Evidence of meeting #15 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 staff.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Hopefully, that will be enough time.
I'll return to where we were in the conversation previously. First of all, I want to go back to the idea of the sitting weeks and changes that might be entailed there. If we were to go to having longer hours on specific days to accommodate the idea that the Liberals want, which is not to be here on Fridays, would overtime costs incurred by staff on the administrative level? What kind of costs would we see in that? If we are talking about longer sitting days, those should incur extra costs for administration staff and these kinds of things. What is your sense of that?
Acting Clerk, House of Commons
It's hard to know precisely without knowing what those longer hours might look like.
I'll give you an example. Right now we begin the sittings on Mondays at 11 o'clock. If we started at 10 o'clock or 9 o'clock, that would have no impact, because people are here anyway to work a full day. Sitting an extra half-hour or an hour later in the day—minimal impact again. People are here, largely, for shifts that end near the adjournment time anyway, and that can be adjusted. People could be asked to come in a little later and stay a little later. We already do that in the journals branch, for example.
My initial instinctive feeling is that it wouldn't have a huge impact.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
In terms of the idea of the secondary chamber or the parallel debating chamber, I know you were having a bit of a conversation with one of my colleagues here briefly on that in the previous round. What's your sense as to what the cost of setting up a parallel debating chamber would look like? Obviously a physical facility would have to be provided of some kind, and the staff costs and stuff like that. In that regard what kind of costs would we be looking at there?
Acting Clerk, House of Commons
Again, I don't believe there's a huge impact financially there. Obviously, we haven't done a full analysis, so there's always that caveat, but if you picture it more as an additional committee, then you immediately get the picture that we can do this very quickly.
As I said earlier, we do 50 to 60 committees a week. This week we have 55, I believe. We're able to do those, and a parallel chamber could resemble a large committee quite easily.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Give me kind of a sense as to how you would see that being set up, then. Would we be utilizing one of these committee rooms and we'd have it set up similar to what we have here, where people would speak from their place at the committee table? I'm not certain as to how that looks.
Acting Clerk, House of Commons
It's hard for me to speculate on that. It would really depend on how the committee would want to structure that. Members might want the set-up a bit like the House is set up, with chairs on either side, with maybe a central podium, or members could rise and speak from their assigned seat.
There are a lot of different possible ways it could be done, from rather informal to rather formal.
The place I referred to is the parallel chamber in Australia, which is in a room not unlike this one, set up for that purpose in a committee style.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Maybe we'll thank you there, and hopefully we'll have another chance.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
In regard to the point on disability that Mr. Reid and Mr. Christopherson made, as I said, you can have the people—and we have, in the past—who have been in their office here and in their committee meetings here. That was allowed under the very first standing order:
The Speaker may alter the application of any Standing or special Order or practice of the House in order to permit the full participation in the proceedings of the House of any Member with a disability.
We'll go on to Ms. Sahota for five minutes.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
Thank you, Mr. Clerk, and everyone, for being here today.
I'd like to start by saying that we're here in this committee trying to figure out how to make Parliament more efficient, more modern, and more family friendly, and this is not a position that all Liberals have taken. It's a position that for years and years has been talked about, has been discussed, and we're trying to figure out how to come to a solution now.
There are many Conservatives and many NDP members who are also in favour of having constituency days on Friday, and many, many spouses.
I appreciate and agree that the impact we were talking about on the constituents might be quite good, because my constituents whom I oftentimes hear from think that I'm not working when I'm not there. I hear that concern quite often. They have to wait weeks to get a meeting with me because they want face time with me, not with my staff, because they have a very serious concern in the riding. Because of that, I end up having to meet them. I take time to try to get back on Fridays mostly, just so that I can meet them and keep my constituents happy, or meet them over the weekend along with attending various events. It leaves very little time for family and children, but that's something that each individual MP takes on.
So, having days in the constituency would make them quite happy, so they wouldn't have to wait weeks to meet with me, but every week they'd know there was a day when they could come and have face time.
I would like to know what your opinion is on the easiest way of doing that, if we were to choose to do that in the end, in your expert opinion. Would it be the parallel chamber? Would it be moving hours around? What is your opinion on that?
Acting Clerk, House of Commons
Here again, bearing in mind the theme of family friendliness, it should be remembered that all parties run a roster system in the chamber for House duty. The lost hours on a day that the House would choose to not sit could be made up on those other days. This has been the pattern in the past when the hours of sitting of the House have been modified. The parties have chosen to make sure that those hours aren't lost. In fact, in some cases they've been increased.
Sitting later doesn't necessarily mean that all members are affected. It really only means that certain members are affected, and not all the time, because House duty shifts change. Sometimes you might have to work a Thursday afternoon once a month or whatever. That's the kind of arrangement that the whips try to make to accommodate members. So the impact of eliminating a day and reapportioning those hours should be manageable, in my opinion, from an individual member standpoint.
The real key, though, is the issue of predictability, and I spoke about this the last time I was here. What really helps members plan their activities and their lives is knowing when things are going to take place. Having votes at three o'clock, as the House has started doing, is a great amelioration of the uncertainty that members used to face: “There's a vote tonight. Well, no, there's an extension because of a ministerial statement, so it's not going to be at 5:30, but 6:00. Oh, no, it's 6:18 that the bells will start.” It was a moveable feast. Members never knew when, plus they had to wait for the time of the bells.
With having the vote right at 3 o'clock, everyone is there. Boom, you do it and it's done. It's eight minutes, nine minutes, and you can get on with the rest of your day.
Now, we haven't been faced with multiple votes yet, and that will challenge that model somewhat. With a parallel chamber, again, it's the same argument there. If you have a parallel chamber, it only affects certain members: the ones who choose to be there. If the quorum is low, like it is in Australia and Great Britain, it's not an issue from the whips' standpoint and the other rules that are put around that.
If you look at it from that prism, thinking of the individual members taking turns where it's required, it becomes manageable.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Thank you.
I asked to be included in the speaking order because I wanted to make some of the same points Mr. Bosc just made. The parallel chamber idea originated, as I understand it, in Australia. It may exist elsewhere. I love Australia. I admire Australia. I used to live in Australia. I was once a permanent resident of Australia.
However, the purpose of the parallel chamber, we should be clear, is to allow people to pretend dishonestly that they spoke before the whole House of Commons when they did nothing of the sort. They speak to an empty room that has a special quorum requirement so that virtually nobody has to be present, and which is running at the same time as the House is running. That means that in fact they are talking to nobody, but they could make a claim. I think that's dishonest. I would oppose having a parallel chamber.
We do have a system of S. O. 31s, where you can bring up any issue that is of importance to you. It happens right before QP, when everybody is present, so you are actually saying it when people are paying attention. That is the beauty of our system. If we have a problem that members aren't getting enough chances to appear before their colleagues, then I would suggest expanding the S. O. 31s from 15 minutes to some longer period of time, maybe starting them at 1:45 p.m. instead of 2 p.m., to double the time, or something like that.
On the subject of taking a parallel chamber and having it set up on Friday, you wouldn't need a parallel chamber because the House of Commons would be available. But I can't think of anything more antithetical to being family-friendly: “Now I must stay in the House of Commons on Fridays if I want to address these matters that are of issue to my constituents.” I would strongly oppose that too.
There are a whole bunch of ways of doing better than this, but I suggest that we start expanding the number of S. O. 31s if you really believe this is an issue. I didn't have a question; I just wanted to make that statement.
Liberal
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
Thank you very much for all your feedback.
I also wanted to comment on having Fridays off. I think the flexibility we have as members of Parliament is to arrange our schedules so they best serves us, our constituents, our staff, etc. I have a very large riding, about 10,000 square kilometres. It's large compared to some, but if you compare it to the chair's, or Larry's, it's a bit different. But you work your schedule around it. I find that I'm meeting constituents on Saturdays, if I have to, in-between events and those sorts of things. So I think there is a lot of flexibility.
I still question whether you look at what's happening in Alberta. People are losing their jobs in Alberta and our salaries were raised, and now we're looking at taking a day off. I think that's the wrong message to send. We heard comments from the parliamentary spouses and some of them said in their survey responses that having Fridays off would be a bad thing, The member from the NDP who was speaking also said it was a bad idea.
I agree with Mr. Reid. I think if there are ways to rearrange the schedule and that those are smaller changes that we can make, rather than just overhauling the entire system. We may be working in our ridings Friday, but I think it gives the wrong impression.
Again, that was more of a comment than a question. We went through a lot already.
How much time do I have? I just want to make a few more comments.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
I want to comment about the calendar, which I know you addressed at the beginning. I know your IT people are looking at it, but that is a huge issue. I know there are the secure ID cards whereby people can log in and get access to it, but it's $100 each, I believe, and we don't want six or seven of them out there, so if there is any way.... We use Google Calendar. I know it's not the best option, but it's the best option for getting people to see my calendar.
I think most of what I wanted to ask has been asked already. I do have concerns about cost of some of the changes, but I don't know if you have any additional comments on that.
Acting Clerk, House of Commons
Yes, just to say that I don't want to leave the committee with the impression that I am in favour or against any of the options being discussed. I'm neutral on all of this. As the House administration and as a procedural team, we will do whatever the House decides it wants to do. That's what we're here for. We have no views one way or another. We're just trying to explain that our flexibility allows us to go wherever the House decides to go.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
Before I hand over the floor to my colleague, I want to make sure that we're not caught up on the S. O. 31s and what Mr. Reid said about having more S. O. 31s during the week. If we had a parallel chamber on Fridays, it would give us more flexibility to add things like that. We could do other things on Fridays: private members' business, government business, whatever. I think it would give us a lot of flexibility as a Parliament to be able to look at what that schedule would look like, and that would include, if you have the parallel team on Fridays, adding more members' statements, if that's the wish of the committee. So I don't want to get caught up on that one thing, but I do want to pass it on to....
Liberal
Ginette Petitpas Taylor Liberal Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
Thank you.
Just to piggyback on the comments of my colleague, Mr. Schmale, we had the pleasure of having the Parliamentary Spouses Association here this week, and they indicated that they had sent out some surveys. However, we also have to remember that only 12 people responded to those surveys, so perhaps they weren't a great snapshot of everyone's wishes and opinions.
That said, there was one comment that I felt was quite interesting. When the spouses spoke about the travel point system, they indicated that some spouses sometimes don't want to use the privilege of coming to Ottawa to visit their spouse because the expenses are posted. Of course, we want all of our expenses to be transparent; we feel it's very important. But some individuals whose travel costs are much higher feel that perhaps their partner's will be penalized during election time or whatever about spending an awful lot of money. Could you expand on that and see if any other option is available that could avoid that type of situation?