Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 13th, 2021

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Just enough for one bath or a shower.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

You're not on mute, Peter.

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

Talking about the Prime Minister's behaviour often makes me want to shower as well, Peter, so I appreciate your contribution and I take it as being quite on theme. Relevance is a rarity here on committee.

It's because of the fact that there are questions as to the way in which the Prime Minister exercises the special prerogatives of his office that we need to have a timely study of Bill C-19. If the Prime Minister would just say that he is not going to call an election during the summer, we'd have lots of time to study Bill C-19. It's not a problem. We could study it over the summer and we could have something that the House could be prepared to vote on in the fall. The urgency for studying Bill C-19 comes directly as a result of the behaviour of our Prime Minister, and I put it to you that it's a false sense of urgency.

Canada does not require an election this summer. There shouldn't be an election this summer. Canadians don't want an election this summer. All of the opposition leaders have pledged not to trigger an election before the summer because they've all pledged not to trigger an election during the pandemic.

Certainly if we can get through these next five weeks without the opposition parties voting non-confidence, there could be no reason for the Prime Minister to decide to trigger an election in the summer, other than because he considers it to be in his own political interest. The opposition parties can't obstruct a Parliament that's not meeting. If there's a way to do that, why don't you let me know?

I'm looking at Mr. Turnbull there, because it seems to me that if Parliament is not meeting, opposition members can't obstruct it. Therefore, it seems to me that it would be perfectly reasonable for the Prime Minister to say that if we get to the point where Parliament is not meeting, he's not going to be the one to call an election. We can't get that. That's where the sense of urgency comes from on Bill C-19.

It would be a mistake to simply move on from this study. I do think we need to get to the point where we report back to the House. Look, PROC has spent a completely disproportionate amount of time debating how to proceed with this study. I think it would be an awful shame if we didn't report anything back to the House on that.

Simply moving on to the study of Bill C-19 and not coming to some kind of agreement as a committee on how we might proceed is a mistake. I recognize that it's challenging. I know that government members have dug in on various positions over the course of the debate, and I recognize that opposition parties don't always agree and that it can be difficult to carve a path forward. That's something I mentioned last time in the context of committing to try to do that, as the other parties did. We did indeed meet to try to find that way forward.

Again, we've seen what can happen to a committee when the interests of one political organization are at play. We've been going through dozens of hours of debate because Liberals don't want to have a vote on the motion that was put forward, despite the fact that there seems to be a majority consensus on the committee to move forward in the way proposed in Mrs. Vecchio's motion. Then you try to take three different political organizations, with different goals and different thoughts about where to go and how to do it, and that discussion certainly can become quite difficult as well.

However, we have been having that conversation over some time because I don't think anybody wants to hold this up. I don't want to speak for anyone, but certainly my impression in the discussion with the other parties is that I don't detect a real desire to be holding up the study of Bill C-19. However, I did also hear loud and clear that there needs to be some kind of resolution to this study.

I want to remind Liberal members on the committee that the reason we're in this study is because of a mechanism that the Prime Minister brought forward. As members here have heard me say before, it's not my preferred method for how to deal with questions on prorogation, or even dissolution. Again, I think those are very related powers, and they should be dealt with in a related way.

The best way that is not outlandish or coming from nowhere...In fact, the United Kingdom, which is where our model of Westminster parliamentary democracy comes from, has adopted a provision, so that it's actually Parliament that makes decisions about prorogation and dissolution.

Unfortunately, those more democratic ways of navigating the questions of dissolution and prorogation have not yet come to Canada. There are some reasons why it's more difficult to implement in Canada, but like many politically difficult situations, provided there's adequate supply of political will, there's usually a solution.

When it comes to prorogation, for instance, I've heard that Canada may even need to go so far as having a constitutional amendment in order to allow the House of Commons to make a decision about prorogation as opposed to leaving it uniquely up to the Prime Minister.

There have been some really interesting witnesses here. I think of Hugo Cyr, for instance, who was here talking about prorogation. Some witnesses essentially proposed workarounds in recognition of the fact that, by convention, it seems to be a constitutional power of the prime minister, and therefore, needing some kind of constitution-level intervention in order to change the way that prerogative would be exercised.

I think the best way to deal with prorogation...That would get us around the need to even have this study, because we would have a fulsome debate in the House of Commons, and then a decision by elected members of our Parliament on whether to prorogue or dissolve earlier than a fixed election date. That's the gold standard.

However, that's not the one the Prime Minister chose. What did the Prime Minister choose? The Prime Minister chose to say that the government would table reasons for prorogation, and that those would be deemed referred to PROC. Presumably, that didn't mean, “Let's refer them to PROC, so that PROC can use the file as a door stop.” As is often the case, when things are deemed referred to a committee for the purpose of study, just as the estimates are typically deemed referred, a committee typically deals with them if it's a well-functioning committee, and they are not held up in filibuster over what is a pretty straightforward motion.

That was the Prime Minister's solution, and that's why we're here. So, yes, Liberals did agree to have a study of prorogation. I take that to mean that they agreed to honour the Prime Minister's intent when he said that political abuses of prorogation were real. He recognized, in that proposal, the political dimension of accountability, that is to say, the dimension of accountability that goes above and beyond, strictly speaking, legal questions of the kind that a conflict of interest commissioner might rule on, for instance.

Here we are, and we're undertaking that study. We're undertaking it for the first time ever. I say with some measure of embarrassment, not individually but as a member of this committee, that when people look back to the founding study at PROC on reasons for prorogation, in some future instance where a prime minister is alleged to have prorogued for political reasons above other kinds of more altruistic reasons, or political reasons in the pejorative sense...There can be political reasons in a good sense, as well, and some of those may have been at play with respect to the pandemic, but they were used as cover for some other kinds of political motivations.

Fair enough, let's get the guy in here. Let's talk to him about it. That's the whole point after all.

