Evidence of meeting #55 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was opposition.
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Conservative
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Those were the arguments that were made. Mr. Doherty is saying they didn't want anybody to know. That was the argument we gave, making it very difficult for them—as difficult as we could—to stay in a room in which audio was available but not cameras.
Actually, as it unfolded—I stand to be corrected—I think early in the morning I again, just as a matter of routine, raised a point of order and requested that we come to this room so that we would have the cameras and Canadians could watch this proceeding, given its importance. They did what they usually do and said “no”, which is what I fully expected, because they have been saying that for the last three days anyway.
Then my friend—I think it was Mr. Richards—requested the same thing a couple of hours later, or maybe three or four hours later, and they said “yes”. I was thrilled. I am so glad we're not in a basement room or like a tree in the forest, and if nobody is there to hear it, did it really fall? We're into that kind of world.
Instead, we're in this nice spacious room with all the cameras to allow people to watch; there are lots of members of the public. If anybody wants to come by, there are lots of chairs here, and we have coffee. We make it as civilized as possible.
I point this out just to indicate that this makes you wonder where the grown-ups are. Where are the people who should be thinking this through? It's a bit like the stunt today with the Prime Minister. Again, I can only go so far, because you're going to nail me on repeating myself, but I can at least refer to it as a “thing” without doing the “thing”.
Again, what was missing? Thinking it through. They thought to a certain point, and that's great, but they didn't take it the next step.
Around here, my experience is that those who succeed in politics are those who can see the furthest the clearest. That's why you hire smart people. That's why I have Tyler Crosby. I make sure I have really, really smart people around me to give me advice. When I was a cabinet minister, I had Michele Noble as my deputy minister and Darlene Lawson as my chief of staff. They were incredibly smart people. When we quickly ran to the limit of my thinking, I could turn to them and ask what they thought, and there were lots of great ideas. If we needed to, we could reach further into other offices—in my case it was the premier's office—and ask for that kind of input so that we had all the thinking.
This was a big deal. The second biggest government in Canada is the Government of Ontario. Like the Liberals, we had a majority government. If you get into certain situations or you want to take an initiative, there are lots of things to factor in. Governing is not easy. Governing Canada in particular is difficult. It's not an easy country to govern. It's governing a big chunk of a continent. We're a little bit like a somewhat smaller version of the European Union. We have so many interests backed with common cause, but that common cause is rooted in a different outlook—say in terms of the manufacturing sector—from my hometown of Hamilton versus that, maybe, from Banff or one of the coasts. The coastal aspect affects a lot of Canadians, but quite frankly, coastal fishing, except at the consumer point, is not something that affects my riding in downtown Hamilton nearly as much as, say, cleaning up inland waters, given that Hamilton harbour is right there.
I'm raising all this because I'm wondering, Chair, where the grown-ups in the PMO are on this file. It's starting to feel rudderless.
I have a couple of minutes; I could speculate a little on some stuff, and I think I'll do that. As I look at this, notwithstanding the good suggestions that I think we've made along the way—the very good suggestion in front of us, which I have yet to complete—here we sit, with no clear direction. It seems to me that at this point, if the government is not interested in....
Maybe they'll pick up on this idea. We're still hoping for a resolution. But if not—and let's assume there are no grown-ups over there, or at least that they're not on this file—that means that the government could completely fold on everything. That's not very likely. It could happen, but wow, it would be the second-biggest blunder they made since backing away from their commitment on electoral reform.
I think, though, that if it's not a capitulation by the government that we're heading towards, then the only thing left for them to do, if they can't find a resolution at this committee and a process that we can all live by, is to bring in a motion in the House that contains the things they absolutely have to have and use their majority there to ram through the changes. But wow, what a cost. What a price to pay. You'd have to want those changes really badly, because this is not only angering the opposition and angering people in the community. It's also leaving a lot of people perplexed as to why they're damaging their brand. The whole brand—I won't go off on it, but it's a reference to “sunny ways”, accountability, transparency—was the brand Canadians wanted, because it was such a breath of fresh air compared with what we'd had for 10 years.
I don't understand why they mess around on this file. It's like identifying a bruise on your leg and then going out of your way to have another family member give it another good kick so that they can do as much damage as possible. You got bruised badly on the electoral reform; it's done a lot of harm. That hurt the brand. There were many people who voted on that issue, but even those who didn't consider it a central issue in their support for the Liberals saw the idea of making that kind of promise for that kind of change as pretty big. Many people feel betrayed, because they moved from their regular party—in many cases, us—and other parties to go to the Liberals on that issue.
You'd be surprised by the demographics of those who recognize first past the post as not a fair system. We shouldn't be going through all of this threat from the power of a majority government that got less percentage of the popular vote than Stephen Harper had. The government didn't even get 40%. It was 39.8% and 39.6%, in around there; there were a couple of points of difference. This government, the current Liberal government, even though they have all those seats—that's part of the screwiness of our first past the post—did not get as big a percentage of the popular vote as the previous Harper government had.
We know that they tried to jig that system. They had their preferred....The thing was so poorly handled, and what it felt like was so similar: it felt rudderless. Normally after a while, once a government makes a couple of moves, just like the government watching the opposition, it's like a chess game: once you see a couple of moves made, if you have thought it through you begin to see which one of the identifiable attacks is under way and you're attempting to respond and defend in kind. As well, you have your own aggression plan in your mind, which you're trying to get to without your opponent seeing it.
That's not happening here. I've been around a long time; when things are obvious, I get it. There's nothing obvious about what the government is doing. It doesn't make any sense. It particularly doesn't make sense that they would do it on anything to do with rules or election or electoral reform or changing the way we do things—it's all the same thing—and they've done more damage to themselves on that one file since they've been here, arguably, than on any other, at least in one fell swoop.
