Evidence of meeting #6 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was process.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:30 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Otherwise, Chair, we're going to be repeating this same circular discussion.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Okay.
Now, for the rest of this meeting, we could do motions or we can do our report.
Mr. Christopherson.
12:30 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
As much as I want to get to the report because it's an important matter and we're all trying to get that moved as quickly as possible, I still think that in this case, because that motion flows directly from the witness we just heard, we should probably hear Mr. Richards' motion first. It did come first, and it's germane to the matter that we've had in front of us for most of this meeting. Maybe we'll wrap that up by one o'clock.
It'll put us a little bit behind, but at least we would have completed totally the work of the witness and ensuing motions today, and we can move on to the next meeting instead of bouncing all around. Those are just my thoughts.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Arnold Chan Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Mr. Chair, my only comment is simply that we have two motions before us on the floor. If we're going to dispense with them, we should try to dispense with both before one o'clock.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Okay. Is the committee in agreement that we'll try to dispense with both motions by one o'clock?
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Let's try to dispense with both. I guess we'll have you at our next meeting.
Okay. We have two motions. One was saying that we had the witness and the other was on the committee meeting with the Minister of Democratic Institutions.
Which motion does the committee want to do first?
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Mr. Chair, I would argue that because mine was moved first, it should be dealt with first.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Are there any objections? Okay.
We'll read the motion as the clerk feels that she has been able to collect it:
That the Committee invite the Minister of Democratic Institutions to appear before the Committee to respond to questions concerning the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments.
Is there discussion on the motion?
Mr. Lamoureux, and then Mr. Chan.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
Yes, Mr. Chair, I do have some questions with regard to that. I thought it was interesting. Through good will, we're trying to work with the opposition. At the last meeting, I sat and observed a member of the Liberal caucus actually move a motion, by using the Standing Orders, our rules, to have an appointment come before us, and everyone seemed to be quite encouraged about it. The Standing Orders provide the details of what we're able to ask and not ask.
This is something, Mr. Richards and Mr. Reid, that you would have known. You guys are not new to this system. I thought the idea of the qualifications and competence had validity. That's what the rule said. That's what we asked them to do. My concern is that we're saying we didn't really want that, and that is what I'm hearing. I'm hearing you didn't really want that, and that what you really wanted was to talk about government policy, government process, and to take an issue and debate it before the PROC committee. If you were to use that same process, you could take a wide variety of different issues and say, “Well, today we want Minister X; tomorrow we want Minister Y”, and where does it end?
I can understand and appreciate that there might have been some frustration on your part in terms of not necessarily getting to ask the types of questions you really wanted to ask, but maybe that should have been raised on Tuesday, when there was a sense of good will and good faith with regard to trying to accommodate an appointment.
We went in good faith, believing that members were genuine in wanting to get a better understanding of the qualifications and the competence. I was actually quite pleased to see that the chair was able to make herself available to come to committee within 48 hours of the board making that decision. The issue of process wasn't being dealt with, and that seemed to be your primary concern. Why did we even call for the chair? Why didn't you just express at the outset that you would rather have the minister? If legislation is referred to our committee or if the House, as a whole, refers an issue to our committee, then there is a lot more validity in calling the minister to appear.
I'm just not clear. Mr. Richards, I would look to you to provide some clarification so that all the committee members understand. Even though I'm not a committee member, I am obviously very interested in getting a better understanding, because maybe it's something we should be taking into consideration on rule changes. We're looking at rule changes. Maybe this is something that's suited to a discussion we should be having. I don't quite understand your motivations. At one time you were leading the committee to believe that all we would do is talk about qualifications and competence of a particular appointment, and then somehow you turned that around to wanting to talk about the process of Senate appointments.
You have many other forums in which that can be done. Today in the House we are debating one of the official opposition's motions. The debate that's taking place on the floor of the House of Commons today could have just as easily been about the Senate. You, and particularly Mr. Reid, have posed numerous questions in question period to the minister you're trying to call before the committee. There are many other forums, and I'm just questioning why it is that, on the surface, 48 hours ago you were suggesting we would like to review the qualifications and the competence of an appointment, and we bought into it. That's the reason we were the ones who actually moved the motion to have her come before the committee. That was a gesture.
We talk about parliamentary reform, and two or three days into it we're already calling a witness. We weren't trying to hide anything. The witness comes and performs, and then right away you're deviating away from competence and qualifications, wanting to pick up a line of questioning that would have been better posed to the minister of democratic reform, quite possibly.
I'm beginning to think that maybe this was your original agenda, the original purpose for having the discussion. That's why I think at the very least, if not to me but to committee members, you need to better explain why you even wanted to have this particular appointment come before the committee if your real intent was to talk about process and mandate.
If it was to talk about process and mandate, I would highly recommend that there be, at the very least, some discussions to make it clearer what the committee is being asked to do. That's at the very least. If you couldn't develop that consensus, then there's a responsibility, as an official opposition, to raise the issue. Instead of talking about deficits and whether there was or was not a deficit, we could have been talking about this issue today. If we'd actually had the minister come before the committee, we could have had that discussion then.
My concern is on whether or not you have other intentions. Are there other ministers that you ultimately want to be able to call?
I would appreciate it if you could comment on the real reason you wanted the appointment to be called. Do you not believe there are other ways in which you can achieve your questioning on process?
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Yes, it sounds as if the parliamentary secretary certainly has a number of questions that he wants to have responses to there, so I'm happy to provide those and I think that's precisely the point. Their government doesn't seem to want to provide answers to questions, and I'm happy to do that.
