Evidence of meeting #27 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was prorogation.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:20 p.m.
NDP
12:20 p.m.
Bloc
Alain Therrien Bloc La Prairie, QC
We were supposed to finish at 1 p.m. Would it be possible to end the meeting, entertain Mr. Nater's subamendment and discuss it together on Thursday? That would prevent us from having to listen to Mr. Blaikie's sermons. I don't think he's in a very good position to give them.
12:20 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
I thought you liked my sermons, Mr. Therrien. I'm disappointed.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
12:20 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Thank you very much.
When the NDP reached out to other parties to say, we want to find a way to get Bill C-19 to committee without time allocation, it was a non-starter from the Bloc. Then we got Bill C-19 to committee and then it was the Bloc leader who sent a letter saying they wanted to talk about how to move Bill C-19 forward. We've had many reversals of position by the Bloc. It just seems to depend on the day, Madam Chair, so you'll forgive me if I can't quite decipher the logic of their position.
However, I think it's pretty clear when it comes to the Conservatives. Here we are. We have the opportunity to move forward with a report to make some concrete recommendations about how to improve a standing order in order to prevent future abuses of prorogation, and the Conservatives have picked up the filibuster where the Liberals left off.
I put it to Canadians. Send me your suggestions on how to break this impasse. I would like to put rules in place so that if we have an election during the summer, which the Prime Minister has made it all but clear is his intention unless things are so cataclysmically bad that he can't pull it off, there are some rules in place so that we can have a proper election.
What we've seen here are more delay tactics and efforts, not only to push this report back into the summer where it will cease to exist, but also Bill C-19.
Come on, guys. At a certain point we have to make some decisions here and we do have timelines. I don't like them either, but I'm not the one responsible for the situation we're in either.
I hope at the next meeting people will come actually ready to get on with it, We're probably going to have to look at changing the timelines in the motion, which is obvious to any one with half a brain who's been paying attention—and I know you all have at least half a one. We all know what's going on. When is it going to get fixed [Technical difficulty—Editor] there's an opportunity [Technical difficulty—Editor] pass.
For all the lectures on political this and political that and insinuations and accusations people want to make about me today, I think everyone should go home and look in the mirror before they go to bed tonight.
Thank you very much.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
Because we do have to suspend in about a minute, I just want to ask all of you, would you like me to circulate the report as it's done so far so that everyone has some time to review it so that we can get going on it?
I see some nodding. I'll email that so that you can take a look at the prorogation report.
The other thing is, if we do get through at the beginning of the next meeting disposing of the motions we have before us.... As Mr. Blaikie said, things are getting tighter and tighter. I thought by the end of this meeting we'd get through it all.
You should be thinking about recommendations if you do want to move to completing that study. Ideally, what the clerk and I had in mind was if things were to get to that point today, it would have been nice to have everyone's proposed recommendations in by Friday. Of course, you don't have the report but the report will be sent out to you just to have in the back of your minds to start thinking about those recommendations if we do make progress in the next meeting.
Is that good?
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Madam Chair, I was just going to say that I respect where Daniel is coming from. There is no opportunity to vote right now. I'm just wondering if we're going to go to a vote on this one. Daniel is talking about timelines. This is something that's important, and perhaps we have time to vote. I don't know.
Obviously, the one o'clock was just one o'clock, but it's not really one o'clock, and I was very happy that we got through the last vote. I'm hoping perhaps we can vote.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
It was one o'clock. I am having the clerk tell me that there was a minute here or there, so that's why I was trying to give it, to resolve the situation. But now we have two to three votes to get through at this point, and I think we'd have to get through them at the beginning of the next meeting. I think we can.
We will circulate the report to everybody and hopefully come prepared to vote on all of it, dispose of it, and get started on Thursday's meeting with the report.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
That's awesome, I think, for us. I'm happy about that report. Thank you very much.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
Great. Thank you, everyone.
The meeting is suspended.
[The meeting was suspended at 1:10 p.m., Tuesday, June 1, 2021.]
[The meeting resumed at 11:01 a.m., Thursday, June 3, 2021.]
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
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.
Today's meeting is taking place in hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of January 25. Therefore, members can attend virtually and in person.
Everyone is attending this meeting virtually, so I'll remind you to make sure your interpretation is switched to the correct channel, to make sure that you mute and unmute yourself and you know the rest of the drill.
I'd like to get back to where we left off in the last meeting. Mr. Nater had just moved a subamendment. We are on the prorogation study at this point. There are three motions before us that are in order. Hopefully, we can dispose of these as quickly as possible. My intention is that, depending on what happens, if we do get to the point where we have voted for or against all of these motions, we can move on to the draft report that was circulated to all of you last Tuesday, June 1.
