Evidence of meeting #39 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was study.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
11:25 a.m.
Liberal
Karen Redman Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
If I could through you, Mr. Chair, I have a comment, but I'd like some clarification. Stephen may have touched on this in his questioning. There was the statement: “As part of this study the Committee should consider the product of the public consultation process currently underway across Canada.” Can I just ask Mr. Preston to elaborate on exactly what that line means? I found that somewhat confusing.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
Joe Preston Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Mr. Owen did bring it up. There is a public consultation process going on out there. I would like, if we're looking at the same subjects, to take into account what they're also learning.
11:25 a.m.
Liberal
Karen Redman Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
I would just make an observation, and I recognize that this is a beginning rather than an ending point.
I look back to some of my experience in the environment field specifically. And I don't mean this to be as partisan as it may come out sounding, but there has been a substantial amount of funding cut by the current government from the bureaucracy that was used to do consultation, to do citizenship engagement. I'm wondering if we could look at the impacts and ramifications of that.
If I can use the illustration of species at risk and how it was held out as a gold standard of a process that worked, because it did deal with aboriginal traditional knowledge, and it did bring those people into the process in a very substantive way.... This piece of legislation took 10 years to finally come to fruition, so they had a long time to engage people. But I think we can't underestimate that kind of a more subtle engagement of citizens that isn't necessarily looking specifically at electoral reform but does make citizens feel like their voice is being heard, and in that instance it absolutely did help shape what the final product looked like.
11:30 a.m.
Bloc
Pauline Picard Bloc Drummond, QC
Ms. Pauline Picard: I sit on the committee that has been charged with studying the electoral and democratic systems of Canada. We have visited all Commonwealth countries to examine the processes they have followed to reform their electoral system. Many hours of work and lengthy discussions have been dedicated to this review and I would not like us to start from scratch. We would need the recommendations that have been made at the end of the study. We could not continue our work because the election was called, but the idea would be to pick up from where we had left, in order not to redo what has already been done.
I do not often have to make disagreeable remarks, but when a translated text talks about “la capacité de lire et d'écrire de la population municipale; la Chambre des communes; et le Sénat”, I get the feeling that we, francophones, are considered a bunch of illiterate people. I would like some care to be given to the French translation, so that it really conveys the meaning of motions that are written in English.
As for “the public consultation process currently underway across Canada”, I have no idea what it is all about. Who is holding that consultation? I would like some clarifications about this.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
February 13th, 2007 / 11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
We can, and perhaps Mr. Reid can join in as well.
I believe the minister made an announcement on January 9 that he would be setting up—for lack of a better word—civic consultations or citizen consultations across Canada. I believe he is having twelve meetings, with one in each of the provinces, one in the territories, and one special youth consultation meeting.
They have gone through the process of engaging or at least asking for tenders for an event management firm, I suppose, to conduct these consultations across Canada. But that wouldn't be a parliamentary group, that would be a citizens' group that would go out and perhaps bring back its findings. I think they asked for the consultations to be completed in the winter of this year—no later than March, I suppose—and the results are to be brought back before Parliament no later than June of this year. That was an announcement that I think was made January 9.
11:30 a.m.
Bloc
Pauline Picard Bloc Drummond, QC
What are the consultations about? What is the purpose of this consultation? Why are they consulting the people? Is this about the electoral process?
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
We can get the exact statement if you wish, Madame Picard, but the objective was to consult with Canadians on the electoral system, hearing directly from Canadians on what they perhaps see as flaws in the electoral system, what changes they may suggest, and that type of thing. But we can get the exact wording of the speech to you if you wish.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
In fact, Jamie just pointed out that there were tenders that went out for consultative processes. Did the members of this committee get a copy of that tender a couple of weeks ago, give or take? We'll recirculate the tender process to all members.
Mr. Reid, you have it there. Did you want to make any comments before I move—
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
I only have the copy from Jamie, and it's in English only. It appears to just be a web document, so it's available online. After Jamie gets back, anybody can just jot down the web address and look it up in both official languages.
The stated purpose of the consultation process—the “citizen engagement process”, as it's referred to—is to deal with a part of the Speech from the Throne that said:
Building on the work begun in the last Parliament
—that is, of course, a reference to this committee's work—
this Government will seek to involve parliamentarians and citizens in examining the challenges facing Canada's electoral system and democratic institutions.
