Please read the following letter sent by Elizabeth May to her fellow Members of Parliament regarding tomorrow’s election of the Speaker of the House of Commons:
”Dear Parliamentary Colleagues,
First, congratulations to all for the trust your constituents have placed in you. We, Members of Parliament, are a small community. We are the largest parliament ever with 343 people. It is a large parliament but it remains a very small village. We all have much more in common than in the difference.
To all of you elected for the first time, deep congratulations and an open hand of friendship. I have been working in this challenging environment for some time. Without sounding presumptuous, if I can help in any way, please feel free to ask questions about how you can best serve your constituents and make a difference.
The truth of Westminster Parliamentary Democracy is that, just as every Canadian is equal to every other Canadian, every Member of Parliament is equal to every other Member of Parliament. The Prime Minister is First among Equals, primus inter pares. So read our founding principles.
There are many ways of describing the job of our Speaker, but fundamentally our Speaker works to protect our rights. Chief among these is our fundamental right of free speech on behalf of our constituents and our right to work constructively in the business of legislative change.
Over the decades the Speaker has allowed that role to be eroded to accommodate the larger political parties and their back rooms and whips, as they try to control their Members’ free speech. In my years of parliamentary service only one brave MP, the late Mark Warawa, Conservative member from Langley City, ever complained to the Speaker that his right of free speech had been denied to him by his party whip. Our Speaker at the time, the Hon Member for Regina Qu’Appelle confirmed two important things in that 2013 ruling: 1) that it is the Speaker’s job to defend individual MPs and our rights, and 2) that only the Speaker decides who will speak.
Since the early 1980s, lists of MPs who are to speak, drawn up by party whips, are given to the Speaker, but as Speaker John Fraser had confirmed years before, the Speaker is not obliged to follow those lists. In the event, our former Speaker ruled that Mark Warawa’s rights were not infringed because Mark had not attempted to rise in his place to “catch the Speaker’s eye.” The Whip telling him moments before Members’ Statements that he could not speak was not a denial of his rights: https://macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-speakers-ruling-on-the-case-of-mark-warawa/.
I share this now because our first order of business Monday morning is to elect our Speaker. It is an institution that cannot exist without respect. The rulings of the Speaker are final. There is no appeal. The Speaker is not a person or a personality. Respect for each other and our institutions is the glue that hold our democracy together.
Two things – within our control – threaten the health of our democracy – the excessive power of party strategists and the unholy growth in power of the Prime Minister’s Office.
In truth, I would love to be your Speaker and try to redress the imbalance as party whips and partisan games – on all sides- bog down the work of democracy. I have however reached the inescapable conclusion that I cannot let down Canadians who know we need at least one Green voice in this place to address critical threats to our children’s future. I cannot silence myself no matter how much I would enjoy the experiment of using our existing rules in the service of democracy.
I know all those friends and colleagues who have written appeals to gain our votes and support. They are all good people. Solid citizens. I worry that none of them is up to the task of restoring Westminster parliamentary democracy to Canada. But I see glimmers of hope in conversations I have had over the last number of days. I will vote for the Honourable member for Hull-Aylmer. We have to put our hope and trust in the Institution of Speaker and support the next Speaker wholeheartedly whomever it may be. But in truth getting this next parliament to work, to be an example for children across Canada of how grown-ups should behave, is up to all of us more than to any one miracle worker of a Speaker.
With that, best wishes to us all in finding wisdom in the exercise of our duties of service to our nation.
Elizabeth May, O.C.
Member of Parliament
Saanich–Gulf Islands”