Evidence of meeting #13 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was prorogation.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:40 p.m.
Professor of Philosophy, Université de Montréal
I will leave all my expertise aside to answer as a father instead. I have three children, including a daughter of almost 15. TV is like an UFO to her. We could have no TV and that would not make a difference to her.
12:40 p.m.
Professor of Philosophy, Université de Montréal
There is the computer. She spends her life on the Internet. She learns stuff on the Internet. I imagine she also spends a little time chatting with her friends, but she learns things, and not only on Wikipedia. Let me go back to an argument that was raised in the context of cultural and generational shift. Our young people no longer learn about politics in the same way we did. I will be 47 next week, and I have always been in the habit of turning on the TV to listen to Bernard Derome at the time or Lloyd Robertson. When we think about it, young people, our children have greater and faster access potentially. Lloyd and Bernard would last for half an hour. But, on the Internet, we find an unimaginable wealth of resources. One of the first reactions of the kids to the letter—which we have put up on the Internet simply to make things easier so people could go see it and sign it—was that it was awesome.
Now, what? Now, what are you gonna put up there? You should have a website that you update regularly with opinion topics, information bits on the way Parliament works, a type of website that defends Canadian democracy. The problem is that I am obviously not paid for that and there are only 24 hours in a day to do all the things we have to do.
12:40 p.m.
Professor of Philosophy, Université de Montréal
Yes, I should. And hockey takes time, especially when the Montreal Canadiens are in the playoffs till May.
I have a BlackBerry and an iPhone in my pocket. I am not exactly a technophobe, but, for people our age, using the Internet is not as deeply rooted a part of our way of life as it is for our children. If what we want is to create a new political culture in Parliament by creating a minority government culture, but also by creating a new ethos of democratic vigilance in the public, we really cannot overlook these kinds of tools.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Thank you.
This has been very interesting, because you talked on a couple things, not just prorogation but the culture within the House of Commons and the culture among MPs. Part of that culture is also the media. We work in a world here in Ottawa where the media looks for a specific clip or a specific soundbite, and it's not one of a committee like this that gets along and works together; it's one of antagonistism, who can get the best shot out there, who can say the meanest thing and get on the news. And that's the culture we work in outside these rooms.
I had a situation during prorogation. Three weeks before that period I went to California with my 80-year-old dad to see his 92-year-old cousin. While I was there I was working on some cases in Haiti, getting some people out just after the earthquake. The first day of prorogation, a blogger picks up a report from two weeks earlier and says that I'm in California. We went to the media and asked them to correct it, and they didn't. Or they did very little. I got blasted in an article three days later in a local paper saying that politicians are all bad people because they're out holidaying during prorogation, which is absolutely false. If he would have picked up the phone and called me he would have caught me in my office in the riding. But it seems that we've got a culture hear in Ottawa where if I can get one on top of Ms. Gagnon, I have to do that, because otherwise the media won't look at me as a serious contender here in Ottawa. How you break that culture is a challenge.
Where I come back to prorogation on this is I wonder if the protest was the actual prorogation, or was a protest about the culture and prorogation the straw that broke the camel's back?
12:45 p.m.
Professor of Philosophy, Université de Montréal
I think you're absolutely right that we have to look at prorogation in a bigger context. It's a symptom of a wider malaise, perhaps both within this institution and in the perception of this institution by the Canadian population. This is another reason why the fix is the rules. We might fix prorogation.... Sean Avery can't wave his arms in front of Martin Brodeur any more, because now there's a Sean Avery rule, but he can do other stuff that's just as obnoxious. If we don't change the culture that creates the Sean Averys, then we have a problem.
I'll say one thing about the media, and this goes back to the discussion we were just having. It might feel to you, because they talk about you, that they are all-powerful, but the traditional media are in a state of extreme vulnerability. How many newspapers will there be in this country in ten years? I don't know--not that many. The kids aren't reading the papers any more. Even television.... Traditional media are in a state of crisis. I think what we have to look towards is not so much how we change the media we have; we should look at how we can exploit, and I use that term in a positive sense, the new media that are arising to set them up from the very beginning in ways that are more productive, more non-partisan than they might previously have been.
This is the third or fourth time I've appeared in a committee like this in my life. There's a world of difference between the sound bites you get on the news about what happens in the House and what happens here. Here there are people working together. I mean, everybody should be able to come into one of these meetings to have their sense of the health of our democracy strengthened, but that's not what is going to be reported.
I think we're living through a generational shift in the way in which people in this country, the young people, consume information. They're not consuming information through the traditional media; they are consuming information on the Internet. And I think we have a challenge as a society to make sure that this new channel of information gets set up in a way that is less toxic, less gotcha journalism, and more deep down, going after....
