Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 7th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

It's finally the day when we start our draft report, so I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 15 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. Pursuant to the order of reference of Tuesday, April 11, the committee is meeting to discuss parliamentary duties in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before we start, I want to inform the members that pursuant to this order of reference the committee is meeting for two reasons: one, for the purpose of undertaking a study and receiving evidence concerning matters related to the context of parliamentary duties in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic; and two, to prepare and present a report to the House of Commons by May 15 on the said study. The order of reference also stipulates that only motions needed to determine witnesses or motions related to the adoption of the report are in order.

Today's meeting is taking place by video conference, and the proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. Just so you are aware, the webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee. In order to facilitate the work of our interpreters and ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow.

First, interpretation in the video conference will work very much like it does in a regular committee meeting. You have the choice, at the bottom of your screen, of.... Well, I guess since we've had some issues with this, you really only have the choice of either English or French, so alternate your choice depending on the language you wish to speak. If you alternate the language you wish to speak in the middle of your statement, please also change the channel at the bottom for the best interpretation results.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When you are ready to speak, you can click on the microphone icon to activate your mike.

I have a reminder that all comments by members should be addressed through the chair. Should the members need to request the floor outside of their designated time for questions—this doesn't really apply this time, since we don't have any witnesses—just for this meeting, please, we should raise our hands. I'll try to follow the side panel for raised hands whenever there is an issue as we go through the report.

When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. Also, if there's a point of order to be made, once again, just unmute your mike and state that you have a point of order. If anyone wants to respond to that point of order, please use the “raised hand” function under the participant toolbar. When you're not speaking, make sure that your mike is on mute. This will be especially important today as well, since we're all probably going to want to make comments on the report.

Should any technical challenges arise—for example, in relation to interpretation or a problem with your audio—please advise me immediately. The technical team will help to resolve the problem. We may need to suspend during that time. It would be a short suspension, but please let me know so that everyone can participate fully.

Before we get started, I'd like everyone to click on the screen at the top right-hand corner to ensure you are on gallery view so that you're able to see each other.

I have a few reminders. All comments should be addressed through the chair. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you're not speaking, please keep your mike on mute. Also, the use of headsets is strongly encouraged.

Welcome, Mr. Richards. I'm glad you were able to solve your technical difficulty and join us. We are just getting started.

We will turn our attention now to the consideration of our draft report. Usually we do this work in camera; however, the authority granted to PROC by the House on April 11 requires that all committees meeting virtually be webcast to the public on ParlVU.

To remind members, we have two meetings, today and May 12, to consider this report and to adopt it if we are to meet the deadline of May 15, which the House gave us. The draft report covers all meetings up until our April 30 meeting.

I'm in your hands. How you want to consider the report and how you want to go about it is really up to the committee. I was wondering if first we could get agreement on this, since you've probably seen and had a chance to read through the report. We have three hours in today's meeting as well, so we can go as slowly as you want in order to go through the report together. We can go line by line, paragraph by paragraph or section by section.

I'm wondering if anybody has any suggestions as to how we go through it.

Mr. Richards.

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

Maybe you've addressed this; I don't know. Obviously with the challenges I was having, I missed the beginning.

It's my understanding that the meeting is public. I understand that, despite some of what we were told during the hearings, there are challenges with being able to have in camera proceedings. However, usually when we consider a draft report we are in camera. There's a good reason for that, yet it's not possible.

Where are we with that? I have some concerns about it. That's usually how we do things and we're not able to. I guess that points out one of the challenges there is with this, and it's probably something we need to address in our report. Having said that, we're also going to be talking about the report in public as well.

I don't know if you've addressed this already, Madam Chair, but it's a concern I have. I don't know if others feel the same way.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

I merely stated in my introductory remarks that pursuant to the order of reference of May 11, this committee was required to hold all of its meetings in public and make them publicly available via webcast on ParlVU. This committee, just as with all the committee meetings we've had with witnesses, will be publicly available.

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

Has the House actually directed the committee to do its report in public as well?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

That is correct.

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

Does anyone know the rationale for that? That is not a typical thing in committees, so I'm just curious.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

No, it's not. As far as I know, the rationale or at least a piece of the rationale—and I can't completely know the entire thought process behind this—is that there may not be a way of ensuring that we are completely 100% in camera. When we are present in the room, we can ensure this by looking around the room. Of course, even at that point somebody could have their phone on or whatnot, so perhaps we can never be 100% sure, but for the most part it is easier for the blind eye to ensure it. Here it's not easy, so they've made sure all committee meetings are publicly available and none of them are in camera at this point, until they've figured out the technology.

This was also from April 11. We studied this issue and perhaps we can make recommendations in this report to address, going forward, how committees can have in camera meetings.

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

That's what I was going to suggest next. Given that, probably.... Unfortunately, we only received the report late yesterday and I didn't have a chance to go through it, although I did skim through parts of it. Maybe it's addressed in there already and I didn't see it. If it's not, we certainly should be addressing that in our report. Obviously there are times when in camera proceedings are needed. We almost ran into one of them during our last meeting, in fact. How does that get addressed? Obviously that's a significant concern that we need to address in our report.

I would suggest, unless there's disagreement, that we instruct our analyst to prepare a section on this for the report. It doesn't have to be a long section, but it should address that and the concerns that exist about it. It probably even needs a recommendation of some kind, but to me it's one obvious thing we should try to address.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Are there any comments from other committee members on that suggestion or general comments before we actually go through the report paragraph by paragraph?

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Madam Chair, I have a question more than a comment. Has this draft report been published publicly?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

No. As far as I know, this report, from the email the clerk sent us—

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

It's confidential.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

It stated that the report was confidentially sent to us. At this point we are going through it, and whether we go through it line by line and I read it out, or we just discuss the paragraphs in general, some parts of it will become public as this meeting proceeds. Then eventually at the end of it, the whole report in its edited version will become public.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Madam Chair, herein lies the problem. We've received what is a confidential draft report at this point. Now we're being asked to discuss it publicly. If the committee decides that we want to go line by line on this, then it will be out in the public realm. Typically, when we have these types of committee meetings, there is a significant amount of back and forth that goes on, discussion and rationale, and people putting their positions forward, and all of that will be in the public realm. There may be some things with a certain individual, for example, who's named in the report that I don't agree with, and that individual will understand my rationale for not agreeing with them.

Really, I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm trying to have some sense of normalcy here in how we deal with these reports. If it's the will of the committee to move forward with this, I think this is where we need to clarify this, notwithstanding what the initial motion that was approved on April 11 says. Can we, as a committee, decide to take this off of ParlVU, take if off the public realm, given that the report is not even public, and discuss this within this framework of Zoom that we're dealing with?

I'm really curious as to what the answer is on that from the clerk, because there may be, as I said, information, proprietary stuff, dealing with Zoom. For example, any one of us might have a problem with what we heard from Zoom and now we're out there publicly discussing that. Not that I have a problem with Zoom, but there may be something in the report that I don't agree with them on, or something proprietary that I have concerns with. Now we're exposing that company publicly to the concerns that any one of us may have with them, whether with respect to security, privacy and all of that stuff. I think we need to pause on this for a second, given those issues.

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

As a point of order, Madam Chair...or maybe this is a point of order and I'd like to add to it. I'm not certain.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Go ahead and I can address both comments or questions.

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

I certainly agree with everything Mr. Brassard had to say. I would take it a step further and would suggest that when we receive a draft copy of a report that is confidential in nature, we're bound to keep that confidential. We're not supposed to share it with anyone. I think what we are being asked to do here, as members of Parliament, is to break that expected confidentiality by speaking publicly on this format. The more I think about this, the more I'm actually quite uncomfortable with that. I think we—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

This is not the first time this has—

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

Madam Chair, if I can finish, I think we need to be seeking advice on this so that, as members of Parliament, we're not putting ourselves in a position where we have done something inappropriate.

I'm not sure if our clerk can respond to that or if we need to seek outside advice on that, but to be frank, the more I think about this, the more I'm actually uncomfortable even participating in this meeting until we have some clarity on that.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I would like to add to this point of order too, Madam Chair, at some point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Okay. I'll just respond quickly and then I'll give the floor to you, Mr. Gerretsen.

I have discussed this with the clerk. I will also take a brief pause to get even more clarification from the clerk, but this is not the first time a draft report has been discussed in public. We are by no means the first to do this, and I'm not talking just within the COVID-19 context. I will get more examples from the clerk as to why and when that was done in the past, if he is able to provide that, but this is—

Yes, Mr. Richards.

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

I don't disagree. In fact, I'm fairly certain I probably have participated in committees where that has been done. My assumption is, though, that we have a copy of a report that is marked confidential, and I know when we've been given a report of that nature I've always taken that incredibly seriously. That is how the system already worked, and for us to discuss it in public, again, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that.

I guess I'll wait for the advice that we get, but I feel like I may be being put in a position where I'm being asked to do something that I'm not comfortable enough to do and, therefore, I may not be able to participate in the meeting. Therefore, I would almost feel like my privileges might be breached, because I'm now being told I can't participate in the meeting that others are going to participate in because their choice—

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

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

Sorry, we are in the middle of a point of order right now and I am—

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

No, it's back and forth between you and the chair right now.