Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 17th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Twenty seconds.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

I don't know if I should pull a Christopherson or not. I'll leave it for now. I was going to ask a few more questions.

Thank you very much for your input. I greatly appreciate it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

We have Ms. Malcolmson.

Welcome to the committee.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Chair. I appreciate the opportunity.

Thank you to the witnesses.

In noting the length of your sitting days, on Monday and Tuesday you sit until 9:30, and Wednesday you sit until 8 o'clock at night.

We have a concern around families of elected members of Parliament here who want to be home to put their kids to bed. It also impacts on our staff as well. It's not very family friendly when we're working so late and asking our staff to be with us.

Can you comment a bit on the impact around the length of the sitting day and whether you've been able to make any accommodation, both for employed staff and elected members?

[David Elder]

Just as a bit of background, there has been a lot of debate and a lot of discussion over quite a long time about the length of sitting hours and sitting days. At one stage we were finishing at 8 p.m. because of this focus on family-friendly hours, and that did last and was quite effective for a while. In fact, going back in time, the House used to sit till 11 p.m., so the reduction to 8 p.m. was obviously very, very welcome. I think the 9 p.m. finish is a bit of a compromise between where we used to be a number of years ago and where we got to in response to this concept of family-friendly hours.

It does relate a little bit to the point that I made about members just wanting, when they're here in Canberra, to get the Canberra business done as effectively as possible. For example, if shorter hours meant that we would then sit on Friday, I think you'd probably find that most members would prefer to be sitting the slightly longer hours and then not have to sit on the Friday to make up the additional hours. It's all a bit of a compromise.

I think the current sitting hours are probably quite a good balance, and they do seem to work quite effectively for members. Don't forget that in terms of members, we only have four members who are actually local members. There are only four members who represent the Canberra area, and those are two senators and two members, so there aren't a lot of members who need to go home and put their children to bed, if you like. Obviously, women who are bringing very young children have issues with the longer hours. I'm not exactly sure what sorts of arrangements they make.

In terms of staff, again, the days are very long. That is true. There aren't really any breaks because we don't have any formal meal breaks in those sitting hours, either, so it does mean a long day for staff. We try to ensure that staff are able to get a break at various times during the day. The 9:30, at least, is a reasonable compromise, I think, much better than 11 p.m., which I think it is starting to get a bit late. These things are all a bit of a compromise. The government, clearly, has a certain number of hours they want the House to sit each week, and then you try to squeeze that into four days and work out how best that's done.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

What percentage of women do you have elected right now? How many of them actually have young children? Is there any perception or measure that the length of your sitting hours are actually keeping women and women with young families out of standing for elected office in the first place?

[David Elder]

Well, the proportion of women in the House of Representatives is around 25%, and it's been around that figure now for a number of years. It climbed up from a much lower level and now it's plateaued at about 25% to 30%. We're just going through an election, so I don't know what the makeup will be in the new Parliament. In the last couple of years, we've probably had half a dozen women, I think, who've had children. That's quite a reasonable proportion of the number of women who are in the House of Representatives. Quite a lot of them are younger women and they are of child-bearing age.

Is it a deterrent? I can't really answer that. My perception is that the women who do have young children are coping well. There's a range of mechanisms that seem to assist them to cope well with the arrangement, and they seem to be perfectly satisfied. For example, we have an election coming, and none of those women are amongst the people who are not recontesting at this next election, so that would suggest that things have been sufficiently satisfactory for them to continue on.

I couldn't really comment particularly well on the impact of that on women generally.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Your day care service for your parliamentarians, does that have a sort of drop-in capability? Do you have any limitations on the ages of children or how flexible the arrangements are for the parents?

[James Catchpole]

The child care centre will take children from six weeks to five years. Although some children, particularly of staff members in the building, will be there reasonably long term, there is the capacity for people to drop their children there on an ad hoc basis, which is what would suit members most, and it's [Technical difficulty—Editor] building.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Excellent. That's good news.

Can you give us any sense of the take-up on your vote-by-proxy provisions for parents of infants?

[David Elder]

At various times it would be used by all those female members who are breastfeeding children. They wouldn't use it, for example, for every division. Sometimes they'll appear for a vote, but at other times they'll give their proxy vote to their whip.

