THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON RULES, PROCEDURES AND THE RIGHTS OF PARLIAMENT
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, September 27, 2022
The Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament met with videoconference this day at 9 a.m. [ET], pursuant to rule 12-7(2)(a), to consider possible amendments to the Rules, and to consider a draft agenda (future business).
Senator Diane Bellemare (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Good morning, everyone. First of all, I would like to point out that next Friday is the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. With that in mind, I would like to mention that we are holding our meeting on the traditional and unceded lands of First Nations Indigenous peoples. I am Diane Bellemare, the chair of the committee, a senator from Quebec. I’m going to ask each of the members of the committee to introduce themselves and indicate the province for which they were appointed.
Senator Massicotte: Paul Massicotte from Quebec.
Senator Greene: Stephen Greene from Nova Scotia.
Senator M. Deacon: Marty Deacon from Ontario.
Senator Cordy: Jane Cordy from Nova Scotia.
Senator Petitclerc: Chantal Petitclerc from Quebec.
Senator Saint-Germain: Raymonde Saint-Germain from Quebec.
Senator Busson: Bev Busson from British Columbia.
Senator Wells: David M. Wells from Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Ringuette: Pierrette Ringuette from New Brunswick.
The Chair: Good morning. It is nine o’clock in the morning. This is the first time that we start committee meetings at nine o’clock. Usually it’s 8:30 or 9:30, so we’re right in the middle.
As you may have seen from the agenda that has been sent to you, the meeting will be divided into two parts. In the first part, we will complete the review of the suggested changes to the Rules that were proposed by the clerks, Gérald Lafrenière and Till Heyde. This should not take very long. Then we will receive more specific wording on the points for which we requested changes, which will be the subject of an eventual committee report.
In the second part, we will examine our work agenda, with a follow-up. We will start this part of the meeting with follow-ups, tabling of documents, and then we will study the agenda that you have received. At that point, I will come back to all the documents that you have received, and there are many. It is not necessary to have them for this meeting, but they will be useful at the appropriate time.
With that, I will turn the floor over to the clerks right now to discuss the points on which we need to conclude the discussions.
Gérald Lafrenière, Interim Clerk of the Senate and Clerk of the Parliaments and Chief Legislative Services Officer, Senate of Canada: Thank you, Madam Chair. The next item we would like to consider is the reports from the Conflict of Interest Committee.
[English]
You will note that under the Rules, when a motion is moved for the adoption of a report dealing with a senator, the vote cannot take place until five sitting days have occurred after the motion has been moved. And the question must be put within 15 sitting days of the motion being moved. Because of where the committee report is placed in the Orders of the Day — which is in other business, committee reports — there are times when the Senate is extremely busy with government business and we never get to that part of the Order Paper that day.
I mean, theoretically, we can go through the five sitting days without the question being called, without the senator being able to debate the matter, and somebody can then put the question. Again, we can get to the full 15 days. That would be unlikely, but it could happen. Basically, it would create a lack of debate on the report before the question has to be called.
So there is a precedent where the Senate, with respect to a report of a former senator, agreed to put the question of the report at the beginning of Orders of the Day, so that way, the report would be called every day during this timing period. We thought it would be worthwhile for this committee to consult with the Ethics and Conflict of Interest for Senators Committee to see if that change is something that’s worthwhile, and the Conflict of Interest Committee might have other matters that they want to address.
We’ve noted this one based on past practices that it has caused concern, with senators wondering whether they would be able to debate a report or not based on the activities in the Senate.
[Translation]
The Chair: Mr. Lafrenière, you are proposing that we consult with the Conflict of Interest Committee to see if this change would be desirable. So we don’t have to make a decision today, but we should invite the Conflict of Interest Committee to appear at a later meeting.
Mr. Lafrenière: It would be a good idea for these two committees to find a common solution together.
The Chair: Perfect. Are there any questions? Is everyone in agreement?
[English]
Senator Wells: Thank you for that presentation. Would you see it changed in the Order Paper or something specific to a report from the Ethics Committee? What would you propose?
Mr. Lafrenière: The last time it was done on what I would call an ad hoc basis. The report came in; there was a decision by the Senate to do so. I think when we noted that happened, the question becomes, is this something that we may want to consider as a general change to the Rules?
So there are two ways of doing it. When the report is tabled, a motion could be moved to say that it will be placed there, but this just creates certainty in the process because while that one solution was applied the one time, we noted that that issue had occurred in other times of people being concerned that senators would not be able to debate the report at all. We’re just presenting it as a potential long-term solution, if that’s what senators think is the best approach.
Senator Wells: Okay. Thank you.
Senator Ringuette: To further this discussion, I guess there would be two options. It would be either to put it under the Orders of the Day in Rules that if a report is tabled that it be on the Order Paper for five days as a first item on the agenda or under the committee mandate. Where would you find that would be the proper place for that?
