HAFF Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON PROCEDURE AND HOUSE AFFAIRS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA PROCÉDURE ET DES AFFAIRES DE LA CHAMBRE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, September 28, 2000

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. Derek Lee (Scarborough—Rouge River, Lib.)): I call the meeting to order. Colleagues, I see quorum sufficient to let us begin discussing the subject matter of our agenda, and that is consideration of proposals on changes to the standing orders.

We agreed that today, before we embarked on the whole process, we would consider the principles and goals that would guide us in selecting possible changes. That was a suggestion of Mr. Blaikie and other members.

The staff has prepared a document to guide us through that discussion. The document brings together goals, objectives, and principles articulated in the Lefebvre committee, in the McGrath committee, and in the earlier procedure and House affairs committee study on the subject. That is a useful collection, so we'll now begin discussing that.

The objective is to help target ourselves as a committee, and it may also give good direction to our table here, as they attempt to assist us with a subject matter that could be fairly complex. It does involve a lot of standing orders and a lot of suggestions of our colleagues.

So let's now begin. We can just go around the table and collect the views of members as to which principles, goals, and objectives they see as the most important in our study.

Would committee members accept that we would keep our remarks to no more than five minutes, and then just keep moving around? That wouldn't oblige anybody to speak for a full five minutes. Let's try that.

Mr. Reynolds.

Mr. John Reynolds (West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

From reviewing the areas for discussion and looking at the layout here, I would like to see us discuss certain issues: number one, the weekly sitting schedule, the four-day week; in chapter V, the special question-and-answer periods; in chapter VI, the speaking times relating to questions and comments after leaders or sponsoring ministers speak in the House; and in chapter VIII, the override of unanimous consent. Standing Order 56(1) was brought in by the former Tory government, and it's very draconian.

Under chapter IX, I'd like us to look at referral before second reading and the borrowing authority bills; in chapter XIII, I'd like us to review procedures for committees on speaking times, notices of motions, dissenting opinions, and in camera meetings, as well as Order in Council appointments and election of chairs and vice-chairs; and under “Miscellaneous”, the sections I'd like to discuss are free votes, confidence convention, party discipline, and decorum in the House.

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Those are the issues that come to the top of my mind as I go through the list for possible discussion. I'll just leave it at that right now.

The Chair: I appreciate the attempt to cobble together particular items, and we certainly can do that, but I think Mr. Blaikie had hoped we might focus on more general objectives. Members should feel free to add their wish lists to the exercise.

I'll go to Madame Dalphond-Guiral.

[Translation]

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral (Laval Centre, BQ): Five minutes will suffice. As I see it, Parliament's objective is to ensure that we have responsible government. There is no question that any measure having to do with the Standing Orders of the House of Commons can contribute to responsible government.

My Canadian Alliance colleague mused that it might be interesting to look at our weekly sitting schedule. No doubt we would all enjoy sitting only four days instead of five, but that's not a priority for me. Whether we sit four days or five days, it doesn't change the fact the Parliament is accountable to the people.

However, I think it might be interesting to examine the whole question of opposition days. That's one matter that I have flagged. Opposition days are not all votable days and I'm wondering if perhaps they could be made so. Such days give the opposition an opportunity to have the House debate issues which very often the government has no wish to debate, for reasons it alone knows. I understand that. Moreover, if all matters discussed on opposition days came to a vote, this would reflect Parliament's desire to promote exchanges of views. Parliament would then not be under the obligation of having to select days on which questions are put to a vote. I think this is a matter that warrants further discussion.

On the subject of committees, as everyone knows, elections are looming. The Standing Orders stipulate that the chairs and vice-chairs, with one exception, be elected from among the members of the government party. If we were to compare, in some respects, the role of a committee chair to that of the Speaker of the House, then I think we could entertain the possibility of having a certain number of committees chaired by someone other than a government member.

I fail to see how this would adversely affect the quality of committee work since quite often relations between committee members are of a less partisan nature, and this helps to further debate. I also think that this would be one way of acknowledging the different nature of the debates in committee.

Furthermore, I would not be adverse in the least to our discussing - and this is my own personal sticking point - committee policy on official languages. Of course, government documents are always submitted in both languages. Occasionally, some submissions from organizations are not translated. I have on occasion accepted this situation because some organizations do not have a lot of money to cover the cost of translations.

In keeping with the spirit of this marvellous country which professes to be bilingual from coast to coast, would it be possible to notify those witnesses or organizations scheduled to appear long enough in advance to give them time to submit their documents and have the translated either into English or into French? I think we have enough issues to discuss for the coming year.

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[English]

The Chair: Mr. Blaikie.

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): All the points people have raised so far are of course important and could be added to the list and various of the chapters in the outline we have, but I guess what I was looking for, and I'm not sure we have it yet, is something that would come from either the committee or the research of the discussion document.

We have before us just a very brief review of what previous committees did and a suggestion of many possible themes. I take it these possible themes have been drawn from comments and proposals of members. It seems to me what we need to do is try to see if we can find the common thread in these themes and let that be our guide, so that when we come to all these different items, we don't just try to ask if something is a good idea or a bad idea.

If our goal is to enhance the independence of members and to relax to some degree both the reality and the perception of party discipline, does this do that? If it does, does it do it in the right way, or does it go too far or not far enough? If one of our goals is to enhance the independence and the power of committees, then we judge individual proposals on the basis of that, and so on and so on.

