44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 13, 2023 10:00AM
- Jun/13/23 7:10:36 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I will begin by letting you know that I will not be sharing my time with any of my colleagues. I therefore apologize profusely because you are going to have to listen to my voice for about 20 to 30 minutes. I will try to make it as pleasant as possible.
Today we are talking about making a hybrid Parliament a permanent thing for centuries and centuries to come. As people often say, nothing is more permanent than that which is temporary. That is exactly what is happening today.
We have had important discussions about setting up a hybrid Parliament in the past. We were in the middle of a pandemic, so it made sense, and the parties had the ability to make those changes happen at the time.
Now people are acting as if we were still in a pandemic or as if more pandemics will happen over the coming centuries. They are ignoring the fact that we do know how to talk to each other when there really is an emergency.
At the time, there was an urgent need to set up a hybrid Parliament so we could work. Despite the fact that we could not be physically here, members of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs took the time to hold meetings during the summer to analyze how to put in place some sort of hybrid Parliament. We consulted experts from other countries. We looked at what was being done in other parliaments. I remember it very well. In the summer of 2020, I was among those who asked experts several questions to learn about the pros and cons and what we should study to establish a hybrid Parliament.
As I said, there was an urgent need for action back then. Despite the urgency, we still took our time.
I see no urgency at the moment. There is no emergency that would require immediate and permanent changes to the way the House works. Still, even though there is no emergency, and even though it will completely upend our way of operating in the House, the motion is being presented to us as if there is an emergency. There is no emergency, yet we are being forced to accept permanent changes to the way we work. All of this landed on us out of the blue on June 8, when the government announced a motion that would have to be voted on before the House rose for the summer. In fact, the government practically threatened to stop us from leaving for our ridings this summer until this system is adopted, despite the fact that, as I mentioned already, there is no emergency.
Before I get to the substance of the motion, I am going to say a bit more about this approach because I still cannot get over the way things were done. The parties were not consulted. Aside from the government talking to the NDP, no discussion was had and no letter sent. We were not told that the government wanted to table a notice of motion containing these elements.
The motion before us is no small thing, however. It is 42 pages long. The government introduced it in the form of a motion that will not be debated at any time other than the few hours we spend on it now. It completely changes how Parliament works with a mere two, three or four hours of debate and, subsequently, a vote without any real opportunity to amend it, discuss it or hear from external parties, experts or people from other parliaments to see how they do things. This is a complex issue that should not be dealt with by way of a simple motion, especially considering that it is, as I said, 42 pages long.
I would like to come back to the question asked by my colleague from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, who said that he was not an unreserved fan of everything in this motion. If this motion does not even please the people who plan to vote in favour of it, if they do not even have the opportunity to debate it, to amend it, to improve it, to see how we could be more effective in the future, this is further proof that the modus operandi behind this amendment is inadequate, to say the least.
The parties would also have liked to have input on how things should be done, because when the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs deliberated on the hybrid Parliament last fall, eight recommendations were made. Some work has been done on this. Two dissenting opinions were presented by the Bloc and the Conservatives. The parties did have something to say on this. Despite that, the government refused to listen to any input on this motion and completely ignored the work that had been done in the past.
A report was tabled in December 2022 as a result of the committee's work. The committee chair at the time said that the government supported the recommendations set out in the report and intended to table a proposal in the House of Commons to make permanent changes to the Standing Orders, as recommended by the committee. Despite that, the government still decided to ignore the recommendations.
At the time, we suggested it be a best practice for members of cabinet to be present in person in the House to answer questions. That was the first suggestion that was rejected. These days, cabinet members do typically come to the House to answer questions rather than doing it virtually. It was an internal directive that was basically imposed by the government whip, for one.
However, the government decided against having the motion include this requirement for cabinet members to be in the House to answer questions, despite the fact that it was a recommendation from the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. What is more, the committee chair, speaking on behalf of the government, had said that this recommendation would be included in any motion or other form of amendment aimed at overhauling the way Parliament works. The government has already gone back on its word.
As I was saying, we had the right to expect discussions among the parties. It is customary for us to operate by consensus for these types of changes to House procedures. Many other members spoke at length about that, particularly on the Conservative side. There is a tradition in that regard. However, the government is not operating by consensus. It is not trying to debate the motion, to improve it or to try to figure out how we could be as effective as possible.