Till Heyde, Clerk Assistant, Chamber Operations and Procedure Office, Senate of Canada: In the case the Clerk was referring to where this happened before, there was an order of reference for the Ethics Committee, I believe, to study the matter. And contained in the order of reference, if I recall, was a provision that any report coming out of that would be the first item on the Orders of the Day. I think what the Clerk is raising is the possibility of embedding that provision that anything to which the relevant provisions of the Rules to which rule 12-30(2) would apply would be the first item on the Orders of the Day would be a point you wish to consider.
Rather than doing it on a case-by-case basis, if there is ever again in the future a report under 12-30(2),it would be the first item on the Orders of the Day would be the point that you may wish to consider.
[Translation]
The Chair: If there are no further questions or comments, we will move to the next point.
Mr. Lafrenière: The next suggestion deals with documents tabled in the Senate.
[English]
The Clerk’s office receives hundreds of documents every year from departments that are required to be tabled in the Senate throughout the year, either through statutes, according to the rules, et cetera. Historically, they had to be tabled in the Clerk’s office in person, which meant that the departments had to come to the Senate of Canada Building — before that, Centre Block — and table the document by paper. That creates a lot of inefficiencies, obviously, for the government departments that have to send people here to bring the physical documents.
It also creates a whole bunch of inefficiencies in my office, because when we get a paper document, we have to enter that information into our database manually. It takes a lot of time. There are days during which we’re getting 20 to 25 documents that are tabled. It could lead to potential errors, because when we’re putting it in manually and doing it quickly, it leads to that. When we get the documents electronically, we can cut and paste.
It is also extremely efficient for us in being able to get the documents to senators right away. When we get it electronically, we can essentially flip it over to senators and anybody else who asks for it. If we get it by paper, we have to PDF it, photocopy it and get it that way.
Under COVID, there has been a sessional order that has allowed the departments to electronically table their documents. All I can say is in terms of the experience I have had as the Clerk and the impact it has had on my office is that it has reduced the workload of one of my employees significantly. Like I said, we have been able to serve everybody more efficiently by having those electronic copies of those documents.
I will say that the paper copy always follows after; we do get the original signed copies after, but they’re sent by mail after we’ve received the electronic copy.
Mr. Heyde: To add to that, once the Clerk’s office has received the paper document and inputted it into the database, they’re then sent to my office for the actual archiving. That, again, takes quite a bit of time to verify the entry for inclusion in the Journals.
The relevant provision is rule 14-1(6), which provides that documents required under law, rule or order of the Senate can be deposited with the Clerk. Since June 23, we’ve had an order that documents can be tabled electronically with the Clerk for the remainder of the session. The proposal would be to make this a permanent provision.
Like the Clerk underscored, it’s significantly more efficient in terms of sending documents to senators’ offices when they’re requested, because we have them already available as opposed to having to scan them. They can be lost or mauled when being photocopied or they can otherwise not be in the best of shape in paper format.
Senator Batters: I have a few questions. I’m wondering what the House of Commons has done on this particular issue. You were just saying that a paper copy does eventually follow and you then enter it into your database. I assume you are manually entering it into your database, as you were describing before. If that’s already happening, I’m not sure how that’s saving time, other than that it can be done at a later point.
Second, when receiving them electronically, is there a particular method via which you’re receiving them or is it just by email? In that case, I’m wondering how you know you’re receiving all of them, because documents of a large size sometimes — I know from our own emails — we don’t receive them; the Senate server blocks them or what have you. Also, the person who sent it is never notified in any way that it has been blocked. So you don’t know someone has been trying to send you something and the person who is sending it doesn’t ever know that it hasn’t been received.
Mr. Heyde: There are a couple of points I can speak to, Senator Batters. In terms of the House of Commons, they have continued, as you know, their hybrid provisions up until June of next year. It’s embedded in their hybrid motion that documents can be received electronically. For the moment, they’re still receiving documents electronically up until at least June of next year. From speaking to colleagues there, I believe their assessment has been that it is significantly more efficient as well.
For very large documents that can be an issue getting through the email system, there’s coordination between the sending department and the Clerk’s office in terms of file sites — I don’t really know the technical term — to allow access to the documents when they’re particularly large.
Mr. Lafrenière: Maybe the other thing to add is that we’re in constant communication with the departments. We generally know beforehand when they will be tabling a document, so if ever we weren’t to receive it, we would generally follow up.
The other thing my office always does, because I’m copied on the email, we do an accusé de réception so the department knows we have received it. They have generally followed up whenever they don’t receive it.
We do have a method to ensure that we get all of the documents. It’s obviously impossible to guarantee that, but my chief of staff is in contact with the person responsible for this at PCO, and we make sure that we’re always coordinated in that respect.
Mr. Heyde: To make one other point, the departments are also fairly vigilant in terms of following up when they are recorded in the Journals. There are sometimes delays for whatever reason, and they tend to follow up as to what’s going on to check that the document has been received. There are technical processing delays that sometimes occur on our end.
Senator Batters: My other question was about manually entering into the database. It’s only done once the paper copy is received; is that right? If that’s the case, how does that save time?
Mr. Lafrenière: We enter the information when we receive it electronically right away into the database. Like I said, being able to take the information from the document avoids errors and is much quicker than inputting it manually. That’s how it saves time. Waiting for the paper copy is just an additional step after. That is really where we’re saving time.