Has everyone received the draft report?
If we do get to that point, we will have to switch to in camera, since consideration of draft reports happens in camera. That link has been circulated to you with the public link as well.
At this point, let's move back to Mr. Nater's subamendment, which was put forward close to the end of the last meeting on June 1. It states:
That the amendment be amended by replacing all the words after the words “disposed of” with the following: “before the Committee begins consideration of Bill C-19”.
I was going over this with the clerk because I want to make sure that everybody knows what decisions they are making, where we are on all of the motions and what the final motion will end up looking like after all of the amendments that we've had. At first glance, when I saw it, I thought the impact of this subamendment would be to make sure that we do not move on to C-19 until the prorogation study is completed. That's a completely understandable desire that Mr. Nater is putting forward. I can completely understand why he would want that.
However, when you put it side by side, it's replacing the words of Mr. Blaikie's previous amendment, which puts in place a timeline. In order for me to know what kind of timeline we're working with, when we remove the words after “disposed of” in Mr. Blaikie's amendment that was already adopted, that is the portion that actually states....
I'll read it out to you and maybe I can have the clerk also read it out for you in case you're not following me.
Mr. Blaikie's subamendment had said:
, and that all questions necessary for the finalization and tabling of the report be disposed of before the end of the day on June 8, 2021 and that the final report be tabled no later than June 11, 2021
If we were to replace the words after “disposed of” with Mr. Nater's subamendment, “before the Committee begins consideration of Bill C-19”, it does essentially remove the timeline that Mr. Blaikie had proposed and that the committee had voted in favour of in a previous meeting.
I'm just wondering, Mr. Nater, if you can explain to the other members and to me if your intention was to remove the timeline or if your intention was just to add it to the timeline.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
The intention was to replace it with that: Basically, let's get this done. My concern is that with the way things are going, as some members maybe want to do, we will basically eat up time over the next two and a half meetings so that the deadline comes and goes, there is no report, and then we move on to Bill C-19 without ever having tabled this report.
So yes, it does get rid of those timelines. The theory is that before we do anything...and there's nothing preventing us from meeting the timeline of Mr. Blaikie. That would obviously be our preference. I just don't want to see us hit June 11 and have missed our own deadline, which we set whether we voted in favour of it or not. The thing is that we want to finish this report and have the report tabled before we go to the next order of business. It does get rid of the timeline, which hopefully we can still meet, but I do not want to see the next three meetings—if we have extra meetings, obviously I'm okay with that as well—eaten up by debating the minutiae of a report for the sole purpose of killing time to get beyond that deadline.
I live in constant optimism that our friends from all parties will meaningfully come to the table, present their suggestions to the report, and not spend two hours debating a comma or a period, but we shall see. Obviously, I am one of four official opposition members of the committee. I can count relatively well, so obviously it's the will of the committee. That's where we're at.
Madam Chair, I will leave my comments there.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
Thank you.
So your intention is to complete the prorogation study, but you believe that in order to do so, the timelines must be removed.
Maybe the clerk can help us better understand the timelines that are in place according to what's been adopted through Mr. Blaikie's previous timelines. Would the committee then be obligated by those timelines to submit a report by June 11? I think that clarifies things. I do believe, from my conversations with all the members in this committee, that it's everyone's intention, just as Mr. Nater wants, to complete this prorogation study and to see it tabled.
Through discussions in this committee, that's what I gather as well, but we can also hear from the members who have their hands up.
First, can you clarify this for us, Mr. Clerk?
12:20 p.m.
The Clerk
Yes, of course, Madam Chair.
Procedurally, there is no problem with maintaining those timelines. In normal circumstances, when all members would be meeting in the room, those timelines would likely be very achievable in the sense that the committee would be able to sit for as long as it takes in order to consider all aspects of the draft report and make a final decision on the draft report.
However, knowing the constraints in terms of resources that not just this committee but all committees face, and the ability to continue sitting possibly indefinitely, if it does end up taking quite a bit of time to go through the report on June 8, we may not, as we know, have full control over the ability to continue sitting indefinitely. We know that generally a lot of these types of decisions are now made in conjunction with the whips and the House administration based on the allocation of resources that committees need to run.
I am reminding everybody in terms of expectations that, despite the will of the committee to potentially want to do this if this ultimately gets adopted, we may not have full control over our own timetable that would necessarily permit the committee to spend as much time as it wants in adopting it.
On June 8, if the report can be processed within the kind of two-hour window that is generally allotted to committee meetings, then it, obviously, shouldn't be a problem, but, as we know, we don't know how long it might take for the committee to consider the report. Then it does create a problem in terms of timelines in order to finalize it.
