Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Jan. 28th, 2016

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

I sat on this committee when your colleague Tom Lukiwski was very much the director of this committee. I saw it, sitting on the side of the table you're on now.

Mr. Lamoureux is an experienced member of Parliament and is, as all of you are, entitled to go to whatever committee he decides to attend. It's a long-standing tradition in the Standing Orders—

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

So I think what you're saying is that there's no change at all. Is that what you're saying? There's no change at all.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

No.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

That's time.

Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. My first two thoughts upon listening to your presentation were, first of all, that you are fair-minded. I think you're sincere in what you're putting forward. That's the impression I get. However, given the experience on this committee, certainly the devil remains in the details. We've already had a little bit of a struggle in terms of manifesting the words “transparency” and “openness”, and the actual decisions that we make here. I'm not going to revisit it. I'm sure you've been briefed on it. It's not worth going back to, but to me, it's indicative of words going in one direction and actions going in another. At some point, I hope to see the two sync up.

I'm going to remain guardedly optimistic going forward.

What I'll do with the time I have—having been here long enough, I know that once I let go of the floor, there is no guarantee I'm getting that sucker back—

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Blake was fairly successful at getting it back.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, and that's why the chair's going to make sure that doesn't happen again. I'll make sure that I'll get my stuff out there, and you can respond as you deem appropriate, Minister.

First off, on the parliamentary secretaries, again, it's almost like we come in now and it's Where's Waldo? I never know where he's going to pop up. He started over there, then he went to there, and now he's over there. I mean, it really does beg the question: why does the parliamentary secretary need to be on the committee if the whole purpose is to make committees more independent?

I say this from experience and partly as a confession. When I was parliamentary assistant to the finance minister back a long time ago at Queen's Park, I was on the finance committee. Make no mistake, I was there to ride shotgun. I was there to make sure that the government majority's will was exactly what prevailed. We weren't even pretending that it was any kind of independence. It was them and us.

That's the world we've had up until now. Your government has come in, Minister, and said you want to do things differently. We're hearing the words, but we're not seeing the action. If you really wanted to send a strong message.... Never mind technically whether the parliamentary secretary can vote or not. It's whether or not, as Blake has said, they're sitting here, orchestrating, as a general on the field, all the team and where they're going. They give a nod and that's where the vote goes. That's where the majority is, and they control this committee 10 times out of 10.

I say to you, in a sincere effort to respond to the effort that I think you've made to be sincere, that if you really want a notion or signal of change, remove the parliamentary secretary. There are still BlackBerrys, staff, and all kinds of means. If you really want to say that things will be different, that you want committees to work a little more independently and be less partisan, then please remove the one person who ties this committee work directly to the executive PMO and the control of the majority. I leave that with you.

Secondly, the PBO...excellent. I'd be interested in hearing what the time frame is to make them an officer of Parliament, given that the Liberals finally came around and agreed that it needs to be done. It's the same with the BOIE time frame. I know that we have House leaders there who can do this, but you're already up and meeting, and I haven't heard any time frame. I'd be interested to know what that might be.

For the estimates budget process with public accounts, you may know that I've sat on public accounts since I got here in 2004. I'm the longest-serving member. My advice would be to go root and branch, to go right back to the basics, so that the working understanding is good enough that if you're a new member, you understand exactly how that process works and then reflect that in the way we change things. Right now, the truth of the matter is that there are very few parliamentarians who truly understand in detail the estimates and the public accounts process that we go through. I think you've touched on an important thing, but please don't go halfway; go all the way. Let's just revamp this so that the public can follow it too.

Next, the family-friendly thing sounds great. The one thing we're a little bit cautious of is that the Liberals under former Premier McGuinty did this in Ontario in 2008. One thing they did was to change question period to the morning. Virtually everybody, and I'm advised that includes even the media gallery, acknowledged that it was done so that the government would have an opportunity to change the negative message coming out of question period and turn it into a positive message before the six o'clock rotation came around.

Regarding the Standing Orders, we spent a lot of time on this in the last couple of Parliaments. It took us I don't know how many meetings to come up with a report that we called the “low-lying fruit”. We all agreed, and it was the simple stuff. But that's the past. The heavy stuff is now in front of us. You want to make major changes, and I'm very interested to hear whether or not those changes will only take effect if it's a unanimous recommendation of this committee. Will you do it with just one opposition party, or is the government prepared to ram things through on its own?

With regard to in camera, I have a proposal in front of the committee right now. I'm sure you're at least aware of it. Perhaps you could give us your thoughts before I head into that debate and give some idea of whether you, as the government House leader, are prepared to entertain some rules around when we can go in camera and what we do there.