It makes me think of a quote from Woody Allen, who said, “The dictatorship is 'shut up', democracy is 'always concerned'.” The government is giving us a few hours to talk and letting us say that we disagree, but then it is going to force us to vote, and this measure will be adopted without any real discussion or debate and without us coming up with something that is really the product of a consensus.
As I was saying, this is kind of a breach of tradition. In the past, amendments to the Standing Orders concerning procedure were made by consensus. In 2022, the House published a list of parliamentary changes to procedure. With one exception, all were made by consensus.
For example, in 2017, the Liberal government attempted to reform Parliament by instituting electronic voting, similar to what we have at present. It also wanted to abolish the half sittings on Fridays. It wanted to establish what it referred to at the time as parliamentary programming, which would have been a type of process requiring the parties to agree beforehand on the amount of time allocated for debate of a bill. The government would not have had the last word unless the parties could not agree.
At the time, the opposition parties, including the NDP, rejected these proposals. Despite the fact that the government had a majority and that it could have pushed an amendment to procedure through the House on its own, it decided not to move forward because it did not have the approval of all parties in the House for something as important as the reform of parliamentary procedure.
This is part of the tradition that has always been followed in the House, with one exception, specifically when the government, under former prime minister Trudeau, created the time allocation motion. The irony is that he used a closure motion to get his amendment adopted. This shows that it was an exceptional way of proceeding at the time that has since been adopted by this Parliament.
What could have been done to change the procedure? I am still talking about the procedure. I have not yet even gotten to the substance of the motion. There are many other ways the Standing Orders of the House could have been amended. For example, we could have used a unanimous consent motion. That is what we did when the pandemic hit. We temporarily changed the procedure by unanimous consent among the parties. If an agreement had been reached, it would have been done quickly. The leaders could have discussed it, and then a motion would have been moved.
If that did not work, the government could have used the usual method of deliberation in the House. For example, it could have introduced a bill and had a vote on how to proceed, as we did at the very beginning of the pandemic. We could have referred that bill to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. The government could have sent its proposal to that committee and asked it to assess it, make recommendations and produce a report. Then, we could have responded the report.
In the end, the government decided to go with a last-minute motion without informing anyone and to force us to vote on that motion before Parliament rises for the summer.
There are several things that have not been considered in all this. We have talked about this many times. I know that my colleague from Salaberry—Suroît talked about it extensively yesterday, so I will not go into all the details.
However, I must mention the interpreters. They were the first victims of the hybrid Parliament, and they are still being victimized. From the outset, those on the other side who are in favour of the change have said that operating in hybrid mode has numerous advantages. We can be in our constituency more often. It is a positive if we have children because it facilitates work-life balance. It makes it easier for us to be everywhere all at once. We talk in the first person but tend to forget that there are people behind the scenes, not just the interpreters. There is a whole group of people who are connected with Parliament who are burdened with additional work. As far as the interpreters are concerned, it is even worse, because they are being physically harmed by a hybrid Parliament.
We know that because of differences in the volume and audio quality when people are participating virtually instead of in person, there is a much higher risk of acoustic shock and toxic sound. We know that the interruptions in the sound chain during hybrid proceedings create dangerous situations for the interpreters. The statistics speak for themselves. Technical difficulties were to blame for 30% of the incidents reported by the interpreters during hybrid sittings from 2020 to 2022. That number may be on the low side, because 45% of interpreters on the Hill are contract employees and may not be reporting the injuries they sustain. Thirty per cent of injuries are reported by only 55% of the people. The number of injuries among interpreters is very likely much higher.
Other aspects affected by the hybrid Parliament were already anticipated even before the pandemic. In 2018, a study was done on the different e-parliament models used around the world. The Inter-Parliamentary Union stated that the e-parliament “transforms both processes and relationships, both inside parliament and with outside actors.” These new processes “increase, decrease or alter how well a parliament legislates and deliberates, holds government to account and represents its citizens.” These four things are excluded from this debate, but I would like to address them.
I am going to talk about a matter that concerns the representation of our constituents. Kathy Brock, associate professor at Queen's University, told the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs that when members participate in hybrid proceedings virtually, a kind of power dynamic settles in that puts ministers and opposition critics in the foreground, while backbenchers somehow fade into the background. This means that members without a title have a harder time in making their voices heard and representing their constituents effectively. The hybrid format does not put everyone on an equal footing because of a dynamic that establishes itself and is harder to undo in virtual mode than in person, in the House.
I have to mention the spirit of collegiality and the informal discussions we are able to have when we are here in person. My colleague from Longueuil—Saint-Hubert talked about that. When we are physically present at a committee meeting, we talk with our colleagues. While still half listening, we can go and get a coffee with a colleague at the back of the room in order to talk about a certain proposal or one of their recommendations that we want to tweak to make it work. That is something that we cannot do when working remotely. There is only one channel for the sound and we cannot listen to two discussions at once. We cannot have informal discussions, and democracy pays the price.
As my colleague mentioned, it is all well and good to have the right to choose to attend in person so that we can have that latitude and human interaction, but it does not make much difference if no one from the other parties has to be here because they have the option of working remotely. At that point, it becomes rather futile to be present in the House in person because none of the members opposite will be there with us to have those discussions with.
Accountability is also an issue. Let us talk about the fourth estate: journalists. They complained during the pandemic that ministers were not on site and so they could not catch them as they were coming out of the House to ask them questions.
There is a problem with accountability in that regard. It does pose a problem when a minister, for example, is not in the House to answer for their policies or the spending committed or being considered.
One thing we see in the government's proposal for a hybrid Parliament is that there is some sort of imbalance or asymmetry in the proposed amendments.
On the one hand, ministers are no longer required to be physically present in the House to give notices of motions, such as closure motions, time allocation motions, ways and means motions and notices of the designation of another day for a budget presentation. Ministers will be able to do so remotely. On the other hand, with respect to the number of people that must be physically present in the house to oppose something, we are going back to what was in place before the pandemic. For example, opposing a notice of motion to extend a session in the preceding hour requires the presence of 15 members in the House.
During the pandemic, we decided that five members were required to oppose something remotely; now it is 15 in the House. We are returning to the practices that existed before the pandemic. We are lightening the government's burden to present notices, but we are keeping pressure on the opposition for members to be physically present in the House.
It is the same for opposing an urgent motion from a minister that would allow the government to suspend the Standing Orders at its convenience. For that, there must be 10 people physically present in the House rather than five MPs participating remotely, as was the case during the pandemic. For motions during routine proceedings, 25 members need to physically rise in the House to oppose a motion moved by the government during routine proceedings.
There seems to be an imbalance that works in the government's favour when implementing this hybrid parliament. This is basically in line with the sort of overall imbalance that we see with the government side gaining more advantages when implementing a hybrid parliament.
To use the expression about throwing the baby out with the bathwater, we would have liked to debate the details of setting up a hybrid Parliament. Necessity is the mother of all inventions. There were some good technological breakthroughs during the pandemic, and it would be foolish to completely discard them. However, we should have been able to debate about what we want to keep to ensure that there is a consensus and that the aspects that are ultimately maintained will serve Parliament well.
The Bloc Québécois is not entirely against the idea of continuing to use electronic voting. However, we would have liked to be able to set some parameters around the use of electronic voting, such as making it mandatory for confidence votes to be held in person in the House.
There has been a lot of talk about work-life balance being one of the benefits of hybrid Parliament. We agree, but could we not have provided a better framework? I will echo the words of the Speaker who is returning to the chair right now. He mentioned in committee that work-life balance should have been an exception. It should be allowed, but only as an exception and with parameters to ensure that this option is not abused.
Should we completely abolish the use of Zoom for the House? Not necessarily, but we should have been more precise about it instead of applying a very broad measure that may benefit people who may abuse it. For example, a member involved in a scandal would be able to stay home and not be held accountable here in the House when journalists might want to ask questions.
These should be exceptional circumstances, such as a death in the family, illness or urgent personal circumstances. A framework could have been developed for this. The use of hybrid Parliament is not all bad. It is bad insofar as it is not balanced.