That's what we need to do, or at least it's what I would prefer to do. If the committee doesn't want to do that, I'll go down the list, and we can debate item by item, but we'll all be arguing, either explicitly or implicitly, about things we haven't agreed on. It may make the process much more difficult if we don't have common assumptions we can hold each other to account on. If we can't come up with common assumptions, then obviously we may be reduced to just debating item by item.

If one takes seriously the comments from not just the opposition but the government backbench, there's a desire in the House for more ability on the part of individual members, both in committee and in the House collectively, to be less under the heels, so to speak—and I don't mean that in a pejorative way—than has been traditionally the case with the Canadian Parliament. That is to say, there is a desire for less party discipline and a lessening of the enormous power that accrues to the party leader, and of course the party leader with the most power is the Prime Minister, but it's also true of other party leaders. I think we need to have a discussion about that, for instance. Do we all agree that's what we're trying to do?

In that respect, just sharing experience from previous exercises like this, it may be..... Well, presuming that we will have enough time to do this—if we're going to have an election in two or three weeks, then this is all moot and the job for another Parliament, but if we find out we're not having an election and we have the time to do it properly—then it seems to me what's in order is a couple of really good in camera sessions.

Frankly, government members aren't free to talk on the record about how unhappy they might be with various aspects of our parliamentary system, unless they're a whole lot different from government members I've known before. That's important. We need to have that kind of sharing of ideas and then see if we can't come to some crystallization of what we're looking for.

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You may not want to do that. You may just want to go down the list. There are a lot of things here that don't fit into a particular theme. There are a lot of things that are miscellaneous.

Some have to do with how to make the place more family friendly or human friendly in terms of when we sit and how long we sit and all that stuff. Then there's the whole question having to do with political parties. This is important for us, obviously. A lot of the rules were written as if there were a three-party House. We've had a five-party House now for two Parliaments and we still haven't gotten around to rewriting the rules.

In many respects, the rules were accidentally written for a three-party Parliament. If you look at the McGrath report, where it says that the lead-off speaker for each party should have 40 minutes—this is what we said when we were reducing the overall times for speeches—we didn't say “three parties”. We said “each party”. But when that was then written into the standing orders, it read “the first three speakers”.

That seemed innocuous at the time because there were only three parties, but the clear intent of both the recommendation and the implementation of the recommendation was that every party should have an equal time at the beginning to express itself. That hasn't been the case for at least two Parliaments. Those kinds of things also need to be addressed.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Blaikie. You've made some useful suggestions. Members may want to consider whether we should, at some point soon, slide in camera to maybe get a better focus.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: The McGrath committee spent a lot of time meeting away from the Hill.

The Chair: Yes.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: We hung out at Meech Lake.

The Chair: This is always a possibility. In the event we roll into an election period, it's worth noting that the Lefebvre and McGrath committees had to deal with that. The time invested by the Lefebvre committee was not lost with an election. It apparently rolled over and was the basis for the McGrath considerations, which did bring about some rather significant changes in the way we do our House and committee business.

Now I'll go to Mr. Jordan and then to Mr. Strahl.

Mr. Joe Jordan (Leeds—Grenville, Lib.): I'm just wondering if Meech Lake is heated. Is it, Derek?

I agree with Bill. If we start with a sense of what it is we're trying to accomplish and the general themes of what we're trying to address, it'll give us pretty clear direction in terms of what we want to do.

Again, I think Bill expressed it very well. The landscape certainly has changed in terms of the number of parties in the House, but I think the landscape has also changed in the sense that the days are gone when somebody could aspire to a certain ideology and hold that line on virtually every issue, whether it was economic, social, or environmental. I think MPs, by the nature of the jobs they are required to do, inherently now require a little more flexibility or a little more opportunity to discuss things.

I agree with Bill. If we can agree generally on what it is we're trying to accomplish, it'll be a lot easier than trying to go through the individual lists. Although this list is certainly a good comprehensive list in terms of the types of things we may look at, I think we could spin our wheels for a long time if we don't come to some consensus as to what general direction we're headed in.

The Chair: Mr. Strahl, then Ms. Parrish.

Mr. Chuck Strahl (Fraser Valley, Canadian Alliance): As is often the case, because Bill and I are ideologically quite close, I agree—

Mr. Bill Blaikie: A point of order.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

An hon. member: This is calumny of the highest order.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: I think Bill's on the right track. There are all kinds of things we can discuss, but I do think we need some kind of overarching theme.

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I would be interested in hearing Mr. Blaikie's comments on the guiding principle of the third report of the McGrath committee. It still looks pretty good.

I don't know if I'd be embarrassed to say that this is the third time in a row we've tried to come up with similar recommendations on the same theme, but it does seem to me that if you're looking at even the possible themes idea.... When I look at the points of order, the points of privilege, in the House over the last quite some time, since I've been here, maybe, generally they are around a couple of themes. One is the accountability of the government to Parliament, as opposed to the executive branch doing their own thing and Parliament being an afterthought. None of us like to be afterthoughts, whether we're on the government or the opposition side, so there is the accountability of the government to Parliament. That's one thing.

Then I think we need to wrestle with the idea of restoring or enhancing public confidence in our democratic institutions. All of us have been at any number of public meetings where they just have various versions of “Well, it's all a lark anyway because we all know what's going on down there.” Whether they do or not, they feel they do. They feel that their democratic institutions are not really accountable.

On a point of privilege yesterday someone was upset because the minister leaked the bill to the media before it came to the House, which means the House is a second-class citizen, and all members of Parliament get aggrieved at that, on both sides of the House. They want to think, to believe, that Parliament is supreme.

It seems to me that in regard to the two themes, you could almost use that kind of guiding paragraph from the McGrath committee. To me it basically comes down to the accountability of the government to the Parliament of Canada and restoring public confidence in our democratic institutions. That, to me, is the overarching theme.

