Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 16th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

I have Dr. Duncan and Mr. Richards on the speakers list. If anyone else wants to get on the list for that issue, can you identify yourself?

Can we hear from Andre, please, on what you will be providing in the briefing so that it can guide us? Then we will carry on with the question that the clerk just posed with regard to Thursday's meeting.

[Andre Barnes, Committee Researcher]

Madam Chair, due to the tight timelines in producing the briefing notes, I tried to anticipate what the committee would like to hear about. The first briefing note will discuss the order of reference. It will discuss some broad considerations about procedures and practices that would be touched on by what this study would involve, but it's such a broad study that really all procedures and practices would be affected by what we're studying. It will also cover what the provinces and territories have done, with some suggested questions for the witnesses.

I'll try to roll out the briefing notes as fast as I can, but due to translation, that's probably.... Now that I've heard the suggestion from Mr. Turnbull, I will try to add that for Tuesday. I might not have time to do so, but I will certainly get that going for next Thursday's briefing note and for future briefing notes.

Please keep the suggestions coming, and I will add them to the next briefing notes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Andre. You always do an amazing job. I know you won't disappoint.

Next, the clerk was asking whether we can have some idea of what to expect for Thursday's meeting. From all the conversation that's happened, it seems that we have the Speaker and the Clerk, and then we have an expectation of having at least health experts or legal and procedural and constitutional people after that. I think it's a discussion about choosing between those two categories right now.

On the list I have Dr. Duncan.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I really appreciate the thoughtful comments today. I have to really push that it has to be health up front, and as up front as we can make it. Even though the curve is flattening out, Canada is still reporting more than 1,000 new COVID-19 cases per day, cases that will likely need to be treated in hospitals and ICUs and will strain the health care system. There's still a steady stream, and it's really important to not get complacent and to ensure that our physical distancing measures and public health measures that are put in place are maintained. What we really want to see is a reduction in the number of new cases per day, and we've got to hear from our health officials again. This comes back to public health, science and evidence.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Mr. Richards is next, and then it will be Mr. Brassard.

Would anyone else like to get on the speakers list?

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

I would like to be on the speakers list.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

After Mr. Brassard, it will be Ms. Blaney.

Go ahead, Mr. Richards.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My thought was that after the officials, maybe we would be exploring primarily procedural issues and things like that. It might be wise to hear from other experts in that same area. That said, if we're willing to go with my suggestion to expand the meetings by an hour so as to have two one-and-a-half-hour panels, it might be possible to do both on that day. Barring the decision to do that, I would suggest we would want to look at those types of officials on the Thursday meeting, just to keep us on the track that we would already be on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Mr. Brassard is next.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to address the point that Ms. Duncan brought up with respect to health.

I think all of us clearly understand that we're in the middle of a public health crisis at this point. Our mandate from Parliament is to look at virtual sittings and the impact that will have. If we require information, there's plenty of information out there with respect to public health official advice.

The health committee has been dealing with this for the better part of two weeks. Given the tight timelines that we're in, with all due respect to Ms. Duncan's point, I think we need to focus on our mandate and leave the public health aspect to the health committee. If there are any references that are to be made, if there is any information to be gathered, we can certainly have the analysts check in with the public health analyst to seek that advice if we have any questions.

There is plenty of information out there with respect to public health, and I think we should stick to our focus, which is specifically to deal with the issues on virtual sittings, and there are many of them, as clearly evidenced by the conversation today. We are going to run out of time. I would not want to take any time away from those issues that are going to be important to this committee as we write a report to Parliament with respect to virtual sittings.

I'm not diminishing the public health aspect of this right now, but there's plenty of conversation going on at the health committee. We could use them as reference if we need to, but we need the time to deal with these issues directly.

Clearly, Madam Chair, based on some of the conversation that we're having and the potential of witness lists and the scope of what we need to look at, we'll not have enough time to even deal with the virtual sittings, let alone any public health information that's required from us to make a decision when that information is already out there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Mr. Brassard.

Ms. Blaney is next.

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

Thank you so much, Chair.

I just want to express my deep appreciation for Dr. Duncan's comments. I have to say that the context of everything we are talking about right now is within that health frame. I also agree that the health committee is doing a lot of that work and I think it would be important for us to check in on a regular basis in committee, reminding ourselves about our commitment to doing this because of COVID-19, because of what we're dealing with across Canada, but not to lose too much time. I think that is going to be the struggle.

