Procedure and House Affairs committee  My understanding anecdotally from people who use it is that there is.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I could find that out as well. I'll move on to the document on the parallel sitting chambers in other jurisdictions. One is called the Federation Chamber. It was devised in 1994 in Australia's House of Representatives. The United Kingdom devised a parallel chamber called Westm

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It was the House of Representatives in Australia. I also found out in reading the report.... Only a few days ago the House of Representatives in Australia produced a report which allows for breastfeeding in the chamber, which I'll cover in a second. I read the report, and it doe

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It makes it sound like there is a slip of paper involved. Turning to non-members on the floor during a sitting, by tradition no non-member or no member who is not part of the staff is allowed to be on the floor during a sitting. That means everyone who is not part of that group

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That said, when it last occurred, in either 2010 or 2011, there was a point of order raised about it. The Speaker clarified the position of the House of Commons at present. The Speaker indicated that infants were permitted on the floor of the House provided disruption and disturb

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. Meanwhile New Zealand appears to have sat for three days for a long time. In comparison with the territorial and provincial jurisdictions, 10 of 13 provincial and territorial jurisdictions do not sit on either Monday or Friday. Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia do not

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The tricky part and difficulty of researching the different jurisdictions just by going on what's online is that they don't tend to have a manual like we do with the O'Brien and Bosc, so you really have to dig around. I did find that Quebec, British Columbia, and Ontario had mad

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There are late sittings in a lot of jurisdictions. Australia goes until 9:30 p.m. New Zealand's House of Representatives on Tuesdays and Wednesdays sits from 7:30 p.m. until 10 p.m. The U.K. sits from 2:30 p.m. until 10:30 p.m. on Mondays. So, night sittings still exist in a numb

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I did not dig into the possibility of extended sittings. The Standing Orders in the House do provide for extended sittings; on the calendar, there's a little star beside the last two weeks in June, and then around the holidays. I'm not sure if those jurisdictions have that. I can

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In fact, it's less, because it's 13 out of 34.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Exactly. New Zealand and Australia also sit considerably less than Canada's House of Commons. In 2015 New Zealand's House sat for 90 days over 25 sitting weeks, and Australia's House sat for 68 days over 28 sitting weeks. The reason these jurisdictions sit less than us is that t

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The changes in the U.K. appear to have been made piecemeal over time. It started in 1997 and they finally made some changes in 2005, when it was recommended that the House study sitting times. The changes were finally made in 2012. They eliminated Friday sittings between 2012 and

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I've found in the provincial jurisdictions that there have been increases. When you decrease, if you remove time from one time.... For example, I think it was British Columbia; it got rid of night sittings and extended the length of the day on the other days to compensate for it.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  This is what I've found. Also, perhaps interesting to the committee is that in Scotland when they were designing a parliament in 1999, they decided to make family-friendly sittings—and family-friendly for everyone, for staff and for members—to be one of their principles and prio

Procedure and House Affairs committee  From what I could gather from reading their manual, from around the 1900s, when that jurisdiction began, it was four days a week. Then they went down to three days a week from 1950 to 1984, and then from 1984 to present they went back up to four days a week. I don't know about