In my column a few weeks ago I discussed the critical importance of the speaker in the next B.C. Legislature. I referenced an article that appeared in the Vancouver Sun, in which Rob Shaw suggested that B.C. politics was headed towards a quagmire.
The issue, he noted, was that the election of the speaker from either one of the two main parties would put a government in peril and make the speaker's role political rather than procedural. I suspect that Shaw had in mind the two uses of the word quagmire: "an awkward, complex or hazardous situation" and "a soft boggy area of land that gives way underfoot."
Before my next column comes out next week, the B.C. Legislature will be called back into session and the first order of business, before the Lieutenant Governor opens the Legislature, is to elect a speaker.
There has been a great deal of discussion about this election over the past two weeks and I thought I would take some time here today to explain a bit more about the complexity of the situation.
In our parliamentary tradition we use the term "by convention" to explain many of our rules and practices.
Our rule of law says that we will have a "Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom."
The U.K. does not have a written constitution. Their rule of law is derived from a series of statutes, court decisions and conventions that frame out what government can and cannot do.
Canada, on the other hand, has both a written and an unwritten constitution. We use the term "hybrid" to describe our constitutional structure. Unlike Britain, Canada is a federal state. Most of the written part of our constitution outlines the division of power between the federal government and the provinces.
In other words, a large part of our written constitution is about federalism: which level of government has power over which areas of jurisdiction.
But, the actual workings of Parliament (at the federal and provincial levels) are simply based on the British system of government: the Westminster model.
So we also derive our practices from statute and from convention.
Convention is a term used to describe practices that we accept but that are not "enforced by the courts because they are not laws."
The Library of Parliament document "Constitutional Conventions" says: (It) is generally accepted that the penalty for breaching a constitutional convention is political, not legal."
I raise all of this to explain why we are seeing the term "convention" as part of the discussion about the speaker.
First, parliamentary procedure does require a speaker to be elected. By convention the governing party provides the speaker who is a sitting MLA not in cabinet.
According to a number of reports, the B.C. Liberals will give up an MLA to become speaker so that Parliament can proceed. But, if the Liberals are met with a vote of non-confidence and the NDP form a minority allied with the Greens, the central question being asked is can and should the Liberal speaker resign and join back into the ranks of the Opposition?
The Liberals have said that they won't "prop up" the NDP government by providing them with a speaker. But if the NDP, as the governing party, provides a speaker they will be shy of one vote to pass important legislation.
This outcome would leave the speaker to break a tie in favour of the government and this action would go against convention which says that the speaker is meant to be non-partisan.
In the Parliament of Canada's introduction of the role of the speaker they cite John N. Turner's comments in the House when he was Leader of the Opposition in 1986. He said:
"You know what we demand of you, Mr. speaker. Perfection! We want fairness, independence, decisiveness, patience, common sense, good humour, upholding the traditions of the House, knowledge of the rules and an intuition for the changing mood and tone of the House as we move through our days."
Much of what happens over the next months and weeks rests on the upholding or the breaking of convention which takes us back to the statement that the "breaching a constitutional convention is political, not legal."
We are indeed in a quagmire where the boggy land is likely to give way underfoot.
