Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 9th, 2020

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

On the proxy voting, I understand that it is a way to make sure that people's voices are heard during the voting process, but I'm trying to get clarity. I've talked about where I live, the really good work we've done there and the very big fear of having anything come back. In my riding, we had one of the worst community cases in Canada. It was a very scary time for that very small community. Even for me to travel around my riding, there's a lot of hesitancy. Constituents say, “We'd love to see you, but we don't actually want you to come and visit.” I think that's really important for people in relating to their constituents, but I want to make sure that the voice of my constituents in this unique area that I live in is heard.

I understand the voting process by proxy, but how do you make sure that those voices are heard if they cannot come to the House? What about members who have people in their family who have an autoimmune disease or issues like that, or who have child care issues? Schools in B.C. are not open. High school students have half a day one day a week. For elementary students, it's half a day a few times a week. Parents don't necessarily have the capacity to travel across the country and be away from their families right now. I'm just wondering how you make room for those voices so that MPs can speak for their constituents.

[Karen Bradley]

That's one of our concerns and that's one of the debates we've been having over the last week or so, that the proposals for physical Parliament and the use of the type of virtual participation the government has now allowed us to have and the use of proxies perhaps doesn't allow for people as you describe to be able to fully represent their constituents. It's something that as a committee we're still pushing for, because I think we need to recognize that this is a unique situation and the usual rules do not apply.

For example, even if your children can go to school, and as key workers, as MPs, our children are allowed to go to school, if your children go to school in your constituency and that is several hundred of miles from London you can't physically get them to school and pick them up from school, and there is no child care in the way that there has been previously.

Therefore, there are some real issues and we're still working to get those recognized. I can't tell you that we have an answer for that at the moment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Ms. Bradley.

That concludes our questioning segment and this panel. Thank you to all the witnesses, Mr. Burton, Mr. Stutely and Ms. Bradley, for being here today. It was very enlightening to see how you've tackled the current pandemic challenges in the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

We've learned a lot from it. Thank you so much.

Let's take 10 minutes while we switch to the next panel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Welcome back, everyone.

Could everyone please click on the top right-hand corner of their screen to ensure that you are on gallery view. With this view you should be able to see all of the participants in the committee meeting in a grid format.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of the new witnesses before us.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When you are ready to speak, you can click on the microphone to activate your mike. I remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair. Interpretation in this video conference will work very much like it does in a regular committee meeting. You will have a choice at the bottom of your screen of French, English or the floor. Please select the language that you will be speaking in. If at any point you are alternating between languages, please be sure to switch your language preference at the bottom of the screen to the language you are speaking, and try to pause briefly in between. That should help things go smoothly. Please speak slowly and clearly. You should make sure that your mike is on mute when you are not speaking. Headsets are of course strongly encouraged.

In the case of Ms. Cuevas, I did hear that she doesn't have a mike. I recommend that you speak as clearly and as slowly as possible, and our interpreters will try to do their best.

Welcome to all of the witnesses. This is the second panel of meeting number 21 of the procedure and House affairs committee. We are studying having a virtual Parliament in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before us right now we have Global Partners Governance, with Greg Power and Sue Griffiths. Then we have the president of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Ms. Cuevas.

Thank you to all of the witnesses for being here today. Could we please have seven minutes of opening remarks from Global Partners Governance, with Mr. Greg Power.

[Greg Power, Founder and Board Chair, Global Partners Governance]

Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be with you. I'll try to be as brief as possible. If I can, I'll do it under seven minutes.

By way of a very brief introduction, as you mentioned, my name is Greg Power. I'm the founder and the board chair of an organization called Global Partners Governance, which I set up in 2005. We work with parliaments, political parties and ministers in various parts of the world.

My own background is in British politics, having worked on parliamentary reform in the think tank and civil society world during the 1990s. I was then a special adviser to the leader of the House of Commons in the British Parliament, Robin Cook and then Peter Hain, where I had to try to implement a lot of the reforms that I was writing about from the think tank world. What looked very obvious, easy and straightforward from the luxury of the think tank world suddenly became much more complex when you're in government and trying to mediate between government and Parliament.

