Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 21st, 2017

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

I do have a number of constituents who are following this, and even I wanted to be able to follow it from my office, as did a number of colleagues. Is there a plan to televise any of these meetings?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

We haven't had any discussion on that.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Can we?

Can I have unanimous consent to place the motion?

[Some hon. members]

No.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Really? And now you're not even going to let the television cameras in. Holy smokes, even Harper didn't do that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Genuis, you're on.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

One of the positive sequelae of this committee is the emerging appreciation Mr. Christopherson seems to have for Mr. Harper. I think that's certainly a welcome development.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

[Inaudible—Editor] by a lot of Canadians.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I know.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You would know.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

For sure. I think maybe we'll get on to recognizing that after the government finally agrees to support our amendment. I will just say with regard to the discussion that just occurred, it is disappointing that members of the government are not willing to allow unanimous consent to televise these proceedings. I think it probably reflects the fact that they know that Canadians are very engaged with this conversation at a time when there are a lot of issues of importance out there. Canadians are specifically engaged on the issue of the amendment. I'll just provide some support for that.

I've been speaking so far for an hour and a half today. I mentioned earlier that before I started I posted a Facebook live video, which admittedly was of fairly suspect technical quality. It already has 124 shares from my Facebook page. There are 124 shares on a video speaking about a procedural matter on an amendment that the procedure and House affairs committee is discussing, but one that I think speaks fundamentally to Canadians' sense of the fairness of our institution and the way in which these conversations have to proceed. Canadians are clearly engaged in this conversation and are looking for those opportunities to rebroadcast those conversations. There are some very good comments coming in with respect to these amendments from people who are posting comments.

Bryan Buck says, “They were never given a mandate to change parliamentary procedure.” That is a good point. There is no mandate for the way in which the government wants to proceed with respect to this. There's not a section in the Liberal platform that says the government is going to run roughshod over our parliamentary institutions and try to make changes to the way Parliament works without allowing opposition to be effectively engaged in the discussion. There wasn't a section that said that anywhere in the Liberal platform.

Bryan Buck goes on to say, “We know the Liberals do not want input from Canadians, but to take away the voice that we have is underhanded.” I think the way they have proceeded here certainly is underhanded. I don't think it reflects the way we expect the House to operate, which is that we make changes to the underlying rules of the House only in a way that reflects a consensus of the political parties, so that they do not make that narrowly respond to their specific interests.

We have a comment from Ed Gaschnitz that “The gov't needs to remember that they work FOR us. We essentially hired them. I call what they are doing insubordination. Insubordination in the real world results in termination in many instances.”

These are a couple of the many comments that I'm getting on my Facebook page with respect to the efforts of the government, and I'll use the word even if some members of the government may not like it unilaterally. So we're seeing high levels of engagement with this issue on social media and in correspondence we're receiving in our offices. I'm sure the government members are receiving the same degree of engagement and response in their offices. We are hearing and receiving those messages; and yet in response to a very good suggestion from Ms. Block about televising these proceedings so that the Canadians who are already very engaged with the process can follow it more closely, government members were not willing to allow that to proceed.

The reality of course is that Canadians are following this. They can follow this other ways. They can listen to the audio, and I know that members of our esteemed press corps are following this issue closely as well and will be sharing the details of the conversation with Canadians in the various ways that they can.

Not allowing the televising of these proceedings is not even a very effective way of shutting out the sunlight. It does speak to the government's response, which I think is concerned about the level of engagement from Canadians but not responding to it in the correct way.

I think the correct way to respond to that level of engagement from Canadians would be to listen and to seek a way forward that supports the amendment, that allows the discussion to take place. I think that would be the right way forward and the right way to respond to the public engagement and pressure we are seeing from people on this issue.

I wanted to come back to the point Ms. Tassi made before we got into this discussion of how we broadcast these proceedings. Her points were to object to the use of the word “unilateral” on the basis that the government is really seeking to provoke a discussion at the committee. We can be certain they are trying to be unilateral in the way in which this study is constructed.

That doesn't bode particularly well for the way they will proceed down the line. Yes, it might be that despite rejecting an amendment requiring unanimity that they come around after the fact and say they would not proceed with the recommendations if they didn't have the support of the opposition. Being more realistic, if it were their intention to listen to the opposition, to not proceed in a unilateral way, and to have a more fulsome level of parliamentary engagement in the process, then why would they not simply support our amendment?

If Ms. Tassi and other members representing the government on this committee do not like us to refer to them as acting unilaterally, then the simple solution is for them to cease to act unilaterally. Then we will cease to use the word, at least in that context.

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

Unilaterally.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Yes, we will unilaterally cease our use of the word “unilaterally” if the government steps back from its unilateralism and embraces the value of consensus when it comes to moving forward with the way we operate with respect to prospective changes to the Standing Orders.

In her intervention, Ms. Tassi also said that we can broaden the discussion and get going on the study. There's a really simple way for us to get going on that study in a way that reflects a broadening of the discussion, and that's for us to move forward with this amendment.

If we have agreement from the government on this amendment then, yes, let's have the conversation about how things work in the Standing Orders. Let's recognize through that conversation what the ground rules are going to be for making a decision.

You cannot simply skip to a discussion of an issue, in some cases, without having that prior discussion of what the ground rules will be with respect to the ultimate making of the decision. That's especially so in this context because if we were to skip that step, if we were not to pass this amendment, then we would be putting in place the conditions that would allow the government to move forward—dare I say it—unilaterally with respect to changes to the Standing Orders.

I think what we see through this whole process is a potential cascading of unilateralism. First of all, they want to pass a motion without an amendment that would allow them to do a study in a way that would not ensure a meaningful role for the opposition. If that allowed to occur, then they could unilaterally propose changes to the Standing Orders.

Those changes would have the effect, over the long term, of allowing the government to move legislation forward without meaningful opportunities for the opposition to respond, without sufficient time for debate, without opposition engagement in how the House functions with respect to the allocation of days, and without the opposition having the opportunity to raise those concerns at committee. This is what you might call the three-step potential cascade of unilateral decision-making and centralization of power in the hands of the government.

The first step is this amendment. This amendment is the opportunity for us as members of the opposition to, in a clear way, express our concern and our disagreement with what the government is doing, and to stand our ground on that in defence of our parliamentary institution.

I appreciate comments from the government on that, but in reality, I think the words we have used are fitting to the situation. If the government members would rather I use different words to describe their actions, then I invite them to act in a different way.

Before we moved into this area of discussion, we were talking about the House calendar and the way the House calendar is set. As I noted, of course, the government House leader proposed that we increase the number of weeks the House sits and at the same time reduce the length of each sitting week, reducing the opportunities that exist therein for the government to be challenged and held accountable.

It seems to me, from reading the section of this discussion paper on the House calendar in its totality, that the direction the government is really trying to go here is somewhat different. It talks about the possibility of sitting at other times, but then makes this plea for flexibility in terms of how many sittings the House has in a year, the length of those sittings, and so forth.

The government House leader should know, as I'm sure she does, that flexibility already exists. It's just that the flexibility is presently expressed through consensus, not through unilateral action of the government.

The discussion paper says that the number of sittings should be based on the demand to sit. Well, we're not talking about markets, where demand can be described as an impersonal force that, in a certain sense, has its own ontological status. We're talking about specific actors with specific interests here.

When the discussion paper refers to “demands to sit”, let's ask whose demand it is that the House sits. It seems very clear to me that, in light of the tone taken by the government in this committee and its approach to this amendment, and the other things that are said in this discussion paper, it would understand “demands to sit” purely in terms of the government's desire for the House to sit or not.

This government has a history, for example with respect to its proposal around motion 6 last spring, that the timeline of sittings would be entirely at the discretion of the government. Is that what the House leader means by “demands to sit”? I hope not, but probably, yes it is.

