Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 4th, 2017

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I appreciate that, and I think that's the way we would like to see this happen as well. I think by early next week, by Monday perhaps, we could have additional witnesses, if there are any.

The only other thing that flows out of this is that I think it would be worthwhile if we could see a copy of the report the Speaker referenced in his ruling. That might cause us to see another witness from that list, depending on the incident commander. I think that might be something we need to see sooner rather than later to determine what additional witnesses we may need to have—whether we need to call a witness who was at the site, the incident commander, or the supervisor and officer. Whether that would be worthwhile or not, I don't know. Depending on what the report says, it might require an additional witness. I think sooner rather than later we should knock this down so we're not dragging this out ad nauseam.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

The only other question I wanted to ask you, Mr. Chair, maybe through you to the clerk, was whether we know if the Speaker's report, which you mentioned earlier, is available and whether it will be shared with the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

The clerk doesn't know.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Okay. That would expedite our review, because then we would at least have a factual report coming back in terms of—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I understand.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I was just saying that if the Speaker has already prepared a report based upon knowing that there was this incident, it would be helpful to have that information, if we have it. Obviously, they don't know when it's going to be available. I'd suggest that you might want to send a transmission to the Speaker's office. If the report is available, it certainly would be helpful to us in expediting our review.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Okay, we'll ask.

The other thing is that I'll leave it up to the whips to see if there are any other MPs who thought something their privileges were adduced on that day, and they can join Ms. Raitt and Mr. Bernier at that round table if there are other people available.

Are we all set? Are we done?

[An hon. member]

I could probably make a speech on something if you want.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

Mr. Chair, I put a notice of motion before the committee. I had anticipated it would not be possible to move it, because I actually thought we would be seized entirely with the matter of privilege and did not want to intrude upon that, given its priority.

I did speak to Mr. Chan and indicated I wouldn't be moving it with that presupposition in mind. However, just to repeat what that motion is, it is to invite the government House leader to appear before the committee. I cannot remember if the wording says this, but my hope would be that she would come before this committee prior to her acting upon the intention she indicated in the letter she put out this previous Sunday, in which she said she would act by means of a government motion to essentially draft standing order changes on, I think, five topics. I won't enumerate them here, but the Prime Minister's questions on Wednesday is just one of those items.

I should just explain. I could move the motion, but not if it's going to tie us up unduly. The purpose of the motion is simply this. The minister has stressed her interest in having what she characterizes as a dialogue or a discussion. Discussion is, I think, the term she uses. Of course, a government motion makes that very difficult. In practice, it is not easy to amend a motion of that nature when it's being debated in the House, which is one of the reasons that these things ought to preferably be dealt with in committee.

Should I stop?

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

No, I just want to make sure that I get an opportunity to respond to you.

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

Okay, sorry.

I can't speak to the details of the conversation I had with Mr. Chan, because that was private, but I raised that with him.

The purpose here is that this actually provides some opportunity for discussion. It's not the ideal way of doing it, but I think it allows her to do what she has said she wants to do, and it allows her, as well, to get some feedback from us in advance on those four or five items she says she'll be moving forward. I can't speak for anybody other than myself, but my suspicion is that she would find the kind of input that I know I would like to have to potentially be helpful on those items.

Frankly, the things that I personally found most problematic in the discussion paper are no longer part of what she's putting forward. I would add, as well, that some of those things were specifically enumerated in the Liberal election platform, and hence her point about their having a mandate and no one should have a veto over it is stronger on those. I can see those points, but I do think she might find it helpful. I know we would find it helpful as well, if that could be done.

That was my sales pitch for the motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Are you suggesting a positive discussion on those five things?

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

Yes, where you can actually come along and say, “You went for these five things. Here are some things you might want to think about on this or that.” We get no opportunity to do that, otherwise, until after it's presented and it is harder to make changes. It's a bit like dealing with a bill only at third reading.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Right.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I am happy to share our conversation.

I am sensitive to the point you are raising, Mr. Reid, with respect to hearing from the minister, hopefully before anything is tabled before the House from this committee.

First of all, let me answer the broad principle. The government is happy to have the minister appear. In terms of the motion you tabled, which I know you have not moved yet, clearly we won't be able to meet your initial deadline of May 12, given that we are now dealing with the privilege motion and we also have the estimates issues that we will have to juggle at some point, but in principle I don't have a problem with the appearance of the minister. From the government side, we are happy to do that. Initially, I was going to suggest that if, for some reason—and I knew we couldn't dispense with the privilege motion—I am aware that the minister is not available at certain periods of time.... That is now moot. As a sequencing process, let's first deal with privilege and then with estimates, because we are under very specific time constraints.