Then, whether you're talking about how we work in committees, how legislation goes through, the shenanigans, the decorum, all those things fit into one of those two ideas. For example, one of the items I would include in this would be why it is that the Senate estimates go through the system and senators are the only ones you can't call before a committee to ask what they're spending the money on. I say that has to do with confidence in our public institutions and accountability to the Parliament of Canada instead of just the executive branch. That's just an example.

I think almost everything fits into one of those two things: restoring public confidence in our democratic institutions and making sure the government is accountable to Parliament, not just the executive branch.

I think everyone, except maybe the executive branch, would find that really a very stimulating conversation. But the executive branch is not the Liberals sitting at the table here. As we all know, the executive branch is a smaller group of people who have a role to play, but we need to make sure that the parliamentary role is understood so that we don't get the points of order we had yesterday, where everybody is aggrieved and bent out of shape and going supernova or whatever the phrase is. It happens so often now that it's old hat.

That's the category and those are the two things I'd like to see in the overall review.

The Chair: Thank you.

Ms. Parrish.

Ms. Carolyn Parrish (Mississauga Centre, Lib.): First I have an editorial comment. I think we flatter ourselves when we think the great public out there is paying attention to our working conditions.

You talk about people not having confidence in governments and politicians. I've been involved in municipal government before. They all believe municipal governments are full of crooks and politicians are useless anyway; that they're not elected in a party system, they're elected as individuals. Let's not flatter ourselves that Canada is waiting breathlessly for the changes we're about to make in the way we run our offices here and our system in the House.

On another hand, I agree with Bill 100%.

Bill, pay attention: I'm agreeing with you.

I think it's a philosophical decision, and we have a real dichotomy here. We have a party that's very much wanting to model itself after an American system and we have a party that's very much modelled after a traditional British system. Unless we decide on the philosophical system that we would like to serve this country, there's no point in going piecemeal through all of this and playing, diddling, fiddling, and fine-tuning. There really isn't any point.

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We have a few chestnuts that come up all the time. There's one particular member of the Liberal Party who comes scooting in here whenever the word “electronic voting” comes out, because that's an obsession.

I was just in Germany. They rebuilt the Reichstag, the most modern building I've ever seen; environmentally perfect, all the stale air goes out naturally. They don't have electronic voting.

I'm concerned, and I agree with Bill. Before we start messing around with all these little fine-tuning pieces—you change one and everything else goes out of whack—we should first decide philosophically what form of Parliament we want, and secondly, we should look at models that have evolved.

You talk about multiple parties. All over Europe now they have multiple parties, in old systems that have been there for years. I'm sure there are experts, like one of our deputy speakers, Peter Milliken, who has visited all these Parliaments.

Instead of plunging into diddling and fiddling—I guess diddling is not a good word. Instead of fiddling and fine-tuning, we should listen to Bill, because he's been here a long time. I've trailed him around Europe on one or two visits. He knows more than I do about this stuff. But I really am concerned that if we go through these little pieces without knowing what picture we want at the end, we're going to be doing this again two years from now and then two years from now.

As far as reinvigorating the Canadian public to see Parliament as a worthwhile institution, that's a joke. Let's just not worry about that, because what we're talking about here is our own working conditions and what sort of government we want to have in this House.

The Chair: Okay.

Mr. Bergeron, and then Mr. Blaikie.

[Translation]

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron (Verchères—Les-Patriotes, BQ): First of all, I have to say that I agree more or less with Ms. Parrish's contention that the average person on the street is not concerned about the work committees do. It's not an existential issue for them. When they come home, they don't wonder about what's happened at the House of Commons that day. That's a fact.

However, one reason why members of the public are no longer interested in our work is that they have lost faith in the institution of Parliament. Why is that? We need to ask ourselves that question. Perhaps they have lost faith in the institution or no longer see it as capable of promoting their values because Parliament, the ultimate democratic institution, has become so inflexible that it no longer allows for the proper expression of democratic will.

The issue of confidence is most basic and to my mind, a fundamental consideration. If we wish to breathe new life into the role of MPs, we must ensure that they can vote more readily according to their conscience and according to the will of their constituents, the people whom they were elected to represent. They were not elected to promote the party line.

When members of the public see their elected representative vote against their wishes and against his or her own convictions, they lose faith. They become disillusioned with the system, believing that MPs are only looking out for themselves and taking care to keep their cushy job with its benefits and perks, because if they vote against their party, they will be shunned, lose out on opportunities to travel and so forth.

Therefore, we need to convey a message to our constituents, namely that this institution can truly be the forum for democratic debate, a forum in which MPs are not simply bound by party lines. It may come as a surprise to you to hear a whip speak these words, but it's the truth. I know that at Westminster, the model for all British-style parliaments, when a government is defeated in a vote, it isn't always necessarily viewed as a question of confidence and the government is not necessarily obliged to step down. The same approach could be adopted here.

Any time the government is defeated on a particular vote, a motion could be put to the House asking if it still has confidence in the government. In the affirmative, the government could remain in office.

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Under the current system, a prime minister would frown upon his members voting against him, because it would amount to a vote of confidence and if defeated, he would have to resign. Our Prime Minister has been heard to say that if his members want an early election call, all they need to do is vote against the government.

I agree with Ms. Parrish when she says that the public isn't really interested in what we do here. We have to wonder why that's the case, because things have come to a pretty pass when the public loses interest in its political system.

When people start to take democracy for granted, then that's when democracy is most threatened.

