Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 3rd, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I call this meeting to order. This is meeting number 42 of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

We have a couple of private members' motions this morning. We have Motion M-431, in the name of Mr. Trost, and he will be sharing with us. We'll do 45 minutes on each of the private members' motions, and then we have some committee business we need to deal with at the end.

Mr. Trost, please make an opening statement somewhere in the neighbourhood of five minutes, if you could. Then we'll ask you great, hard-hitting questions after that.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Mr. Chair, it does seem sort of strange to be here having been on the other side of this for 10 years.

First, let me say thank you to all my colleagues for the unanimous support I received in the House, and the good feedback that I've received from many people. In many ways, what we're doing today is formalizing many of the informal conversations that we've been having on this issue over the past few months.

Let me also apologize for not having prepared remarks, and remarks in French. I was going to do this in French, but the moment they said there were TV cameras, I thought better of it.

Let me go through a few basic points.

First of all is the history and background of where my suggestion for the study of election of committee chairs is coming from. Back in October 2002, there was an opposition supply day where the opposition parties—and it actually passed with a considerable number of government members supporting it too—proposed to move toward elected chairs, to a system where the committees themselves chose their chairs. Prior to that, they had been appointed. That has been the practice in many Westminster parliaments, although New Zealand and Australia do elect from their committees just as we do here.

In doing some research on this and thinking about what parliamentary reforms could be done, we came across the British model, which is election by the entire House. For members who would do further research, I encourage you to look through the supply day remarks of October 31, 2002. In my speech, I noted some of the remarks by the now Minister of Justice, and also Dick Proctor, the former NDP member for Palliser, who had some good comments on that.

What is the rationale behind the change that I'm suggesting you study and hopefully propose? It's not a criticism of the current system, but as I said in my speaking notes, it's good, better, best. Let's never rest until our good is better and our better is best. I think a change where we have a system where the committees are more directly accountable to the entirety of the House, and the committees become a greater function and their function is more direct toward the House, would be an improvement. I outlined some of these things when I spoke in the House. There's a vested interest that all members would have, because all members would vote and would have some degree of input as to who the chairs are. Again, there would be enhanced credibility and greater flexibility.

There are going to be a few questions, which I hope you will debate. I was deliberately not trying to be too prescriptive in my motion because I think we need to have consensus, if we're going to suggest this reform to the House, on some of the mechanics. I hope that as you discuss this and put some questions together here, you will concentrate on not just the general principle, but also on some of the mechanics, which is what you have to do.

Here are a few issues that need to be discussed, and I have suggestions for all of these issues.

First of all, does this apply just to chairs or also to vice-chairs? I deliberately left out vice-chairs in this because as a member of the governing party I did not want to put out the idea that with our larger numbers in the House I was trying to impose something on other parties. I was very clear. Personally, I have no problem with it, and in fact I would encourage vice-chairs to be included in this, but I think if that's going to be done, it should be done with both opposition and government support.

How do you repeal the chair? Again, I have some suggestions about how this would be done, because on occasion chairs don't function. I have some suggestions and some members may have some others. Do you elect the chair on a yearly basis? Do you do it after prorogation? How often would you elect or re-elect chairs? There are different ways to do that. Also, there are ballot mechanisms. Again, I have suggestions on all these. Later on Mr. Reid will be putting forward a ballot mechanism suggestion, which I think will be fairly applicable to this.

As you go forward with some of your more basic technical questions, I can issue my suggestions. They're suggestions to get you to think about how this could be implemented, and if this would be put to the House, how the House would best implement it, should the House decide it's a preferable suggestion.

Regarding my expectations for your study here, let me make some basic suggestions. This does not need to be fairly comprehensive. In many ways the experts on committees are—and this is unique in this situation—the people sitting around this table. I've lived this committee system for 10 years. Some of you have been here for longer than that and some of you for shorter than that, but this is what we as members actually know.

A quick literature review might be useful. An hour on teleconference with representatives of other Commonwealth and Westminster parliaments, particularly the British model, might be useful. Some input from past clerks, other people with expertise in the Standing Orders, and possibly previous members of Parliament from various respective caucuses might be useful.

