VOL. XLVII No. 1B - 8 p.m., MONDAY, MARCH 3, 1997

Monday, March 3, 1997

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA

Monday, March 3, 1997

The House met at 8 p.m.

MATTER OF PRIVILEGE

(continued)

Resignation of Speaker

Madam Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member for Dauphin who has 21 minutes remaining.

Mr. Stan Struthers (Dauphin): I would like to thank the member for Seine River (Mrs. Dacquay) for allowing me a few minutes to just conclude the remarks that I began before six o'clock and finished up then. I want the member for Seine River to realize something that is very basic, something that is going to be absolutely evident over the course of the next several months in the House, and I would dare say over the next couple or three years to the next election, that if she remains in the Chair, it is only because her colleagues and her party have had the Whip on them and that they have stood and supported her despite the logic, despite the question of fairness and in total, absolute, flagrant defiance and ignorance of the rules that govern this Assembly.

I feel sorry for the member for Seine River insofar as I do not wish upon anyone to have a job knowing that they are keeping the job not because of the good job that they are doing or that it is any expertise of theirs, it is simply because her own party is backing her up over and above all the rules and traditions for which this House has stood for years. It is not only a reflection on the member for Seine River but a reflection on those who will presumably later on in this debate simply stand up and ignore the wishes of Manitobans and ignore the rules and practices of the House.

I just want to conclude, Madam Speaker, that the one thing I can tell you from the Canadian Parliamentary Association's meeting in Halifax that the Speaker of the Nova Scotia Legislature, Paul MacEwan, would be absolutely impressed with, he would be absolutely proud of, the work that you have done as Speaker in the Manitoba Legislature. I would suspect that the Speaker, in disrepute from a summer and a half ago, would say that you have been doing an excellent job because what you have done is you have made his breach in the Nova Scotia Legislature look quite small and insignificant compared to the abrogation that you have applied to our House on behalf of the Premier of Manitoba (Mr. Filmon).

Thank you very much, and I will cede to the next speaker who would like to speak on this motion.

Hon. Gary Filmon (Premier): I am delighted to be able to be able to rise and speak to this motion that was put forward by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Doer) and assure you that I will be voting against the motion, Madam Speaker, because I believe that this motion speaks more about the lack of integrity and character of the people who put this motion forward than it does about you. Indeed, this motion is all about the Leader of the Opposition attempting to cover up for his lack of integrity, for his lack of commitment to his word. I might say that I do not blame him singly in this because I believe that in this effort he was under a tremendous amount of pressure from some of the new, aggressive young Turks in his caucus who forced him into a situation, which, I am sure, he did not want to be in, which was to go back on his word, to go back on a signed agreement, to go back on a change of rules that had been worked on for five solid years by many people in this House that predates the presence here in this House of many of the members opposite. [interjection]

I would ask the member for Crescentwood (Mr. Sale) to please be calm. I did not interrupt the speakers who were here all afternoon. I listened patiently, and I ask him to do the same, please, Madam Speaker.

An Honourable Member: And if he does not, what will you do?

Mr. Filmon: The member for Wellington (Ms. Barrett) wants to chirp away. They are afraid to hear the other side of the story. They are there, as they have been in the past, harassing people, trying to cut people off, trying to stop the business of the House from going on.

Madam Speaker, I sympathize a great deal with you because that has been the treatment to which you have been subjected now for almost two years in this Legislature, and it is a treatment that is fitting of the perspective that people have of the members opposite. It is no wonder why they are regarded as the poorest of all the alternatives in this province because of their lack of decorum, because of their lack of commitment to their word, because of their harassment of you and others in this House from the time that you have been in that Chair. As I say, I have a great deal of sympathy for you, and their actions speak more about their lack of integrity and their character than they do about you.