For this, by the way, the Prime Minister took personal responsibility. The Prime Minister is saying it was his decision to make, and he made it, and so that promise is broken, as decreed by him, the same guy who made the promise.
The government knew they were going to pay a big price for that. They did their political calculations and figured it was worth it, but before they even got a chance to move on to another big issue, some other shiny object we could all be focusing on, they came along and did this nonsense—more heavy-handed, anti-democratic, Harper-like manoeuvres—on the issue of changing the rules. You would think if they were going to do that and light that fuse, they would have some idea of what the boom was at the end. So far, the only boom at the end of lighting their fuse is the sound of them falling on their collective rear ends and making a mess of this.
I emphasize again that the parties that have spent the most effort and the most time making suggestions for a way out are the opposition benches. Mr. Richards and I have sat back and tried to find out what else we can propose to the government that would get us all off this, because remember, the work that's being held up at the end of the day, the most important work in all of this, is not really our rules. That's not the most important thing. The most important thing is the bloody study of the Chief Electoral Officer's report on changes to our electoral system. We're nowhere near that. That's a number of layers in the onion down. We have all these other things.
It kind of reminds me, Chair, of back in the days when I was a negotiator. The same thing can be said on both sides, but in my case, it was a human resources director who didn't know how to negotiate, who did not understand the signals and nuances and indicators, the kinds of things that keep you from a strike. It was a short one, but we ended up in a short strike that need not have happened. It was a real lesson for me, a lesson I passed on to other union negotiators to make sure they weren't that, going forward.
I could name the negotiations, I could name the company, and I could name the person. I'm not naming the person, but it was the incompetence of the human resources director who was leading the company negotiations that caused us to strike.
The strike then focused the mind and got the company to see exactly where they had gone wrong. In short order, once we sat down and were focused in the right way, guess what? We solved the strike, got a collective agreement, and were back at work in no time, but that work stoppage happened because we had a counterpart on the other side who didn't know what they were doing, who didn't listen, who didn't read the signs, because negotiations for collective agreements are a lot like politics. It's the art of the possible.
Just for the record, I've also sat on the other side, when I was president of the local union. We had staff, and when we had negotiations with the staff, I was on what I considered to be the wrong side of the table, so I get this from both sides. I'm just pointing out that the ones who have the upper hand usually are the ones who have the better game plan. They are better resourced. They have more time. You're constantly trying to weave your way around and through a well-thought-out plan that's been digested and laid out by the other side.
In this case, with something this big and this important, particularly when it speaks to anything to do with electoral reform or reforming anything with rules, you would think they would be so cautious as to recognize that serious damage has already been done on this file.
Why would you do that? If you were going to do it, you would make sure you had thought it through to the nth degree, because the very last thing you want to see happen, if you're the government and you just screwed up your electoral reform file as badly as this government has, is exactly what we're doing now. For the government to have this committee where it is right now takes a really short meeting. It doesn't take much thought. That looks like what happened.
I'll try to give them some credit, Mr. Chair. The only thing I can think of—again, wrong assumptions are often where the problem lies—is that, if you recall, this started on a Tuesday, and lo and behold, the very next day there was a little thing called the budget. We were downstairs in room 112 north, with no cameras. We were not on the main level; unless you knew we were there and had a reason to go there, you wouldn't have even known we were talking—or not talking. You wouldn't know.
In order to get us to this stage, which is a full-blown parliamentary crisis—we're in the grown-up room, we have the cameras, and we're ripping the government, legitimately, on this whole approach—the only thing I can think of that makes any sense is that although it's a bad plan, there had to be something: they thought, with the budget coming, no one would pay any attention on the Tuesday and the Wednesday. That was accurate, because for the most part, nobody did. We were kind of doing our thing in silence.
We weren't actually into it all that long, to be fair, Chair. I think you suspended, and we participated in the reading of the budget and things. To be fair, then, we hadn't been here that long.
The only thing I can think is that they saw the budget coming. They thought this would get no attention. When it did get the attention of the media, they would immediately conclude that we were being obstructionist for the sole purpose of opposing and that we were causing all this grief. The combination of two and a half days of having to keep going 24-7 and getting very little attention because the budget soaked up all the media attention and all the oxygen in the room...and when the media did turn their attention to us, they would conclude that this was just being obstructionist, and maybe by the following Monday or Tuesday, in exhaustion and defeat, we would have folded and the government would have retained the right to change the rules unilaterally using their majority. We would have had these phony negotiations or discussions where it's nice when we all agreed, but not necessary to have agreement for something to be in the report, because the government would just slam through what they wanted.
Even if the two opposition parties have dissenting reports, we all know that no government minister holds up the report of a committee and says, “What we're doing is adhering to almost all the recommendations that came from the committee that studied this matter, and so we're being consistent with our promise to respect committees and to listen to what they say and consider their input”, and then adds, after that, “Oh, and by the way, both opposition parties submitted dissenting reports, and the majority report only actually represents the government members.”
That's why it matters who controls what goes into the report.
I'm going to be referencing something, Chair. I did this in the House the other day, but I didn't do it in the committee, so I'm allowed by the rules to revisit it. I'm going to talk about the report we did, our eleventh report, which we were dealing with on Monday, and talk about the process and how we went through it. That report is one concerning which the government could stand up—any minister, or the Prime Minister—and say, “We have the eleventh report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, and they've recommended a number of measures, and we're going to act on them.”
Chair, that would start indicating to people that the legislation is likely going to go through fairly quickly. Why? Because the eleventh report is the “Interim Report on Moving Toward a Modern, Efficient, Inclusive and Family-Friendly Parliament”. Again, it's related work and a completely different process. I'll talk about that difference. Right now I am showing the difference between having a report that all the parties agreed to versus one that has government support.
