Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 14th, 2016

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

It's to your credit.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Thank you.

You are the one who gave us that compliment, and so I'd like to thank you for it.

I'd like to talk about perception versus reality a little bit, because I feel there is a lot of politics being played and some closed-mindedness on the side of the opposition as to the Friday sittings.

I'd like to know how many ministers, not just in this Parliament but in the last Parliament and in the previous Parliament, are actually there on Fridays. What does question period look like? How many members are actually present on Fridays? What are the hours like on a Friday?

I don't want us to be closed-minded to this, and I am not saying I'm completely for one thing or another. We've just heard my colleague Arnold Chan say that even the Liberals.... We are just trying to figure it out. There are people who are for it or against it. They are trying to see what's best to make Parliament more family-friendly.

I have to say, for myself, before knowing that you could probably trade off House duty and all that, it was a very difficult decision for me to make when running for a member of Parliament, for this position, because I have a young family. I used to play a very prominent role in the child care, so we had to switch things around at least for the first year or two of my child's life. I got in the game, in the race, got out of it, and then got back in after a year. It was a struggle.

I don't want there to be a deterrent factor for other people with young families who might want to participate and become members of Parliament. After all, we do need a diverse Parliament. We need to make sure that their voices are heard.

That is why I would really like to focus on this idea of perception versus reality. How much are we actually gaining by these Friday sittings? Would we be losing anything by not having the sittings, by switching the hours around but still having the same number of sitting hours, depending on how we change things? How much would we gain in our ridings, and how much might our constituents gain from our being there?

Could you shed some more light on what the reality of our Fridays looks like right now?

[Marc Bosc]

There is a well-established rule that we don't comment on the presence or absence of members. That said, it is no secret that attendance on Fridays is lower, for the same reasons I mentioned earlier. All parties have roster systems. They try to manage the requirements for their members to be present as efficiently as they can and allow as many of their members as possible to go back to the constituency, either on Thursday evening or early on Friday. Then they try to manage it in a similar way on the other end, on Mondays.

I have no views on whether or not it's a good idea not to sit on Fridays. It's neither here, nor there to the House administration. We will adapt to whatever the House decides.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

I'm sure you would agree that the status quo is always easy to maintain, but it takes some mindfulness and some courage to change things and to modernize Parliament. That's what we are trying to get to.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Ms. Petitpas Taylor.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

I would like to echo something that has been said on a few occasions today. It's not about taking Fridays off and not wanting to serve; it's about being more efficient with our time as members of Parliament, not just here in Ottawa but also in our ridings.

We're starting a 10-week rotation, let's say, and for me to be able to meet a constituent, the next appointment that's available is in early July. To me, that's just not acceptable.

Going in on Saturday mornings is an option, but we try to have that work/life balance.

My question is specifically for the staff. If members of Parliament worked in their constituencies on Fridays as opposed to being on the Hill, would it create efficiencies for the staff of the House of Commons by our not being here?

[Marc Bosc]

As I said earlier, the vast majority of House of Commons personnel are indeterminate employees. They are full-time employees. There are a small number of sessional employees, so there may be an impact there, but I would suggest that it's minimal.

Pierre, would you agree?

[Pierre Parent]

I would agree with Marc, because the bulk of our staff are full-time permanent employees. We do have a very small portion of our staff who are sessional, who are tied to the actual activities of the House.

The same applies to summer. There are some activities that continue in the summer, whether it's in finance, legal services, or information services. This is the bulk of our workforce.

The Fridays would not necessarily create extra savings or significant savings for the administration.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

But for the staff, would it allow them some time to catch up on the work that needs to get done? Sometimes when we're here we can see that we can create an awful lot of extra work.

[Marc Bosc]

Perhaps in some offices, but we're used to the parliamentary cycle and we manage with that. I don't think it would have a huge impact.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Far be it from me to agree with Mr. Christopherson twice in one day, but I do want to say that he had called on those members who aren't affected by travel points to talk about this issue. I live 15 minutes from here. The furthest reach of my constituency is, at a maximum, a forty-minute drive from here, and I don't have children or caregiving responsibilities.

I would like to echo that I think it's only fair that those who have to use more points because they have larger families or travel greater distances not be perceived as spending more money—the only caveat being that if we're going to say how many trips they took, we should also indicate if it was economy class or business class, and whether they took the most efficient, direct, and economical route. We don't want people to think that since we're not putting down the amounts, they can just go business class every single time.

Now back to the issue of the parallel chamber on Fridays. I think that if we were to sit half an hour early and half an hour late, Monday through Thursday, we would make up the 4.5 hours we sit on Fridays for all the business we do in the House right now.

Here's what happened to me just this past week. We have four days of debate on the budget. On the very first day, I asked to be put on the list. There were 80 members who had already asked to speak on the budget during those four days, so a lot of members don't get to speak on the things that are really important to them.

