Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 17th, 2016

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

I want to go back to Fridays. You said they were removed historically.

Can you give me a time frame for that, or was it so long ago that you're not aware of it?

[David Elder]

It was a very long time ago. It might be 30 years. It's a very long time. I'd have to go back and check. I'm happy to do that, but it would be a very long time ago.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Has there ever been any talk about those times and whether there was any kind of negative public opinion surrounding the taking away of the Friday sittings? I know you mentioned previously that you did it with members being able to serve their constituencies and be able to get back. But was there initially a negative perception to that, or were people very happy that members were going to be in their ridings?

[David Elder]

An important issue is that the House didn't lose any sitting time as a result of eliminating the Friday sittings, because they sat earlier. For example, at that time we didn't meet until 2 p.m. on individual days. Now we meet at 10 a.m. on Mondays, we meet at 12 noon on Tuesdays, and we meet at 9 a.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays. All those hours that the House was sitting on a Friday were absorbed into longer hours on the other four days.

The answer is...I don't know. I'm not sure I was really around at the time the Friday sittings disappeared. I can't recall that there was any particular reaction because it wasn't as though the House was sitting fewer hours.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

What takes place on the day that you start at noon? What takes place before that? Is there anything going on? Is that why you're starting that day at noon?

[David Elder]

The reason we start at noon on the Tuesday is that it's in the morning when the political parties will have their meetings. Typically, the parties will have their party meetings on that morning prior to the House sitting.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Are members usually starting their day quite early every day, regardless of what time the House actually starts sitting?

[David Elder]

That's right. Typically members would be here at seven, 7:30, or eight o'clock.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Thank you so much for your answers. They were quite direct. I appreciate that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Ms. Malcolmson, you have three minutes.

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

I'll come back to the question of who you have elected to your Parliament. I was looking at the international rankings and New Zealand ranks 39th on the number of women they have been able to get into Parliament right now. Australia's ranking is 56th and 61st is Canada's, so you're doing better than us, but we're also at the 25% so it's not a huge surge.

Can you talk a little more about whether you've done any inquiries about what might be keeping women out of running for office? I appreciate your saying that you are encouraged by the take-up, that women who did get themselves to Parliament who have children are willing to run again. That's good.

We're curious about what is keeping women from even considering running, whether they have aging parents and have a disproportionate load around looking after them, or whether they have young children, or are considering having a family. As parliamentarians, are you doing that inquiry around barriers to even standing for office in the first place?

[David Elder]

We're not doing it, but it is a very interesting phenomenon that, first, the level of female representation does seem to have plateaued around that 25% to 30% mark and, second, that Australia's rankings have fallen significantly over the last 15 years. I think we were up there at about 20th. Now we're down, as you said, at 56th or whatever.

That's a very unfortunate thing. I don't know the explanation. We haven't done any particular investigation. I might have a variety of theories but I don't know that I'd express them because they are personal theories about what might be happening. It's very unfortunate that we're seeing the plateauing rather than the continuing increase, and that Australia's ranking is falling significantly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you very much to our witnesses for being there early in the morning. This was very helpful. You have unique things that we might look at using. I'm sure our clerk will be in contact with you to get any more details or for you to ask us any questions.

[David Elder]

Thank you, Chair, and yes, please, if there are any other queries or follow-ups, please be in contact, and we'll be only too happy to help.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you very much.

I'm not going to suspend. While we change the screens, I have some good news on our committee business. A couple of hours ago I talked to Mr. Scheer about the standing order that the Speaker had proposed to us. Remember he had some concerns—but with the wrong paragraph. It was one of the paragraphs on routine business we weren't changing, so that's why it didn't fit with the emergency. He has no concern.

You all have this. I'm just going to pass it out again. The only paragraph that is different in this is proposed paragraph (b). Proposed paragraphs (a) and (c) are the routine stuff that was there before. They were in one paragraph in the existing standing orders; now with the proposal they are in two. The emergency one is in the middle, so just those six lines on page 3 are new.

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

In the case, Mr. Chair, of the appendices, New Zealand and Australia dealt with the same matter. Is that correct?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes.

The six lines that are being changed are proposed paragraph (b); that gives the Speaker more flexibility when we have an emergency similar to the one we had, or any other emergency.

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

Would it be acceptable to you, Mr. Chair? I was sitting right behind you and Andrew Scheer. I won't say I went to lengths, but I tried not to eavesdrop. As a result, I didn't hear the details of what you were saying.