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Yes, I'd agree with that. The thing I would say, though....
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Mr. Hoback, I'm really sorry, but I do find that politicians' perception of time is drastically different from what they actually thought. I did set limits at the start of this. Thank you.
Monsieur Malo, are you taking a round? Welcome today, by the way.
12:50 p.m.
Bloc
Luc Malo Bloc Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I am happy to be here with you.
Mr. Weinstock, thank you for being here.
In your opening remarks, you said that this constitutional convention played a much more important role than previously. The legislation or the Standing Orders then play a secondary role compared to the constitutional convention.
You also said that the popular movements that resulted from prorogation could now influence the government in the event of a repeat. You can fine-tune my remarks if you wish. How can those movements, if at all, influence the constitutional conventions that govern us?
May 6th, 2010 / 12:50 p.m.
Professor of Philosophy, Université de Montréal
The constitutional negotiations—my apologies, we are bargaining at the Université de Montréal—I mean, the constitutional conventions that govern us in terms of prorogation are already relatively well established. I did some thinking after writing the letter. Since, for most of our history, we had a tradition of governments with large majorities, prorogation was used for technical purposes, to indicate the time for a new Speech from the Throne, a new legislative agenda. That being said, I still think the constitutional conventions are relatively solid, but Mr. Harper's recent prorogations and also one by Mr. Chrétien during the sponsorship scandal have begun to erode them. To make a long story short, I do not think there should be new constitutional conventions, but we should remember that there already are some that, up to a few years ago, set the conditions and the climate in a pretty effective way for the use of prorogation power by the prime minister.
You are wondering about the potential impact of these popular movements. Right at the start of the discussion with Ms. Jennings, I think, we were talking about the fact that the Conservative government has not gone a long way towards any proposals made by the opposition. The public reaction to last year's prorogation could have resulted in a higher political price for continuing to turn the opposition down flat. I do not have my crystal ball with me, but that is where I might possibly see the impact to be.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
I know. You see how fast it goes when we're having fun.
Mr. Christopherson, may I offer you a couple of minutes? Mr. Albrecht would also like a couple of minutes if we can get them in before we finish, please.
12:50 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
This is a name game, by the way. That's my middle name.
Here's what I wanted to ask you. I'm going to play devil's advocate about the new media and the other side of it. I'm of that generation for which, you said, it is something we've gone to as opposed to it being part of us. I see it with my 17-year-old daughter. It's night and day.
However, I've been around politics for an awfully long time, too, in all three orders of government, and one thing I know about politicians and politics is that it's very adaptive. Radio came along, and you could argue that at the time it was going to give the public a whole new awareness. And it did, but the politicians adapted. Then TV came along, and it was much the same thing. Politicians adapted. Now we have all the social sites--Twitter and everything. You know, blogs all seem normal now, but it was just a few years ago that they didn't exist, and now people have blog masters. In other words, politicians have hired people.
Whatever the public tries to do in a pure way to talk, we're going to find a way, and the system is going to find a way to get in there and attempt to spin it and manipulate it, if not to affect the outcome, at the very least, then to affect appearance. We're very much like a Hollywood movie set. You have to take a look at what's behind what you're looking at.
There's this notion that it's going to provide a new ability for the public, by itself, to be a different participant in politics. Yet I still see politicians and politics being able to adapt to make it work for them too, leaving us in the same sort of spot after we've gone through a transformative process.
What are your thoughts on that?
12:50 p.m.
Professor of Philosophy, Université de Montréal
I don't want to sound like an Internet Pollyanna, because I'm not one. I can see some limits. But one of the things I really think is a strength of the Internet as opposed to other forms of communication is the entry cost and how low entry costs are. Also, on obstacles to get there, you don't need a licence to broadcast on the Internet. All you need is a....
12:55 p.m.
NDP
12:55 p.m.
Professor of Philosophy, Université de Montréal
It's the fact that you don't have to have a lot of money or a lawyer to get a blog running.
12:55 p.m.
Professor of Philosophy, Université de Montréal
I think a person who looks at the Internet right now to find out what people are thinking about prorogation sees a much more democratic space.
Why I'm not a Pollyanna is because I see the downside of that, which is, of course, quality control. Tomorrow I'll be attending a meeting of the new public health ethics committee that's been set up by David Butler-Jones, and I know that one of the issues they're concerned about is the public health impact of the Internet. It's not that our kids are getting obese using the Internet but rather that they're getting all kinds of nonsense information about health.
All things being equal, it's the same thing with politics. There's a lot more information out there. It is therefore more democratic and perhaps more neutral, because it's harder to control by established interests. But you probably have a lot more quackery.
I think lowering of the entry cost is something that does have a positive impact.
