Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 20th, 2013

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

A point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Lukiwski, on a point of order.

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

That was never said.

I know Peter is trying to defend a position he has, but Madam O'Brien never said there was a move towards majority votes.

Let's keep it clear on the record.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Lukiwski.

[An hon. member]

It's not a point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

It isn't, so we'll carry on.

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

It's on the record now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Julian.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Madam O'Brien said there was a recent vote; it was a majority vote. It is true that I used the word “move”.

But my point is, and I'll come back to you, Speaker Milliken, if we have a vote where a majority that is just on the government side establishes policy or a decision, do you see that as a precedent that makes it more difficult to establish consensus later on?

Where you have a situation where a majority imposes or decides, then implicitly there is the fact that it could be used in the future. Would you see that as a negative precedent, or an unfortunate precedent?

[Peter Milliken]

No. Something like that can happen, but there's not a majority on the board. The Speaker is the chair, so there's only a possible equal vote among the parties.

The Speaker may have to cast a deciding vote and decide one way or the other, but I don't remember being put in that position. I may have once, but that's the most I could say about it. As I said, I don't remember for sure.

It was very rare—very, very rare.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Yes. But as you said earlier, your job as Speaker is to establish a consensus and to try to have that bridging between the majority—

[Peter Milliken]

Try, yes. Sure.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

—and the opposition.

[Peter Milliken]

But normally there wasn't an issue like that with the board. It was almost always agreed one way or the other.

If it happened, it was only once in 10 years. It was just exceedingly rare. It was almost always a consensus or a majority, one way or the other.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Speaker Fraser, I'd like to ask the same question to you.

Can you recall a situation? You, as well, were in a number of different situations as Speaker where there was a vote where the government was on one side and the opposition on the other. That was as opposed to, as you mentioned in your testimony, looking for a consensus and having sensitivity for the opposition and the opposition point of view.

[John Fraser]

Mr. Julian, unless I were able to go back over all of the minutes over a number of years.... I might find a situation like that, but if there had been situations like that, I think I would have a pretty good memory of it. I can't recall any situation in which the discussion at the Board of Internal Economy became so two-sided, if I can put it that way, that there was need for anything except to try to find a way through it.

I'll say this. There were times, of course, when members on both sides, both the opposition and the government side, might start off a discussion in which they seemed to have one position, and that position would be modified as they heard from each other. Of course, it is also the Speaker's task to try to make that happen, but it also happened, at least in my experience, because members around the table, while they might be able to have quite severe differences of opinion on the floor of the House, seemed to find ways to work things out. That doesn't mean they always started off a discussion in complete agreement, because I think that's asking for too much. But they were all there to do the job that had to be done, and as long as the decision didn't so upset one or two people, no matter what side of the House they were on, they would usually concede, “All right, we can live with this.”

There is another problem with this, which I didn't get into in my earlier comments, and that is what do they do when members come along and ask “Well, what exactly did you say in these debates?” The members will later see the minutes or something and see the result of the deliberations. I don't have any particular answer to that. But it seems to me that people, being normal...there was probably some discussion by members of the Board of Internal Economy with some of their own caucus before they came to meetings, and there may have been some discussion afterwards.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Julian.

Mr. Lamoureux for seven minutes, please.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Speaker Milliken and Speaker Fraser. It's great to see the two of you here.

I have some experience from the Manitoba perspective. I sat on the Legislative Assembly Management Commission, which operates in a similar fashion to the internal board here in Ottawa. When I reflect and I try to understand why it was that we moved in a certain direction in the Province of Manitoba, I can't help but apply some of that here in Ottawa. For example, Canadians as a whole want to see more transparency. They want to see more accountability. The issue of proactive disclosure seems to be talked about a great deal. When you look at the things the Board of Internal Economy does, are there things we can take out of the Board of Internal Economy that might appease the need to be more transparent and accountable?

I'll give you a specific example. We have a commissioner in the Province of Manitoba. It's the commissioner who sets the pay and the pensions for MLAs. The Canadian public, as a whole, don't believe politicians should set their own pay or determine their pensions. Having that independent commission proves to be of value.

The idea of movement toward more public meetings and not to have in camera meetings, may be an issue. Can we set up a subcommittee that deals with highly personal, in camera type topics that do come up but ultimately have to go back to the full committee in order to ultimately be approved?

Can I get each of your thoughts with regard to answering those types of need? Are there some things that we can kind of hybrid away from the Board of Internal Economy, thereby giving more attention to those critical issues?

Speaker Milliken, do you want to start off?

[Peter Milliken]

First of all, the rationale for the board meeting in camera is a very sensible one, in that they're dealing with mostly what I would call personal issues of claims for payment or whatever—that's a big thing for the board to deal with—and then policies for dealing with those things as well, because they do the bylaws and regulations that govern the way members submit claims and how they're processed and all that sort of stuff.

That part isn't secret. The bylaws are all made public. They're all there for people to read, if they want to, and to see what rules govern members and the way they can make claims and how they're to be processed—all that sort of stuff. So I don't see that as a big issue. I know the media try to make it such, but it isn't. It has worked, and we've had very few problems with it over the years I've served in Parliament. To my mind, it's worked remarkably well. I'm not counting the Senate; I'm talking about the House, and that part has worked really well. I think it's because the rules are public. Yes, they're passed in private at meetings, but then they're made public, and so are the minutes of the meetings. So that stuff is not secret in that sense. The record of what has gone on is there.

Now, sure, it's not a detailed record of who said what, but it does have the decisions the board made that are made public. And I think that's important. I'm not disagreeing with that aspect of the way the body functions, but I also think that in making decisions and reviewing complaints or reviewing cases that members have asked to be raised because they feel they were unfairly treated...it's reasonable for that part to be done in secret, behind closed doors. Why should the member make public the fact that he's unhappy with a decision that was made in respect of a claim the member advanced? I don't see why that's an issue. The question is whether the claim was correct or not, and the board will make its decision. Those decisions have been, in my view, well made over the years that I was there. I never heard complaints in the time before I was on the board, as chair, from any of the previous ones either. It was something that just didn't happen.

I feel our system works very well, and I think it's important to bear that in mind. If we had people making false claims or there were a lot of claims that were not well regulated because our regulations were weak or not properly enforced, yes, but that hasn't been an issue, and it isn't an issue, in my view, with the House of Commons. That's why I'm a strong defender of the way our current system works and the way it has functioned. I think it's good, and I think it's served the House very well, it has served the members very well, and it has served the public of Canada very well.

Salaries of members are not an issue the board decides; it's a government issue. The budgets are what set these things, and they are introduced by the Minister of Finance. The recent restrictions on budget increases for members for their salaries were done in the budget, as I understand it. That's my recollection. I don't think the board ever made a decision in respect of MPs' pay. They may have affected their budgets. If the Department of Finance, in its budget that the minister gives in the House, cuts the Board of Internal Economy's budget, you can only imagine where the cuts are going to fall. MPs' salaries are dealt with by the Minister of Finance in the budget, not by the Board of Internal Economy.

The board isn't there just to look after members. It's there to look after the interests of the House of Commons. In my view, it's done a remarkably good job of it. And I'm not saying that because I was the chair; I'm just saying the way it worked, the way the members worked around the table, to me was extremely good.

It was quite non-partisan. One party would say, “Our member is asking for additional payment for this or for that, but we don't support it”, and the others say, “We don't support it either”, and that was the end of it. That's the way the board works, in my view. It's mostly consensus, and it was very effective for that reason.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Speaker.

Speaker Fraser, I'll give you a chance for a short answer on that. Mr. Lamoureux is just about out of time.

[John Fraser]

I'll be very short.

Speaker Milliken, I think, got to the nub of the thing. Salaries and benefits are determined by the government in the budget, not by the Board of Internal Economy. That, however, may not transfer over to the question of expenditures on any particular trip or activity the member might be in. That could lead to discussion.

I agree with Speaker Milliken when he says there are some things that are sensitive enough that, in fairness to a member of Parliament, they should not be dealt with in the public domain.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Fraser.

We'll move on to Mr. MacKenzie for four minutes, please.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Speaker Milliken, whom I know best in this whole thing, it seems to me, having sat here through this, that we have people who have a solution for no problem.

When I heard the IPSA people talk about the issues they had that brought forward the IPSA program—which seems to me to fit very closely with the BOIE, other than that IPSA is an independent body—they were all the same things: they hold their meetings in camera, they have their minutes, and so on. But what we found out is that prior to their making those changes, they had a system whereby any expense claim of under £250, or about $400, could be made and was automatically paid without any type of receipt.

Would you agree that such a system does not exist here and that our receipts are scrutinized in a manner that is much more comprehensive than that?

I think that explains why they are where they are, and it probably explains the difference in the two systems.

[Peter Milliken]

I'm sorry, I don't have enough of the details to answer that question. I don't know whether we demanded receipts or not. I suspect so, but I just don't remember. You'd file a claim, and I don't know what was attached to it; my staff did all that. But I assume they attached receipts or that there was some evidence—a boarding pass or whatever it was. I don't know; I guess they attached that stuff. I'm sorry.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

That's fair enough. But if in fact those receipts are submitted—