Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 21st, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

It's whatever he wants to do, but if they want to, we would make the time available at one. Okay.

I'm quite disappointed that Mr. Nater isn't here, because we were getting a nice lecture from Mr. Reid on the history of Speaker elections when he left.

We're now at Mr. Simms.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Chair, can you read out the speakers list for us?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes. We have Mr. Simms, Mr. Blaikie, and Mr. Richards.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's it on the list?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I put my name on yesterday when I finished; I asked my name to be put on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes, we passed, though. You missed it.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Okay. Then put me on again.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Okay.

Mr. Simms, much to your surprise, you're up.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

I think my intervention last night covered it. I'll pass. I think it goes to Mr. Richards now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Okay.

Mr. Richards.

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

That's good. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As much as I have been looking forward to the opportunity, I'm also disappointed that Mr. Nater isn't here. I thought he was providing us with a lot of great points. It has been a little while since I've had a chance at this. I think it was actually March 21 or whenever when I last had a chance to come up on the speakers list. I've had a chance to intervene and say a few words here and there, but this is the first chance I've had to take the floor.

This is great. I have some things I've been waiting to share with the committee in regard to some of the stuff that we've been hearing from Canadians in particular. I'd like to start by recapping a bit of the history of where we are and why we're here.

I think that's important to remember at this point, Mr. Chair. We've been through a number of iterations of this meeting, and I feel that we're stuck in the same place. I guess it's important for people to understand why that is.

When we started this meeting.... Was it March 21? Is that the right date? Yes? It was March 21. It was to be a two-hour meeting, right? It was at 11 a.m., and when we came in, we had the Elections Canada officials sitting at the end of the table, because we had been studying the Canada Elections Act and some of the changes that the CEO of Elections Canada proposed.

We were looking at those changes, trying to determine whether those were appropriate, and having what I would say was a good conversation and a good discussion about those changes. I think we were being quite productive and were working in a consensual fashion, where we were all coming to agreement on something and then moving forward. If we couldn't agree on something, we understood that maybe we'd set that aside. It seemed to work pretty well. It also seems to have been the practice that we've followed in this committee.

I've been here for I think coming up on four years now. It has been three or four years, for sure, and that's the way we've done things. I've been speaking to the members who have been on the committee a lot longer than I have. Mr. Reid has been here for some time, and so has Mr. Christopherson. Mr. Lukiwski, obviously, was a member from this side for some time. I sat with him on this committee. He has been here for some of this debate as well, and I think has contributed to it in an exemplary fashion and offered some great points and advice. In speaking to them, they've told me that for as long as they can remember as well, which is far longer than I can, that it has been that way, and it always seems to have worked.

When we came into this meeting on March 21, there had been this discussion paper while we were on our constituency week that had come out from the government House leader, which was seeking to make some of the changes that they had failed to make a couple of times before, with some other new ideas that no one had really seen.

As I outlined when I spoke earlier in this committee, I think I spoke for a couple of hours at that time..... That's not normally considered brief, but in terms of this meeting it might be the briefest intervention, or one of the briefest. What I outlined at that time in looking at the standing order changes that had been discussed and suggested during the take-note debate in the House of Commons on the Standing Orders—I believe it was a take-note debate—there was very little correlation between that document compiled by our clerk about what was suggested there and what was in this so-called discussion paper from the government House leader.

We've still never had a real explanation of what the basis for that is. We were told that it was election promises, somehow. I didn't see very many of those things in their election promises either. It just came out of thin air.

We went into the meeting to discuss Elections Canada. We had the officials sitting here for some time. I finally asked Mr. Chair if we felt we could maybe allow them to go and get on with their day if we were just going to be discussing something that had no relation to them.

Obviously, the government had an intention of raising this at that meeting but didn't see fit to inform anybody prior to the meeting. As soon as we came into the meeting, within seconds, this motion that Mr. Simms had been asked to put forward by the government was put on the table, to just sort of ram this through in a very expeditious fashion without having to have the consent of the opposition parties, without really having to.... Although they claim they want to have a conversation. I've heard that over and over. When I say “they”, I mean the government. I'm not talking about the members on the other side of the table per se.

We keep hearing about this conversation or discussion, and we want to have this. I think the members on the other side of the table are sincere about that, but I don't know that I can believe the same of some of the other people who are saying it. The government House leader, in particular, is one who comes to mind. You can talk about wanting to have a discussion, but there's actually an ability to have one, so let's do that. I'll get back to that in a second.

The point I was making is that if there really were a desire to have a discussion, and that was supposed to be the starting point, one would have thought that they'd have said, “Okay, look, this is what we want to do, and we're going to raise this at the meeting.” Instead, it was, “Here it is: we have a motion and we're going to ram this through.” Then we in the opposition were left sitting there and asking what's going on.