Speaking about broad philosophical directions, there is, of course, the whole matter of revitalizing the role of MPs and allowing them to truly function as legislators. I talked about this a little earlier.

There's one more thing. Parliament has evolved considerably. So too has society. The structure we have reflects a somewhat archaic form of parliamentary government. This question was discussed at length by the sub-committee looking into the schedule of the House of Commons. Members are now being called upon to be more involved and active in their communities. The public understands more and more that parliamentarians have a life outside Parliament. Parliament, however, has not adapted to this reality.

Either last year or two years ago, it was suggested to the sub-committee that it act upon these proposed changes. For a variety of reasons that I will not get into at this time, we did not follow through with these changes. Personally, I disagree with the idea of a four-day week. However, I strongly feel that the Friday schedule should be altered because as things now stand, it's a utter waste of time and of the taxpayers' money.

MPs must remain in town to debate government bills for 60 or 90 minutes. Barely two ministers are present for Question Period to field questions from the opposition. Why do we cling to such an inflexible system? Why not consider new approaches, like the one adopted for questioning in the National Assembly? It allows for far more constructive debates without necessarily tying up all parliamentarians, leaving them free to attend to business in their ridings.

I'm not talking about Ontario, naturally, because its situation is somewhat unique, but compared to legislative assemblies in other regions of Canada and Quebec, federal members spend more time sitting in Ottawa and they represent much larger ridings and larger constituencies. Therefore, we are not as available to address the needs of our constituents.

I'll stop there, Mr. Chairman. I'll most likely have more to say later.

[English]

The Chair: Good. Thank you.

Mr. Richardson.

Mr. John Richardson (Perth—Middlesex, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I've just looked at the two proposals in the set-up of the McGrath report and the subsequent one drawn up through our own library and clerk. I see we have 17 issues listed here. They all spin around a nucleus of operations that overlap.

Looking at those that are relevant, and relating them to similar things, we could break it down into five or six channels, or even three or four, but pick them out as we know them and place them in the areas where they would be relevant. The debate would narrow the focus, but it would cover almost all the things we would normally cover in this committee.

I feel that a list of 17 titles is a little long, and if we could reduce it to, let's say, four titles, I think it would give it a little better condensation.

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The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Blaikie.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: That's not dissimilar to what I was suggesting, that we try to see how some of these many themes can be integrated or reduced to three, four, or five. I don't think we should set an arbitrary number but obviously a lot less than is the case.

I just want to say, partly responding to what Carolyn had to say, that I agree that people don't care about our working conditions and they probably shouldn't, but they do care about Parliament, or at least they have a lot to say about the extent to which they see it as a sort of rubber stamp for decisions that are made elsewhere. That touches on all the things that are here, the independence of committees and of individual members, the whole question of party discipline, free votes, etc.

In that respect I just want to correct what I think is a constant misperception of parliamentary and political history. I don't know if this is the prelude to the great debate on values we're going to have in the election, but it's not the stark contrast between the British parliamentary system being defended by the Liberal Party and the American congressional system being put forward by the Reform or Alliance. For one thing the British parliamentary system has a lot more free voting in it than the Canadian parliamentary system has. It has evolved. We have one of the more archaic parliamentary institutions here. This was true in 1983 and 1985 when the McGrath committee met. It was something we tried to chip away at and to some extent did, but certainly not to the extent we had hoped for.

We still have one of the most archaic parliaments. You try to explain to somebody from a third world country that almost everybody from the Supreme Court judges down to the dogcatcher is appointed by the Prime Minister, and you wonder in the end who has the undeveloped democracy. We're parading all over the world teaching new democracies how to be democratic, and yet in some respects we have one of the more undemocratic countries you could ever see. That's without even getting into the whole issue of the Senate.

So it's not this stark contrast.

For that matter, the call for less party discipline and more free votes was alive and well in this Parliament long before the Reform Party was a gleam in the eye of Preston Manning. The McGrath committee called for a greater range of issues on which there could be votes without party discipline. It was even implemented to the extent that all the language of confidence was taken out of the standing orders. There used to be language of confidence in the standing orders. That was all taken out so that every opposition motion, every supply day motion, for that matter every motion that is moved in the House of Commons to this day since the adoption of the McGrath report is not technically a matter of confidence in the way they once were.

We can sit here and kind of beat our gums to death forever about how we're going to change the rules to change the confidence convention. There's nothing to change. It has all been changed. The confidence convention exists in the head of the Prime Minister. The confidence convention exists in the heads of various party leaders. The confidence convention is part of our political culture. It has nothing to do with our procedures any more. It did at one time, but it doesn't any more.

My Alliance colleagues keep calling for changes in order to permit more free votes. The only changes that are needed are the changes in our internal party political cultures and in our political culture generally, so that if people do have free votes and they do vote against their leadership, this is treated as a healthy sign, rather than a sign that they don't have confidence in the leader, or the caucus is falling apart, or all the negative interpretations of this that arise in the media and elsewhere. We need to develop a political and media culture that does not routinely see this as being negative. This committee can't change that.

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Procedurally, members of Parliament have already been led to water; we just have not been able to make them drink. It's all there. It's all there for government backbenchers. It's there for other members of Parliament. Of course, it's hard to drink if you have your leader or your Prime Minister saying, “Go ahead, drink”. The axe is waiting.

Sure, we've had a bit more free voting; we've had free voting on private members' business. We've had some free voting on the government side, but nothing that ever endangered anything the government was trying to do. We've had no lost motions. We've had some political manoeuvring—manoeuvring is too pejorative—but some people have been allowed to vote against the party line on certain things, like gun control and a few other things. It's been more a sort of internal management of issues, as opposed to, I think, genuine free voting. But it's all there.

