Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 17th, 2016

[David Wilson]

That's correct.

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

What about question period? What time of day does that happen and for how long?

[David Wilson]

Questions are held at 2 p.m. as soon as the House sits each day. There are 12 questions to ministers. It usually lasts about an hour, but it doesn't have a time limit. There are rules that questions must be short, just long enough to ask a question, and the answer is also supposed to be brief. It's sufficient to ask for parts of the member's question, but no longer. It's not an exchange of speeches or points of view. It is a short question, just a couple of lines of text, followed by an answer, and then the member has the ability to ask supplementary questions following the primary answer.

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

Okay. It's 12 questions with a supplementary, so that's 24 questions all together with the supplementals. Is that correct?

[David Wilson]

No. They can have multiple supplementary questions. A party has a weekly allocation of supplementaries that is allocated proportional to their size in the House.

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

There's been a bit of a discussion about members with young children. How many members do you have right now with young children? That would be with young children who would be nursing, mainly, but maybe for those with young children under the age of five or six, as well.

Would you know?

[David Wilson]

I would have to estimate.

I know of two with children who are nursing at the moment. I would guess around half of the members have children who are still dependent on them.

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

Particularly for members who have children, and who are nursing, what sort of accommodations are made there for them?

[David Wilson]

There's a room next to the debating chamber that has been designated as a parent's room for members where they're able to feed or change their children. They can have a bassinet or a cot in there for the child to sleep in. It is used particularly with members. Members can also have a family member, or a staff member, who can go into that room and look after the child while they're speaking in the chamber. It's used usually while a member is speaking—at least they want to be—because the rest of the time they're not required to be in the chamber because of the proxy voting.

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

A few of my colleagues have done this, so I'm going to stray a little off topic.

I noticed in doing a bit of reading prior to your appearance here that fairly recently your Prime Minister had been thrown out of your Parliament for the day, I believe it was. Upon reading further, I understood that it wasn't the first time that it had happened. I don't think it was the same Prime Minister. I'm curious about that.

I recently had raised a point of order regarding our Prime Minister and some of the behaviour we saw from him during question period. He wasn't thrown out of Parliament. In fact, I will give him credit, his behaviour since the time I made the point of order has improved, so that was a positive thing, and I hope it will stay that way.

I'm curious as to what precipitated the Prime Minister being thrown out of Parliament. It must have been quite a situation.

[David Wilson]

Yes, and you're right; I think most Prime Ministers sitting for a reasonable period of time in New Zealand would have been thrown out of the chamber at least once.

In fact, the current Prime Minister, since he's been Prime Minister, which has now been eight years, hasn't been made to leave the chamber. Before that, when he was an opposition member, he did go out a few times. In this instance, he was required to leave because Standing Orders say that when the Speaker is on his feet and calling for order, members must sit down and be quiet. The day before that, the Speaker had warned him about the same thing. He tends to get up, turn his back to the Speaker and then address the rest of the chamber. Sometimes when the Speaker is on his feet, the Prime Minister says that he can't see him. He did that three days in a row. He had been warned the day before, and the Speaker did that for the same reason he would ask any other member to leave, which was just defying the Chair.

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

Thank you very much. I appreciate your diligence on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

That will help our family-friendly Parliament. Anyone who is not family friendly will be thrown out.

David.

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

Thank you.

I don't have a lot of questions.

Your opening statement is among the most thorough we've had yet at this committee. I must congratulate you for putting the word “nappies” in Canadian Hansard for the first time. I checked quickly and it's never been said here in the House before.

You talked about proportional being used in New Zealand, and I can only imagine how having two types of MPs has interesting impacts on family and riding relationships. As I understand it, in New Zealand, it's an MMP system, so some MPs are elected in ridings and some are on lists. How does that affect how much time they spend in Parliament versus in their ridings? For that matter, what do list MPs consider to be their ridings?

[David Wilson]

That's a good question.

Every list member would consider themselves to have a riding or an electorate, though they're not directly elected by it; they're elected by the nation at large. All of them will stay in office in some part of the country, which would usually be where they live, and so most cities and towns will have two members' offices, the first being that of the electorate or riding, of the person who holds that seat, and the second being that of the list MP who is based in that area.

The only requirement is that the second member make it clear to everybody on their signage and business cards, etc. that they are a list MP based in a certain area and they are not the MP for that area. Both kinds of members would spend the same amount of time in Wellington, and, I would think, the same amount of time in their offices out in the rest of the country.

There's really no difference in what they can do, or how they would behave and go about business in Wellington. I think list members in particular have acted to minimize their difference out in the population at large as well.

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

From a technical point of view, when MPs in New Zealand are travelling back and forth to Wellington from their ridings, how is that accounted for? For example, here we can bring our family, our dependants, but each one takes a travel point and we have a limited number of travel points. How does it work in New Zealand?

[David Wilson]

The members themselves are free to travel as much as they like within New Zealand. That is bought and paid for, for them, by the parliamentary service. They're entitled to bring their family members to Wellington a certain number of times a year. I'll have to check that number and let you know what it is. I think it's about 10 times a year, but I might be wrong about that, so I'll check it. They are able to bring them, but there's a limit on the number of times they can do that without paying for it.

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

New Zealand is a two-island country, so I'm guessing most MPs come by aircraft, rather than by any other means. What's the breakdown?

[David Wilson]

That's correct. Seventy-five per cent of the population live in the North Island, well into the southern point of that island, so the vast majority of members also live there, and they do fly. Auckland is the most popular city, with a quarter of the country's population, so it has a large number of MPs, and almost all of them, except perhaps eight to 10 members based in Wellington, would fly in, and then the locally based ones would drive.

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

How many members are there in the New Zealand Parliament, and how many are constituency versus list? Because of the way the lists are topped up, is it consistent from one election to the next?

[David Wilson]

At the moment there are 121 members in the House and the number does vary slightly because the list does top up those numbers. We are a party. Perhaps one is a seat but one is a very small share of the total national vote. So we had 122. We currently have 121. It's possible, but very unlikely to have less than 120. The mix is 70 elected MPs, 50 list MPs.

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

You mentioned earlier that anyone who's not a minister can put forward a private member's bill. Does New Zealand have parliamentary secretaries to ministers, and if so, can they submit bills, PMBs?

[David Wilson]

At the moment there's only one. There's a parliamentary undersecretary, as they're called, and that's even lower than a parliamentary secretary. That person is able to submit bills. He is not considered a minister so he is not able to ask questions at question time or introduce legislation in his own right but he can introduce members' bills, and in fact he has.

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

I appreciate your answers. I'm out of time. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

We're officially over the question time, but does anyone have one last question?

Go ahead.