SoVote

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith

Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
Liberal

Beaches—East York
Ontario
Voting Attendance: 64%
Expenses Last Quarter: $123,505.63

Government Page

Jun/2/22 5:21:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, pairing has a long history, but it does not have a long history of being used in a very flexible way. When there is a procedural vote and it is more of a last-minute vote, I wish the best of luck to all of us to sort out a pairing mechanism to accommodate the members who need to be accommodated. It is fiction that pairing gets us to a place of flexibility that we need to get to.

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Context: House Hansard - 80 - Jun/2/22

Mr. Nathaniel Erskine-Smith (Beaches—East York, Lib.)

Jun/2/22 5:12:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to speak to an idea that I think most would agree with, in general terms at least: We ought to modernize Parliament to enable all of us to better represent Canadians. What does that mean specifically? Well, many of us have proposed very specific examples, and I want to tackle this at a bit of a higher level because there are three general ideas we should be grappling with. The first is about flexibility. I heard what my colleague from the Conservative Party said. By the way, we have worked together on committee, and I think we were a pretty independent committee, even in a majority government context, but I heard a dismissal of flexibility. I take the point that for a serious vote, we should all be there, potentially, absent emergency circumstances. I was certainly in Parliament in person yesterday when we were voting on the bill for evidence-based drug policy. I thought it was really important to be there in person. I do not think it is important to miss my five-year-old's first baseball game at 6:30 p.m. in East York, this summer at least. I do not think it is important for a procedural vote. I think we can accommodate different votes in different ways, and have different flexibilities for different families in different contexts. I do think the voting app continues to remain of utmost importance, particularly if people care about young families engaging in Parliament. By the way, I probably will not even consider running again, frankly, if we do not have greater flexibility in this place. I also think of colleagues with loved ones who, in their circumstances, need care as they are sick, or members themselves who are ill. I do not think vote pairing is the ready solution there. I think we need to accommodate members in order to ensure that we are representing our constituents in full and that there is flexibility there. I do not want to be dismissive of the point, by the way, that we need to be there in person to build relationships. I value the time I spent in person between 2015 and 2019 in particular, when there was a full in-person Parliament. I have relationships across party lines too, and I have been able to build on those relationships even in a virtual environment. In building those relationships at first, certainly being in person meant a lot. When we look at our 26-week sitting calendar, it may be that in certain weeks there is no flexibility, and then there is flexibility at other times. Maintaining some definite in-person component and allowing flexibility in other weeks may be the solution as far as that goes. Regardless, that has to be looked at seriously and the voting app should be there to stay. The second broad point is we ought to look at these rules first for flexibility and second for empowering parliamentarians. I have heard some conversation today about the frustration with the arcane nature of Private Members' Business. It is frustrating. I have been lucky, actually. I have effectively won the lottery three times. I am a lucky man, much to the chagrin of the government I think. In winning the lottery, I have also seen others who are so far down the list they will never have their bills or motions debated and voted upon. I want to quote a former Conservative colleague, Bruce Stanton. I think he was one of the most thoughtful individuals regarding the Standing Orders and our parliamentary work. He wrote, “On the whole, a parallel chamber for the House of Commons would strengthen the democratic process in Canada’s Parliament by giving MPs greater means to legislate and challenge the Executive Branch of government. As such, the idea deserves our careful consideration.” This is not a new idea. It exists in Australia. It has existed for many years in Australia and also in the United Kingdom. This is from the chamber in the U.K.: Since 1999 the House of Commons has held debates in a parallel debating chamber, known as “Westminster Hall”. This chamber is used for debates on issues raised by backbench Members, for debates on select committee reports, for debates on subjects selected by the Backbench Business Committee and for debates on e-petitions. Before I got into this business, a friend of mine from law school gave me Samara Canada's Tragedy in the Commons. It almost scared me away, frankly, because it is a lament. Every single exit interview is a lament to say, “I wish I had done more.” We should be empowering parliamentarians via a parallel chamber or some other means. Every single measure we look at should be looked at through this lens of empowering parliamentarians. Adjournment debates could be held in these parallel chambers as well. We ought to be looking at these changes through the lens of empowering parliamentarians, and a parallel chamber is certainly one of the ways to do that. If we do not want to think of a physical space, then perhaps we can think of a virtual space for that parallel chamber. It happens to already exist. Before I get to the third point, I want to reference the idea of the independence of committees. This is one place where rules can matter. I want to emphasize my agreement with the idea of electing committee members and chairs via secret ballot as a chamber, but I emphasize to colleagues that it is also about the way we conduct ourselves. This is about culture too. There are ways of ensuring committees are more independent if we act as we ought to act in this place and we embrace a different culture, so let us change the rules but let us not forget our own place in changing the culture. The third point is related to the second one. As we look at changing the rules, we ought to look at flexibility, number one; two, empowering parliamentarians; and three, at decentralizing operations and reducing party control. Others have already spoken to this point about the role of the Speaker and have said that the power of the Speaker needs to be returned. I do not ask questions particularly in question period, because it is wrought and it is a theatric exercise, to put it politely. It does not need to be that way and it ought not to be that way. I think in two different ways about empowering the Speaker. One is that it would encourage those on the government side to ask more pointed questions. Second, it would ensure decorum on the opposition side. That is critical not only in relation to questions but also for S. O. 31s. Finally, I am not going to use my full 10 minutes, but I want to make this point, a point related to what my Conservative colleague just put forward. We should not be restricted to five minutes as far as our speeches go, but I do think we should be able to use five minutes or two minutes or eight minutes to give our remarks and that the remainder of that 15 minutes should be for questions. It should be our decision how much time we use to speak, and the remainder of the time should be used for questions and answers. Sometimes I just want to speak for one minute and would love to have 14 minutes of questions. With that, I look forward to questions.

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Member of Parliament

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith