Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 12th, 2020

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I just want to clarify whether the public health information is also going to be included for each of those jurisdictions. If we're going to include and update the other aspects for each jurisdiction, can we make sure to get some public health information in there as well?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thanks for that clarification, Ryan, and thanks for bringing it up now before we move on.

I think the items that have been mentioned so far include a current, up-to-date record of their proceedings, whether they sat, any rule changes that they've made, any provisions that they had, travel restrictions and health agency updates. They're to be very brief, in a sentence each, if that's possible.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

To Ms. Blaney's point, it's a really short timeline. It's almost as though we're going to do a separate study for each jurisdiction now in the next 24 hours or the next five hours. I just want it on the record that I'm concerned about that and the validity of that information. I think it's going to be very challenging to pull that off and it puts a burden on the analysts.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you for that.

We're going to move on to the “Discussion” portion.

On “Observations and recommendations, i. Guiding Principles”, we'll start with “(a) Temporary nature of procedural changes”.

Are there any comments?

I'll go to my draft version.

The clerk was just reminding me to remind all of you. I'm sure you've see the letter we received from the Speaker of the House of Commons. Speaker Rota sent a letter the other day, and I just want to remind you. Have you all had a chance to take a look at that letter?

Okay. Since the parties had all submitted their recommendations prior to hearing from the Speaker and reading what he had to say in that letter, I just thought that I would give you a heads-up that you may wish to incorporate some of what he said into the recommendations, but that is up to you.

Go ahead, Christine.

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

I'd like an addition made to the various points, which I find rather negative in terms of the quality of the debates. I'd like to offset that by adding that Mr. Rota testified to the quality of the exchanges that have taken place. He's the only witness who has officially seen the before and after. I think that would balance out the paragraph a bit.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

You would like that added, not as a recommendation but into the procedural changes, as one of the bullet points.

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

Yes, exactly. I'm alluding to Mr. Rota's opening remarks, when he said, “As chair of the committee I was impressed by this experience, both from the technological standpoint and the quality of the exchange”.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Okay. Andre will include that quote by Mr. Rota.

That's good, Andre.

[Andre Barnes]

I would only add that I would put the Speaker above the other witnesses, as the Speaker is a very important figure in our House of Commons.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes, absolutely.

All right, seeing as there are no hands raised regarding this section, we'll move on to “(b) Employ an incremental approach to expanding the House's technological operations”.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

In paragraph 5, line 17, it just says, “He also noted that members needed to continue make”.

That should maybe be “continue to make”.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes, another “to” needs to be added.

Andre, you've got that? Okay.

That's on page 27, but for the French version, we are on section (b) still, on the second-last paragraph. No, there are more paragraphs. I'm sorry.

Are we good with this section? Can we look at the recommendations for this section now? Okay. For this section, we have recommendations from three parties.

Andre, we may need your help a little bit—or even more so—on some of this, because some of these ideas are overlapping each other, as you can see. I'm not sure, but maybe from a writing perspective you can give us some guidelines or some feedback as to how things can be changed so that they're not overlapping or redundant.

[Andre Barnes]

I suppose the easiest thing to say would be that with each recommendation you could take elements that you like or don't like, or you could take the whole recommendation, and I could create a blend. Or each recommendation could be separate and distinct. It really is up to how the committee would like to proceed, but that would be one possibility.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Keeping them as is, I think, is an option. I don't think it's the most stylistic option. In terms of having our report a little more presentable and cohesive, it would be good to blend, but that's just my opinion.

I was wondering if the committee has any ideas as to how that could be done, or what could be blended, if anything—

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

Madam Chair—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

—but if it's the parties' wish to keep everything completely separate, that's fine, too. We could do that.

Mr. Brassard.

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

I guess the challenge I have when I look at the recommendations as printed now is that they really intertwine a fully functioning virtual Parliament with an emergency session type of Parliament. I think it has to be a little more cohesive or conclusive, whatever you want to call it, where we separate the fact that, under an emergency situation, we want to make sure that perhaps there is some trigger or mechanism. We could use a pandemic as one of those situations. There could be other situations as well.

I'd like to put a wall around, for lack of a better term, what we identify in the recommendations as moving to a virtual one or the potential of a hybrid Parliament in an emergency situation, as opposed to just simply talking about a fully functioning virtual Parliament. I just don't see that in here.

My point is that we have to come up with something that is much more understood in any one of these recommendations in order to reflect what the purpose of this study was. I go back to what it was, and that was to look at alternatives, given the type of situation that we're in right now.

I guess a little more understanding, Madam Chair, is what I'm saying.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Madam Chair, can I make a comment?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes.

Oh, I'm sorry. Mr. Duncan had been waiting.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

My apologies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Mr. Duncan had his hand up even before Mr. Brassard spoke.

Was your hand up from before?

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

No worries. You have a tough job between the screen and the participants sitting there.

This is a newbie question. I apologize. As a new member, this is my first time going through a study like this. Are we going to go through each recommendation individually in each section? To Mr. Brassard's point, there's some higher level here of what direction we're looking at going in, and I think it's going to be important before deciding on all of these sections and recommendations.

As a new member, I'm just wondering if we're going to debate or discuss each one, or if we're going to discuss by sections, or if we're going to go through the smaller technical stuff and then go to the recommendations. I'm just looking for some clarity on my end.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes. Let's hear from Mr. Turnbull, and then maybe we can get into that.

Actually, you just reminded me that originally my desire was to get through just the text and then come back to the recommendations. I think that may help us speed things up a little bit, at least for the time being, until we get into the real nitty-gritty. It also gives us a little more time to reflect on the recommendations and how we can make them flow more consistently, because at the end of the report—and correct me if I'm wrong, Andre—it's not going to state whether this party or that party has made this particular recommendation. It's just going to say that the report recommends these things.

I think it's in the committee's interest as a whole to have a report that looks like it was written by the majority of the committee, rather than to have a very disjointed, repetitive set of recommendations, because the parties are not going to be identified in the final report. We're not going to know who recommended something, other than perhaps by seeing a dissenting or supplementary opinion. We will be able to differentiate by what was in those additions to the report, but other than that, the main body will only have the recommendations of the majority of the committee.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

That's unless anybody watches this committee and knows where we all stand.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

You're right that it is public, but for readers of the report down the road who are looking at the report for information, I think it should be as coherent as possible.

Go ahead, Ryan, please.