You can imagine that right off the bat there would be some suspicion about what the agenda is. When words don't match actions, it is always something that sets off alarm bells. That was the case. The words weren't matching the actions.

This is fairly typical of Prime Minister Trudeau. That seems to be the way he operates. That's his modus operandi. He says a lot of words that sound wonderful on the surface if you don't really think about them.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

It sounds great, and it's this nice package. It says all the right things, but it's really just like one of those dolls: you pull the string and it has a few things that it says. There's not really much substance behind it, and there isn't much action. That's kind of how it works with this government. It's pretty frustrating, to say the least, to have to try to deal with that.

Here we are. We got this dropped on the table in front of us. They want to ram it through. The opposition says to hold on second, that this is not the way it's done. It has never been the way to do this. This is highly unusual. It doesn't really seem to be in keeping with the spirit of fairness. It doesn't seem to be in keeping with what's in the best interests of Canadians. If that were the real intention, one would think that there would have been someone saying, “Hey, we're thinking that maybe this needs to be our priority list, and we're going to raise this.” They could have said that they were going to bring it forward, and they could have let the Elections Canada officials know, saying to them not to waste their time, not to come by, that we were going to have this discussion that day.

Rightfully so, my colleague Mr. Reid brought forward an amendment, quite a reasonable amendment. For the life of me, I still cannot understand why members on the other side would not want to approve it, go along with it, and work from that basis. It's the way things have been done. They seem like reasonable people. I would think that in their heart of hearts they probably want to proceed with us in that fashion. I do think that. We've heard that from them. I think they would like to do that. The amendment would allow that to happen.

Yet from somewhere above, I think they're saying they're not going to accept that, because that way they don't get to do whatever they want. They don't get to ram this through. They don't get to make any changes they want without the opposition having a say. This way means doing it without Canadians having a say. If one party gets to do whatever it wants, that means Canadians are left out and are not a part of the process.

I hear a phone ringing.

[An hon. member]

I apologize.

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

Is that Justin Trudeau calling to let them know not to cave in, not to give up, not to let the opposition have any say? I don't know. He called the wrong number, though, because I don't think Mr. Schmale is going to have much sympathy for that point of view.

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

I can report back.

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

I don't imagine you'd have much sympathy for that, Mr. Schmale. Maybe they need to call someone else. I don't know.

Anyway, at the end of the day, I guess one would hope for, at some point, the sincerity from them that I hear from the members on the other side of this committee. We've seen and witnessed in action in the committee the way they like to function. We know that's the way they operate.

The conversation and the chatter that I hear in the hallways around here from other Liberal backbencher MPs suggests that they're pretty frustrated as well with the approach this government has taken. I've heard the chatter in the hallways. I've heard them complaining about the Prime Minister's Office and asking why the heck they don't have a conversation with the opposition. Why don't they try to work this out? Why don't the House leaders have a conversation? We hear all of that.

I wish that government House leader and the Prime Minister would listen to the Liberal MPs who are saying this; the ones I know do feel that way. I wish they would listen, because we could have a conversation. We could move forward and have discussions about the Standing Orders. I think it's an important exercise, and it happens in just about every Parliament that we have a look at the Standing Orders. In the discussion paper, there are some things that are worth having a discussion about. I can get back to the substance in a second, because there are some things I have concerns with, too, no question, but there are also some things that we could certainly have a discussion about.

I guess one would wish that maybe some of the members on this committee who are reasonable.... I think they want to try to move forward. If one of those people were in the government House leader's position, for example, or were Prime Minister, maybe we'd have someone who was trustworthy and capable of having that discussion, and we could do that. Right now, I don't feel that those positions in this country are filled by people who are willing to really live up to their words and actions and capable of actually performing the job that's needed. That would allow us to move forward.

I was told last night—I was out of the room for a bit—that the government House leader came by. I understand that she brought some birthday cake for members and there were a lot of smiles. That's all wonderful. I think everyone felt great about that, from what I hear, but what didn't happen, from my understanding, was a discussion, and that's the very thing that we hear over and over again in question period and elsewhere. The government House leader says “we want to have a conversation, we want to have a discussion”, but that didn't occur.

I suspect that it was probably the last time she came here that we said, okay, let's have a discussion. As opposition members, we raised some very substantive ideas on how we could move forward and were met with, “Well, let's have a discussion.” We said that we were trying to have one right then, but discussions can't be one-sided. There has to be some give-and-take. That means the other side has to want to participate beyond talking points and platitudes. That's one thing this government—the Prime Minister and others—is really good at: talking points and platitudes. They're good at that. I'll give them that, but that's about it.