The Leader of the Opposition was woefully betrayed by various of these aggressive new people in his caucus who, I think, put him in the unenviable position of having to see his word absolutely trashed and breached, to have to see the work that was done by members on both sides of the House for a period ranging of up to five years be absolutely thrown away because they believed that was in their political interest, their narrow, partisan interest, to just simply ignore the rules of the House and ignore an agreement that had been signed and rules that had flowed from that agreement. The fact of the matter is that his caucus forced him into this situation, and now they take him that extra embarrassing step of having to bring forth a motion in this Legislature to try and justify their actions, Madam Speaker, by placing the blame and the responsibility on you. A terribly, terribly unfair situation and a terribly unreasonable situation that flows precisely from the actions of the members opposite.

They breached an agreement that resulted in a set of rules. They breached an agreement that had been worked on, that had been signed by the House leaders, that had been agreed to by the Leaders in this House, the member for Concordia (Mr. Doer) and myself. They breached an agreement that was to have, in the words of the member for Thompson (Mr. Ashton), resulted not just in rules reform but indeed in true parliamentary reform and, indeed, I will read the words of the member for Thompson in just a few minutes as part of this presentation, but there is ample evidence of the fact that members opposite created the situation that faced us in late November, created it for their own political interests and now have set up the Leader of the Opposition in attempting to justify it.

Madam Speaker, I think it is most inappropriate that the Leader of the Opposition, having moved the motion here in the House, then goes out and talks to the media about how we are only interested in having tea parties and other social functions on this day of the opening of the Legislature, when the majority of our members sat here through all of the presentations of the members opposite while their Leader went out for more than an hour to entertain his friends in the media to try and get his viewpoint across, his rather twisted and distorted viewpoint, I might say.

* (2010)

This story has a great deal behind it and all last summer members on our side were hearing stories about the great plots that were being cooked up by members opposite. The member for St. Johns (Mr. Mackintosh), with two former House leaders from the New Democrats, Mr. Anstett and Mr. Cowan, were seen here in this Legislature during the summertime and we were told about how they had this grand plan to break down the rules of the House and to break down the agreement that they had willingly entered into, that they had been a part of not only negotiating but a part of drafting, Madam Speaker.

Of course, the member for St. Johns stood up and, in his modesty, took great credit for the fact that he was the representative who negotiated and indeed advised Elijah Harper during the time in the House in Meech Lake when the Meech Lake motion was not able to be introduced or passed in this House. He takes great credit for that circumstance, in all of his modesty of course, because he was the one who figured it all out. Well, in typical fashion of course, people with huge egos and a great deal of arrogance, they recast history in their own mind. I listened to him, and he said, among other things, that Elijah Harper blocked the passage of the Meech Lake Accord by getting up on a point of order.

Well, that was not the case at all. Our rules, and this is the point, our rules called for notice to have to be given in order for certain procedures to take place, including the introduction of that constitutional resolution. Our rules said that without notice we had to get unanimous consent, and members opposite who were here, unlike the member for St. Johns, who has cast this all in his own mind in his hero role--he was not even here, Madam Speaker, because if he were he would know that the only thing that Elijah Harper said was no. Because at each beginning of procedures in this House on each day of business, the Speaker made the appropriate request to the House, and he said, do I have unanimous consent to waive the requirement for notice? And Elijah Harper said no.

That is exactly what we are talking about today, talking about rules and the obeying of rules. Indeed the member for St. Johns does not know that this whole issue is about the fact that his opposition party, that his colleagues willingly decided that they were not going to obey the rules of this Legislature that we had put in place unanimously, that had been the product of years and years of discussion and ultimately several months of negotiation that put in place an agreement, an agreement that said, among other things, that we would operate in the following fashion. This is the memorandum of understanding that resulted in the rules that we worked under, and that memorandum of understanding was signed by the member for Thompson (Mr. Ashton) on behalf of the New Democrats, by the member for Inkster (Mr. Lamoureux) and by our former House leader, the member for Charleswood (Mr. Ernst).

