Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 12th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Good morning, everyone. We're going to get started right on time, seeing as we have a lot to get through.

I call this meeting to order. Welcome to meeting number 16 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 the parliamentary duties in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since we have no witnesses, I'm not going to go through what's required under the motion. However, because we do have some subs who may not have done a virtual committee as of yet, I'll just mention some of the procedural rules that this committee will operate under and some reminders of how to keep the committee orderly.

The interpretation in the video conference is going to work very much like in a regular committee. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either floor, English or French. Please choose the language that you are speaking in, and if you do choose to change languages in the middle of speaking, then you have to switch the language preference down at the bottom. It just gives a better sound quality. When you're on “floor” you tend to hear the interpreter and the speaker at the same volume, and that's not ideal.

Before speaking, please wait until you are recognized by name. When you are ready to speak, you can click on the microphone icon to activate the mike. You can also hold down the space bar to activate the mike and when you are done speaking, you release the space bar to go back to mute. If there are any points of order during the meeting, unmute the mike and state that you have a point of order and I'll recognize you so that you can make your point. If anyone then wishes to speak to the point of order, you can do so by clicking on the participants list and you will see that there is a "Raise Hand" icon and you can click on that.

A few other reminders are to speak slowly and clearly for the interpreters. When you're not speaking, make sure your mike is on mute. As we have said many times, the use of a headset is strongly encouraged. If you don't have a headset provided by the House of Commons, then please see if your office or somewhere around you can provide a headset that has a mike.

We're going to turn our attention to the draft report. I should remind everybody that we did have this conversation last time. This committee meeting is not in camera; it's a public committee meeting, because the order that PROC was given by the House of Commons on April 11 requires all committee meetings that are virtual to be webcast to the public on ParlVU.

Today, remember that we have to finish the consideration of the draft report. This is to be submitted on May 15. Therefore, it would be ideal that we complete this report today. The clerk and I and all of the party whips have arranged for a contingency plan in case that does not happen. We will not be able to go past two o'clock today because there's another committee after us that needs the room and the support services, but we have arranged for a slot to be available for us tomorrow, Wednesday, from three o'clock until six o'clock, if we were to go overtime and not be able to adopt the entire report today.

Mr. Richards.

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

On that point, if we do end up having to go into tomorrow, the deadline that was put on us for dissenting reports was the end of the day.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Tomorrow.

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

If we're to meet from three o'clock until six o'clock, that will become a little bit difficult because we won't even know what the actual report has in it until the end of the day. I wonder if, in that instance, the deadline for the dissenting report could be extended until noon the following day to allow us that opportunity. It would be pretty difficult to provide something before the main report is finished being drafted.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Point noted, and maybe we can have this discussion at the end of today's meeting. We can see how far we get, and then we'll consider what could be done in terms of that deadline.

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

Sure. That's fine, but I think it's good for our clerk to have that information now, because obviously it would be very unreasonable to expect a dissenting report to be provided before the main report was completed, if that were to happen. Maybe we'll get done today and it won't be an issue—I agree—but should it become one, I certainly hope that can be extended, because it would be quite unreasonable, I think, to expect anything else.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

We can talk about it at the end of this meeting. I do believe that the requirement was for dissenting and supplementary opinions to be in by end of day tomorrow, on the 13th—

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

Yes, I agree that it was, but obviously when conditions change, the requirement should change as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes, okay. We'll discuss that at the end of the meeting. My hope is that we're going to get through this, and the quicker we get started, the quicker that becomes a possibility. We'll leave a bit of time at the end to discuss this issue and figure it out so that we have a reasonable alternative.

The draft report now covers all meetings. All of you should have the second version of the draft report. At the last meeting we were going through the first version. All of the changes that have been discussed have been incorporated into this report, but we had only gotten up to about page 15 of the last report. The recommendations that have been submitted by all the parties have also been incorporated in this report.

