Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 16th, 2021

[Allen Sutherland]

I see. What you're asking is with regard to whether government work can occur while the steps for prorogation take place.

I want to make sure, Mr. Therrien, that I understand your question properly.

[Alain Therrien, Bloc, La Prairie, QC]

You said that, when a government is considering proroguing the House, it often holds consultations to justify its decision, and it prepares the writing of a Speech from the Throne to have it delivered. It can do all this at the same time. That was my question, and I misspoke.

I thank you very much, and I thank the witnesses for their presentations.

I have no further questions, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you.

Mr. Blaikie, you have two and a half minutes.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Whether in this case or in the case of some previous controversial prorogations, I think part of the idea for this change in the Standing Orders in the last Parliament was to create a forum for Canadians to get some satisfaction when there are doubts about whether prorogation is really in the public's interest or whether it is in the government's own political interests.

Earlier I heard—and I'm sure you heard the same—the government House leader say that we are from different parties, we have different takes on it, and we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't think anybody would have found that to be a satisfactory answer in the case of the 2008-09 prorogation when Prime Minister Harper prorogued Parliament to avoid a confidence vote.

If the result of this exercise is that we just accept that there are different points of view depending on what your party is and we don't have anything concrete to say about the circumstances of prorogation and the obvious political effects that they have, that will be a disappointment. It seems to me that having the legislature more involved in decisions about prorogation at the front end and evaluating government responses at the front end would do more to mitigate these apparently intractable disputes.

I'm wondering if you have any reflections on that, given your experience in government. I know it is the PCO's job to defend the existing prerogatives of the Queen, but I also know that those prerogatives have changed in different ways over the years. I'm wondering if you have any reflections for us on how that convention might change in this regard in order to try to avoid these kinds of intractable disputes post-prorogation and to have a more constructive process to build consensus around the need for a prorogation.

[Allen Sutherland]

I have, perhaps, a few thoughts on this. The mere fact that the committee is studying prorogation as per the changes in the Standing Orders is novel and represents what, over time, might be a change to the convention.

I would say that the convention is a very long-standing one. It predates Confederation. For the history wonks among us, it goes back to 1530. It is a long-established convention. It has been an established Canadian convention since 1867, and foundational for that convention is that the PM has the prerogative. It often takes place—I'm willing to say always takes place—in a very political context because it's a political move. That's never going to change.

I do think that the standing committee's work is actually a very interesting way of bringing light and sunshine to the decision, so I thank the committee for its work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Mr. Sutherland. We thank you for being here.

Ms. Vecchio, you have five minutes.

Go ahead, please.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

That's fantastic. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that.

Mr. Sutherland, are there any other mechanisms? I note here that it was actually three days that we lost because we lost the sitting days—

[Allen Sutherland]

I'm sorry. You have my apologies.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

It's all good.

We lost more than just one day. We lost two additional days as well, so we lost a total of three days from this, but we did lose all the work that was being done in committees. I recognize that a lot of work being done was focused on WE, and it was very embarrassing for the government, but there were other committees that were doing some sensational work. I note the work that we were looking at, regarding women during the pandemic, in the FEWO committee.

Were there any other mechanisms this government could have used to say, “We're going to reset the agenda but we know it's important to continue to do the committee work”? Were there any other mechanisms through which they could have done that?

[Allen Sutherland]

I did look at this a little bit in preparation for the committee meeting, and one of the things that I focused on was the government bills that were in Parliament prior to prorogation. I would note that with one exception all of them were reintroduced and are making their way through the system. I note that it does appear that—and since it's a minority Parliament, it takes goodwill on both sides—the various bills that were before committee or at second reading have been reintroduced. The one exception, I think, was appropriate. It involves what was then Bill C-3.

In terms of some of the other stuff, I think the government endeavoured to bring things back to the stage they were at before. With regard to the PMBs, there was no practical impact—

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

But on the committee business, they had to restart.

[Allen Sutherland]

That's absolutely right, with the exception of PROC.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Yes, with the exception of PROC.

Are there any times when they can say, yes, here's what we're going to do, but committees, you can go back to business? You have to reset those committees, basically. It is up to the committee to decide, so if you have government members who do not wish to see the WE Charity scandal or anything else brought forward, they will continue to filibuster, which we saw in multiple committees. I just wanted to check if that was a thing.

I also want to look further at this. You're indicating...and I really appreciate it. It brings the light onto this long-standing convention that we have when it comes to prorogation by doing this report. I want to ask you.... Perhaps you cannot be quite fully open to this, but do you feel that this report that was tabled is 100% accurate? Are there any missing details?

[Allen Sutherland]

I'm not in a position to comment on the report. It was tabled. It's the government's reasons and—

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

That's fair enough.

I wanted to look at some other indications, because we had talked about some of the consultations that were being done and the reason they needed to have this. The House leader indicated something about more consultations and being able to amplify all of this. Did you see an incredible increase in consultations after August 18 up to September 23, the day of the throne speech, or had these consultations been going on throughout that period of time?

[Allen Sutherland]

I think there was an uptick, and the reason I'm laughing is that normally I work quite close to the priorities and planning group, and I know that when prorogation hit them, it was a surprise. It was late August and they knew that they had to kick into gear really quickly, so the nature of their consultations, both the public ones and also the ones within government, were quite intense.

I know that there was a comment earlier about how it's only a speech, but it's a very special speech and it does take time to put it together properly. I can assure you that things ramped up really quickly and on multiple levels.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I appreciate that.

I've gone through the speech. Actually, you can take almost three-quarters of the speech and say, “Here's the 2019 and here's the 2020 speech”. The wording may be different, but the change is the COVID, whether it's the economic or the environmental, you know, the two billion trees, there's nothing new there. I understand what you're indicating here—

[Allen Sutherland]

Just on that, there's always a mix of continuity and change in any Speech from the Throne. It would be entirely inappropriate if suddenly black were white and white were black in a speech—

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Yes, that's very fair.

[Allen Sutherland]

—so it's not a surprise that there would be things that would continue on.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I just think that for many of the members we see sitting here, we all knew, as we've indicated, that they were essential programs that were helping Canadians each and every day, like the CERB and all of these benefits that were helping businesses, and they were all coming to an immediate stop. The government introduced Bill C-2, which then became Bill C-4, and now we're back and having to do another bill. I think it might be Bill C-20, but I know that it still hasn't been tabled.

There continue to be these bills that need to be introduced because of the lack of programming or planning on this. I'm not saying that it's an issue because of bureaucrats, but these are some issues.

My last and final question for you is this. When we talk about the writing of the speech—and you indicated the first two paragraphs are always done by the Governor General—was it the work of the senior bureaucrats or the work of the PMO that finalized the speech?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Maybe in the next few minutes Mr. Sutherland will get that in.

Mr. Turnbull.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Sutherland and Mr. Booth, for being here. I really appreciate it.

Mr. Sutherland, I have a quick question for you. How many years have you been in the federal public service?

[Allen Sutherland]

You're asking me my age here.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

No, I was just wondering how many years of experience you bring to this committee.