Yes, I agree. Almost all of my meetings have been Zoom meetings, and so I feel fairly familiar with this in some ways. But, as I say, when it's a much bigger screen with potentially 10 times as many people at least on there, it's going to be very difficult to examine it and see who's popping up, unless there's some technology allowing people who push the button to get their intervention to the front....
The other thing I've noticed in our meetings is that you can turn off your mute button and then start to speak. Members were interrupting one another frequently in these board meetings, not intentionally, but two or three would start speaking at the same time and then the chair had to calm them down, choose one, and say, “You're going first and others please be quiet”. It's not a straightforward process. I'm just concerned, as the means of dealing with a large number of people, that it's going to be even more difficult for that.
What could happen, as what happens in the House, is heckling. You push off your silent button and start heckling the member who's making a speech if you disagree with what he or she is saying or want to challenge the member. You could have a whole bunch of people doing that at the same time, because once one starts, others would respond by saying, “You're not supposed to be speaking. Shut up.” All that sort of stuff can go on, as happens in the chamber. It would make it very difficult, I think, for the presiding officer on a screen of this kind to manage the disorder. It's a numbers game, in my view, that is important here.
The other possibility is that when there is a crisis like this, there could be some worked-out arrangement whereby the House would only sit for, say, a day a week, and on those days, new legislation could be introduced and referred to committees right away. Then the next week, more of that, but then maybe some committee reports would come back with suggested changes to the legislation that could be adopted. Then, if the parties agree, there could be a vote on third reading or second reading, with approval of the amendments, whatever, and then get on with it without having lengthy debates at those stages of the bill. That could happen too. There might be some willingness to do that, at least on matters of national importance that Parliament might have to deal with, where we're not sitting for three or four months because of this infection.
I think those are possibilities for avoiding lengthy chamber sittings. This would also mean that most of the work done on computers would be committee work. As I say, I think committees could function reasonably well compared with the House, given the size. A committee could have a meeting, as we're having here now, because parties could express their views. Each of the members would get his or her say, witnesses could be called and questioned by the various members, and the chairman of the committee could see who's next by the colours that light on people's screens if they push the button. It would be relatively easily managed because of the much smaller number.
I say that, having sat on these boards and watched. It's not that I'm wildly in favour of this method instead of an in-person meeting, but it's not that bad, in my experience, except for the fact that we do have a lack of control in who speaks. A bunch of people can speak all at once, and you then have to have somebody say, “Wait, we have to hear one first, because we can't hear everybody at the same time”, and calm them down. That happens in the House too, but it's a different situation there.
Those are the points that I thought I'd suggest here. Obviously, there's going to have to be some good process for identification of the person, a picture or a camera that picks people up. That needs to be part of the process, in my view, so that we can see who's there doing the talking and that it is not somebody substituting for the member.
I think it's important, too, that the options for intervening in debate should be somewhat limited if the debate is taking place in this format.
We don't need to have lengthy questions and comments at the end of a member's speech. We don't need to have questions of privilege or points of order raised frequently, which could happen, but some of that will happen without much control. It's an issue that's going to have to be dealt with. It might be a little harder for the Speaker to deal with, because you can't always see what's going on in the background with the person appearing. There could be other people in the room with the MP speaking who are yelling at him or telling him to do something else or passing him notes, and this could cause consternation among some of the people watching.
I think it's an area of potential crisis or a problem, but one that may be important from a House perspective, as we have this lengthy period during which we will not be meeting or close to somebody because of this ailment that our country and much of the world are suffering from at the moment—