Would it just be okay if we get confirmation and then deal with this on Thursday?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes. I'll tell you what his problem was. It was in the first paragraph, where it said “earlier”. It's not related to the emergency at all, but he thought “earlier” didn't apply to the emergency because when they had to call back, it was later. Then, when I pointed out to him that the first paragraph has nothing to do with the emergency....

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

Right. I do recall his raising that concern.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

We'll just be one minute.

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

[Inaudible—Editor] to Scheer again?

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

I'll chat with him at our caucus tomorrow. Maybe we can deal with this on Thursday. Assuming it's as straightforward as that, we probably can all just agree to report our recommendation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Sure.

Thursday, hopefully, in very short order we could sneak this in. We could have an emergency any time, so it would be good to have it in place.

I'd now like welcome David Wilson, the Clerk of the New Zealand House of Representatives. We thank you for getting up so early in the morning. I know it will be very interesting for us. We're finding that the parliaments in the Commonwealth all have different, interesting variations. The committee's very anxious to hear how it works in New Zealand. We're trying to improve ours so that it's more inclusive, more efficient, with better sitting times or days, and family friendly for kids, for young mothers, child care—all these types of things. We're very interested.

You could make an opening statement for as long as you like, and then we'll go to questions around the table.

[David Wilson, Clerk of the House, New Zealand House of Representatives]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

Good morning from New Zealand. I didn't get up particularly early, it's 11 o'clock in the morning here.

Just to begin, the issue of improving work-life balance for members and staff has been focused on in New Zealand, and I'm aware that it's been an issue also in Australia and the United Kingdom. I think it's become more acute, in New Zealand anyway, because the average age of members has tended to decrease over the last 20 or 30 years, and there's an increasing number becoming parents while they're members. There have been two in fairly recent times in New Zealand. That brings often a few challenges. I also employ quite a lot of staff in their twenties to forties, and about two-thirds of them are women, so parental leave is relatively common for staff. That's a little bit easier to cover by secondments, which opens up opportunities for their colleagues, but it's not so easy for MPs.

I thought it might be useful if I set out the sitting calendar of New Zealand, a little bit about how the Parliament works, and particularly how it takes votes, because that has been a topic of particular interest when thinking about the absence of members caring for young children.

In New Zealand the House sits for 31 weeks of the year. It sits on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday each of those afternoons and also 7:30 until 10 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday night. The House sits for 17 hours each week in a normal week. Parliamentary committees meet on the mornings when the House sits. It's very rare for our House to sit at any times other than those 17 hours per week for 31 weeks. It doesn't normally sit during school holidays, and the House takes a long break over the Christmas period, which is of course our summer.

In terms of voting in the House, almost all votes in the New Zealand Parliament are a party vote rather than the traditional division that we see in a lot of Westminster parliaments. A party vote is conducted by the Clerk of the House reading out the names of each party, and the party whip then casts all of the votes for their party. I would call out, for example, “New Zealand National”, and the whip would say “59 votes in favour” or “59 votes against”. I call out “New Zealand Labour” and it's “32 votes in favour” or “32 votes against”. That makes voting very fast. It's a change that we made in 1996 when we moved to a proportional representation system and a break with the old two-party first past the post system that we had.

One of the features of the party vote is that members don't have to come to the chamber to vote. Their whip or another representative of the party can do it for them. That removes a lot of the demands on members, particularly those with young children or other dependants, to necessarily be in the House late at night and be available to attend to vote.

One of the other features that's important, when you think about this in the New Zealand context, is that parties may have up to 25% of their members absent from the precinct and still cast their full allocation of party votes. In other words, 25% of votes can be cast by proxy by members who are absent from the parliamentary precinct. That can also assist members who have to be absent for a variety of reasons.

A few of the other terms of reference that the committee listed and I thought I might cover are around day care facilities. In New Zealand there is a crèche on the parliamentary grounds, but it doesn't work all of the hours that the House sits. It closes at 6 p.m. There is a room near the debating chamber for feeding children, heating bottles, changing nappies, and general care of young children.

In New Zealand there is no parental leave entitlement in law for members of Parliament because they're not employees; however, since about five years ago, the Speaker has been given in our Standing Orders the ability to grant leave to members either for personal reasons or for illness, and he's done that on a couple of occasions with members who have had babies. That's one way that a member can effectively have parental leave on pay and not be required to attend the House in that period.

