44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 13, 2023 10:00AM
- Jun/13/23 6:51:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent presentation. I think he has a brilliant way of expressing himself.
It is not that we are proposing new measures. Our situation has been evolving for some time now, in line with the measures that have been brought in to deal with the pandemic and to respond to the crises we are currently facing.
We are simply saying that the world has changed, things have changed, and we all have to adapt to those changes.
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- Jun/13/23 10:41:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I challenge my colleague to tell me, of all the changes he has just noted, how many of them were imposed through the will of one party. How many of those changes to our rules were made by one party, without consensus from all members of the House?
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- Jun/13/23 11:24:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my grey hair bears witness to the fact that I have learned certain things in life. One of them is that changes need to be explained and justified. Intelligent arguments must be presented. People need convincing. That is not what I am seeing in this motion. These changes are being imposed and have not been properly thought out.
The government should remember that, during the pandemic, we were eager to return to work here after two years. We were glad to see one another and to work together again. Today, we are hearing the total opposite from the Liberals. We are being asked to accept that the work will be done from home under certain conditions that are as yet unknown.
That is not what we signed up for. Our voters did not put us in power or elect us to do that. Changing the rules midstream is never healthy. I would like to have—
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- Jun/13/23 11:29:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very grateful for the opportunity to address the assembled House tonight on this government's proposal to make permanent changes that it has been tinkering with, experimenting with, over the last number of years on hybrid Parliament, which would allow members of Parliament to address the House both from the floor of the chamber and via Zoom.
I think we have a role, as Conservatives, to advocate for conserving the best traditions of our past, but that does not mean that we oppose change in all its forms. It means that we are appropriately cautious, I would say, about change in that we want to ensure that, in the process of changing fundamental institutions and other aspects about our national life, we do not lose things that were important about the previous forms of those institutions, which we were maybe not always fully conscious of.
Members of the government and of the NDP have repeatedly asserted that the current system is working. I think many members are relatively new in the House, and I was only elected in 2015. Those who have been here for a long time I think will notice how these changes have fundamentally changed aspects of our institution already and generally for the worse. It is important that we notice the ways in which the current provisions are not working and the problems that they are creating. As we deliberate about what the new rules should be, we ensure that we are pushing for solutions to these problems instead of allowing these problems that the government has created with this new model to simply continue to exist and fester.
The most critical concern I have about the way the current approach to hybrid Parliament operates is the way that it has shifted the role and powers of committees in this place. Previously, without the hybrid provisions in place, committees could sit largely whenever they wanted. They had designated time slots, but they had a great deal of flexibility in terms of going beyond those time slots.
As a political staffer, I recall times when we were dealing with critical issues in this place where committees would say “We decreed a new subcommittee and that subcommittee is going to meet for five hours Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night to deal with whatever the issue is.” There was flexibility for committees to do what they wanted to get to the bottom of issues that had to be addressed. Committees could also extend if there was some unresolved issue, and I am thinking here, to some extent, of the filibuster that has been alluded to.
Yes, the filibuster is a legitimate technique that is used by all parties. I think Mr. Christopherson of the NDP still has the record for it. We have a filibuster ongoing with the Liberals at public accounts and, yes, from time to time, some people I know in our own caucus may have used that tool once or twice. However, the point is that the filibuster is a tool that seeks to create a balance between the majority and the minority in committee. Generally, filibusters are resolved by committees sitting for extended hours, which forces members who are filibustering to maybe come back to the table. However, when we have hybrid provisions that limit committees to only sit in narrow time slots, it actually makes it much easier for members to filibuster. That is why there has been an explosion of the use of the filibuster by all parties in the House since these rules have been put in place.
These resource limitations constrain committees in their ability to sit for extended periods of time to actually resolve conflict that may exist in the context of those committees and to dig deeply into issues of concern for our national life. An example I remember vividly from my career is the process by which the Uyghur genocide was recognized in this Parliament. It was the subcommittee on international human rights sitting for two days solidly, because the committee members wanted to look at the situation of Uyghurs in China. At the end of those two days of intensive sittings, the committee was able to come to a particular conclusion. Now, with the hybrid provisions in place and the resource limitations, it would be much more difficult for any committee that wanted to look in a deep way at any issue to be able to do that.
Committees, in order to access resources, need to go to the whips of the various parties who then are able to make determinations about the allocation of resources. So, control over committees is no longer in the hands of the members of those committees to decide when they sit. Control about when committees sit, how they sit, what time slots they have available to them are made by the central controllers of the resources that are going to be available. These central controllers, the whips, in some form, decide if they are going to allow industry, public accounts or foreign affairs to have that narrow slot, and committees have to get that approval to get access to those resources in order to sit.
So, the way this place has changed is that committees no longer have autonomy. They no longer have control. They no longer have the ability to delve deeply into issues as required, because it is the central controllers as opposed to the members of the committee who decide who gets resources. I think there has been some acknowledgement that this is a fundamental problem, a fundamental change in the way our institution operates. However, members opposite have said, “Well, this is a problem. We need to solve it, but we should just move forward anyway.”
I would submit to the House that we have been dealing with this problem ever since we have had hybrid Parliament. Members have repeatedly raised concerns about it. It may be an issue of available dollars, or it may be an issue of available people who have the experience and expertise to do interpretation. I do not know exactly what the source of the problem is, but the point is that we have been doing this for years, and we still have that problem persisting.
I would say, if we are going to move forward with some kind of a hybrid framework, we have to do so in a way that protects the fundamental rights of committees to be able to do their job. That means resolving these resource issues in some way. This is the most important point that I want to make tonight. The hybrid provisions undermine the ability of committees to act autonomously. For all members, in all parties, who care about the functioning of parliamentary committees, we cannot push forward with these permanent changes to the Standing Orders without resolving that issue of committees.
I want to make a few other points as well. It is inescapable that a member standing in this place addressing members of Parliament is fundamentally different, in terms of the kind of communication that takes place, than a member sitting at home, in front of their screen, often reading off the screen, and able to completely shut out any other noises or interruptions. The back-and-forth taking place now, as Liberal members gesture and communicate, is part of what has made the House of Commons a great institution for over a hundred years. I relish that. I welcome the heckling. I welcome the back-and-forth.
If I were sitting at home, sitting in front of a screen, reading off the screen, and able to shut out any noises from the member for Kingston and the Islands and others, that would be a completely different kind of exchange. Something is lost. Something is being lost in the tone, in the lack of exchange that exists in Zoom calls and speeches.
I support the move to a voting app because I think we have seen how nothing is lost in the transition from standing votes to a voting app. However, I think we can see very clearly how a great deal is lost in the quality of exchange that takes place when we go from what is happening right now between members on the floor of the House and what happens when someone sits in front of a screen, shuts out any kind of other sound or noise or interaction, and simply delivers what is front of them.
On the issue of family friendliness, I live in western Canada. I have five young children, and this is hard job. There are many hard jobs. There are many jobs in this country where it is simply a reality that, to do the job properly, people have to travel and spend time away from family. There are certain opportunities that we have as members of Parliament that many do not, by the way, and we are able to have our families travel with us from time to time. However, the reality is that there are challenges.
There have been ways in the past that the House has accommodated these challenges. There has been the convention of pairing, for example. If a member needed to be away, they would engage a member of another party and both would agree to mutually absent themselves to preserve the balance. Members would cover for each other. This is what happened in the past.
However, as we move forward, I think the voting app reduces the need for pairing. Members could still vote. Only one member can speak in the House at a time, one out of 338. If a member needs to be away for a couple of weeks, and they are not able to give speeches but are still able to vote, I think they could effectively represent their constituents for that period of time without being able to speak remotely. We could preserve the flexibility and the family friendliness by having that voting app, while still preserving the idea that speeches in the House of Commons should be delivered from the floor of the House of Commons.
Finally, there has been discussion about diversity, about getting people with young families and more women in politics and such by giving more flexibility. However, it is important to note that changes to the Standing Orders the government is proposing still have a preference for members who are in person. It is odd to me that the government says people should be able to participate fully virtually, yet we can see in the changes to standing orders 26(2), 45(1), 53, 56(1), 62, 98 and one new standing order they are proposing, there are many cases where the Standing Orders say that members have to be in person to stand to object to the passage of a particular motion.
I think it is quite unfair that the government would say that we are going to bring in more women and more working parents as members of Parliament, yet subtly putting in place, in the Standing Orders, measures that would limit the full participation of those individuals.
We need to conserve the critical aspects of this institution that we have had for a long time. We can make some changes, but we should conserve the essential aspects of being in person, especially for speaking and for deliberating. This is the heart of our deliberative democracy, and something is lost with these hybrid provisions, something we need to conserve.
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