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.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Clerk of the Committee  Mr. Justin Vaive
Andre Barnes  Committee Researcher

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota

Thank you, Mr. Amos.

Mr. Sarai.

May 4th, 2021 / 1:35 p.m.

Liberal

Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I appreciate the opportunity. This is my first time in PROC and we're discussing a very important topic. This is new to me, so if I sound out of the ordinary on this, please let me know, Madam Chair. I would appreciate that.

1:35 p.m.

Conservative

Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota

Yes, Ms. Vecchio.

1:35 p.m.

Conservative

Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON

It's great to have Mr. Sarai here for the first time.

Perhaps we can let him know what the motion is so that we can actually stay relevant.

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota

Yes, I think Mr. Sarai has all the—

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC

I have your motion, Ms. Vecchio, and I think it's the amendment to that by Mr. Turnbull, so—

1:35 p.m.

Conservative

Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON

Yes, it's on prorogation. I just want to ensure that we're actually on the right topic today. Thanks.

I've heard a variety of things, I think even a HUMA motion that was presented to us, and then presented to HUMA last week. Whatever we can do....

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota

Ms. Vecchio, thank you for your vigilance.

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC

The first thing that came to mind when I saw this was what are my constituents thinking? I am the elected representative of my constituents. What are they talking about? I have 120,000 constituents. I have a lot of young constituents. I have a diverse background of constituents. I have a riding that's been held by virtually all of the parties. It was the legendary Chuck Cadman's riding. It was held by Penny Priddy, a legendary NDP member of Parliament and MLA, and minister. For the first time since 2015 it has been held by a Liberal, me, so it's had quite a variety in its tenure.

I tried to see how many have actually asked about the prorogation. To be honest with you—and I have one of the busiest constituency offices, and I know all of you have a lot of activity—when it happened, a couple of people had questions, but I have had zero comments since then. I will tell you that's because most people are worried about the recovery and they want to get back to things.

Then I look back—

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota

I'm so sorry to interrupt.

I am having some difficulty with your sound going in and out, and phasing out a bit. I'm wondering if the interpreters are having difficulty as well.

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC

Okay, I'll try adjusting my—

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota

Maybe we could just pause for a second.

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC

Is it the Internet?

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota

It's much better now.

Mr. Clerk, is that better? You haven't had any complaints from the interpreters, have you?

1:35 p.m.

The Clerk

Madam Chair, we haven't had any indication yet that it is a problem, although when Mr. Sarai started speaking again, it did seem to dramatically improve. It may have just been the positioning of the mike.

I'll check with the techs in the room to see if there are any connectivity issues that Mr. Sarai might be experiencing on his end.

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota

Thank you.

It improved a lot when you moved your mike, so that's great. I don't want to strain the interpreters. I was straining myself, just trying to hear, so I can't imagine what they are going through.

I'm so sorry to interrupt.

Go ahead, Mr. Sarai.

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC

Thank you.

I've closed some windows. Hopefully I wasn't consuming too much bandwidth from the Internet that might have been making this a slower, choppier experience.

I was getting to what my constituents asked, and that's what I'm elected to do: address their concerns.

As I was saying, since being re-elected in 2019, and even after the prorogation of Parliament in 2020, I have had maybe two people, at the beginning, who wanted to know why, who actually wanted to know the semantics of it. Otherwise, I've had no concern about it. In fact, what my constituents have been asking about is how to get vaccines. How do we get vaccines into our arms? How do we get businesses back? How do we save jobs? I think that has been the focus of the government.

Then I look back at the history of when prorogation has been used. I hate to say this, but it's funny to see who's calling the kettle black, or however they say it. prorogation was used before to save a government from falling apart when three parties actually opposed it. In this case, it was a very contrarian version. We have a pandemic, which, as my colleagues Will Amos and Mr. Turnbull have said, nobody has seen in the last 100 years. I think 1918 was the last time. To go back, I've had to jog people's grandparents' memories, and even they have only heard about it, or when they were very young had very vague memories of it to actually relate that experience.

To continue in government as if nothing has happened and as if nothing is going wrong, with commitments that were made in a particular direction in an election just months earlier would be very unfair. It would be very inappropriate. It would not be what prudent Canadians would expect a government to do. Prudent Canadians would expect a government to be nimble, to quickly change, and to quickly figure out what needs to be done on the fly, immediately. They would want a reset.

If there was ever a time when prorogation was justified, was needed, was essential, that was the time. That was the time when Canadians wanted to forget about everything else. They wanted to know how they were going to be safe, how their children were going to be safe, how their kids would go to school, how they would be able to continue paying their mortgage or rent, and how they were going to put food on the table.

The government had to reposition and rethink things. This was front and centre for me.

Then we look at the length of time and the actual number of times. I think this committee has hashed over the length of time and the number of times that the previous Conservative government used prorogation as a tool for their own personal benefit when it was convenient. This time it was done in a pandemic.

Just look at the days that were postponed. There were months, the time before, that Parliament didn't sit. In this case, I think it was maybe 10 days or about a month of prorogation. In actually sitting days it was just 10 or 12 days.

What we came back with and what was given back after that period was a great reset. There was a fall economic statement that painted a blueprint or a road map of how we were going to survive this tenure and how we were going to sustain our businesses, jobs, and economy. Also, the question was how we were going to do a road map into recovery afterwards.

If you talk to any Canadian, anybody on Main Street, on Bay Street or in the airline industry, as well as the thousands and thousands or workers who are unemployed, that's what they wanted to hear us debating. They did not want us to debate other motions that were there from the past. Nobody cared about those at that time. They wanted us to debate how we were going to help.

The first calls I got were what most of you got: “What's happening with my job? Is the government going to be there for us?”

The second calls I received were from employers, who said, “I know I'm going to go through a pretty rough patch, but please don't let me lay off my employees. I barely got them. These are some of the best workers I've had. It takes a long time to nurture them. Can you figure out a way whereby I can still pay them a little bit? I want to and am continuing to pay them, even if I don't have much work. It would be great if the government could assist me in that way.”

The government responded in that way and was able to keep millions and millions of employees working even though revenue had dropped in those businesses. After that, when I brought up with my constituents, who would call, or call via Zoom, because we couldn't meet in person, whether they were having an issue with prorogation, or had any concerns on this, they said no. They didn't want to talk about that. They wanted to know what we were doing about their rent. Their businesses had been closed down.

In Surrey Centre we have a lot of banquet facilities. We have a lot of other facilities that were shut down, gyms and whatnot. They said, “Who's going to pay my rent? I have a huge footprint. Who is going to support us in this?” That is what they wanted to hear the government discussing at that time. That's what they wanted to hear in the debates in the halls of Parliament, or on the screens of Parliament, which we have switched to. That's what they wanted to see, and we came through. We said we'd give 65% to those who were hurt financially, but 90% to those that were shut down by public health notices. Right now the calls I get from them are thank yous and about the optimism going forward.

Prior to March we were on track. We made a million jobs, had the lowest unemployment rate prior to the pandemic in 2020.

I'm not in an affluent neighbourhood. I probably have one of the lowest family mean incomes in the Lower Mainland. If you turn right or left out of my office door, you would see “help wanted” signs in the windows of London Drugs and Starbucks. In fact, I have a non-profit employment centre next door that helps people get employment. Quite frankly, they had very few to send over there because everyone was getting jobs and everyone was doing better.

I think prorogation is a very important tool. It should be used very scarcely. This government has only used it once, only for a few weeks. It was a time to have cabinet, have government, have the Prime Minister rethink. In this case it was a minority government, so everything had to be done with all of the other parties. You had to have them on board. This was not a unilateral execution of power or abuse of power. This was something that you had to work on in co-operation with the parties, House leaders, opposition leaders, because you could face an election at any time. All of the measures were done in that pattern prior to prorogation, and after that, and every party virtually voted for almost all of those measures.

What were those measures for? They were measures for Canadians to get through this. They were measures that we needed at that time. They were not Mickey Mouse, as my colleague Mr. Amos just said earlier. We were able to hedge the most procurement of vaccinations in the world for every single person. My skeptics, family and friends, all of us, have interesting Zoom conversations or chat groups where people are saying, “Are you really going to get vaccinated? I'm not going to get vaccinated until 2022.” I think our colleague, Ms. Rempel, the health critic, has said a lot of things about children getting vaccinated, the third world getting vaccinated, before—

1:35 p.m.

Conservative

Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON

On a point of order, Madam Chair, perhaps we could get back to the relevance of this, please.

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota

Ms. Vecchio would like you to refer back to how this links to prorogation.

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC

It absolutely links back. The relevance, Madam Vecchio, is this: What is front of mind of Parliament? We're all here for the citizens of Canada, for our stakeholders, for this country's betterment. What was the focus? The focus was vaccination. The focus was job recovery. The focus was saving jobs. That's why prorogation occurred.

Prorogation is an essential tool when used right, and quite frankly, that's why Canadians do not care about this. We've had our parliamentary committees look into everything prior to that. They're looking into some of the stuff again, which they have every right to do.

Our parliamentary committees are very powerful instruments. They have gone through every program, every controversy, every issue that has popped up since then, and they continue to do that. Therefore, I think a prorogation of four weeks and several days for a government to come back, to create an agenda, a set of legislation that would be there for a global emergency, a global pandemic, a global epidemic, is what was needed at the time, what was essential, what was expected by Canadians and what was delivered for Canadians.

Even after that, if you see what happened after prorogation, right away, the House started very quickly. The fall economic statement was given right after that. Debates on that fall economic statement were done. Tweaks were made. Amendments were suggested. Parliamentary debates resumed. Parliamentary committees resumed. Parliamentary committees challenged us. New committees were set up, including one that I am on, the Canada-U.S. committee to deal with that issue that came out: the protectionism of the U.S. We are debating, and we are continuing to do those things. A new budget was given, which is being debated as we speak, to deal with exactly those issues that are relevant to this day.

This is why Canadians elected this government. This is what Canadians expect in times like these.

That's what I want to share with this committee.

Thank you.

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota

Thank you, Mr. Sarai.

Ms. Shanahan.

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC

Madam Chair, I see that our colleague, Mr. Blaikie, has his hand up. I would be happy to cede my place to Mr. Blaikie.

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota

Thank you, Ms. Shanahan.

Go ahead, Mr. Blaikie.

Is Mr. Blaikie there?

You probably didn't think your turn would come so soon, did you?

1:35 p.m.

NDP

Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB

I am indeed here. I am pleasantly surprised to get a turn a little earlier than I thought. I raised my hand when there was some talk of how we might have a discussion to move past this.

Obviously, there is a lot in Ms. Vecchio's motion about the WE Charity scandal, but what's important to note is that my Liberal colleagues on the committee have also made this about the WE Charity scandal, because they refuse to have a vote because they are trying to protect, presumably, the Prime Minister for sure and others who were mentioned in the original motion from having to come to discuss the WE Charity scandal. All that is to say it's very much the Liberals on the committee who, as much anybody else, have made this about the We Charity scandal.

What I've tried to propose is a way forward that puts the focus back on prorogation. We've heard many times—and I don't think it's in dispute—that the Prime Minister effectively.... While it's the prerogative of the Crown to prorogue Parliament, she does that on the advice of the Prime Minister. It's effectively the Prime Minister's prerogative to decide when Parliament is prorogued.

There are obviously differences of opinion about the reasons for the Prime Minister's prorogation. We've heard also some disagreement, and I think some real questions. We've even heard from Liberals at committee that, well, you know, the length of the prorogation might have been different, and maybe they didn't quite get that right and the timing of when it began.

There are some questions about the nature of the prorogation. We know that the Prime Minister is the decision-maker. I've offered many times on the record and off the record to various folks on the Liberal side that we could bring this back to the topic of prorogation by having the Prime Minister at committee for an hour and, as far as I'm concerned anyway, dispense with the rest. I know there are other committees pursuing the WE Charity question, and rightly so, but for as long as my Liberal colleagues are going to continue to filibuster in order to defend other Liberals from having to talk about the WE Charity scandal, this is what it's about.

If we're going to end up voting on this motion, then I'm going to support the Conservatives' motion. There's no doubt in my mind about that. The question then becomes, can we get back to making this about prorogation? That means having the sole decision-maker on prorogation come before the committee. I know that I'm not saying anything that's actually new here, but I think it's important because we've heard so much, so many words, from other colleagues that I think it's easy to lose the thread here.

The reason we're having this study is that the Prime Minister himself proposed this as a mechanism to prevent political abuses of prorogation. There can be legitimate reasons for prorogation. I think I've said here before—maybe I haven't—that the Manitoba legislature routinely prorogues. Every year, they come back with a Speech from the Throne. There have been uncontroversial prorogations in Canada's history. There were several, I think, in the Chrétien era. Nobody has talked about them, because they weren't interesting.

There are a lot of ways to prorogue Parliament. I'm not disputing that it is a tool that can be used. The pandemic is clearly all-consuming, so the idea that there might be a prorogation having to do with that is not outlandish. It's just that it happened to be announced the day after the minister of finance resigned right in the middle of a scandal and the day before a whole bunch of documents were due that might have shed some light on that scandal. I think any right-thinking person might think that there really is a connection there.

Yes, there may be questions for the Prime Minister about the WE Charity scandal, but also about the timing of the beginning of that prorogation. There are also questions about why the Prime Minister saw fit not to end it earlier, for instance, and to have us come back in order to have a far more fulsome discussion than what took place in Parliament about the expiration of the CERB program and what would replace it. We know, of course, that the legislation ended up being rushed through and there were some problems with that legislation.

Again, when we talk about the sickness benefit and then people later using that in order to quarantine from international travel that they had taken against the advice of the government, that was something that.... All parties agreed to that legislation and didn't identify that as a problem, but in fairness to opposition parties, I'll say that we didn't have a lot of time with that legislation. It was tabled and had to be passed in a matter of days, because the CERB deadline was there, despite the fact that I know I can say with certainty that New Democrats were calling for the House to sit in the month of September so that we could have that longer discussion.

There are a lot of legitimate questions about the timing and the nature of the prorogation that belong rightly with the sole decision-maker in respect of prorogation in the context of a study that has come about as a result of his own proposal for how best to prevent abuses of prorogation.

It makes perfect sense to have the Prime Minister here for one hour, and we could move on. I am putting that back on the table. I welcome a discussion about why it is that people don't think one hour of the Prime Minister 's time, in order to make good on his own proposal for how to prevent abuses of prorogation, the kind that we saw in the Harper years....

I would like some of my Liberal colleagues to say, if they think it's true, that had this mechanism existed in the Harper Parliaments, they would not have thought it was appropriate for Stephen Harper to come before PROC and defend his government's position. Then maybe explain how this mechanism is actually supposed to prevent political abuse of prorogation if the only decision-maker doesn't actually have to defend the decision in questioning to committee, because then I don't think it's a very good mechanism.

Of course, people at this committee will know that I think the best mechanism would actually be to have Parliament vote on prorogation because in instances of non-controversial prorogations—as I have said, there have been more of those than not in Canada's history—I don't think it would be difficult to get Parliament's assent to a prorogation. But in cases where it is controversial, then I actually think it's Parliament that should decide whether Parliament rises. It's Parliament that should decide whether all the work of committees is suspended or not. It's Parliament that ought to decide whether the legislative agenda gets cleared or not.

If a government doesn't want to move forward with certain legislation, it's always their prerogative not to put it up for debate on any given date. We saw that. Bill C-27 was a bill, a bad bill, I might add, that was presented by the Liberal majority government in the last Parliament, and I don't know that it was debated at all, in fact. I was relieved. I would have preferred that the government just withdraw it to give people peace of mind about their pension. That always hung over people's heads in the last Parliament, so withdrawing it would have been a better way forward, or dare I say, even a prorogation mid-Parliament.

There were times in the last Parliament that I did say that I thought we were about due for a prorogation. There was a lot of stuff on the Order Paper that the government clearly wasn't interested in moving forward with and I thought it would be good to just have the government reset its direction. Then the government picked the most controversial moment that it possibly could have, raising the spectre of political abuse for prorogation after over five years in government. So yes, we have questions. That's fair. That's what Parliament is for. That's what the accountability function of Parliament is all about. It's a principle of responsible government that elected parliamentarians be able to pose questions directly to decision-makers within government. Let's get the Prime Minister here and let's get this study over with and let's move on to something else.

Thank you to Mrs. Shanahan for allowing me to make that intervention sooner rather than later.

Thanks to the committee for listening to that again.