Political parties may also give a member leave, and they're able to do that through their 25% proxy allowance for voting, which means they can have a few members away and still vote with their full numbers in the House.

We've given some thought to technology and how it might help Parliament, particularly parliamentary committees, to work more effectively and efficiently. This prompts the question of whether members should be required to work such late hours or travel so much. One change we've implemented in the last few years is an electronic committee system that allows members to work from any digital device, anywhere in the country that they can access the Internet.

We use video conferences fairly frequently to reduce committee travel, but we're not considering having sittings or committee meetings by video conference. Members have decided that having to sit together as a team, understanding the risks of confidentiality in committee proceedings, and being sure about who's present to vote are more important than the flexibility that video conferencing might allow. In fact, a few years ago, the House legislated to require members' attendance, and if they were absent without leave, for their pay to be docked accordingly. If anything, in recent years the Parliament has reinforced the idea that members should be present unless they have leave.

As an employer, I allow staff to work flexible hours, to work remotely, to take leave, and still have holidays. For some staff, there is a requirement: they're here when the House sits or they travel with committees, which may be outside normal work hours. This is part of the employment conditions of staff, and they know about all this when they go to work. Members also know those things, but it doesn't mean it remains static. We think about other things we might do to assist.

We've given some thought in New Zealand to the idea of a parallel or an alternate debating chamber, like the Federation Chamber in Australia. We don't currently have a second chamber. We legislated to abolish the Legislative Council in 1950. Though this is a different proposal, the idea of a parallel rather than an upper chamber, there's not been great enthusiasm for it in New Zealand.

One reason is that there is quite a small number of members—121. It's difficult, with all of their other commitments, to stretch to sitting in another chamber concurrently. It's possible that the quality of debate would be diminished in that chamber, as members were rostered to take a turn there, then to return to the main chamber and take a turn there.

It's also not being felt as necessary because almost all of our debates in New Zealand have a fixed time frame of about two hours. An initiative has been introduced, our extended sittings, which are primarily being used as a way to create additional sitting hours, usually on a Wednesday or Thursday morning, to deal with non-controversial business. It's quite different from urgency. A bill under urgency is agreed on unanimously by the business committee, which is a committee of all members of the House. It takes bills through only one stage at a time rather than the multiple stages. It must finish by 1 p.m. on a sitting day.

This deadline has been very successful in progressing business that there's general agreement about across the House, and it's there to address a reduction in the use of urgency. The flow and effect of that has been that urgency often will take the House into sitting on a Friday, later at night, or into weekends. These extended sittings have been a pretty successful substitute for urgency.

Finally, I have a few miscellaneous comments related to making your Parliament more efficient or inclusive. The first point I'd make is that democracy isn't particularly efficient, and parliaments are not very efficient, either. They spend a lot of time scrutinizing the executive. That's an important democratic function. Certainly, we should look for efficiency where we can, but I don't think it should be the driver in this area.

One of our former members has recently called for shorter sitting hours, for the possibility of temporary replacement of members while they're on parental leave, or even the possibility of job-sharing among members. There is a news article she wrote that covers all those things, which I would be happy to share with the committee if they would like to see it.

The Scottish Parliament, as I understand it, sits business hours, and that seems to work successfully there. I believe that in Sweden they allow temporary replacement of members, but I think only for ministers when they join the cabinet.

As I mentioned, the second chamber idea has been discussed in New Zealand, but not currently supported.

I think that in our situation, the mixed-member proportional electoral system has created a more diverse Parliament, and that is likely to continue to increase demand for better, different, and more flexible working conditions, as the group of people who become members of Parliament is more diverse, perhaps, from those who traditionally sought election 20 or 30 years ago.

I think our use of the business committee as a cross-party committee that operates by unanimity has really enabled parties to agree to timetables to allow them to spend time on what matters to them, so the opposition can spend an appropriate amount of time setting out its alternate views against things it doesn't support, but when there is general agreement, it has allowed the House to save quite a lot of time and progress non-controversial or widely supported legislation pretty quickly.

I think the combination of that sort of agreement about House business and the ability to cast proxy votes—and generally there being no requirement for particular members to be in the House—has meant that some of the challenges that other parliaments have faced perhaps haven't arisen here to such a great degree, but it is still very much a work in progress.

That brings to an end my opening statement. I would be happy to take questions from members.