Reflections on the Office of Deputy Speaker.

• Author: Blaikie, Bill

In comparison to the Office of Speaker little has been written about the role of Deputy Speaker. In this article Canada's longest serving parliamentarian and current Deputy Speaker reflects upon the different perspective that comes from presiding over debate rather than actively participating in it. He suggests the need for members to find more ways to listen to each other and to work together.

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As Dean of the Canadian House of Commons, it fell to me on April 3rd 2006 to conduct the election of a Speaker for the 39th Parliament, something I had done in the 38th Parliament less than 2 years before. In both cases the outcome was the same. Peter Milliken, MP for Kingston and the Islands was re-elected Speaker.

The election of the Speaker in this way, by secret ballot, is a procedure first employed in 1986, when Speaker John Fraser was elected to succeed Speaker John Bosley, who had resigned as Speaker in the middle of the 33rd Parliament. It was a procedure recommended by the Special Committee on Reform of the House of Commons in 1985, chaired by Jim McGrath MP for St. John's East, and later Lt. Gov. of Newfoundland.

The idea behind the new procedure for selecting a Speaker was to reinforce the notion of the independence of the Speaker from the government, and the independence of Parliament in being able to choose its own Speaker rather than having to accept whoever received the nod from the Prime Minister. And indeed, not all Speakers since the beginning of this procedure have necessarily been the ones preferred by the government.

In the 38th Parliament, in the context of the first minority Parliament in 25 years, there was further evolution in the nature of the chair with the Deputy Speaker being chosen from the ranks of the Official Opposition. It would remain for the 39th Parliament to create an even more novel situation. Although there is certainly precedent for a non-government MP being Speaker (Speaker Jerome 1979), there is no precedent for both the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker being chosen from the opposition. Yet this is what happened on April 5th, 2006 when I was chosen Deputy Speaker of the House, the first New Democrat to occupy the Chair, and the only MP left in Parliament from the McGrath committee that had pointed the House in the direction of Chair reform.

After 27 years as an active and aggressive partisan MP on the front benches of my Party, being in the Chair was certainly going to be a different experience. As...