Evidence of meeting #1 for Electoral Reform in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
I'm told that we could write that the issue will be referred to the steering committee for further study.
We will now vote on the amendment stating that the committee recommends the motion be studied by the steering committee. The clerk will take care of the exact wording, but that's the gist of the amendment.
We will vote on Mr. Deltell's motion.
(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Is this on questioning of witnesses? Is that what we're moving to now, or is it something else?
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
All right. Why don't we just take the one that was circulated to us?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Would you like me to read it? It reads:
That witnesses be given ten (10) minutes to make their opening statement; and that during the questioning of witnesses the time allocated to each questioner be as follows: for the first round of questioning, seven (7) minutes to a representative of each party in the following order: Liberal Party, Conservative Party, NDP and Liberal; for the second round, five (5) minutes be allocated in the following order: Conservative Party, Liberal Party, Conservative Party, Liberal Party; followed by NDP, for three (3) minutes.
That's how it reads here. Is that what you're moving?
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
I'd like to propose an amendment, if a motion was so moved.
To ensure that we reflect the composition of the committee and ensure everyone has an opportunity to speak—and I'm hopeful as well that we will find the time through the subcommittee process to ensure that we find a way to engage Canadians in this process—I propose to amend the motion as follows:
That the motion be amended by changing the words after “That” with the following: “witnesses have ten (10) minutes to present their opening statement; followed by the first round of questions: six (6) minutes Liberal Party, six (6) minutes Conservative Party, six (6) minutes NDP, six (6) minutes Bloc québécois, six (6) minutes Green, six (6) minutes Liberal; followed by a second round: five (5) minutes Conservative, five (5) minutes Liberal, five (5) minutes Conservative, five (5) minutes Liberal, five (5) minutes NDP, three (3) minutes Bloc québécois and three (3) minutes the Green Party.”
That was the sheet that we circulated prior to this meeting. Ms. May just got it now.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Mr. Chair, I appreciate the amendments to reflect the obvious, which is that there are full members of this committee from the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois. As we are full members, there is no justification for three minutes for the Bloc and three minutes for the Green Party in the second round. Our allocation in terms of the amount of time should be equal, even if the number of time slots is not.
Perhaps this is the right time to go through my proposal. I've given a copy to the clerks. Unfortunately, and I apologize, it was drafted in English only.
My proposal was that witnesses be given 30 minutes for their opening statement. Then the questioning would be seven minutes for each, in the sequence of Liberal, Conservative, NDP, Bloc, Green, Liberal, followed by a second round of five minutes each for Conservative, Liberal, Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Bloc, and Green, followed by five minutes for questions from the public.
That's my proposal. The 30-minute piece is for ensuring that we have adequate time to hear from experts, but perhaps the time at the beginning for witnesses could also be flagged. We could have that go to the subcommittee to consider whether that should be at the discretion of the chair.
I would like us to recognize that presentations of only 10 minutes from people who have spent their lifetime studying electoral reform will be inadequate for their expertise. While we're going across the country and hearing from as many people as possible, we may perhaps want to have 10-minute presentations, but when we solicit the opinions of experts, we should want more than 10 minutes. We should go to 30 minutes.
It is possible that we could go to shorter times for Bloc and Green, but I want to make sure that we recognize that we're not junior members on the committee.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Would anyone like to...?
We will go to Mr. DeCourcey, and then Mr. Aldag and Mr. Cullen.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
I want to thank Ms. May for the intervention and I apologize that it hadn't got around in front of you as I spoke.
There is certainly no intention to treat any member disparagingly or preferentially over another. This is just to ensure that every member of the committee gets at least one chance to speak during each round of questioning.
I do think that 10 minutes can be enough for a quality witness. Then it behooves us all to ensure that we are ready with good questions. Certainly there is a little upwards of an hour of questioning on top of the witnesses' testimony, so I'm confident in this process. Certainly I'm not immovable on this point, but I am confident that this arrangement gives us adequate time to adequately question witnesses and hear their expertise.
