Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We'll get started.

We're at the 60th meeting of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs and we have four great guests with us today. We should have a cake.

We are here on Mr. Chong's Bill C-586, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Parliament of Canada Act.

Professor Turnbull, you volunteered—because I told you—to go first with your opening statement. Then we'll work our way across. Please if you would, we'll go ahead and get started. When we're finished all the opening statements, we'll ask really hard questions.

Professor Turnbull.

[Dr. Lori Turnbull, Associate Professor, Carleton University, As an Individual]

Good morning. Thank you very much.

The proposed changes to the Canada Elections Act and the Parliament of Canada Act seek to equalize the power of relationships between political party leaders and their caucuses. It is often argued that the current balance of power is weighted too heavily in favour of leaders. This is the problem or the set of problems that Mr. Chong's bill seeks to address, as too much power in the hands of party leaders could undermine the capacity of individual legislators to represent constituents and hold leaders to account.

As Mr. Chong's bill states in its preamble, our system of responsible government requires that the executive branch be held accountable to a legislative branch. He offers his bill as a step in the right direction in terms of honouring the spirit of responsible government. So in these remarks, I will try to identify the main aspects of the bill and what I take to be their justifications. I'm going to focus mostly on his original bill and the proposals in the bill. I acknowledge that he has recommended some changes. I'll try to go somewhat seamlessly back and forth between those things.

Political parties in Canada operate under an understanding of party discipline, which means that members of caucus are generally expected to vote in solidarity on bills and motions. One of Mr. Chong's concerns seems to be that a leader might punish a rogue member of caucus by expelling him or her for failing to support the party's position. His bill offers protection to caucus members by preventing party leaders from removing members from caucus unilaterally.

Instead, the bill states that a member's removal from caucus would happen only if a majority of all members of the caucus voted in favour of the expulsion by secret ballot. Readmission to caucus could come in one of two ways: either the member is re-elected to the House of Commons as a member of the party or a majority of caucus members present at a meeting vote in favour of the readmission. So note the higher threshold in place for expulsion.

The bill also seeks to restrict a leader's power over candidacy nominations. Currently the party leader signs off on candidate nominations, which means that a candidate needs the approval of the leader in order to run on the party's banner. This could give leaders significant power and influence over current members of caucus who need to get the leader's signature of approval on their nomination papers for the next election.

Mr. Chong's original bill proposes the following reform. Have a nomination officer sign off on nominations rather than the leader. There would be one nomination officer per province and one for the three territories chosen by secret ballot of the chief executive officers of the party's electoral district associations. Nomination officers would be chosen for four-year renewal terms but Chong has proposed an amendment so that the party would appoint one person to sign off on all nominations.

Party leaders are somewhat immune from caucus judgment because caucuses do not choose or remove their leaders. They are chosen by parties at large in delegated conventions or country-wide ballots depending on the party's preference and its internal rules.

While leadership reviews currently happen by parties at large at regular intervals depending on the party's constitution, the bill provides for a leadership review process by caucus alone, defined as the “process to endorse or replace the leader of a party”. The bill states that if 20% of caucus members submit a written notice to the caucus chair to call for a leadership review, the chair is to order a secret ballot to review the leader. If the majority of all caucus members vote to remove the leader, a second vote is held to identify an interim leader until the party as a whole can decide on its new leader.

As far as I can tell, the bill doesn't specify the time periods that lapse between those things. For instance, once the petition with the 20% signatures is presented to the caucus chair, when does the caucus chair decide to have a vote after that? I'm not sure. I'm also not sure how much time would lapse between the removal of the leader and replacement with the interim. I assume that would happen immediately but I'm not sure.

A further point of interest in the bill is its definition of caucus. The bill states:

In this Division, “caucus” means a group composed solely of members of the House of Commons who are members of the same recognized party.

Senators are notably absent from the bill's definition of caucus, despite the fact that the Conservative Party of Canada includes senators as active members of its caucus and until earlier this year, the Liberal Party did as well. In this sense, the bill is at odds with what is standard practice for the government caucus.

The bill restricts the application of its definition of caucus to its division C.1. So it's not meant to be a sweeping definition of caucus to be applied universally. That said, it would be a legal definition of caucus and at this point, as far as I'm aware, there is no other legal definition of caucus.

It is important to consider the potential implications of this. Could this set a precedent whereby senators are not considered to be real members of caucus? By excluding senators from caucus, does the bill make a statement intentional or not about the role senators play in responsible government? Specifically, does it suggest senators play a diminished role as compared to members of Parliament?

On the one hand, the exclusion of senators from caucus in the bill is understandable and there are parts of the bill that obviously don't apply to senators. Senators are appointed until age 75 and are not subject to nomination contests; however, senators can and have been removed from caucus. But under this bill, they do not get the protection that MPs would get.

I'll conclude now because I've probably taken more than my five minutes, but I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you very much.

Speaker Milliken, it is great to have you here. It's always fun when you can attend committee and share with us, so we'll give you some time to share your thoughts with us.

[Peter Milliken, Former Speaker of the House of Commons, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's a pleasure to be here and to see many former colleagues again.

I think this bill is a very interesting one, and certainly one of the things I've been speaking about in the course of lectures, and so on, that I've been giving since my retirement is the importance of the control that leaders are exerting over parties. It's something that has shifted during my time in Parliament. When I was first elected in 1988, I don't remember all these controls being in place or being enforced in such a vigorous way as they seem to be now. It causes me concern because we've switched to a system where party leaders are elected now by all the members of the party voting nationally. So the leader is claiming greater authority than any of the other elected members of the House because he or she was elected by a group of voters who were all members of the party, admittedly, but were national in scope. So it's hundreds of thousands of voters instead of a smaller number that's the situation in every constituency in our country.

Because of this leadership vote, they're saying, we have authority over the party and we'll decide who's in and who's out, and we'll decide who's going to be the candidate and who isn't. I don't think this is something a leader should be doing. In my view, our system has worked as a successful parliamentary system, as does the British one, by the fact that we have members elected by their constituencies. The candidates are chosen by members of the riding associations in each constituency, which choose the candidates and then put them against one another, and we have our electoral battle on a local level in a constituency. I think that's made our system work extremely well.

I think it's really important that the party not dictate who the candidates are in these ridings; and by the party, I mean the leader or any person under his or her control who then can say that this is the only person who can run in this riding. If anybody else wins, we won't allow them to be the party candidate.

I think the bill is beneficial in that respect. Now, there may be arguments as to whether it could be improved or whether there are other solutions to it, but I think it's important that the local association have the right to choose. I don't know why the president of the local association couldn't certify to the Chief Electoral Officer that so and so is the selected candidate at the nomination meeting they held in that riding. To me, that's the way it might reasonably work, rather than have some official in the party doing this on a provincial or a national basis—or whatever geographic basis we want. The riding presidents could do it, and I believe the ridings—and I'm not an expert in the law in this regard—are registered as part of the electoral process and are allowed to work with the candidate during the election campaign and all that sort of stuff, in terms of fundraising and all that sort of thing.

I think Elections Canada should be able to tell who the president is and then accept a certificate from the president rather than the party leader as to who the candidate is.

Similarly, I believe the right of the party to have the caucus have some say in who would be the leader is also important. Now, whether it has to be embodied in statute is another matter, but there's certainly an argument for it because I think if we're going to have this national election, the caucus ought to have a veto if the person who is chosen is unacceptable to the caucus for some reason. For example, suppose someone's elected leader who isn't an MP, runs to get a seat, and doesn't make it. How's the party going to continue without that person in Parliament, if that's the situation? Stuff like that can go on, and I don't know why the caucus shouldn't have the right to say, okay, you're no longer the leader because you're not an effective person for us and we need somebody who can do the job here, and we'll appoint an interim and the party can have a convention and choose someone else. To me, that's reasonable. It's just a matter of whether it has to be in the law or not.

