Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the member for his question. I think rule clarity is important. Interns are not gifts. For someone to be aware of all the parliamentary internship programs, they would need to have access to a registry similar to the one described by Mr. Thomas

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the member for his question. When I saw the commissioner's advisory opinion, I asked my colleagues in charge of programs in other provinces—be it at the National Assembly of Quebec or in Ontario—whether their legislative assembly had a similar ru

Procedure and House Affairs committee  First, interns are not gifts. It is not okay to view them as such. Second, members, people who are considering this, must think of program and Hill accessibility for young people. Thank you.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. There are a lot of things to say around unpaid labour on the Hill. One of the things I did when I was director was to try to widen the pool of applicants to the parliamentary internship program. We surveyed alumni from the last 10 years. We figured out wh

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, I appreciate that question. Very briefly, in theory everybody working on the Hill is covered by certain policies and procedures. In my experience, as the previous director and as an intern, volunteers tend to have fewer supports and less training. This isn't the cas

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. I might defer to my colleagues here, in that when this advisory opinion came out, it certainly took effort to clarify it for the parliamentary internship program. Yes, because it's operated by the CPSA, I have an email here from the commissioner's office confirming t

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, thank you for inviting me to share my opinion. I submitted my opening statement, so I'll just summarize my recommendations. First and most importantly, members reviewing the code should consider the impact of the advisory opinion on the accessibility of the Hill as

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Madam Chair, I'd like to thank the member for that question and his comments. I was an intern in 2008-09. I think there are two aspects to the problem of how troubling it is to have young people referred to as gifts. One is that when you're a young person working on the Hill—I t