Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 6th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

I call the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 32 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

The committee is meeting today to continue our review on the House of Commons virtual hybrid proceedings, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022.

Our first panel consists of academic witnesses and will be followed by a second panel focusing on the issue of language interpretation in virtual House and committee proceedings.

Before we start, I'll remind you that all comments made by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair.

I welcome Dr. Kathy Brock, professor and senior fellow at the School of Policy Studies, department of political studies, Queen's University; Dr. Jonathan Malloy, professor and Bell chair in Canadian parliamentary democracy, department of political science, Carleton University; Dr. Erica Rayment, assistant professor, department of political science, University of Calgary; and Dr. Melanee Thomas, associate professor, department of political science, University of Calgary.

Opening comments will start with Dr. Brock.

Welcome to PROC.

[Professor Kathy L. Brock, Professor and Senior Fellow, School of Policy Studies and Department of Political Studies, Queen’s University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It's wonderful to be speaking before you today. I decided to walk my talk, and that's why I'm appearing in person.

Parliament is the beating heart of democracy. You know that. It is tremendously demanding of you, but it also gives tremendously to you. While you have to be commended for how Parliament functioned during the pandemic, those measures must now come to a conclusion. I'm going to explain why that is my belief in terms of the functions Parliament performs in our democratic system.

The policy-making function consists of two roles: a support role to get the government's legislative agenda through, and an accountability role. Both were affected during the pandemic. One study of 80 parliamentary democracies has shown that consultations with the public and public engagement generally were not at their maximum, and in fact suffered greatly.

For the support function, there's importance in being there in person and building those relations across the parties and within parties, and having an in-person caucus allows for more frank feedback than being online does, particularly if people are worried about being recorded.

Accountability also suffered. When you aren't face to face—when the Prime Minister and members of cabinet are not forced to stand up and face the opposition—you lose something. When they must stand up in Parliament and speak to the opposition, they're probably going to have given policies a bit more thought, because they're going to have to justify them. There are subtle checks built into Parliament that we lose when people are not in face-to-face meetings.

The representational function of the House of Commons is very important for, first of all, electoral conversion. It is the House of Commons that converts the results of votes into government and opposition parties, and it's important to have that visual image for Canadians. That is somewhat diminished when you go into a hybrid format.

Politicians come to Ottawa to represent their constituencies and do the national business. However, by understanding constituent interests within the national interests, I believe, they learn to moderate and temper views, and to build better, more inclusive policy across the country. When you stay in your constituency, there's a tendency for what we call “policy capture” to set in, such that you may be influenced by local interests too strongly and not have that tempering effect of the national interest.

Then there are the system maintenance functions Parliament performs. The first is recruitment. By bringing people together, you recruit the people who are going to be the great public servants, whether elected or before they're elected or after they're elected. If they're in Parliament, interacting face to face, they're going to build political acuity and the skills they need to perform those functions even better.

Second, Parliament also integrates. It builds the bridges. People come from across the country and learn about other parts of the country by listening to their colleagues. That creates a certain harmony. There's a socialization function, and this replies to the arguments on diversity. Not requiring people to be in Parliament, or saying that due to particular demographic or personal characteristics, they need to be online, means that if people are not here in person, Parliament is not forced to change.

A good example of that is a member of the Ontario legislature who was hearing impaired. They realized the bells to call people to vote did not work, and that's when they installed lights. That is just one example, but there are many more I could go into, including washrooms. They changed when women came into Parliament, but we won't go into that.

Finally, there's a legitimation function. Parliament must not only work, but it must be seen to work in order for Canadians to understand what government does and why it's important. When the legislature is in operation and there's accountability, you get transparency of policies. Government is seen to work better and people believe their views are being heard.

In my recommendations, which I included in the brief that I know you have, I do mention that the hybrid format would be good for committees, I believe. It could be used there. I think it should be investigated, because you can get more witnesses through that approach. Otherwise, I think Parliament should be sitting in person.

I'll just stop there just to say that Parliament works when it's seen to work. That's a healthy democracy.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you, Dr. Brock.

We will now go to opening comments and remarks from Dr. Malloy.

[Jonathan Malloy, Bell Chair in Canadian Parliamentary Democracy, Department of Political Science, Carleton University, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

On a point of order, Madam Chair, I just want to say that it was a long time ago when I first met Mr. Jonathan Malloy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Is this a conflict of interest?

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Partly. He was my adviser in graduate school. I would be remiss if I didn't mention this, and I know this might mean something to the member. In 1996, he wrote a seminal piece in Canadian Public Administration on “Reconciling expectations and reality in House of Commons committees”, and when I was thinking about his appearance here today, I thought I would raise that seminal work in committee in good faith.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Can we just thank you?

We try to run a functional, professional committee meeting here, and I'm going to try to maintain that today. I thank you for bringing up something. I'm not sure why it's relevant, but maybe we'll find out later.

With that, Dr. Malloy, we go to you for opening comments. I apologize for that intervention.

[Jonathan Malloy]

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.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you very much, Dr. Malloy.

Now, we will have Dr. Thomas and Dr. Rayment sharing their opening time.

I will pass the screen over to you, Dr. Thomas, and then you can just pass straight to Dr. Rayment.

Thank you.

[Dr. Melanee Thomas, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Calgary, As an Individual]

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.

[Dr. Erica Rayment, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Calgary, As an Individual]

I'm going to add a few additional considerations to supplement Dr. Thomas's remarks about hybridity and core parliamentary functions.

First, I want to speak very briefly about the downstream impacts of a more inclusive Parliament, and then I'd also like to share insights from some new research about MPs' attitudes towards hybridity.

First, I just want to draw out more explicitly why it matters that hybridity can help to make Parliament more inclusive and representative, as Dr. Thomas has just highlighted.

There are lots of good reasons to care whether Parliament is diverse and inclusive, but what I want to emphasize is that diversity in terms of who serves in Parliament has an impact on the substantiative issues that get addressed in politics. Research repeatedly demonstrates that who a representative is and how they experience the world shapes the issues and the positions that they will bring forward in political debate.

My own research confirms that in parliamentary debate in Canada, women MPs are dramatically more likely than men, regardless of party affiliation, to put women's issues on the political agenda and to bring women's perspectives into the parliamentary conversation. Having in place measures that make Parliament more inclusive, such as hybridity, helps to ensure that we're not missing the perspectives of the folks who might otherwise be systematically excluded from participating in Parliament.

The second thing I want to highlight is that there is actually a very high level of support among MPs for the continuation of at least some aspects of the hybrid parliamentary model. As part of a larger research project, looking at the family-friendliness of parliamentary institutions, my colleague at the University of Calgary, Susan Franceschet, and I surveyed MPs this past summer about their attitudes towards various measures that could be implemented to make it easier for parliamentarians to reconcile political and family life.

We're still in the very early stages of this project and we haven't run any kind of detailed analysis or published our results, but there are some top-line findings that I am able to share that I think are important for the conversation we're having here today.

First, there is an overwhelming support among MPs—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Dr. Rayment, we're out of time, but I know we're going to get you good questions and make sure that you can share that insight. You can always submit it to the committee as well through the clerk.

[Dr. Erica Rayment]

Okay. Perfect. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

We're going to do a first round of questions. We're starting with Mr. Vis, followed by Mr. Turnbull, Madame Gaudreau and then Ms. Blaney.

Go ahead, Mr. Vis.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses today. I was very much looking forward to this panel.

Upon hearing the testimony, I think I'm going to direct my first questions to either Dr. Thomas or Dr. Rayment. You talked about inclusivity of Parliament, but first let me preface that.

I am a father of two children, with a baby on the way. It is extremely challenging, being from B.C., in doing my parliamentary functions from time to time. That is what I signed up for. Some of my female colleagues who have spoken here today talked about the same challenges in our last session.

You talk about hybridity as a way to improve participation. I would actually argue that it's the opposite. Since I was elected in 2019, the government has adopted a practice that has effectively hoarded speaking times for two members, Kevin Lamoureux and Mark Gerretsen. The government doesn't actually let backbench Liberal members speak on a regular basis.

That's either because the House leader doesn't want them to speak or there is.... It's in participation during—

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

— government orders during a hybrid Parliament, and I can cite the data from the Parliament of Canada.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I have a point of order on the basis of relevance. I don't see the relevance of this line of questioning.

Obviously Mr. Vis has lots of latitude to come to that conclusion, but I will also say that what he is saying is untrue when he says that the government doesn't allow other members to speak in the House of Commons. That's patently false.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

You didn't let me finish it, so—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

You will get to finish, because the floor is going to come back to you. Rest assured.

I am just going to remind us all that we have an understanding as to the work we're doing as a committee. We have chosen this study and it's important. I think we have an approach we can take, which is to define someone else or to define where we're at. Perhaps this is where Mr. Vis is going. I'm not sure, but I think we can actually have a really good conversation here and get our Parliament to the spot that it should be. I think colleagues are expecting this and I think Canadians are expecting this.

I'm going to pass the floor to you, Mr. Vis. I think you have a choice on how to use your time. I have confidence you will use it in a good way.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Mr. Turnbull and I have actually both spoken in Parliament about 72 times. Maybe I'm at a bit more after last night. During government orders, I've intervened about 75 times. Mr. Turnbull, according to the Parliament of Canada, is at about 72. Mr. Lamoureux is at 780. The only person to exceed him is the Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes.

After Mr. Lamoureux, it's Alexandra Mendès, the other Deputy Speaker, followed by Chris d'Entremont, and then Mr. Gerretsen, who has intervened, according to my numbers here, 527 times.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

There is also a list of parliamentarians. There are about 20 of them—two Conservatives and about 18 Liberals, if I remember correctly—who have not intervened once during government orders.

If the purpose of a hybrid Parliament is to improve inclusivity, why are two members more or less taking up all of the speaking times during the core function of holding the government to account during government orders?

[Dr. Melanee Thomas]

I don't know if you would like us to answer at this point. I'm happy to turn it over to my colleague, Dr. Rayment, because I think we do have an answer to the question that is implied.