Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 30th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I'd like to call us to order please. We are in public today for meeting number 54 of the procedure and House affairs committee, dealing with Bill C-586 by the member from Wellington—Halton Hills.

Mr. Chong, it's great to have you here today. We'll let you start with an opening statement and then we'll ask you all the hard questions we can possibly think of. Because of the delay from the votes, we'll give you the time to be able to do that.

Mr. Chong, you have the floor.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, Chair.

Thank you for inviting me here today to talk about Bill C-586, the reform act 2014.

Mr. Chair, I believe this bill would strengthen the foundation on which our democratic institutions in Canada were founded, that foundation being responsible government. The ideas on which this bill are based are not my ideas. They are not new ideas; they are very old ideas, very Canadian ideas. This bill is based on the ideas of people like Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine—a monument to whom is standing behind us here in Centre Block—that establish the principles on which modern Canadian political institutions are based, ideas that have laid the foundation for modern Canada.

Dear colleagues, it has become clear that decades of changes to the House of Commons and the way we elect MPs have weakened the role of MPs in favour of party leadership structures. As a result, there is a growing divide between Canadians who want their MPs to have a bigger say and a House of Commons where power is concentrated in the leadership structure.

The reform act puts forward three simple reforms to strengthen the House of Commons by proposing to restore local control over party nominations, strengthen caucus as a decision-making body, and re-enforce accountability of party leaders to caucus. These three simple reforms will empower MPs and give them the tools that they need to better represent Canadians in Ottawa.

When the original bill, Bill C-559, the reform act 2013, was introduced last December I welcomed suggestions on how to improve the bill. Based on the suggestions received in the months following the bill's introduction, I introduced a second bill, reform act 2014, on April 7. Since April I have consulted extensively with colleagues on both sides of the aisle. As a result, on September 11, I proposed further changes to the reform act 2014 in order to gain sufficient support at second reading. At the time, I called on this committee to adopt these changes if the bill were adopted at second reading. On September 24 the House of Commons adopted this bill and sent it to this committee, which brings us to today.

Mr. Chair, I have prepared for committee members a package that outlines the changes in the form of four amendments and a series of negatived clauses.

I ask that you consider and adopt these amendments and negative certain clauses in order to secure passage of the bill at third reading.

Since the introduction of the reform act, I've received an incredible amount of feedback and support from members of Parliament, academics, stakeholders, and Canadians from across the country.

I ask the committee to support this bill and the proposed changes and to deal with this bill as expeditiously as possible. Time is short and we are up against the hard deadline of the dissolution of Parliament and a general election. I look forward to answering any questions that you may have.

Thank you very much for having me. Merci.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Chong.

We'll go to questions for a seven-minute round.

We'll start with Mr. Richards.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thank you.

It's a pleasure to have you here today, Mr. Chong.

I do appreciate the remarks you made at the opening, which I know in fact to be very true, which is the fact that you have done a lot of work to consult with your colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I know I personally had some conversations with you about some of the concerns I had with your original bill. I know that many other members have done the same. Certainly that is something we can all appreciate, that you have done a lot of work to try to ensure that you've got the support of members from both sides toward what you're trying to accomplish. I think we all appreciate what you're trying to accomplish. In some cases, in some parts, we may disagree on how you're trying to accomplish this, but we certainly can all agree on the fact that your motivations are very laudable.

You've mentioned the amendments that you've proposed. We've seen those in the media and are all aware of what they are, but you didn't really have a chance in your opening remarks to tell us a little bit about them. Just so it's on the record here with the committee, could you maybe briefly tell us a little bit about what amendments you are proposing? Can you do that fairly briefly, because I do have a couple of other questions I'd like to ask you.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Sure. Broadly speaking, there are two sets of changes that I've proposed to this bill. The first concerns party nominations, for which I'm proposing that the bill simply remove from the Canada Elections Act the party leader veto over party candidates and leave the determination as to who would endorse a candidate for the purposes of an election to the registered political party.

The second set of changes that I propose concerns the governance and structure of party caucuses. The change there is quite simply this: that before each of the four sets of rules can be put into force—those being the rules for review and removal of the party leader, the election of an interim leader, the removal and re-admission of a caucus member, and fourthly the election of a caucus chair—a caucus as its first item of business after each and every general election would have to vote in a recorded manner on each of these four sets of rules, either adopting or rejecting them.

In the event that they rejected a rule, they could choose to revert to the unwritten status quo or alternatively adopt a modified written rule.

These changes, announced on September 11, were done to address the real concern from all party caucuses here on the Hill that the bill was too prescriptive and didn't take into account unique circumstances or special situations.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

I appreciate that. You would know that those are some of the concerns I had and that I know many others had as well in regard to the bill as it was originally written, and even in the second form.