Here we are, and this has been the kind of launch, if you will, of Prime Minister Trudeau's idea about how to stem political abuses of prorogation. I don't think it's gone very well, but I don't think it's beyond redemption.

It was very good until the filibuster started. We heard from people that we ought to have heard from. I'd have been happy not to have heard from the Government House Leader, though, and go straight to the Prime Minister, because, as I say, it was very clearly a decision for him to make, and that he did make.

We did all of that. It was going very well and then there were some reasonable proposals for other witnesses that had to do with some of the alleged reasons for prorogation. Suddenly, that wasn't acceptable to the government, so here we are stuck in a filibuster.

I think it's really important, in terms of setting a good precedent, that the Prime Minister appear. I think it's even more important that the upshot of this entire process not be that PROC fails to report back and that the Prime Minister uses a similar special prerogative to end the Parliament before PROC ever has a chance to report back. It would be a really bad precedent to say that these reasons are going to be flipped to PROC, that they might start to study it and hear from some good voices, but then they descend into a completely unproductive, months-long period of debate and never emerge. I think that would send the wrong message.

I would hope that if the Prime Minister or some of his folks are listening or some Liberals on the committee report back, there would be some sense of duty to this proposed solution so that we don't end up in a place where we don't even bother reporting back. How sad would that be?

I do think it's incumbent upon us to work towards some kind of resolution to what has been a very frustrating ordeal. That's why members of the opposition parties have been discussing what a way forward might look like. It's an odd position of reverse onus.

I've been part of opposition filibusters. If you're in an opposition filibuster, usually you see it as your own responsibility to find a way out of the filibuster.

With respect to Mr. Turnbull for having tried, it didn't really work. We haven't seen a lot of flexibility in terms of what the government might be prepared to accept or not accept. We had an up-and-down offer from Mr. Turnbull. I'm appreciative of the fact that we finally got to vote on that. I think that was good. As I say, it kind of clears the space for trying to find some other kind of alternative.

We may have to cycle through several attempts. If we can get into a place where we're proposing things and dealing with them without having to debate each proposal for months at a time, I think the committee would be well served. I think this special mechanism of the Prime Minister would be well served because it might actually get us to a point where we break the impasse.

If the model is that we're waiting on one person to propose one solution that's automatically going to rally everyone and if it doesn't, we're stuck in a months-long filibuster, we don't have enough time to make that model work. Arguably, even if we had another two years, we might not have enough time to make that model work. I'm just basing that on the precedent we've already set with the length of time we've spent considering Mr. Turnbull's amendment. That all gets hard to do.

I would definitely encourage, as we work through these things, a spirit of voting within a few meetings on any one proposal, so if it's not the one that's going to do it, we can dispense with it and move on and hear some other proposal. I think that might be a nice way to break the deadlock. There is definitely going to have to be some deadlock-breaking at this table, it seems to me.

I don't know that we're going to be able to negotiate something behind the scenes that brings everyone aboard all at once. The rhythm of the committee has to change because it's been quite slow. We need to move from what we've been doing in a couple months to doing in a couple meetings. I'm willing to make some proposals and not take their passage or failure personally. I think one is always disappointed if one makes a proposal toward resolution and it doesn't pass—at least in the sense of being hopeful for a resolution.

I would rather know that something I propose isn't going to work within a couple of meetings than to have to take a couple of months to get to a rather obvious conclusion.

In any event, I do now want to propose something. I know it may not be the thing for which everybody suddenly says, “That's amazing, I love it, obviously, why didn't we all think of this months ago?” I want to throw it out there as something for consideration. I would urge members to take a reflective approach to the proposal. I do think that there are advantages and disadvantages for all in this proposal. I certainly don't want to be causing any knee-jerk reactions.

I think it's fair to say, and other opposition members can correct me if I'm wrong, that I don't think we have a fully formed three-party proposal that's going to come forward today, so I'm going to put something out there that I think probably won't be shocking to anyone, but with an adequate period of reflection I think may be the solution. If it's not the way forward, then perhaps we could vote on it next day and dispense with it, so that the table can be clear for somebody else to put something forward. Maybe in the meantime there will be some discussions that help shepherd us all towards a common solution. I would certainly invite that and be happy to talk to people about what that might look like, if it's not the thing that I'm going to propose.

would like to propose an amendment to Ms. Vecchio's motion. I would move that the motion of Karen Vecchio concerning the committee's study of the government's reasons for the prorogation of Parliament in August 2020 be amended by 1) replacing paragraph a) with the following:

a) renew the invitation issued to the Prime Minister to appear before the committee, provided that if he does not agree, within one week of the adoption of this motion, to appear for at least three hours, the Chair shall be instructed to report to the House forthwith a recommendation that this committee be empowered to order his appearance from time to time;

2) by deleting paragraphs b) through h).

I want to talk about some of the advantages of this proposal. One of the things that we have heard loud and clear at this table many times is that the government takes exception to the idea that the procedure and House affairs committee would be for lack of a better term—I'm not sure I like this term—but relitigating the WE Charity scandal in the way that it has been dealt with at other committees.

We have heard that very clearly. It's something that I'm prepared to do, because I still think there's a dearth of answers. As I say, I don't think the government has really adequately been held to the kind of political accountability that I think the WE Charity scandal demands. That's why I've been very happy and comfortable about supporting Ms. Vecchio's motion.

I do hear that the government doesn't want to do that. For me, the question about the WE Charity scandal in the context of this study isn't about all of the details of the WE Charity scandal. We have seen the ethics committee deal with a number of those questions and hear from a number of the witnesses who were in Ms. Vecchio's motion. Rather, for me, the interest of the WE Charity scandal, as I say, has to do with the timing, the length and the nature of the prorogation that the Prime Minister in fact executed. Why did he prorogue on the day that he did? Why did he cancel a unanimous decision of Parliament to have four summer sittings? Why did he not heed calls by at least some opposition parties—I'll speak for the NDP here—to resume earlier in order to have some time for parliamentary dialogue about the replacement of CERB?

These are all important questions. I think the details of the WE Charity scandal do bear on those issues. I do want to talk to the Prime Minister about those things. Do I need to talk to the Deputy Minister and Minister of Finance, and to the Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth? Even though a lot of the parliamentary dialogue certainly, and a lot of the media conversation and the evidence, points to their involvement in the way that the WE Charity scandal unfolded, they aren't the decision-makers when it comes to the timing and the nature of prorogation.

While I would like to hear from them here, and while I think their interventions may have some light to shed on how things happened, I don't need to hear from them in the same way in a study on prorogation. If I have to prioritize one witness in the entire motion by Ms. Vecchio, the Prime Minister is clearly it—for political reasons, sure, in the best sense. He was the decision-maker. The very kind of political accountability that Parliament is at least in part established to deliver rests with him. He is the appropriate person to ask about those issues.

I don't think I'm going to learn more about the nature of prorogation from the Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth than I am from the government House leader. Those are two people who are part of a cabinet that the Prime Minister might have spoken to about the decision, but they aren't ultimately responsible for it. I do think that in the case of the Prime Minister, there's cause to believe that we might yet learn something. Even if we don't learn something new, it will have been a valuable exercise. That is how political, as opposed to legal, accountability operates. The decision-makers have to answer questions about what they did and why they did it.

Likewise, I think it would be very interesting to hear from Mr. Morneau about what his reasons for resigning were and why he thinks his resignation happened. I dare say it was “precipitated”...but I won't use that kind of prejudicial language, although it did happen right before prorogation. Does Bill Morneau think there's a link between those two things? I'd love to hear whether he thinks so or not.

The point remains that it wasn't Bill Morneau who decided to prorogue Parliament. It wasn't Bill Morneau who went down to the Governor General's residence when he did—because he didn't. The Prime Minister did. He made that call.

It would be useful to hear from Katie Telford, who I'm sure was involved in the decisions that led up to the Prime Minister exercising his special prerogative in the way that he did. Is it strictly necessary in order to better understand prorogation? It is not anywhere near to the same degree that the Prime Minister is.

The Kielburgers clearly had something to do with WE Charity, had a role to play in the proposal that WE Charity was pursuing with the government and had relationships with government that landed Bill Morneau in a conflict of interest. Did they decide when Parliament would be prorogued? No, they didn't decide that. Only one person could decide that, and that was the Prime Minister.

In a study of prorogation, who is it most important to hear from out of all these witnesses? It's the Prime Minister. There's no big surprise here, but I think it's important to reinforce. I recognize that the Kielburgers weren't the ones who made that decision. By saying we're going to limit the scope of this motion, does that mean there will be no questions about WE Charity for the Prime Minister? Absolutely not. If the Prime Minister appears, those questions will be properly directed at the decision-maker on prorogation. They can be asked in a way that gets to the bottom not just of the fact of prorogation, which obviously happened and is obviously a prerogative of the Prime Minister to prorogue, and nobody has ever disputed that....

The question is how he has used that prerogative and whether he has used it appropriately. There you have to get into the details of the actual prorogation. While many of these witnesses can help us get into the details of something that I think still calls for answers—that is, the WE Charity scandal itself—they can't give us any kind of privileged information or insight into the nature of the prorogation.

The same would go for the Perelmuters, who have testified at other committees that were looking directly, and rightly so, and I'm glad for their work.... I'm grateful to Charlie Angus for the leadership he showed in that study and the work he did along the lines of holding the government politically to account for what was a serious scandal, but I don't think that the Perelmuters are going to have a lot of insight into the nature of prorogation. Again, while I think it would be helpful to hear from many of the witnesses in this motion in order to better understand the WE Charity scandal, which might help us better understand some of the motivations of the Prime Minister, if we're looking to try to wrap up this study now on an expeditious basis after spending a lot of time on it, I don't think they're the one witness that we need to hear from in order to get that work done.

Likewise, there was a call for the production of a lot of papers, papers that I think ought to be produced, papers that I think would give more insight into the WE Charity scandal that Canadians deserve to know about, but those papers are not going to shed light on the question of why the Prime Minister decided to prorogue Parliament the day after the resignation of his finance minister, which apparently had nothing to do with the WE Charity scandal or his, at that time, very recent appearance before another committee of the House where he was held to account for the fact that he actually had a debt of $40,000 to the organization that was being sole-sourced for a large government contract that he had only cleared the night before.

Are we really supposed to believe that none of these things are connected? I'm sorry, Madam Chair, but I wouldn't be doing my job if I accepted such a facile explanation.

Even all those things considered, there's still a question, as I say, when you consider all of the needs of the pandemic and the desire of many government backbenchers to spend some time consulting with their constituents on what might be in the Speech from the Throne. I would note, Madam Speaker, that we only had one scheduled sitting day over the time of that prorogation, but that one scheduled sitting day also happened to coincide with the deadline for documents like the ones called for in this very motion that we've been debating.

Our Liberal colleagues would like us to believe that it's a coincidence. Coincidentally, the timing of the prorogation just happened to rub up against the deadline when documents like the ones in this motion were actually due and which the government clearly doesn't want to provide.

Again, we have this odd coincidence about the timing and the nature of that prorogation, how long it lasted and the effects of proroguing at that exact moment, on the heels of the resignation of the finance minister after embarrassing testimony on the WE Charity scandal and on the eve of an important deadline for the tabling of documents that would lay out many details about that scandal.

Despite the recent finding that the Prime Minister wasn't in a legal conflict of interest, what we do know is that his right-hand man was. We know that political accountability has a broader application than legal accountability and that the Prime Minister does share in the political blame for this fiasco that even the finance minister refuses to take responsibility for. If he has taken responsibility for it somewhere, then I would urge my colleagues to point us in the direction of where that happened, because I haven't seen it yet.

