Being Speaker isn’t easy — and it just got a lot harder

The address to a joint session of the House of Commons and Senate last week by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was among the most solemn and poignant moments in the history of Parliament.

Everything since then has been anything but.

When the House convened on Wednesday afternoon for question period, the proceedings began with Deputy Speaker Chris D'Entremont — occupying the chair in Anthony Rota's absence — beseeching MPs to conduct themselves with decorum. A day earlier, the deputy leader of the Official Opposition had called the Government House leader a "disgrace" and the Liberals had demanded an apology.

"I would suggest to the House that it is incumbent on all members to bolster their efforts in being respectful and courteous in their interventions," D'Entremont delicately suggested.

If nothing else, the House got through the next 45 minutes without anyone calling anyone else a "disgrace."

The Conservatives had been demanding that the prime minister apologize for the fact that Rota's honoured guest last Friday — Yaroslav Hunka, who turned out to be a former member of a volunteer unit in Hitler's forces — had caused such embarrassment and offence.

And shortly before question period, the prime minister stood before the cameras outside the chamber and expressed "how deeply sorry Canada is for the situation this put President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian delegation in."

WATCH: Trudeau apologizes on behalf of Parliament

Trudeau apologizes on behalf of Parliament for tribute to member of Nazi unit

15 hours ago

Duration 1:22

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed Parliament to apologize for MPs honouring Yaroslav Hunka, a Ukrainian who fought with the Nazis, adding it was a 'terrible mistake.'

Once question period began, Trudeau stood in the Commons and offered his "unreserved" apology "on behalf of all of us in this House."

This was somewhat awkward. The prime minister can apologize on behalf of the government of Canada, or on behalf of the country itself, but it's not really for him to apologize on behalf of MPs.

But it was an apology.

The blame game

The Conservatives were still unsatisfied. The Official Opposition wanted Trudeau to apologize not on behalf of everyone, but for what they said was his "personal responsibility" for Hunka's presence in the visitors' galleries.

Rota already has said that the decision to invite Hunka, a constituent, was his and his alone. And the Speaker's office has said that no guest list was ever shared with the Prime Minister's Office. In fact, according to the office, no guest list is ever shared with the government.

But from the moment it became clear who Rota had invited, the Conservatives have been enthusiastically committed to the idea that it was somehow Trudeau's fault. And they have pursued a couple of theories in hopes of making that case.

One theory rests on the fact that the director of the Parliamentary Protective Service — the force entrusted with the security of the parliamentary precinct — is a member of the RCMP who reports on operational matters to the commissioner of the RCMP (who ultimately reports to the minister of public safety, who reports to the prime minister).

But the Speakers of the House and Senate are, by law, responsible for the PPS. The service's own website states that it is "a separate and distinct organization from the RCMP and the Government of Canada."

Parliament is in charge of its own security. That is no small thing — it's part and parcel of protecting the vital principle of parliamentary sovereignty. The House of Commons and Senate are not arms of the government. They are democratic institutions unto themselves — and must be, if Parliament is to fulfil its duty of holding the government to account.

But Poilievre also suggested, during a scrum with reporters on Tuesday, that he did not view Hunka himself as a security threat. So it's not clear why any security or intelligence agency would have flagged the 98-year-old anyway.

WATCH: Poilievre presses Trudeau on visit to Parliament by former Nazi soldier

Poilievre calls on PM to 'take responsibility' for tribute to man who fought with Nazi unit

19 hours ago

Duration 2:42

The Conservative leader says Justin Trudeau needs to apologize after a Ukrainian veteran who fought with a Nazi unit was invited to Parliament for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's speech.

On Wednesday, Poilievre suggested that diplomatic officials in the government should have vetted Parliament's guest list for a visit by a foreign dignitary. Even that would seem to infringe on Parliament's rights and privileges — unless Parliament was willing to invite the government to do such political screening.

But such a request would implicitly concede that Parliament can't be trusted to responsibly manage its own house. The institution would be diminished by such an admission — Poilievre himself insists that a simple Google search would have prevented last week's embarrassment.

One way to judge the prime minister's personal culpability here is to ask whether Conservatives would be blaming Trudeau now if it had been someone invited by a Conservative MP who had caused an international embarrassment.

The answer to that, almost certainly, is no.

The great responsibility of being Speaker

For a while on Tuesday, the Conservatives took to describing Rota as the "Liberal Speaker" — a rhetorical gambit that even D'Entremont, a Conservative, felt compelled to object to from the Speaker's chair.

"I want to make a quick comment that the Speaker is just the Speaker," he said. "We do not belong to any party when we are in this position."

Speakers generally don't stand to correct factual errors during question period. If they did, they might never get a chance to sit down. But this week might have demanded some kind of interjection — some plea for reason and seriousness.

In the wake of an international embarrassment, Canada's Parliament has hardly done much to minimize the disrepute in which it might now be held.

Anthony Rota might have acknowledged the inevitable at least a day earlier. The prime minister might've been reluctant to play into the Conservative side's attempts to assign blame, but his apology could have come two days earlier. The government's suggestion that Rota's remarks about Hunka be struck from the parliamentary record was problematic, whatever the intent.

But all the energy put toward a quixotic quest to pin blame on the government could have been put toward substantive questions about repairing whatever damage has been done and ensuring this sort of thing doesn't happen again.

This is hardly the first time an opposition party's reach has exceeded its grasp. But in this case, some basic tenets of parliamentary democracy risk being trampled underfoot.

It is into this scene that the next Speaker will arrive next week. A vote will be held on Tuesday. The winner (if that word still applies) will become the 38th speaker of the House of Commons, taking up a position first occupied in 1867 by James W. Cockburn, one of the Fathers of Confederation.

If the Speaker is traditionally regarded as little more than a beleaguered umpire in a funny robe, the past week is at least a reminder of the great responsibility involved in presiding over a legislature such as Canada's — a place that is not only the democratic expression of a nation but a stage for people like Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The importance of such places has rarely been more apparent — and the Speaker might be uniquely placed to not only protect but strengthen and promote that institution. That responsibility will weigh all the heavier on whoever is dragged to the chair next.