You know, Chair, better than anyone in this room, because you're a chair, that at end of the day, a majority of the members control what the report says. If that happens to be the government, then normally the opposition parties, if they're opposed and feel seriously enough and have good reasons for opposing it, will issue a—
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
—thank you—a minority report, a dissenting report. Those are actually two different things, but for the purposes of this we'll call it as one.
When you say “the Committee recommends” in the eleventh report, I'm going to agree. I was part of this report, from beginning to end, and everything that's in here.... This is not inconclusive. This is 10 and a half pages of recommendations.
I'm going to point out later, Chair, that where they couldn't come to an agreement, because there was such good will they said, “But we're going to look at this further. There are some other things we want to consider. We're going to come back to this. This is still an important issue.” What that meant was that there wasn't all-party agreement. It could be one opposition party or both, but the fact that there wasn't agreement meant it wasn't going in this report. That's how we agreed to approach it.
This report—which you chaired, Chair, and presented to the House, where it was accepted—will likely, and has already started to, effect change in the House. But it starts with everybody's agreement. That's a whole lot different from things we disagree on, which is most things. When we do agree, it's kind of given that we move it along. If we don't have any disagreement, let's move it along and get it implemented. We're all in agreement.
But what the government wants is for us to just set aside the fact that in the past, on these kinds of reviews, it was only when everyone agreed. They wanted us to set that aside and start having discussions. As we have discussions, there would be some things we agree on that would go in the report, and it would start to look like this one. If it ended there, and if that was all they were going to do—if they said, “We're not going to deal with these issues; we're not controversial,” or whatever, and they just carved those out in a way that we all agreed with—then again you would have a report that contained the recommendations of everyone.
But what the government wants is that, when we have a vote on a recommendation, if the motion carries.... The government has the majority of members on the committee. As long as they support a motion, it carries, 10 times out of 10. We don't have the numbers. The math is not there. In minority, it was a different world. A majority would be reached by different permutations of the parties and the members. But in this case, what the government wants is that this committee review everything and make decisions wherein the government majority wins 10 times out of 10. They win every single vote. No matter how good our arguments are, they win the vote, and that's the only thing that goes in the report. If the Conservatives move a motion and it fails, it's not in the report. If I move a motion, no matter how good my arguments are, if the government decides they don't want it, it's not in the report.
At the end of the day, it's called “the committee report”, because majority rules—basic democracy. But given the fact that we are in our various camps here, it's not just one against another to reach a majority; it's actually groups of us in our caucuses. We would end up with a report that the official opposition doesn't support and that the third party doesn't support. Only the government does. Yet the government would have the ability to hold up that report and say on their legislation, if it followed the recommendations—which it would, because why would the government members vote against something that wasn't going to find its way to legislation...? The government is controlling both procedures, the procedures of creating legislation and what happens here at the committee, which they also promised they weren't going to do. Members were going to be independent.
Let me tell you, I'm not going to name names, but if there were independent votes of the Liberal backbenches, I'm not so sure we'd be where we are in the process. That, however, is speculation on my part.
The ability to hold that report up matters. When the average citizen hears a government say that it respects committees and gives committees more resources to do work, and says that it is going to consider the work of committees important and that their input is considered by government, that citizen is going to consider the promise kept. The government holds up the report and says that the report says such-and-such, and look at that, our legislation says almost the same thing. Isn't that wonderful? Parliament is working so well. We have a majority report out of the committee, they did what we wanted them to do, they did it by the deadline we wanted them to meet, and we managed to pay so much respect and attention to their report that, lo and behold, if you look at our legislation, it reflects the hard work of that committee.
The problem is that such a procedure leaves the impression that we all agreed. Nobody then says, oh, sorry, I do have to say that there were two dissenting reports from the two opposition parties, that really the only people who supported the report were Liberals, but we just thought that, to be fair-minded, we would say that.
That's not going to happen. I didn't do it when I was a minister; I don't expect anybody else to. If I got a committee report that supported what I wanted to do, that's all I needed. As to the details of how it got there and who voted for it, when I'm a minister that's not my concern. My concern is that I need to have a committee report. I get one, and it says exactly what I was hoping it would say: surprise, surprise when you're in a big majority government.
I get this, and that's why it matters. The government could claim after the fact, when they're justifying stuff they have put into legislation, that it goes all the way back to the hard, non-partisan work that the committee did and that this just reflects their work, and they're so proud that they made committees relevant and were able to turn that t into legislation. The impression, without the government having to spin anything, is that the opposition is onside with these changes, because there's a majority report that says the committee believes such-and-such.
That's why it matters. That's why I suspect, Chair, that the only way they're going to get out of this mess...unless they're smart enough to take up the opposition on this idea or some other process that provides an off-ramp, that is not an off-ramp to surrender for the government but rather an off-ramp that leads to a process that will ultimately give them the deliberations, if not the answers, they were looking for. Ergo, while we still have the right to hold up the government through filibuster, that's why. I emphasize again, we're doing this 24-7, not because the opposition has set it up that way, but because the government made this a 24-7 filibuster. As a result of that, everything that happens in the House, and if things find their way into other committees, is all a result of the government.
But if they have to bring that final motion in...let's say they withdraw everything here and just throw their arms in the air and say we're going to the House, we're going to bring in a motion, and we're going to pick the things we really want.
You got that Wednesday thing, by the way, without a rule change. That needs to be emphasized. You got exactly what you wanted. You wanted a Wednesday Prime Minister question period. Your Prime Minister was clever enough to answer all the questions, therefore de facto creating a Wednesday Prime Minister's question period. We didn't have to change a single rule, and you didn't have to ram through a single change.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
It's very amazing, Mr. Doherty.
It again speaks to thinking it through, but make sure you go all the way, because that one was only half thought through.
At any rate, if they ultimately have to withdraw everything and just go straight to a motion in the House, that's not going to be pretty either; obviously we will make that as difficult as we can and draw attention to it. As my passed-away friend Jack Layton used to say, it circles the stain. So that motion—you still don't have all the things you want. We still have some rights, and before those changes are made, we get to use the rights we currently have vis-à-vis applying them to the process of change. It will be the last hurrah for some of those rights that we have, but we will use them.
My point is that this seems to be the only endgame available if the government doesn't find a positive, co-operative way to deal with these issues, and that is a loser. You can just imagine what the speeches are going to be. This is all fodder for that.
Speaking further to the letter and to the model that was used in 2001 by former Prime Minister Chrétien, which is where I picked up at the beginning—I believe I ended with Standing Order 108—it says:
That the committee shall not adopt any report without the unanimous agreement of all the Members of the committee;
You'd almost think it was a misprint. How could that be? How could we have Liberal Prime Minister Chrétien, known for his sometimes unorthodox ways of creating efficiencies in his life, versus Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who promised to respect committees and to listen to their work and take their work seriously? You'd almost think there was a misprint and that the name on the top of this motion in 2001 were actually to be that of this government. The kinds of things the Liberals are trying to do now would be more akin to some of the characteristics Canadians might apply to Monsieur Chrétien, given his combative style. That is not, however, the case, and ergo the dilemma for us in terms of trying frantically to understand what the government is doing.
We realize they want everything. They want everything their way. Okay, every government starts that way. But where's the thought into this? You seem to have thought real well on the substantive parts of the rules that the government wants so that they can control things—recognizing that this is already one of the most controlled Parliaments in the world—but zero thought went into the politics.
In the past, the accusation against the Liberals was that they used to be great at politics and lousy at substance. It amazes me, as well as angering and perplexing me. I almost wish I could flip to the back of the book to get a sense of how this ends, to kind of cheat, in a way. I have to know: how does this end up? Right now, I can't figure it, other than “complete white flag”, which I doubt. The only real alternative after that is to ram stuff through. It seems to me it would be worth their while, given the sensitivity around these kinds of files, to be turning themselves, not us, inside out to find the off-ramp. It's just that we actually think the work that's not being done is important to Canadians. I'm not really factoring it into the government, per se. We're listening to the government framework around the matter, but the issue at hand is the work of the Chief Electoral Officer, which is under the domain of no party. He's hired by Parliament, can only be fired by Parliament, and is answerable to Parliament through this committee.
As to how that ends well, I can't begin to say. You'd have to change so much: the national dialogue, the media coverage, and the understanding that Canadians are now having as to what you're doing. So much of that would have to change, and I don't know how you'd do it, if you were going to somehow come out of the end of ramming through the changes in the House by using your less-than-Harper's-majority to do so. How does that end well for the government? It's bloody-minded, it gives you what you want at the end of the day, but it leaves a lot of dead political processes in its wake. I can't imagine how much negative coverage there will be through that whole process.
As I say, you know that we're not going to make it easy. The government should be worried, because the official opposition Conservatives and the opposition New Democrats, believe it or not, are finding out how easy it is to work together when it comes to dealing with this government. I don't need to say beware, but beware. If you bring that motion in, it's going to make this look like the easy part. It's just going to get uglier.
Maybe one can only hope that as we speak now, they may have actually pulled together a group of grown-ups in the PMO who are going to look at this and start thinking through how they get out of it and whether there's a way they can do it without taking any more hits. That would be my starting point.
If you aren't approaching it that way and the only thing being looked at is how to get bloody-minded, what the steps are, what the research is, what the precedents are, and if that's the only thing being looked at, then there really isn't an awful lot of difference between the way this government treats Parliament and the way former prime minister Harper and his gang treated Parliament. The best-case scenario is that you look as ruthless as Harper without being nearly as efficient at it.
What a great victory. Let's see you run on that. I'd like to see you turn that one into an ad.
I don't know; for a while, when you guys first came out of the gate, it was looking like, wow, for at least the initial times, they have some magic touch over there. It was going good. Even when you had negative stuff, it didn't seem to stick, because everything else was going so well. No matter what's going on, there's always a good picture of the Prime Minister to go along with the article. You always seemed to do just fine in the early days. You always came out smelling like roses.
What happened? I realize that the realities of governing sink in, and that can be shocking, but some of you have been around for a while. One can only hope that as we read these things out and as we reiterate at least the problems the government is having, it may somehow be helpful in providing a way out of this.
I've pretty much exhausted everything I can think of, which I've shared with Mr. Simms. Mr. Simms has been kind enough to make himself available to Mr. Richards and me, as the two vice-chairs of this committee. Even during the break week, Mr. Simms reached out and talked to me on the Wednesday. One was a bit of a heads-up as to some stuff, and another was just to chat and make sure about the lines of communication. He's been great that way.
I have to tell you, though, that I'm getting a little bit exhausted being one half of the team over on the opposition benches that is coming up with ways of getting out of this mess and finding an exit strategy, when all the government does is continually put up roadblocks and refuse to budge even an inch. You can tell I'm getting old by “budge an inch”; let's say “centimetre”. I still look at centimetres and figure out what it means in inches. That's what happens. It's the same thing with kilometres and mileage.
If I may, Chair, this will take just 60 seconds. When that system came out, my mom said at the time, “I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it.” There was enough of a layover in the transition period that she hasn't had to. She has pretty much been able to stay with what she's comfortable with. My daughter, on the other hand, went through school when it was taught. I look at some of my colleagues here, and they have to give a thought to what the heck an inch is again, or a yard. What the heck is a yard? She was free and clear, because she was brought up and taught in the new world. Half the time she's looking at me, when I come up with my expressions, and asking, “And that's what, again, Dad?”, as I reinterpret English back into English.
