Larry Bagnell

[Standing Orders and Procedure, February 1st, 2021]

Madam Speaker, the member wanted to expand three types of debate: the take note on petitions, Private Members' Business and expanding the Adjournment Proceedings. There is already not enough time for government business.

What does the member think about the solution that Britain and Australia have of having a second chamber where we could have much more of all three of the items he wants?

[Standing Orders and Procedure, February 1st, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I hope everyone can hear me this time.

Congratulations to the member for a very thoughtful speech. She mentioned private members' bills. I have a comment and then a question.

As I said earlier, if we had a parallel house or second House of Commons as they do in Britain and Australia, we could work on many more private members' bills.

My question relates to this. A lot of private members' bills do not go very far. One reason is that they have not been scrutinized by bureaucratic experts. No matter which party is in power, a lot of government bills are fixed or do not go forward because of the experts, who have spent their entire lives on that topic, weighing in and at least giving their opinion.

Does the member think that a way to have more private members' bills go through would be getting expert opinions, or further information, on the bills from a relevant department's experts who have spent their lives studying the issues?

[Standing Orders and Procedure, February 1st, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I will not comment on the other place; they make their own rules.

However, the first point is a very good one, and I think it supports my point about looking at a second chamber of the House of Commons, because in a second chamber we could have more private members' bills and more debate, and more people could speak on government bills. That would be an excellent way of increasing the ability to have more meaningful debate, and more MPs could actually get a private member's bill forward.

[Standing Orders and Procedure, February 1st, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I think that is a great idea for PROC to look at, and then PROC could make recommendations

[Standing Orders and Procedure, February 1st, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, we would not be decreasing the time that Parliament sits, but just be giving more time to more important input on important issues, as opposed to spending one, two or three hours just having people stand up and sit down when their votes are already recorded.

[Standing Orders and Procedure, February 1st, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I think that if there were a way for people to have more time to deal with some of those very important motions, it would be helpful.

On electronic voting, I forgot to mention that three parties already, and I think probably four when they get to speak, will be supporting that. As far as the point the member made about men with young children goes, yes I have a nine-year-old and a twelve-year-old, but I did not want to bring up my situation.

[Standing Orders and Procedure, February 1st, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, as other members have said, I will be giving my own personal opinions. I have not talked to any member from any party about my ideas.

As a former chair of PROC, I think the results of this debate may depend on how PROC deals with it. PROC is a very busy committee. It has a lot of things to do, and there have been serious, major issues raised today that PROC just would not have time to get to. To deal with some of the major issues like electronic voting or a second chamber, I think PROC should consider creating subcommittees that could have other members, not just PROC members. Some of these issues may then actually be dealt with.

My major point today is one on which I have been pushing for years now, and I will take this opportunity to push it again. It is that when we return to the House, we should have electronic voting there. I am chair of the parliamentarians of the Arctic nations, and every one of the seven Arctic nations has electronic voting.

I do not think it serves people well when what now takes several hours for a few votes could be done in a couple of minutes. Millions and millions of dollars are being spent on this. I do not think workers in Canada appreciate it when millions and millions of dollars of their money are being spent just so that members can stand up before the results go in Hansard. That is where everyone finds out how we vote. The record is in Hansard. If there were a button on our desks, we could just push it. The results would show up on a screen, and then they would go into Hansard and everyone would know how we voted.

There is also the opportunity cost. Members are constantly saying they want more time to discuss important bills, yet we are taking hours upon hours in each session for people to stand up one at a time to vote.

For members who have questions about this, we could have trials. There could be certain votes that it would not apply to and for which members would still have to stand. We could do trial sessions, as has happened in the hybrid Parliament. As the Green Party member of Parliament for Saanich—Gulf Islands has said, I think we need to get into the 20th century, even, and make Parliament more efficient in that way. Perhaps the Library of Parliament could do a study, and maybe they already have, on how this is done around the world.

I would like to raise some other potential points. First, I do not think it makes sense to require unanimous consent to start the committees. Second, Sweden has votes only Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and that type of discipline would certainly free up a lot of members who have other urgent things to do and who may not be able to be in the House for votes or, as an NDP member said, be able to travel 20 hours for a 10-minute vote.

Another point is that PROC has dealt with electronic voting before and has said it was something that could be discussed in the future, as it did with the idea of a second chamber. The House of Commons in Britain and the House of Representatives in Australia both have a second chamber. That gives more MPs time to speak. We hear time and time again that more MPs would have liked to speak on a bill, as we heard again today. A second chamber would allow that, as it does in those other parliaments. This is great timing for PROC to do a study on that, because we have a second chamber being built in the Centre Block and we have this one in the West Block.

The other point is that in a pandemic or an emergency, such as damage to a House, we would be ready to go. That is another reason to do that as well.

As we have proven in the virtual Parliament, Friday sittings work very well. There is no reason Friday sittings and even Monday mornings could not be done by virtual Parliament. Sometimes in the past, because of my travel of 28 hours and eight airports every weekend, I would get home Saturday night, depending on delays and airplanes and everything, and have to leave eight hours later to get on four planes at 4:00 a.m. Sunday to get back here. Friday and Monday sittings are terribly inconvenient for my young family.

I once again go on record to say that I hope PROC reports on the Centre Block renovations. I have been pushing for a playground in the empty courtyard, particularly for women with children.

I do not think we should require a vote regarding the Standing Order that allows a member to be heard. There should be another process for that, because it is a good way for any party to waste time if it wants to.

What PROC or one of its subcommittees should discuss are the rules for pandemics and other emergencies that could occur, such as a fire. We need more detailed rules so that we can carry on regardless of what happens. Good examples would be a standing order related to social distancing during a pandemic or for a fire that requires movement to another building, such as a second House of Commons.

The points made about unanimous consent are very important. Sometimes we go through three reading stages, hours in committees, three votes, and then the same process in the Senate, to discuss major issues that are important to Canadians. They are given very thoughtful consideration throughout our system. There are a lot of protections to make sure this process is done right and is carefully thought out. However, someone can raise a motion for unanimous consent, and then we have 10 seconds to think about something major and make a decision on it. We have to look at how that could be made more efficient, relevant and appropriate.

I agree with what was mentioned today, I believe by an NDP House leader or former House leader, with respect to the order of the private members' draw. I too was in Parliament for well over a decade before my name was drawn for a private member's bill. One way that problem could be fixed is if the order could be carried over from one Parliament to the next for members who are re-elected. I know that solution has been proposed before.

Programming in general and the programming of government bills is a very good idea. It is done in many other houses. The opposition parties and the government sit down to decide how things would be discussed and for how long. If the Library of Parliament or a perceptive journalist were to do a study on how much time was spent on some very serious issues compared to some that could be dealt with very quickly, they would find that the time spent was not appropriate. That is because programming is not done. Programming would allow more time for things that have very serious consequences and are very important to Canadians. It would also provide for more orderly progress in the House and avoid the extensive delays that we see, which are not productive and which reduce the number of times a person can speak on very important matters they want to speak on.

There are a lot of things that PROC could discuss, but it is going to have to work out how it can do it because its plate is already full. It would have to set up committees or a process to be able to deal with some of these serious issues. There are so many of them that we need a process to deal with them all.

[Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, November 26th, 2020]

Madam Speaker, the member said we have no plan. I would like to ask the member this. If he and his party are going to try to make the case during this debate that we have no plan, why have they spent so much energy, effort and passion contradicting, voting against and denying the many items in our plan that are now reducing greenhouse gases?

[Citizenship Act, November 23rd, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I have a quick comment from the traditional territory of the Ta’an Kwach’an Council and the Kwanlin Dun, which both have signed modern treaties and self-government agreements.

I want people watching to think about how they would feel if they bought a house and when they went to move into it someone decided the house was not theirs and it was not being given to them. They can imagine how first nations and indigenous people felt when they signed treaties that were not honoured. It would be the same feeling.

This bill would give comfort and acknowledgement to immigrants. As I mentioned in a recent previous debate, we did not learn about this in school in any sufficient amount so this would give recognition of indigenous rights, which is in the Constitution, and the sanctity of the treaties we must abide by and, by the honour of the Crown, we should have been abiding by them from the very beginning. It would be a great recognition of that.

[Broadcasting Act, November 19th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member about indigenous broadcasting, but first I want to thank him for his trip down memory lane. It was very fun.

I want to correct a couple inaccuracies about broadband and the great work that the broadband minister has been doing in connecting, already, over a million people. The member mentioned 2026 being the start of the action, but actually it is close to the end. By then, 98% of Canadians will be connected.

I want to give a big shout-out to Canadian indigenous broadcasters. Northern Native Broadcasting in the Yukon does a tremendous job. I hope it gets increased funding through the local content ramifications of the bill. I know the member is a big supporter of indigenous people and I am sure he is in support of the local indigenous production of their own stories that this bill would help.