Before turning it over to you, Madam Chair, one last point I will say is that, in regular times, this type of motion would mean that the committee would start sitting on June 8 and would continue to sit without adjourning until such time as all of their work is finalized on the report. That is the area where we're having difficulty right now because of the allocation of resources. We may not have all the time that might be necessary for the committee to finalize the report.
One last thing I will say about the June 11 portion of the subamendment, which gives the deadline for the chair to present something back to the House, is that one of the questions that's necessary to dispose of the report comes at the very end, when the committee is asked if they want to adopt the report. Obviously, if the committee was of the view that it didn't want to adopt the report after having gone through the whole thing, there would, obviously, be nothing for the chair to report on June 11.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
That could happen in either situation, I think. It depends on the will of all of the members of the committee to want to get that report completed.
I do believe that, in the past, we have seen that, if we do have strict deadlines, the committee is more motivated to try to get its recommendations in, get a vote on those recommendations, move forward and get it done, but I do understand the constraints.
Also, I did want to let the committee members know that today we do have constraints because of House administrative shortages. I have directed the clerk to try to find us that extra time for the meeting on June 8, and I am hoping that we can get through everything. If we do go to a vote today, we would move into the draft report, take a look at the content of the draft report, perhaps have a day or so to submit proposed recommendations by all the different parties, give the analysts time over the weekend to insert that into the draft report, and then we would have a completed draft report to look at and would vote on all of the proposals in the next meeting.
Next we have Mr. Blaikie.
12:20 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Thank you very much, Madame Chair. I just wanted to take an opportunity to put on the record some thoughts about Mr. Nater's subamendment and his most recent comments.
First of all, I think there is at least a mild incoherence in the idea that we're more likely to meet a deadline if we don't set a deadline. I think the best way to meet a deadline is to set a deadline. I think the deadline, by virtue of the wording of the subamendment that was adopted, is actually quite strict in that it requires decisions to be taken.
The problem at PROC for a long time now is not that the committee couldn't get through a vote if a vote were held. It's that we haven't been having the votes. The concern that the Conservatives have raised—which is a concern that I share, having looked at other committees and the way some of them have operated in terms of finalizing reports—is that we might not get to where we make those decisions, and therefore the report gets talked out. That's why the subamendment is very clear that the questions necessary for finalizing that report have to be put by the end of the day on June 8.
I respect that there are administrative constraints in this Parliament. In fact, one of the things I've found frustrating, being a member of three committees, is that I find members on those committees often don't take into account.... They want to go on with business as if it were perfectly normal and don't really recognize that there's a duty on members of Parliament to organize our work, to be able to accomplish our legitimate goals within the resources that the House is able to provide in the circumstances. I think we're often asking too much of the House to provide resources to support normal decision-making procedures and timelines that don't recognize where we are. I think that members of Parliament can do that, however, if they're not motivated by other political reasons, perhaps, for delay—in this case whether in respect of not wanting to see a report on prorogation or not wanting to see progress on Bill C-19.
As a New Democrat, I want to see us make progress on both. That's why I think adopting a strict timeline, getting on to consideration of the draft report.... I'm not going to reveal any details, but I've seen that draft report. Overall, I think it's a pretty good reflection of what the committee has heard. I don't think that the main report language ought to be very controversial, frankly. There'll be a question as to recommendations. I think that if we can submit our proposed recommendations by Friday and come prepared for a discussion on Tuesday, we should be able to organize our work to assign a legitimate amount of time to each recommendation and then hold the vote. Once all the votes have been held, we'll have the content of a report that we can then vote on, as the clerk has indicated. If the committee makes the decision that it doesn't want to report to go back to Parliament, that's a horse of a different colour. At that point, it's the committee deciding it doesn't want that.
That won't be my option. Unless things unroll very differently than I imagine they will, I think on balance it's really important for PROC to be reporting back to the House, but I believe that if we want to, we can organize our work to come to a final decision, even within the context of a two-hour meeting on Tuesday. I don't think that it should take us eight or 10 hours if we all behave like grown-ups and do our preparatory work properly. This is something we can do as professionals in a professional workplace. The question is whether we want it done, and the first way to signal that we do want it done is to accept a rigorous deadline, and we have one as it stands.
If we adopt Mr. Nater's subamendment, we will not have a rigorous deadline. In fact, we won't really have any deadline at all, and then I think we run the risk of not only not reporting back on prorogation but also of not reporting Bill C-19 back to the House. That's just an unacceptable outcome to me. I want both, and I think it's still within our power to do both.
I won't waste any more time with my comments, but I wanted to have those on the record.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal