Canadian Heritage Committee on May 1st, 2012

[Audrey O'Brien]

As one very good example, I think, of the ways in which we are better off celebrating our own traditions and our own way of doing things, I'll refer to a group that hasn't been meeting for that long—I guess it has been 10 years now. That's the G-8 Speakers of the lower houses. Other G-8 countries, for instance Russia, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom—and certainly the French—have a tremendous, elaborate protocol and all of the architecture and history to go with it and so forth. The last time Canada hosted, Speaker Milliken was the Speaker, and we were discussing how best to go about hosting. Ultimately, we decided that you can't out-Rome the Romans and you can't replicate Paris.

Instead, what he did was decide.... As well, there was the question of the security for Dennis Hastert, the then-Speaker of the House of Representatives. They decided that they would have it in Kingston and would have them staying at, I think it was either the Royal Military College or the Canadian Forces base. That took care of the security side of things. Then they had a tour of the Thousand Islands and whatnot, and Dennis Hastert, for example, was just thrilled to bits, as were the other members, because it was so different from what they were used to, and it was really typically Canadian. And Speaker Milliken got to show off Kingston.

So I think that there are ways in which we shouldn't sell ourselves short because we're not, say, St. Petersburg.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Of course, a tour of the Thousand Islands is always a good thing.

[Audrey O'Brien]

Absolutely, yes; there you go.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Brown.

Now we're in our five-minute rounds.

Mr. Cash.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here.

It's a little like calling the principal to our office as opposed to what I'm generally used to. It's an honour to have you here, Madam O'Brien, and Madam Rody and Mr. Janse as well.

You mentioned international protocol practices. Are these codified? How do we understand these international protocol practices?

[Audrey O'Brien]

If you have members, for example, who are participating in an Inter-Parliamentary Union conference, depending where the conference is held they'll be familiar with how the conference takes place, how the IPU handles it, and then there will be elements of the host country that will be taken into consideration.

I think each country has its own norms, and you know them by way of reputation. Elizabeth can perhaps speak to that more directly.

[Elizabeth Rody]

International protocol also evolves. We get a lot of our international guidelines from the United Nations, such as, for example, concerning flags. When there's a summit, how do we display flags? UN convention will tell us that it's by alphabetical order in English, unless it's a Francophonie summit. So there are some general guidelines.

As you know, summiteering has become quite the art and is out there a lot, so there are a lot of groups that get together when they put together some of these summits. They have developed some sorts of protocols, and you see these a lot in international meetings. When you're watching on television, you'll always recognize the same type of format—how the flags are displayed, where people are seated, and all of these kinds of protocols.

The fundamentals are always the same because everything comes back to the fact that it's based on precedence. If, at a G-20 summit, you have heads of state and then heads of government, the heads of state will go first, depending on when they were either elected or named to their positions. It's the same thing here in Canada when we have an event—for parliamentarians, who was elected first; who is a member of cabinet, and so on and so forth. These principles always are applied at different levels.

International protocols are very similar. They were all developed many years ago at the Geneva Convention talks, when Europe was deciding on all of their after-war splits. When ambassadors came together, they had to figure out an order. This has been passed along to different offices of protocol, and we have just applied them differently.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Thanks.

Madam O'Brien, you mentioned in your opening remarks that protocol is more art than science. You have also said it would be good to have some of the storehouse of knowledge, institutional memory, which apparently Madam Rody has in her brain, down on paper.

Tell me there's a difference between those two statements: the art versus science, and the need to have some of this written. I'm asking because I'd like you to comment on the point of our study here, which is to get potentially a national protocol procedure to better advise provinces and municipalities.

We have a number of different federal organizations, agencies, and offices that have protocols. Is it possible to codify this stuff?

[Audrey O'Brien]

When I say it's more art than science and then say it would be kind of nice to have guidelines down, part of that is basically trying to ensure a transfer of knowledge from veterans and a documentation of precedents in what is here. Parliament, understandably enough, is very often an oral culture. You know it's been done like this, but it's not ever written down anywhere.

