Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 9th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Good morning, and welcome to the 57th meeting of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. This meeting is in public.

Today the meeting is to continue our study on the question of privilege regarding the free movement of members of Parliament within the parliamentary precinct. The meeting will begin with a briefing from the analyst about previous questions of privilege related to this topic.

At 11 a.m. the Speaker, the Acting Clerk, and the acting director of PPS will attend to respond to members' questions regarding the administrative framework on the Hill. Finally, at noon, Ms. Raitt and Mr. Bernier will be here to discuss the circumstances that led to the question of privilege.

We're also making good progress on getting the estimates either on the 16th or the 18th, next week, so that looks very probable.

With that, I'll turn the floor over to Mr. Barnes, our analyst from the Library of Parliament. The analyst is not a witness, and so we don't have to do the rounds if you don't want. We can do our informal questioning of him once he has finished his presentation.

[Andre Barnes, Committee Researcher]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

As members of the committee will no doubt recall, at our last meeting the committee asked the library to provide a briefing on past instances of questions of privilege that are similar to the one that has been referred to the committee by the House on May 3 of this year. With that in mind, I will provide a summary of the seven past instances involving members being impeded or delayed from accessing Parliament Hill and the parliamentary precinct freely.

I will be going over these incidents in reverse chronological order, so if you were to follow along in the briefing note that was provided to the committee, it would actually be the other way around. You would have to start at the end of the briefing note. The reason for that is that you'll find the most recent cases to be the more relevant ones as compared to the ones that are 20 or 30 years old.

Of note, four of these incidents took place in the most recent Parliament, one incident in 2012, one in 2014, and two in 2015. The other incidents that I will review are the 2004 visit of the President of the United States, which was probably the most egregious instance of members being denied or having their access delayed to Parliament Hill. There is also a case from 1999 involving the Public Service Alliance of Canada protest. Perhaps what's interesting about that particular incident was that PROC's report in 1999 indicated that the right of members to access the parliamentary precinct was not well known at that time. The report, in fact, states:

We note that it is rare in Canada for Members of Parliament to be obstructed or impeded in carrying out their parliamentary functions. It is not surprising, therefore, that some Members or PSAC picketers may not have been fully aware of the right of Members to unimpeded access, and this may have occasioned some delay.

That was in 1999.

Lastly, I'll review the incident that took place during the 1988 protest on the Hill over the GST.

With that I will begin. If committee members have any questions or would like any clarification while I am talking, please feel free to ininterrupt at any time.

I'm hoping to provide a few more details than are in the briefing notes. It may be a little longer than the actual briefing note itself.

The two most recent incidents were dealt with in a single ruling by the Speaker on May 12, 2015.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. I was waiting to see where you would start. Is there a page 6?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Go ahead.

[Andre Barnes]

I'm sorry, this particular instance I did not include in the briefing note.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, I noticed. That would be my point.

[Andre Barnes]

In getting the briefing note ready in one day, there wasn't time to cover all of them, so I thought I would cover this one in this particular briefing.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's fine. I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing a page that I should have. Thank you.

[Andre Barnes]

I'm sorry about that.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's fine. I understand.

[Andre Barnes]

The Speaker ruled on the incident on May 12, 2015. The House adjourned in June of that year, and then the election was in the fall.

Two instances were dealt with in a single ruling. The first was a bus being delayed from entering the Elgin East Block entrance, with members on board the bus. That happened on April 30. The second case occurred during the visit of the President of the Philippines on May 8, 2015.

The details of the incidents are as follows. On April 30 the member from Skeena—Bulkley Valley rose in the House on a question of privilege. He told the House that he was chairing a meeting in the Valour Building when the bells sounded for a vote. He and five other members boarded a bus in front of the Valour Building and proceeded east down Wellington. The bus attempted to turn left into the East Block entrance, and was prevented from reaching the gate by the parliamentary protective service. I suppose in their communication by radio it wasn't clear from the debates how they were talking. The bus driver was told by the PPS that they couldn't enter the precinct and that their access was to be delayed by three to five minutes. No reason was given. The members could not get off the bus because they were stuck in the middle of traffic. The bus driver was unable to pull over to the side to let them off because they were in the middle of traffic. No reason was given, as I mentioned, and it was not clear, when the member rose on the question of privilege, whether or not he was able to make it to the vote. The Speaker reserved his decision on that matter that day.

Just over a week later, on May 8, at 10:30, a Friday, the member from Toronto—Danforth was walking to Centre Block. He had indicated to the House that he wanted to participate in a debate that was going on. He was walking on the west part of the ring road on Parliament Hill. He saw up ahead that the PPS was holding up a crowd, just across from the House of Commons. When he got to the crowd, he attempted to cross there. The member of the PPS stopped him. He showed the member his lapel pin and his ID. The response from the PPS was that her orders were to stop everyone, and it did not matter if he was an MP or not. The member was told that the delay was caused by the expected arrival of VIPs, which it turned out was the President of the Philippines.

On May 12 the Speaker ruled on both cases, finding that both constituted prima facie questions of privilege. The member from Toronto—Danforth was invited to move the motion to refer the matter to procedure and House affairs; however, the motion was defeated in the House, 145 to 117.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

For both of them?

[Andre Barnes]

Yes. They were handled together as a single motion. That concludes the first incident.

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

When he was told that he could not enter because of the presence of the President of the Philippines, where was that?

[Andre Barnes]

Where was the member?

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

Yes, where did that happen on the precinct?

[Andre Barnes]

He would have been on the sidewalk toward the members' entrance, right at the very top—

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

On the House of Commons side.

[Andre Barnes]

On the west side of Centre Block, on the House of Commons side.

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

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

David.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

To underscore as we move through, to the best of my knowledge almost every incident, if not all, involves foreign dignitaries, and the security is beefed up to recognize the protection we owe them. I want to raise this now because it's the thread all the way through. The answer is not that there's an immediate instance and the security people have stepped in and we don't want them to. No matter what's going on it's not that immediate situation that needs to be decided at the moment in the best interest of the priority. At that time the priority is our visiting dignitary; that's understood.

The issue here is the absolute continuing lack of planning. You know these visits are coming. We know the disruption that's going to be caused, but the security service also knows that this place still functions. We don't grind to a halt, and so they need to build into their plans that ability for every member, no matter where they might be, to get into this House. Consistently, that's where it's failed, in my opinion. That's what I'll be homing in on, that it's not a matter of “don't do the right thing to protect a secure moment”. That's nuts, and that's not what we're talking about. We're saying you know what's going to happen on the Hill, you're planning for every minute and movement of our guest, you can also build into those plans how the members are going to get around to continue their business.

We keep being told—and you'll hear this, colleagues—that we're going to do that from now on. Yet I keep finding myself sitting here, over and over again, in the same kinds of circumstances. It's because we haven't yet gotten the message through that the planning for members having access to the House of Commons is as important as planning for the security of our guest. It's a constitutional requirement, not some polite Canadian niceness. I'll be homing in on this all the way through, Chair, because to me, that's the answer. It's the planning that needs to take place but isn't taking place, and we inevitably get into these clashes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Just so that people know, apparently the bells are going to ring at 10:40 for a vote, a 30-minute bell.

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

Chair, I was going to raise that same point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Okay.