In fact, I think the predominating quote in response to inquiries about the recent conflict of interest report by the former finance minister, Mr. Morneau, is “no comment”, which has been what I've seen. If he has commented more extensively on that, I haven't seen it. I might have seen something that was a prepared statement that was to the effect that it was in the past and it doesn't matter anymore. Of course, we all remember Rafiki's compelling refutation to Simba in The Lion King of the claim that actions of the past don't matter anymore.

I'm just trying to generate some interest on the committee, Madam Chair. I am beginning to suspect they might be losing interest, so I thought maybe a reference to The Lion King would spice things up, but it's a tough crowd. I appreciate that, and I appreciate the reasons for that.

What am I saying? What I'm saying is that this particular amendment offers, I think, a real and significant olive branch to members of the Liberal Party on the committee who have spent a lot of time telling us how irrelevant many of the witnesses are. While I don't agree with them in that assessment, what I am offering here is to dispense with all of that. Not only am I dispensing with that, or proposing that the committee does, I am also reducing the amount of time that the Prime Minister would have to appear from three hours to one.

Essentially, everything that Liberal members of this committee found objectionable in the other motion disappears except for one hour of the Prime Minister's appearing. That's, I think, pretty good, because, if you were to make a list of what the Liberals didn't like about this motion, to have everything off the list except for one thing, and to have the length of that presentation be reduced by two-thirds, is a pretty good offer.

I won't speak for the other parties on this, but what I will say is that I think I'm not alone in feeling that it is very important that the Prime Minister appear in this study.

I won't be alone in asking some questions about the WE Charity scandal in that hour either, but my questions will certainly revolve around the circumstances of the prorogation, as I see them mattering to Canadians who were concerned, while on CERB, about having a better sense of what was waiting for them on October 1. Having then participated in the rushed debate that occurred at the end of September in Ottawa, I can tell you, that would have been time well spent, having heard from tons of Canadians from coast to coast to coast in the lead-up to that deadline about the anxiety and the uncertainty they faced. I can tell you that it would have been productive to create more space for Parliament to hash out what the agreed-upon way forward at the end of CERB would have been.

Having heard from students who were very disappointed that the NDP's proposal for a student benefit was cut down and didn't match what was on CERB, and the fact that those extra jobs that were supposed to top up that income support didn't happen, I can tell you that this was a decision that is very real to a lot of Canadians and had an impact on them in a very difficult time.

Folks on CERB ultimately did get an answer. We, the NDP, were ultimately able to maintain the benefit level. Even last summer, the government was looking at cutting the benefit level. We were able to avoid that. I was happy for that.

Students, on the other hand, never did see that income they lost made up. When you're a worker and the only thing you have to sell is your time, that kind of lost time really matters. It's not that easy to bounce back from. There's no extra cheque coming for the time you couldn't spend working and getting paid a wage. That's why this continues to be a very relevant matter.

Again, I know this is not totally new. I don't know that any committee member is going to get particularly excited at the proposal. In my experience, the fact that nobody is particularly overjoyed is usually a sign that some kind of meaningful compromise is afoot. I can tell the committee that I share that feeling in respect of this amendment, but I do think it's a way forward. We clearly need a way forward.

Before the constituency week, we were building some momentum to a way forward. I appreciated that Liberal members of the committee allowed us to have a vote on the amendment that had been before us for a very long time, to clear the way to have a discussion about another proposed solution. Given the fact that we spent months on the last solution, I think it would make sense to spend at least this meeting on the current solution. I'm quite open to having a vote on it at the next meeting. I think that might be useful. If folks want to talk about it a little bit more, I'm obviously happy to do that.

If this isn't going to be the one to do it—which I hope nobody will decide today because in these kinds of delicate conversations, time for reflection is important—then I do think that we can try to dispense with it relatively quickly the next day or at some subsequent meeting in the not-too-distant future.

I'm trying to honour here what I perceive to be an important need to conclude this study. I really think it's important that we report back to the House somehow. I'm satisfied that if we hear from the Prime Minister, we can at least report back. That's something we can get done. That's worth an hour of the Prime Minister's time. I think it would be worth it, anyway.

Frankly, I think there's a duty here, as the decision-maker, for him to appear. It's a double duty because I think he also has a duty to honour what he proposed as the solution to potential political abuses of the power of prorogation. He proposed that decision-makers answer for that. Of course, he is the decision-maker. That's important and that allows us to get on, conclude this study and report something back before the end of June. I think it is very important to do, so that when people look back on this....

I appreciate that, clearly, Liberal members feel there was no political abuse either in the fact of having prorogation or, apparently, even in the details of the prorogation, such as the nature, the length and the timing. That's fine, but that doesn't mean that at some future point they aren't going to suspect another prime minister of having abused that political power to prorogue Parliament. Indeed, I can find some common ground with Liberal members on the committee about past abuses of prorogation.

The question then becomes what we think is a good process for how to introduce some meaningful political accountability into that. I think having some written reasons tabled and forwarded on to PROC, which hears from some academics and then just buries it as a testimony item rather than reporting back to the House, would be a mistake. That's what we're at risk of doing if we don't find a way to wrap up this study.

I think the quickest and most straightforward way of doing that is to have that opportunity for political accountability with an appearance by the Prime Minister. That allows us to move on quickly, if the Prime Minister is prepared to do that in the spirit of his own solution.

The other reason it's important to try to find some kind of conclusion to this is that I want to see us get on to the study of Bill C-19. I want to see Bill C-19 sent back to the House with enough time for it to pass before summer. Again, to be very clear, I mean that I want that because I don't trust the Prime Minister not to call an election during the summer.

If the Prime Minister would do one of two things, it would help the situation at the committee a lot. If the Prime Minister would appear, I think this would reasonably resolve our issues here at the committee. If the Prime Minister would say that he's not going to call an election during the summer months when Parliament isn't meeting, then that would give us more time to consider Bill C-19 and again would help with the work of the committee.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's an odd scenario to have government members filibustering a committee with an expectation that the opposition is going to help them break their own filibuster. As I say, in the filibusters I've been engaged in before, we talk about what our end game is and we talk about how to get out of it if it's not producing what we want, because we recognize that the people who start a filibuster are the people who have the obligation to finish it.

