Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 21st, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Vance.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

I just have a quick question. This is my first meeting at PROC here, and I have to give a lot of credit to all the speakers.

David, some of the points you were making were bang on, and Todd, you as well. Fantastic. Why can't we continue having this discussion this way? Why can't we continue having this discussion to deal with a lot of the issues and a lot of what we're trying to do here? This is a great discussion we're having here. Why can't we just start from here and start having a discussion, as we should, based on what was put on the table, I believe, a couple of weeks ago? This is a very, very good discussion.

I'm not a part of this committee. I'm going to be here today and probably in the future if this continues, but ultimately, going to Todd's points, a lot of good points were made. May I suggest that we bring this out, as three parties, and bring to an end a lot of what's going on here? Let's just deal with the issue that we're tasked with.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Ms. Tassi.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Is that okay, Mr. Christopherson?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

I appreciate your consenting to my intervention.

I think you're aware that I spoke about this in the House. I listened to Mr. Doherty's point.

You've mentioned in the House of Commons that you're a workaholic, and I can appreciate that. To be honest, I think most MPs are working extremely hard. Even though I'd spent my whole life in the background in politics, I didn't really appreciate the amount of commitment and work that MPs put in.

I think that's exactly why we need the discussion. Coming from someone new to politics in terms of being an MP, and seeing how hard we work, there are clear things, in my mind, that we can do better. That's why we need the discussion.

The example I gave in the House of Commons is the committee work. We're in committees. We have people who are giving testimony, who have travelled to be there. The bells go, and everything has to stop. We go back and do our votes. For 30 minutes, the bells are going. You can't speak while the bells are going. Oftentimes you don't even get back to the committee. Those people go home. They are experts. Taxpayers have paid for them.

That's one example of how we can do things better. This isn't about not working hard. Everyone is working hard, but it's how we can be better at what we're doing. To be honest, it's what I promised my constituents. When I was knocking on doors, I had people who didn't want to talk to me because I was a politician. When I engaged them in conversation, I made the promise to them that when I got here, I would do this better. I can tell you in all honesty that there are things that we need to do a lot better in terms of the way we do them in order to be more efficient. It's not about working harder but working smarter.

The other thing I want to add to this discussion here at the table—and it's something that I'm challenged by, that I find difficult—is that we have made certain suggestions, but I actually feel as though they're being unfairly spun. We're not talking about taking Fridays off; we're talking about making Fridays as meaningful as we possibly can. If that means working a full day, then work the full day. If it means that Fridays become an extra Tuesday or Wednesday during the week and we put that time in, in the discussion paper it says that. It's about extending. We could extend the time that we sit, start earlier in the year, end later in the year, all those things.

Even in regard to QP, it's frustrating for me to hear opposition criticizing a Prime Minister who goes across the country answering questions at an open mike; who, in QP, answers questions, who today answered every question during question period. I appreciate that he can do that all the time and I appreciate that you don't have to change the rules to do that, but he did that today.

It isn't about avoiding responsibility and accountability; it's about making ourselves more accountable. Even in QP, as the Prime Minister did today, we want to have him, together with cabinet ministers, accountable to Canadians. We want them to see that.

Why can we not now start calling in witnesses? We could bring them here, have a discussion with them, enter the dialogue, and then move forward, making decisions on best practices, on the evidence we've seen, and on our experiences here on how we can do better, so that at the end of the day we can better serve Canadians. The discussion paper is a starting point. We want to have the discussion. We want to get the evidence before the committee.

Thanks for allowing me to make those comments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Arnold is next.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Badawey, I respect that I intervened while you were trying to talk, and I apologize for that. It's definitely a very passionate discussion, and we're actually having a discussion here tonight. I want to touch briefly on the travel schedule and the Friday issue.

The local MPs can get home on a Friday. As Mr. Doherty discussed, if we extend Thursday sittings, I can't get out on a Thursday night so it means I have to get up at about 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. Ottawa time. The plane might touch down by 11 a.m.