At the same time I wouldn't like to see something written down that became a kind of commandment that you couldn't deviate from even though it meant that it would be a more successful event—it would answer the needs of the participants, and the circumstances of the moment in a given situation.

It's more a question, I think, of perhaps providing a framework that people can operate within, to say these are the principles you need to take into consideration. Now once they're taken into consideration—so long as you're sure those principles are being respected and this is the usual framework that things operate on so you know you're deviating from it—there's a consensus that you will deviate from it, or you can under the circumstances.

I don't want to throw cold water on a noble endeavour, but I would think it would be very difficult to come up with a national framework for something like this, partly because people are very jealous of their territory, and partly because they know their territory very well and they tend to consider their way of doing things within that territory as sacrosanct. As soon as you get involved in a kind of negotiation, you necessarily water it down—everybody has to put a little water in their wine—and I would just wonder by the time you did that if you would have anything really very meaningful in terms of guidelines.

I see Eric.... Eric is always responsible for keeping me from, like Wile E. Coyote, going off the cliff so I better turn this over to Eric.

[Eric Janse]

I wanted to make one quick analogy with parliamentary procedure. There are some parliaments of the world where they have codified specific words that you cannot use in the given chamber at any time.

We in the Parliament of Canada, for instance, have not gone down that route. There are codified explanations contained in the parliamentary procedure and practice of the Standing Orders and like that, but there is no list of words you cannot ever use. It's up to the Speaker to determine on a given day whether the word is non-parliamentary. You could have an instance where one day a word creates a disturbance, and the Speaker will probably get a member to withdraw it. Another day if it's a bit quieter in the House, the same word can be used by a member, and it's not deemed to be non-parliamentarian. That's where the flexibility issue kicks in.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Cash.

Mr. Calandra.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

I don't know that we're trying to say—at least I'm not—that all protocols be set in stone and this is just the way it is. My thought is that it's more of a guideline. This is how it has been done in the past and these are perhaps the elements that you should strongly consider.

For instance, when I was first elected it was written down. This is what your first day in the House was going to look like. This is what would happen on a throne speech. The Usher of the Black Rod would come in and pound on the door. You couldn't go past a certain spot in the Senate. It was all written down. The ceremony, it seems to me, has been the same since I was watching it on TV as a kid, and nobody strayed from that. But the ceremony is what it is and I have to assume that it's written down somewhere that's what happens—well, I know it is because I have it.

That's not to say our traditions won't change at some point and maybe the usher will do something different, but until that happens I just feel that sometimes it's nicer to be able to provide better resources. This might be our saying to the government, make it easier for others to get access to this type of information.

I'm going to ask you to stray in a little bit of a different direction because I have you here.

On half-masting the flag, for instance, I'm told on Parliament Hill, Canadian Heritage might say “This is the protocol to half-mast it”, but it's actually Public Works that has to order the flag down because they are in control of the building.

How much do we get in the way of protocol because the Parliament Buildings are controlled by Public Works and not by members of Parliament? Can you answer that? Or do we ever get in the way?

[Audrey O'Brien]

When you say “do we”, who is this “we” of which you speak?

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Does Public Works get in the way of protocol or the rights of parliamentarians to their building because our buildings that our members are in are actually controlled by a department of the government and not by the two speakers?

[Audrey O'Brien]

Right. My own feeling is that regardless of who would be in control of the building, somebody would be upset at some point. It's just the nature of the beast.

I think that, generally speaking, parliamentarians and Canadians are well served by the protocol at Public Works. As for the business of half-mast, I think that's understood and it's respected. It's obviously a case, though, as well, where there's a cut-off point.

At the risk of venturing too far, there was some degree of unhappiness at one point and some degree of concern that the flag wasn't put at half-mast when the news of a casualty in Afghanistan was announced. That raises a whole host of other questions that have nothing to do with paying tribute to the person who's made the ultimate sacrifice, but they have to do with logistics. Does this happen on the day of the funeral? Does it happen when the news arrives? How does that work?

