Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 16th, 2015

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

I just want to make sure that we have absolute clarity on this. If the committee decides to move forward on the principle of election of committee chairs, you would be comfortable with whatever else we come up with, or this committee would come up with, in terms of the process and the actual technical amendments if need be, as long as the principle is adhered to.

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

Yes. If the principle is adhered to, I would be more interested in the committee having broader consensus on the mechanics than on any particular mechanics.

If you decide, based upon your previous question, to put in a rule that once a committee chair is deposed, he cannot run for re-election, I'd be fine with that. If you decide that he could run in endless loops of elections, I'd be fine with that. If you had a two-strikes rule and he would be out, I'd be fine with that, the same as I would be fine with it if you wanted to tier committee elections or have them all in one day.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Madam Latendresse.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Trost, we will probably have a sense of déjà vu. I am going to ask you some questions that were raised last time you appeared, but I want to put them to you again because I think it's important to see what we can do to improve certain aspects of your proposal.

On our side, we work very hard to ensure that, to the extent possible, there is at least one woman and one francophone representative on each committee. Even if there are only three members per committee, we always try to maintain a diversified representation. I clearly represent francophones, women and youth, all at the same time, but it can work.

Do you think it's possible to improve representation, even with the system for electing committee chairs?

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

Thank you.

As I noted last time when you asked this question, I asked what is the representative pool of current committee chairs. I forget, but there's either one or no female committee chairs. There's probably one, if my memory serves me correctly. Yes, I see a hand signal that there's one.

I would say that I am not comparing the ideal to my proposal. I am comparing current situation to my proposal for the election of chairs. I think that would be one of the things that would be improved or moved in that direction, because I could very easily see that appeal being made as one of the elements of someone's candidacy.

Let's be pretty blunt here. Members of Parliament want to be seen as reflective. They want to reach out. Caucuses do cultural outreach programs. They do gender outreach programs. They do regional outreach programs. If someone is making a campaign pitch and saying that they need to be there and chairing a committee because it's unrepresentative, knowing how members think, I think that would be fairly powerful.

I could see block votes. I could see female members crossing from one caucus to the other to vote for someone in another caucus because, frankly, they would feel that there's an under-representation of their gender among committee chairmanships. I actually think my proposal would probably open up those posts. I think it would aid that.

I think my proposal is not the question. My proposal is a partial solution.

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

That's interesting.

I want to come back to an issue Mr. Lukiwski raised earlier. It is still important to try to plan what should be done. We talked earlier about decision making. We are starting with the premise that committees are always masters of their agenda and of what they want to do. I still have some reservations regarding the three-strike rule you proposed earlier. We need to find a process that would both help the committee maintain its independence and help the House make decisions.

How could we reconcile those two aspects if a committee chair elected by the whole House lost the committee's confidence?

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

It's a difficult question, and that's why I put out various responses.

My observation of human behaviour, though, is that irrespective of what rules you make and what laws, someone will find a loophole and a way to bend it. In the end, what works the best is if people are actually cooperative.

As much as we have particularly aggressive fights in this place—I will have been a member of Parliament for 11 years by next week—my observation is that you're talking about a most extreme circumstance, a fairly rare circumstance. You might want to have a rule for that circumstance, but whatever you come up with is going to be a technical and imperfect solution. It's going to be imperfect because a situation like that is only going to arise when there are already bad feelings and resentment. So with whatever rule you come up with, whomever feels that the situation did not work out in their favour is going to resent it in the end.

You're not going to have a perfect answer to that one. I'm saying pick one solution, and then experience will guide us if we need to moderate it or change it.

Whatever rules you come up with this first time aren't going to fit everyone's wishes or everyone's desires perfectly, but we have to start somewhere.

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

My last question is much more general.

What is the main advantage of your proposal compared with the current system? Is there a major problem with the current system you are trying to solve through that election? What is the proposal's main advantage?

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

I think the main advantage of this proposal is that it starts to give the House and members a greater sense of ownership of the committees. Members do good work on their committees, but I think committees should be directly responsible to the House. Now, I would ultimately like a system where for committee chairs and vice-chairs, and even inside of caucuses, there is some election mechanism rather than the de facto appointment system that most caucuses now function under.

I think you would ultimately get more robust committee reports. I think you could get a broader range of subject matter dealt with. I think people would be slightly less cautious on all sides; I think that would sometimes be a good thing. That's what I would envision.

Does the system work poorly now? I would say no, but I said that systems can work better. Canadian democracy is a good system, but it's always what you're comparing it to. If we're comparing our parliamentary system to some tinpot dictatorship somewhere, of course it's perfect. If we're comparing it to an ideal that we all aspire to, then it has flaws. That's what I would say.

I want to get closer to the ideal. Canada is a great run country and has been since 1867, but we don't judge ourselves by world standards. We judge ourselves by our own standards, which is that we want to be the best in the world.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

First, Mr. Trost, I applaud you for your initiative. I think it's a wonderful initiative, something that I support—at least I support the principle of how we try to open up parliament to have this sort of a system. In principle, I think most Canadians would support that.

