Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 21st, 2017

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm open to that.

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

You could always give up the floor.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, I could, and you know how much chance there is of that right now. I will give up the floor, though. I do intend to.

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

I'm next.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

There is an end to this; it's just not foreseeable really soon.

So, returning to the 23rd report, on March 6, Chair, you rose in the House and you presented this report—proudly, I would assume—on our behalf, just as you did the 11th report, proudly, I would assume, which we.... I have spelled out that we have said in here that this was all done by consensus. You'll recall the wording: in this approach to the study, the committee attached importance to reporting back to blah, blah, blah, and taking into account, and that we would only do it by consensus. I can search for the exact words if you want, but you know they're there.

Turning to the new report, I had been making some reference to the good work we were doing on the Chief Electoral Officer's lengthy report. I think it would take something like 30, 40, or 50 meetings to actually go through that entire report and create our own report. It's a big undertaking. I've done it before in previous parliaments. For the most part, it's just been hard work, not controversial in terms of how we did that work. That was with Mr. Lukiwski, who spent a lot of time on this committee.

Again, you'll recall, Chair, that I had referenced that we have what we call the low-hanging fruit process, that we were doing it in sections. There was some methodology to our approach: we were doing it in sections. The goal was that at the conclusion of each section, we would do an interim report to the House, so that the work we were doing could be fed into the.... Hopefully, ostensibly, the government would take into account what was said here, notwithstanding the uh-oh around Bill C-33. I think we got around that one. Notwithstanding that little bump in the road—put that over here—for the most part, the whole idea was that we would issue reports, I think at least three, in sections, and we decided internally that we would approach those things that we could possibly, somehow, humanly find agreement on, and put those in the report.

Those things that clearly didn't lend themselves to an obvious readily available consensus we put aside and put in another pile, to take a shot at on another day. This, I think, is the first one. Whether it was first or second, I can't recall. I don't know if you can recall, Chair. Anyway, this was the first or second one.

I see the analyst offering something. Was it the first one? Thank you very much. That confirms that this was the first of at least three, probably four, reports by the time they did a separate one trying to tackle the issues that were going to be tougher. Probably they'd be thinner reports, but there would have been at least four in total. This was the first one.

This is also, again, part of the problem with the timing, such that the minister came in and asked us to do some selective work on the rest of the report, and report to her by May 19, and then this other thing landed in front of us, and originally they wanted it done by June 2.

I mean, really, who's thinking over there, or supposed to be?

Anyway, that remains a problem. It would be nice to get at it, because it would mean we've dealt with this problem. The only way this goes away is if we, the opposition, get our rights.

As per the format of the last one, you'll recall that it was pretty much the same report that “The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs has the honour to present....” It was the 11th there; it's the 23rd here. This was an “Interim Report on Moving Toward a Modern, Efficient, Inclusive and Family-Friendly Parliament”. This is “An Interim Report in Response to the Chief Electoral Officer’s Recommendations for Legislative Reforms Following the 42nd General Election”. Neither one is little stuff. This is all deep, complex things, and yet look: Mr. Badawey was talking about how much he enjoyed that discussion. That's because once you get into that kind of respectful give and take where you're not trying to beat each other up and you're not trying to get one better on the other party, where you're actually working together, that's where it's not only enjoyable but productive; unlike this, which is non-productive, other than it's us defending ourselves.

On the second page, we, all of us, government members, chair, vice-chairs, members, all of us said this in doing our report. Remember, this is us, the same committee, the government members, the very same people:

In conducting its work, the Committee attached importance to completing its study of the first two chapters of the CEO's report and providing the House with its assessment of the CEO's recommendations in a timely manner.

Again, I want to point out how co-operatively we are working with the government. “Timely manner”—the only thing that's timely, in terms of the government and its agenda for bringing legislation, is getting our feedback, and, if it's true to its word, taking into account what we've had to say and factoring that in to help inform its decision. That's respect.

We could have caused the government some grief if we collectively said, “You know what? We have a great chance here. We have this report that's going to take 50 meetings anyway, so what do you say we stretch it and make it 75 and really make it hard for them to get anything done?” We didn't do that. We did nothing remotely like that. It was not even suggested, not even as a joke. We all take this work seriously.

This committee is, in some ways, like the steering committee of the House. This is the only committee that meets at the same time every week. The only committee. Every other committee rotates, but we don't. Every other committee actually gets created only when we generate a report that says it should be. I'm not trying to pretend that we're making all the decisions around here; it's the makeup of the committee, and it comes from the caucuses and the whips.

But my point is that this is unlike any other committee. Everybody on here, from the newest rookie to the oldest veteran—

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

That's you.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

It's probably me. I'd rather not think about it, but I'm pretty sure it's me. We all take our work seriously. This stuff matters. We weren't going to play games with our election laws, and we didn't play games with them.