I don't get back to my riding.... The plane might touch down by 11 a.m., which is already 2 p.m. Ottawa time, after a 4 a.m. start. Really, I have a few hours on a Friday afternoon, and that's it for business hours.

If I were expected to do that every week the House is sitting.... We have Fridays off. That's what the public will see.

My suggestion is that if we're going to change this, let's change the number of sitting weeks. Let's sit for some longer hours in the weeks we're here so that we have fewer sitting weeks and we can truly be home in our constituencies.

I represent one of the largest ridings in British Columbia, not as large as Mr. Doherty's or Mr. Zimmer's. Corner to corner across my riding is probably between an eight- and 12-hour drive. I've never done it yet, corner to corner. But it's eight to 12 hours. I've talked to members who have a 20-minute drive, corner to corner, across their riding.

I represent nine municipalities, four different MLAs, and about 15 regional districts. I can't do that on a Friday afternoon. If we have extra sitting hours and fewer sitting weeks, I'd be able to do this more often.

We can't get to a discussion on this because we can't agree to do these changes with unanimous consent. That's what this discussion has become about. If we could sit and discuss all of these issues and reach unanimous consent on whatever those issues are, I'm certain this committee could move forward in a much quicker manner.

We've had much discussion among the committee members, but I don't think it's the committee members sitting here who are making the decisions on this. I think that if they were, we would really look at why we're here. It's to make constructive changes. If those constructive changes were agreed to through unanimous consent, I think we wouldn't find ourselves sitting here until 9:30 tonight, or midnight, or whatever it might be. I understand you were here until 3:45 a.m. That's incredible dedication, and that's very evident around the room and given the number of people who are here.

We need to have an open discussion and we need to have the end result be a unanimous decision. The rules are put in place not for the leaders in the game. Rules are put in place, in any game, to make it fair for all, even the underdogs. They make it fair for all. If we're going to change the rules to what the current majority wants, then all of the players in the game are going to suffer.

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I would just like to mention my appreciation for Mr. Christopherson's leniency towards these lengthy interventions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Doherty.

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

I have a really quick answer to Mr. Badawey's comment or question as to why we can't continue this discussion. The number one reason is trust. Trust is earned; it's not just given. If you burn me once, shame on you.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

You're right.

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

If you burn me twice, shame on me.

Right now, the opposition does not trust that the government is going to have a meaningful debate or a meaningful discussion. This is why everything has gone on in the House, whether in the discussion or with the challenges during QP, to ask whether it is going to allow the opposition and all members of Parliament to have a say and to vote whether we're going to change.

I think Mr. Christopherson has mentioned that the Standing Orders are our guiding principles, the rules we follow. I think other members of the committee—and I too am just sitting in—have mentioned that these are the rules. We should all have to agree, if we're going to change them arbitrarily, whether that is to make them better. We have to trust that's the idea, that the full intent is it's going to make life better for all MPs and not for one side over the other.

I don't have the benefit of having been here in the previous Parliament. I'm not going to sit here and say that we did things right or others did things wrong. I'm going to say that this type of conversation we're having today is probably what Canadians and what the rest of Parliament want to see, a civilized conversation back and forth. That's what we were elected to do, to have a healthy debate and to be able to come to some form of consensus that we can all agree on.

Mr. Christopherson, in his intervention, has mentioned the report, which I've had the opportunity to read, that was tabled by the chair. There are good comments in there. There are a lot of things in this motion that were discussed in here, but no consensus could be found. They said they chose not to put forth any recommendations at that time on some of the very things that are in this motion.

If we could trust that the motion and the discussion paper put forth were not going to be, as has been said before, rammed down our throats, and that everyone would have a say, then I think a healthy debate could continue, whether it's today or the next day. We've asked a number of times. The opposition—whether it's us, or whether it's our House leaders of our party, whether it's the leadership of our party, whether it's members of our bench, or other members of the parties—has asked repeatedly, and we've not had an answer saying, yes, we will allow that to happen. As a matter of fact, quite the contrary, we haven't.

