THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON RULES, PROCEDURES AND THE RIGHTS OF PARLIAMENT
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, April 18, 2023
The Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament met with videoconference this day at 9:32 a.m. [ET], pursuant to rule 12-7(2)(a) of the Rules of the Senate, to consider possible amendments to the Rules.
Senator Diane Bellemare(Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Welcome to this meeting, everyone, which marks the start of a five-week marathon for our parliamentary business.
I am Diane Bellemare, Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament. Today, we will continue the study we started on committee structure and mandates, pursuant to rule 12-7 of the Rules.
We will go around the table, starting at my right.
[English]
Senator Cordy: Jane Cordy, Nova Scotia. Welcome to our witnesses this morning.
Senator Omidvar: Good morning, colleagues and witnesses. Ratna Omidvar, Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Saint-Germain: Hello. Raymonde Saint-Germain from Quebec. Welcome to our eminent witnesses.
[English]
Senator Black: Rob Black, Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Ringuette: Pierrette Ringuette from New Brunswick. Welcome, gentlemen.
[English]
Senator Woo: Yuen Pau Woo, British Columbia.
Senator Marwah: Sabi Marwah, Ontario.
Senator M. Deacon: Marty Deacon, Ontario. Welcome.
Senator Busson: Bev Busson, British Columbia.
Senator MacDonald: Michael MacDonald, Nova Scotia.
Senator Wells: David Wells, Newfoundland and Labrador.
[Translation]
The Chair: Today, we welcome three eminent senators, as Senator Saint-Germain said, to discuss the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
We have with us senators Harder, Boehm and Downe, who will talk with us and answer our questions.
Since we only have one panel today, I hope we can get to the end of our questions. If it takes a little more than an hour, I hope you have the leisure of staying with us for that time.
Let’s proceed without further ado to opening statements. Let’s start with the current chair and continue with the former chairs.
[English]
Hon. Peter M. Boehm: Colleagues, I am pleased to be here today as Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, which I will refer to by its acronym of AEFA, to contribute to your study on committee structures and mandates. I wish to give an overview of what AEFA is studying and how our work has been structured, and I will also highlight a few issues that I see as particularly problematic for the committee. AEFA had only seven meetings between November 2020 when I became chair and December 2021. I will focus on the period between February 2022 and now.
AEFA, while it gets its share of bills, both governmental and non-governmental, and pre-studies, does have time to focus on studies of its choosing. After being authorized by the Senate on February 24, 2022, on April 7 last year, AEFA began its study on the Canadian Foreign Service and elements of the foreign policy machinery within Global Affairs Canada. As of our last meeting on this study on March 22, AEFA has welcomed 51 witnesses for more than 17 hours of testimony across 13 meetings. In support of this study, AEFA also undertook a successful fact-finding trip to Washington in December of last year. AEFA will report to the Senate on the Foreign Service study this fall.
It was always the intention that this study would take approximately one year to ensure it would not be unnecessarily rushed but also to allow for other topics of interest to members to be looked at concurrently. This includes a five-year review of the provisions and operation of the Sergei Magnitsky Law and the Special Economic Measures Act as mandated by the former, that is, the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act. The Senate authorized AEFA to study this on October 17, 2022. Meetings began on October 26 and concluded after eight sessions and 26 witnesses on February 15. AEFA will report to the Senate on this in the coming weeks.
It is also important that a committee with an international focus be able to respond to developing global issues, and so it was agreed that AEFA should periodically meet on the situation in Ukraine. Since March 3, 2022, under our general order of reference, the committee has held seven meetings on Ukraine, with 24 witnesses, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Honourable Mélanie Joly.
There has also been careful planning in how and when meetings are scheduled, because while AEFA is not the legislative workhorse that LCJC and SOCI are, we expect, especially in May and June, to receive government bills or parts thereof and to lose meetings because other committees need out time slots for their own government business. Having to reschedule committee plans due to government business, our own or that of other committees, is the first of the issues I will highlight that is surely not specific to AEFA.