In short, there are many things the Bloc Québécois would have liked to discuss. That is our main complaint, specifically, the fact that a bunch of measures are ultimately being imposed on us with no real opportunity to make changes, improve the proposal or take advantage of the good that might come out of the pandemic. It is being imposed on us at a time when our work is winding down, when, as I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, there is no immediate urgency because the pandemic is largely behind us.
If the government was going to make changes that will affect Parliament in the long term, the least it could have done was to seek a consensus among the parties, as was customary in the House.
This is a letdown that, unfortunately, we have to focus on as the session nears its end.
I am now ready to answer my colleagues' questions.
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- Jun/13/23 7:32:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if the member for Winnipeg North had been paying attention to my speech, he would know that I talked about the Trudeau senior government's passage of time allocation in the part of my speech about how things are being done, not the part about the substance of the motion.
We can agree on the merits of time allocation. Perhaps discussions with the parties could have resulted in an agreement rather than the use of a closure motion on the decision to create time allocation. That is the thing I have a problem with.
There could have been discussions about the creation of a hybrid Parliament with minor amendments that might have garnered the government the support of all the parties, or at least a significant majority. At the very least, we could have arrived at something that looks a lot more like a consensus.
Once again, I would like to point out that there is absolutely no urgent need at this time to introduce permanent changes to the way the House of Commons operates by adopting a hybrid system, especially based on the small number of hours that we will get to talk in the House to a government that refuses to listen anyway. It has already made up its mind, with total disregard for a tradition that has been consistently followed, with one exception, that involves finding a consensus with parliamentarians when it comes to changing the rules of procedure of the House.
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- Jun/13/23 7:35:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there were a lot of elements in that question. It makes me think of things I wanted to say, but did not.
There are other things that could have been considered for the balance between the work we do in the House and the work we do in our ridings. One example that readily comes to mind is the parliamentary calendar. We sit 26 weeks a year. Is it necessary during this time of year to have a constituency week followed by four weeks in a row in the House, where we sit until midnight to boot? That is no way to achieve work-life balance, and it is not the most efficient formula, either.
In the meantime, after the holidays, the House is shut down from mid-December and we do not return until the end of January or early February. Could we not add some of the final weeks in June to this period so as not to have this six-week gap during which we cannot hold the government responsible for things it could have chosen to put in place during the final weeks in December? We would have the same amount of time in the House, but we would make better use of it and we do not even have to think about the hybrid model to get there.
Many options could have been considered for improving work-life balance and increasing the amount of time we spend in our ridings. There are currently many activities taking place, but we are missing them. Why? It is because we are in the House. Why are we in the House? Do we really need to be in the House nine out of 10 weeks at present?
A simple change to the parliamentary calendar might have been much more beneficial than the creation of a hybrid Parliament to achieve that goal.
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- Jun/13/23 7:38:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke. I am sorry that I misquoted him. He has become a member of the big club of misquoted members. I believe we are all unwilling members of that club.
On the issue of protecting interpreters, if it had not been urgent and if we had had this discussion about the substance and form, we could probably have put in place more mechanisms to protect the interpreters. One that comes to mind is the communication of complaints concerning the misuse of electronic equipment by parliamentarians. When there is feedback, do we really have a good way of ensuring that the interpreters let us know so we can fix it?
Even worse, the Bloc Québécois made a recommendation at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. It recommended that rigorous measures to protect the health and safety of interpreters be implemented as follows: by improving working conditions to prevent injuries, by providing good equipment, by having a rigorous protocol for the use of technology, by having a better process for reporting technical difficulties.
That recommendation was not even put to a vote in committee, let alone included in the motion before us today. They could have taken the time to ensure better protection for interpreters. As I said, there was no need to rush this motion. Doing so will hurt the people who help us do our job well every day. That is absolutely deplorable.
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- Jun/13/23 7:40:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned in my speech, there appears to be some asymmetry in the measures that the motion sets out for the changes they want to make to the rules of procedure.
The in-person attendance obligations for the government side are being watered down. In contrast, the opposition side is facing the exact same prepandemic obligations when it comes to being able to thwart certain government motions. For that reason alone, I get the impression that this is indeed somewhat deliberate.
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