Why Do We Need Hansard?
Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first Prime Minister, probably said it best. Here is the Hansard
report of part of a speech he gave in Canada's House of Commons on March 7, 1881. Canada's
federal Hansard had just been operating for less than a year. A Member of Parliament moved a
motion to abolish it. This is Sir John A.'s impassioned argument against the motion -- which, by
the way, was defeated:
Then we are driven to the original resolution to do away with the Hansard altogether. As I said
before, that rests with the House. But I think it would be a retrograde step, it would be unjust to
the great body of the House. If we can afford it -- and we can afford it -- every hon. member who
represents a constituency has a right to have his speech reported; for we are all equal here, we are
all equally interested and have equal rights and responsibilities; we all have the same rights; the
youngest member has the same right as the oldest member, to have his utterances as fully spread
out in the official report as the leader of the House or of the Opposition. It would be a retrograde
step, it would be a mistake, it would be a historical blunder.
We all know the regrets that are expressed by every literary man, every political man, every
statesman, and every historian, that the speeches made by the great men in the days of old were,
in consequence of the practice of Parliament, lost forever. I think it was the younger Pitt who
said that he would rather have a lost speech of Lord Bolingbroke than all the lost pages of Livy.
We have no speeches of Chatham; no speeches of Bolingbroke; none of the great speeches made
in the Long Parliament, at the time of the fight between freedom and tyranny, in the time of
Charles I.
We all know how eagerly historians have looked up every little sentence which can be discovered,
any casual note taken, any remark made by any of the leaders of public opinion from the time of
Queen Elizabeth until now. If you open a history and read about those days you will find how
imperfect are the notes of Cavendish, the mere scraps preserved by Strange, or Gray, or by any
others who took notes of public utterances of the statesmen of those times, and yet how eagerly
they are scanned in order that historians may find out the motives that moved the body of
Parliament -- not merely the leaders of Parliament, but the great mass of parliamentarians, because
it is the general opinion of Parliament, and not the opinion of the leaders of the day that shows
what the public pulse is. It is the expression of opinion by the mass of the members that shows
really what the feelings of the people are as expressed by their representatives.
Even in Canada how deeply interesting would be a Hansard showing the debates in the old
province of Upper Canada, or of Lower Canada, giving the discussions in 1791 and 1792 when
the two Legislatures were formed. If we had that, it would be the most interesting volume in the
world, and every Canadian would read with the deepest interest the speeches on the subjects that
engaged the attention of the members of Parliament of those days. He would learn what the chief
subject of interest of the people, what the style of speaking and the manner of thought, not of one
or two great leaders, but the great body of the representatives of the people, were in those early
days. And we are in a great measure without a colonial history. We have no means of tracing out
the very groundwork of all our legislation -- the motives and impulses of those petty municipal
questions which were the chief subjects of interest in the early days and which have expanded into
the larger subjects which are now engaging the attention of the people and the Legislature of
Canada.
As a matter of history, it is of the very greatest importance that the remarks of every hon.
member, who has a responsibility as the representative of the people should, if we can afford it
--
and we can afford it -- be as fully recorded in the official report as those of a leader. I hope we
shall not commit such a great mistake, I hope we shall not make such a relapse into barbarism as
to throw over the only means by which after generations shall be able to learn what were the
subjects of interest engaging our attention, what was the style of speaking and the style of
thought, and what were the moving impulses of the people and their representatives in Parliament.
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