This memorandum of understanding said, among other things, that government bills will be introduced, printed, and distributed during the spring sitting. All bills so introduced will proceed to a vote on third reading and Royal Assent not later than the final day of the fall sitting, Madam Speaker, but, of course, the member for St. Johns (Mr. Mackintosh), who boasts about the fact that he was a Deputy Clerk in this Legislature and became, of course, the greatest source of information on the rules of this House through that process, then decided to go back and take law. In the process of taking law, of course, he became one of those people who decided that, of course, law was not based on principle, but the practice of law was a function of being able to find as many loopholes and as many ways of getting around the law.

That is the attitude that he brings to this House; that is the attitude that he brought to his caucus, and that is the attitude that is bringing his caucus down, because the fact of the matter is that in this Legislature, nothing works unless there is a commitment on the part of both sides to abide by their word, Madam Speaker.

Their word is supposed to be their bond but, of course, we know what this memorandum of understanding, which was agreed to by all parties, which was passed into rules unanimously by this House, we know that that word that they committed to meant absolutely nothing to them when they felt that they had a political opportunity, a political opportunity to gain some cheap votes. That is all that was behind their actions then and is behind their actions today in trying to make you the scapegoat for their actions, their lack of integrity and their lack of character, Madam Speaker.

The fact of the matter is that the reason that we are in these circumstances is that we cannot trust the word and we cannot trust the honour of the members opposite. I tell you that in all of life, there is nothing that is more precious than your word. There is nothing that is more precious than keeping your commitments that you have made. Indeed, members opposite should know that if you cannot do business with people on the shake of a hand, no amount of lawyers, accountants and consultants trying to put the words together will make it happen.

So what we are talking about is principle. We are talking about a commitment to keep certain principles, and one of those principles was, the foremost of those principles was that all bills so introduced will proceed to a vote on third reading and Royal Assent not later than the final day of the fall sitting. That was something that was absolutely dismissed by the members opposite because they have a few fixtures in their midst, notably the member for Crescentwood (Mr. Sale) and the member for St. Johns (Mr. Mackintosh), to whom word means absolutely nothing. They are people who believe that laws are there to be manipulated, to be gotten around and that words and handshakes mean nothing if you can find a way to turn it to your political advantage.

They regrettably have conveyed that attitude to most of their colleagues and now a majority of them support that position. They have regrettably put their Leader in the embarrassing position of having to bring this kind of motion into the House to try and transfer the responsibility and the blame on to you, Madam Speaker.

Well, it will not work, and the public do not accept it, and the public know them for what they are. They are people who cannot be trusted. They are people who do not keep their word. That is exactly why we are here today debating this absolutely phoney resolution put forth by the Leader of the Opposition.

I find it absolutely fascinating that we have had some impassioned speeches from members opposite who again attempt to recreate history, to revise their view of what happened. We had the member for Wolseley (Ms. Friesen), who said she believes that we ought to "get it right in the detail as in well as in the principle." Principle is what we are talking about. This is what the agreement said that was signed by all parties, that was passed into the rules of this Legislature. It said, government bills will be introduced, printed and distributed during the spring sitting. All bills so introduced will proceed to a vote on third reading and Royal Assent not later than the final day of the fall sitting.

Madam Speaker, you know as well as I do that if this matter were to go to court, if this matter were to go to court and the members would argue as they have attempted to argue, weakly, I might say, that this is not exactly the way it turned out in the rules, any judge would go back to the principles of the agreement. This matter was well spoken about by the member for The Maples (Mr. Kowalski) last November when he talked about the fact that in an agreement, if there is any question as to the meaning and the intent, people go back to the source document. In fact, the member for St. Johns (Mr. Mackintosh), as a lawyer, ought to know that if we were in court and a judge said, well, I am not sure what the Legislature meant by this particular clause, the first thing they would do is to go back to the source documents and to go back even to the things that were said in the House when those source documents were being produced.

