Hi. For those of you who are unaware, I've been a journalist on Parliament Hill for almost 12 years now. I also am the author of a book called The Unbroken Machine: Canada's Democracy in Action, which is a primer on civic literacy and responsible government and Westminster parliaments in Canada.
I'm guessing I've been invited here today because I've written a number of columns in recent weeks that have been in opposition to a virtual Parliament in various ways. I'll start with outlining what some of my concerns are.
My biggest concern, obviously, is that Parliament is something that works best in person. A lot of the most important work that happens in Parliament is relationship building, and that happens on the sidelines, in rooms, in lobbies and in corridors, and it's something that can't happen at all in a virtual space. That's one of the concerns that I definitely have about a longer-term hybrid environment.
As well, I'm particularly concerned because there's a long history of unintended consequences with rule changes that happen in Parliament. Some of the examples that come to mind are when we capped speaking times at 20 minutes. Instead of creating a livelier culture of debate, all it did was create a culture of MPs reading canned speeches to fill time, as opposed to actually having back-and-forth exchanges in the chamber. That's incredibly concerning to me.
Another unintended consequence was the elimination of evening sittings in the early 1990s. That meant MPs were no longer having dinner with one another in the Parliamentary Restaurant three nights a week, and as a result, the collegiality in the chamber crumbled. It's no longer the same kind of environment that it was back then.
A further example I would cite would be the decision to expel Liberal senators from caucus. The unintended consequence was basically to eliminate the institutional memory of the caucus, as well as centralize more power with the leader.
As any kind of rule changes have unintended consequences, I think we need to think very hard about what those consequences might be in this particular circumstance.
When it comes to hybrid sittings and remote voting, one of my biggest concerns among these unintended consequences is that as much as people keep saying these need to be temporary, it nevertheless was mentioned in the previous report of this committee that there should be an exploration of using these means to modernize the rules of the House of Commons. For me, that means this is essentially a Pandora's box now—that any changes we adopt, even if they are thought to be temporary, will see people who are looking for them to be made permanent. [Technical difficulty—Editor] concerns about what these rule changes might lead to.
Thank you.