Merci beaucoup.
Liberal
John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
To build on what Matt has said, I'm concerned about the 30 minutes. We could fill our entire summer.
We're going to hear very important information from our witnesses. I wonder if we could keep their allotted time to 10 minutes to keep it tight, but invite written submissions. There could be a lot of information given to us that we could still pull into our final report.
I think we need to be aware of the amount of time we can give to each witness. I'd rather keep the presentation piece a bit tighter, have time allotted for us to do the questioning, and invite written submissions to round out the information we're hearing from the witnesses.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I was just clarifying the 30 minutes with Ms. May, because originally it was 30 minutes for all witnesses, but I think she's suggesting 30 minutes for each witness. I would agree with what John just said. If I look at a panel of five witnesses, we'd potentially be two and a half hours into the meeting before we would start to have the exchange. I'm someone who, over time, has enjoyed the exchange—not necessarily more than the opening statements sometimes, but it's an exchange, and you can probe into something that's been said.
Mr. Chair, since we've deferred one aspect of how the committee is going to function with witnesses and how we're going to allot time for questions and arrange the lineup, I suggest that we also send this matter to them. As was said earlier, the two are in fact connected. If we do end up including a public piece in our lineup—or if we don't—it will affect the timing allocation. We could go through this whole debate now and pass a motion to allot this many minutes here and this many minutes there, but if the subcommittee decides to do something different, we're back to the same conversation. Then we would have to adjust what we decided on.
Why not send both these questions to the subcommittee? That's a typical job for a steering committee. They'll come back to us, of course; it will always be put back to the main committee to decide to agree to or modify whatever the steering committee comes up with. It's better than spending all of our time here today doing that.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Yes, a friendly one, a very friendly amendment.
This conversation is good. It's important that we arrive at a fair allocation of time and that we get to do our jobs properly, yet this thing that we just sent to the steering committee will inevitably be connected to this conversation. It's the same amendment that Mr. Deltell moved on my amendment to Madam May's...or this main motion that Scott started off.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Mr. Chair, I appreciate the latitude to speak to this a little more.
Just to step back, in the past—and I don't mean the dim recesses of time, such as 1937, but the times I remember—parliamentary committees did not force-march witnesses through the process as quickly as possible, and not every witness was put on a panel.
To make sure my memory wasn't false on this point, I tried to figure out who I could phone. I called a former member of Parliament, Karen Kraft Sloan, with whom I worked when she was on the environment committee long ago. I asked, “In the old days, didn't witnesses get half an hour or 20 minutes?” She said yes, that it was at least 20 minutes, depending on the witness.
I think latitude is needed. For instance, the person who's at the top of my proposed list of witnesses, which we haven't gotten to, is Professor Arend Lijphart, and those who've studied electoral reform for a long time.... I know Scott Reid would know this witness. This man has spent his life studying empirical evidence of the effect of voting systems on how governments and parliaments perform and whether there is a statistical alignment between how people vote and how well their country does economically. These are very interesting questions, but complex, with a lot of data from the 36 countries that were studied.
It would be a huge loss of our opportunity to learn if we held a witness like that to a 10-minute presentation. On the other hand, we could have a lot of witnesses who want to come to us when we do public hearings across the country. I take the point made by Nathan and others that 10 minutes may be more than enough when we dive in with questions later.
I would support this going to the subcommittee to figure out if there's a way to say that the chair, with latitude, can have longer presentations from the witnesses we've sought out when we agree by consensus that it's someone we really need a lot of time with. Restricting them to a 10-minute presentation on a lifetime of work is both a loss to us and an insult to the witness.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Okay. I'm told that if there is a desire on the part of the committee to refer this matter to the steering committee, the mechanics will be the following: first, that we have unanimous consent to withdraw the motion as amended, and then that we have a motion to refer the question to the steering committee.
Is there unanimous consent to withdraw the motion as amended? There seems to be.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
One of the consequences of that, I believe, is that the next person in the speaking order—me, in this case—loses his space.
Conservative