We're in this odd moment where I think government members are trying to shift the onus onto the opposition to break their filibuster. They can break it at any time. I'm not the one, with the exception of a longer intervention today—and I appreciate the patience and interest of members of the committee with my intervention today—who has been filibustering for the last number of months, so it's not for me to end it. I can't end the filibuster just by stopping talking, which is normally the power of somebody who is engaged in a filibuster, and it's normally up to that person who has the power to end it by stopping to find a way forward.

It's a very odd position to be in, with having colleagues imply that somehow it's the responsibility of the other side of the table to find a way out of their own filibuster so that we can consider their own legislation. I hope the Canadians who are listening appreciate what an unlikely and broken kind of situation this really is. I've done my best in good faith to try to bring about an end to this filibuster on a number of occasions, but it's true that I have not been willing to compromise on the importance of getting the Prime Minister here, because, significantly, I believe there are some really important non-partisan parliamentary reasons for having the Prime Minister at this committee, and I'm not really prepared to bend on those.

This amendment brings us a long way towards getting rid of what government members found most offensive—if you take them at their own word, and we should here—in the motion. In fact, I think just prior to my own intervention, it was Mr. Turnbull's contention that one of the things that was so objectionable about the motion was this litany of witnesses and documents. With this amendment, that's gone. It's a request for the Prime Minister to appear for an hour. All of the additional stuff that government members have said is a fishing expedition that has nothing to do with prorogation—all of that is done. All of that is gone with this amendment, if it passes.

This is a real opportunity for government members to be able to take out of the motion the lion's share, and I'm talking everything but one hour with the Prime Minister—all of the witnesses who are only being called because they have a connection to WE but don't have a clear connection to prorogation except through WE. We hear that Liberal members aren't interested in exploring those connections, even though I think those are connections that ought to be explored. We take them off the table.

The only call here is for the principal decision-maker in respect of prorogation, which is of course what we are studying. How do we know he's the principal decision-maker? Because you can go back to 1935, when cabinet said, by special proclamation, that those decisions—the decisions around prorogation and dissolution—rest with the Prime Minister alone as a special prerogative.

That is to say it is different from many of the other prerogatives of his office that he often jointly exercises with cabinet. It's not to say there wasn't a discussion at the cabinet table, but it is to say that, at the end of the day, he is the sole decision-maker.

It's why the NDP has asked the Prime Minister, not the Deputy Prime Minister, not the Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth, not the Minister of Finance, not anybody else. We've asked the Prime Minister to commit to not calling an election during the summer, because we recognize it is a special prerogative of the Prime Minister to make that call or not. We haven't asked that question of any other member of cabinet. Why? Because no other member of cabinet makes that decision. Cabinet does not make that decision collectively. It's the Prime Minister that does it.

We heard many things about how far-reaching the motion was, what a fishing expedition it was, how we should be talking about prorogation and not going down rabbit holes. While I say to my honourable colleagues on the other side that I don't agree with that analysis of the motion, for the sake of having five weeks left and in the context of a Prime Minister who won't commit to not calling an election during the summer, we need to get on Bill C-19. We need to do it in a way that, above all, sees this committee report back on the issue of prorogation.

It's not for the reasons of this Parliament but for the reason of future parliaments, which is what, presumably, the Prime Minister wanted when he pursued a change to the Standing Orders because he recognized that the prerogative of prorogation was sometimes abused. He wanted a mechanism in order to create the context for political accountability.

If the Prime Minister is really comfortable in his reasons for having prorogued, when and how he did, then he ought to be willing to come to PROC for an hour to allow the work of a senior committee of Parliament to continue. Particularly, in light of the fact that our next bill and the consideration of that bill.... It's a bill of his own government. It's a bill that has a sense of urgency attached to it, because of the way he carries himself in respect of a special prerogative—just like the one we are studying.

When it comes to proroguing and dissolving Parliament, the power is the same. It rests uniquely with the Prime Minister. Bill C-19 is urgent, because he refuses to say that we're not going to have an election during the summer. That has everything to do with his exercise of the prerogative that's at issue in the report we're doing.

Like I say, with no pretension that this is a perfect solution or that it's going to satisfy everybody.... In fact, it will be dissatisfying to all of us in some way, shape or form, but it might be the way that we can move forward on this. Before anybody makes any hasty decisions, it's important to have some time for reflection. It's important to have time for news of this proposal to work its way up to the Prime Minister and the people around him, so that they at least have an opportunity to consider whether they think this is worth it. I do think that the way out of this quagmire is through prime ministerial leadership.

While I may have my own doubts about how on supply that really is, I want the opportunity to be proven wrong in what I think about the Prime Minister. I want to give him the opportunity to come to this committee for an hour and explain his reasons for prorogation, so that we can file our report and move on.

My proposal to you, Madam Chair, seeing that we happen to be at our normal ending time for meetings.... I know my Liberal colleagues are great believers in coincidences, so this is just one more for them to believe in.

I would propose that we suspend our meeting at the normal time, so that we can come back on Thursday at 11 o'clock. Perhaps by then, people will have a sense of where they would like the debate on this particular amendment to go. If at that time, members would like to have a vote so that we can dispense with it, that would be great.

With that, I'll cede the floor.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Mr. Blaikie.

I believe your remarks, miraculously, ended at the right point in time.

If I have consensus from the committee, we can suspend for today.

Seeing no one who said “no”, we are suspended.

[The meeting was suspended at 12:59 p.m., Tuesday, May 25]

[The meeting resumed at 11 a.m., Thursday, May 27]

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

I call this meeting back to order. This is a resumption of meeting number 27 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, which started on April 13, 2021. Of course, as we have been doing for some time now, we are meeting in hybrid format pursuant to the House order of January 25, 2021, and therefore members can attend in person or via the Zoom application.