To further walk me through it, which you've already done to a certain degree, if I am someone who wants to chair a particular committee, you're suggesting that I would then be obligated to go out and get x number of signatures, whatever it might be. I would then be responsible for submitting my name some time shortly after the House resumes or predating when committees actually begin. Then it would be done on a preferential ballot where all members would in fact be able to vote. You're suggesting that the principle would just apply to the chairs, and nothing else at this point in time.

Is that a fair reflection of exactly what you're looking for?

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

Yes, I think that would be a fair reflection.

As I've noted, I've touched on other issues. You may want to add vice-chairs, particularly first vice-chairs, to this, but I didn't put that in there.

Again, I view this as a very gradual step to show people that it could be done, and then we'll expand from there.

As I've noted, I would like to see broad consensus on recommendations because that strengthens it when it goes to a future House. With a future House, if we have a tightly divided parliament between the parties, if this is strongly identified with one party, the odds of it being successfully implemented drop dramatically.

That's why I'm fairly hesitant to be too aggressive on the details, because I'm looking for consensus.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Right.

In regard to the concerns about a majority versus a minority, do you see any scenarios where it could be somewhat problematic? What I'm thinking of is that today, for example, there are some standing committees that have an opposition member as a chair. In a solid majority situation, the opposition could lose that opportunity potentially to chair. I don't know if that's been the case in other Parliaments, in particular the British Parliament. Do you have any opinions or thoughts on that?

The opposite could be the case in a minority situation, where you could see a manipulation to shut out government members from being chair. Do you see that as problematic at all?

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

Yes. If you review my testimony from the previous committee, I noted that I did not envision any changes in eligibility for who would run for chairs. That would mean that only government members would be eligible to run for what are now government-led standing committees, and opposition members would only be eligible for opposition-led standing committees.

Now, it's very possible.... One concern you were getting close to but didn't quite touch on is what would happen in a majority government when the opposition members' chairmanships could effectively be picked by the government members, or the reverse in a minority Parliament, where the opposition could gang up and effectively pick chairs from among those government members who are most friendly to the opposition. That's a possibility, but that would be the will of the House and not the will of the party leaders.

I would note, as implied in my statement on preferential ballots, that these votes would be secret. One thing I know about secret ballots around this place is that as much as the party leadership may have a preference, as soon as it's not holding up hands in the room, the votes are impossible to control. When they did this in the House of Commons in Great Britain, one of the candidates for one of the committee chairmanships noted that while they only have 650-odd members, among the candidates for committee chairmanship they had approaching 2,000 commitments. Politicians sometimes tell people what they want to hear, including other politicians.

I think a secret ballot would be very difficult for the leadership to try to manipulate, to try to cherry-pick opposition members, particularly in the new Parliament when you have new MPs and you have people who are manoeuvring back and forth. I think it's a theoretical problem. I don't think it would be a practical problem.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

In regard to things such as the special committees, the idea there is that if the Prime Minister at the time calls upon a special committee to look at something, you made reference in the report that it be of the same structure. You then suggest that the same principle would apply, that the entire House would have to vote on the chair of that particular committee.

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

Well, think about this. Let's say there's a Liberal government—you'd naturally like the thought of that—and there was some issue on human rights to be dealt with. Mr. Cotler in your caucus has a specific expertise, and assuming he's not a minister in the government, I could see someone like that wanting to lead the study because of his expertise and the respect he has on this issue from different sides of the House. Mr. Rajotte's retiring. He's well respected on the finance committee. A similar situation would occur if there were a particular piece of legislation or issue that had to do with economic or financial matters. It could be very possible that the House would want to give its blessing to members who have specific expertise.

Again, it's something you could address, and you could come down on either side, but I think it would add to the credibility of a committee to do that.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

The idea of having to have the secret ballot, that principle would apply even for the special committees.

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

Secret ballots do a wonderful thing, as I noted in my remarks about 2,000 commitments from 650 members of Parliament. People are free at that point to do what they want, and I think it would add a degree of credibility. We want to have as much credibility in our committees and in the work that we have here as possible. Voters want us to have input and the credibility that we have goes a long way. The credibility that we're able to bring to our constituents, some of it could come from the committee here.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Generally speaking, currently in all committees there is a government chair, an official opposition vice-chair, and the second vice-chair is from the third party. Would you still want to see that principle, where all three political parties hold some form of position, whether it's chair, vice-chair, or second vice-chair?

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

Yes, again I didn't address eligibility for positions. You must have that, and I think that's one of the things that would strengthen it, because it would not just be government members who would be elected, but also opposition members.

Again, I can understand the situation where a party only has one member on the committee, such as the situation here, and they could not put their chosen critic on the committee, if the House voted one way or the other. So I could see an exception being made for the second vice-chair position for parties with only one member, but other than that, I think it would add credibility in all situations, because we represent all parties here and all parties should function under the same rules.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Reid for four minutes, please.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you.

