Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 4th, 2016

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

Like you, I'm an individual who actually got his fourth degree by the time he was 40. I take to heart that learning is a lifelong process. I appreciate that we want to encourage younger individuals to pursue that as part of their own career development.

Madam Labelle, this wasn't necessarily clear when I had the opportunity to review your curriculum vitae, so I'd like you to expand a little bit on your experience as it relates to bicameral parliaments or bicameral institutions. Obviously your experience here with the Parliament of Canada, dealing with the House of Commons and the Senate, is clear. Are there other experiences you bring to the table, through your international work, that you feel contribute to your role and competency to serve on this particular advisory board?

[Huguette Labelle]

Thank you, sir.

I think it was more as president of CIDA that I had the opportunity to work on and listen to requests regarding issues around the world, because we were working in over 100 countries. Not every request was focused on their parliament, but many were, and sometimes they had to decide how to reconstruct what had become very dysfunctional in their country or sometimes rebuild from close to scratch.

I'm thinking of a number of countries that are still really struggling to see if their parliament can work much better than it does. I'm thinking of countries like Haiti and a number of states that are currently in a failing situation or are fragile. They have worked very hard, but somehow....

That's one aspect of people who were looking to benefit from our experience, and we were always able to match them with a number of countries that had a bicameral system, because that was what they were looking for.

Also, through the OECD and through the European Commission work that I was brought in to do, especially in the last few years, I was able to see how a number of countries that have parliamentary infrastructure similar to ours were asking themselves a number of questions.

I think it is not so much in having focused only on that but also in seeing how those parliaments were able to try to find the best way forward. Some that did not have a bicameral system might have said that it would be better for them to go that way.

I think that's all I can say at this time on that, but that international experience was very useful to me, and a number of G7 or G8 counties, as you know, have bicameral situations.

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

Thank you, madam.

How much time do I have, about a minute?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

You have one minute.

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

I wanted to very quickly follow up on whether, in doing part of that review, particularly through your work with the OECD or other institutions, you ever dealt with a situation like the one we have here in Canada, where one of the Houses of Parliament is an elected body and the other one is an appointed body. If so, how did you see that within the frame of democratic legitimacy as you looked at these countries that were facing the particular challenges you just described?

[Huguette Labelle]

I don't think, sir, that I can say.... Whether we look at Germany or the United States or Australia or France, they are all in very different time frames, as you know, in terms of what they have and what they are trying to do at this time. The U.K. Parliament is the one I've been closest to. We've looked at it in terms of what they have been doing with their House of Lords, so that's the one I think I'm more familiar with.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

We'll close with Mr. Christopherson with a three-minute round.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Chair, I do appreciate the extra effort to make sure the full rounds were completed. Thank you.

Madame, just to come back again to competency, in terms of what you would be thinking about as you have each of these in front of you, my understanding is that a person would have to be recommended by an organization to get their name in the hopper. I'm not 100% sure on that, but if someone could find a way to get put on the list unilaterally, here's my concern. Are you not worried at all, when you think about applying this, that there is the potential for an elite body—and all of us here qualify as elites—to appoint other people through the lens of that elitism, so that we end up with more elites? I say that as a person with a working-class background. Although I've been in electoral politics for over three decades, I'm just from the working class. If my resumé went in to you the first time I was elected, it wouldn't even stay on the table, let alone be considered.

My concern, then, is how you go about selecting candidates that may not even find themselves in front of you. If we use the benefit of democracy, people like me can get elected, because there are certain traits that electors want in a lawmaker. There are a lot of other things. I know there are lots of lawyers and doctors, and that's good, but I'd like somebody in there who knows what it's like to get up every day and have to get their fingernails dirty to make a living.

I'm wondering how we avoid the continuation of the view that the Senate is full of elites—because they are all connected to somebody—and how this process and your thinking and your colleagues' thinking are going to give us a different result. Can you help me understand how you think we can get there?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

You have one minute to answer the question.

[Huguette Labelle]

Thank you, sir.

I think we're dealing with the first phase of five appointments. After that, when we move into a more regular period, it will be individuals applying. That will give, I think, a very broad capacity, and hopefully it will also give us a broad capacity. As I mentioned before, I think it's very important for diversity to prevail.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

But the diversity would be by your definition and that of your colleagues, and that's it. Diversity as defined by Canadians doesn't come into it. Do you not think that's a problem we'll end up with in the Senate, given our trouble in the past?

[Huguette Labelle]

I hope we can demonstrate that when we're talking about diversity, we're also talking about diverse backgrounds as well as individuals from—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

But you'd be the one to decide what that mix is. You will decide what Canada looks like in terms of diversity. That small group of people will replace the thinking of all Canadians. How on earth could we possibly end up with a Senate, under that process, that reflects the will of the Canadian people?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

This is your last chance. You have 10 seconds left.

[Huguette Labelle]

I think that will be what people witness eventually. I hope our work will demonstrate that we can recommend the kinds of diverse individuals a Senate needs to have. I guess it's once the nominations are made and recommended by the Prime Minister to the Governor General that you'll be able to see whether we've done our work in the way you're talking about, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I hope you get it right, because there's no way to get rid of them if you're wrong.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you, Ms. Labelle, for coming on short notice and being here a little bit past 12—

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

Mr. Chair, I would like the witness to hear this before you dismiss her. I just wanted to move a quick motion. We can dispense with the motion afterwards, but I did want her to hear this.

I'd like to move: That the proposed chair of the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments, being Huguette Labelle, is deemed qualified and competent to perform the duties to which she is being appointed.

I have Ms. Sahota seconding the motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

That's a standard motion; we'll deal with it after we suspend. Then we'll go to the Library of Parliament report.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you, and we'll thank our library researcher for doing a report. We look forward to hearing from him.

Because he's not a called witness, this will be very informal. As he discusses, if you have a question, we'll just interrupt him while he's talking—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I apologize for interrupting you, sir. I'm just not clear where we are. We had a motion, and then we dropped it, and now we're talking about the next piece of the agenda, so I'm a little unclear.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

There are a number of things under committee business. We'll do that, the motions and all of that, after we hear the report.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You say the report. I'm sorry; the analyst was bringing a report for the second part of the meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes.