Thank you very much, Madam Chair and members of the committee. It is my pleasure to be here and to be able to share some ideas with you.
Also, I'm deeply honoured to be sharing the panel with Joe Maingot and Gary O'Brien, two long-time colleagues, so it feels just like home, even if I'm in Saskatchewan and everyone else is spread across Canada.
I want to thank you for the invitation to appear before your committee to discuss ways that members can fulfill their duties while the House is adjourned due to COVID-19. I have to declare a bias, though. First, as a former clerk of the Saskatchewan legislative assembly and then the Senate of Canada, I have 25 years of accumulated service; thus, I am a huge supporter of the Canadian parliamentary system.
As members of Parliament will know, you have various roles to fulfill: one, to represent your constituents; two, to review legislation; three, to express grievance before supply, in other words financial review; and finally, to hold the government accountable. These are no easy tasks when the House is sitting in the usual way, and that makes it even more difficult now. When you're able to meet in person, that encourages rigorous and healthy debate. With the physical distancing requirements due to COVID-19, that old normal doesn't apply now. I therefore strongly recommend that Parliament continue to meet, especially during abnormal times, and thus I want to explore with you some options that I think should be considered and that I think are being tested in some way.
First, over the last six weeks the House has met with a limited number of members to allow for physical distancing. I support this action and encourage the House to meet like this on a regular basis. The House with a limited number of members will lack the intensity of the debate, but I think that is better than having no meetings at all.
How often should the House meet? Well, that is a political decision. I know that by nature the government wants fewer meetings, and by nature the opposition tends to want more meetings. I will leave it with you as to how you find that compromise, but I think a compromise must be found so that Parliament will meet on a regular basis. In the interest of good governance, I think we need to find a way for Parliament to be able to meet on a regular basis. The drawback to the option of meeting with a limited number of people is that the members who are farther away from Ottawa are limited in their ability to attend.
I also think that an option of meeting by distance would be good. I'll use the word “Zoom” because that's what we're using here, but there could be many different ways of doing it. In Saskatchewan, through the Municipalities of Saskatchewan, we're having meetings of up to 400 people at a time. They are able to listen, to see the speaker, to offer comments and to ask questions.
The drawback to that is that it doesn't allow for freewheeling debate as you would have if you were meeting in person, but again, I make the argument that it's better than nothing at all. One of the advantages, I guess, of this system is that there's no heckling, but maybe that is a drawback as well. One of the possible drawbacks of meeting by distance is for those members who don't have Wi-Fi. Saskatchewan is a vast province with a small population, yet we are able to make virtual meetings happen. I'm encouraging you to make every effort to do that across Canada. Today I'm doing this presentation, by the way, without Wi-Fi. Thanks to a personal hotspot, I'm able to connect through my iPhone and see you here today.
Committee hearings, on the other hand, are well adapted to virtual meetings because of the smaller size. Thus, I would encourage Parliament to make greater use of committees. They can be connected through Zoom without much difficulty, and even though we miss that personal approach, I think that from now on a lot of the business could be done through committees virtually.
The question now is, with the House with the physical spacing and the virtual meetings—perhaps a combination would be the appropriate way to go—is the Constitution or the Standing Orders being violated? I would argue not.
It could be offered that, if Parliament is not able to meet, then the members are not able to fulfill their roles and the spirit of the Constitution is not being followed. With a virtual meeting of the House, for example, as long as a quorum is present at the House in person, that requirement to sit and to meet quorum would be met. Members attending electronically would be in addition to that quorum. Since all of the members can meet, and if all the members can meet under those two circumstances, then there needs to be an agreement. In terms of the minority Parliament, if there's going to be a division of a smaller number meeting in the House, if you had a confidence vote, you would have to make sure that the agreement is followed so that there is no defeat of a government.
If there was a defeat, if there was a breakdown of that agreement just because of the limited number meeting in the House, I would argue that the Governor General would take into account the circumstances in deciding whether another election would be called, if the government would be defeated or if they would carry on. I would argue, too, that any political party that is playing games with the numbers during a pandemic would face a negative outcry. Thus, I am sure that would not happen. If all the members were allowed to meet virtually, as well as those in the House, I think that would be the easiest way, because you would avoid that division of how many members could be there. The possibility of defeat of government would be much, much less.
Particularly in times of crisis, the public wants its Parliament to function well. I cannot see any constitutional or procedural reasons why a combination of those two options shouldn't be followed.
A possible objection to virtual meetings would be how a vote is counted. At present, as you know, a member must be present and standing in the House to declare their vote. I know that voting can happen by virtual meetings. A vote can have a great significance in the House. “Stand and be counted” is a common phrase, but during these unusual times you may not have that show of public support. You have to be able to vote, and that electronic system will show that it has been valid. The electronic system will show how many people have voted and how they have voted. I think that is well within the rules.
Neither of the above options is as effective and as attractive as meeting in person, but, for now, these options are better than no parliamentary sitting at all. Once the pandemic has passed, Parliament must return to its former method of meeting. The Canadian parliamentary system has existed since before Confederation, through world wars and economic depressions. It must find a way to function during this pandemic.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.