But us, we got stuck in the middle. Some of us weren't real good at or didn't have an aptitude for making conversions. It's not that I'm looking for any sympathy. I'm sure there are many other boomers who realize that having to make that translation and formula adjustment in your head slows down talk.
Thank you, Chair. You're indicating to me that I need to talk about the subject matter, so I will.
The next point is:
That the committee may recommend to the House texts of new or amended Standing Orders;
Not only were they asked and willing to come up with some of the concepts, but also they were asked, if they wanted, to provide actual language; that's how much they were trusted. That's the kind of work they expected them to do and that they did.
The next point states:
That the committee may make recommendations for changes to relevant statutes and, if it does so, such recommendations shall be deemed to have been made pursuant to an Order adopted pursuant to Standing Order 68(4); and
Again, this speaks to the importance of the Standing Orders as a tool that we use in everything we do. The final point states:
That the committee shall present its final report no later than Friday, June 1, 2001.
Chair, I've introduced this by way of ensuring that our record of debate reflects everything that's happening on the issue in front of us. The letter, which I've read in its entirety, both sides, signed by the two opposition House leaders, outlining once again an off-ramp strategy for the government.
Conservative
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
Thank you.
I've actually quite enjoyed Mr. Christopherson's comments, and he can probably teach me a little about yards and inches and stuff a little later. I did grow up with the metric system, so it's somewhat foreign to me in some ways, but I still measure things in—
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
I could be deeply enlightened.
I was wondering whether, for the benefit of the committee, we might be able to have that letter circulated in both official languages. It's been shared through social media, I know, but it might be something worthwhile to table for the committee as part of our deliberations and conversations here, if that's the will of the committee.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Thank you for a real point of order.
Okay, Mr. Christopherson, you're on.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thank you. They do happen, those real points of order.
I believe I was making a final summary reference to this document. My friend has now asked that it be circulated to all members.
We forget how many people there are who follow these things and who care very much about these matters. They would want access, so I would hope that we could make that available if we get any public requests, given that we're in this unusual situation, Chair, and that if somebody did happen to contact the clerk of the committee you might feel comfortable in ensuring that a copy goes out, or at the very least, that it be.... Of course, they could always call any one of our caucuses, the House leaders for our caucuses, our caucus chairs. Any member, actually, would eventually find them a copy of it.
Again, I want to leave this subject on this one important point, that is, this at least represents the opposition benches trying to do something. Where's the government's suggestion?
The only thing we've heard, and it's not even formal—there's nothing on paper—is that there might be some consideration to move the deadline from June to sometime in the fall, but as I've said, without changing the fact that the government wants the unilateral right to ram through anything we can't agree on by consensus, it matters not to us whether that guillotine flies in June, October, November, or December. It's not the time of doing it that's the problem—it's the doing of it that's the problem.
To shift gears out of first, I would like to spend a little time talking about the report that was tabled the other night. Most importantly, this is a report from this committee, not one in the past, but this committee, meaning just PROC, in this Parliament, with this makeup of almost the same members. We haven't had too much change here.
You, Chair, have been the chair from the beginning, and the two vice-chairs have been in place from the beginning. That's important. This committee needs stability, because a lot of decisions made in the early part of the year can have implications later on, having set precedents for going forward later on in the year.
What's most edifying here is that the parallels aren't hard to find. It doesn't take a stretch to go from what this report is about to what we're talking about here, which is why the Speaker in the House last night allowed it to be discussed as a relevant part of the motion that was on the floor.
This report is the eleventh report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. That's us.
I might mention, Chair, just to give you fair warning, that later on tonight—much later—I'll be making a reference to the twenty-third report of this committee, which also is our interim report. I see you nodding your head. You know what it is; you presented it in the House. It's the interim report response. It was our first go-around of the low-lying fruit exercise that we had done, so I will be making some reference to that also.
Again, to summarize at the beginning where I'm about to go, I'm about to show that when this committee actually does work together, which we want to do and have a history of doing, we do good work. It's usually a little dangerous for politicians in a non-election period to be bragging, but I've been on a lot of committees in 30 plus years, and it's a good committee, and you're a good chair and we've done some good work. I think we could have done more good work. We were doing good work on the chief electoral report, which is exactly what this is about.
Here's what I want to speak to, Chair. I won't task you to separate where I might be crossing over and repeating things between two reports. I'm going to be talking about two distinct processes, and how one worked and how one is not. I won't go beyond that into any great detail on the one that is, except sufficiently to make the case that I'm doing. I won't go into that level of detail. If I start to slide in that direction, I know that I'll hear from you, sir.
As for that process, unlike this process, the other one started with respect. It started with an element of co-operation, Chair. You don't miss very many meetings, and I'm pretty sure you were here for that. If not, you would certainly be aware that not long into the new year, on January 28, 2016, the then House leader, Mr. LeBlanc.... Again, at committee we have a little more latitude. That's why committee work is important. That's why it matters whether or not we have the right to talk until we're done on this committee. I've known Dom—Mr. LeBlanc—for a long time. He was here when I got here. Like a lot of us, he's part of the furniture. He's been around a long time. He's respected, liked, and well known. No one was surprised when he ended up in a senior position as the government House leader.
He was kind enough to come to the meeting. He sat downstairs in room 112, in that general location, and he asked us—I would even go so far as to say he asked nicely—with a lot of respect, to please, as part of the parliamentary process, undertake a review of how we do things. I'm paraphrasing. He asked us to take a look at how we do things here, such as committee work, caucus work, work in the House, and travelling between our offices. He asked us to take a look at all of that and make suggestions that would make this Parliament more family friendly. It's a big undertaking, one that you would think couldn't work, really, unless you had co-operation.