For now everyone in this committee hearing is attending virtually, except that we have our wonderful staff and our amazing clerk and our interpreters there in person. Actually, I don't know if our interpreters are there. I don't think they are.

[The Clerk]

Yes, Madam Chair, they're here in the room.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Okay. Thank you for all of the help you've given us throughout these hybrid sittings.

This is a reminder to everyone that taking screenshots or photos of your screen is not permitted, and everyone in the room, of course, has to maintain that two-metre social distance, wear a mask at all times when possible, and maintain hand hygiene.

For those participating virtually, please don't forget to select the language you need interpretation for, if you do, and remember to mute and unmute yourself.

Since we are continuing from our last meeting, we have a new amendment on the floor. We no longer have Mr. Turnbull's amendment. We have a new offer on the table, I guess you could call it, by Mr. Blaikie, and hopefully everyone has that amendment in front of them. It is an amendment to Ms. Vecchio's main motion. It was circulated on Tuesday by the clerk when we started discussing it.

Does everybody have that amendment? Let us know if you don't have it for some reason. We can send you another copy of it.

That's what we're on, and we have a speakers list. Mr. Blaikie had the floor when we last suspended, and after that we have Mr. Lauzon and then Mr. Turnbull, and that's it for the speakers list.

Mr. Blaikie, do you want to pick up from where you left off? Did we have a vote at the end of the meeting? No, I think it was just by consensus, so you have the floor. Go ahead.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I had concluded my remarks last time, so I'm happy to have you proceed down the speakers list.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Mr. Blaikie.

Go ahead, Mr. Lauzon.

[Stéphane Lauzon, Liberal, Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Once again, I'd like to thank everyone for being here today.

We made progress as members of this committee and can now see some daylight. Before giving you my own comments, I'd like to thank Mr. Blaikie. He took the time to give us a clear explanation of why , in his proposed amendment to remove the paragraphs following paragraph (a), he wanted the Prime Minister to appear in the week following the adoption of the motion.

I took note of a number of points in Mr. Blaikie's comments because he took the time to properly explain things. He clearly said that he wanted to know whether the prorogation was tied to the WE Charity or to the pandemic. That was at the beginning of his statement. The committee did look into this from the outset, with witnesses, with the presence of Pablo Rodriguez, and with all of the questions we had to deal with about whether the WE Charity or the pandemic was the reason for the prorogation.

Things have changed since then. Time moves quickly in politics. The Ethics Commissioner's report clearly showed that the Prime Minister had no links to the WE Charity, which in turn had nothing to do with the prorogation. The report cleared the Prime Minister, leaving us with the other option—the pandemic. If the pandemic was not a good reason to prorogue Parliament, I now find myself wondering what other reasons for doing so there could possibly be.

If I remember correctly, Mr. Blaikie also came up with an argument about a confidence vote that doesn't hold water. Allow me to explain. Mr. Blaikie mentioned that Canadians did not want an election. He also said that no one wanted an election in the summer and that these were all things for which the prime minister is accountable. However, that's not really the way things work. It's true that a minority government always depends on a vote of confidence or a vote on a budget or a budget statement, a throne speech or various other reasons for opposing a government. One can be forced to call an election, and it is the prime minister's prerogative to go to the Office of the Governor General to request one. However, it's wrong to say that it is solely the prime minister's responsibility.

If the parties work together, an election during the pandemic, and during the summer while waiting for people to be vaccinated, can be avoided. That's not only a prime minister's responsibility, it's the responsibility of the government, and the opposition has an extremely important role to play when it's a minority government.

Everyone knows that political jousting is involved and that the prime minister is not the only person to decide when there will be an election, which is why Bill C‑19 is so important.

No one around this table wants an election or an election campaign to begin next week. However, if there were one, then as a member of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, I would feel irresponsible not to have gone ahead with the study of Bill C‑19. I believe that it's very important.

I'd like to speak to you about something that is essential to the proper operation of Parliament under a minority government. We really all want the same thing, which is to provide better support to Canadians. It's extremely important for the various parties to work together effectively. We currently have an amendment before us. From the outset, I have argued vehemently that the Prime Minister is in the middle of managing a crisis caused by a pandemic. The Prime Minister has an extremely busy schedule. We could always knock on his door and ask him to come and speak to the committee, but doing so at such short notice is almost impossible for him. The wording of the amendment and the motion makes it extremely difficult to require the presence of a Prime Minister who is tied up dealing with a pandemic.

I'm not closing the door. We are continuing with our work, Mr. Blaikie. My colleague Mr. Turnbull demonstrated this clearly in his amendment with respect to the Deputy Prime Minister, who is also the Minister of Finance. That would have shown that we were very open to suggestions. Mr. Turnbull's amendment showed that there were many possible ways of getting answers to our questions and producing a good report. We would have had a better chance of getting the Deputy Prime Minister to appear, even though she too is very busy during this pandemic. She is of course also very busy as Minister of Finance. Wearing two hats is very demanding.

We were ready to move ahead. It's simply a matter of governing properly. I respect all the decisions that this committee will make. We voted against Mr. Turnbull's amendment and I have already moved on to the next one, from Mr. Blaikie.

This pandemic has gone on for just over a year now, and we could not have predicted where we would be now. I gave a presentation this morning about tourism and people were saying they would like to have a longer-term outlook. We would, six or seven months ago, liked to have had long-term forecasts so that we could better plan things like tourism and reopening the borders.

A pandemic doesn't come with an instruction manual. We're here to make decisions based on public health recommendations and we are going to continue to do so.

When we found ourselves in the middle of a pandemic, we didn't think that the priorities of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs would still be the same as those on the list, which we were lined up to deal with at the outset. The priorities are no longer the same today. Sixteen months ago, who could have guessed that the top priority now would be Bill C‑19 in the post-pandemic period?

We need to begin working on how to manage a future pandemic or disaster. We need to focus on those areas where we are likely to be successful. We need to write down what happened now, because it's still fresh in our minds and were still living through it. Now is the time to finalize the reports, and to archive the committee's data and experience so that it can become better in future at managing another pandemic, or even a flood, like the one that occurred in my riding.

We can learn a lot from what we did. Bill C‑19 remains a priority.

I understand why Mr. Blaikie is saying that he would like to turn the page, but from that to wanting the Prime Minister to appear here within a week is rather a stretch. He's all over the place at the moment. Everyone wants to see him. He has an extremely busy schedule. You can't mess with the Prime Minister's schedule like that. I would rather have him managing the country than appearing here before the committee to answer questions about the scale of the pandemic or about the WE Charity. People say they want to know whether he's guilty, even though we all know that he's been cleared by the Ethics Commissioner. I'm still standing my ground, but I agree with Mr. Blaikie when he says we need to vote, at which time I'll decide how to vote. That's all there is to it.

Lately, unfortunately, some people appear to have forgotten that we're in a pandemic, and I find that deplorable. Not only that, but Dominic LeBlanc sent a letter to the leader of the official opposition about the importance of collaboration among the parties because, as we all know, the Conservatives used procedural tactics in the House to slow down debate over Bill C‑19. And here we are with Bill C‑19 is now before us.

As I was saying, Bill C‑19 is upon us. The bill will make it possible for Canadians to vote safely if there is an election. I've heard people speculating about specific dates for the election. We don't have an election date. We don't even have an election calendar. Some are saying that the election will be held this summer, while others are saying that it will be in September. Many journalists have been making predictions based on their own analyses. I'm amused by all this, because I don't have a date. Our priorities are the safety of Canadians, managing a country, and having as many motions as possible adopted before the end of this parliamentary session. This committee has important work to do. We all know that time is slipping by, which means that it's important to prioritize the various matters at hand. I'm pleased to say that thus far, in spite of everything, we've been able to move ahead with this bill.

We've set aside Mr. Turnbull's amendment. I've got over it already. Now, there is another amendment on the table. We need to discuss it because I feel that what Mr. Blaikie has suggested is a compromise. He worked very hard on it, not only in terms of document disclosure, the hours and weeks of work that were required, testimony from the two Kielburger brothers, etc.

We know now that Mr. Blaikie has put some water in his wine.

I'm worried about the timing. It's very difficult for us to ask the Prime Minister to change his schedule and appear here within a week. He needs to meet provincial representatives on a regular basis. We are still negotiating various things with the provinces and territories. There is also the status of the indigenous territories and we are all aware of the Prime Minister's involvement in this issue. In the House this morning, there was another speech at 10 a.m. It never stops. The Prime Minister is in great demand. I'd like him to come and pay me a visit, but he can't. His schedule is too busy.

I'm still of the opinion that the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, the Honourable Chrystia Freeland, could have come and spoken to us at greater length about the need to create a recovery plan and a collaborative approach by the parties that would help Canadians. She's an extraordinary and open-minded woman who generates optimism when she speaks. I'm certain that the Honourable Chrystia Freeland could add some very interesting points.

I'm convinced that she could have spoken to us about the need to step back and develop new priorities for Canadians.

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

On a point of order, Madam Chair, I really appreciate Mr. Lauzon, but could we perhaps get on to this amendment? Three or four times he has referred back to the old amendment. We have heard for the last couple of months about why Chrystia Freeland should be here. That is not on the docket today. Today's docket is the Prime Minister. That's the amendment.

Perhaps we could stick to the Prime Minister's presence. Specific to the amendment, there is only one thing that needs to be discussed here, and that's the Prime Minister.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you for that reminder. I think Monsieur Lauzon was for the most part talking about the Prime Minister, but sure, I guess a reminder never hurts, Ms. Vecchio.

Carry on, Mr. Lauzon.

[Stéphane Lauzon, Liberal, Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC]

In response to the point of order, we are today discussing Mr. Blaikie's amendment, but I'd like to link it to an amendment the committee voted on and rejected. This would make the arguments in favour of requiring the presence of the Prime Minister still valid today. I am not talking about Mr. Turnbull's amendment, but rather about what we might have been able to gain compared to having the Prime Minister appear.

Mr. Blaikie also clearly indicated at the beginning of his speech that what he wanted to ask the Prime Minister was whether the decision to prorogue was based on of the events surrounding the WE Charity or because of the pandemic.

It mustn't be forgotten that after a prorogation, a prime minister is the only person who can submit a report explaining the reasons for it. The Prime Minister did that, without any obligation to do so. No one has forgotten that the Conservatives had prorogued Parliament for no good reason without ever giving an explanation. We agreed to the prorogation criteria on that occasion.

This is really not the time for partisanship. It's time for everyone to work together to help Canadians get through this crisis. I understand what Mr. Blaikie has been saying. He also clearly explained in his intervention how important it was to study Bill C‑19 before the end of the parliamentary session. He did say so. There's a simple way to do just that, and that is to proceed with the study.

Let's allow enough time for the Prime Minister to come, but proceed with the study of Bill C‑19 in the meantime. I think that's the best approach. We have important things to discuss with respect to Bill C‑19. We need some thorough discussions with the whole team, all the committee members. For example, there is the matter of having polling stations open on two additional days, Saturdays and Sundays. There are some good points to be made on this topic. I have some good points to make. Keeping polling stations open for eight hours on Saturdays and Sundays and 12 hours on weekdays requires a lot of volunteers. This needs to be discussed and an effective structure is needed.

I'm keen to discuss Bill C‑19 Because I have some ideas. I've done my homework. It's important to talk about the changes requested by Elections Canada, the scope of the Chief Electoral Officer's powers and how these powers can be extended.

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

On a point of order, Madam Chair, I just want to get back on topic, which is this amendment. I recognize that Bill C-19 is sitting at the door, and it is this filibustering that is holding up all of the opportunities to get to Bill C-19, so perhaps we can get back to Mr. Blaikie's motion, or considering his amendment to that, and get back to it.

I understand that this will probably be overruled, but at the same time, let's get back to the real business of what we're doing on this.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Ms. Vecchio.

Carry on, Mr. Lauzon.

[Stéphane Lauzon, Liberal, Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC]

Once again, this is directly linked to the amendment suggesting that the Prime Minister appear next week. First of all, we all have good reasons to move on to something else and secondly, it's impossible on such short notice for the Prime Minister to come. We appreciate Mr. Blaikie's work, but the time periods are unreasonable or even impossible.

To manage a national pandemic in a country like Canada requires negotiations with other countries, like the United States at our borders, and with indigenous peoples. That's significant. It's extremely important to speak about the things we need to address and allow the Prime Minister enough time to come. I admire Mr. Blaikie's work. He has previously stated the reasons why he wanted the Prime Minister to come and also said that he wanted it to be in the week following the adoption of the motion. No responsible government could demand that from its prime minister.

The third wave we are currently experiencing, in spite of a vaccination process that is going extremely well and is even accelerating, shows how important it is for us to continue to work together and to set partisanship aside for the good of Canadians.

Madam Chair, I'm not going to change my mind on this. You may tell me that it's not related to the motion that was introduced; but I'm sorry, the information I have in hand shows that the motion should be delayed so that we can do other extremely important things.

There are some facets of Bill C‑19 that we need to analyze quickly. If I remember correctly, there is a voting period of 13 days…

[Alain Therrien, Bloc, La Prairie, QC]

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

I enjoy listening to what Mr. Lauzon has to say, and he knows it. However, an amendment has just been proposed and I'd like to go around the table. I'd like to speak. I certainly haven't taken up much time so far. I have some comments to make about the amendment introduced by Mr. Blaikie.

Having listened to Mr. Lauzon's comments, I fully understand his position. That's good. He is entitled to speak and we have heard him. Nevertheless, it seems to me that we could go around the table to hear what other MPs have to say, because this amendment has been introduced. With respect, I just want to point out that I'm on the list. I may be a little impatient, but I'm finding that things are moving rather slowly.

Before we move in the direction that Mr. Lauzon is advocating, I think we should quickly go around the table to see what the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois think. I believe we have understood where the Liberal Party stands, which proves that Mr. Lauzon has done his work properly.

However, before going into this in greater depth, I would have liked to hear from Ms. Vecchio or another Conservative Party member and would also like to hear the Bloc Québécois' position. We could then continue to discuss things at greater length if the Liberals wish. I think you understand where I'm headed, Madam Chair.

With respect, Mr. Lauzon.

[Stéphane Lauzon, Liberal, Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC]

That's fine, Mr. Therrien.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

I absolutely do. It is a good suggestion.

I'm bound to follow the list. Right now we have Mr. Lauzon, Mr. Turnbull and then it's you, Mr. Therrien. Perhaps now that you have intervened and made your suggestion, it will be up to the next speakers on the floor to maybe keep their comments short and pass it on to you if they wish, but that's the speaking order I have right now.

Mr. Lauzon has the floor. Then it's Mr. Turnbull and then it's you, Mr. Therrien, followed by Mr. Long and Mr. Simms. If Mrs. Vecchio wishes to speak, she could be at the end of that speakers list as well, or whoever from her party.

I will also just let everyone know that on the issue of the prorogation study, the draft report—the incomplete draft report, if you want to call it that—is complete thus far, so don't get too upset. I'm not saying it's the final report that I'm about to submit or anything like that. Of course not. It's just that the translators have translated what the analysts have compiled for us thus far, and that is ready to go.

If more witnesses are to be added, those would have to be added and then translated. Everything we've done up to this point is ready for us to view. If the committee wishes to view it thus far, that's something you could do as well. I'm just throwing that out there as something we could do if the committee wishes.

Of course, as the speakers have mentioned, Bill C-19 has been referred, but of course we have the amendment and main motion to take care of, I believe, before we get to that point.

I just thought I'd make a bit of an announcement to let you guys know that both of those things are waiting for us on the sidelines, if we want to take a look at them.

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

On a point of order, I just want to ask specifically about the report.

I know we haven't given drafting instructions or anything like that yet. Right now, I take it that Andre—I see him right there in my camera and know what a great job he does—has all of the data and information that we have received and has already put it into reports for right now. It's waiting to go to translation and then we will look.

Is that the plan?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

I believe that everything that's been compiled so far has already been completed and translated, just to save on time.

Is that correct, Andre?

[Andre Barnes, Committee Researcher]

Yes, that's a correct summary.

Laurence and I thought it would be a good idea just to stay on top of the work by summarizing what we had heard so far and waiting for further instructions from the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

I haven't seen what we have thus far in the report. I just know that it's done. When it gets circulated to everyone, I would see it at that point as well. I just know it is there and I wanted you to know as well that it's there and is fully translated thus far.

I'll give the floor back to Mr. Lauzon.

[Stéphane Lauzon, Liberal, Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much, Mr. Therrien.

I'm going to show that I'm acting in good faith. You may have noticed that I don't have any notes, and I don't need any today to say what I think about what we're going through, and we've acquired enough experience. In the speech I just made, I may have mentioned collaboration a few times. The best I can do with respect to that is give each of you a chance to express yourself on this amendment before I speak again. And of course, I'll raise my hand when I want to speak and wrap up my comments.

Mr. Therrien, I'd like to begin by giving you the floor, because Ryan is next. We need to take into account what Mr. Blaikie talked about for almost 20 minutes. He clearly explained the reasons previously given for the presence of the Prime Minister. I'd also like you to ponder allowing the Prime Minister only a week to appear here before us. I didn't say that I was absolutely against calling on him, but I did say that a week wasn't long enough.

On that note, Madam Chair, I will give the floor to the next person to hear what they have to say to the rest of us. I will raise my hand right away when I'm ready to conclude what I have to say on this matter.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Mr. Lauzon. I appreciate it.

Mr. Turnbull.