I certainly would agree with you that the amendments you are suggesting are valuable amendments. You have three areas that you seek to reform with the bill, the first being the rules about party nominations, which you have just mentioned. I think the concern was that the bill was too prescriptive, that Parliament was deciding for the political party how it would conduct its affairs. You've put back the ability of the political party to make the choice, prescribing that there must be something in the political party's rules, but that it's their choice as to how they would conduct themselves, and this gives them the power to govern themselves.

The same goes for the caucus provisions. You're allowing the caucus to make a choice as to whether it wants to utilize the rules in choosing its leadership and deciding who can and can't be a member of the caucus, again allowing the caucus to make choices about how it would govern itself. These are principles that I think we all would agree make some sense.

The case that becomes a little foggier arises when you talk about the provisions for the party leadership. The leader of the party is of course the leader of the caucus and therefore should be accountable to the caucus in some way, but also is the leader of the political party and therefore should be responsible and accountable to the members of that party in some way.

The one concern that I think remains with the suggestions—including the amendments—that you're proposing would be whether in fact the changes, even with the amendments, still put too much emphasis on the caucus and therefore remove some ability for the political party to have the same accountability.

Obviously this is something that every political party views somewhat differently, but at the end of the day, both the caucus and party members feel that there is some need for accountability to them. The concern would be whether this, then, by tipping the balance of power more towards the party caucus, removes some ability for there to be accountability to the political party, putting the control more—

And I know this is a philosophical debate. Some people believe that maybe it should be more the one way, and some believe it should be more the other. But that's the concern: should every political party have the ability to make that decision for itself?

Do you not feel that maybe, by allowing a caucus to make the decision to take this power for itself, the bill removes some of the control from the party and the political party members? I'd want to hear your thoughts on that.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Richards.

The first thing I'd say is that the bill doesn't affect the power of the registered political party and its members to elect the leader as they currently do, or to review the leader as they currently do. All the bill does is recognize—

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

I don't mean to interrupt you, and I agree that technically it does not change that. By virtue of the fact that it does give more control to the caucus, and when you're talking about barriers of 20% and these kinds of things, does that then remove some power from the members because you're giving more to the caucus members?

That was the question I was trying to get at.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You have 10 seconds left.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

All that the bill does is to clarify the existing unwritten constitutional convention, parliamentary convention, that caucuses have the right to review the leader and to replace the leader of the party within the House of Commons if they see fit. I think there are plenty of examples to illustrate that unwritten convention.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Chong.

Thank you, Mr. Richards.

We'll go to Professor Scott, for seven minutes.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

It's the lingering effect from the last meeting....

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

It is lingering, yes.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you, Mr. Chong—Michael—for stimulating the debate as you have.

We all know the trajectory of this, and I think it's been good for our democracy that we're having this discussion. Let me go to the heart of one question. With your suggested amendments, you've moved from a prescriptive approach to a model rule, non-binding, probably a bit more than, guidelines approach to the internal governance sections.

Could you tell us in your own words why you believe this will still be effective, despite its maybe disappointing some people that the prescriptive part is gone, in terms of transparency, spotlighting, and making sure that parties actually have to justify their internal rules. Do you feel this is something that can be effective without being prescriptive?

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

I believe it will be effective without being prescriptive. I believe the first test of the bill, if it is adopted by Parliament, will be after the next general election in October of next year, because the first official business that members of Parliament will have to attend to is to congregate as caucuses and vote on each of the four sets of rules. I think that will create a situation where the issue of the structure and governance of caucuses will be constantly revisited after every general election, which will provide an opportunity for debate and improvements.

I also believe that we live in an era of greater and greater transparency where members of the public demand that their public institutions be ever more accountable, whether those institutions be the House of Commons and the Senate of Canada, or registered political parties and party caucuses. So I think the long-term trend on the part of our institutions and our party caucuses will be toward the adoption of these rules and to greater transparency.

I think this puts in place a perpetual motion machine that will ensure that we move toward that era of greater transparency and openness.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

That's great. That leads me to my second question.

At some level, even though the rules are non-binding, I'm wondering if we have some responsibility to make sure that each one of them reflects the best possible, or almost best, practice. I ask this because if, over time, there is going to be this political and normative pressure on parties to justify departures from the rules, I for one would prefer to be in the situation where we're having to justify departure from the best possible rules.

On the caucus chairs issue, as you'll know, the NDP already elects our caucus chairs. We do it every year and not simply after each election, and we also have a rule to say there must be a deputy chair, and that at least one of the two must be female. We've arrived at this position thoughtfully.