That's part of the theme of what I was going to say in relation to these comments. I'll make five broad comments about the transition to trying to implement virtual parliaments. A lot of this is based on a paper that my colleague Sue Griffiths, director of GPG, wrote that was specifically commissioned by the Mongolian Parliament as part of some work for the Asia Foundation, but we've looked at parliaments around the world in relation to this challenge.

These are the five broad points.

The first point is that in all parliaments, the obvious priority is the technological challenge. How do you do this? We've seen lots of parliaments all around the world trying to understand the practical implications of bringing this technology into parliamentary chambers that perhaps aren't that suited to the use of technology. Also, what does this do to parliamentary business? Most parliaments have had to prioritize. You can't get through the same amount of business that you were able to when the Parliament was sitting in physical form. How do you choose those priorities? Who gets to decide those questions? Who decides which business takes priority? That's the first set of challenges.

The second point is the political implications of this. The fact that you suddenly have to do your business in a slightly different way, and that you will not be able to get through as much business, will have subtle changes on the balance of power.

I think there are three things worth mentioning in relation to that.

Number one, as many parliaments have found, if you're going to do hybrid sittings, which combine both virtual and physical presence of parliamentarians, who gets to decide who's in the chamber and who's Zooming in virtually?

Number two is the way in which this changes the dynamics. We've seen this most obviously, certainly from our point of view, in the British Parliament. I'm slightly disappointed we didn't get to hear what the representatives of the Houses of Parliament in the U.K. said to you. The dynamics of the debates in the British Parliament have changed fundamentally. The ability to manage a very rowdy floor full of politicians is a political skill, which has both made and broken ministerial careers in the U.K. You see it most obviously in our own Prime Minister's questions when the Prime Minister clearly benefits from having an audience for his style of speaking to Parliament, whereas the Leader of the Opposition perhaps has a more austere, forensic style, which is more suited to not having an audience, or at least he certainly doesn't need it as much as the Prime Minister does to get his points across. It changes the dynamic, and you can see that in a whole range of debates in Parliament.

Number three is what the lack of physical presence does for the organization of politics, and the ability to whip a party is very different when you're not physically in the same space.

The third point has to do with public communication. What does the move to a virtual parliament do to the ability of the public to access parliamentary proceedings? If they had been physically able to get into the building, how do they access knowledge, information on what Parliament is doing and who decides what sort of information they get.

The fourth point is logistics and resources. Again, looking at the U.K. as an example, one of the big issues that hit the news was the fact that Parliament had to provide all MPs with enough resources to be able to work virtually, including the provision of laptops. This became a news story because, in a time when the economy is not moving, why on earth should MPs get all this extra money when everybody else is suffering. That was the way it was portrayed in the news, but there is an issue there around making sure that politicians and staff have the ability and the skills to participate remotely.

The final point, then, is just about what the lasting impact of moving to virtual proceedings is. The short answer is none of us know. There will be a lasting impact. I think we've all gotten used to this sort of meeting, and it's likely to provide a feature of parliamentary proceedings in all business for some time into the future.

In other parliaments you have seen the use of emergency powers during this period, and the insertion of sunset clauses through a lot of the hybrid and the virtual Parliament rules that have come in.

Just by way of conclusion, I think the issue here is that this has changed politics, both practically and politically in the way that it's done. I think there has been a lot of focus on countries like Hungary, where Prime Minister Orbán has used the pandemic as an excuse to extend the powers of the government.

I think the real risk for most parliaments is not that head-on assault to democracy, but a slow erosion and a subtle shift in the balance of power that we don't actually notice at the time, but that does change the ability of a parliament to hold government to account.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Mr. Power.

Next up, we have the president of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. You're allowed a seven-minute introductory remark. You can take less, of course. We're happy to have you here, and look forward to learning what countries around the world that belong to the Inter-Parliamentary Union are doing in this case.

[Gabriela Cuevas Barron, President, Inter-Parliamentary Union]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you to all of my parliamentary colleagues.

At the Inter-Parliamentary Union, we are collecting the parliamentary responses to COVID-19, and how parliaments are adapting to these new and highly unfortunate circumstances.