* (2020)

I said before about what was said by the member for Thompson (Mr. Ashton) at the time that these new rules were adopted. I quote. "I just wanted to note that this is a time that is not used very often. The rules committee of the House has not met for many years, I believe, and I am certainly glad that we are meeting to discuss the consensus that has been reached in the principles of rules reform and to try to put the substance to that consensus." He went on to say: "I suspect it may not be as easy as it appears, so I think we have some work ahead of us, but I think it is a statement of commitment of members of the House generally, not just change the rules, but parliamentary reform."

That is precisely, precisely what happened, that we went through parliamentary reform that was to establish a new way of doing business in this House, Madam Speaker.

So that is why it is so difficult when members opposite go and talk to people who used to know this House, former legislative reporters from the different media outlets or people who used to be experts on the rules of the House five years ago or 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

This was a replacement of all of those previous rules based on a unanimous commitment, a unanimous consent to a memorandum of understanding that then translated into rules of this Legislature. What this is all about is the fact that one group in this House decided that it was in their political interest to breach those rules, that agreement, and that commitment of word and simply do whatever was in their best political interest. They are paying the price for it today. It is why they are running third in this province, Madam Speaker, because the members of the Liberal Party have some integrity. The members of the Liberal Party have some sense of what is the value of their word. The members of the Liberal Party have spoken out on this issue.

I just want to quote the member for The Maples (Mr. Kowalski) and some of the comments he put on the record with respect to the duplicity and the lack of commitment to their word and to the integrity of the members of the New Democratic Party.

I quote him from Hansard, November 25, 1996. He said: "I am not a lawyer, as is the member for St. Johns (Mr. Mackintosh)." He said: "I am a police officer who for 25 years has maintained rules, who has interpreted the rules in the form of the laws of Canada. Sometimes when I have taken my interpretation to court I have been wrong. Sometimes I have been right. So I have learned to be humble and not self-righteous and not arrogant in my interpretation of the rules to know that sometimes people wiser than myself--or maybe I have not taken all things into consideration, but in this matter, I read the rules and I read your ruling"--Madam Speaker, referring to your ruling.

He went on to say: "I have a strong conviction that what has happened here is that the provisional rules fell short. We know what the intent was and, unfortunately, when we drafted the rules it did not give a mechanism in which the matter could come to a vote. What I see your ruling as doing is giving a way for this matter to come to a vote. The member for Inkster (Mr. Lamoureux) said possibly you did that prematurely. I would argue that why do we have to wait till the eleventh hour? Why can we not conduct business in a planned, civilized manner? So I do not see this as doing it prematurely, I see it as looking at what was coming. It was inevitable what was going to happen"--Madam Speaker, I think that that is a very, very fair, balanced and reasonable interpretation.

He went on to say: "The member for St. Johns talked about that letter of understanding," saying, "that agreement was no longer valid."

Madam Speaker, today the member for St. Johns went so far as to say if we had an agreement--if we had an agreement, as though somehow history had been erased and that this was all a bad dream, that there was no agreement, that there were no new rules, that there was no procedure that had been unanimously passed in this House. This is how revisionist he attempts to be. It is shameful. It is absolutely shocking.

In any case, I will go on and say the member for The Maples (Mr. Kowalski) said: "Well, I remember when I was on the Winnipeg Police Association and we were in contract negotiations. During those negotiations we had a stenographer present during all the discussions. Out of those discussions, quite often there would be a letter of understanding drafted to state what the agreement was in those negotiations. From that letter of understanding, a contract was written, signed and agreed to. Later in the year, after the contract had been signed, things occurred which we had not considered or that the contract was not too clear of. What is the first thing we went to? We went to see what was the intent in the letter of understanding, and if the letter of understanding was not clear we even went back to the stenographer's notes on what the conversation was on what we agreed to."

Those are people of principle. Those are people whose word means something. Those are people who really want to find a solution that is the right solution to a problem.