There could be one meeting on testimony, perhaps one meeting to hash out some of the mechanisms that everyone could agree on, and a very simple one- or two-page report, or maybe slightly longer.

Those would be my expectations.

I realize that you have considerable time constraints, because you have other things to deal with, but these are suggestions to do a modest report to give guidance to the House if we wish to take up this issue again in the future.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I very much look forward to questions from all members.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Trost.

We'll go to Mr. Lukiwski on a seven-minute round.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Trost, for being here.

I'm going to give you more latitude to explain your motion more fully. You talked about the mechanics of the motion itself, and you had some suggestions as to how the mechanics could work. I'd like to hear more about that.

Clearly right now, or at least ostensibly, we have a system of where we elect chairs. In those committees where the government is required to have a chair, the government puts up a candidate and everyone agrees. It's the same thing with the vice-chairs. We all know that's an agreement from the parties who do it. It's not really, perhaps, an open election as you perceive it to be.

I'd like to hear how you would envision this if you had the ability to craft the system yourself. Perhaps you could point out as well, in terms of some of the mechanics you've already identified, the differences between a majority and a minority government and how the elections might be influenced by that configuration.

For whatever is left of my seven-minute round, perhaps you would just walk this committee through how you would like to see this system enacted if you had the ability to set it up yourself.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Thank you for that question, Mr. Lukiwski.

When it comes to mechanics, I'm not hard-wired or married to any particular suggestions, but I'll deal with some of the questions I had from colleagues in the corridors.

First of all, with regard to majority or minority situations, I am not suggesting in my motion that those who would be eligible for committee chairs would change. In my suggestion, if you have 24 committee chairs, you would still have 20 chairs drawn from the government and four from the opposition.

Interestingly, colleagues, that was the first question I got from the government side: in a minority situation, could the opposition elect all the chairs? I got the same question from opposition members literally the same day: would not the government, then, elect the chairs for our four members?

I'm not suggesting the eligibility criteria change for the 20 positions; the government would still be chosen. The opposition would still be chosen for the four positions.

I envision that sometime very soon after the Speaker of the House of Commons was elected, members would be presented with some form of a preferential ballot, or a series of ballots, if that's preferable, with the respective committees listed on it. They could mark their preferred choices for committee chairs on these ballots.

Of course, deadlines would be established for members to put forward their names. I don't think the system we currently have for Speaker, whereby people withdraw their names, would be wise for this, but members would put forward their names.

Somewhere here in the House of Commons, one of the committee rooms perhaps, members would cast their ballots for their respective committee chairs throughout the day. The clerks would then do the count, and at that point the results would be known. That would be a fairly simple mechanism. I think most of us would be fairly comfortable with that, since most party nominations, when there are more than two candidates, tend to run with a ballot system like that.

I noted there would be an issue of what to do when a committee chair needs to be removed. I think there are different answers for this. The principle I'm trying to establish is that the committee is responsible to the entire House. Committees are made up of ratios similar to those of parties, so there would be some continuity if we remove the vote on electing and repealing from the broader House.

If you're going to repeal the election of a chair or remove the chair, I would suggest that a vote would first have to go through committee. Then it would be presented to the entire House, with both the mover and the committee chair being challenged, then an opportunity to present their case, with very short time limits. The House would vote, possibly through a secret ballot, not in the House with a standing vote or anything, because we don't want committee business to interfere with other House business. I think that would be the most practical suggestion.

Mr. Lukiwski, do you have a question on any other particular technical matter?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

I would like to hear your opinion on the fairly major difference between what you're proposing we study and the current system.

Committees are masters of their own domain now. That's always been an assailable fact in Parliament. Committees can determine what course of study they want to engage in and the course of action they follow.

You're suggesting a fundamental change, in that the committee itself does not determine who it would like to see as its chair, but that all members of Parliament should determine who they would like to see as chairs of these 24 committees.