The bottom line here is that under Standing Orders 110 and 111, this committee has the duty and the ability to have a nominee come before us so that we can examine their qualifications and assess whether they are able to perform the duties of the post they have been appointed to.
In order to be able to assess those qualifications and determine their ability to perform those duties, we must have a good sense of what those are. Because the government has been very secretive in terms of what the process would look like—sure, there has been some detail provided—there is a lot of detail lacking in terms of the consultation process with a variety of different groups, as one example. There are a number of examples.
The problem here is that we have a government that has created this process to appoint senators, which they claim is some kind of a reform to the Senate, but it's a very secretive process. Canadians won't even have any idea at the end of that process whether any of the people who have been selected by this board would even be appointed by the Prime Minister. There will be no way to ever know whether the committee was actually able to perform its duty.
To be able to properly assess this, we have to have a better sense as to what that process is, what those consultations would look like, and what the outcomes would be, because when you look at the permanent phase of the program, you see that it's the board that would be providing recommendations on what that permanent process would look like, and we have no idea what that would look like now.
If we aren't able to assess the board, we really have no way of knowing whether those changes that are being recommended by the board are going to be based on any kind of logic, so we have to actually have a sense as to what this process is and what the process will look like.
If you listened to the questions I had for the chair who was before us today, you'd know I was trying to get some sense as to what that process would look like so that I could assess the ability for the board and the members to be able to do the job, but we weren't able to get any answers because we were told that she couldn't answer that part of the questioning.
There were other members who had questions. Mr. Reid had some very significant and serious questions. If it isn't the job of a committee like ours to be able to have a sense as to whether the Constitution of Canada is being followed in a process the government is trying to set up, I think that's a pretty sad statement about this government. If they are not interested in knowing whether the Constitution is being followed in a process, that's a pretty sad statement. For us to be able to properly assess this, we must have a far better sense of the process, which the government is trying to keep secret.
The question I have for the parliamentary secretary is this: is it the position of this government that this minister shouldn't be responsible for this process to ensure that Canadians have confidence in it? How can they possibly have confidence in the work that's being done if we have no sense as to what the work is supposed to be, and what it will look like, and if it's going to be held secret from Canadians? That's exactly what the government is doing .
To bring the minister here and properly assess the process so we can lay that against the qualifications of the people who are charged with doing that process is the only way we can properly discharge our duties under these two standing orders. That's why it's so vitally important that the Minister of Democratic Institutions appear before this committee. It's so we can properly do our job.
If the government is going to try to prevent us from doing our job as a committee, that's also a pretty sad start on what they would call “real change”.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Before I go any further, in a minute we'll have Mr. Lamoureux respond to the question he was just given, and then the order is Mr. Chan, Mr. Reid, Mr. Richards, and Mr. Christopherson.
Mr. Reid and Mr. Richards, when it does come back to you, the clerk has pointed out that she's not sure where this would fall in our mandate.
While you have some time while they're talking, would you look at section 108(3), which describes our committee's mandate, to see whether this actually falls in the mandate and just describe to us where it does.
Mr. Lamoureux, could you reply to the question from Mr. Richards?
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
I appreciate the answer, Blake, I really do, but I think that in good part it's somewhat misguided.
In the type of questions that you're putting on the table, you're raising issues about constitutionality. You're talking about the process. You're talking about the kinds of consultations. These are all questions, and I'm not going to say whether they're good questions or bad questions. That's fine. You're entitled to ask whatever questions you want.
My concern is that we had this discussion 48 hours ago when concern was initially raised by the official opposition in regard to the qualifications of one of the appointees. In a gesture of goodwill, you made reference to the committee doing things differently. It was a committee member—Ruby, was it you, or one of—
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Mr. Chair, I will be very brief on this point of order.
The parliamentary secretary has just indicated that we had expressed concerns about the qualifications of one particular employee. Nobody expressed concerns about the qualifications of any one particular employee. We're simply trying to get a sense as to the qualifications to be able to do the duties that are asked of them. If we cannot be given the information by this government about what those duties are, how can we possibly assess the qualifications?
It's like asking us to do an assessment of someone's ability to do a job without giving us the job description. That's what this government is doing. It's keeping the process a secret, the consultation process a secret, and therefore we cannot properly assess the qualifications. It's not questioning anyone's duty. It's the ability to do the job. We have no way of being able to assess that, because we don't know what qualifications they need, because we don't know what the process is.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
I agree with the point of order, so don't touch on the qualifications of the person.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
12:45 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I have a point of order.
While we're dealing with points of order, I want to ask, Chair, if you think this is acceptable in terms of the regular business of this committee.
Mr. Lamoureux is not even a member of this committee. The government members went out of their way to say how grown-up they were, that they were quite capable of leading themselves, and they didn't need Mr. Lamoureux for that. The guy's not even a member of the committee. He represents the government, the PMO. He's leading all the discussions, and the real members of the committee are just sitting there.
Is that regular business to you, Chair? Is that a new era? Do you see anything a little bit amiss here with this kind of dialogue?
February 4th, 2016 / 12:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Mr. Christopherson, the official opposition asked Mr. Lamoureux a question, so I can't refuse him that opportunity.
12:45 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I'm not pointing just to this one question. He's the only one who's been talking all along.
12:45 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
This is ridiculous. This government said they were going to do things differently. This is not different. At least Mr. Lukiwski had the legitimacy and decency to sit in the driver's seat when he was driving. This member is not even a member of the committee, and he's driving the committee.