He goes on to say: "Now there is no doubt in my mind--it is common sense, and as I say, I am not a lawyer, I am just using common sense and my understanding--that everybody in this House knew what we were agreeing to in December when we signed that agreement that at a certain point all the legislation would come to a vote. Unfortunately, when we drafted the rules we did not do it as well as we could have. But do you know, that is interesting because--although I will not comment on Bill 67 but--how many bills have passed through this Chamber that have been perfect? Is there a single bill that could not have been improved if we would have spent more time on it, and is there a single bill that there was not another word to say about it?"

I will tell you how explicit it was in the discussions that led up to it, the memorandum of understanding that was signed. It was preceded, I might say, by a letter of exchange between the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Doer) and myself, and in the latter stages when we were coming down to the number of weeks that we were going to have as the bare minimum and it came down to 20, the Leader of the Opposition said to me: You have to understand that we are giving up the right to forestall passage of legislation by using rules of the House to frustrate the process. We are giving that up, and no other party has ever given that up before, and he said this is a very big issue with my caucus.

So they understood it, Madam Speaker. Chapter and verse, they understood that they were giving up the right to use the process of the Legislature to frustrate the rules and to manipulate things to try and stop passage. They understood it, and then having agreed to it, having passed the memorandum of understanding, having signed it on behalf of their caucuses and having passed it unanimously, they then turned their back on their word and their commitment.

That is what we are dealing with, Madam Speaker, and there is nothing else on this agenda but the need of the opposition to try in some way absolve themselves of the blame and the responsibility for what happened in the latter stages in November in this Legislature. It will not work.

It will not work, because we know and the public knows that their word cannot be trusted, that their signed agreement means absolutely nothing and that they are in fact the cause of our problems here in this Legislature.

Madam Speaker, the member for Wolseley (Ms. Friesen) talked about her anger. Well, indeed, I had a great deal of anger in my mind as well as I watched the antics of the members opposite, theatrics I would say, planned, programmed and totally, totally premeditated theatrics in this House in the last couple of days.

The member for St. Johns (Mr. Mackintosh), of course, is the primary example of that. Never have we seen people in this House behave so atrociously as we did, so childishly as we did, in those last two days of the House. But what is interesting is that it was all planned and premeditated. It was designed for the cameras. It was designed for maximum public attention. Why else would that member have his family gathered in the House to watch his performance on the particular day that he rushed down from his seat and into the centre of this Chamber? Why else would he have them all there ready, waiting for the action? Why else but if it was not to show them what a hero he was, what a great role he had in this Legislature, and how he was now going to take over and be responsible for this House and its inability to deal with the legislation that he had committed to dealing with? Why else would he do it?

* (2030)

This is what we are talking about. This is the kind of hypocritical nonsense that we have. He has got his whole family gathered in the Chamber, in the gallery, to watch his performance because he is going to come down here and get on television and get on the front page of the paper for rushing down into the middle of this Chamber to threaten you, Madam Speaker, and to try and provoke me. That is exactly what this is all about. This is about the member for St. Johns and the member for Crescentwood (Mr. Sale) and various other members there on an ego trip gone wild.

Madam Speaker, the member for Wolseley (Ms. Friesen) talked about shame, and indeed there was nothing more shameful, nothing more shameful in the 18 years that I have been in this Legislature than watching those performances and watching a party that used to have some integrity, that used to have some commitment to principles, let it all go, let it all go for cheap political purposes. There was nothing, nothing that I have seen in 18 years that was more shameful than that. That is what we are dealing with in this resolution, and that is why every member of this Legislature ought to vote against this resolution, because it is patent nonsense. The fact of the matter is that the member opposite made some sort of impassioned plea today saying that he hoped that he would have an opportunity to speak again in this Legislature, that he would be given that opportunity.

The fact is that he, along with every other member of this Legislature, will have an opportunity to speak as long as they abide by the rules of this Legislature, the rules that we all agreed to abide by, the rules that we unanimously passed in the last session. Now they are gone, and so we are back to the old rules, and we know what the rules are. We will abide by those rules, and as long as we abide by those rules, we will be recognized, and when we do not abide by those rules, whether the person is on that side of the House or this side of the House, they will have to deal with your rulings, Madam Speaker.

You have been more than generous in your rulings throughout the past two years. You have been more than generous in your treatment of everybody in this House, and members opposite joke about the number of times, Madam Speaker, that you have ruled against my actions in this House, that you have asked me to withdraw comments in this House, that you have asked me--[interjection] That is right. That, I think, shows exactly the evenhandedness and the impartiality of how you have dealt in this House.

Day after day after day in Question Period they break the rules of the House. Beauchesne says very clearly that questions are to require only one carefully worded sentence of preamble. There is not one question that is asked opposite that ever meets that test, but you are generous. You are generous. You give them the opportunity to continue to flout the rules. You give them the opportunity to continue to have their way in this House, and what do they do? They find new ways to harass you. They find new ways to break the rules of the House and to try and provoke you, Madam Speaker, but you have very wisely and very carefully looked after your requirements in this House and your duties and responsibilities in, I would say, the most professional manner, and I applaud you for it.

Madam Speaker, the member opposite, or several of the members opposite, talked about the fact that they somehow did not have enough time to deal with the MTS bill, and that is what provoked them and that is what caused them to act out and to break the rules and to breach their agreement. Well, the fact of the matter is that in the fall alone we had 11 weeks of debate, and during that period of time the MTS bill could have been called any time that the members opposite wanted to deal with it. We had, I believe it was almost 300 presentations at committee--

An Honourable Member: Yes, yes.

Mr. Filmon: --almost 300 presentations at committee. It went on for days and weeks on end, Madam Speaker. So at no time was there any threat of attempting to close down legitimate presentations on this bill. But we are not talking about legitimate presentations. We are talking about a group opposite who had determined that they were going to breach the rules of the House, and they had a fixer in their midst, a former Deputy Clerk of this House, who was going to find them a way to break the rules that had been agreed upon, that had been signed by all three parties and had been passed unanimously by this House.

Madam Speaker, they talked about not having enough time. You may recall that when the bill was passed in committee we had an opportunity to bring it back into the Legislature and have several days of immediate debate on the bill in report stage. Every day, despite the fact it was the only item on the Order Paper, they denied leave to deal with that bill. So, if they were interested in debating it, it is absolute patent nonsense for them to say that they did not have a chance when they denied leave every day. They could have spoken for three additional days on the bill, and they did not. Their choice, and they now sit there and they try and say that somehow it was the fault of the government. Well, that is why they are not believable. That is why the public does not believe them. That is why the public is treating them with the kind of scorn that they deserve because of the way they dealt with this issue.

Madam Speaker, this whole change in the rules was about trying to bring on a more orderly, civilized and respectful process in this House. It was something that was worked on, the product of five years of work that was absolutely thrown away because some members of the opposition, in their arrogance and in their desire for political gain, decided to just throw away the agreements that had been put together by their colleagues. All of this was thrown away, five years of good hard work to try and not only reform the rules but, indeed, to reform parliamentary procedure. We have to thank the members opposite. I think principally the member for St. Johns (Mr. Mackintosh) and the member for Crescentwood (Mr. Sale) and a few of his other aggressive colleagues who, unfortunately, have taken away the tacit leadership of the party from the member for Concordia (Mr. Doer). They have taken away his leadership because of their own personal interests, their own interests in power, their own interest in trying to improve their profile for the future.

That is a great tragedy, Madam Speaker, because a great deal of hard work was put in by many, many people who were committed to improving this Legislature for the future, for future generations and for future members of this House to be able to deal in a civilized, dignified manner and in a respectful manner in this House, all of that thrown aside because of their own partisan, personal interests, I might say. The fact of the matter is, they ought to receive the continuing scorn of the people of Manitoba as they are getting it right today.