I just want to dispel the notion that somehow, before the Reform Party and the Alliance Party came along, there were no members of Parliament who ever had this notion that perhaps Parliament wasn't working very well and there needed to be more free votes. I made my first speech calling for more free votes in this House in 1982, and that's getting to be a while ago. I'm sure people made those kinds of speeches long before I got here.

So let's not kid ourselves that we have these two models. We have a long history of members of Parliament on all sides of the House saying there's something dysfunctional about this place. I think we were actually making progress, frankly, to some degree, during the early years of the Mulroney government, until the Prime Minister caught on. He was kind of new.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Bill Blaikie: In the McGrath committee, we had a very conscious strategy: we have to act quickly, because this guy's new, he doesn't really know. Once he figures out how much power he has, he'll want to defend it. Unfortunately, we have a Prime Minister now who has been around for a long time, knows exactly how much power he has, and isn't likely to give it up. But that doesn't mean members of Parliament can't tilt at that windmill one more time, give it the old college try. Maybe one of these days something will happen.

The Chair: A postscript in connection with free votes. I agree with Mr. Blaikie a hundred per cent that we're not going to alter the convention by changing our rules. It's in the heads of our political leaders, and when they want their team to be with them in the House, that is going to be what's going to happen, unless a rebel or two decide they're not going to be there.

Yes, we may have been led to the water. I think the Prime Minister had been doing some sipping of the water, at least in his own mind, in dealing with private members' business. I think he regards that as a step, where he made the decision that he wouldn't expect his team to vote together with him and that members could vote freely on private members' business.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: He's still swishing it around.

The Chair: Yes, that's right. And you're looking across the table, Mr. Blaikie, of course, at the government whip, whose major job it is to marshall members politically to vote on the government side—and you each have your party whips on the opposition side to marshall members for voting. That's a dynamic that runs contrary to the philosophy of a free vote. You have people in the party hierarchy whose job it is to marshall the vote. So we're not going to adopt a rule here that dispenses with party whips.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: We have to marshall on a smaller range of issues. You could have a broader range of issues in which that kind of marshalling wouldn't be necessary, and that was what the McGrath....

The Chair: Yes.

[Translation]

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: Mr. Chairman, may I just say something?

[English]

The Chair: I'm just going to finish my postscript, and then Mr. Reynolds wanted to move a motion dealing with membership of our private members' business subcommittee.

In trying to approach some principles or objectives, I wanted to throw out on the table, from the view of the individual member in the House, that the rules should facilitate and ensure the engagement of a member on issues in the House in that committee. We'd want to make sure that member isn't blocked from engaging, from speaking. That's a principle we should keep our eye on. We all represent parties, and some of us may say we have to make sure our party is engaged, but we also have the view of the member. We should be keeping our eye on that as a principle.

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The second one—and to me it is just as important—is the effective use of House and committee time. The time is limited, unfortunately, to 24 hours a day, and we can't change that by statute in the House. We only have so much time. I would think we all ought to be looking for ways to ensure that when we spend time on things, it's done in a fair but productive way. I realize there's a difference of views between government and opposition on that, but no matter how you see-saw on the issue, at the end of the day we have to let the House do its business. That's another principle. I'll just call it the productive use of House and committee time.

I thought I'd throw those two things on the table. Now I've caused Mr. Blaikie to want to do some value-added here, and Mr. Bergeron wants to add something.

[Translation]

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: I'd just like to add one more thing.

[English]

The Chair: And Mr. Reynolds, your motion can wait? You don't have to rush off?

Mr. John Reynolds: I was just going to add a postscript myself.

The Chair: Oh, okay. Why don't we do Mr. Bergeron first.

Mr. John Reynolds: That's fine.

The Chair: Oh, everyone has some add-ons. I just want to let Mr. Reynolds dispose of his motion.

Do you want to do that first?

Mr. John Reynolds: Sure. I move that Garry Breitkreuz replace Deborah Grey on the subcommittee on private members' business.

The Chair: Clerk, do we have that?

The Clerk of the Committee: Yes.

Mr. John Reynolds: And my postscript is—

The Chair: Well, we heard the motion. Do we need a seconder? We do not need a seconder. You've heard the motion. I'll put the question.

(Motion agreed to)

The Chair: Thank you. Now I will leave Mr. Reynolds.

In the order in which I had been recognizing postscripts, Mr. Bergeron was next. If we're not unhappy with it, I can let Mr. Reynolds continue.

Mr. John Reynolds: I won't take very long.

The Chair: Okay.

Mr. John Reynolds: I just want to mention to Mr. Blaikie that I beat him by ten years in looking for free votes in this place. At one time in the 1970s, with a minority government, I voted with the Liberal government, and they won the vote by one vote. I can tell you, I was not a very popular guy with the leader or the whip. It was to do with wiretapping legislation.

A lot of members of Parliament in all parties over the years have asked for that. A number of us here also went to the meeting on committees, in the reading room a few months ago. I give the Prime Minister credit for what he's done. It's step by step. It's slow. It's not as fast as a lot of us would like.

I agree with you. I talked to one of my own kids the other day, and he said, “Where are you, in Ottawa, here, or where?” He's a 38-year-old successful businessman who reads the paper every day, but he doesn't even know where I am. Most Canadians are like that. They expect us to come here and do our job. They don't watch the news as we do every night. Whenever you talk to them, they ask, “How come it is so rowdy there?”

Our new leader wanting to have his press conference downstairs maybe is a little more civil than the way it's done, at the back, and maybe will lead to something better when we all start operating as do normal business people and normal people in every walk of life.

The work we're doing here is very, very important, and it's a step-by-step process. If we can make some positive changes so that a person like me, who voted that way that time.... Fortunately I didn't have to worry; they didn't send me on any trips. I had enough money to go on my own trips. I could go to Hawaii whenever I wanted. But that's the pressure that is there, and it shouldn't be there.

Governments are going to have to learn on the executive side that people are elected to represent their constituents, and if they all don't agree with the executive, they'll take it back to the hopper and make it work for everybody. I just don't see that as an impossible thing. It happens in other parliaments. In Great Britain they only call out the real whips every once in a while, and the rest of the time it's basically all free votes.

Governments have to react to what the members are doing. If we can just get that message across here over the next few years, so that everybody who comes here feels safe in voting the way they want to vote, I think it's going to be very, very good for everybody.

• 1200

The Chair: We're getting into short bullets here, so Mr. Bergeron, then Mr. Blaikie, and then Mr. Jordan.

[Translation]

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to come back to what I suggested earlier. As paradoxical as it may seem, on the question of confidence, if we want to dispel any fears of a government defeat, I think that on the contrary, we need to reintroduce in the Standing Orders a provision respecting the question of confidence, along the lines of what I was saying earlier. If a government is defeated on a matter that concerns it or that it raised, it must immediately put to the House a motion asking if it still has the confidence of the House.

The Liberals may not be in office forever. In fact, I'm certain they won't be. If a government is defeated by its own members on a motion or legislative proposal, the House may want to reaffirm its confidence in this government and allow it to continue in office. Consequently, a government, if not the Prime Minister, would not always face the threat of defeat or of having to call an election.

It's just an idea. Perhaps we should bring back the notion of confidence in the Standing Orders, but in a different way.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Blaikie, then Mr. Jordan.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman. With apologies to the committee, I am moved to one more history lesson.

You were talking about the use of our time both in committee and in the House. One of the ironies of the consequences—not the intent but the consequences—of the McGrath report was that we did away with the evening sittings, but the object of that exercise was that committees would meet in the evening, because people were feeling exactly what we feel now, only in different circumstances. They were torn between committees and the House.

You can't be in both places at the same time, so we said, well, let's shorten the parliamentary day. Committees used to meet regularly from eight o'clock to ten o'clock in the evening and the House sat from eight o'clock to ten o'clock in the evening. What was a drag, if you like, particularly from the point of view of people who had their families or whatever here in Ottawa, was that we would most often have the votes at ten o'clock. The votes we now have at supper time we then had at ten o'clock rather than at six o'clock—but it made for some interesting evenings.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the goal of that particular reform—something to keep in mind is that there are, a lot of times, unintended consequences of reform—was to free up time so that people could be in committee without having to be in the House. The goal was to eliminate that conflict.

Instead, as soon as it was changed so that people didn't have to be here for the House and didn't have the discipline of having a vote at 10 or 10:30, people who lived in Ottawa, particularly those who had their families in Ottawa, sort of won the day and said, no, they wanted to go home. “Now that I don't have to be here in the House, I want to go home,” they said. Evening committee meetings disappeared from the face of the earth.

What happened was that work that was supposed to be spread out more rationally actually got telescoped into a smaller space, so that we now actually have more of a problem with people having to be everywhere at the same time than we did before the McGrath reform.

I just say that with respect to your comment about how to use time more effectively. What we had in mind was that the evenings would become a time when people didn't have to face votes at 10 or 10:30 and could go to a committee meeting after supper.

Of course then people used the parliamentary dining room. They didn't disappear to 10 million different places to have supper, so they could just go back to the committee meetings. But that's another story, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: All those other stories are probably quite interesting.

Mr. Jordan.

Mr. Joe Jordan: The historical perspective is actually quite interesting because it does bring some perspective to this.

• 1205

I just want to attempt a bit of a defence of the parliamentary system. The sense I get from talking to people is this. It's very easy to sit there in the coffee shops of Canada and say that MPs are trained seals and “We want somebody to go to Ottawa who is going to represent our interests”. What they really mean is “I want someone to go to Ottawa who is going to represent my interests. Screw my neighbour.”

If you take a sports analogy, hockey and golf both have very clear objectives. In hockey you have a dressing room where you have a strategy, and you go out there and perform in a certain way. Everyone may want to be a goal scorer, but that's not going to work. You move towards your objective. Golf is an individual sport; you do your own thing and hope for the best. I think there are pros and cons to both.

Before we just trash the parliamentary system, maybe we want to think about that. There is some value there. I agree with what Bill is saying, that maybe—

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Marty McSorley over there—

Mr. Joe Jordan: You may want to look at the scope of it when it's a whipped vote, but we haven't had that many whipped votes.

My concern is that it's a little overly simplistic to say that more free votes are a good thing, because (a) I've yet to see an instrument that's going to reflect what my constituents feel, other than the squeaky wheel, other than the guy phoning me and screaming. Does he reflect the majority of my constituents? I don't know. And (b), if MPs are going to vote freely, we need more time to become informed on the issues we're voting on. Otherwise it's going to be public opinion that is going to kind of direct it. I don't think that's better; it's different.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Then we might actually have to start to have a debate, you see, instead of—

Mr. Joe Jordan: There you go—

Mr. Bill Blaikie: —closing things down after a day and a half.

Mr. Joe Jordan: Yes, well, that's what I say—

Mr. Bill Blaikie: We might have to listen to each other.

