We'll give him an A+ for effort there.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.
My name is Jonathan Malloy. I'm a professor of political science at Carleton University, as I said, where I hold the Bell chair in Canadian parliamentary democracy. I'm also former president of the Canadian Study of Parliament Group, although I speak only for myself today.
I appreciate the chance to speak on hybrid proceedings. I will immediately begin by noting that I have not conducted any primary data gathering myself on this topic—I haven't crunched numbers or anything like that—but I have published reflections on the matter and I thought a great deal about the overall issue in the context of Parliament and its purpose.
I don't advocate either for or against hybrid proceedings. Instead, I offer a challenge: Discussions with hybrid proceedings cannot be separated from the larger context of the institution itself, and so the hybrid issue is an important test of the maturity of the Parliament of Canada, and in this case specifically the House of Commons.
My mentor, C.E.S. Franks of Queen's University, once wrote that the reform of Parliament is not merely a technical matter of making Parliament more effective and efficient, although it's often presented in both terms; reform is also questioning the purposes for which political powers should be used in Canada and how various interests and viewpoints succeed or fail to influence political choices and outcomes.
I hold similar views. The apparent lack of long-term consensus in this House of Commons about hybrid proceedings betrays a larger weakness and immaturity of the institution. Hybrid proceedings are far beyond a technical matter. They are rooted, as Franks wrote, in how various interests and viewpoints succeed or fail to influence political choices and outcomes.
Despite its age, and I speak with respect for the committee here today, the Parliament of Canada often acts as an immature institution, not able to stand up for itself and its own interests beyond partisanship, especially compared to its closest counterparts. The most vivid illustration is the repeated abuse of prorogation by Canadian governments on short notice to escape difficult political circumstances. Both the previous two governments and the current one have done so, the last despite an election promise to refrain from the practice.
In comparison, Australia and New Zealand have largely discarded the practice of prorogation entirely, and in 2019 the U.K. government tried and failed to prorogue Parliament to get out of a sticky situation, this being seen as an unacceptable violation of the institution's norms and integrity for mere partisan purposes.
We see this institutional immaturity in other ways, such as the comparative weakness of the Commons' Speaker compared to the British counterpart.
I thus unhappily view the apparent current lack of a long-term consensus on hybrid proceedings to be another illustration of the adolescent immaturity of the Canadian Parliament.
There are obvious arguments both for and against hybrid proceedings, which this committee will be well familiar with, many of them not substantially different from discussions in any workplace in 2022. I need not review them in detail. Obviously, remote participation provides certain conveniences and can facilitate better access and reduce inequities, but it also means less opportunity for informal interaction and building and maintaining institutional culture that goes beyond the screen. These are trade-offs with which we are all wrestling these days in various organizations.
More unique and distinct to Parliament is the dimension of partisanship and partisan interests as they pertain to hybrid proceedings, and this is what concerns me. The institution is approaching hybrid proceedings in the same way in which far too much of the institution is run: by short-term interests and whatever suits the side of the House one happens to be sitting on.
I do want to recognize the progress made over the last two years, and I recognize there are momentous complexities here, but regardless, the lack of a long-term consensus on a hybrid House is concerning. It does not reflect well on the institution and its maturity.
Again, I do not firmly advocate a particular solution here. What I do advocate is consensus, which requires give and take from all sides and going beyond immediate interests. I do realize parliamentarians are often given vague advice along these lines to work together better. Nevertheless, this is my advice, and I repeat my opening challenge: that the hybrid issue is an important test of the maturity of the Parliament of Canada, in this case specifically of the House of Commons. The institution needs to get this right to show Canadians that Parliament can stand up for itself as an institution.
Thank you very much.