Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 4th, 2019

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I think, then, that in any consideration of this, we're going to have to think about the whole ball of wax of what it would cost to deliver this.

[Charles Robert]

All of that, I think, would be factored in. I think there is some flexibility, and it would really depend on the model you choose to propose. If the parallel chamber meets five days a week and a good number of hours, yes, you're probably right. However, if it only meets a few hours—like another committee, let's say—I'm not sure that the impact will be as considerable as you might fear.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I think the family-friendly aspect is going to be a big issue. I think one of those meets at 4:30 in the afternoon. I don't think there will be a lot of favour for that.

[Charles Robert]

I might tell you that in the good old days—and we are really talking about the good old days—the House of Commons at Westminster would meet at seven o'clock in the morning. The funniest part was that they adjourned when they refused to adopt the motion to bring in the candles.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Well, we don't want any candles in here. We already lost one House of Commons.

I think the key to it, as well—if you would even consider it—would be that we're going to have to completely change who gets to set the agenda and who gets to choose what is being debated that day. Right now in our committees, the majority government members decide all of that. If we really want to provide an additional opportunity for other members to participate, those kinds of things are really going to have to be democratized, I would suspect. I think there have been a lot of proposals to try to better democratize the House proceedings as they are, and my suggestion would be to maybe work on that first before we start inventing another chamber.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you, Ms. Duncan.

Now I am going to more flexible open questioning, so anyone who has questions can ask them.

We'll start with Mr. Graham.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I'm going to build a little on some of the things that were said earlier.

There is a certain frustration around here about how some of the PMBs we do are quite weak. We have a day, a week or a month for absolutely everything now, which is cool, but I think PMBs have a lot more potential than that. I see the opportunity of a secondary debating chamber as one that can really empower PMBs to have a purpose again, I think, and make PMBs important again.

So—

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

We'll just have one for everybody, as opposed to the lottery winners.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

That's right, and it would be nice to change the PMB selection process to, at the very least—and I've put this motion once—survive. It would fix the slightly ridiculous problem of somebody who has been here for five mandates and has never had a PMB and somebody who comes here on the first day and gets a PMB.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Agreed.

[An hon. member]

Have you ever had one?

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I'm off the list. I'm at about 10 years from now to get mine.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

One in 15 years.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Yes.

In terms of the structure of a secondary debating team, which I think is a really good idea, you're talking about having to decide the rules. What would be a model to start with from your point of view? Would it be committee of the whole with autopilot-type rules so that the committee would rise the moment bells happen and be suspended like this committee is? Is it somewhere between the House and a committee?

[Charles Robert]

I think a committee of the whole would perhaps be a useful model to look at, and then using that as your template, as you drill down into decisions about what you really want the parallel chamber to do, then you can start and say, “Okay, there are rules here.” You can select. There are some jurisdictions that have another way of handling business that you might think would be useful. This is an opportunity for you to be experimental.

I would suggest to you as one possibility that if you didn't allow votes in the parallel chamber because you really wanted to promote debate, the opportunity to be flexible about whether or not you think the government has to have control may be less of a factor.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I think the purpose of parallel debating chamber is, to use computer lingo, to multithread the environment. When you have a computer that can do two things at once, you call it multithreading, so you're having the things offloaded to another process, or the other House, to deal with a particular problem. The private members' bills would come to the secondary debating chamber and go back to the House for the vote. I think that makes a lot of sense. I don't see any reason to vote in the secondary debating chamber at any time, not even unanimous consent. I don't think that should be permitted there.

I have another question for you. Is there any reason the secondary debating chamber has to be a physical chamber, or could we think of a virtual chamber?

[Charles Robert]

That would be a serious innovation that I think you'd have to consider carefully. The rules right now, for example, require a physical presence.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

If it's an autopilot with no quorum and no votes and no UC, then it sort of becomes moot. If somebody wants to use it the way, for example, the late show works, where one person speaks and one person responds, and nobody else has to be there, if that's—

[Charles Robert]

The one factor that might come into play would be if you establish a quorum, and how small you would want it to be or how big. I suspect, and it's one way of looking at it, that if you make it too small, you reduce its importance. It might be convenient in terms of advancing debate, but if you're basically debating into a mirror, I'm not sure how meaningful that is.

[An hon. member]

He does it all the time.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

It's arguable that sometimes debates into a mirror do happen, but there happen to be 337 people watching the mirror. I'm not sure that necessarily flows.

Anyhow, I do have another question. I'll come back to that later if I get another chance.

If we have a debating chamber, should it have a name that represents it and what it does?

[Charles Robert]

Sure, I think that would be a great idea.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Okay. For me the ultimate purpose of a secondary debating chamber is to take back control of some aspects of this to the backbench. I'll propose a name for you, and I've told Scott this before—Scott and Scott. I would propose to name it the William Lenthall chamber to recall that the last time the executive tried to interfere, they lost their heads, so it would be the backbench chamber.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!