Senator Busson: It seems to me that you’re speaking in favour of this rule change.
Also, COVID has offered the opportunity for a pilot test of this procedure, and you don’t seem to have any downsides. Are there any downsides to this, from your experience?
Mr. Lafrenière: Till mentioned that it was at some point attached to the hybrid motions. I view this as a completely separate issue. That’s where the idea came from. We obviously didn’t want people to visit our buildings. But we realized that we were getting all of the information in a more efficient manner. We weren’t requiring people to come here.
We talk about expenditure of public funds. Departments were taking taxis to come here and go back, and they were likely wasting an hour of their time to do it versus now getting all of the information electronically. We’re sure that we’re not missing pages. Nothing has gone awry. I haven’t noticed anything in the two years we have done this where there has been a negative impact on the Senate.
Mr. Heyde: In terms of the volume of paper, what we’re getting is quite significant. I know one of the ideas is to reduce environmental impact. I know electronic documents also do have some impact, but we’re talking about a very large volume of paper. During COVID, there were some delays because people couldn’t come in. In the end, I was trundling several suitcases of documents from the Clerk’s office over to Table Research.
I also know that when dealing with paper documents sometimes and when I’ve looked for them from several years ago, oddities can happen. Things are upside down, and sometimes there may not be the entire document in the archives, because things happen as they’re being moved.
I suspect it’s less of an issue with the electronic version.
[Translation]
The Chair: So we conclude that we agree with this approach for the future. We have two remaining points to address: points 21 and 22.
Mr. Lafrenière: Point 21 deals with the appendix to the Rules of the Senate. With the adoption of the first report of this committee regarding the election of the acting chair, we note that in the appendix there is still reference to the Selection Committee to elect the acting chair. The idea would be to harmonize this with a change the committee has made in the past.
[English]
The Chair: Agreed? Moving on to point 22.
Mr. Lafrenière: The last point that we wanted to raise is with respect to a recent legislation that has been adopted by Parliament, and that is the Accessible Canada Act. The Senate is required this year to table its first report on how we will implement accessibility measures in the Senate. This is something that will be coming to The Internal Economy Committee at some point later in the fall, our report on this and what we intend to do.
As we were going through the rules and, again, through the history of things that have happened in the Senate, we were basically wondering about the best approach for the Rules Committee with respect to this. Obviously, we can go through every single rule to see if there is anything in there that would hinder a senator with any type of disability from participating in the work of the Senate. We could conduct that work or we have noted that other legislatures have passed what I would call a general accommodation clause in their rules. Basically, it would say that the Speaker could alter the application of any rule or practice of the assembly in order to commit the full participation in the proceedings of the assembly of any member with a disability.
At least one rule that I can think of requires senators to stand when they speak. We could modify that rule to take that into account, or the other option would be to pass a more general accommodation that the Speaker could basically alter the rule in cases of need because we can’t necessarily predict at all times what may cause difficulty in participation.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Of course, you will understand that the text speaks to me a lot, since I myself am a person living with a disability. The words we choose are important, just as much as those we don’t choose. I have seen the words “duty to accommodate” and I think that is very good.
In my experience and what I’ve seen in committees, the Senate has indeed been very open to accommodating people with disabilities, like myself. Regardless of what the committee chooses to do, if changes are to be made, I think it would be important to consult with people living with disabilities. Of course, mentioning when a senator is unable to stand up is obvious when we’re talking about wheelchairs, but when we’re having this conversation about inclusion and diversity today, we’re casting a much wider net. Sometimes, in trying to do the right thing, we can forget about certain types of disabilities. If we’re going to move forward with these kinds of changes, it would be important to do it in consultation with people who live with that experience and experts who have that skill and that experience.
[English]
Senator Batters: That is an excellent point by Senator Petitclerc. My question is, again on this, what has the House of Commons done on this particular point, since we’ve had the coming into force a while ago of the Accessible Canada Act? What have legislatures in Canada done on this particular point?
I’m also wondering if you’re working into the rules a duty to accommodate. Isn’t that already inherent in it? I’m assuming that this is how some of these different issues have been resolved previously — because of the duty to accommodate and different matters being worked out as they are. Is it something that requires rule changes or not?
Mr. Heyde: In terms of the latter point, the Senate has obviously adopted a reasonable approach that, when we are facing a situation that requires some accommodation, we do that. I believe the proposal here is to simply put it on a firmer footing, so if there were — and it’s difficult to imagine this happening — a question about reasonable accommodations, there is something that the Speaker can turn to. There would be a definite, concrete decision of the Senate embedded in the Rules.
In terms of your questions about the House of Commons, I believe there are some provisions in the House of Commons. It would be better to get back to the committee afterwards, unless somebody else has some more precise information about that. They also have faced that issue in the past.
Mr. Lafrenière: One of the reasons there might be a lack of information is that the regulations under the act have not been implemented yet. I mean those under the act, not what we have done in the past. Those requirements are not yet in place. I just mentioned that the Senate is not required to table its report on accessibility until later in the year. We’re just highlighting this as something that will be coming into play. We’ve noted that other legislatures are obviously not impacted by the federal legislation, but they have started adopting the provisions that I mentioned this morning.