There are different practices. Allow me to start with a terrible number: Almost two billion people in the world have had suspended or reduced parliaments. As we know the importance of our responsibilities, we also know that when it happens, when parliaments are suspended or reduced, our capacity to promote legislation, for example, emergency legislation, to adopt budgets or even to exercise our responsibility of overseeing the government is also reduced. It is affected, and that also affects democracy.

I would like to review a little of what IPU has been receiving from the national parliaments. First are the remote working methods in parliament. The current pandemic has caused significant disruption to parliaments around the world, but with it has come a wave of unexpected innovation. Committee meetings, just like yours, have proven to be more adaptable and, perhaps, better suited to the digital tools available. Forty per cent of parliaments report using a remote model for their committees and only 6% report holding no committee meetings.

Ten per cent of parliaments have opted for a technology-based solution in their plenaries, using digital tools to operate a remote parliament or a hybrid chamber. In the hybrid model, a number of members and officials are present in the chamber, and others are able to participate remotely via video conferencing tools. Twenty per cent of parliaments had held no meetings of their plenary, and two-fifths were holding face-to-face plenaries but with reduced numbers and special conditions applying.

I would like to recall what Greg was saying. In this case, it's not only about having meetings. In most of the cases, the rules of the parliament are not allowing these virtual meetings to be a mandatory decision for the parliament. That's the case in my own country of Mexico. We have committee meetings, but we are going to vote everything hopefully in September, when we can go back to the parliament.

We know this is creating the opportunity to accelerate parliamentary innovation and to develop new working methods. Surely, we are going to need to adapt our roles as soon as possible, and I think this will happen around the world.

In terms of procedure, before parliaments can operate in a remote or hybrid manner, they must identify, as I was just explaining, the legal and procedural barriers to doing so. It has proven to be the case that many parliamentary systems have been legally or procedurally defined in such a way that it is either explicit or implicit that they must meet in person and that decisions are ratified by a vote of those members present. For example, we have a quorum rule for most of our parliaments, or even for parliamentary organizations. Many parliaments have reviewed their legislative framework and brought forward amendments. Spain, Brazil, Finland and Latvia are such examples. The U.K. House of Commons and the New Zealand House of Representatives have formally amended parliamentary Standing Orders to allow for remote sittings.

There is also the issue of the availability of staff and members. Of course, if we are asking people for social distancing and to work from home, this applies to the secretariat, the staff, the people who are helping us in our parliaments, and this also translates to the national parliaments. For example, the European Parliament expects its IT team to be working remotely until at least September. Remote working requires secure access to the systems used in parliament, and it is clear that parliaments that have invested in remote access and cloud-based solutions prior to the pandemic are at an advantage here. Another example is the parliament of the Maldives, which is an excellent example of how prior investment in strategic planning and IT has made it easier for them to respond to the current circumstances.

We also have different working modalities. Greg was mentioning some of them, so I will go very quickly. When a parliament operates virtually, not only the formal procedure but also the practical process changes. Members need to have access to a sufficiently reliable—we are experiencing that—and high-speed Internet connection. That can be very difficult in remote or rural areas. For example, for the Inter-Parliamentary Union, when we're trying to convene a long, important, big meeting of the IPU, there is also a need to adapt to the different time zones. That's not easy. We also need to be open and to adapt to these circumstances. For example, Angola has used regional public buildings, where an MP can attend if their home-based connection is not sufficient. Again, we have different examples.

When it comes to technology, there are two clear favourites in terms of video conferencing. Zoom and Microsoft Teams are the two solutions being chosen by most parliaments for plenaries, committees and internal meetings. Other options include Cisco Webex, Google, Jitsi and Kudo, which is particularly suited to multilingual parliaments.

We also mentioned the physical distancing in parliament. We have a lot of different experiences. Perhaps I can go further during the questions and answers.

I think we are also going to get very important lessons, in a very positive way, out of this highly unfortunate situation. In terms of using technology, yes, we are going to need more tools for more inclusive and dynamic work in parliaments. We also need more IT people in our parliaments and also in other parliamentary organizations. That's a lesson for the Inter-Parliamentary Union, for example. This could also be a great opportunity for greater transparency, more open parliament practices, communication with society and inclusion.

Perhaps I am optimistic here, but I believe that, in the end, parliaments are going to need these very positive lessons in order to survive in society. We are facing very important criticisms from our constituencies and these kinds of tools, I am sure, are going to become very popular tools to get closer to our constituencies.

Thank you very much again, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Richards, go ahead for six minutes, please.

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

Thank you.

Let me start with you, Mr. Power.

You wrote a blog post back in April in which you said, “The COVID-19 crisis has been seized upon by several governments to extend their reach and sideline parliament”. I'm wondering if that's something that remains a concern to you and is something that you've seen problems with, and if you can elaborate on that a bit.

[Greg Power]

Yes, I think there were two main examples in my mind at the time. One was Hungary and the other was Serbia.

In Hungary, Viktor Orbán essentially declared a state of emergency powers quite quickly. He generated an awful lot of publicity. In Serbia, it was slightly different. I think the fear was that the powers that had been taken over were more ambiguous, but there were suggestions in the early part of the emergency powers that the elections due for June were going to be delayed.

Now, in both cases, they have worked out in slightly different ways. For Hungary, we are now being told that a state of emergency is going to stop I think in about a week's time or two weeks' time or something like that. In Serbia, it happened more quickly. What has happened there is that the approval ratings for President Vucic have actually increased quite dramatically as a result of this, because he has looked like he has controlled the outbreak of COVID very well.

Those are the two examples I had in mind. It was more to do with the emergency powers than it was specifically to do with how parliament has adapted, but parliaments were being sidelined as a result of that.

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

Yes. Obviously your concern there is that of governments using emergency situations to do things that wouldn't be considered acceptable at any other time. I think that's really what we're hearing from you, correct? Yes.

For example, if a government were to propose legislation that would give itself complete authority to make all taxation and expenditure decisions without the need to consult the legislature for two years, would that be the type of concern that you would have had?

[Greg Power]

Yes. That was what I was alluding to. If I remember rightly what I wrote—it was a couple of months ago—I think the point I made was that headlong assault. That's what generates the headlines. I think the bigger risk for most parliaments is the stuff you're not seeing, the stuff of who is deciding who gets to be in the chamber and ask questions. If you're having to reduce the amount of business that a parliament can get through, who is determining what takes priority and what doesn't? What then suddenly goes into statutory instruments as opposed to coming onto the floor for debate? I think that's the bigger risk for most parliaments.

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

Right, so another example might be, say, if a government were to use the pandemic as an excuse to close down the legislature completely and then replace it with a committee type of structure that would meet for eight hours a week or less. Would that be something you would see as a concern as well?

[Greg Power]

This is a issue that has come up in a number of parliaments. I might hand it over to my colleague Sue, who may be able to clarify some of this, but certainly in a number of parliaments that decision has been taken, so the decisions of the entire parliament have been delegated to a smaller committee. The extent to which that works or doesn't varies, according to the parliament and its provisions for having a steering committee or a bureau. In South Africa, I think, if I'm right—I'm looking at Sue—they rejected this idea for exactly these sorts of reasons.

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

Okay.

What about the idea of a government using the pandemic to prevent up to two-thirds of the standing committees of a legislature from being able to meet even virtually and limiting the powers of the committees that are able to meet? Would that be something that you would think would be of concern?

[Greg Power]

Yes. All of these things are of a concern, yes, absolutely.

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

Okay.

On the idea of a government using this type of situation to prevent opposition politicians from being able to advance motions or to advance debates on topics they have concerns about, or even from being able to use a written question system to get some detailed accountability, would those things be of concern?

[Greg Power]

I think they're all altering the nature of the way in which parliaments are used to operating and limiting the ability of certain parliamentarians to contribute.

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

To go another route with it, if a government were to use the pandemic situation to pass something through what we call an order in council, or something that would be considered a cabinet decree or something of that nature, to be able render illegal the possession of billions of dollars of property owned by private citizens, would that also be the type of concern that—

[Greg Power]

I get a sense you're alluding to stuff that is beyond my knowledge and very specific cases.

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

Very well.

[Greg Power]

I think everything you're referring to, anything that limits what had been the previous rights of parliamentarians to introduce certain things, are, obviously, issues of concern.

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

Absolutely, okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you.

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

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