The dynamic that Mr. Badawey saw, I would say, was about kind of a normal discussion. Sometimes it's not as good. It can get a little bumpy and stuff, but other times—I have to tell you—we're firing on all cylinders, and everybody has ideas, and it's all the chair can do to manage everybody and to keep their ideas alive but to hang on to it.

It's really like us, Alexandra, when we're working on a report at public accounts. We have a common goal. We are holding the bureaucracy to account in implementing the government's policies. It doesn't matter who the government was when the policy was made or when it was implemented; our focus is on the Auditor General's report that analyzed how well the bureaucracy implemented and carried out the procedures they it should in carrying out the policies of the government of the day. We take that seriously. We work together as one unit. If you walked into our committee room and we were sitting in different chairs, I think you'd have trouble telling which one of the members were government and which ones were opposition. To me, that's the purest sign of an effective public accounts committee.

Alexandra, Madam Mendès, you know exactly the kind of culture I'm talking about, and how stimulating it can be to work together as a group. As a rule, parliamentarians are—I make myself the exception—interesting people. MPs are interesting people. They have interesting lives. They're usually very good communicators. That's how they got elected. They usually have a great sense of humour.

When we're in camera and working together, it really is enjoyable. You have a lot of smart people who are there for the same reason. Nobody is the boss. Everybody is kind of sovereign in their own right. We have a common cause. We have great coffee, great staff, all the brains we need to get us through the exercise, and hopefully we pull our political ability and bring it all together. It is actually very stimulating, and I enjoy it far more than screaming, hollering, and yelling at the government, which I have done a lot of and still have to do from time to time, but it's not my favourite.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

It's definitely not.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Again, Chair, we said this. We wanted to do it in a timely manner. That's respect for the government that got a majority. I don't like the fact that it got a majority. I would have been much happier if it were a minority, and much happier if it were us. I know I keep saying that. I'm trying to get over it. It's hard. I've never been there before.

[An hon. member]

Just breathe.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Just breathe deeply.

It's okay, Dave. You still won your seat. It's all right.

It really matters. When the Chief Electoral Officer came in there was no partisanship to it at all. Why? Because the Chief Electoral Officer hopefully, and blessedly for us, is completely 100% honest, has not a biased bone in his body, and his goal is to give us, as participants and Canadian citizens who own it, an election process that, as much as first past the post allows, reflects the political will of the nation. That's important stuff. It doesn't get much bigger. It's deciding who gets to run a G7 country with the second-highest oil reserves in the world to boot. This matters. We took it that way, and we did report in a timely manner and structured our work in a way that was timely. I'm not going to get any benefit out of it except maybe an improved electoral process. The government's the one that's going to get the credit, quite frankly, because it's the one that's going to take the Chief Electoral Officer's recommendations, which find themselves as part of our report. It's going to take that report and form legislation, and it's going to come in and say, look how wonderful we are. We're doing all this great stuff. And we're going to have to sit there and say, yes, a lot of that is my work and you're getting the credit for it. But, do you know what? That's just the way it goes. That in no way negates or lessens the responsibility I feel to be respectful of colleagues who are approaching this important matter in exactly the same way.

The first thing we said was that we were going to do this in a timely manner, out of respect for, quite frankly, Canadians. In the same paragraph, the next sentence reads: “The Committee, therefore, considers this report to be an interim report.”

So again, to Mr. Badawey, where we were able to find agreement as quickly as possible or with a focused discussion and wordsmithing and approaches, then we were able to bring in this report. We're recognizing that we still have more work to do and some of the tougher stuff is still coming, but we're trying to do the best we can. We want to move this as quickly as we can, and we want these things to form part of the rules for the next election. The best way we can do that is to get our report in the hands of the minister responsible so that she can then formulate legislation, get it to cabinet, get it in front of the House, and make the changes so the next election is even fairer and better than the one we just had. That's the process.

We considered this, and still do an interim report. In preparing its interim report, the committee.... Remember, this is unanimous. The government members, the very same members, most of whom are here now, at different times.... In other words, they were members of the committee then; they're members of the committee now, even though they may or may not be present at this exact moment. They were members of the committee then and they are members now. We collectively said, “the Committee placed a priority on striving to achieve consensus among viewpoints; the recommendations made in this interim report were agreed to unanimously by members of the Committee”, and we were proud of it.

Now, hardly a parliamentary heartbeat later, everything's changed. It's back to the future.

I'm trying, guys, to be as reasonable here as I can. I'm leaving stuff out.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Move on. There's nothing stopping you.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I think they actually said that at one point.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

I think you're right.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

To be serious, this is a report, by the same group, the same committee, on the same subject matter, at least in terms of the rules for election, rules for making laws.... They're all about rules that we collectively work under that are not meant to be partisan. If they are partisan in some way, something has gone wrong, because they're meant to be fair to everybody.