Mr. Joe Jordan: To go back to the original point, that's why I think if we can define what it is we're trying to do, it'll give us some badly needed focus, because this could take years. The fact that I agree 100% with what was said in 1985 is a bit of an indictment of the process, because it hasn't happened. I don't know. It's a difficult issue, especially given the landscape at this moment.

My final point is that I did want to discuss another issue. Should I do that now or...?

The Chair: Seeing no objection, is this related to the standing order review?

Mr. Joe Jordan: No. It's related to the document.

The Chair: That's fine.

Mr. Joe Jordan: I'm just wondering about this because there have been a couple of questions raised. In terms of defence of democracy, freedom of the press is one of the fundamental pillars. Do we have rules about the documents on the table? Does the press have access to them?

The Chair: Let's check with the clerk to see what is the use and purpose of the documents on the table.

The Clerk: I think this particular question has arisen with respect to the briefing notes that have been prepared by the researcher for the use of the committee members.

The practice has been that briefing notes prepared for the use of the members by the parliamentary research branch are not distributed to the public. They're for the use of the members of the committee and the committee staff. Other documents that are produced by witnesses at public meetings are open and available to the press as long as all members of the committee receive their copies first and have been satisfied. The press can then have access to what is left.

I'm discussing a practice; it's not written anywhere. It has been standard practice that briefing notes prepared by the Library of Parliament research branch are not distributed to members of the media. That's a decision for the committee to make.

Mr. Joe Jordan: Okay. I respect that. I saw the clerk in action and I was very proud of her defence of the rules.

But I'm just wondering about it. If somebody is assigned to cover this committee, it's probably not by choice. Maybe we can make it a little easier for them or...?

An hon. member: Why are you here?

The Chair: This is boring, and why would the press want to cover something as boring and as mundane as parliamentary procedure?

In any event, the clerk has articulated what the current practice is. If there is no view among members that we should change it, that's the way it'll be. I suppose we all have an interest in ensuring that our public is aware of what's going on here within Parliament and the committees. The service is put in place to serve members, first and foremost, and provided it's all working favourably, there's absolutely no harm, as I see it, in letting the press and the public see what we're doing. In any event, I don't want to get into a real nitty-gritty discussion of the precise procedure.

• 1210

Mr. Bill Blaikie: They could always get it from whoever leaked the UI legislation.

The Chair: Yes, whoever. So there we are.

We're trying, colleagues, to nail down some principles that would allow the staff to group the standing order changes as they've been proposed and maybe even prioritize. Are we getting closer to that? Mr. Blaikie is our éminence grise and Ms. Parrish is our energizer.

Ms. Carolyn Parrish: I'm the summary person.

The Chair: All right.

Ms. Carolyn Parrish: There are a couple of images I'd like to correct. The idea that nothing has changed since 1985 is not true. I am suffering from my own smart-assed change we introduced, which was voting on private members' bills from the back row down. I'm now the third voter in the back row. So we're all sitting there going, whoa, what do we do? So we do have to pay more attention to the private members' business that's up, because we are not getting direction from the whip on how to vote on private members' business. So those of us who are in the first couple of seats in the back row are really paying attention.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Why do you ask, what do we do? Why don't you say, what do I do?

Ms. Carolyn Parrish: It's because I'm a team player, and it was pointed out that this is a team sport. If we want an individual sport, we stay in municipal politics. If we want a team sport, we join a party and we hopefully stick with at least using the same puck and the same uniform.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: On private members' business.

Ms. Carolyn Parrish: Not on private members' business, no.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: That's what you were talking about.

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: We're all using the same puck.

Ms. Carolyn Parrish: The point Mr. Blaikie made on unintended results worries me a little bit, the whole description of how the hours were changed and then it turned out that there was an unintended result that was, in his opinion I assume, negative, which was a further diminishment of the importance of committees and everybody running all over the place. I think that would be important for the staff to keep in mind when they group them so that we don't change one thing and it's going to mess up something else. So if you can group them so that we don't get unintended changes or dichotomies, it would be a very good thing.

The last thing I would like to mention is my circle fairy, which I've had all my life. If people are standing in a circle and they all take one little step back, the circle gets bigger and it still functions. If one person takes 16 steps back, they break the circle. I think when you make changes like this, if you try to do it very dramatically, you really mess up. So I'd like all of us to take little steps in unison on this thing as we're going through it, rather than break the circle.

Mr. Joe Jordan: The circle will be unbroken, you mean.

Ms. Carolyn Parrish: That's right.

The Chair: Somebody wrote a song about that once. We have some guidance in our musical heritage.

Ms. Bakopanos.

Ms. Eleni Bakopanos (Ahuntsic, Lib.): Thank you.

I've just been sitting here listening to everybody, and I'm taking in a history lesson. Thank you very much, Bill, for that. It's very useful, actually.

Your original question was, how should we regroup them? I've been thinking while everybody has been talking. I don't know if this will be useful, but I think the first question that was asked, and I think it's Carolyn who put it best.... I don't know what was said before I arrived. I think we have to look at what model we want. I would like to see first a discussion perhaps on the type of model in terms of the fact that we have five parties now instead of a two-party or a three-party system. I don't mean that we do exhaustive research all over the world in terms of what there is, but we have some expertise available, I think, and we can look at a few models.

From there I would like to see a discussion first around the procedure in the House and then the procedure in committees. I can see the regrouping. I don't know how much farther they want to go from that to members' rights, obligations, and privileges. That's my suggestion in terms of how to proceed. How far down we can get between now and December I think we'll have to see as we go along. But I think there has to be some discussion overall in terms of model and then in terms of procedure in each of the two areas that most of us are involved in.

