Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 27th, 2018

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

I wonder if you could maybe fill us in a bit on what that Standing Orders rewrite is about. Normally those kinds of things, obviously, would go through this committee, and I think especially in light of the debacle we saw last year with the government's attempts to rewrite the Standing Orders without the consent of all the opposition parties, it's something that I am quite surprised and obviously disappointed to hear. And I'm sure it will be shared among many of my colleagues in the opposition that there seems to be this new backdoor effort under way to now change those Standing Orders. I wonder if you could fill us in a bit on what that Standing Orders rewrite is about.

[Charles Robert]

It's not so much to change the Standing Orders, and the exercise was undertaken at my initiative. I had discussed this with various staff of the different parties represented in the House of Commons. The purpose is, for me anyway, personally, to understand the Standing Orders because I find them to be written in a rather complex fashion.

The commitment that I had made is that there would be no change to the Standing Orders; that the purpose would be simply to make them more user-friendly, and to institute tools that would allow the members using the Standing Orders to appreciate the interrelationships among some of the Standing Orders to others. For example, there are practices that indicate that the leader of the government or certain individuals may have unlimited time in speaking, but that's not universally true. The idea would be to explain, when you're looking at the standing order, where, immediately after see that yes, you have unlimited time, underneath it you would actually have listed when you don't have unlimited time. When a member's looking at the Standing Orders, they can appreciate, is this circumstance applicable? Do I have unlimited time, or am I limited in time to 5, 10, 15, whatever number of minutes there might be in the opportunity to speak? It's basically meant as an aid, and again, understanding completely that there are no changes being recommended through this exercise.

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

You're confirming it's your intention, at least, that this is only simply to rewrite and clarify language, not make any changes to the Standing Orders.

[Charles Robert]

Absolutely.

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

Okay.

Also, I think there's been some discussion about the establishment of a new deputy clerk's office. I'm wondering if that office's budget is reflected in the estimates that are before us here.

[Charles Robert]

It is.

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

It is. Okay.

I wonder if you could tell me—I haven't seen any major problems in the way things are operating around here, but you're obviously more inside on seeing that than I am. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what the motivation for that change was, adding a new deputy clerk.

[Charles Robert]

As I explained to the Speaker and also to the Board of Internal Economy when the proposal was accepted, the idea is to have somebody capable of supervising all the intricate operations that are part of corporate services, that are designed to assist you as members. In the same way that we have a deputy clerk over procedure, managing the operations there for the purposes of providing the documents and staffing of committees and all the other parliamentary operations, it seemed to me that it was equally logical to have a position created of deputy clerk of administration who would be responsible for providing the same kind of oversight.

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

Okay. In my recollection, previous deputy clerks have always been appointed by Governor in Council. Who made the—

[Charles Robert]

That's been true since about the 1990s, and it's not statutory, which is one reason that the deputy clerk was stripped of the GIC component and made a direct appointee.

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

Okay, so who made this appointment decision, this particular decision, then?

[Charles Robert]

Which one now?

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

For the new deputy clerk.

[Charles Robert]

I did.

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

You did. Okay.

Was there some kind of competition that occurred?

[Charles Robert]

No.

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

No, so how was that decision made, then?

[Charles Robert]

The decision was mine, basically, because I knew that, coming in as clerk, it would be important to have an operation that was as good as it possibly could be to assist the members in fulfilling their parliamentary duties. As you will recognize, certainly before the board the topics that are generally discussed deal with the supports that are given to the members by way of technology, travel points, offices, contracts for employees—all of that. In order to make sure that I would be as well-served as I thought I needed to be, I decided that I would appoint somebody as the deputy clerk of administration.

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

Okay. There's also been a rumour that the House administration is going to be assigning a procedural clerk to work in the government House leader's office.

[Charles Robert]

That was part of the original proposal that was worked out with Privy Council, but Privy Council declined to take the offer.

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

Okay, and was that offer made to all the various parties' House leader's offices, or just the government House leader's office?

[Charles Robert]

I would certainly be open to considering the possibility of assigning such proceduralists if the House leaders across the board decided it would serve their purposes.

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

Okay, thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

We'll now go in camera. Oh...?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

On a point of order, Chair, I have two things quickly.

One, if we're going in camera, I want to mention that the subject matter is the HR issues that we've talked about before. With consultations with colleagues, we've agreed that it's probably best to do that in camera.

However, before I do all of my time, I'd like to ask one question in public first.