This speaks to the fact that, in my opinion, some committee mandates are too crowded while others have room to grow. For example, in June 2022, AEFA studied then Bill S-8, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, despite immigration falling under SOCI’s mandate, which I do not quite understand, because SOCI already had, as it often does, a full docket. That AEFA took on S-8 is not a complaint. We spent one meeting and part of the next on it, but it goes to the question of whether government business should always be every committee’s immediate top priority regardless of other plans.
On mandates, I would also take this opportunity to highlight AEFA’s request of this committee last November, with a goal of better reflecting AEFA’s work, to add development to AEFA’s mandate and to change the committee’s name to “Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Development.”
I mentioned earlier that AEFA in particular should be able to meet on urgent and emerging global issues. Given the lack of flexibility and agility of Senate committee schedules, it is nearly impossible to meet without at least one week’s notice, to deal with a myriad of technical processes unless it can be done during one of two specific two-hour slots per sitting week, and as long as there is no government business. AEFA also receives meeting requests from visiting delegations and groups around the world. Not all are appropriate for formal committee meetings, but when there are meetings, they are often necessarily informal due to inflexible time slots and other committee commitments.
I will end on the issue of travel. This is timely as I’m appearing this afternoon before CIBA’s Subcommittee on Senate Estimates and Committee Budgets, SEBS, to try for a second time to secure funding for AEFA to travel to Europe in support of its Foreign Service study. While arguments about prudent spending are certainly fair, the Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade simply cannot do the job for which it is mandated without reasonable travel outside of Canada. It is a Foreign Affairs Committee, after all. This is something I suggest Rules consider as it continues its study. The ability of committees to travel — while it must take cost, use of resources and Senate sittings into account — is vitally important whether undertaken within or outside of Canada.
Thank you, colleagues. I look forward to your questions.
Hon. Percy E. Downe: Thank you for the invitation to appear today. I was a member of the Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committee from 2004 to 2017, so I’m really the ghost of Foreign Affairs and International Trade past, and I will tell you what we used to do as opposed to what they’re now doing.
During that time, I sat as a member, deputy chair and occasionally as chair. I was appointed as a member from Atlantic Canada when a Liberal member retired from the committee. I think that’s significant. I wanted to be on the committee, but I had to wait until someone from our region left the committee, and that happened and then I went on so the committee had regional voices and regional representation.
During the time I was on the committee, we examined 27 pieces of legislation and issued a dozen major reports on topics ranging from regional studies to analysis of the impact of free trade agreements.
The Foreign Affairs Committee is somewhat unusual in its terms of reference. Most committees are a mix of studies by the committee or a review of legislation referred to it by the Senate. So it is with the Foreign Affairs Committee, but with a key difference. Many of the bills they examine are enabling legislation for international treaties and agreements — free trade agreements, for example — and unlike much domestically orientated legislation, the committee’s latitude is severely limited. As a practical matter, amending such legislation could require reopening negotiations with another country and is thus normally out of the question. Only approval or rejection is possible, and occasionally observations are amended to a bill.
As a result, it is through the independent studies that the Foreign Affairs Committee performs its most valuable work, in my opinion. During my time in the committee, we undertook extensive studies on a range of topics and regions. As one example, over three years, we conducted a study of the development and security challenges facing Africa, the response of the international community to enhance that continent’s development and political stability, Canadian foreign policy as it relates to Africa and other related matters on that topic. It was no small task, but one the committee undertook with meetings over two years, over 400 witnesses, in 12 countries, including officials, academics, diplomats and two presidents.
Indeed, travel is essential to the work of many committees, but no more so than with Foreign Affairs. Just for the record, the chair and I didn’t coordinate our comments. I didn’t know what he was saying. These are my views. For all the recent advances, there can be no substitute for being there in person. It is commonplace for early drafts of reports based on hearings in Ottawa to be completely reworked as a result of what we learn during fact-finding missions.
I’ll give you one small illustration of that, chair. When we were studying Africa, we were in Kenya. We were talking to the Foreign Affairs officials and CIDA officials, and they advised us about Kenya’s proposal at the time to increase education and that they needed financial assistance for that. Canada’s officials on the ground, CIDA, sent the request back to Ottawa. By the time it got approved, the Kenyan government had already implemented the program and didn’t need the funding anymore. But when we travelled to Denmark, we found, in a side comment in a meeting, the Danish officials mentioned that they have their officials on the ground with a mandate for the framework of the objectives of the Danish government for Foreign Affairs. The person has the authority, the approval and the funding envelope. When the same request came from the Kenyan government to Denmark, it was approved within a matter of weeks. We found that out in Denmark in a meeting. As I said, it was almost an off-the-cuff comment. We followed up. What did you mean? How did you fund that and so on? Different policy, different decision, and it had an impact for obviously thousands of Kenyans. The Canadian government was not able to participate, even though it was our objective to do so.
For all that, the impact of the work of the committee may not be as direct as that of other committees. As I said, many of the bills we examine can only be approved or, in theory, at least, rejected. With much of what we look at, human rights in Russia, for example, we can only call attention to issues of concern, but there’s real value in that as the committee continues to contribute to the debate of important global issues, their impact on Canadians and vice versa.
An important part of that continued contribution is the committee’s practice to follow-up studies, usually conducted after a year or two. For example, after we did our study on Africa, we would call the various departments impacted by our recommendations before the committee to tell us what recommendations they accepted, which ones they rejected and why. Because we have tenure, unlike the members of the House of Commons, we can use that tenure to follow up and have the impact that our studies should have. The African report, for example, was downloaded thousands of times since it was released so many years ago, and it’s an important contribution to the discussion of the impact of development assistance.
As I stated at the outset, it’s been a few years since I served on the Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committee, so my experience may not match current circumstances. However, I would, of course, be happy to share my experience and answer any questions members may have. Thank you.
Hon. Peter Harder: I’m going to make a couple of comments that are supplementary to the ones you’ve already heard under three headings.
One is with respect to mandate. As Senator Downe alluded to, the subject matter of Foreign Affairs is often within what’s called the Royal Prerogative, and that limits the range and capacity of the Senate with respect to legislation. I would argue it is a very important committee process for international treaties and examination of free trade agreements and the like, but it is within that context that the Senate review must take place, as does that of the House of Commons, for that matter.
The committee’s mandate, in my view, ought to include international human rights. There are times when the Human Rights Committee has actually, in some respects, encroached on what I would say is the mandate of the international dimensions of human rights. Senator Downe alluded to a study that was very specific in this area by the former committee. I leave that to you but just flag it as a mandate issue.
Senator Boehm has reflected the desire of the committee to include in its title the broader mandate. I have a slightly different view. He knows that. I would use Global Affairs as an inclusive rather than an itemization because it would reflect the international human rights aspects that Global Affairs in fact has responsibility for.
I want to underscore the importance of Senator Downe’s observation that the committee — and indeed this is probably for all committees — should be more deliberate in regional representation in Canada so that the interests we’re describing in our work, even though it’s international, reflect the broader collective interest of regions in Canada. This committee, again, as other committees, benefits from tenure. That is to say, senators who have served on the committee for more than one session have a capacity to reflect on the mandate of the committee in a more fulsome way.
The second point I’d like to make is with respect to the timing of the committee and some of the issues Senator Boehm raised with respect to getting time allocation. My bias would be for a three-hour slot once a week that is less likely to be interrupted. You could have more deliberate planning for three one-hour panels or subject matter that can truly accomplish what, frankly, is often at risk. I would also urge that the timing, once established, be preserved as best we can, recognizing that that is not just in your gift.
The fourth point I’d like to make is to emphasize the points that have been made by my two predecessors about travel. Surely to goodness, a committee devoted to the global affairs of Canada ought to be expected to travel more often, and it should be the whole committee. Do not just pare it down for cost. You want an informed committee. You can narrow it down in size if you’re afraid of paying the cost of committees.
When I was deputy minister of Foreign Affairs, the government of the day introduced the Accountability Act. One aspect of that is that deputy expenditures had to become public. The day they were to become public, my assistant came into my office and said, “I’ve got terrible news for you.” “What’s that?” “The expense claims of deputies are going public tomorrow, and you’re the highest.” I said, “Pam, that’s great news because if the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs doesn’t have the highest expenses, somebody is in trouble.” Indeed, even the reporting said, “But you would expect that. They’re the Foreign Affairs deputy.” And I never had another question.
My point is that we can, collectively, be a bit brave if we’re confident about our work. We, as a committee, ought to be confident of our work.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much. It was very useful. I have a list of senators who want to ask questions.
[Translation]
Senator Saint-Germain: Thank you for your presentations. As a former member of the committee, I agree in general, so I won’t come back to it. However, I want to acknowledge the relevance of your current study on Canada’s foreign affairs services, as well as the fact that there are few platforms as independent as this committee to conduct such an anticipated study. Congratulations on that initiative.
My question has two parts. You raised the fact that little government legislation is referred to the committee. Usually, it’s treaties. However, it’s difficult to amend an international treaty.
In fact, don’t you think that, generally, the committee should review government bills through the lens of their international impact, not just treaties?
Senator Boehm: Thank you for the question, senator. I think that question is rather complicated. Practically every government bill includes international aspects, so it all depends.
[English]
If we’re looking, for example, at a free trade agreement, which requires an act to implement it, obviously there are elements there, but there could be a bill that is very domestically focused in terms of trade elements, where maybe not. I just question where we would make the judgment on that. In a budget implementation act, it’s relatively easy. The elements sort of pop out, and they are assigned through the process that we have here in the Senate. But that’s one issue to deliberate. The danger I would see is that we might have just too much on our hands and go around saying, okay, there’s an international element here and there’s one there. The selection thereof might be problematic.
Senator Harder: I’d like to add to that. We’re living in an age where many domestic issues have become internationalized. I would expect many committees to be studying issues of their mandate that do have an international dimension. We shouldn’t be afraid of that or say that it should go to the international committee. We, as a group of senators, need to step up to the reality of exposing the international implications, even in what is essentially domestic legislation. For example, on issues of safe third country and migration and refugee protection, there is a domestic agenda and there are international implications. There are, in fact, some aspects of it which I would say should be in the Foreign Affairs Committee. The principal, at least in the present day, is SOCI, but I would hope that that committee itself is informed of the international dimension. It should be somewhat nuanced and opportunistic, rather than dogmatic through a reference in the mandate itself.
Senator Woo: I have just returned from the Republic of Korea where I travelled with a parliamentary delegation, including, as it turns out, the chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. We met with our counterpart, Korea’s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee. As it turns out, we arrived shortly after a delegation from the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee was in Seoul.
The general comments around our visit vis-à-vis the U.S. visit and vis-à-vis our Korean hosts were that our own Foreign Affairs Committees — I’m referring to both the House and the Senate — don’t seem to have the same gravitas or stature or ability to have an impact when they do things abroad. They don’t go abroad that much to start with. I want you to elaborate a bit on that in terms of how we can structurally improve — if it’s desirable — the design of our Foreign Affairs Committee so that it does have more of an impact.
The underlying question there is, what is the role of the Foreign Affairs Committee vis-à-vis Canadian diplomacy? We have a parliamentary diplomacy stream, which is not about the committee; it’s about the friendship groups. We have the executive that in fact is responsible for diplomacy. Then we have these creatures, the House and Senate committees. How do you see them fitting in? Should these committees play a bigger role?
Senator Boehm: All I can say, Senator Woo, is that it has been a work in progress since 1867, with various things. I agree that, in the case of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, there’s a lot of gravitas there. When our committee was there in December, we met with its chair. You could feel the gravitas oozing across the table.
It depends what we want to do. The Senate traditionally has been best with various studies. To link it to the travel issue, the last major trip or study that the committee undertook was in 2016, to Argentina. Did that have an impact? I don’t know; I wasn’t here. But it seems the reports do well in terms of domestic consumption.
Here we get into, as Senator Harder mentioned, the Royal Prerogative and the link between what the executive is actually doing and what we do. Other than legislation, there is no fixed reporting requirement. Maybe that is something we could work on, for example, in the study that we’re conducting right now. When we complete it, we could have a committee meeting with the minister to formally make that linkage. I don’t know, but these are things that we should try to discuss in some detail.
I’ll stop there. My colleagues might want to comment on diplomacy.
Senator Harder: I’d like to underscore two points.
First, we have to recognize that this is a parliamentary system based on the Westminster model, not the congressional system, so our roles are different. Having said that, there is what I would call hidden wiring, which we could use. What would that hidden wiring be? In the U.S. committee, tenure matters. Once you’re on, you don’t want to get off, and you move up in the committee in terms of role and authority and experience. There are subcommittees, and a number of U.S. senators cut their teeth on the Africa subcommittee by virtue of that work. I mention that because earlier we talked about tenure and regional representation. If that were something that we could say that we, as a Senate, need to respect so that the committee can have the credibility to which you referred, then we need to do that. But that’s hidden wiring. You can’t write that in the mandate.
The other hidden wiring is this. The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee travels on every break. They determine where they’re going and what the studies are. I hate to say it and sound repetitive, but if you want a Foreign Affairs Committee that is not different than the other committees in travel, you’ll get what you’ve got. If you want a Foreign Affairs Committee that you deliberately are mandating to represent Parliament and the Senate internationally and attend not just our own business but other — with the Munich Conference, if anyone goes there, it’s because the department is paying for it. That’s not the Senate paying for it. The work you are doing in Korea is not from the Senate paying. The work I have done in the U.K. wasn’t paid for by — that was personal. I’m a member of the Trilateral Commission, as are you. We cannot get any expenses paid for that other than perhaps going to Washington. We were meeting in India — couldn’t go. We were meeting in Belgium — I guess we could on our own hoof.
My point is that if you want senators to be involved, you have to provide for it. You then have to have the checks and balances to make sure that they are not doing personal diplomacy.
Senator Downe: I will not repeat the comments others have made other than to reemphasize the difference between Canadian Parliament opportunities for MPs and senators compared to other countries. I was a former vice-chair of the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and IMF. I was the only North American on it. We had meetings in Paris and so on, none of which were funded by the Canadian Parliament. For all the other colleagues, parliamentary funds were used, but not an option in Canada.
I think in addition to the wiring Senator Harder mentioned, there are also opportunities for more transparency. I refer to my remarks to the free trade agreements. They come to us, and it’s a “yes” or “no.” Our American counterparts, senators and representatives, can go in, swear a secrecy oath, and, throughout the negotiations, read the transcripts of possible options and have input into them. Imagine if that were to happen in Canada. If we were negotiating a free-trade agreement with Peru, for example, which we have done, I could go in and say, “Oh, here’s a problem that will affect my region,” before the deal is finalized. That is not to say our negotiators are not aware of all the problems, but the more sets of eyes, the better. In my opinion, parliamentarians have a role to play in that, and that’s an area we could address by having the government be more open, transparent and allow our participation. We couldn’t, of course, disclose information.
Senator Omidvar: Thank you to the witnesses.