Finally, on prorogation, there was a ton of work done one or two Parliaments ago, back when we had minorities. We did a lot of work. Joe Preston was the chair. I would urge a revisiting of that as the starting point, because it addresses a lot of the constitutional things. We had all kinds of experts come in. It was a great civics lesson. We didn't come to a conclusion, but we learned a lot. I would just ask that you maybe consider that.

With that, Chair, I'll say thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

Mr. House leader, you have a minute and a half.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I left a minute and a half on the table?

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

You left a minute and a half, but you raised seven issues. You're an experienced parliamentarian, David, so you would know; I'll pick and choose the easy ones and then the chairman will cut me off.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, he will, but there's a second round, remember.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

You got your comments on the record.

No, I appreciate the spirit in which you began your comments. I share that view. I am optimistic too that we can make incremental progress. It won't be perfect and there will be moments of disagreement, but where we can come to a broad consensus on Standing Orders, on legislation, and on just operationalizing some of these things that we all, at least in informal conversations, share, I think we should move expeditiously.

With respect to the public accounts process, you're absolutely right; it evolved—this is not a partisan judgment—over a number of governments and Parliaments into a process that was disconnected and unintelligible. I will suggest to my colleague Scott Brison that he have a conversation with you. Your experience on that committee will be useful. He is going to ask colleagues on the public accounts committee to help him fashion this. He and I will try quite quickly to arrive at a way to better align this process.

But you're right; we'll do it substantively and seriously, and not tinker with it. Otherwise, we won't achieve the objective.

Am I out of time, Mr. Chairman?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

You are.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Okay. Well, you'll have five on the table when we come back.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Graham.

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

Mr. Minister, thank you.

Chair, I'll be splitting my time with Mr. Chan.

I just want to say quickly that I was a staffer in the 40th and 41st Parliaments, and I have seen a lot of dysfunction. As a former staffer, I think I have a different perspective, and I am looking forward to taking on these challenges head-on.

I kept my old boss's office, and I just changed desks, which I think was a lot of fun. I'm already seeing a real change, though, as a member.

Being an MP has severely hurt the time I have for my two-year-old daughter. I think that's the big issue for me. I come to Ottawa and I work 12 hours a day. Then I go back to the riding and work 12 or more hours a day there, too, except that I also have to drive a few hundred kilometres around my 20,000-kilometre riding. My wife and my daughter often come with me, which is wonderful. I'm very lucky. Most people don't have that option.

Since I'm expected to be everywhere all the time in 43 municipalities, do you have any suggestions on how to do better family friendliness on the riding side of things? We always talk about what happens here on the Hill, but not so much about what we do on the other side of this job. Thank you.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Thank you, David.

To be honest, I hadn't reflected. I have a riding, perhaps not as large as yours geographically, but there are the same kinds of issues with francophone, anglophone, and aboriginal communities. When I became the member of Parliament in my riding, there were two traffic lights. I think there are now eight, so there's been a very marked economic improvement during my tenure. But it is like yours. I envy you. In your constituency, there are at least some larger urban areas, compared to rural New Brunswick.

It is a challenge. I know what I have done—and other colleagues have more experience at these kinds of issues—is to say that if I'm going to the northern part of my constituency and there are a series of local community groups or municipal leaders or others who have been calling the office to set up meetings, I try to bundle them. If I'm going to drive x number of hours, I borrow a municipal office in a small town and set it up as a satellite constituency office, and I invite people from that particular area to come to meet with me. We try to spend half a day or whatever time's allowed, and I can clear up a number of meetings and not go back over and over it again.

People at this table may have suggestions around how the Board of Internal Economy could, either through technology—and I know colleagues have more experience than I might with this—or through different allocation of resources.... For some people with huge, northern, and remote ridings, the points system, for understandable reasons, may not marry up with their particular transportation needs. I think the Board of Internal Economy should be wide open to listening carefully to ways that we could maybe not even change the budgets, but adjust the rules in a way that better serves colleagues with unique needs in their constituencies.

I don't know if that somewhat answers your question, David.

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

It certainly helps. It's largely what we're doing. My riding is large enough that, effectively, travelling to my second office takes a point. If I go to my office every week and I come to the Hill every other week, the points are pretty much gone. If my staff have to travel to a city council meeting, often that means travelling well over 100 kilometres.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Right.

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

We do try to group them, but that's not always realistic. We have to work to their schedules as well.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Of course, and if you want to bring your family to Ottawa, you'll quickly reduce the number of points available for work.

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

I'm very lucky that we can drive, but most people aren't in that situation. Thank you.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Chan.