Wilfrid Laurier: It would be mere presumption on my part to remind hon. gentlemen that the Speakership of the House of Commons is one of the most important offices under our parliamentary system of government. The Speaker is the channel of communication between the Commons and the Crown. He is the spokesman of the Commons. It is his duty on every occasion when the Commons think proper, to address the Crown, to convey the messages which the House wishes to convey, whether they be in approval or dissent, or whether they be expressions of joy or of grief.

He is in that respect pre-eminently the Speaker of the House of Commons. In the olden days, when the nature of the relations between the Crown and the Commons were somewhat hazy and undefined, these functions of the Speaker, as we know, were of paramount importance; but in the later centuries, as the relations between the Crown and the Commons have been more clearly defined and better understood, those special duties, though of course still continuing, have lost some of their degree of importance.

But the Speaker is also the presiding officer of this House, and, as time has developed our parliamentary system of government, we have found that the duties of the Speaker, as presiding officer of the House, are now the chief duties of the office. The experience of all parliaments, and especially the experience of the Mother of all Parliaments, as well as our own experience, has taught us that the discharge of these duties requires, on the part of the presiding officer of this House, a sound and firm judgment, a judicial mind, and a thorough knowledge of the customs and usages of Parliament; and above all, the proper discharge of the duties of the office requires from the Speaker absolute impartiality and fairness in his decisions.

I submit to the members of this House that in all these respects the Honourable Member for West Ontario (Mr. Edgar) is eminently endowed, and that he is a proper person to be the Speaker of this House. All the members of this House who sat in the last Parliament -- and there are still a few-all those who sat in the previous Parliament -- will agree with me that in the hands of the member for West Ontario (Mr. Edgar) the honour and dignity of this House, the sound traditions of parliamentary government, and the rights and privileges of individual members will be in safe keeping. All will agree with me that the hon. gentleman (Mr. Edgar) will discharge the duties appertaining to his office with favour to none and without fear of any and they will agree, too, that he will be in every respect, as the office implies, the First Commoner of the land.

Therefore … it is with great pleasure that I move, seconded by Sir Richard Cartwright: That the Honourable James David Edgar, Esq., member representing the Electoral District of the West Riding of the County of Ontario, do take the Chair of this House as Speaker. Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist.  He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy.  A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.