All Mr. Reid—I'm going to put words into his mouth—wanted to achieve with his motion, to the best of my knowledge, was to reaffirm what we'd already done. Nothing radical, nothing new, nothing undemocratic—just reaffirm the process that made us proud to table the 11th report dealing with exactly these issues. You even have your favourite words in there “modern” and “efficient”.

We used the same process for the 23rd report, which, by the way, is a report that we are still seized of and a process that we are still in the middle of. Somewhere in one of the layers of the onion, once you get past all the other stuff, somewhere in there you will find that our prima facie purpose right now is this report, because, whether the government is thinking about that or not—and it looks as though maybe they're thinking about it too much—October 19, 2019 is coming. We would like to see some improvements that the Chief Electoral Officer has identified. And make no bones about it: there is great common cause between me and the Liberal benches in terms of some of the stuff that came from Bill C-23. We feel we have to get the heck out of there, and the only way it can get done is by having timely reports go to the government, to the minister responsible, who generates legislation, who brings it to the House that gives the orders to the Chief Electoral Officer about how the next election will be conducted and under what rule. I still consider it important. I consider this kind of an aberration. I'll be glad when this is done.

Yes, I like to talk. Everybody knows that. I make as much fun with this process as I can just because that's what I do. But I have to tell you, I'd much prefer to get back to work. It's a lot more satisfying. The fun of this kind of wears off after hour three, hour four, or hour five. Back in the last Parliament, I went to hour eleven. That's not nearly as much fun as having a stimulating discussion with Mr. Badawey about how we ought to conduct ourselves, the relationship between passing laws here and representing Canadians in a G7 country, and also focusing on our ridings, which is the raison d'être at the end of the day for all of us. At the end of the day, the absolute top priority is always our constituents.

I want to have that discussion. I think there are maybe some new ideas about what we could or couldn't do with a Friday. Certainly Madam May came up with some new ideas, just fresh thinking, a different way to look at things.

I want to underscore again, and I don't expect you to respond, and I say this rhetorically, Mr. Badawey. I ask how you would feel about engaging in the discussion you were just having that you enjoyed so much if you knew at the end of the day that, whether I agree with you or not, I could make you eat and live with what I wanted. At some point it's not even as much convincing as it is ordering. That takes away, and here's the thing I want to say. By having that sword of Damocles hanging over us all the time.... Mr. Doherty focuses on the word “trust”, and he's absolutely right, because that is what this is about, trusting each other. You leave that in place, and the dynamic that Mr. Badawey enjoyed, I suggest, vaporizes. I'm going to take that differently from the government when it starts to get a full head of steam and starts arguing its point.

In the back of my mind, I'm not spending as much time thinking about where the flaws are in their arguments as wondering when they are going to lower the boom and just run me right over on this thing, and it doesn't matter what I say. Really, what I should do now is not deal with the substance of the matter; I should be laying down the groundwork to deal with the politics of him running over me.

That is very different. It's 180 degrees from all of us focusing on the same issue and trying to find a common cause solution. It's completely different. In my opinion, most of the government members, in their hearts, get that, the ones who are having to sit here and look us in the eye, who were part of two previous reports for which we proudly said we did this by consensus, only to find ourselves now not willing to go by consensus. We'd be under the threat constantly, in every debate, every discussion, once the government allowed everybody to have their say.

It's amazing. I've been around enough committee meetings to know, and Mr. Chair, you've chaired enough meetings to know, that when you do get entrenched, let's say, go out of this committee and into a committee where you're dealing with a particular bill such as one on transportation, a government bill, you can tell when the government has made up its mind what it's going to do. For the most part, it usually stops talking, because the only way you can move to a vote on committee is if everybody who wants to speak has done so and there are no more speakers. That's the only way to end debate, which, by the way, is also something that the government wants to get rid of and we would lose that. You'd be 10 minutes, 10 minutes. I don't understand fully how many times I'm supposed to take the floor on the 10 minutes. All I know is that there wouldn't be the right to take the floor and speak for your time. That would be gone.

All I'm saying is that you cannot expect that, all of a sudden, when we have done all this goodwill. I think we deserve some credit: we have not played politics with any of this. There's no evidence of it anywhere. I'd defy anybody to point to anything that either we or the Conservatives have done that was obstructionist or in any way meant to derail or delay the important work of this committee. I don't think that evidence exists, because that attitude didn't exist. We all agreed that the only things going into the report were things that we agreed on. Therefore, if you want to get a change in the report, what's your approach? You respectfully respond to your colleague, giving credit where credit is due to the points they're making, and then respectfully make a counterpoint and hope that they aren't just closing their mind and waiting until you're finished so they can talk but that they're actually listening.

