Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 13th, 2020

[The Clerk]

Whatever the committee decides to put into the report in terms of recommendations, they are just recommendations. However, once a report is presented to the House, the House is always able to concur in that report. If the House does concur in it, which means essentially that the House is adopting the report, the recommendations in it become orders of the House. It does imply that there's a certain amount of binding, if you will, because the recommendations become an element that the House and its administration will be required to implement in some way or fashion.

I'm not sure if that necessarily extends to sending people all the way to Campbell River to check on lighting. They would obviously interpret that, but it does bind the House in some ways. If the House chooses to concur in the report, these become more than mere suggestions or recommendations. If it doesn't choose to concur in the report, that's all these will ever be, recommendations, free to be taken or left.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Maybe you can elaborate on what it means to have the House concur.

[The Clerk]

To concur is just that. It essentially means that the House is ordering that something be done. Depending on the wording of the recommendations in the report and if the House concurs in the report, it will become the express intent of the House that the action be taken or the recommendation be implemented.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

LIB 11, as amended, is to remove one of the bullet points mentioning headsets and microphones and then to include the suggestions made in BQ 9. Those are the amendments, essentially. Do we have agreement to adopt?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you. Next is BQ 8.

Ms. Blaney.

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

Again, I was just wondering about this. I assume that the Clerk of the House already works closely with the Speaker during regular Parliament, but I don't actually remember any testimony on this specifically. I'm just wondering if I could get some information about where this recommendation came from.

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

I just want to make it clear that I'm opposed to this particular recommendation. When we're talking about the proceedings of the House of Commons, we're talking about debate in the House of Commons and who moderates debate in it. That should be done by parliamentarians. It should be done by those who were elected. I would oppose anything else, so I certainly can't support this.

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

The idea is mainly to help the chair, who does have a number of things to do manually during virtual meetings. The clerk could help her note the speaking order. The goal is not so much for the clerk to take care of that, but to help out the chair. Perhaps the recommendation could have been worded differently. I am not hell-bent on it. It was simply meant to lessen the chair's burden, so that she could focus on the main aspects of her work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Since you don't need this recommendation to go forward—you've now led me to ask you—would you be willing to withdraw the recommendation?

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

I am prepared to withdraw it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Okay, that is no longer a part of the report.

We'll move on to “(e) Voting”. We have two recommendations for this section: LIB 12 and BQ 3.

Mr. Turnbull.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Madam Chair, thank you.

I would suggest that BQ 3 is a much stronger recommendation that, I think, covers the sentiments of LIB 12 much better. I would suggest that we remove LIB 12 and go with BQ 3 as the recommendation in this section.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Okay. I love it. We're removing our suggestions and making it easier.

Ms. Petitpas Taylor.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

On that point, could I also just, at the end of “threatening their safety and/or that of their families”, add “and communities”, if that's okay with Madam Normandin and everyone?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you.

Is there any discussion on BQ 3 as amended with “and communities” at the end?

Ms. Blaney.

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

No, I'm not going to support this one. I'm happy to have a vote, but I just feel that this should be something that is set later in the report as something for us to actually study further. We did hear from some people that they were exploring virtual voting, online voting, electronic voting—there was a lot of terminology—but I feel that we did not get to the core things that we should know about security, about how to make sure that a member is represented, etc.

The other thing is that there is nothing in here that talks about the other options. There was block voting. There was proxy voting. There was a whole range, and I don't feel that we fully studied them.

I would recommend to this committee that we do a study on this quickly, but we are not in a place where we can recommend a particular type of voting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Okay.

We have Mr. Richards, Mr. Duncan and then Mr. Turnbull.

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

Ms. Blaney actually put it quite well. I won't repeat all of it, but I will simply agree that we didn't have nearly the study of this that would be required to make a change of this magnitude. In fact, there was very little to almost no discussion about it.

We've heard over and over again from a number of members, particularly the government members, that it's something we shouldn't be doing: bringing forward things that we didn't have time to discuss. We certainly didn't do that, and this is a major change to our way of doing business. We should not be making it without a proper study and hearing proper evidence on it.

That has not happened, so I certainly can't support this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

We'll go to Mr. Duncan and then Mr. Turnbull.

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

Make that three of us with this comment. Again, I am in favour of studying this more. It was very broadly discussed, and I had some other potential witnesses reach out after hearing some of our conversations.

Again, I take note of what the Speaker said. I know he gave some updates. To be honest, I haven't read through all the correspondence from the Speaker and some of the confidential documents.

We need to have a further conversation on this. I am not opposed to looking at it further, looking at options, but I just think that for the amount of time we spent and what our witnesses said, there was nowhere near comfort on enabling or supporting the set-up of an electronic voting system.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

We'll go to Mr. Turnbull and then Madam Normandin.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to point out some evidence that was given to us that I think is really important to keep in mind when understanding this recommendation in the context of our study.

We had a report from the procedure committee—I have it here—from the Right Honourable Karen Bradley, the chair of a committee of the House of Commons of the U.K. Parliament in London. She wrote to this committee and gave us some really substantial information I would point members to. It gives an overview of the MemberHub platform. I don't see this information reflected in our current report, but I think this section, given the recommendation, is really substantiated by the U.K. Parliament and how quickly it moved to implement an electronic remote voting procedure.

What's interesting about the things that I think are really relevant is that Karen Bradley is quoted in that letter. I would recommend that this quote appear in our report. She said, “The Committee is satisfied with the assurances it has been given about the security of the system.”

Also, I did a bunch of Google searching—

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

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I wasn't finished, Madam Chair.