Canadian Heritage Committee on May 3rd, 2012

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to all of you for being here.

It's very interesting to get a sense from sort of inside the bunker of how the things that Canadians see on the outside get put together. It's clear that it's complex, but it's also clear that we have incredibly professional people with a rich storehouse of the institutional memory of how things work. That, as we're hearing from witnesses, is as important as just about anything else.

I have a couple of quick questions, but I'm wondering if someone wants to comment on what is more of a general philosophical question that may help us in our study. Is the role of protocol to protect tradition or is it to reflect tradition? Is it to protect it or is it to give voice to what is actually happening in the community and in the culture?

[Mary Shenstone]

The role of protocol is to show respect and dignity for those involved and have an established sequence of proceedings so there isn't offence overall.

Protocol changes over time, and it's important that it changes over time. The values of society change, and protocol can adapt and change with them. So the reason to protect tradition, if one is to protect tradition, is to not cause offence to those for whom tradition is important, to the extent that it is important to them.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. MacAulay, you mentioned a manual that the Black Rod had embarked upon. Give us a bit of sense of the parameters of this manual. Is it a manual? Is it a guidebook? Is it prescriptive?

[Dwight MacAulay]

It's a compilation of all the different areas that most protocol offices deal with. For example, Mary mentioned the orders of address, how to send a letter to Buckingham Palace, if you're asked to do that, the order of flags at ceremonies and state funerals, and all that kind of stuff. It's a very good set of guidelines. They aren't hard and fast rules; they're really guidelines.

On your earlier point about maintaining respect or reflecting what's going on, when somebody tells me there is precedent for this because it was done this way last year or the year before, my simple answer is that doesn't mean it was done right; that just means it was done before. So you have to take things in balance. That's why the general demeanour of most of us in this profession is to have quite an even keel. If we didn't have that we'd be jumping out of our windows half the time at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

Things have happened in the past that people expect because they were cultural things, and so on. They may have just happened that way and were never right from day one. Our job is to catch them where we can, tweak them a bit, and maybe change them.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Witnesses we had at a past meeting, and two out of the three of you, mentioned that in all matters of protocol there needs to be an element of flexibility. Notwithstanding some of the specific issues Mr. MacAulay is bringing up around order of precedence, when you are looking at all the different protocol offices and all the levels of government—goodness knows, in this country we spend a heck of a lot of time having jurisdictional conversations—is it possible to get the minutiae down in some kind of guide book? If it's possible, is it a good idea?

[Dwight MacAulay]

I'd say yes to both. It's certainly possible. As was mentioned earlier, there are baselines or benchmarks for most of this stuff when it comes to some of the elementary things involved, such as flying of flags at events, and so on.

The flexibility comes in recognizing the jurisdiction or province you're in. As I mentioned, in Quebec the Roman Catholic Church has very high prominence.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

I understand.

Does anyone else want to weigh in on that question?

[Mary Shenstone]

I think it's a question of an overall framework. Getting into all the minutiae may run the risk of overly cementing and therefore removing some of the flexibility. It's difficult for us to deviate from what has been written down. It's human nature. I think it's possible to have an overall framework and general guidelines, but each jurisdiction's details will inevitably change in a few months or a year or two, depending on the circumstances. And the circumstances are always different. No two events are identical. Even if there were a written opus, we would still be calling the various departments in the federal government and each other for advice and examples on the tinkering that I don't think one would realistically write down.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Ms. Bowles.

[Cathy Bowles]

I agree with Mary and Dwight.

I also think that a lot of the framework already exists. We certainly reference Canadian Heritage websites. That's our starting point, and then we modify it, depending on our guests, depending on the event, and depending on the occasion. It's a communications tool for making everybody feel comfortable, so we adapt it that way.

Whenever we host anything at City Hall, it's to make people feel comfortable and respected, but we're still respecting the guidelines that have already been established by Canadian Heritage. We don't deviate that much.

What would have helped us when we did a couple of lying-in-state ceremonies—they were both different, so I can only imagine the complexities when you're doing it at a national level—would have been having certain scenarios made available to us for particular events or for particular occasions. That would have helped us.

It's not carved in stone. It may be a particular scenario used for a specific event.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Cash.

Mr. Simms.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our guests.

I believe you had a recommendation. Did you get it out there?

[Dwight MacAulay]

That was about the Prime Minister being first.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

It was about the Prime Minister being first. Okay.

This leads me to the next one, which is a question for all of you.

Have you thought about bringing this up with the Council of the Federation or with the intergovernmental affairs ministers in the provinces and with the municipalities as well? Has that been discussed with the federal intergovernmental affairs minister?

[Dwight MacAulay]

I haven't discussed it at that level. I can assure you that I did discuss it with the premiers' communications staff and with government communications staff. Then I brought it up with the chief of protocol, and they all thought it was a good, simple process. Maybe it's not the magic bullet, but it would be a good start for a lot of these things.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Okay.

It seems simple to me as well, but for some reason, simplicity can get lost in bureaucracy.

[Dwight MacAulay]

It is simple, yes.

[Mary Shenstone]

We have regular meetings of chiefs of protocol, and we have even more regular discussions, through conference calls, for instance, among chiefs of protocol. So we're constantly talking about this sort of thing—how we're doing things and where things are at. At the last meeting of chiefs of protocol, I think the order of precedence was on the agenda without deep discussion. It will probably come up again in the future.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

I have a question regarding some of the trips you make.

When I was in Israel some time ago, I remember they had a conversation about how the Premier of Ontario had visited at that point. They were talking about a certain project and were hoping to get the Premier of Saskatchewan, I believe it was. Many premiers make trips abroad similar to that.

You say that you liaise with the Department of Foreign Affairs. Obviously, you do. What's the situation when they say the premier wants to do this particular event and Foreign Affairs says it's not really a good idea? Do you push back? Do you say to them, sorry, the premier wants to do it, or do you just say that if Foreign Affairs says don't do it, we don't do it?

[Mary Shenstone]

Here's where flexibility comes in. We talk about it. We talk about the reasons. Is it a question of timing? Is it a question of security? Is it a question of availability of players?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Do you have flexibility to a great extent?

[Mary Shenstone]

We are talking to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade on a regular basis. These international missions are very complicated. We are guests in another country. We work very closely with the embassies. We do talk about it, absolutely.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Okay.

There are no strict guidelines, per se, but you're certainly well within a certain.... It's a diplomatic way of saying that you'll watch your Ps and Qs, certainly. If Foreign Affairs says it's not a good idea, then you should probably take it as such.

[Dwight MacAulay]

I've been on several of these. If the ambassador were to say don't do this, we probably wouldn't do it. We'd probably want to know why.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

I say that because I've noticed that provinces are being engaged more at the international level. An example would be our free trade agreement with Europe. Provinces are signatories, as member states would be in the European Union. Newfoundland has memoranda of understanding with several countries, including Iceland. But you don't have a foreign affairs department, so that puts a lot of strain on you as a province.

I apologize. I don't mean to exclude you from this conversation, but this certainly puts a lot of pressure on you, more so than ever. Do you find that this is the case?