Then, if we can get back to it.... You called for an appearance for two hours. The government's position is that we are prepared to have her appear for one hour. If we need additional time, that's fine. We'll consider it after she has made an appearance. You can ask whatever questions you want to ask based upon the letter that she has tendered.

It just depends on how fast we can dispense with the privilege matter and the estimates matters. At that point, if you wish to move a similar motion that calls the minister, we will be supportive of it, but only if it is for one hour, and obviously within her schedule. I can't undertake that this won't be before something is tabled, because we have these other matters that have come in front of this particular committee.

I don't know her timing with respect to when she might submit something to the House, but if we can quickly dispense with the privilege matter and the estimates matters, we might even possibly be able to fit this in before the end of the month, and if not, hopefully in the first week of June. Then we'll see where we go from there.

I know that's tight, but it's the best we can do, given the circumstances. As I said, had we moved forward on the discussion paper, the minister would have been the first person we would have called from the government. We have nothing to hide on that. Our point is that the minister needs to explain what she was trying to advance. Now that obviously the terms have changed with respect to limiting it to the five platform items—that was tabled in the more recent letter to the opposition House leaders—you are welcome to ask questions about that.

Again, we don't have a sense of what the standing order changes.... We have a framework, but we won't know how they will look until they are actually tabled before the House.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Christopherson is next, and then Mr. Reid.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

I am just seeking a piece of information, if that's possible.

When I thought this thing through a couple of weeks ago, trying to get a sense of where the government was going to go, one of the options that existed was to bypass what's happening here and go straight to the House. That was before you withdrew some of the most controversial parts. There still may be the possibility that once that motion is in the House, you're likely going to use closure, because you can't use time allocation on a motion. We are getting close to the end of the session, or at least we'll be into June, probably. When I thought that through, the only thing that made any sense.... Given the nature of it and the closure, it seemed to me that the government would want to do this as close as possible to the rising of the House because of the chaos and the mood that could be created.

Had they done all of them originally, the place would have been unmanageable. I don't know if it will be that bad, but it could be. I am only raising this because if we know that it's likely to come later in the sitting rather than earlier, that gives us a lot more opportunity to incorporate the kind of flexibility that you were looking for, Arnold.

In terms of recognizing that the government has an agenda, Mr. Reid is suggesting that, notwithstanding the politics that would have the government eventually bring it to the House, it's still a good idea to get the benefit of committee. Mr. Reid, I don't know if people are picking up on that point, but if you've been around for any time at all, you begin to appreciate making these kinds of small changes, a little here and there, to try to do that. It's hard enough for us to do it. If you try to do that in the House, with 338 people and the rules that we have, it's very difficult. What you end up with is a government that finally just gets kind of bloody-minded and says, “We can't be dealing with all these little pieces”, and they just ram it through.

Any time that can be spent here at committee, where we are actually talking about those issues, can only be helpful. It's easier for us to do that if we have a sense that this motion is coming later in the sitting rather than earlier.

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

Mr. Christopherson's points are good and raise some thoughts that had not occurred to me.

But in response to Mr. Chan, first of all, I think the constraints you suggest, particularly with regard to the priority given to other items, are very sensible. I would prefer two hours to one hour, but I recognize that you guys have the majority. We can't push through a motion that you're not going to agree with.

I'll just make this observation with regard to a one-hour appearance. I really don't think it would be helpful to us, or to the minister for that matter, to discuss her discussion paper. Most of those items have been taken off the agenda. She has five items she wants to move forward on, and I would suggest we stick to those five. We should actually suggest another venue, one of going back to party caucuses, in relation to the issue of Friday sittings and other things, for example, the programming motion, that she said she doesn't want to move forward on. Why discuss that when we have only 60 minutes? With respect to the five items she has on her agenda now, that's enough meat. I guarantee that we'll be able to discuss those for an hour.

Of course, I'm always interested in asking questions, but to some degree I see this as a chance to put forward suggestions, which she doesn't have to take but I think they're generally helpful suggestions. I suppose others would have to editorialize after the fact and see whether I was mistaken on that. But it's a chance to put some ideas into her head prior to coming up with this. I would be very surprised if she has these things prewritten and worked out right now. I think they're in the process of designing them in her office, and I suspect input would be useful to her in delivering her job conscientiously.