I think that, generally speaking, the rules for the half-masting of the flag are very well respected by Public Works. We don't get involved in that and I wouldn't want to.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

This is more of an example.

You know we have two police forces in Centre Block, the Senate police and House police. I know the people who seem to protect the Prime Minister are greatly different outside the building than they are inside the building, and there's protocol obviously around why that happens.

Protocol is not just about where the flag goes, it's about other things, our buildings, which are the—

[Audrey O'Brien]

Right. In terms of the security forces, if you trace it right back to its root, we have the fact that it's a bicameral Parliament, and that is the source of many of the reasons that there's a bifurcation.

With regard to policing, the bodyguard for the Prime Minister is a security protocol, if you will. When the Prime Minister enters the building it's the House of Commons security that provides that body, the close bodyguards. That came about, I'm told, because there was a great deal of reluctance at the idea that there should be a national police force present in the building rather than it being people controlled and ultimately in the service of the House of Commons itself.

So there are reasons that things have developed as they have. I would venture to say, by virtue of the training, that the bodyguards who are the immediate detail around the Prime Minister have the same training and are trained to the same level as the RCMP who guard him outside.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Calandra.

Finally, Ms. Mathyssen.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to the committee. It's lovely to see you here, and I appreciate very much all the wisdom and advice that you are giving.

I want to pick up on something in regard to this need for a manual of “this is what happens”. I wonder, if that were the case, would there also be the danger of it becoming “this is the only possibility”.

What I'm thinking about at this point is the apology to first nations regarding residential schools. I know that at the time there was a great deal of concern because, first of all, how can you give an apology if there is no response, and first nations' leaders were prohibited from responding on the House floor. There were a number of other things: who would be in the chamber, and how would all of the participants be managed? Yet the reality is that it was an incredible and successful event because we broke all the rules and made sure that there was an opportunity for it to be genuine and a very human event.

I wonder if you could comment on that.

[Audrey O'Brien]

It's interesting that you would mention that event because I think the event took place at 2:30, and it was 1:45 when Speaker Milliken came into my office with the government House leader to say that there had been a change in plans and they wanted the representatives of the first nations on the floor of the House.

So we went into full improvisational mode, but improvising on the principles that are still sacrosanct. We figured that we wanted people on the floor of the House and that we would do that by having a motion to go into committee of the whole. The motion would provide for the Speaker to actually be chairing, even from the committee of the whole, and the motion would specify that, so we were drafting the motion as we went.

The one hiccup that we ran into was the fact that we only had one microphone that was working and could be passed around—of course, Murphy's Law would follow an O'Brien clerk—and we figured we'd go with that and they would just pass it around. That worked and seemed to be part of the choreography of the thing.

As you said, it was tremendously moving and it was just an absolutely tremendous event for the entire country.

I think that part of me, even though I'd like to see things sort of written down in terms of principles, to pass that on to people.... One of the other things that I find is that certainly the whiter my hair gets, the more I see the generation gaps that don't take 20 years any more, where people just don't seem to be particularly aware of what I would have viewed as basic courtesy. Maybe it's too much texting, who knows; I'm too old. But anyway, all of that is to say that writing it down and then adhering to it slavishly would be a terrible mistake because I think, again, you have to go with the idea of what your objective is. Your objective here is to indicate, with the greatest respect and dignity, the sorrow of the nation because of the circumstances that people were forced to live through. And again, you can't quite throw the rule book out. You have to have it choreographed so that people know what it is they have to do so that is done with due ceremony, if you will.

But I wouldn't like to see flexibility lost, either, because I think that really is the essence, the art.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you very much. I appreciate that response.

That's it for me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Ms. Mathyssen.

Thank you, Madam Clerk, for being here with us today, and Mr. Janse, and Ms. Rody. We do appreciate your testimony. This is the first day of our review on national procedures and it's been interesting. We look forward to the rest of our study, and thanks for being a part of it.

Meeting is adjourned.