The Chair: The suggestion is that we focus on the House first and the committees second.

• 1215

If I were to say that we have found a way to save 10 minutes per hour of House time by dispensing with some old procedure that arguably wasted 10 minutes, I'm assuming that everyone would buy into that. I'd like to suggest that our focus here is time. I'm not talking just about compression. It might mean expansion. But time is the major commodity we're dealing with when we're talking about productivity or efficiency.

On the other side is the ability of a member to be involved and to influence the process of debate and to be engaged in the movement of a bill or a motion. There you're not talking about time. You're talking about the precision of the rules that focus either on.... Well, it may not focus on the member. It may focus on something else. So we're still searching for an articulation of some principles.

Ms. Bakopanos has ordered the thing in a way that we would look at the House first and committees second. That's fair, if members accept that. That seems to be a reasonable position.

Mr. Robertson, do you have any questions that you think we should try to resolve as we give you this Herculean task of organizing our work effort here?

Mr. Jamie Robertson (Committee Researcher): No. I think what we can do is take the discussion today, the points raised, and see if we can take the 17 points or whatever and put together for your consideration a list of maybe three or four based on the discussion and the priorities that have been identified. I think it's your decision to decide what your themes or principles are going to be. What we can do for the next meeting or the next time this issue is raised is come up with a draft that maybe will make it easier to focus the discussion in terms of identifying the themes.

The Chair: Mr. Reynolds had a short list, and Madam Dalphond-Guiral had a short list. I don't recall anyone else having a short list of—

Mr. Joe Jordan: You told us not to do it any more.

The Chair: That's right. If there is, I would suggest that members simply provide that to Mr. Robertson.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I did identify the whole thing about political parties and all that.

The Chair: Yes. That shows clearly on the record.

Now, as to the process we will use to do this, I think we want to be efficient as well.

Shall we go in camera or should we stay in public session? Some of the benefits of going in camera are that we all don't have to be so careful about the public record or the politics as it may affect things currently before the House or committees. That's usually the case in going in camera.

Mr. Bob Kilger (Stormont—Dundas—Charlottenburgh, Lib.): I simply think it would be somewhat premature to make a decision on whether or not we go in camera. To the extent we're able to, we should do as much of our business as is possible openly and transparently. If we reach a point where we deem that for a specific period of time we might need to look at that option, then we can make that decision at that time.

The Chair: Okay. Yes, there's general agreement with that, so we'll stay public.

The researcher is going to come up with something, and some items will be at the top of the list. I suppose I could ask each of you to communicate with Mr. Robertson if you have one or two things you want to deal with first rather than later.

• 1220

Ms. Parrish.

Ms. Carolyn Parrish: Is it going to be possible for Mr. Robertson to give us models that are working? As Mr. Blaikie pointed out, we've gone to a five-party system. I know there are European parliaments that work quite well with multiple-party systems. I'm wondering if, as we're going along, we can look at a model that, in the opinion of the learned people around, seems to be working, so that we're not reinventing the wheel at every corner.

The Chair: Are you talking about a role model or an example of another institution that has multiple parties?

Ms. Carolyn Parrish: I'm talking about an example of another institution that is dealing with five parties, for example, and how they order things in the House for length of time of speaking and so forth. We all think our own model works, but I'm sure as we're studying them, we'll find ones that work better than others.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: The only thing that doesn't work about ours is those rules that are still grounded in a three-party Parliament. It's not that big a deal.

Ms. Carolyn Parrish: Right.

The Chair: Yes.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Apart from a more fundamental analysis, there are just things that need to be tidied up, because the rules were written for a three-party Parliament.

The Chair: Would it be useful then to have someone completely vet the standing orders to purge the two- or three-party mentality and identify areas that need to be restated?

Mr. Bill Blaikie: That's something Jamie can do for us.

The Chair: Well, that may be a large project, so we may have to bring somebody in to do it.

Ms. Carolyn Parrish: Maybe we should wait until after the election. We may go back to three parties.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

The Chair: Okay, we're going to get into a bunfight here.

Mr. Robertson is comfortable with that, and that's a good suggestion.

Our next meeting will be next Tuesday, and we're going to begin walking through a list that Mr. Robertson will.... No? Okay, we're not.

The clerk advises me that three members of the advisory council on parliamentary renovations were able to make themselves available. Is it the view of members that we should proceed with that? It's already lined up. I was not certain we did collectively want to proceed, but if that's where we're headed, then that's next Tuesday. Then I would project that the Thursday following, we would get to commencement of the standing order review.

First Ms. Parrish, then Mr. Bergeron.

Ms. Carolyn Parrish: I agree that we're going to do that. Could I just say that from now on we should try to do a theme? We bounce around so much in here that we lose the continuity, and we have to rev our engines up again. We're on this subject. Could we try to just stick to one for a while?

The Chair: Well, we've just come back from the summer here.

Ms. Carolyn Parrish: I know. I understand that. I'm not disagreeing; I'm just cautioning.

The Chair: The alternative was not to meet today.

An hon. member: My engines are always revved.

Ms. Carolyn Parrish: I have a shorter attention span.

The Chair: Mr. Bergeron.

[Translation]

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: I simply want to point out to everyone that it's quite possible we won't be able to meet next Thursday.

[English]

The Chair: Yes, any number of political contingencies might cause us to alter our agenda, but no matter what we plan for next week, we still have to face the possibility that the House may distract us with important business.

That being said, thank you for notice, Mr. Bergeron. We'll adjourn until Tuesday next.