Those of us who have been on the opposition benches for many years very much appreciated that the government House leader was asking this committee in exactly the way that was consistent with the election. This is my opinion now: it was consistent with what the government promised in the election, which was to show respect for committees, to listen to what the committees have to say, and to use the committees more as an integral part of Parliament, the real workhorse, rather than the view that the previous government seemed to have, which was that committees are mostly a nuisance, much in the way that they ultimately viewed Parliament.
Mr. LeBlanc's request was taken so seriously and co-operatively by this committee that while he came to see us on January 28, on February 2 we started our work. There was no acrimony. There were no accusations, no troublemaking, and no filibusters. We started working.
We worked on the principle that if we didn't all agree, it wouldn't go in the report. That does make for tougher work down the road, because the easy stuff will have been done and you're left with the tough stuff, but it did allow us to generate this report. It was amazing how often we did agree.
I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself, because this report is worth considering.
To recap, on January 28 the newish government House leader came in for his first meeting with us. He asked us to co-operate to meet their objectives and their electoral platform. The first thing we said was “yes”. We respected the fact they had won the election and that they were a few months old. They had a mandate to do these kinds of things. There was a strong feeling in the House of members who wanted change, especially newer members, like those with young families. Unlike in the past. when that would almost always mean women, in this case right away it affected my new colleague Mr. Schmale, who is the father of a couple of young children and has a modern family. My sense is that, as much as his job allows, he is a hands-on dad, as much as he possibly can be, and he had as much interest in this subject as anyone else in the past, who might always have been women.
It wasn't gender-specific. There was a general sense in the House that we could do this better. We could make some changes that would make it easier for people with families, or, on the other end, for people who have some disabilities, or people who are older and can't go as long. There are lighting issues around danger, and distances. We still haven't dealt with a lot of that.
Just to give an example, Chair, I had a temporary problem with sciatica over the last few weeks. Anybody who has had sciatica knows how painful that is. I forget what I was doing, but it might have been one of these committees or something, and it was late. The buses only run until an hour after the House is sitting, no matter what else is going on. I walked out the door and it was really cold. I've learned that extreme cold adversely affects sciatica. All I could think was how I was not going to enjoy that walk. My office is at the justice building and my vehicle was parked beside the Supreme Court. That is an awfully long way to go. If I had any options, I normally wouldn't walk that far because of the damage it does.
I was so lucky that night. When I came out, one of the buses was there. Really, I thought I had won the lottery.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
On a point of order, while you're on that topic, I forgot to tell people that the buses will be here tonight until half an hour after our meeting. If you want a bus, take it. Get down there within half an hour after we conclude.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Great. Thanks, Chair. That's usually a little longer than the House, because the House normally adjourns around 6:30 or so and they stay an hour after.
But here's the dilemma, Chair: not everybody is done with their work at this place at 9 o'clock. I've often been here, as I'm sure every single member has—I see some members nodding their heads—well past 9 o'clock. Now, what if, instead of having a temporary mini-crisis and short-term disability over my leg and my sciatica, I had a permanent minor disability that made walking long distances incredibly difficult, let alone in the weather and snow and the ice? Our folks are really good at keeping it as clear as they can, but when you get those storms around here, it doesn't take too long.
More important than me and my woes, what about the staff? As long as there's one member here working well past the buses, there's some staffer in this building supporting them who has that problem, whether it's Tyler cleaning up last-minute stuff, making sure that I'm ready to go again the next morning full tilt, or whether it's our bus drivers who are here and our other support staff and our security people. What about them? Those parking lots are an awfully long way. I really wonder, how do those who have any kind of disability—and it doesn't take much, given the long distances and the weather—do that? We still don't have it right.
There was a non-partisan sense of, look, we're all members of Parliament. We all come from our respective ridings. We all got here the same way. Our purpose is, in macro, the same—to make Canada as strong as it can be and better than when we got here. In general terms, regardless of what party you belong to, that's why we're here.
These issues came up from that kind of human element, and not one that I expect the public to care much about. It's just like when you think about world famous people, you don't think about them as people, with the regular challenges we all have and the aches and pains and the problems at home, all that stuff. You don't normally do that.
I'm not seeking any sympathy for that. We all worked awfully hard to get here. You take the little bit of bad that comes with the good that comes from being a member of the Canadian Parliament.
These were issues that we all cared about as people. It didn't matter; whether we were looking at each other as humans, as fellow citizens, as fellow workers here, or whether we were looking at the staff who support the work that we do, we knew that this place was not making people's lives as good as it could. In fact, it was hurting people's lives.
There was that general desire to make things better for everybody who works here, and the government had decided that this was a priority for them as well. There were those two interests. Does it start to sound familiar? Standing orders, election laws: we have these common interests, and how you approach it makes a difference. Does it start to found familiar?
So we approach this before the House leader even—
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
On a point of order, Mr. Chair, there are a few conversations going on around the room. While a little bit of side chatter is quite acceptable and understandable, especially when we're in a long session like this, some of the volume is getting to be rather annoying. It's making it very difficult to hear the member who has the floor.
I would just ask that all members show a little more respect and either keep their conversations quiet or take them away from the discussion tables here.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
Mr. Chair, I'd like to make the point that I consider myself to be the principal culprit during that little episode. I would like to apologize to Mr. Christopherson and to everyone on the committee—and you too.
Thank you.
Liberal
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I want to thank Mr. Arnold for representing my interests.
I have to tell you that I'm shattered that you weren't just hanging off my every word anyway. I'm going to have to get over that. Mr. Doherty advises me that he was, and so was....
Okay. I'm feeling better now. I was really feeling hurt there, Chair. I thought they were hanging off my every word. There are other discussions going on? Really? I guess I was happier before. Ignorance is bliss.
Anyway, thanks very much for allowing me to have the floor, which under the current rules I am still entitled to.
As I was saying, that general environment of all of us wanting, for non-partisan and non-MP reasons, to take a look at this subject and the merging of that with the government desire to make that one of the first things they moved on, led to Mr. LeBlanc coming here, in a very friendly, respectful exercise of dialogue about what the government would appreciate the committee doing vis- à-vis priorities they had identified for their term.
As I said, that was on January 28. By February 2 we had completely reoriented whatever we were doing. We said, yes, that made a great deal of sense, and there would be no reason for us to be opposed. If we had been opposed in any way, then that would be obstructionist, because there would be no reason for it. That's why I'm not hearing too much claimed, even by the current government, although I expect over time cries of obstructionism will increase, that we're just trying to hold things up. If that's all we were about, Mr. LeBlanc gave us a perfect opportunity to go in camera on this subject, and, quite frankly, if we wanted to, we'd still not be re-emerging. We could keep it going that long, because remember, the agreement was that it was only things we agreed on.
Again, there was a desire on the part of members to do something and a desire on the part of the government to make it a priority. The minister of the day came to the committee and respectfully asked us to consider making this a priority project for our work plan, which we then, in a matter of days—it looks to me as if it might even have been the next meeting—but within two meetings, we were on it. If we were all about obstructionism and getting in the way of the government's victory dance at winning, we had all the opportunity in the world. It didn't happen. It could have, but it didn't, Chair, and that's why I say this is a very good committee.
It has a good mix of all that we need, especially veterans and new members, and that combination, I find, is the best. If you get too many veterans you get lost in the way things ought to be and the way they used to be, and if you get all new members, they really have no context and no corporate history as to what's gone on, what's worked and why, and why you approach certain things this way as opposed to that way. A good combination gives you that mix.
Then the last ingredient you need is a great chair, and we have that. We have this mix of new members and older veterans. Collectively we started working together as a team. I remember this review. Chair, I stand to be corrected, and you could correct me, or colleagues, but I don't recall our going into the ditch even once, where any of these issues became partisan. I'm going by memory. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that on every single one, if we had any disagreement, it was just a respectful disagreement on a different view, a different perspective, a different idea. Chair, how many times have you heard...? For instance—I'll use members who are here—Mr. Graham would give a thought on something. Then one of the opposition benches would say they thought that was a great idea, they hadn't thought of it that way. Then somebody else would jump in, and sometimes we'd get lost in it.
Then you, as Mr. Preston did, would keep an eye on where that discussion was, and then just at the right time, when we were getting ourselves lost because we were getting off on these ideas—all positive, but we were getting away—you'd bring us around. It was never the heavy-handed “thou shalt” and “you will” and “you won't” and “stop doing this” and “you're not on the point”. There was none of that. You knew that you had a group of people who were working together, and that all they needed was a bit of leadership to make sure the discussion stayed focused.
It's just like you do with me. You make sure we stay focused on the main points, and that everything is germane. I say that lightheartedly, but it's true nonetheless, and I've been around to see. When you have a bad chair, you can't even agree on an adjournment time.
So we had all the ingredients. The only thing that could have disrupted that committee meeting, in my view, would have been if one member, just one, had started dragging in partisanship and started talking like a New Democrat instead of a member of the committee, talking like a Conservative or a Liberal rather than a member of the committee. Every one of us saw that the second we sat down in this chair....
There are always some elements of partisanship. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to describe some kind of fairyland. It's only an instant away. In the multiverse the brains are very thin, and we're very close to that universe where we're fighting. But we got into the universe of working together, and we stayed there through this whole report.
Mr. LeBlanc read his mandate, Mr. Chair, and we put it in the report. With your indulgence, this is from our report. It says:
Mr. LeBlanc’s mandate letter contains the following instruction:
Work with Opposition House Leaders to examine ways to make the House of Commons more family-friendly for Members of Parliament.
It doesn't say “Liberal” members of Parliament. It doesn't say to make it more family friendly for “Liberal” members of Parliament and the heck with everybody else. It doesn't say that.
That wasn't the approach of the minister. He didn't come in and say you're going to do this, you're going to do that, you're going to do it by this deadline, and I don't want to hear any problems.
That's a bit of an exaggeration—
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
—but that would be the opposite of what he did.
He didn't do that. He came in and was very respectful. What I am pointing out, Chair, over and over, because it is so important, is that at the cornerstone of everything here is respect. It's respect for the tradition of how we've done things in this place. It's respect for what those who came before us went through and how they dealt with these kinds of changes. More than anything, it's respect for each other as members of Parliament, worthy of having an equal say in the rules as to how we make laws in this great country.
And we were treated that way. It didn't say for the “Liberal” members, although it benefited Liberals. It also benefited Conservatives and New Democrats. More importantly, it benefited the multitude of people around us, aside from our personal staff, who don't have a partisanship. Their job is just to help us do what we do, even when we do silly things like this.
In the very next paragraph, Chair, after the reference to Mr. LeBlanc's mandate letter, it says this—and these are our words, all of us. Again, this is the committee report. It could easily be just the government, with two dissenting reports attached, and I would still be correct in saying “the committee report”, but in this case I am emphasizing the fact that it is a unanimous consensus report that we all agree on and we all supported.
Doesn't that sound like a better world to be in than the one we're in here? This is more where I was in 2012, 2013, 2014, leading up to the election in 2015.
Here's what we said in our report, Chair, after we referenced Mr. LeBlanc's mandate:
In its approach to this study, the Committee attached importance to reporting back to the House in a timely manner any findings and recommendations that could result in improvements to the inclusivity and work-life balance for members, along with seeking improvements to the predictability, efficiency and modernization of the institution, all while taking into consideration the impact of changes on members’ constituents.
Now, what I find particularly interesting is that we as a committee chose to make a reference to “improvements to the predictability, efficiency and modernization of the institution”. That's exactly what the government says when it talks about its discussion paper, that it's all about predictability, efficiency and modernization, which are some of its favourite buzzwords. In the election, it used to be “accountability”, but not so much anymore.