As all of you probably have read the report, I'm going to go through the report quite quickly, especially the first 15 pages, because we've already been through those. We're really just going through it again to make sure you're okay with the changes that were made.

The latter part of the report has all of the recommendations. You'll see that in the recommendations there is some overlap with different recommendations. A lot of the parties were thinking along the same lines in terms of some of the recommendations, so maybe we can work on figuring out how we can keep some in, take some out or amalgamate others. That choice is up to you, so that we can avoid some redundancy in the report.

I think that covers just about everything, now that I look at all my notes, so we should get started.

I'm going to start with page 1. Perhaps we can first just get through the writing of the whole report, and then we can go back into the recommendations. They start two-thirds into the report, the actual recommendations, so let's go through the text of the whole report and finalize that, and then we'll get into the recommendations.

Is that okay with you, Andre and Justin? Do you think that will work? Okay.

We'll go to page 1 of the draft report. There were two versions submitted. You can take a look at the version that shows the track changes, or you can take a look at the clean draft version. It's up to you. The track changes will show you exactly where the changes were made. We can quickly address those changes and get through the 15 pages. If you do have the track changes report in front of you, maybe we'll use that for now so that we can quickly go to those thoughts and address those issues.

Christine, did you have a comment to make?

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Chair, could you refer to the sections rather than the pages? That way, it'll be the same for everyone, in French and in English, and it'll be the same as well should there be changes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Absolutely, and thank you for that reminder. I tried to do that last time. I almost would have forgotten.

We will start with the introduction. There was just one change made in the introduction.

In order to indicate if there are any issues, just use "Raise Hand" in the “Participants” section. I'll keep monitoring that to see if there's a raised hand. I'll also try to monitor the screen and, just like we were doing last time, if you could give me a thumbs-up, we can keep moving on. You can do it by using “Reactions” at the bottom of your screen or you can just physically give me a thumbs-up. Either way, I see it and I know there's agreement.

Okay. So the introduction looks good? All right.

In section i, “Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs' study on Parliamentary Duties and the COVID-19 Pandemic”, there are changes near the end of it. Is everyone good with that section?

Mr. Brassard.

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

Madam Chair, we're still in that section. There should be a correction.

On page 2 of that section, line 28 says, “open discussion about the reports contents”. It should be “report's” as opposed to “reports”.

I'd like to see the following added after “report's contents”: “and especially witnesses' evidence.”

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Okay. You're looking at the English version, page....

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

It's page 2, line 28.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Okay. Sorry.

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

It says, “have a frank and open discussion about the reports contents”. “Reports” should have an apostrophe before the “s”.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Absolutely.

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

Afterwards, I'd like it to say, “and especially witnesses' evidence.” It should read, “the Committee expressed deep concern that reviewing a confidential draft report during a public meeting adversely affected their ability to have a frank and open discussion about the report's contents, and especially witnesses' evidence.”

I think we made that clear in our discussions the other day. I'm not going to rehash it. The members who were here understand the concerns of not dealing with witness evidence in camera or in confidence.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you.

Is everyone okay with those corrections? Okay.

We're going to move on to section ii, on notable other decisions.

Sorry, I see Mr. Tochor has something.

First we'll go to Mr. Brassard.

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

Sorry, as we moved on to the next page, I didn't realize we were in the same section.

Line 2 of page 3 says, “eight meetings and heard from 38 of witnesses.” The word “of” should be removed on that line. It should say, “and heard from 38 witnesses”, not “38 of witnesses”.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes, I have it. There are a couple of other things like this that I found throughout the report too, minor things. Keep pointing them out as we go along.

Andre, I think you're probably going to have somebody review this report one final time. Will you, in case we miss any minor editing issues like that?

[Andre Barnes, Committee Researcher]

I'll talk to the people in PPD. They're the production people. I'll see if they'll do that, but I'll take another look at it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Okay.

[Andre Barnes]

The problem is that when you read it so many times, you're kind of blind to your mistakes. Sorry about these.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

It's not a problem. We'll point out those things.