My point to Mr. Badawey is that this is what we do. That's how we're able to get these reports on exactly the same kinds of issues we're dealing with today. It's not just a question of whether it's fair or not; it isn't. It's not just a question of whether this is consistent with what we have done in previous parliaments; it isn't. It's not even consistent with the way that we have worked in this Parliament, where we took pride in our reports being supported by everybody who was on the committee.

Look, one of the arguments the government makes is that when it's a matter of consensus, nothing gets agreed on, nothing ever gets done, nothing changes. There are two things: number one, we had a previous Parliament that got into this deeply. They did a deep dive, as they call it now, into this subject.

They're the ones who came back and said, look, we didn't get to agree on all the things we wanted to change; in fact, there were some things we thought should change but we couldn't recommend change because we can't agree on the language, but we still believe we are better off keeping that out of the report than jamming it in there and damaging how Parliament works. The government of the day forcing rule changes is not consistent with that harmonious approach.

We believed that right up until this thing happened three weeks ago. Then all of a sudden it's as if it's full stop, a back turn, and we're going that way now: “We don't need consensus.”

Batcar did it better; the Batmobile did it better, Scotty. We won't argue about 007; his was a great car too. Nothing, though, did a turn like the Batmobile. I mean, there's nothing like a bat turn—

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

On division.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

On division? Okay, that means we respectfully disagree but will let it go forward. We'll let it go, then, but I'm right. I'm right in recognizing your point. How's that?

That, then, is pretty much what happened. It was like a bat turn. In the beginning—this is the thing that really boggles the mind—the first two reports were entirely consistent with the approach the government promised. That's why I have not been able to say to them, “you haven't kept a single promise when it came to standing committees”, because it's not true; they did keep some. Sometimes we had to push them a little to do so, but it was nothing like this.

I don't know whether it's right or not, but the cold calculation has to be that it's worth taking the heat now.

I've sat on house management committees in government. You go to the next election, and you work backwards. This is not a big secret; every cabinet does it. You start at some point, once you are settled in and have dealt with the crises and the big things and get a little bit of breathing time. The first thing you start doing early on is identifying that here is “E” day and here's today, and you ask, “what do we want to achieve and where do we want to be by E day? What are the things we want to run on by way of showing Canadians that we kept our promises and that doing so has made their lives better and our country stronger?” Fill in the blanks for provinces, territories, or cities, but pretty much that's the game plan.

The government calculation seems to be that it is worth taking whatever comes; that all of this and all the negative stuff is worth it, just as with the calculation around turning their back on their promise for electoral reform—“This is the last election we'll ever have under first past the post.” That's going to be a running Canadian gag for...how long?

Then they come on, and all of a sudden....

Take the Friday thing as an example, because it's so stark. The government has been burbling about Friday. They have this thing about Friday. I don't know exactly what it is, but they are really fixated on Friday.

We dealt with it. They knew it was coming. It was one of their big issues. They knew we were going to deal with it in the 11th report, and—pardon me, it was in the 23rd report—and we said we can't agree. Our report—

Actually it was, I think, the 11th report. Thanks.

Do you see the new friends? You're doing a good thing: you are making new friends of old enemies—on the other side of the House, but measure these things as you will. Thank you very much, Todd. I appreciate that.

It says:

Given the lack of consensus the Committee has heard regarding whether the potential benefits of eliminating Friday sittings outweigh the potential drawbacks, the Committee does not intend to propose a recommendation regarding this matter.

Previous parliaments have told us that you, the future parliaments, are in our opinion better off to not bring in a change that is supported by everyone than to bring in a change that, even if it in some ways makes it better, does not have buy-in from everybody on the committee. You are doing Parliament a bigger....

Remember, this is not partisan stuff. They are talking parliaments to parliaments. They are talking to us from the past into the future and saying you're better off only implementing things you all agree on rather than following the efficient process of letting the government dictate what the rules are. That's what they told us, and that's the advice we took for two previous reports in this same Parliament, in this same committee, on the same subject. It's maddening.

It's maddening because it doesn't make any sense. That calculation, again, to finish the thought, was that whatever the damage now, it's worth doing because it gives us the ability to have the deliverables we want for the next election.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

May I ask a question?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Sure, as long as you talk slowly.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

A little while back, you quoted the internal report on the rules, under which we had entered into that study. Could you repeat those for me?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, sure. Do you mean on the new report I just raised?

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

I mean on the interim report that we had done as a committee together previously.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Both of them are ours, and there were two reports. One I was referring to at great length. I think you're referring to the one that we did, the 23rd, on the Chief Electoral.... I'll read the report if you want.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

No, I mean the modernizing and the family-friendly one that was....

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

All right, and you wanted my reference on—