Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 9th, 2017

[Andre Barnes]

I don't know.

I could let you know what the Speaker said in sending it to the committee, although the committee never studied the matter.

As a final wrap-up of the presentation, I would mention that in the time I had, I did look at other jurisdictions to see if I could find anything that might guide the committee in what is done in other places. I checked the website on Australia's House of Representatives' committee on privileges. It went back to November 1998, and I couldn't find a report on a similar subject matter.

In the U.K., of course, you have Erskine May, which makes reference to the privilege itself and gives you the history of the privilege, but it gives no information about incidents that have occurred recently.

I did check, and there were two very important studies conducted by joint committees in the U.K., one in 1999, and one in 2013. There is a reference to unimpeded access in the 2013 report. About that, they mention that the House of Lords passes an order on the first day of every session to remind the metropolitan police commissioner that the “House be kept free and open and that no obstruction be permitted to hinder the passage of Lords to and from this House during the sitting of Parliament”.

Why it made it into the report is that the House had ceased doing that in 2004. The joint standing committee thought they should recommence issuing this order, similar to what the House of Lords does.

I scoured other jurisdictions. I used Google to try to find out if anything had happened in Ontario, and the words “protests, members' privileges, impeded access” produced no hits. That might be a witness worth calling, if members were interested in finding out what has happened in the provinces.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

David.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Andre. That's a great report, exactly what we expect from you and the excellent standard you have.

I just want to observe that in listening to the whole thing, it seems to me that it's 9/11. It's pre-9/11 and post-9/11. If you look at pre-9/11, the circumstances suggest that things weren't as tight. Most of the matters here, to use your word, were “quirky” situations. They were one-offs. It wasn't this consistent thing that we're seeing, and it really didn't start until after 9/11, when the world changed and security became the absolute priority that it is. I think that's probably a good part of this. We've had all but an overreaction, to the extent that it's such a blanket security mindset. This idea that there's an exception just doesn't fit into that. I get that. I think we all do.

If this were easy, we wouldn't have an ongoing problem. The trick, again I'll just say it—and you're going to get sick of it—is the planning at the beginning. That's what this is all about, making sure that the planners understand where members are likely to be at the time that our guest is here, and ensuring that part of the planning guarantees them safe and timely access, at all times, to the Hill.

That's where it keeps falling down. We just don't get that emphasis. We're getting better, but we're not there. When I look at the history, I really think a lot of this has to do—because we're dealing in big time spans here, relative North American times—with after 9/11. We're getting all of this ratcheting down so tight that we can't even get around.

That was an observation more than anything, Chair.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Reid.

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

Our analyst didn't find relevant examples from the jurisdictions he looked at, which doesn't surprise me. For example, in the case of the Ontario legislature, you would not normally be dealing with people who have the same security issues that we have federally. They do have a security presence, but I think they're able to keep it at a lower level, based on the realistic assessment that they are less of a target for terrorist attack than we are.

I've visited the Australian Parliament. It is a single enormous building with everybody connected through underground passages. Hence, they simply would not have the kinds of issues that arise here.

I think this is a uniquely problematic situation, which has to do with the fact that we have a series of 19th century buildings mostly connected by above-ground communication. People have to cross public thoroughfares. This will never be resolved until we have something that I'm not actually recommending, which is an elaborate network of underground tunnels, at great expense. That, I think, is just the nature of it. We're going to have even more problems, and they will be largely unique to ongoing infrastructure changes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Graham, go ahead.

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

On the same point as Scott's, I believe that most of the buildings are connected by tunnels; we just don't have access to them. That might be an interesting thing to—

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

Yes.

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

When I was a staffer, they built a new tunnel between Confed and Justice. It's a walkable tunnel, but it's not open even to members to go through.

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

It's interesting, but it doesn't resolve the problem of getting from Justice and Confed to Centre Block.

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

No, but I believe those tunnels exist among all buildings. The reason the East Block tunnel was open, from what I understand, was that a member going through it hurt himself when it was a heating tunnel, so they decided to make it a real tunnel. Perhaps part of the longer-term process would be to open up these tunnels to be legit.

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

That's not a bad idea. That's actually a reasonable recommendation, although if we decide to recommend this direction, we might want to exercise some caution on costs. As you know, the East Block tunnel is panelled in wood and has a few other features that perhaps aren't really necessary. I am told it was inordinately expensive.

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

Also, of most concern in the East Block tunnel is that my cellphones work there, so I don't know how thick that ceiling is under the road.

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

Are you saying the problem there is that it's not secure enough?

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

No, I'm just curious how thick that ceiling is, because my phones work perfectly well in that tunnel.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

If Elon Musk wanted to build all these really cheap, boring things, we'd be able to do all that tunnel stuff.

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

We'd have pneumatic tubes among all the buildings. It's an excellent idea.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

There we go. You know what? You go down to the States.... Anybody who's ever been to Congress knows that they have a whole train system underground, literally with the “choo-choo”—not that we are suggesting this. I agree with you about the cost.

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

I think we're going off the rails.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Before we suspend for the vote.... When we get the report—if we get the report—from the PPS that was done and that we asked for from the Speaker, and also the video, I would suggest—and they'll probably ask—that it be in camera, because we are giving out security secrets to some extent, so we don't want to reduce our protection by doing that. If everyone agrees, when those two items come up, we'll do it in camera.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

As long as we give an assurance to everybody that the scope of what we're talking about is going to be very narrow and it's only security.... Having said that, yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Is there anything else related to this report before we break?

Let's try to get back as quickly as we can after the vote so we can start right away and get as much done as we can.

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

We should learn to prepare as a committee for these things.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Okay, the meeting is suspended.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Welcome back to the 57th meeting of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. For your information, the meeting is now being televised. We are pleased to have with us today the Honourable Geoff Regan, Speaker of the House of Commons. He is accompanied by the acting clerk Marc Bosc and officials from parliamentary protective service: acting director Mike O'Beirne, and Robert Graham, administration and personnel officer.

On behalf of the committee I would like thank you for making yourselves available on short notice. Your expertise and input in this matter is invaluable. I know you are all very busy so we appreciate your being here today. I'll ask the Speaker for his opening remarks. At this meeting we're talking about the structure of administration and security, not a particular issue at this time but the overall structure.

I would ask committee members when you're doing your questioning to try to exhaust any questions for the Speaker at this meeting. We may have to ask these witnesses back because we got truncated by half an hour, but the Speaker may not come back if we can get those particular questions finished today.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for coming.