I find so interesting the parallels of what we were asked to do, how we did it, what our end product was, looking at the eleventh report, versus what we have now. Again, I can't go into it, because I would be repeating, but it is fair for me to make a reference that this process, unlike the other one in which a discussion paper was dropped in the public domain towards the end of a constituency week with no fanfare, no attachment, and not even a heads-up to the other House leaders that it was coming or a follow-up discussion about what it means, followed—I believe Mr. Reid has done the math—within a couple of hours, by Mr. Simms, in the same fashion, dropping his motion into the public domain.
When we get to committee, obviously the first thing we want to do is establish how the decisions are going to be made. We're back to the alleyway to playing scrub again. How are we going to pick the teams?
The government has one file with a number of different pieces and two completely different processes. When the government follows the process that's consistent with what they ran on, and they treat the committee with the respect that they said they would, what happens? What usually happens when you offer respect? You get it back. And that's what happened. Mr. LeBlanc came in, read his mandate, asked us to undertake certain work, very respectfully, and within a matter of days we were on it.
In this process, however, we had something dropped in the middle of a constituency week without any context, with a motion from a committee member a couple of hours later indicating, all but dictating, what the government wanted to do with the discussion paper. The first thing that Mr. Reid does, as the critic for the official opposition, given the opportunity to have the floor, is put a motion that says, hey, before we do anything, we'd like a guarantee from the government that we're only going to do this by all-party agreement, that it will be by consensus, that we will agree to that.
It should have taken 60 seconds for the government to say, yes, of course that's how we're going to do it. We'd have had a quick vote. It would have been done and recorded. We'd have moved on, and be working toward a final product, just as this same committee did with the eleventh report.
Not only that, but as Mr. Reid began to get the idea that the government wasn't going to support this, he started to settle in to fill out the balance of the meeting with what we call, and I've referenced this before, “running the clock”, which means exactly what it does in sports. You just keep doing what you're doing so the clock runs out and others can't do anything else in that time: run the clock.
That's what Mr. Reid thought he now had to do. That was bad enough, having now realized that the government was not going to agree that, as in the past, it would be by consensus, but when the allotted one o'clock adjournment of the meeting came along, lo and behold, Mr. Reid found out that the government had a further surprise for us—a sneak attack. Mr. Reid may have been ready for up to two hours of time to talk in order to have one of those little battles I talked about at committee that happen from time to time, and that don't impact everything else that's going on. That's what we thought was going on there.
Then we got to one or two minutes after one o'clock. Somebody asked you, Chair, if we shouldn't be adjourned, to which you indicated there was not majority support for rising, and therefore the meeting would continue. That was two weeks ago Tuesday, and we're still on that date.
All of this has been because the government won't agree to what is the usual practice in a major review of Standing Orders—that is, if we don't all agree, it doesn't go in the report and it doesn't go to the House.
What a difference. It's the same government, but a different House leader. I was a House leader once for the third party at Queen's Park. You get to make a lot of decisions when you're the House leader, but if there are some decisions with your political life to make on your own, you'd better be checking from on high before you go telling the government House leader what deal you're about to cut. I get that it's not just the personality, and I'm not trying to make it about that, but I am pointing to the difference in what happened and the approach. I can't go too far on this, because we were not only in camera, we were, like, pens down. We were having a totally 100% informal, set this aside....
We had the minister in here the other day, and a few of us thought, okay, here's our chance, we have the minister in here. Do you remember how it unfolded, Chair? You'll stop me if I'm telling tales out of school that I shouldn't be from a confidential meeting, but we agreed to just set everything down and have a quick chat with the minister to see if she could help, because she was in a position to do something that could get us out of the logjam.
I cannot go into the cut and thrust. I won't attempt to. I won't play any games like that. I'll just say that it was not productive. I only say that—and that's all I'm going to say about it—as a comparison to what happened when Mr. LeBlanc came in when he was in public and we could have done anything we wanted to embarrass him. We had the cameras going. It was all there to us. But we didn't do that. That's not what we did.
I am so glad that we have this report to point to, to show the Canadian people the difference between how we deal with two parts of the same subject, one with respect and collegiality, which is what they ran on, and the other was just borderline political thuggery. We're still in the middle of that fight. What the heck happened? What happened in such a short period of time?
Maybe it's time to bring Mr. LeBlanc back, at least into the discussions at the House leader's office or something, because this is nuts. This is not where we need to be. This is not where we were the last time. For the life of me, I really don't know why we're here and why we aren't sitting down and finding a way out of this that we can all respect, because they are our collective rules of the House, not the government's. You can run on something, but that doesn't necessarily mean that word for word.... I mean, would you run on a platform that said, “MPs will never be able to speak again after we form government”? If you somehow still formed government, do you think you'd have the right to implement that? It would be an interesting debate. It would probably get about as far as this thing's going, I don't know.
I know that's silly, but this whole thing is so silly, it really is, and non-productive. I don't get where it goes. This is the underlying thing. I usually can figure out to some degree what the heck is going on. I have no idea, except I know that the government wants their way or the highway. We know from past experience how well that works, we know what kind of Parliament we end up with, and we know how Canadians feel about that.
Moving on, Chair, under discussion on page 2 in that report, we state—remember that “we” when I read this, because this is our report that we issued to the House—the following:
The right of the House to establish its own rules and manage its internal affairs is among the most important rights claimed over centuries of parliamentary tradition and possessed by the House of Commons. The House can set and change its work practices, rules and procedures, along with the resources and benefits provided to members, in order to ensure that these retain as their purpose to enable and support members in carrying out their functions as representatives and legislators.
That was us describing our collective ownership of our rules and procedures.
We didn't say in our report—