Personally, I would like to hear, hopefully sooner than Tuesday, if there is a possibility for us to expand these meetings. I think just having an understanding of the capacity within the House would really help us, as a committee, to make that kind of decision. What I would like on Thursday as well is to get to the constitutional and legal experts as quickly as possible. I think that will really frame our moving forward in a really strong way.

That is my recommendation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Ms. Blaney.

We are exploring the extension right now, and maybe by the end of the meeting we will have some information, or quite soon afterward. We are definitely looking into that, and I take your points.

Does anyone else want to comment further about Thursday's meeting and get on the speakers list? We're trying to figure out whether we can extend it and maybe put in both. I think the point that we can accommodate both of these perspectives was brought up by Mr. Richards as well. Would anyone else like to speak to that?

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Yes, it's Mr. Turnbull here. Can I get on the speakers list?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes, absolutely. Go ahead, Mr. Turnbull.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I appreciate all the comments that were made, especially those by Ms. Duncan.

I think it's really important to ground this study in the realities that we're in. This context is, I believe, unique in many aspects. Parliament has never had to function within a global pandemic before, as far as I know. I quote from one particular report that has been done on a virtual parliament in the U.K., which said we're confronting “a highly infectious and potentially deadly coronavirus, with a long incubation period during which many people are asymptomatic”.

I think we need to understand and be grounded in this study in terms of why we're doing it. We're doing this study because meeting physically in Parliament actually poses undue health risks for many people who work there, including MPs but also including the many support staff who are needed on site for those physical meetings. I think we're studying this because we have a responsibility to not put any of our colleagues at risk, and I think this is really important.

Although I really appreciate Mr. Brassard's comments that the health committee is doing exceptional work, I really do feel that we need to ground this in a few health experts up front just to keep us grounded. I think we really need to keep our feet on the ground.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Mr. Turnbull.

Monsieur Therrien, do you have any feedback as to how you see health experts and procedural or legal experts being at Thursday's meeting?

[Alain Therrien, Bloc, La Prairie, QC]

No. This is in line with my earlier suggestion regarding the constitutional aspect. I'm completely fine with it. I don't see any issue in this area.

Clearly we must address the issue of public health and be aware of what the future may hold. I completely agree with this.

[The Clerk]

Madam Chair, I've just received word internally from House management that our technical resources could probably accommodate the committee meeting for three hours at a time instead of two hours, meaning Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m., which would then potentially create an opportunity to split a three-hour meeting into two 90-minute meetings so that two different panels could come for each of those 90-minute sections.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Okay. Thank you. Thanks for working so quickly on that, Justin. I think this will help resolve the desire of the committee members to fully explore this issue and be able to give good recommendations to the House, so I appreciate that.

The reason I—

[The Clerk]

There is one last thing. Could I confirm, then, that on next Thursday we can go forward with the three-hour meeting? We'd split it into two panels.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but am I understanding correctly that one panel would be related to public health issues and the other panel would be legal, constitutional and procedural experts?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Correct, and I think we have had some discussion about having the law clerk also, perhaps in other meetings as well. Just as we have your expertise available to the committee, perhaps there might be some meetings where it would be valuable to have the law clerk on the line as well so that if questions popped up, he'd be able to supplement.

We'll keep that on the side, but that is how I see it right now. We can open it up to other members.

The reason I've been reaching out to some of the members for feedback is that I cannot see your facial expressions right now. I don't know if people are nodding in agreement or if people are in complete disagreement with some things, so I'm going to continue to call upon the different parties to try to get a sense of where we're at. I understand that maybe not all members are in line with their party at all times, but I think that's the best we can do for this teleconference today.

Does that sound good to the Liberal members?

Would anyone like to speak as to having that three-hour meeting for Thursday, with one of the two parts to the meeting being on health and the other on procedural and legal aspects? Would that be okay?

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

I will say yes on behalf of the Liberals, Ruby.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Ginette.

Would the Conservatives be agreeable to that?

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

Maybe what we would want to do is expand on the health part. We talked about it being health and security. Those two things do go together to some degree, I think, so maybe we would want to have some balance of the health and security aspects on that panel. Otherwise I could agree with that idea.