The House does not meet simply to pass government legislation. It meets in order to achieve a whole variety of objectives at once—yes, to deliberate upon legislation and to pass some legislation; but also to provide a forum for the airing of constituent concerns; to provide opportunities for the government to be held to account; to create opportunities for the House to pronounce on motions, which themselves may not have legislative force but may have wider implications for the way in which we proceed; and certainly, if I didn't mention it already, for deliberation and votes on private members' legislation.

These are all reasons that the House sits, which is why I think it's important to ask, if one says the House calendar should be changed so that the number of sittings is based on the demands to sit, how that is different from the way we work already. Right now the House is scheduled on the basis of a consensual understanding among the parties of what is appropriate, recognizing the different functions of the House and the different responsibilities it has. If we were to move to a system where demand was somehow adjudicated in a different way, I suspect, if we note the actions of the government across the board, that this would not be demand aggregated in the same sense.

Elsewhere the document refers to the government after it has spoken to people in other parties, which still, obviously, provides the framework in which unilateral action could take place. This is another example where we see, in the draconian way we've seen relatively consistently throughout the life of this government, a proposal for weakening the strength of our institutions. In fact, the final sentence of the section on the House calendar makes the concerns I have reflected on quite explicit. It says:

While there are mechanisms to allow the House to sit beyond adjournment dates, they are usually implemented by unanimous consent or by the use of closure.

If changes to adjournment dates are made by unanimous consent, that's obviously a very good way to proceed. We should seek to, as much as possible, proceed within our operations in the House in a way that is unanimous, in a way that is reflective of the consent of the House as a whole. At least in cases where closure or time allocation are used, and certainly there can be inappropriate uses of those things, the current procedure for closure or time allocation has the effect of, in each instance, convening a certain kind of public conversation. It can become an issue for discussion and debate when those things are put forward, but if we were to see a change imposed through this process in this committee, in the absence of the amendment, if we were to see this change pushed forward by the government House Leader, which would allow, without either the accountability mechanisms associated with closure or the really positive types of decision-making processes we see through unanimous consent, that would create some real concerns.

The next section of the discussion paper, which I also neglected to mention in our discussion last night, is the issue of proposed changes to routine proceedings. It's interesting, because the misuse, so-called, of routine proceedings is something we've seen frequently in the activities of this government. We have seen many cases in which, at the beginning of routine proceedings, a member of the government front bench puts forward a motion to proceed to orders of the day. Then we have a vote on it, which, so far, the government has always won, because it has a majority in the House, and it forces the House to move on to orders of the day. We lose the opportunity for routine proceedings, but we also have a vote that takes place that introduces something else into the flow of the day, which maybe creates an issue for committees that are going on, and so forth.

I'll say this to the government. If they have concerns about routine proceedings, this is one form of unilateral action I would find acceptable: cleaning up their own behaviour and not moving motions that restrict the ability of members to do the important parts of their jobs that are part of routine proceedings.

It's interesting that they they present certain uses of routine proceedings in the context of the discussion paper as if they are problems, yet these are things the government has done. Again, this is one area where the government can and should act to change its own behaviour to show more respect for members of Parliament. Reforms to the rules governing routine proceedings that go beyond that should obviously be ones that engage the entire cadre of members of Parliament.

Again, the tone here is striking, because in this and other sections we get the sense that the government really does believe that the principal job of Parliament is to provide a stamp for their intended legislation, their intended area of discussion, as opposed to having it exercising its functions in a more fulsome way as a genuine representative body.

The section on routine proceedings speaks of this:

The rubric of “Motions” allows Members to move a debatable motion that could, on certain days, deprive the House of the ability to deliberate on the intended item for debate during Government Orders.

First of all, if there are motions that members need to bring forward, the ability to convene debate on that is not unlimited. The government House leader should know—and I'm sure members here would know—that it's not simply the case that any member of the House can propose a motion during routine proceedings that eats up the whole day. There are, of course, opportunities for the government to move to adjourn particular debates. As well, there are provisions they have that allow them to respond to these conversations and to come forward. If members, in the context of routine proceedings, were to move concurrence motions, for example, those have a prescribed time limit in the Standing Orders; I believe it's three hours.

