Evidence of meeting #147 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was debate.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Clerk of the House of Commons
Okay, but let's use that as an opportunity to figure out how it can be addressed more effectively. I know that when omnibus bills arrive in the Senate, they adopt a motion after second reading to actually divide the bill to go to separate committees—
Clerk of the House of Commons
—with one committee having mastery of the entire bill. Then they submit bits and pieces to it.
If you had a parallel chamber, you could devise the Standing Orders to allow specific portions of the omnibus bill to be debated in a parallel chamber. This means you could have focused debate, if that's what you feel would be useful.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
You could also say that the parallel chamber is the place where bills get sent to serve that parallel Senate purpose of dividing up the bill into its appropriate sections. That would effectively be managed through some kind of House leader and opposition House leader teams within.... Is that a possibility?
Clerk of the House of Commons
I think it depends really on how the House as a collectivity decides on the best way to manage the increasingly complex business that the House is confronted with.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Right. In all fairness, though, what we've just described is not parallel. Not that the U.K. or Australia—
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
We could be. I just want to be clear that we're now talking about an innovation, as opposed to an emulation of an esteemed predecessor.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
The other thing that strikes me about the increasing complexity of our society, and the increasing sophistication of the legislators who come here—which may not mean they're more sophisticated people than our predecessors a century ago; it may only mean that we have larger teams working for us, constituency offices, greater ability to access Library of Parliament resources and so on—is that there's more private members' business and it is more meaningful. Even in the 19 years I've been here, I've seen a significant move in that direction. To me, that could potentially serve as a venue for dealing with the multiplicity of issues that are not part of the government agenda or of various opposition party agendas, and yet are of importance, and not always on a local level; they can be issues that have national importance but are very specific.
Having said that, I feel very strongly that one of the problems we have is we are unable to get enough private members' business through the bottleneck. As a reasonable target, I would suggest that we ought to be trying to ensure that every member has a reasonable chance, wherever in the hierarchy or lottery he or she comes out, to present a bill to the House and to expect that it can make its way through the various readings and be sent off to the Senate in time to make it through that body. We can only do this if we increase the amount of time devoted to such bills. Inevitably, that would mean moving that business to a parallel chamber. Alternatively, we could sit all night in the House of Commons to deal with private members' business, but this seems a more humane and practical way of doing it.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
I was going to ask for a comment, but I'm out of time. Maybe you'll work that into your responses to Mr. Graham's or Ms. Duncan's questions.
Clerk of the House of Commons
Again, I think depending on what you regard as your priorities and what you want to achieve, it can certainly become an aspect of the role you would assign to the parallel chamber.
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Thank you very much.
It's my first time at this committee. I always wondered what PROC gets up to. I have to say, I'm shaking my head at this one. I'm wondering if we can have some of the members of Samara actually follow a member of Parliament one day, and see that we don't have a second in the day to do something additional. A parallel chamber, I'm like....
I have lots of questions about this. You make a good point with omnibus bills, but time after time, the opposition asks for those to be separated, to go to the appropriate places, which are the relevant standing committees, and we don't get that. That would be my preference, rather than going to some nefarious room that isn't taken as seriously.
I think there are many things that could be done to make this place more democratic, and to not only give more opportunities to the elected members, but to the public, scientists and experts to come in and testify, so that we can hear their opinions.
The big question I would raise is that I think a lot of people would think this sounds exciting, because we're actually finally going to have debates. We don't really have debates in this place. One person speaks, and then another person speaks and another person may get to speak. I think that if there were a mechanism, not necessarily another House, but if there were time set aside each year, where we were generally going to have debates, then there could be agreement on the topics of the day.
Say, for example, we have a genuine debate about how we're going to resolve pharmacare. It's not just people giving speeches; you actually have an interesting debate, and maybe panels of experts.
I looked at these other two parallel chambers and in some cases, it seems like those are exactly the things we do in the House. I'm wondering why we need a parallel chamber. My biggest bone of contention is with majority governments. What guarantee is there in this second chamber that it's not all going to be taken up by majority government members? Who's going to decide who gets more time to debate? Big issues like that need to be discussed.
What's the intent of this? Is it to give opportunity for those who aren't getting a fair chance to speak the chance to speak? We have the frustration right now where many can't even table their private member's bill because of procedural actions by the government of the day.
I'm wondering if you've discussed those kinds of issues with these other two jurisdictions about whether they have dealt with some of these issues, and where they think this second chamber helps any of those issues.
Clerk of the House of Commons
I have not discussed with either Westminster or Canberra how they manage their business. I'm a bit familiar with some of the culture.
I would suggest to you that Westminster with its 650 members and a thousand years of history may be bound by certain traditions and behaviours that are expected and that are different from our own.
Australia has a somewhat newer Parliament. Even though it has a close history to Canada's in its development, it is a highly partisan chamber, where party discipline is very strongly enforced. I would see that its behaviour is probably closer to what you have just mentioned.
Clerk of the House of Commons
In the second chamber, as you see, they deal basically with what I think Mr. Simms, Mr. Graham and Mr. Reid would admit are somewhat less substantial issues. That's because it's perhaps, in an environment of party discipline, a safer option. Nonetheless, it's releasing a pressure valve that is giving opportunities for members to raise issues that they still feel are important. From that point of view, then, Canberra may be satisfied that this is an effective option to implement to allow members some opportunities to focus on what really is of interest to them.
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Other than having to find another chamber, which is already a challenge around here with Centre Block closed—
Clerk of the House of Commons
Just consider it basically another committee.
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Our caucus can't even meet over there anymore because there's no room for it, so I don't know how we're going to have another chamber. However, in addition to another chamber, we're going to need clerks and interpreters. There's increasing pressure that we would have indigenous interpreters.