I'm not an expert in this. It might be something that could go into party constitutions, but it could also, I suppose, be part of the law. So those aspects of it, to my mind, are important for furthering a more democratic operation for our Parliament, because I don't think members should be dictated to by a party leader on every issue and told, if you don't vote this way, you're out of the caucus.

Yes, we need some independence of voice for members because the interests of our constituents do differ from place to place, never mind party to party, and members may sometimes feel they have to represent those interests and vote in a different way. But we can do it, in my view, without incurring the position where we're thrown out of the party and not allowed to be a candidate in the next election.

I think it's important that members have that kind of independence. I don't think it's offensive to our system, and never has been. I know some leaders may think that it is, but I think we should be looking at that, and if we have to embody this in law to do it, away we go.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Professor Franks, it's great to have you back too. It's been a while since you've been at our committee.

[Dr. Ned Franks, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Studies, Queen's University, As an Individual]

Well, you've escaped me for a while, but I'm honoured to be here, sir.

As I understand it, the intention of private member's Bill C-586 is to reduce the influence of the central party organizations over the nomination of candidates in constituencies, and correspondingly to strengthen the role of the local party organization in this nomination process. I do not have facts at my fingertips, but in recent years I've perceived an increase in the apparent desire and practice of some parties and party leaders to override constituency choices of candidates and instead parachute in a candidate more preferable to the central party organization or party leader.

So far I have not seen a study of whether these acts of parachuting in candidates succeed in improving a party's chances of electoral success either in the constituency itself or more widely in the country, but my impression is that it does not generally improve a party's chances at the polls. Perhaps that's not the purpose of this sort of parachuting of candidates. Perhaps it's prime purpose might well be to keep candidates who are perceived as undesirable out rather than to ensure the good ones get in.

Regardless, from the perspective of the principles of parliamentary democracy, I find this control by the central party organizations to be an unattractive practice. The fundamental base of representation in our system of parliamentary democracy is that each constituency selects its own member. This is ensured by the electoral process in the competition among parties within constituencies. I feel that an important, if not essential, subsidiary principle to this fundamental principle is that each party within a constituency should select its own candidate, and that this selection not be subject to control by the central party. The central party organization should certify the local constituency organization but keep its hands off the choice of candidate.

The principle, a constituency should select their own candidates, is being contravened frequently in recent times in Canada by party leaders who reject candidates nominated by the local constituency association and parachute in a candidate more appealing to the central party organization. I've not seen any study that shows how much this practice improves or harms a party's chances of getting its candidate elected, and certainly such a study would be useful. In some cases the rejection of a constituency organization's choice might be justified because the constituency organization is at odds with the party and opposes the direction the central party has taken. In my view, the local party should, as long as it's recognized as the legitimate constituency organization, have the right to affirm its own views.

The reforms proposed in private member's Bill C-586 are an attempt to reduce the influence of the central party organization over constituency choices of candidates in general elections. Insofar as it would accomplish this goal, I think it's a good step forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Professor.

Mr. Carroll, it's great to have you back here too. Please, you have five minutes or less with your statement.

[Matthew Carroll, Campaigns Director, Leadnow.ca]

Good morning everyone, and thank you for inviting me.

I'll say a few words about Leadnow in just a moment, but I'm going to begin with a couple of quotes.

The first is from Bruce Woollatt, a Leadnow member from London, Ontario. He says, “I'm tired of the MP for my riding being the representative of his party in his constituency, rather than my representative in Ottawa.”

The next quote is from Lori James in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, who says, “I've had enough of MPs waving ta/king points rather than debating issues and working together to resolve them. I want my representatives to work together for the good of the country not the good of their party.”

Leadnow is an independent advocacy organization. We work to bring Canadians together from coast to coast and across party lines to take action on the issues that matter. Since our launch just before the last federal election, our online campaigning community has grown to include over 360,000 Canadians.

Together, through online consultations and face-to-face gatherings, our community has decided to focus on three areas: building a fair economy, action to protect our environment and address climate change, and democratic reform.