I'm trying to get at the rationale behind this. Why do you think it would be more appropriate for entire Parliaments to determine the workings of individual committees as opposed to the system we have followed for many years?

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Mr. Lukiwski, let me challenge a little of your assumption.

Memberships of committees are currently determined by the whips, not by the committees themselves. We're not looking—

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

That is true, but once the committee has been established, they, as a committee, can then determine their course of action.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Mr. Lukiwski, not their membership; members can get pulled from the committee at any time by the whips.

In this situation other members of committee could still be pulled by the whips. The chair, and if we were to add the vice-chair, instead of being responsible to the whips, would be responsible to the committee as a whole.

We're not changing what the committee has. Even for removal of the chair, or if we were to add the vice-chair, under my suggestion the committee would have to move the motion and pass it beforehand. If the committee members refuse to make the change, the House would have no ability. This is not removing the committee's authority. This is a change of the whips' authority relative to that of the entire House.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

We'll go to Madam Latendresse, the most capable vice-chair we've ever worked with. You have seven minutes.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. That is a nice compliment.

I will start with a general question for Mr. Trost.

In your view, should vice-chairs also be elected by all the members of the House or should they be elected in committees, they way they are now?

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Thank you for that question.

I did not include this in my motion because I'm a government member and most of the committees are government members, and I did not want this to be seen as being imposed on the opposition parties. I personally think the principle would apply equally. That said, if the committee feels that would be too big a change, and if the committee cannot get unanimous support for that concept, my advice to the committee would be to leave that out of your recommendations.

I think the principle is the same. I think there is no logical argument to separate one from the other, but I do understand the sensitivity that smaller parties have and their concern that something might be imposed upon them by the larger parties.

I don't think that a change like this really can or should go through the House of Commons with a majority-plus-one vote. I think it would need a substantive majority. I'm not setting a particular number to it, but if we're going to do this, more than one party has to support it, and it has to be a substantive majority of the House.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Why have you chosen the preferential ballot to elect committee chairs? After the election of committee chairs in Great Britain in the last election, the committee that addressed this issue said that, overall, it was a good idea, but it still recommended going back to

first past the post

rather than the preferential ballot, in order to simplify the process.

Do you have any comments on the issue?

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Yes. To go back to my general point, when it comes to mechanisms, I'm not married to anything in particular. If we want to do first past the post, that's a possibility too.

It's just my observation that this has been the way things have been going. If the committee wants to go there, I don't have a particularly strong opposition to it, but preferential ballots is the way a lot of nominations have been going. It's the way a lot of people do argue for things. I have problems with.... I'm a supporter of first past the post in many situations myself, but I thought this might be what might engender the largest amount of support. In particular, having looked at the situation in U.K. with their committees, eight were unanimous—there was no contestation for the post—but some of them were very multi-tier candidates situations, with many candidates for the same post.

The other thing I looked at was how our parliamentary associations are run. Our parliamentary associations use the preferential ballot, so I thought that might be the easiest for members to carry forward. Also, even though we do it over many rounds, we effectively have a preferential ballot when we elect the Speaker of the House.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

With the current system, the members come to an agreement among themselves as to who will be committee chairs and then they vote in committee. Under your proposal, there would be a vote in the House. A number of people might be concerned about gender equity in terms of the number of women that will be committee chairs. Other people might be concerned about the proportion of francophones, aboriginal people and members of visible minorities being elected as committee chairs.

Do you have any comments about that?

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

I didn't have my staff check through every committee chair and every category you mention. For the sake of a reference point, we checked out what the current ratio is on gender. I don't think it will surprise committee members to know that currently only one committee, the status of women committee, is chaired by a female member of the House.

Some members had expressed concern that my system would lessen diversity in this. I suppose it's possible that a man could be elected chair of the status of women committee and we could have 24 male chairs at that point. But barring that unlikely happening, I don't see how my system could lessen the diversity more than what we currently have. That's not a criticism of any particular chairs; it's just a reflection of certain realities that are out there.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Of course, mathematically, we could hardly do worse, could we?