Your model, your approach, now allows us to just continue doing this by saying that we think this is better. At the same time, could you comment on whether the NDP approach, an approach like this, could be the model rule as opposed to the one you have?

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

I haven't really thought about the NDP rule that you currently have, but my preference is for the rule that's in the bill. Obviously, I have put it in the bill because I thought that would be the best approach.

That said, I acknowledge that there are caucuses that have unique circumstances or different situations or different traditions, and so allowing caucuses that flexibility, as the changes I proposed on September 11 would do, I think, is a good thing.

The other thing to note, though, is that the vote on each of the four sets of rules would be a recorded vote, and the importance of the recorded vote is this. We in this country have long had a tradition that votes should be publicly recorded on issues of policy and substance to ensure that members of Parliament are held accountable for their actions. We've also had a long-held tradition that votes for or against individuals for office should be secret ballot votes. That was a hard-fought-for right and one that I think we should maintain, and one with which the bill is consistent.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Great, thank you.

I just want to go back to one of the other rule changes that I and my colleagues have one particular concern about. When the rules that you had set out were prescriptive, it would have been impossible, other than through a very indirect mechanism, for a party to maintain central rules with respect to diversity, promotion, and equality goals in nomination. The NDP has very strong central policies that are intended to make sure that the best possible efforts are made to ensure that the pool of nomination candidates reflect equality and diversity goals. There would have been a way to get around it, and we talked about it, but it wasn't specifically possible in the bill as written. So I appreciate your responding to those concerns. My only question is that in doing so the mechanism seems to have been to remove the local nomination rules entirely, the local control over timing and the process. I'm just wondering if you had considered simply having a clear rule to the effect that the central rules of the sort we have would not be ousted by the local rules.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

I think the changes proposed on September 11 to leave it up to each registered political party to decide how to go about party nominations was the right thing to do. Ultimately, I believe that party members want to empower themselves. In every cycle of nominations that we go through as registered political parties, there are controversies in each of the parties about candidate nominations. These are usually centred around the central party imposing its will and authority over the local party. My view is that even though the changes proposed on September 11 aren't prescriptive in regard to party nominations, I think the long-term tendency will be for party members, through their national conventions and the adoption of changes to their national constitution and bylaws, to move toward greater local control over party nominations. This bill will allow parties to do that because, for the first time since October 1970, it will remove the statutory requirement that party leaders approve or endorse candidates for election.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Scott.

We'll move to Mr. Simms, for seven minutes. Welcome back Scott. It's good to have you back here. It's not because we don't love Kevin, but [ Inaudible — Editor]....

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

Thank you for that. I sincerely from the bottom of my dear heart would like to say thank you very much, and it's good to be back here to see everyone again. I feel like we went through good times together and we'll continue to do so. Is that enough? Have I greased the wheels enough, sir?

Mr. Chong, you know, we started here about 10 years ago, you and I, and we've had this conversation spanning probably five or six years.

The first time we spoke about this you talked about that one rule, which was the first rule, I guess, that inspired you to do this. I believe it was in 1970 when it was decided that the only way you could get your name affixed to a party—or should I say a party affixed to the name—was to have the signature of the leader, period. This was also brought up as something problematic by former Speaker Milliken, after retirement, in the Travers debate.

You didn't just do that, though. You went another route and became, as the word's being thrown around, “prescriptive” in many respects. It was illustrative, a learning experience, for all of us because other jurisdictions around the world use these types of measures, Australia most notably and, of course, the U.K. given the fact that they have Westminster systems like we do.

But why didn't you just stick to that one change? Effectively, you have changed it, right? So let's be clear: It's no longer just a leader but we as a caucus now who will have have the power to decide who the nominee will be, correct?

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Yes, the bill encompasses change but not just to the Canada Elections Act but also to the Parliament of Canada Act in respect to parliamentary party caucuses.

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

Still, it's quite definitive, now that you've accomplished getting rid of that rule from 1970.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

That is if this committee adopts this bill and its changes and sends it back to the House for third reading. Look, we're only about a third of the way through....

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

My apologies, I tend to be Pollyannaish by nature. I apologize but I'm highly optimistic about this. But I congratulate you for that, because it took a lot of work and some might say, as the headlines might do, that you backed down. I don't think you backed down; I think you stepped up. I think you created a model by which a conversation can take place amongst all parties here. So like others before me, I congratulate you for doing that and as I say, you've always kept us in the loop, me included.

But when you look at the prescription from the very beginning, what model around the world did you look at and say this was really what you wanted to go towards? I don't think that's the most important question but it's one that hasn't been touched yet. So, which model did you look at and say okay, that's the one that seems to me like the best for transparency?