What we keep hearing over and over again from our community is a grave concern about the state of our democracy, as well as a deep desire for positive change. Democracy isn't an end in itself. It's a means by which we can come together to make progress on the major challenges we face as a society, and that's why when Mr. Chong introduced the reform act, we felt compelled to act. There are issues that we believe Canadians want to make progress on, but the reality is that action to improve the functioning of our democracy and to empower MPs to better represent their constituents truly cuts across all issues and cuts across all party lines.

Over 26,000 Canadians have now signed on to Leadnow's campaign in support of the reform reform act. Yesterday, I sent out a survey asking all of them for their opinions on the issues that this bill encompasses, as well as their thoughts on democratic reform more broadly. In just a few hours, over 3,000 had responded. That's where the quotes I opened with come from, the voices of regular Canadians across the country who care about these issues.

These are Canadians who self-identified as being supportive of the reform act, as opposed to a random public poll, but I do believe it will be useful for the committee to get a sense of the reasons why Canadians support this bill.

First, when we asked about the freedom MPs have to represent their constituents over the interests of their parties, 91% told us it's very important for MPs to be able to disagree with, speak out, or vote against the official positions of their parties.

One of the issues we've seen debated within the context of this bill is the ability of parties to ensure a diversity of candidates. That's a goal that is in tension with the aims of increasing MPs' freedoms to represent their constituents. Despite this tension, it is something that is important to the Canadians we surveyed—75% said it is very important for parties to be able to ensure a broad diversity of candidates.

My understanding is that Mr. Chong's latest proposed amendments would give each party the power to decide what mechanisms it puts in place for the approval of candidates. We asked people who they thought should have the final say in whether a candidate gets to run for a party. This was more varied, but 53% said it should be the sole control of the local riding association and 37% were in support of regional nomination officers chosen by the local riding associations. Only 6% thought it should be nationally appointed nominations officers, and less than 2% believed the status quo of the party leader signing nomination papers is a good idea.

The last point I want to make is that while we believe the reform act is a useful first step towards democratic reform, and one we very much hope to see passed into law, it is just that, a first step. We have a very long way to go if we're going to meaningfully restore Canadians' confidence and trust in our democracy. At the end of the survey we asked what other reforms, which are outside of the scope of this bill, they would support. It's notable that over 96% believe our first past the post voting system is broken, and that we need electoral reform.

Catriona Sinclair, a Leadnow member from Millbrook, Ontario, summed this up. She says, “I believe the Reform Act is extremely important. I also very much want to see Proportional Representation brought into our voting system.”

On behalf of everyone who signed on to our campaign, thank you again for inviting me this morning, and I look forward to the discussion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

Thank you all for your statements.

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

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

Thank you very much.

Thank you all for being here, lady and gentlemen.

I'm going to play devil's advocate for a moment, not to say that I'm opposed to the initiatives contained within Mr. Chong's bill, but there are always two sides to every argument and I know you all can appreciate that.

There are two main elements here. I think you primarily touched on both of them. One is whether the party caucuses should have the right under certain circumstances for the removal of their party leader. The second one is whether the parties or the individual riding associations should have final say on who their local candidates would be.

Let me deal with the first one, that of whether the caucus should be allowed or should have the ability to remove a party leader. One could make the argument, as I believe Mr. Milliken did, that since in this day and age most party leaders are elected through a full “one member, one vote” process, it is the party membership that elects a leader. Only they should have the ability to remove a leader as opposed to a smaller group of caucus members who, while duly elected and nominated, were nominated by a far smaller group of people.

How do you answer that? There seems to be a disconnect there if 300,000 to 400,000 people who are members of a particular party voted in favour of electing a particular party leader, but then they should not have a similar say in removing that leader. Do you not think there's a bit of a disconnect there?

I'll start with Professor Turnbull and move right on down the line.

[Dr. Lori Turnbull]

Thank you very much.

I'm going to go with you in playing devil's advocate for a moment.

The trigger point for a leadership review is 20%. That's a relatively small number. If you have a 200-person caucus then it's 40 people. You can do all the math for all the different sizes of caucuses, but it's a relatively small number.

You can imagine someone—again, I'm playing devil's advocate—who decided that they're not happy with this particular leader. They can get 20% of the people in the caucus to sign a petition that says, “Let's talk about this”. They can say, “Look, you don't have to go and vote against the guy. We don't have to necessarily make any changes here. What we're asking for is a review”. Well, okay. You now have 20% of the people who want to have a review and you have a leader who's in crisis because even if he passes the review, he has a problem.

There's that side of it on the one hand. I would think about the 20% threshold and whether that's appropriate.

I can take the flip side and answer your question in a different way. One way that it could be reconciled is that although the caucus would be able to remove a leader who was democratically elected by the whole party, it would only be able to replace the leader with an interim. The party at large would have to choose a new leader, but the caucus would be forcing the party at large's hand in that way. They've tossed out the old leader and you have to come up with a new one.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Milliken.

[Peter Milliken]

On the same point, before the 1920s when Mackenzie King brought in the change to have a party convention to choose the leader, the leader was always chosen by the caucus. In a parliamentary system that was considered standard and normal with nothing particularly wrong with it. He went to this system of a party conference. I attended several of them in my younger days and enjoyed having the chance to choose the leader. That was fun.

I stress that each constituency chose a group of delegates to go to that conference. They heard all the candidates and voted on it. It was a very democratic process in my view. They recently decided that everybody gets the vote and forgot about the conference.

We've shifted away even more from a system where it was a smaller group that made the choice. The group would clearly be influenced if you had a big caucus. If you happened to be the governing party, and had the majority in the House, you'd have a fairly large caucus and the ridings of the members of the caucus would be influenced by the views of their MP. They would say, “I'm supporting John Doe for the leadership. I hope you guys will too. Talk to your friends at the conference and see if we can generate enthusiasm and interest”. There was a process there that is gone with the current system of having a national vote. It's reduced because with the national vote you have trouble getting in touch with all these people.

It has changed things and I don't find it offensive that a caucus could say, “No, this person who's been chosen is unacceptable to us. We have to work together in Parliament and this person has to work with us in Parliament and do stuff in Parliament, and we don't think he or she is the best person for the job. We think there are better people. We want someone else”.

That's the reason I'm pushing this. We've moved away from a system that in my view was very parliamentary. This one is less so.

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

Thank you.

[Dr. Ned Franks]

I have been concerned with the so-called decline of Parliament over the years. I think in part the decline involves the parties gaining more power over the parliamentarians. As we go on, I would like to see more focus on Parliament as representatives of members of constituencies, and my thinking has worked in that direction.

The other problem, which I believe has more or less been solved, is that members stay in Parliament a lot longer now than they did 20 years ago. I think we have a much more experienced cadre of politicians in Parliament, which I consider to be a very good thing.

I just leave it at general comments there. I was concerned with the bill itself because it needs to be looked at in a lot of detail and I was not able to do it; it's a very complex topic in a very complex environment.

[Matthew Carroll]

The point I would make is that over past decades we've seen an increasing centralization of power within the offices of party leaders. At the same time, we haven't seen an increase in the checks and balances on that power. For me, the ability of caucus members to remove a party leader, or at least initiate a process to do so, would provide an extra check and balance.

One of the questions we asked our community about, which I didn't fit in because there was a shortage of time, was who they thought should have the ability to remove a party leader. The response was mixed. Many of them thought it should be the members, many thought it should be MPs, and a fair number thought it should be both, that there should be two mechanisms potentially for a leader to be removed.

But I think it would provide a useful check and balance against the control and the power that the party leaders currently have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you very much.

We will go to Mr. Scott, first, apparently sharing time with Madame Latendresse.

You have seven minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will take a brief moment to make a comment so that we're actually all clear on what this bill would do. Apart from the fact that it's no longer prescriptive, it's creating model rules.

Concerning the relationship between the parties and the party leaders, this bill would allow for the caucus to remove a leader and elect an interim leader. They are not electing an interim leader of the extra-parliamentary party. The leader remains the leader of the extra-parliamentary party if the leader has been elected by the extra-parliamentary party; that's absolutely right. That's what Michael Chong testified to, and that's how it works. There are two different parties in the political system.

What it does is produce a tension as a result of the fact that if caucus is going to do that to their sitting leader in the parliamentary party, they have to contend with the fact that they have the popularly elected leader still formally the leader. Michael Chong's bill leaves open to each party how they're going to deal with that tension.

The fact is that this is the way it already works. Whenever somebody is forced out or resigns or whatever, they don't always resign as leader of the extra-parliamentary party. I just want to make sure that's clear. However messy it is, that's the way it works.

The second thing is that Nik Nanos just did a poll showing that not all rules are viewed by Canadians with the same favour. The rule of removing the leader by the parliamentary caucus was disfavoured by about 65% to 70%. This reflects Tom's observation that we have layered a populist, presidentializing party process on top of the old parliamentary approach to choosing a leader.

I just wanted to bring that up and then leave it to my colleague to ask her questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Madame Latendresse, you have five minutes left.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I already asked Mr. Chong this question when he appeared before the committee. This is indeed what he said, that this process applied to the leader of the parliamentary caucus.

I have a question concerning the rules that apply to the parties, in particular the one that requires a 20% threshold to conduct a leadership review.

This rule applies fairly well to very large caucuses, but less so to a very small party caucus. The House recognizes a party as soon as it has 12 members. With those parties, that means that three people could decide the fate of their leader.

Should something be changed to ensure that these rules are better adapted to smaller caucuses?

[Dr. Lori Turnbull]

Yes, I am concerned with the low threshold; 20% seems low. If you are talking about a party with 12 people in it, you have three people who are able to cause a problem for the leader. You might have three people who do it for entirely the right reasons, but you might also have, in any mathematical situation, something that's inspired more by politics than by anything else.

It seems that it would be up to the full caucus. It would really depend on what would happen in the full caucus vote then. If you had, say, a politically inspired or opportunistic request for a leadership review and then the full caucus swatted it down, that would be the end of it.

One of my concerns is that we don't know how much time would go by between the leadership review petition and then the vote. If someone were campaigning for leadership, do we give them a month to campaign? Do we give them a week to campaign? It seems to me that would make a huge difference in the evolution of what happened in the party.

[Matthew Carroll]

I think you've studied this bill more than I have, so maybe correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that the rules would be put in place, and then at its first meeting each parliamentary caucus would have to decide whether or not to use those suggested rules or alternatives. There is actually, potentially a mechanism for a small party to say that given we only have 12 people, we want to meet a threshold of 50%, or six people, to trigger a review. Correct me if I'm mistaken about that.

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

I think that's absolutely right. It's good because it leads me to another question that I'd like to ask.

Currently, there aren't any mechanisms to easily inform the population of what normative rules each party has chosen. Currently, these are suggestions. Do you think there should be a mechanism so that people can know exactly what each party has decided to do in order to govern itself?

[Matthew Carroll]

Personally I think there should be a mechanism. I'm not sure in terms of the process.... It says it has to be recorded. I'm not sure exactly what that encompasses, but I'm a big believer in transparency, as are the folks in the Leadnow community. I think it should be clear to folks outside of the parliamentary caucuses what the decision is that's been made and how the leader could be removed.

[Dr. Ned Franks]

I really wonder about the extent to which Parliament itself should tell caucuses and parties how their internal politics should be governed. I really do. Historically there's been a big difference between parties both within Parliament, outside Parliament, and the relationship between the two.

In some of the parties there's been an enormous grassroots power. I think back to the CCF-NDP government that I worked for in Saskatchewan in the 1960s. There was a tremendously strong constituency organization as well as a government.

By and large the major parties in Canada are organized around their parliamentary representation. I think in that sense the parliamentary representation should have a pretty strong voice in deciding a party leader and other related matters.