Generally speaking, with this procedure, are we not running the risk of making the process more complicated by having all those elections at the start of each Parliament?

We already have the election of the Speaker, which we will discuss a bit later with Mr. Reid's motion. The procedure might become very long if we add the election of all those chairs.

For instance, just now, you explained your idea in the very unlikely case of a committee chair being removed. Do you not think that the system proposed is much more cumbersome than the current system where committees can choose another chair on the spot and solve the problem?

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

When the British looked at their system, they noted and divided the reforms into two types. There were reforms for the sake of efficiency, and reforms for the sake of effectiveness.

The reform that I'm suggesting here today is very much a reform for the sake of effectiveness. It doesn't mean that I don't have suggestions to keep it efficient. With the revocation of the chairs, the system that I'm suggesting might take up 30 minutes of House time. I even suggested a mechanism where the vote could be held outside of House time. There'd be only one speaker back and forth on the issue, with possible questions. That wouldn't take up House time. In the unlikely event that a chair was removed by the committee, that would maybe take up 30 minutes of time in a day.

When it comes to electing chairs when a Parliament starts, we typically have a length of time before committees are formed and settled. Again, if you use the system I'm suggesting, that the vote is conducted throughout the day, members come to a room, pick up and mark their ballots, and drop off their ballots. I think members can fit that fairly easily into their schedule, without disadvantaging anything else in the schedule of the House.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Latendresse.

Now another one of my favourite vice-chairs, Mr. Lamoureux, for seven minutes, please.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Trost, I'm somewhat fascinated by what you're suggesting. When I think about it, I think about the idea of how committees come in to being. I read what you're trying to do here as having more independence in terms of the committee. Under the current system, the chair is elected, but in order to get elected you have to be appointed to the committee. In order to be appointed to the committee, you have to be on the right side of the party's list.

Is that a fair assessment, in terms of what I've conveyed?

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

I'm sitting in a room full of experts—as expert as I am on this issue—and I don't argue with you, Mr. Lamoureux. Every member can make that judgment for themselves.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

If we isolate the chair and we say that the chair is now elected from the members as a whole, from the House, in essence what we're saying is that the whip, or the leader, if you believe that the leader is the one who instructs the whip, would have less influence in our committees.

Would that be a fair assessment?

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Yes.

I think this is the concept that we're dealing with. Our committee is a creature of the House; our committee is a creature of their respective party executives. I'm suggesting, for the sake of both the executive and the House, it would probably be better if committees became more directly creatures of the House, so that the responsibility would be more direct. I suspect that is how they were first envisioned.

I should say that even though I'm only talking about the chair today—I've suggested things about the vice-chair—part of the reason I did this was to provoke other members to a more robust debate on how we select committees. I took this as a very mild step. If you bite off more than you can chew, you often don't get anything. If you allow someone a small step, they'll take it, and once they've taken it they will possibly go forward.

With regard to where you're going, I think most members would agree. The question basically becomes whether the committee is responsible most directly to the House or to the executive. What is it a creature of, and what is it there to assist?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I think you're being humble. This is a fairly significant step which would ultimately allow the potential for committees to be more robust in their independent ways through the chair. It's the sort of reform to committees that could benefit all Canadians, if in fact we were to move in that direction. The way I'm seeing what's being proposed here is it enables a higher sense of independence for committees.

I don't have any further questions. I just wanted to make sure my assessment wasn't too far off base.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Mr. Lamoureux, I appreciate your assessment. I wouldn't overstate how grand this is. Mr. Chong is trying something through his legislation that is considerably more ambitious than what I'm proposing here today.

Perhaps I saw too many pieces of legislation, private members' initiatives, have great ideas and not go anywhere, so I decided to go with something very modest. As you saw from the vote in the House, I got the unanimous support of the House, which says that I have something that people do think is worth looking at. I can see members being opposed to it in detail, when the final result is presented by this report, but I at least have the unanimous consent of the members that this is something that needs to be thought of, namely, the general theme of looking at how our committees are structured and how they can be made more effective and more accountable to the House of Commons and ultimately to all Canadians.