First, Manitoba Canadian Alliance MP Howard Hilstrom talked the
Liberals into submission, refusing to quit talking about principles of
democracy until Liberal MPs on the House of Commons agriculture
committee allowed a secret vote on the new chair.
Then, he defied the odds by being elected one of the committee’s two
vice-chairs by that same secret vote process.
The agriculture committee was the first committee to adopt secret
ballot voting. It did so a day before the Liberal caucus splintered and
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the Commons voted overwhelmingly Nov. 5 for a Canadian Alliance motion
to require secret ballot elections of committee chairs, despite the
opposition of prime minister Jean Chrétien.
With almost 60 Liberals voting for it, the motion was approved 174-87.
Traditionally, the prime minister has decided who should be chairs of
committees and the government majority makes sure it happens.
Immediately, some committees began to meet and by secret vote, the
Liberal majority on a number of committees voted against the tradition
of having a member of the official opposition as vice-chair.
Hilstrom is one of the few Alliance MPs to keep his job.
While the agriculture committee became the first to use the new rule
even before it was imposed, that was not the original plan.
The committee met late in the afternoon of Nov. 4 to rubberstamp the
prime minister’s office’s preference that New Brunswick Liberal Charles
Hubbard be reaffirmed as chair, with Ontario MP Murray Calder as
vice-chair.
Before the Liberal majority could get the floor to make the nomination,
Hilstrom moved that it be a secret ballot. When there was no Liberal
consent, he talked for half an hour about secret ballots.
The Liberals cried uncle and agreed to a secret ballot process, but
only Hubbard’s name stood as a nomination so he was acclaimed chair.
Calder was elected the other vice-chair.