Perhaps the takeaway is that we need to have that discussion, and that trust has to be rebuilt.

I'll leave it at that. The bottom line is that we can't have that discussion until trust is earned.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

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

Mr. Chair, I have one final intervention.

Before we go to Mr. Christopherson—I think he's ready—I just want Mr. Doherty to know that.... I'm not saying he was insinuating this, but we do not disagree with or want to fight against the idea of a filibuster. I think in the past 45 minutes, we've actually contributed to it. We've actually come up with a term called “counter-busting”, which I'm not sure exists. Perhaps Mr. Nater will tell us in the future.

Nevertheless, I'd like to go back to Mr. Christopherson because I think he's, as usual, just, as we say at home, “rarin' to go”.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you. I'd just like to thank Mr. Christopherson for offering to take a rest.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

I thought the point of order was going to be that there's a bit of a tradition not to mention the other place here, but that wasn't it, so we'll let you carry on.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I think you're right. As long as you say the other place, you're okay.

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

Which other place?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You're right. I appreciate that. People should know. That was done deliberately by colleagues who are not part of my caucus here, just making sure we can make this as humane as possible for one another. That does speak to the camaraderie that exists. It's a decent thing to do, and I appreciated that. It allowed me to clear my throat, have a quick chat with Tyler, get my fluids refilled, and check a couple of emails, so thank you. I appreciate that.

I want to address Mr. Badawey directly, because he was the one who generously did it, for exactly that reason, and made that clear. I wanted to say how impressed I was, in response to Mr. Badawey, because first of all he kept his word to me. He wasn't going to jerk around, grab the floor, and do things with it that we don't normally do when we don't have the floor in our own right. He kept his word to me.

Then, Mr. Badawey, you managed to get two great hits in about local, covered off your schedule for the weekend—magnificent stuff—managed to score a government talking point on the way, and ended up back where you began, talking about the local. When I heard you were a mayor, it suddenly made a whole lot of sense. You're going to do really well here.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I thank you for that. That was a tour de force. That is how you do this sort of thing, and I admire that. I'm glad I got a chance to get to know you a little better.

I would just say in seriousness that I thought your last comment was heartfelt and not in any way tongue-in-cheek, when you said, “This was a good discussion. Why can't we keep doing that?” I would like to say to you, through the Chair, that that's the kind of work we've been doing. When I pointed to that report, the one I've been waving around all night, that's how we got there. When I said we did good work, I didn't just mean we pulled together a report. It's like public accounts. We have a great dynamic at public accounts. I'm so blessed. Those are the two committees I sit on, and that is the way we work.

But Mr. Doherty is correct. The only thing stopping us, Mr. Badawey, from getting to that point is asking the government to withdraw its residual desire to make a decision alone. If that nice discussion, and enjoyable discussion, and positive discussion that you were part of fails, then under the rules we've been following regarding consensus, there would be a report that says something like this.

Given the lack of consensus the committee has heard regarding whether potential benefits of eliminating Friday sittings outweigh the potential drawbacks, the committee does not intend to propose a recommendation regarding this matter. In other words, we couldn't come to agreement.

Some will say, well, therefore, that makes this inefficient and ineffective, and yet I've pointed to other reports in the past, particularly the one from the 37th Parliament in 2003, that went out of their way to say to us that in their opinion—my words—Parliament is better served by not having rules that not everyone agrees to, than by resolving a problem.

Put another way, we all agree that there's a problem. We can all agree that Fridays could be used better. The question is, what is that “better”? We may or may not be able to come up with a consensus. If we do, it's in the report. If we don't, then it goes in the way this does, which shows that we took a shot at it. We tried.

I'm going to be making references to other decisions like this, where we actually say that this is important and we want to come back to it. We don't have a consensus yet, but we are putting ourselves on notice that we want to come back and work at this, because it's important for us to try to find agreement in some of these areas where we believe change should happen but we just can't agree on the details of that change.

That, Mr. Badawey, is respect. Then, when I'm listening to your opinion—I'm listening to Vance Badawey give me his opinion as a member of Parliament on behalf of his constituents—and your own life experience, and what you believe is in the best interest of this committee, I will listen to you, and I'll do my best to try to understand your perspective, especially if it's different from mine. But it is very difficult for me to do that if you reserve the right to use the power of all your buddies to overwhelm all of us, so that whether you win the argument by debate or not, you win because might makes right.

That's the problem. We have not had that.

I'm about to make reference to another report we did, which was on the Chief Electoral Officer's report. We, this committee, in this Parliament, since you've been here, did this for the second time.

This committee brags about the fact that everything in here is by consensus. That's the difference, sir. If you remove the threat that your government wants the right to use your majority to carry the day, when your arguments to me don't convince me, we can't have the same kind of discussion. We can't have the kind of discussion that got us these two reports.

That's what my friend Mr. Doherty was referring to when he talked about a lack of trust. It's hard to have a debate with someone when they say that no matter how this goes, my way will prevail; if I have to, I will use political force to make it happen; and now, as long as you clearly understand that, let's have a nice, free, fair give-and-take discussion about how this should be resolved.

That becomes impossible. That is our whole point. It's on that one issue. It's not whether we agree on Fridays, or Wednesdays, or all the other issues. At this point, it is a political fight. It is a war. Your government made a war by pushing it into 24-7. We are 100% prepared to stand down from it the second the government indicates that it's no longer trying to get the upper hand that it hasn't had even in this Parliament, let alone in previous Parliaments. The second that happens, we're into that discussion. You would be, any time you're here, a positive contribution to that, because the kind of discussion you saw happen here....

These mostly aren't even the full-time members of the committee. This is the kind of culture we've created. This is the kind of environment our chair creates. He provides a lot of latitude. He does have his limits. That's why I always keep an eye on him, out of the corner of my eye. At some point he decides his limit has been reached.

But that's the kind of culture we have. We do work together. I think you'd find it very stimulating. You obviously have a lot of experience in “hand on the ground” local politics, where it's real. We're not that far apart in our desires. You're probably getting to be a bit like me in that you've been around long enough in politics that the adversarial stuff really starts to get stale. What really can excite you is trying to bridge the difference when we have a common cause. We just have to figure out the details of how to get there, and then we all work together as a team.

That's stimulating. It's enjoyable. It's good work. It leads to reports that are accepted by the House, with recommendations that all members feel have been fairly considered. While it may not be everything they want, they can live with that rule, because it's fair-minded and it came from a place where fair-mindedness was the order of the day.

Right now you have managed to focus, with pinpoint accuracy, on what the problem is. It's not our lack of ability to talk. It's not our lack of ability to be respectful. It's not our lack of ability to work together. It's a lack of rules that allow us to do that where we're treated equally to you. I'd love to be having a debate with you, knowing in the back of my mind that if your argument doesn't convince me, I can force you to accept my way. That's a very different debate to have that tucked away in the back of my mind rather than the only way we'll get any change is that Mr. Badawey and I have to find some common cause here. We have to find that language.

That's where we start getting help. Our staff start helping. Our analysts help. Our chair helps. Then we get to two good reports: the 23rd report and the 11th report of this committee. In this Parliament, since you've been here, we've done that kind of work.

In fact, sir, colleague, this is virtually the exception. I can ask Tyler or anybody around me to remind me differently, but I can't think of anywhere else on this committee that we got so seriously in the ditch that the work we were expected to do was in jeopardy.

I don't think we've ever gotten to that on this one issue other than now, on the one motion where the government is refusing to agree that the only things that will go in the report are things we all agree on. That alone was going to be enough, and it did seize up the work of the committee and created all this problem. The government then of course launched—I focus on this a lot, because a lot of filibusters happen in committee and people don't even know they happen. Sometimes they happen for only 10 or 15 minutes, and the fact that one is about to happen causes someone to say that the last thing they want to do is listen to Christopherson going off. There have to be some words they can use to get past this. There have to be. I exaggerate a little, but that dynamic has a place.

Under one of the proposals you want, sir, and if you retain the right to pass it with just your vote, you will force it down our throats. Whereas right now as a local member, if you need 20, 30, or 40 minutes to explain an issue.... And obviously you know your constituency well. You're a long-serving mayor who leveraged that into a federal seat. You're obviously trusted and respected in your community. I don't know about you, but my community is complex, and very few issues aren't.

I need the time, because of who I am—and I talk a lot—to break it down into the components that I think are best reflecting where my constituents are coming from and why, and why this is either a good idea or a bad idea for my beloved Hamilton. Right now, in my entire time, whether at Queen's Park or here—let's leave it at my time here, I don't have to worry that—tick, tick, tick—I have to get that covered too as we do in the House.

By the way, the limitation in the House on the early debates is 20 minutes with a 10-minute Q and A. Under the proposal you put forward, it would be 10 minutes. You'd go from being able to take as long as you want to convey your point of view reflecting your constituency—which is just as important as mine, and just as important as the Prime Minister's, and just as important as Ms. Mendès'—and you take that time. That's why we have committee work. That's why the rules at committee are different from those in the House, because the House time is different. We're handcuffed with the times that are there. When we get to committee, we deliberately loosen up the rules a little. We call each other by our names sometimes. At least it's not out of order to do so. Most importantly, we can take the time.

The unlimited time is not just a weapon for the opposition to threaten to start a filibuster or to continue one, although that's an important element of it. It's also just the ability to come to a committee meeting and explain something in a way that can't be done in the House. If I can't do it at committee, that means I leave the Hill not feeling that I've fully represented my constituents, because nowhere did I have time to spell it all out. It all had to fit into somebody's preconceived idea of a fair amount of time. Since we accept that in the House but we don't like it, we try to make up for it by creating a lot more latitude. Those of us who have chaired committees know that the parameters of where you allow a member to go are much looser; they're not totally loose, which is why the chair still tells me to get back to the point, but there's a lot more latitude and certainly not the time constraint.

We can have a respectful, stimulating discussion about that, but we can't do it if you and your colleagues on the government side believe that no matter what happens, at the end of that discussion it's your way or the highway, might makes right, and you can use your majority and roll over us. You don't have to be on this side for too long to realize how that would make you feel and what you might do to prevent it. Ergo, maintenant, that's why we're here. That's what all this is about. All this, whatever you want to call it, is all about whether or not we're going to continue to respect each other the way we already have in this Parliament or whether we're going to completely shift and go 180 degrees in a different direction with a different culture and a different attitude that reflects far more the regime we just left than the one that you promised to bring in.

I feel confident enough in the righteousness of that position. Having been in both government and opposition, and identifying committee work as my favourite part of being here on the Hill, I am 100% resolute that it is not in the best interest of our beloved Parliament to go against the advice of our predecessors and to go against the practice of this very committee in this very Parliament. That's the issue.

I have so many places to go, I don't know which one to choose next. I think I'm going to go to this one.

I want to introduce something new. You'll like new. I know when I do something new, you like that, because it's pretty much guaranteed to be non-repetitive, one would think, by definition.

Chair, it is more of a walk down memory lane for you. I stand to be corrected, but I believe it was on March 6 that you tabled on our behalf the 23rd report of this committee. We've issued a lot of reports. We've done a lot of work, good work, co-operative work, work that we all agree on.

This report looks just like the other one. You have to understand the similarities in what we've done before versus where we are now. Literally, those are the two reports. This is the one that I'm making reference to now; and that's the one that I've been making reference to all this evening. They're the same. It's the same work, the same product, the same template. The only thing different is the subject matter.

The other commonality is the issue of consensus. I've already read to you from this report ad nauseam, and I'll forewarn you that I'll have to make reference to it again in the future, but only as a reference, not as a speech. It's a whole new report.

Colleagues, you'll recall that I mentioned earlier—

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

Are there copies?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

If you wish, we could suspend, make copies, and hand them out.

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

I actually would.