That's why we are where we are. If they would just say, look, let's have a conversation, a discussion, and mean it and actually do it, we could probably figure out a way to arrive at some consensus. Maybe we could get this amendment passed, because at the end of the day, if there were anything else to this besides the government wanting to ram through whatever it wants to do and whatever its changes are, they would agree to that. There's no reason not to. We've heard them say, well, the opposition can block us from putting in our election promises. No one believes that, because these things in this discussion paper were not in their election promises.

Here's what I wanted to speak about. I spoke to it last night, but it was late, about 10:30 p.m., and I'm not going to fool myself and pretend there are millions of Canadians watching right now this morning, but there are probably more than were watching at 10:30 last night. There are a few more who would be watching now. I think there's something that's worth reminding us about, and it's this discussion about the Fridays.

For the Fridays, the current claim is different from what they've tried before. They've tried two or three different ways to get these Fridays. For some reason, they really want to get rid of the Fridays. They don't want to have Parliament sit on Fridays. I've heard it described in a lot of different ways, such as shutting out the lights in Parliament on Fridays. I've heard it described as taking a day off on Fridays.

We got into that a bit last night. I'm not going to say that anyone wants to have Fridays off so they can sit at home and watch TV and eat bonbons. I would agree that I don't think that's anyone's intention. I think people would be in their constituencies working or doing other things, but it's one day less each week that Parliament would be sitting, one day less that there would be a question period, and one day less that there would be private members' business.

I understand there have been arguments made to add hours to other days. As a set-aside for the moment, I'm personally not sure that works. I think that eliminates some flexibility for MPs. I think it makes it difficult. For example, if you were to start earlier to replace those days, if you had to start an hour and a half earlier, say, which would be about what you'd have to do to replace the Fridays, you'd be starting at 8:30. We all know that there are a lot of things that go on.... Actually, it might be even earlier, because we wouldn't be able to start earlier on Wednesday; it might even be eight o'clock.

Whatever it is—for the sake of argument we'll say 8:30, because it doesn't really matter—we know what happens before the House sits in the morning. That's the time when people do their preparatory work. If there are people who want to meet with you, say, and you're on House duty that day, that's the time when you can do that. That's the time when there may be a breakfast meeting.

For example, I wasn't able to be here for the first bit of the meeting yesterday. I had a group that was in Ottawa. They're people from all over Canada. You don't get that opportunity every day. I've been working on an issue with them, and they wanted me to speak to them at their breakfast. That was an opportunity to do that.

What you would do is that you essentially almost would take those opportunities away, because you would make it so that they would have to happen at 6 a.m. or whatever. That starts to become a little bit.... These things often start at 7:30, and that's a reasonable time, but 6 a.m. starts to become unreasonable.

There's the other thing you could do. You could talk about lengthening the day. You could add an hour and a half or two hours at the end of the day, and then it's 8 o'clock or 8:30, if there are no votes, before Parliament finishes for the night. I know that for some of us.... I think this was raised last night. I think Mr. Johns from the NDP raised it. He had a good point. It's what I often do as well as an MP from out west. There's a two-hour time difference. At 6:30 or 7 o'clock, the House wraps up.

[An hon. member]

It's three hours for some.

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

Yes, it's three hours for some. For me, it's two, but for a B.C. MP, it's three hours. That's correct, so it's even more of an opportunity for them.... Also, it does speak to that morning thing too. Because we are going back and forth, it can be difficult for some from out west. With a two- or three-hour time change when you have a 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. start, it could be like 4 a.m. for someone, because when they go back to their ridings, of course, that's the time they're on.

That can be difficult for some people. For me, it is. I find that a bit difficult. I'm not really a morning person per se, so I find getting up at what is equivalent to 3:30 or 4 o'clock my time a little difficult, I'll be honest. I am a night owl, and I like to work into the evening. If Parliament is to sit—and this is the point I want to make about that—until 8 o'clock or 8:30 in the evening, some of the opportunity you get to catch up on things in your riding gets lost for those people from out west as well, because what happens is.... It's even worse for those in the east because then it's almost too late to even make any calls to anyone, even if they're at home.

Often the House will wrap up with still a bit of the workday left, so what I'll do is that for the people who I have to try to catch at work or those kinds of places, I can still make a few of those calls. Maybe I can have a little dinner or get in a little exercise or something and come back to the office, and then I'm able to catch the people after they've had dinner at home. If we start to sit longer in the House, it eliminates some of that opportunity as well. It starts to become more difficult. I know people say that if they could just get to their ridings on Fridays more often, they could do more for their constituents. I want to argue that it actually might do the opposite. I know that sounds funny to begin with, but when you think about it, you lose those opportunities with constituents before or after the House sits if you lengthen those days.