Yes, it means that if the government wants to be discussing a particular legislative initiative for the full day and there is an important committee report, members can't immediately.... First of all, members cannot immediately move concurrence motions. There is a period of time that has to elapse between the tabling by the committee and the presentation of that concurrence motion, and it's not a short period of time. I can't remember exactly what it is, but there is a period of time that has to elapse.

Also, given that the government has a majority on committees, it is unlikely that the government would suddenly start to see a spate of frivolous committee reports as the basis for subsequent concurrence motions. In reality, under the current rules, we see concurrence motions moved relatively rarely in terms of leading to concurrence debates, and oftentimes that does occur with some degree of discussion or advance notice. The House of Commons can and often does work through discussion and collaboration, through consensus among the different actors within it, but this section would seem to imply that there is some grand, grave problem associated with members of Parliament exercising their legitimate prerogative.

If a member wishes to move for a concurrence motion during routine proceedings—interestingly, the last one we had was related to electoral reform issues, which is another case of talking about how our democratic system functions—that debate can occur if the debate is not adjourned, and it can be adjourned. If it's not adjourned, it will proceed for up to three hours. Then, for the remainder of the day, the government has an opportunity to proceed with government orders. Most of the days that we sit are allocated for government orders.

I don't see the logic in the suggestion that somehow there is a fundamental problem that a concurrence motion could be moved. Some of the language in this discussion paper doesn't seem to reflect a fulsome awareness of the current practice. The last sentence of this section says:

The House should examine different ways to schedule debate on such motions.

Members of the House already have the ability to work collaboratively to identify the times when a concurrence motion could be put forward and to proceed on that basis. The House is not limited in its ability to do almost anything, provided there is a consensus among parties and members of Parliament to proceed in that way. There are virtually no restrictions on the actions we can take via unanimous consent. Certainly, it would often be quite sensible for the appropriate notice to be given and discussion to be had about when a concurrence debate should occur, just as it can happen with respect to take-note debates, emergency debates, and other things of that nature.

We already have a system in place that allows the members of the House to collaborate on issues of scheduling, although perhaps not always on the floor of the House. When the government, in the context of this discussion paper, talks about somehow changing it or doing something different, I think that suggests they want to shift the balance in a way that works to their advantage.

That might not be their intention. They might be looking for ways to strengthen the effectiveness of routine proceedings in good faith, and perhaps there are ideas that can be proposed in that regard, but I'm not convinced there's a need for that. There are other reforms that I think would be helpful with respect to the Standing Orders. There's an opportunity to establish the conditions on which we can have a good, meaningful, and in-depth discussion on the function of routine proceedings and how its supposed to work. However, we should do that in the kind of environment that we have emphasized, one in which there is a consensus among the parties and members on the way to proceed.

The discussion paper speaks about the rubric for private members' business and it makes a proposal that is interesting in adding another rubric, which I suppose means adding another hour or another period of time when we can have debate on private members' business. If we could develop a system that would allow a larger number of private members' bills to be put forward and to be flagged for debate, I think that would certainly be a good thing. Of course, it would be important for all members of Parliament to be engaged in that discussion. I think one question that we should consider is whether to treat private members' motions and private members' bills somewhat differently because we see a large number of private members' motions without legislative force coming to the House, and they may be important and reflect priorities of constituencies. However, when there are private members' bills that come forward....

Mr. Chair, the lights are flashing. Does it mean something?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

We'll just check. The House is opening.

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

We're missing O Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

There is a point of order.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, just for the sake of clarity, are we going to suspend for question period and then return here afterwards?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

No.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

That's the best part of private members' bill business.

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

It's broken.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Ms. Block.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

On that point of order is there an expectation that this committee will suspend for the budget?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Pardon me?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes.