Evidence of meeting #33 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was bennett.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
12:35 p.m.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good afternoon, Mr. Bennett and Mr. Arnott. I don't know if you remember me, but we met in Charlottetown and Halifax. I'm very happy to have had the opportunity to meet with you in person.
Here, we have an example of arrangements made for a very short committee meeting. As we've just seen, there are a few technical difficulties.
That said, based on your expertise, I'd like to hear your thoughts on what the Speaker of the House of Commons, Mr. Anthony Rota, said when he appeared before our committee a few weeks ago.
Let me explain. We're increasingly seeing that representation is a multi-faceted issue. We have committees, of course, and we have the House of Commons. I feel like we're starting to figure out engagement and accountability. The Speaker of the House of Commons said that if the hybrid format were to be used permanently in Parliament, the parameters or circumstances for remote attendance would need to be established.
I'd like you to speak to that, based on your expertise. At the same time, it will answer Mr. Turnbull's question about what measures were feasible.
Who wants to respond first? I'll just pick one of you: Go ahead, Mr. Bennett.
12:35 p.m.
Speaker, Newfoundland and Labrador House of Assembly
You have my apologies. I missed a lot of your preamble and the question.
12:35 p.m.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
I'll summarize. If we set parameters in the House of Commons—
Are you hearing the interpretation?
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bardish Chagger
Do you have interpretation, Speaker Bennett? At the bottom, you can choose the language you want to listen to.
Do you have it on English?
12:35 p.m.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
In our meeting, it wasn't possible to learn enough French.
12:35 p.m.
Speaker, Newfoundland and Labrador House of Assembly
I am hearing in English. I just could not hear because the volume is very low. I have everything turned up on high.
12:40 p.m.
Speaker, Newfoundland and Labrador House of Assembly
I didn't catch the question. I'm sorry.
12:40 p.m.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
I'll be even more brief. I hope you will take this into account for my time, Madam Chair.
I'd very respectfully like to draw on your expertise as speaker of a legislative assembly.
The Speaker of the House of Commons appeared before us and said if hybrid sittings were to become more or less permanent, we would need to set parameters and define the circumstances surrounding remote attendance.
I'd like to hear from you on that.
Go ahead, Mr. Bennett.
12:40 p.m.
Speaker, Newfoundland and Labrador House of Assembly
I think I caught most of it. I guess you were asking about the parameters around the feasibility and the use of hybrid in the long term for the House of Assembly.
From Newfoundland and Labrador's point of view, we do see the value of the hybrid opportunities that exist. From a financial point of view, it definitely has been a valuable resource that we've been using over the last two years, particularly within our committee structure. However, we have been able to adapt to utilizing it within the House of Assembly as a whole, if needed.
I'm not sure if I'm answering your question. I'll be honest with you, I find the translation very low. I'm going to resort to my clerk for a second. I don't know if she's hearing any better.
12:40 p.m.
Bloc
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
12:40 p.m.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
I'm actually putting the same question to Mr. Arnott, but I'd like Mr. Bennett to be able to hear us properly.
Go ahead, Mr. Arnott.
12:40 p.m.
Speaker, Legislative Assembly of Ontario
Thank you very much for the question.
Yes, without question, as discussions continue on the advantages and disadvantages of hybrid Parliament and making it a more permanent feature of how we do our business, I think it would be essential that parameters be developed.
In the context of the Ontario legislature, if such a discussion were to take place, it would be the House leaders from the various recognized parties who would take the lead. The Speaker and the staff of the assembly would provide support to ensure that the discussions were fruitful. Probably, there would be involvement by a standing committee of the legislature.
Ideally, if such a course of action were pursued, it would be best if none of the parties sought partisan advantage but looked to the broader interests of Parliament in terms of the development of those parameters.
12:40 p.m.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
That's very broad. If you think of other responses to my question later, we would greatly appreciate if you could forward them, if possible. We could then consider them in preparing our report, which will be released in the coming weeks.
Earlier, we heard testimony about accommodations to facilitate meeting attendance. Those who testified talked more about circumstances that had had a considerable impact on them and their family. Those are exceptional circumstances. Otherwise, if elected members must sit in person, do your assemblies provide all the amenities needed to encourage parents to become members, so as to ensure parliamentary succession in your institutions?
I invite Mr. Arnott to answer the question.
12:40 p.m.
Speaker, Legislative Assembly of Ontario
I'm not sure that we've done enough at the legislature to support members with young families, for starters. My wife and I have raised three children, and we went through this as a family as well through the years. Our boys are now grown, but it is very difficult and challenging for members who have young families to be away from home so much. I think the legislature needs to continue to find ways to support those members who have young families.
You're right. There are situations and occurrences where members who would want to be otherwise present in the chamber for debates, for votes and for the other participation opportunities, including committee service, might not be able to because of a family emergency, a health issue, any number of things, including an issue in the riding that compels them to be home.
This is something that all members have to deal with on a regular basis. I know that all members would want to be physically present to fully participate, but there are situations and occurrences that arise to make that impossible from time to time. I think there should be acceptance and awareness on both sides of the House on that in, again, not trying to seek partisan advantage when someone's sick.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bardish Chagger
Thank you, Speaker Arnott.
Now we'll go to Madam Blaney for up to six minutes.
12:45 p.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm very grateful to hear from the Speakers today—of course, with special recognition to Speaker Bennett. We spent some time together in Turkey not too long ago, recognizing the incredible sacrifice of Newfoundlanders and the last section of the Trail of the Caribou. I want to thank you for being here. It's good to see you again.
I think one of the biggest changes that we could have never expected was COVID-19. We all had to respond to it very rapidly. I'm going to ask both of you the same question. I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about the impactful lessons of a hybrid Parliament and committee. What were the best practices that you found? How did it assist in terms of adapting and modernizing the system to deal with the pandemic, but also just to move forward in the future?
I will start with Speaker Bennett.
12:45 p.m.
Speaker, Newfoundland and Labrador House of Assembly
Good afternoon. It was great seeing you in Turkey. It was quite the memorable event.
Yes, COVID-19 obviously was a great learning lesson for all legislatures. I'm quite sure, like Newfoundland and Labrador, it was constantly evolving and changing. That was not only for us with the legislature, but for an election, when we had to revert to alert level five one day before our election was called. There were some great lessons to learn. As I said, we only had a small group to work with, but we constantly evolved and improved our systems as new challenges were faced.
I guess some best practices evolved.... Obviously, the virtual hybrid sitting opened up lots of opportunities for us to increase our meetings—committee meetings and things like that—which before was very challenging. With committee meetings, with such a large province, even though small in numbers, travel for members was always very difficult, especially when the House wasn't sitting. As a result of the virtual hybrid and some of the changes we made to our legislature, we've readily adapted that procedure—and I guess things evolved as it evolved.
It's been a great experience. We learn and we continue to learn from it, and we'll continue to use this virtual hybrid sitting.
12:45 p.m.
Speaker, Legislative Assembly of Ontario
We, as a legislature, continued to sit in person, as I've said before, but the standing committees in many cases were sitting virtually.
I think the primary benefit of virtual committees was that we were able to accommodate a large number of presentations from across the province, where people could participate virtually who otherwise perhaps couldn't, especially with the difficulty with travel and the various travel restrictions and public health advisories that were upon us.
I also think that those best practices can be carried forward, again assuming that the House wants them to, and assuming that members on all sides of the House believe that it would be prudent and advantageous to do so.