Another way you might get more time, if that is what you are seeking to do, would be to actually sit on the Fridays. I would say that if you want to make them a longer day, well, that's fine, and I could see the merits in that, but I don't see the merits in getting rid of them. I'm going to get back to the question period thing in a second, but if you want to lengthen them out, say, even if they went.... Some people said that to be able to get home to their ridings on a Friday night, they would still need to.... But let's say that Parliament wraps up at 5:30 or something. You could still do that. That's adding a few hours to the day.

As for what would happen then, if you were to add up those hours for 26 weeks, there probably would be a couple of weeks of time that you'd be making up on those Fridays, so maybe, as an example, you could give people an extra couple of weeks in their ridings each year. I'm just throwing this out. I'm not saying that this is a proposal, necessarily, but it's an example of what could be done. I would be willing to argue that if you had that time at the beginning and the end of the day, like you do now in Parliament, to catch up on constituency things, and then you had another couple of weeks when you could spend a block of a week in your riding, you'd get a lot more done that way than you would by just being home for a Friday, when you're a little bit tired because you didn't get home until 2 a.m. or something and you've been flying. You'd probably get more done that way.

I think those arguments that somehow this is better for your constituents are disingenuous.

At the end of the day, what it really does is take away one question period each week: 20% of the question periods. It's a pretty significant number. Taking away 20% of the question periods is really taking away 20% of the accountability. That's what it really means. It means taking away 20% of the accountability that the government has to provide to Canadians through the odd opportunity that opposition members have in question period to raise substantive issues, to raise their concerns, and to raise the issues of their constituents, etc. That's what I think it's really about.

They brought forward the family-friendly initiative and said that we have to get rid of Fridays because that's family friendly. A lot of people spoke out and said that they didn't really see how that was family friendly. Some people probably thought it was, but there were a lot of people who didn't, so they said, “Okay, well, we'll back away.”

If you look at the report that we put out—I don't have it in front of me, so I can't remember the exact wording—you will see that we essentially reported back that we didn't feel there was a need to get rid of Fridays. That was the decision of this committee. It was done the way they're usually done. It was a consensus decision. We agreed unanimously that would be the way that this would be done.

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

Mr. Chair, I have a point of order. I feel bad, Mr. Chair, because I'm interrupting my colleague. Others have had the floor for some length of time, and Blake has only had it for a moment and is making some very interesting points.

What I want to ask about is this. I wasn't here last night. I had asked you earlier to give us an idea of what the committee's schedule is going to be and when you're going to suspend, reconvene, and that kind of thing. As of the last time I was here, you were going to suspend at midnight and start again at 9 a.m. Is it the case that we're going to be sitting after QP, coming back here, and then going until midnight tonight? It's significant in terms of scheduling my own life.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes. Your colleagues probably know. I announced last night that we'll finish at 11 today and reconvene at 9 a.m. on Tuesday.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Richards.

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

Thanks.

It's important for everyone to have some sense of that schedule, so that's appreciated.

Let's go back to the idea of being family friendly and how they said that we have to get rid of the Fridays. That first attempt was shot down. It's being brought back in this proposal under some other kind of cover, which is that somehow we're going to modernize Parliament. That's the new buzzword or buzz phrase that's being used.

I talked about that earlier. I talked about the Prime Minister as a kind of a pull-doll. He's got his buzz phrases that he says, and they all sound pretty, and that's about all he has. He doesn't really have anything substantive to offer and he doesn't really offer any action. It's just like that again—“we're going to modernize Parliament”. What the heck...? Does getting rid of Fridays modernize Parliament? Sorry, but I don't see modernizing Parliament by getting rid of Fridays, but that's the latest excuse.

It just seems like there's a real desire to get rid of the Fridays. Frankly, I think it's to get rid of that one question period every week, that 20% of the question periods and that 20% of accountability to Canadians. It's the same thing with the Prime Minister's question period; it's somehow put out there as modernizing Parliament that they're going to make the Prime Minister answer all these questions one day a week.

Well, as he proved on Wednesday of this week, he can do that now and still show up on the other days. We didn't see much of that this week as far as the other days go, but he could still do that. I think the effort here is to put this in Standing Orders so that it's cover for him to say that he really doesn't have to come in on the other days and he's only going to be accountable once a week. That seems, again, like less accountability for the Prime Minister, less of those pull-my-string phrases to memorize so that he can answer your questions in question period.

Fair enough. That's where we are. We're at that point where—