That's the part of the Speech from the Throne that serves as a justification, and it goes back to the previous Speech from the Throne, from 2004, in which these same themes had been raised.
The 43rd report of this committee specified that a citizen engagement process was to begin. From a technical point of view, “citizen engagement process” means something technically in terms of how one goes about carrying out consultations and who is capable of doing it. That really is the basis on which this went forward, so this is a follow-up on that.
In terms of the other side of the resolution that we made, like many members of this committee, I was on the committee at that time as well. You may recall that we had discussed having two components. One was the citizen consultation process that would report back first. The parliamentary process would then report back at a later date. This all fits into that framework.
11:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
You're ready to vote. I have one more member who wants to speak to this, so we'll do that first and then we'll call the question.
Madame Redman.
11:35 a.m.
Liberal
Karen Redman Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
Thank you.
I'm troubled by this motion. I don't understand how that process as it has now been explained to me reconciles with the processes before us. The committee that is currently under way has tendered an event management and is going ahead with this, and this is then being reported to the House directly. Is my understanding correct?
11:35 a.m.
Committee Researcher
In the last Parliament, the predecessor to this committee recommended a parallel process in its 43rd report. One would be a special committee of the House, and separately there would be a citizens' consultation group. I believe it was anticipated that the citizens' consultation group would do the polling, but it would be undertaken at the expense of the government. The government would put out the tender and award the tender.
In the recommendations, there were provisions for the two groups to meet at certain stages in the process. The citizens' consultation group would come up with its recommendations and feed those into the special committee of members of the House. As you know, the election intervened.
What the government did a few weeks ago was start the process for hiring someone, or a group, to undertake the citizen consultation aspect of the recommendation. At this point in time, that is entirely at the decision and discretion of the government. At this point in time, there is no parliamentary decision to set up a special committee or, as I think Mr. Preston is suggesting, the idea that this committee undertake that part of the recommendation, with an added element of dealing with certain other issues.
11:35 a.m.
Liberal
Karen Redman Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
So this process and the one the government has launched don't necessarily intersect.
11:35 a.m.
Committee Researcher
No, but they could. That would be I think the intent of part of Mr. Preston's motion. This citizen consultation process would feed into a Procedure and House Affairs study, but that is for you to decide at this point in time.
I assume the government will make the recommendations or the results of this process available to whichever committee ends up studying this issue. At this point in time, though, no decision has been made about that.
11:35 a.m.
Committee Researcher
The timeframe in the original report had a closing date of the end of January for the tendering process, and, I'm sorry but I don't recall.... It's to complete the project to draft report stage by May 23, 2007.
So public consultations were to begin by March 9, 2007, with a draft report by May 23, 2007. There is no final date that I see here, very quickly.
11:35 a.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
I may be wrong, Jamie, but I believe the minister, when he made the announcement, said they were to report back by June of this year, with the first draft in by May 29.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Jay Hill Conservative Prince George—Peace River, BC
To add to the discussion, Mr. Chair, Jamie has done a good job of recapping where the committee was and of the report we made back to the House. Looking around the room, quite a number of us had the privilege of participating in that study. I would just state for the record here that certainly I and everybody who participated in that were very supportive of that report, and it went back to the House.
I don't think there's anything in Mr. Preston's motion. I think he's amenable to amending it if the committee would like to see more in it or less in it, or whatever. It's merely to launch the parliamentary process that was foreseen to dovetail with the independent citizen process that, while being funded by the government, was not to be directed by the government.
That was a concern that many of us had at the completion of our study that we did in the last Parliament. We didn't want to see the politicians, the parliamentarians, directing and thus unduly influencing what the citizens had to say about a potential future electoral system that they might envision. Rather, we would have our input through a parliamentary process—not just us, obviously, but our colleagues in both Houses—and the citizens would have their input through this consultative process.
The two, as Jamie said, would be parallel tracks. They would intersect at periods so that we would be apprised of the progress made, one or the other. Ultimately, in the end, we would then have as comprehensive a process and study completed as possible.
Until Jamie just read those out, I wasn't aware that the timelines were that tight. That might be problematic, but I guess we'll have to see how this is unfolding. I haven't had an update as to how the tendering process has gone. In particular, I would think that May 9 date is going to be very tight. We're almost into March already.
