Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate the opportunity, today, to speak to the House regarding the debate on standing orders and procedures.
As times change, I believe so should the rules governing the functioning of one of the greatest institutions: our own Parliament of Canada.
The Fathers of Confederation recognized that the needs of the House of Commons and Parliament in general would change a great deal over time.
That is why, in their infinite wisdom, they created mechanisms for reviewing the standing orders of our Parliament and ensured that parliamentarians would have the important task of reviewing their own rules based on the needs of members of the House of Commons and Canadians.
That is the task that is before us today. We are discussing some of the issues that were raised in committee over the past few months, so that we, my esteemed colleagues and I, can provide more in-depth explanations as to why some of these standing orders need to be reviewed.
Today, I rise to discuss, in particular, the further study of the possibility of eliminating sittings of the House of Commons on Fridays.
While Friday sittings remain in effect today, I would like to discuss just a few of the many reasons why, in my own humble opinion, in the spirit of promoting a more family-friendly atmosphere for members and modernizing our Parliament, this is an issue that deserves much more serious attention, thought, and further consideration.
Obviously, some members may not be in favour of eliminating Friday sittings. I completely understand their concerns. I can already hear my colleagues grumbling about how this member is just trying to get out of working on the weekend, as though she is the stereotypical politician who is always trying to get out of doing work.
That is not at all the case, and I am convinced that many of my colleagues in the House agree with me. The real reason is quite the opposite. We are proposing that we carefully examine the possibility of eliminating Friday sittings precisely to give members of the House more time to spend in their ridings, travel back and forth to their ridings, and do more work there for their constituents.
For example, some members have to travel very long distances to go back to their ridings. By eliminating Friday sittings, the parliamentary calendar would be more predictable. That would give members a more flexible schedule and would benefit their constituents.
I believe that we can easily convince the Canadians who elected us to represent them that we can do a much better job if we have a little more time in our ridings to listen to their concerns and to talk to them face to face.
I just spent a wonderful summer in my riding, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, where I had many opportunities to speak to my constituents and many community stakeholders about the issues that affect the people in our riding.
I spent countless hours this summer with my constituents. I had a marvellous time with them at barbeques, town halls, chance meetings, and farmers' markets, as well as in my constituency office, and also interacting with our region's stakeholders and hearing their concerns directly, face to face.
In doing so, I was able to secure necessary funding for vital infrastructure development and cultural projects in my riding and, also, to participate in important community discussions, mostly because I was physically available to my constituents and stakeholders and present to hear their opinion and concerns.
In my opinion, that is one of my most important responsibilities as an MP. I believe that we can do much more to free up members a little from the work in the House, so that we can focus more on our work with the constituents in our ridings.
For one, being present in our ridings allows us, as members of Parliament, to be far more engaged with our constituents and more aware of the issues that concern them. It also connects us with Canadians in a much more direct way. It is democracy in action.
Even in this day and age of social media and non-stop communication with our citizens, nothing says to a Canadian more clearly that their member of Parliament is listening intently to their concerns than when they can actually meet with them face to face and have a frank exchange with them in person.
This summer, I spent more time with the people in my region because I was in my community more. However, with the arrival of fall, when the House is sitting, I have much less time to spend with the people in my riding.
This is not a partisan issue.
It has more to do with the very nature of the work of an MP, which is to listen to one's constituents and to faithfully represent their interests in Parliament. In my opinion, we can make our job easier by more carefully examining whether we should stop sitting on Fridays.
In that regard, I would also like to point out a significant problem that all too often goes unnoticed. Increasingly, when we remain immersed too long in our life here, in the national capital, we have a tendency of distancing ourselves somewhat from everyday life in our ridings. Consequently, we run the risk of losing sight of the importance of our constituents' everyday reality.
Sometimes, when we are spending too much time in Ottawa, it becomes a bit easier to lose some of the perspective of how government policies and programs directly impact the lives of Canadians, and it becomes more difficult to see the real forest for the trees.
I maintain that if we as MPs were to spend more time in our respective ridings, we would have a better idea of the complexity of what is happening on the ground back home and a better understanding of our constituents' problems.
Much like researchers who can draw a much more accurate picture of the situation when they are right in the thick of it, MPs can do a much better job of observing the reality in their ridings, I contend, when they are physically on the ground.
For instance, they are much better equipped to witness the impact of a particular policy or program when they have direct contact with their citizens and when they benefit from additional opportunities to see these policies and programs in action.
The initiative to eliminate Friday sittings from the House calendar, unless there is a compelling reason to sit that day, is not new.
Professor Sarah Childs, from the University of Bristol in England, conducted a study on the subject of work-life balance in western parliamentary democracies. She pointed out in that study that the House of Commons in the United Kingdom sits during only 13 Fridays, set in their calendar, while the Houses of Commons in Australia and New Zealand completely eliminated Friday sittings from their schedules.
Here in Canada, eight of our 13 provincial and territorial legislatures have opted for four-day weeks, and two others sit on Fridays only in exceptional cases.
I put it to the House, if our colleagues at the provincial and territorial level have seen to modernize their own institutions in order to accommodate the lives of sitting members, then should we not follow suit?
I would strongly argue that a thorough study of the question of eliminating Friday sittings of the House goes a long way toward making a concerted effort to improving the work-life balance of MPs while also freeing them up to do a much better job representing their constituents' interests for all the reasons I have just mentioned.
In closing, I think we can all acknowledge that we have an incredible opportunity here at this time in our history to review some of the practices of the House in order to ensure that members can achieve a better balance between their parliamentary and personal responsibilities, and that this matter is highly important to how our Parliament operates.