Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.
My name is Dr. Melanee Thomas, and I'll be sharing my time today with Dr. Rayment. We join you from Calgary, Alberta, in Treaty 7 territory.
We focus on a key question: Does maintaining hybridity help or hinder Parliament in fulfilling its core functions of representation and accountability? For us, hybridity can clearly help Parliament fulfill these two functions. What is crucial is its design.
If designed well, hybridity is a relatively straightforward fix for several systemic barriers in Canadian politics. It's not a panacea, but it undeniably could help. Given this, for us, the bar to reject adopting a permanent hybrid option in Parliament is very high.
We highlight two considerations—how a hybrid option helps facilitate representation and accountability, and then, results from research Dr. Rayment is working on about support among members of Parliament for hybrid proceedings.
On that first core function of representation, there's no question that continuing with a hybrid option improves Parliament's ability to operate as a representative institution. Hybridity improves this both in terms of who gets elected to Parliament and in terms of who is able to participate in parliamentary debate.
Allowing MPs the option to participate in remote proceedings when they need to has the potential to shift who considers running for and serving in public office, notably with regard to Canadians with caregiving and other constraints. Folks with parenting responsibilities and elder care responsibilities and people with illnesses or disabilities might look at the prospect of a regular commute to Ottawa and think, “Absolutely not; I can't swing that”, and so they would self-select out of elected office. We know from decades of research that it is disproportionately women who are systematically selecting out.
When it comes to parliamentary debate, providing the option to participate remotely ensures that the voices of members of Parliament voices are heard and that their constituents can be represented even when the MP is unable to be physically present in Ottawa due to illness, caregiving responsibilities or whatever else might arise.
Hybridity will not remove all of the systemic barriers that women, indigenous people, racialized people and people with disabilities face with respect to a career in elected public office, but providing the option sends an important signal about who Parliament is designed for and who is welcome within the institution.
With regard to accountability, what we mean when we speak of it is parliamentarians' ability to learn, follow up on, scrutinize and accept or reject what the government is doing. For us, hybrid and remote proceedings could improve accountability in Parliament for reasons similar to the reasons that it improves representation: Hybridity ensures more MPs can participate in the processes Parliament uses to hold government to account.
The key question is design, not mode. While it is not a panacea, we see great potential for hybrid proceedings to be designed in a way to enhance Parliament's accountability functions.