We would be happy to share copies of the text used by other legislatures. The one I read this morning was from the Northwest Territories and what they’ve agreed on.
Senator Batters: Is it correct then that the regulations are known? They’re just not in force yet? Is that right? Or do we know what the regulations are yet?
Mr. Lafrenière: No, we’re waiting for some of the details. There have been consultations in published documents, but they are not yet in final form.
Senator Batters: Okay. Perhaps it’s a good idea to wait for that? It doesn’t mean that we can’t work on it in the meantime. Thank you.
[Translation]
The Chair: The suggestion then is to do nothing or to formally have the duty to accommodate, which is the practice already applied, as I understand it.
That was our last point.
[English]
Senator Cordy: Could we perhaps have a panel of witnesses at some point to deal with accessibility, so that we would get a background ourselves for it?
The Chair: We will do that. That is a nice suggestion. Thank you, Senator Cordy.
Mr. Lafrenière: Maybe I can get back to the point raised by Senator Petitclerc because the words are important. I’ll read out the Northwest Territories text because it doesn’t talk about accommodation. It says:
The Speaker may alter the application of any rule or practice of the Assembly in order to permit the full participation in the proceedings of the Assembly of any Member with a disability.
As Senator Petitclerc mentioned, the wording and the message you’re sending are extremely important.
The Chair: I get it now. Accommodation is not necessarily the proper word.
Would you agree that, for the moment, if we have to, we’ll have a document with the same kind of wording as the Northwest Territories? Or we can wait to have a panel.
Senator Ringuette: We should have panel of experts to do it once and do it right.
[Translation]
The Chair: Yes. I understand that as a result of our discussions, we will have specific wordings, as planned during the previous meeting.
I thank you for your participation.
[English]
Adam Thompson, Clerk of the Committee: Senators, just to build on the chair’s point, I have been working on text for consideration in our last meeting. I will take the points discussed in this meeting, and, for those where there was agreement, I will add in text; for those where there was an agreement to consult, we will draft the letter to the Conflict of Interest Committee to get their input on that item, and we can proceed with witnesses on the accessibility issue.
The Chair: Agreed?
[Translation]
Thank you very much, Mr. Lafrenière and Mr. Heyde. See you soon.
That concludes this part of the meeting. We will now turn to the other part of today’s meeting and deal with three items in the following order.
First, we will look at the follow-ups to the decisions we made last June and the letters we sent to leaders.
Our second point is a discussion about the motion on human capital that we were to table today for a sessional order.
Finally, we will go through the work plan on committee structure, with the understanding that this work plan can be discussed in parallel with other items and that we will discuss the different proposals under the other items regarding follow-ups to the letters we received.
[English]
I will start with the letters to the leaders that the steering committee signed. We have received, up to today, answers from four leaders: Senator Gold, Senator Cordy, Senator Saint-Germain and Senator Tannas. We have not yet received a letter from Senator Plett.
In the letters, it was not as unanimous or as consensual as the meeting we had previously. To summarize, you have those letters. You can read them. We have general agreement that we are welcome to revise Rule 12-7, which is the rule on the committee structures and their mandate. We have encouragement to look at that issue.
For certain groups, the Independent Senators Group and the Canadian Senators Group, this review should not impede us to look at the Rules so that we are in the concomitance with the Parliament of Canada Act modification and the recommendation of the Special Senate Committee on Senate Modernization.
We did some work in the Senate with the motion of Senator Woo and Senator Tannas on that issue. We will come back to that. Those two groups said, “yes, go,” but you should also do this review about the rules for equity group. There was no consensus on the creation of a new sessional caucus committee, sessional committee on human capital. Some were opposed, some said not now and so there was no consensus on that.
There was no consensus on the suggestion we made to reduce the number of members per committee. There was an invitation by some to do that revision in a more substantive way. When we do our review of the committee structure, we could also look at Rule 12-3 on the composition of committees.
Do you have any comments to make? That’s the information I wanted to give you on the work we did on that day.
Senator Batters: I notice that a couple of leaders, one of them asked that we put a priority on the issue of studying the issue of rule changes dealing with the changes to the Parliament of Canada Act. My comment on that is we would need to receive a mandate or direction to do that from the Senate because, when that act was passed, there was no discussion about next steps; we will need to refer this to the Rules Committee, because certain rules will need to be changed as a result of that.
We didn’t have any of that discussion. I’m not sure why it would need to be prioritized ahead of this matter that we’ve been talking about for many months, of making sure that the committees are functioning as best they can.
As well, the other motions that were talked about that were previously on the Order Paper, it was noted, have expired on the Order Paper. That means that they weren’t passed and they haven’t been reintroduced. Again, I don’t think we should be prioritizing things that we don’t have the essential mandate to be considering right now.
We should be proceeding with what’s going to be quite a large undertaking, particularly because we don’t have any consensus, unfortunately, on the issue of reducing the number of senators on committees right now, and that’s despite the fact that I did see that we had a couple of new appointments yesterday. There are still 15 vacancies. There are still quite a number of senator vacancies.
Senator Ringuette: In regard to changes to the Rules, and from my recollection of previous discussions in this committee, this committee was waiting until the changes to the Parliament of Canada Act were enacted, so that then we would change the Senate Rules accordingly. That’s my recollection.
Also, to remind our colleagues, the Rules Committee is one of the committees that does not need a special mandate from the Senate to undertake a study or revision and make recommendations to the Senate as a whole.
This is my perspective on this issue. I’m kind of disappointed that we didn’t get a response from Senator Plett to the letter, because I believe that the group is very important in looking at moving forward different issues.
Will Senator Plett provide a response to the letter? If he will, then maybe it is premature. When you say there’s no consensus on items, and we still have one of the group leaders who have not provided an answer, I think that perhaps we should send — Madam Chair, on your behalf — a request to Senator Plett asking if he would kindly provide his feedback on your letter, then we’ll see what the response is on those issues and we can decide what we do.
The Chair: I will hear from all those who want to speak and then I will make a suggestion.
[Translation]
Senator Saint-Germain: In reference to Senator Batters’ comments that this committee would not have a mandate to review the Rules as a result of the amendments to the Parliament of Canada Act, it is my view that this committee has a great deal of power, including the power of initiative. I also believe that the Senate can change the rules that govern it.
As a senator, I personally wish to benefit from the expertise of the committee. However, as I am aware of the importance of upgrading the Rules of the Senate, if the committee is not in a position to advise the Senate on this fundamental matter, I believe that the Senate will have to act and that negotiations will have to take place at another level. In my view, that is not desirable.
Secondly, in terms of operating by consensus, it is indeed important that the Rules of the Senate that govern all of us, the government, the opposition and the other three recognized groups, are rules that we agree upon. However, perfect consensus among 105 senators may not be possible. That is where we will one day have to agree to operate with a clear majority of senators who believe that the proposed rules fit the modern governance needs of this upper chamber.
Senator Massicotte: On the fact that Senator Plett did not respond, I think there needs to be a follow-up; however, I would strongly recommend that the follow-up be done by the chair, with Senator Batters perhaps, in a face-to-face meeting. Often, you can be surprised, because with a little bit of communication, you can improve the situation. That is what I would suggest.
The Chair: Thank you very much for the suggestion. I was heading towards this option. If you agree, we’ll make an appointment and have a meeting with Senator Batters, Senator Plett and myself to see what his position is, ideally. I hope he can give it to us in writing.
In the meantime, there are a number of elements that justify our taking the initiative on the revision of the Rules. Obviously, we have the power of initiative, and it is very interesting to have it. Secondly, we need consistency with the Parliament of Canada Act, but we also want consistency with the work that was done previously by the Special Senate Committee on Senate Modernization, which concluded that we needed to bring the Rules up to date very quickly to recognize the principle of equality of groups.
There was no specific wording for each rule. On the other hand, Senator Woo’s motion, which was amended by Senator Tannas, gives us a framework that we can use or that we could draw on. We could, on our own... It amounts to the same thing, because they’ve made a complete list of all the rules that we have to discuss.
Senator Ringuette: As the Senate Rules Committee, I find it difficult to see why, in response to the amendments to the Parliament of Canada Act, we should not revise our Rules to be consistent with the Parliament of Canada Act. I think it would be a bit humiliating to neglect this important task as legislators. I would like to propose that at our next meetings we begin the revision using the motion of senators Woo and Tannas, which had been made public, to begin and to do our job well.
I think this is a high priority. It would be humiliating for our committee to not continue our work to ensure that our Rules are consistent with the changes to the Parliament of Canada Act.
The Chair: We understand your position, senator.
Senator Ringuette: I am asking if we should have a motion or at least have a discussion so that we can get on with the job.
Senator Massicotte: I think a motion would be premature. I think we need to have a meeting and revisit this issue to see where the senators stand. Then we can judge what is necessary.
[English]
Senator M. Deacon: This meeting is important to have and as kindly as possible in the most timely of manners, because we could be continuing to wait and wait. Hopefully, this meeting will happen in the timeliest manner possible.
The Chair: Are you saying that we should prioritize this motion?
Senator M. Deacon: And the meeting.
The Chair: Yes, the meeting.
Senator Batters: At that meeting, perhaps we could hear from the clerk or whoever would be most appropriate to give us an outline of what rules they believe need to be changed, so that we’re not just starting from scratch, so an outline what needs to be changed.
Senator Cordy: I think we’ve gotten a good start today. The suggestions would be pretty simple to go through. I think we could do much of this in one meeting, what the clerk brought forward this morning. That would be pretty simple and it would be immediate. Some of them, we had discussions about today; some I don’t think require much discussion. The current rules in some cases are very outmoded — just like the no smoking rule. There is no smoking anywhere in the bidding. Why would we have a rule about no smoking in a committee room? That would be an example. That one should be easy, Senator Massicotte. That should be an easy change. I don’t think she’ll drag it out.
Then look at the study on the rules and further work on that, which may be a little bit more complicated, but I think it would be a quick and easy one to do in one meeting, to go through all that we were presented today, so that we can say that we have ticked off a few boxes.
Senator Busson: I just want to make a comment around the work that has been and is being done and the future work of this committee around modernization. It’s well and good that we’ve talked to all the facilitators and group leaders about how they feel about our work going forward, but I think all of us in the room are feeling like the committee needs to prioritize this modernization whether or not there is consensus. I think a study may be part of finding the consensus we need as we move forward. It will uncover facts and situations where folks who would have said, “Well, we don’t agree with this,” may change their mind as we move forward. Certainly, studies have done that in the past.
I’m anxious. I can’t speak for everyone, but I think this committee is seized with some really important go-forward items, and I hope we can get to them.
The Chair: I have prepared two documents. We did not table them yet. There is a translation issue. We want to be clear with them. First, we will talk about the working plan on rule 12-7 very soon. But on top of this issue, we did prepare a document that put together all the propositions that were made in the Special Senate Committee on Senate Modernization. t is quite short, but we put in what the propositions were and where we acted. It’s interesting, and I thought we would take some time, maybe one hour at some point very soon, to go through all the recommendations that were made and what we did and what we didn’t do.
The review of the Rules in the spirit of the Woo-Tannas motion is in there. It is one of the propositions of the Special Senate Committee on Senate Modernization. By doing that, we will set the stage a little bit to have a general idea of what we have accomplished. This has been done, so we could have a panel, or just among ourselves take this piece and talk about it very soon.
We also have a document that we prepared with the list. Do you remember the big list that we produced last winter? We have a shorter list with all those items, if they are in progress and those that have been accomplished and what we have to do in the coming weeks. So that’s also interesting as a tool, as a checklist.
With all those things, you will receive those two documents, pretty soon. I cannot give you a precise date, but for the next meeting, I will probably table them in the committee.
For the moment, what we did prepare was a plan for the review of rule 12-7 for which there is a consensus. As I said before, we will not be able to concentrate all our meeting on that issue. We’ll have to do this, and we will have other issues like the equality of groups, the Tannas-Woo motion, that we could do one week, and we can go to the other things another week.
Why is that? Because it takes time to prepare the meeting, to have good witnesses and to have the clerk be prepared. For instance, as you will see in the working plan, for the review of the structure of committees, we need to hear from the clerk about a big overview of the work we do in committees. That takes time, and the clerks are not ready. Shaila won’t be able to summarize in detail the division of the tasks in committee. So next week, we will not be able to start the review of committees.
Next week, I was thinking that we could perhaps look at the modernization of the Senate recommendation and put that in perspective so that when we talk about reviewing the motion that was tabled in the Senate by Senators Woo and Tannas, it will be like an introduction, and we could start that work next week too. I think we could do one hour on a summary of the work that has been done since 2015, and in the next hour, start to talk about how we can amend the rules under the objective of equality for the groups.
Senator Saint-Germain: Madam Chair, on the deadline for this review, I believe that the review of rule 12-7 is important, but we have always agreed that, except for a special committee on human capital and the labour market, the enforcement of the decisions would be with the next Parliament.
The Chair: Exactly.
Senator Saint-Germain: The priority is with entrenching in the Rules the amendments to the PCA and other consequential amendments during this Parliament. It is obvious that the priority has to be given to the first one because we don’t have the same deadline, and we have more time to further study the needed amendments to rule 12-7.
The Chair: Okay. So do you agree that we do that? That we put the review of committee not to the side but as a second priority, and that next week we start directly looking at the change in the Rules? We will speak with Senator Plett and we will have our clerks and we’ll go through the list to see which rules necessitate discussion. Is there agreement on that?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: We’ll do that. Today, I hope we can still go through the plan on the committee work so that will be done. When we finish with the review of the rules that have to be changed, we could be ready, because this review of committee needs preparation.
We have a lot of discuss. I will then turn to the paper on the motion on the human capital committee. There was no agreement. I don’t know, what do you think? Should we table the motion? You’ve received it. We could table it and wait if there’s an appetite, or we could not table it. I just want to have your opinion on that issue.
Senator Saint-Germain: Once again, Madam Chair, on this one, personally, my group and I are supportive of the principle of creating this committee on a trial basis, but we would like to be further informed with regard to its mandate.
I think it’s premature to table a motion in the chamber without having an agreement on the mandate of this committee. That would be consistent with the study on committee review and committee mandates. Before agreeing on a committee, like we did on special committees such as MAID and some other ones, we need to have a mandate and to agree to the mandate.
According to me, the next step is agreeing to the mandate, and then a motion can come to the chamber.
Senator Batters: Yes, on this particular one, from my point of view, I’m certainly agreeable to having this happen on a trial basis, but at the same time, knowing we have yet another committee, I was hopeful that we would, at the same time, also have agreement about reducing on a temporary basis the number of senators on committees so that all senators would be able to give the necessary consideration to this.
In the present circumstance, it may be premature to proceed with a notice of motion and have it simply sit on the Order Paper for considerable time without it really having a good chance of passing.
Senator Cordy: Our group thinks the idea of this committee is very desirable, and nobody is against it, except that, as I’ve expressed in the letter, there are concerns about how we person the committee and how do we have the resources to have another committee. What we said is we need a debate on it.
I would be in favour of tabling a motion because people can speak on it and provide information. It doesn’t just have to sit there. People from the Rules Committee or others can speak for or against it, and it will likely not ever come to a vote, but that’s fine. It will provide information to people within the Senate.
The Chair: Okay. So there are two options, to table it or not table it. To table it without a mandate, but if we need to —
Senator Ringuette: I do agree that maybe we need to elaborate on the mandate of this special committee before we table a motion. Perhaps during the time that we elaborate on a mandate to be included in the motion, we will have a response from one of the groups that has not responded yet.
Personally, I strongly feel that the Senate needs to give attention to this dire situation. I’ve held that opinion for the last five years. Certainly, I wouldn’t want one or two groups — or leaders, I should say — to delay this important work that we have to do for Canadians and Canadian businesses.
We also know it’s very important, particularly for Atlantic Canada, to review the EI program. We need to give great attention to that review. Anyway, those are my two cents.
Senator Cordy: In speaking to people, nobody is against the idea of human capital and a need for it at all. I think what people are concerned about is how to implement it with the limited resources that we appear to have at this time.
I think, from my perspective, I would like people to get the information. If people don’t want to table the motion, we could start an inquiry on that specific issue and again bring the knowledge to everybody in the Senate. I’m just trying to think of ways that we can get it done without voting down that particular issue, because people do have concerns about being able to physically add another committee to our agenda at this time. That’s what I’ve heard, at least. People are all in favour, they understand the importance of it, but we would have a healthy discussion on whether or not we have the people who could add another committee.
The Chair: I’m inclined to say that the steering committee will review the motion that we have prepared. We might table it in a week after our steering committee.
Under the notion of a mandate for that committee, I am of the view that the mandates we reviewed stylistically just a few months ago are very general. For the creation of a sessional order, I don’t think we need to specify a study. There are two things: the creation of a committee with a general mandate and then the specific mandates about specific issues.
The way we have been proceeding lately was in the rules. If you look, they were corrected during the summer. The mandate of each committee is very wide. Then, when a committee does a study, it goes in front of the Senate, if there’s money attached to it, to explain the specific study that’s going on.
I would not try to digress too much from this pattern in the creation of this sessional committee. Let’s think it over after our discussions with the steering committee, and we’ll revise the motion that has been put forward so that it could be used as an inquiry at the same time and a way for people to express the necessity of such a thing.
I understand the reasoning of Senator Ringuette on this issue, because she has been raising it for a very long time. I’m of the view that it is a very important issue too, but we have limited resources and all sorts of limits. It’s hard to do everything at the same time. We’ll wait until our next meeting after steering to look at how we can amend a motion for the Senate as a whole.
Having said that, are there any other comments?
Senator Busson: Madam Chair, I wanted to add that I think we all believe in the human capital committee or however we’re going to frame it. I hope we don’t get lost between that issue and the issue of the number of people on committees. I think they’re two different things, in essence, and I’d hate to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.
The Chair: Thank you for that comment. We have 45 minutes left, so I think we can take 15 minutes with the plan for the review of committees. We agreed last time that we were supposed to talk about that issue. It’s not a priority; we’ll do it later, and we’ll take 15 minutes on that. Then, for the remainder, maybe we can have a steering committee — sorry; there’s one person missing.
You received this proposal. It’s a document prepared in my office. It’s called A Study on Structure of Committees, Mandates and Work Plan. You have a French and English version. It’s a couple of pages long. We tried to be synthetic, but this document is a piece of information.
It starts with preliminary remarks so that everyone has the context of this review. The structure of committees is governed by the Rules of the Senate, chapter 12 as a whole. The structure of committees and the way they function has evolved organically since Confederation. You look at historical events.
The functioning of committees has been reviewed a few times. Some changes have been made as a result of those reviews. For example, following a report by the Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament in 2002, the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages was established at that time.
Changes are approved by the Senate as a whole. Three committees have specific influence in the configuration of the structure and functioning of committees: Internal Economy, or CIBA; Committee of Selection; and the Rules Committee. We do the rules, but the Committee of Selection does the composition of the committees and the scheduling. CIBA is responsible for the financial issues in relation to committees. All three committees have an impact on committee work.
In general, in the conduct of the regular business of each of the committees, each committee is the master of its own functioning. Apart from the Senate management committees — such as CIBA, Rules, Selection, Ethics and Audit — all committees receive their mandate from the Senate, which is covered by rules 12-8 and 12-9. The steering committee of each committee proposes the agenda and upcoming witnesses. They propose that to their full committees.
We agreed in May 2022 that we have guiding principles that govern our deliberations here, so the document repeats those guiding principles: the independence of the committees; equity among senators, groups and caucuses; efficiency in our work; accountability to Canadians; attempting consensus in our work; and the Westminster model being a foundation of our parliamentary system. Those are taking the words of the document that we previously tabled.
For the review, the mandate being proposed in here is that phase 3 of our study is to undertake a comprehensive review of rule 12-7 and, more specifically, to analyze the following: the numbers of committees and their structure; the mandates of the committees, with the exception of management committees, which are Internal Economy, Selection Committee, Rules, Conlfict of Interest, and Audit; and the composition of committees regarding the numbers of senators per committee, which is rule 12-3.
The process that’s proposed here is, first, to identify the issues and objectives being pursued in the context of this review; in other words, it is to know the problems and to identify more precisely why we’re doing that. These are a couple of questions for reflection: What are the rules and the missions of committees? What are the issues identified in relation to the rules? What are the issues identified in relation to practices?
There are some structural issues, and there are some that are more of the culture or practice — the way we conduct business.
Why are committees known as the “jewels of the Senate”? Can the work of committees be improved? Is the structure of committees adequate or a fair distribution of Senate legislative responsibilities among senators? Is the structure of committees tailored to respond to the legislative and public policy concerns of government and Canadians? Are there changes that need to be made in relation to the modernization of the Senate?
Those are thoughts to help us identify the issues that we want to address. That’s step one.
Step two is to identify the rules and practices that we want to change. What are the tools for the process? There is the history of previous studies, and we have documents on that. There is the panel of experts, parliamentarians, professors and others. Another tool would be the analysis of international and Canadian practices in provinces and territories.
It’s hard to conduct a plan from 1 to X meetings because it will be a work-in-progress. I think the first thing would be a review of the work we do — the budget; how many bills each committee would study in a session; are the hours equally distributed? All the information is available. It’s in a document that’s produced and tabled to CIBA, and it’s available on the Senate website detailing the finances and activities of the committees. It is tabled each year. It’s a good document. It’s about 100 pages, and it shows all the studies that have been conducted, all the expenditures, the number of meetings, the number of hours, the number of bills that were addressed.
When you look at the data, you see that the average is not an average for every committee. Some have a lot of hours of work; others have fewer hours of work. Some don’t do any bills or very few; others do a lot of bills. Those that do a lot of bills don’t conduct research. Others do conduct research and travel.
When we look at that, it’s a start. Then with those issues, I was proposing we would have the first panel with the clerks and the analysts to present the data of the annual reports on Senate activities.
The second panel would review the other reviews that have been made in the past. We were thinking of inviting at least those who manage the Special Committee on Senate Modernization because the issue of committees has been addressed at some point in time in that special committee. Some witnesses came from outside of the Senate.
Third would be a panel identifying the different models and structures of committees found in other legislatures. We have also documented international comparisons and comparisons within Canada. The structure of committees, it struck me, is not the same from one parliament or one legislative body to another. It’s interesting to see how other countries or other provinces or territories address legislation and so forth.
As my last sentence, we’ve sent you a lot of documents for background. The analysts, during the summer, reviewed the financial reports. They also did a review of some committee work in other countries and in other legislatures in Canada. The special little informal subcommittee that was chaired by the late Senator Forest-Niesing also produced good content on historical background and international comparisons.
We’ve sent all this material to your offices for you, in your spare time, to read and to inspire our discussions on this review of committee work. I am finished with the presentation.
Mr. Thompson: Those documents to which the chair is referring — you would have received an email on Friday — are now set up in the document portal. You can access those documents electronically. I also have physical copies here, if you prefer that. I’ve had them spiral-bound so that they’re all together in one package for you. If you’d like copies of that, just let me know at the end of the meeting and I’ll hand them out to you.
Senator M. Deacon: This is a question or perhaps a comment. We do have a lot of data; we can find it in the CIBA reports. A lot of work has been done in a lot of areas circling around this since that Modernization Committee was in place and disbanded as well as in other groups.
When I look at the questions to consider and those that are there for reflection, the data will absolutely give us a baseline and a guide to where we are right now. But I wonder, when I look at these questions, about the anecdotal data which are really important. Some of this will come out clearly in a report on the number of committees, such as “This is how the committee was structured, and this is why.” Some of these anecdotes show some pretty courageous conversations about experiences and why some committees function this way and why some don’t.
My comment or question is, as we proceed, how will we continue — because we do have some — to balance the quantitative data with the conversations that don’t sometimes come out in the numbers?
The Chair: I don’t have the answer to that, but I can tell you, though, that it’s a work in progress. In an opening committee, the first one — we have some tabled already. For the anecdotal subjects, we could invite chairs of committees. We could have a panel of committee chairs at some point. They would be ex-chairs, people who have retired and have a good memory of what happened; we could also do that. That will come when we start the study, as with any study. We would start and then say, “Next week, we should focus on that and that,” and so forth. You’re invited to table to the steering committee or with the clerk any information that you think is relevant for this study.
Senator Ringuette: I find that your proposals with regard to points 1, 2, and 3 are quite adequate to lay the groundwork on our thinking and moving forward. I certainly agree with this work plan. I hope that we will move on this plan sooner rather than later.
The Chair: Are there any other comments? Do we agree that this is okay for a start? For our next meeting, we will look at the motion on a new committee, but mostly we will prioritize the review of the Rules in order to be in concordance with the Parliament of Canada Act.
If that’s okay, we will conclude our meeting for today and we will meet next week. Thank you.
(The committee adjourned.)