I hear what Mr. Reid is saying about Fridays being just for members' statements. I think we should allow it for members' statements—and for any bill that is before the House, perhaps members could give a twenty-minute speech on that subject on Fridays. We could even do it longer. We could have six hours on a Friday.

We'd be adding more time, but being much more efficient in terms of when we're here and when we're away, so that when we are here we are doing the things that we know matter to our constituents, and we don't have to be here just sitting in the lobby if there are other things we could be doing.

Can you comment on whether that would work, for instance on a Friday.

[Marc Bosc]

Again as I've said before, the committee has the full flexibility to recommend any kind of structure it wants to recommend. I'm reminded a little bit of something that Dr. Koester, a previous clerk of the House, said to me one time, and it's from an old version of Erskine May, where in the preface there are two quotes. One is from an old clerk from the 1600s who grumbled during a procedural wrangle that “the old way was the best, and when we went out of it, we found rubs and stops as men usually did in unbeaten ways”. And then the alternative view from a different clerk in the 1820s was, “What does that signify about precedence? The House can do what it wants.”

So what the committee needs to remember is that precedents come from somewhere, and new ways of doing things come from somewhere. The committee is entirely free to recommend whatever it wants in that regard. I really have no views on what the best way forward is, but you should know that the House will adapt to whatever the committee recommends.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Go ahead, David.

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

I'll just very briefly respond to one comment on the shortest and most efficient route: we should be careful of that. In my riding, the shortest route goes through the Papineau-Labelle nature reserve on single-lane unimproved roads.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I meant flights.

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

Okay, be very specific on that, so I don't get stuck having to go through the reserve. Thank you.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I meant flights.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Okay.

I'd like to thank our witnesses for a very long but very helpful session. You answered a lot of questions that committee members had in a lot of areas and gave us the ramifications of the recommendations that we might make ultimately. I know that you've always been very helpful. Between meetings, if we need clarification, we know you're always there, and we really appreciate your giving us this much time.

You are excused.

[Marc Bosc]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

As I said at the beginning of the meeting, we have five items of business that we can deal with. We have Mr. Reid's motion and Mr. Christopherson's motion. We have to approve a budget for these hearings to pay for our witnesses coming, and there's the guideline from the Ethics Commissioner on gifts for members, which I hope you've all read. There's also the emergency motion drafted by the clerk or the Speaker, which seems to make quite common sense and is a very short item. So we have to decide which item of those to do and to start with.

Go ahead, Mr. Reid.

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

If I could, I would like to go with the motion I proposed first. I don't think this is controversial, but I could be proved wrong. So perhaps I'll move it now.

The motion is:

That the Chairperson and federal members of the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments be invited to appear before the Committee before the end of May 2016, to answer all questions relating to: their mandate and responsibilities, the Report of the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments Transitional Process (January - March 2016) that was submitted to the Prime Minister on March 31, 2016, expenses incurred during the period of the report, and anticipated future expenses.

Mr. Chair, I'll be very brief in summarizing the rationale for this. In the past, there was resistence to inviting the members of the advisory board. Yes, it was from the Liberals. The arguments presented against doing so included the fact that they would be submitting a report and that we ought to wait for that and ought not to put them in a position of having to report to us prior to doing their report to the Prime Minister. That's no longer an issue. We now have that report.

We also have some other information. We have information that their costs were a good deal higher that I would have thought would be reasonable, although it may be that they are reasonable and I'm just not seeing what the reasons are. But you can project that, if it costs this much to appoint seven, it's going to cost about three times as much to appoint the remaining 22 vacancies, and obviously that is a concern. Thus there's a desire to find out more.

As well, there is one oddity. The advisory board indicated that it had misplaced the list of organizations it contacted. I'm having some trouble, in the age of endless electronic copies of things, understanding how that could have occurred. The advisory board thought it was important enough that it wanted to present this information, but was unable to get a complete list. So getting that from it as well would be part of what we'd want to hear, or I would certainly want to hear.

Anyway the proposal is to get the advisory board here before the end of May, and I'm reluctant to raise this issue if we wind up having another meeting where we've got six witnesses and I'd be crowding them out through discussion of this motion. So that's why I raised it today, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Does anyone want to speak to the motion?

Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'll chime in quickly, to the extent that I'm not going to oppose it. We'll support it.

But you know, for us in the NDP, in the context of our position, this is all just polishing the deck chairs on the Titanic before the darned thing goes down. We're not all that interested in perfecting an overall system that makes appointments in a democracy the reality. However, it is the reality, and if anyone wants to continue poking around in this area, we'll be supportive, but always in the context that none of this should be happening. It's a wart on the body politic of Canada that we have this thing, and all its various permutations of appointing people doesn't change the fact that it's an appointment process.

Also, I remind the government that it's not 2015 now, but 2016, and the idea of an appointed upper House is still the antithesis of anything anyone would remotely call a democracy.

In that context, we'll support it, but we won't be leading the band.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

Will there be any further discussion before we have a vote?

The motion has just been read.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I'd like a recorded vote, please.