I should emphasize two things about the proxy vote. The member does need to be in Canberra and they do need to be in Parliament House to be able to exercise it. It can't be done remotely. You can't be back in your electorate exercising your proxy vote. Similarly, you can't be at your residence here in Canberra and exercising your proxy vote; you need to be in Parliament House.

It is used very regularly by the women with breastfeeding children.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

Now we'll go on to Ms. Vandenbeld.

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

Thank you very much for answering our questions.

The idea of the Federation Chamber, the parallel chamber, has come up a number of times in our committee.

We had the U.K. Parliament speaking to us this morning. They talked about the fact that the parallel chamber there, Westminster Hall, is much more flexible. It's in a horseshoe, ministers attend regularly, and there's much more to-and-fro because of the nature of the speeches.

Can you tell us how it works in Australia?

[David Elder]

It's works in a very similar way. It is a much more informal chamber than the House of Representatives. It's a much smaller chamber. Even though all members are members of the Federation Chamber—in other words, all members can attend—we only provide seats for about 38 members in there, because generally there's only going to be a fairly small number of members there.

Certainly, it's a much more intimate chamber and much more confined. It is in a horseshoe shape, but members in fact can sit anywhere in the chamber. They don't have to sit on the usual sorts of opposing sides if they don't wish to do so. Ministers do attend. They'll attend for the final stages of bills. They'll attend for the committee stages of bills. It's meant to be a much more informal way of proceeding than the House. It operates on the same rules as the House, but it's just much more intimate and much more informal.

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

You've said that they sit in a horseshoe and can sit anywhere, but do they? Do members from different parties actually sit side by side?

[David Elder]

No. Unfortunately, they're terrible creatures of habit, so they do sit on their respective sides. Even our independent non-aligned members will sit somewhere in the middle. I think old habits die hard.

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

Is there a set time for the speeches? Is there a question and answer period?

[David Elder]

There is a set time for speeches. As I said, the rules for the Federation Chamber are really the same as the rules for the House. The speech time limits are the same as the speech time limits for similar sorts of presentations or similar sorts of business matters that operate in the House.

Question time only happens in the House of Representatives. There's no question period up in the Federation Chamber, but in the committee stages of a bill, for example, that might take the form of a question and answer format between a minister and other members.

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

You mentioned both the popularity of the Federation Chamber and the unpopularity of the Fridays. Do you think there's a correlation, in that having that parallel chamber made it easier to sit four days a week because there was that additional time for government business?

[David Elder]

Well, I think there's no question about that, and at the moment, we're not utilizing the full capabilities of the Federation Chamber. It's meeting about 30% of the time that the House does. Potentially, it could meet 100% of the time. It can meet any time that the House itself is meeting. It can't meet when the House is not meeting. It can't meet before or after the House has finished.

Potentially, there's considerably more time we could use for the Federation Chamber, so the fact that it's not being used suggests that there's not really any need for, say, a Friday sitting. We could easily accommodate that by having more sittings of the Federation Chamber.

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

When is private members' business taken care of? I understand that the Federation Chamber is primarily government business. Does it also do other things?

[David Elder]

It does do private members' business. Monday is our private members' business day. Part of that happens in the main chamber, so there are two hours of private members' business in the main chamber, and then there are two and a half hours in the Federation Chamber, also on that Monday. So it certainly does do private members' business, but it doesn't exclusively do that; some of that is available also in the House of Representatives. In fact, in the last Parliament, I think, we had about eight hours of private members' business, and quite a lot of that was done in fact in the Federation Chamber. We've actually reduced the amount of private members' business in this most recent Parliament.

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

Thank you.

I think Mr. Graham has a very short question that he'd like to ask.

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

I just wanted to clarify one point from earlier on. It sounded like you're saying the House sits two weeks on and two weeks off. Is that correct?

[David Elder]

That tends to be the usual pattern, but at times there might only be a week's break. At other times we might sit one week, break for a week, and then sit for two weeks, but broadly speaking, the pattern is two weeks on and two weeks off. That's the broad pattern, yes.