inappropriate for the Coalition to put its case to the Speaker today. In my view the Speaker must rule on these matters as he did in 1994.

I draw to Members’ attention the words of Mr. Speaker Fraser, as reported in the Debates of September 24, 1990, on page 13216:

I think we have a great tradition of protecting the rights of minorities, and I can assure the hon. Member that the rights of minorities will be protected by the Speaker in a way that is fair and equitable for all other Members.

Before we consider the arguments for and against the case for recognition presented by the hon. Member for Pictou–Antigonish–Guysborough, let us set aside the many points raised during the discussion that may be of peripheral interest but that are not relevant—let alone illuminating—to the question to be decided.

For example, there were several references made to the definition and recognition of political parties in statutes, notably the Canada Elections Act and the Parliament of Canada Act.

Of course it is a long held principle that the Speaker does not interpret matters of law. Nonetheless, political parties are a fundamental part of our electoral process and detailed requirements concerning their registration are set out in Part 18 of the Canada Elections Act. The hon. House Leader for the New Democratic Party said:

I do not think the House of Commons can be completely isolated from what takes place outside it and from the status people enjoy outside the House.

To be sure there are political parties outside the House and there are recognized parties and caucuses inside the House and these may be closely linked. In matters relating to the status or designation of individuals or groups in the House, the House makes its own decisions without necessarily limiting itself to standards and definitions used outside the House of Commons. Definitions used in the House of Commons are not drawn from statute; they are drawn from the practice of the House.

After a general election, the statutory focus shifts from the Canada Elections Act to the Parliament of Canada Act which latter Act, for example, stipulates the composition and role of the Board of Internal Economy. The bylaws of the Board in turn govern the execution of those statutory responsibilities through the administration of the House of Commons.

The arguments advanced by hon. Members referring to either of these statutes to the bylaws of the Board of Internal Economy or to the Board’s responsibility for matters of finance and administration do not concern us here. The hon. Member for Pictou–Antigonish–Guysborough has rightly explained that he intends to raise these issues with the Board in due course, so these statutory and resourcing matters need not detain us.

The hon. Member for Winnipeg–Transcona implied in argument that recognition by the House involved an application of the rules surrounding a marriage ceremony. The hon. Member is an expert in holy matrimony with wide experience in performing marriages. His comments were of great assistance to a Speaker untutored in these matters. However, I would remind him that even common-law relationships sometimes attract a sort of legal recognition. Society may recognize certain things. The House is another matter.

Let us turn to the crux of the problem, that is, whether House of Commons procedure will permit the recognition of what the hon. Member for Pictou–Antigonish–Guysborough has described as “the fourth largest political entity” in the House, the PC/DR Coalition.

It might be helpful to return to first principles here, because so many extraneous elements have been invoked on this question in the widespread speculation that this controversial, highly publicized situation has provoked.

Let us return to the opening of a Parliament and the convening of a newly elected House. Once a general election has been held and the writs of election issued, attention turns from external political realities to the internal realities of a new Parliament. The political focus shifts from the electors and the election to the elected MPs sitting in the House of Commons and its committees.

Deliberations in the Chamber and in committee are governed by the Standing Orders and by House procedure and practice. In these procedural authorities, the terms “party” or “recognized party” refer to a group of Members with a number of identifying features: first, there are at least 12 Members in the group; second, they appoint a slate of House officers as their official spokespersons; third, they work as a cohesive unit; and fourth, they serve under the same banner.

In a newly constituted House for the duration of a Parliament, each individual for whom a writ of election has been received will work as an MP usually within a party. The machinery of the party caucus, that is, its officers, staff and research bureau, will serve to organize each party’s work in the House and in committee.

During the course of a Parliament we have seen Members change parties, Members suspended from caucus and Members expelled from caucus. Each Member was elected to the House. Each Member elected to the House may live out the vicissitudes of that Parliament as he or she sees fit. Indeed, each Member may self-designate his or her affiliations or lack thereof.

In this regard, a basic question is how a Member will be identified. It is an accepted part of our practice that individual Members and groups are permitted to select the manner in which they will be designated for parliamentary purposes. As Mr. Speaker Fraser stated in the Debates of December 13, 1990, on page 16705:

—the Chair must advise that it can find no prescription limiting the designations inserted under political affiliation in the Appendix to Debates to those parties officially recognized as such pursuant to the Canada Elections Act.

The absence of such a limiting prescription must be weighed against the combined weight of our past practice in this regard and our longstanding tradition of respecting the word and legitimate demands to self-definition of individual Members.

In the case before us we have 12 Members of the recognized Progressive Conservative Party and 8 independent Members who comprise the Democratic Representative Caucus, in total a group of 20 MPs who have identified themselves to the Speaker as Members of the Progressive Conservative/Democratic Representative, or PC/DR Coalition. This is the title of the caucus under which they will henceforth be known.

The Coalition composed of these 20 Members has further announced that it will function as a group for parliamentary purposes and has informed the Chair of its slate of officers. Here again these are matters that the House has always left entirely to the discretion of MPs. They identify themselves as individuals and are free to identify themselves as a group. Their spokespersons are theirs to select. Neither the Speaker nor other Members has a say in such matters.

Therefore I have concluded that the officers named by the PC/DR Coalition will be recognized as the Coalition’s spokespersons in the usual operations of the House and its committees. They are: the Rt. Hon. Member for Calgary Centre as Leader; the hon. Member for Fraser Valley as Deputy Leader; the hon. Member for Pictou–Antigonish–Guysborough as House Leader; the hon. Member for Prince George–Peace River as Whip; and the hon. Member for Edmonton North as Caucus Chair.

Just as I must conclude that the Coalition’s officers must be recognized, I can find no procedural objection to the request that Members who share the PC/DR designation and the leadership of these officers should be seated together in the configuration that their Whip may determine. In my view this is not a matter where the Chair has any grounds to object or to intervene.

However what I have granted to this point is not all of what is being sought. On the basis that it possesses more than the basic 12 Members required for status as a recognized party in the House, the Coalition seeks additional recognition. Specifically it argues that by virtue of its 20-member composition, the PC/DR Coalition should have precedence over the 13-member New Democratic Party. In other words, the Coalition seeks to be recognized as the fourth party in the House, or seen another way, as the third party in opposition.

It is here that the Chair encounters considerable difficulty. Earlier I listed what can be extrapolated as the hallmarks of a party or a recognized party under our procedure and practice, namely at least 12 Members with a set of House officers working as a cohesive unit, serving under the same banner.

My problem is simple. By its very name the Coalition acknowledges that it is a composite entity. An analysis of the arguments finds it successfully passes the first two tests set by our practice for any recognized party, and to the extent that a single set of House officers are its spokespersons, it can be said that it meets the third criterion of working as a cohesive unit.

Yet the Coalition has declined to present itself as a party in this place. It may speak as a party does, it may operate as a party does, but until such time as its Members present themselves as a party, the recognition the Coalition seeks with regard to precedence and allocation of time must remain at best a matter for negotiation between the Coalition and the four recognized parties.

In discussing the process of debate, Marleau and Montpetit states at page 506:

The Speaker subsequently “sees” Members from opposite sides of the House in a reasonable rotation, bearing in mind the membership of the various recognized parties in the House, the right of reply, and the nature of the proceedings.

In determining the allocation of precedence and time during debate, during Question Period and Statements by Members, in the distribution of allotted days and the composition of committees, the Speaker receives the advice of the House Leaders and Whips who negotiate agreements on these matters based on party strength in the House. Agreements reached through the negotiations of House officers greatly facilitate the work of all Members here in the House and in committee and are of immeasurable value to the Chair in its presiding role.

For such negotiations to be genuine, all officers concerned must be given an equal opportunity to participate. I am sure that the hon. House Leader and the other officers of the PC/DR Coalition seek no more than this and I know they will be afforded the usual courtesies by their counterparts. Only under the most extreme circumstances where the fundamental rights of Members were threatened would the Speaker feel compelled to intervene in such matters.

I remind the House of the words of Mr. Speaker Macnaughton in the Journals of September 30, 1963, at page 387:

It is not (a situation) where the Speaker ought by himself to take a position where any group of Members might feel that their interests as a group or a party have been prejudiced. Nor should the Speaker be put in a position where he must decide, to the advantage or to the disadvantage of any group or party, matters affecting the character or existence of a party, for this surely would signify that the Speaker had taken what was almost a political decision—

In summary then, after careful scrutiny of all our precedents and of various analogous situations in the United Kingdom and in the Commonwealth, the Chair has concluded that our practice has uniformly dealt not with the recognition of groups but with that of parties.

The Chair acknowledges and recognizes the PC/DR Coalition as the regrouping of, on the one hand, a recognized party, and on the other, a group of dissident Members, together operating as a single caucus. The officers of the Coalition will therefore be recognized as the official spokespersons for the Coalition and the members of the Coalition will be permitted to sit together in any arrangement they wish. Since the Progressive Conservatives retain their status as a recognized party, the PC/DR Coalition will continue to enjoy the precedence afforded to the Progressive Conservatives.

However, the Chair is unable at this time to grant full party recognition to the PC/DR Coalition since I cannot extend recognition as a party to a group which disavows that title and which is clearly an amalgam of a party and a group of independent MPs.

If circumstances change, the Chair will of course be prepared to revisit this question.

I thank hon. Members for the contributions they made on this difficult and important question and of course for the free advice offered over the past few months by our media.