That's all I wanted to say about that.

One further thought, though, is that when we move on to other items, it would also be helpful to get some idea of what process the government would like to use for moving forward with other non-platform standing order changes going into the remaining two years of this Parliament. That would be helpful. It doesn't have to come from her at that time, but she might want to add that to her remarks.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Technically, we have a review under way, but that's all—“technically”.

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

That's fair.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

We in the opposition respect that the government ran on certain platforms. You get elected. You have the legitimacy, and the moral as well as the legal right to pursue that.

At no point yet has there been any opportunity for the opposition to have some changes that we would like considered to be part of all this, so somewhere in all of this, it's not just the government's total domain of the rules. We have some suggestions too, and there are some serious issues such as some of the ridiculousness of chairs making a really good ruling only to be overruled by the majority of the day, so that what is nonsensical and outside the rules is made legitimate. That should be appealable to the Speaker. You shouldn't be able to use a majority vote to dictate how the chair has to rule, especially when the chair has ruled consistently within the rules, but another rule allows the majority to overrule that. I'd like to talk about that.

Right now you can shorten a bell—and we got nailed on this in minority twice. Under the current rules, if you want to shorten a bell, let's say we have a 30-minute bell but it's one of those times when everybody is around, we're not far away in the House, and everybody is saying we don't need to waste all this time, the way we do that is to march in the two whips. They come in and do their little ceremony and that is the majority agreeing that we're going to shorten the bell.

Shortening the bell is a big deal. You schedule your time. As long as you're there for when you should be to legally vote, you shouldn't have to be fearful that somebody is going to take away the time they just told you you had to get to the House. The mechanism for that is the thing—but here's the thing, at Queen's Park where there are three parties, to shorten the bell, it takes, guess what, all three whips to say all three caucuses agree.

Twice since I've been here in minority Parliaments, a couple back, the Conservatives and Liberals joined together. They were satisfied to shorten the bell. We had no consideration. In one case it was done deliberately because we were seen as the problem child in that case, and the vote was taken before everybody was even in the House because two of the parties had the power to end the bell by doing the little ceremony, but the third, fourth, and if there's a fifth party, just get left out of the loop.

There are very legitimate things that would help improve this place in fairness, which we'd like an opportunity to put forward, but nowhere are we given that chance except on that technical review, which is what the government House leader used as a hook to hang her discussion paper on. The reality is that we did what was minimally necessary to meet the requirements of the law and when that was done we moved on to other issues, and we may or may not get back to those rules.

I want to take a moment to say somewhere in this whole process the elements of fairness suggest that the opposition should at least be given their day in court and have an opportunity to put forward their suggestions to make the House more responsive to the needs of its members.

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Chan.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I don't want to deal with what Mr. Christopherson raised.

Again, I simply want to urge committee members. I think we're going to have a sense of this fairly quickly in terms of the availability of the various witnesses once we put things out, and it is in our collective interest to try to move things along fairly quickly.

I just want us to think about how this would get sequenced. We're looking most likely at two days to deal with privilege. We're probably looking at least at some period of time at a minimum that we need to instruct the analyst in terms of a report back to the House. We might decide we need more time for privilege, but that is my sense of where things are leading right now, unless the facts change. We have set aside three possible dates: May 16, 18, and 30 to deal with the estimates, and hopefully we can dispense with that within two of our meetings.

Once we have a sense of how this thing is going to sequence, might I suggest that we call a subcommittee meeting to figure out the rest of how we move things forward for at least the balance of the session? That is the practical thing to do.

At that point too the minister wants some certainty as to when she might appear because she has some dates when she is available and some dates she is travelling. That's the issue. I'm happy to have her come as expeditiously as possible so that you can ask your questions, and I'm fine with that.

From that, where do we want to carry on? I'd like to get back to the Chief Electoral Officer's report at least for the balance of the session and get as much of that done as possible.

My cards are on the table, so rather than our getting into the substantive debate of the issues you're raising.... You're raising issues that I think we can come back to in the fall, as a committee, if we can get through the Chief Electoral Officer's report and any legislation that might happen to appear before us, and then go back to other standing order changes if we think we want to get back to that particular issue. That should be—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I shan't hold my breath.