The two issues I see as being fundamentally problematic, not necessarily fatal, but being a problem that we would want to wrestle with are, number one, the issue of parties or factions in the House, and number two, the problem of having more than one mandate.

With regard to the problem of members of parties or factions in the House, if you have a system that we had simply set this up within and have no regard of the rules, no reflection of the rules, of the reality that a number of parties have their own discipline and are patrolling themselves as blocs, then the danger you have is that all positions will wind up being held by the party with the largest faction, particularly when that party has a majority—more than 50% of the seats. I'm certain that's the reason why the rules now talk about opposition-shared committees, the need to have opposition members present on committees before you can conduct business, and so on.

Once you reflect those factions, you then have the unintended consequence—I think it's unintended—of freezing out independent MPs, something that occurs in committees right now. I think that's potentially a problem, one that you may or may not have thought of ways of dealing with.

The second issue relates to having more than one mandate. By that I mean that you get elected by the House, you get dismissed by members of the committee, who had no confidence in you, and then under your suggestion, as I understand it, you could run again and be re-elected by the House. At first I thought this seems crazy, and then I thought maybe it's not so crazy. Maybe effectively it should be thought of this way. The committee submits an advisory opinion to the House that it doesn't have confidence in our chair. Then the House could say that it has confidence in the chair, so that the committee should conform. They may not say that, but if they override the committee's opinion, then, effectively, members of the committee ought to accept the chair's style of chairing things, or perhaps retire from the committee and let themselves be replaced.

I appreciate your thoughts on both of those two topics in the remaining time we have.

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

Mr. Lamoureux was getting to your first point in his question too. Perhaps I should have been more explicit this time, but in the last committee appearance I dealt with the question directly.

In my proposal, I would argue that the eligibility of those eligible to run for particular posts would not change. For the committees that are designated government committees, it would mean that only government members could run for those positions. For the committees that are designated opposition-chaired committees, only opposition members could do that. Eligibility would not change. You would still not have cabinet ministers running for committee chairmanships and various other things.

In that respect, I think it deals with the issue you're dealing with. Yes, if government members ganged up and liked a particular opposition member, they could all vote for that opposition member, and that opposition member could end up as the chair even though most of the opposition members preferred someone else to be the chair.

But again, as I said to Mr. Lamoureux, that's easier said than done in a secret ballot. Having watched how many rounds the election of the Speaker went last time, where people's various votes were going back and forth, it's fairly difficult to do. It's not impossible. You could have the 20 government members most friendly to the opposition all elected as chairs if the opposition supported them in a minority situation. Again, that's possible.

The British experience, as I've been able to look through it, doesn't seem to support that this is what happens. In some of the recommendations and reports on it, they've said that this has been a profound change and that it's worked fairly well for them. What seems to be the case—I don't have a hard quote to back this up, but I wish I did—is that the people being elected as chairs in Great Britain tend to have expertise in certain areas or who have reputations. That tends to be where Parliament has gone rather than the top trying to manipulate.

The dual mandate question, I agree with you, is one of the more difficult ones. That's why I dealt with it with the potential three strikes and you're out rule, or come back and forth.... Again, there are different forms of punishment when someone misbehaves. My parents were not fond of sending me to a corner. They tended to prefer corporal discipline. But sometimes when someone misbehaves, you might want to send them over to a corner for a time out, for a quiet time. You don't necessarily want to kick them out of your house and expel them.

I think it's also possible that once a committee chair is removed, some steam would be let off, and the committee would be fine with letting him back. Again, we've had this problem in the past. You could have a situation where a committee could repeatedly fire a chair and he could get repeatedly reappointed by his party. We could have the potential for the endless loop in this situation too. It's not a new problem. It's just a different way of dealing with the problem, and it would be more public when it happens.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Lukiwski for four minutes,

Then, if you don't mind, your chair has a few questions today.

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

Thanks very much, Chair.

You touched on a lot of the possibilities for how one could manipulate the results, and it's true. It may not be easy, but it's certainly possible.

One of the difficulties I have is the practical one of having members elect committee chairs early on in the process. For example, in this next Parliament, I think it's very likely we will have at least 100 new members in this Parliament. There are 30 new seats. There are 40 retirees. A 10% turnover of incumbents running again I think is normal, so we'll say that there will be 100-plus new members coming into Parliament for the first time without knowing the background or the expertise of anyone else.

They're brand new. They're newbies, whereas the whips of each party, or at least the party leadership, do know the background and the relative strengths and weaknesses of other members. One could certainly argue that the whips or the parties themselves are far better positioned to suggest which members might have a certain expertise to effectively chair a committee, as opposed to brand new members saying they have no idea who the person is. How do you envision overcoming that? Would there be speeches? Would there be campaign brochures put out? How does a—