I will pick up on the language used by Senator Harder and ask you a question about the wiring in the Senate. AEFA does incredibly important work, especially their studies. As chair of SOCI, I think you are lucky that you have the time and opportunity to do the studies.
You mentioned SOCI and LCJC. There is another commonality, and that is our schedules. We meet at the same time on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and we have done so ever since I joined the Senate in 20-whatever-it-was. It is impossible for any senator who is a member of SOCI, LCJC or AEFA to sit on any of those other committees because of the hard-wiring of our schedules. As someone who is deeply interested in global affairs, I beat myself up all the time because I cannot attend your meetings.
What would you say to a proposal that has the schedules change every few years so that there is a cross-pollination of senators? I think it goes possibly against the comments you made, Senator Harder, about tenure, seniority and getting a firm grounding, but at the same time, it also speaks to access and diversity.
Senator Harder: I’ll take that one because of the comment. You could solve it by having three hours on Thursdays for one and three hours on Wednesdays for the other. I appreciate your comments. I just think we should look for solutions outside of them, because I do value tenure, but I’m open.
Senator Cordy: Thank you for the issues you have raised, not just for your committee but all committees. Being from Atlantic Canada, the issue of regional voices is extremely important. Fisheries certainly has a predominance of Atlantic Canadians on it. This one seems to be pretty well rounded, looking around the room, but some are predominantly Central Canada and so on. That is a relevant issue, but I’m not sure how we deal with it.
My second comment is that we have a challenge in some of the committees that I’m on — one in particular — where the only witnesses who can appear in person are people who can drive to Ottawa. If you are from Nova Scotia, they won’t pay for you to fly. To me, it is ridiculous. All witnesses for committees should be able to spend resources to fly and to be as much a part of being in person for a panel as any other witness who is coming from a distance that would be driveable. That’s what we were told for one of the committees that I’m on. That’s what it was for Fisheries Committee, so we’ll have to maybe examine that to see if it makes sense.
Senator Boehm: Thank you, Senator Cordy.
On the representation issue, the West is underrepresented in AEFA; it’s very much an Atlantic and Central Canada membership. That’s something that concerns me, particularly when we are looking at issues that have an impact to the West.
For in person versus online, what we have learned from the pandemic is that we can have witnesses by Zoom. That has opened a tremendous opportunity for our committee in the sense that, as we continue our study of Ukraine, we have had very senior Ukrainian officials participating directly from Kyiv, such as deputy ministers and deputy prime ministers, et cetera.
Where we have a difficulty — and it’s a technical one, and I want to mention this — is on the reliability of headsets. If we have a witness from the United States, Europe or anywhere — as we have had — to insist they have to have brand X — they don’t always understand that. How are we going to get that to them, because we can’t do that now either? That’s a technical issue that we’re grappling with.
I hope that responds a bit to your queries.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you to our witnesses for being here today. You cover a good spectrum of experiences.
I want to come back a little bit to three things. I want to come back to the impact of the work — and it could be studies, so the impact of studies, lots of energy and important issues. Perhaps Senator Downe could respond first, from the point of longevity — I remember the one report from 2016 — what he thinks the true gains are from those reports when they leave your committee, and they are looking really well done and thorough. What do you feel the action is as a result of your reports?
Senator Downe: Thank you for that question.
The follow-up is key. This speaks to the tenure as well. You do the report. The members of the committee who are on the report — Africa, Argentina, other reports, and we did one in Asia as well — follow it up. We made a series of recommendations based upon, in the Africa report, as I mentioned, 400 witnesses. So two years later, you have Global Affairs, the Canadian International Development Agency, all of those, in and you go over the recommendations. Here is what we recommended. Did you implement that? If not, why not? Did you implement part of it? And so on. You can do a real check mark or a report card, basically.
The other part is using the position of the Senate as a bit of a bully pulpit — to use an American expression — to raise awareness of the issues and to drive the agenda across a broad spectrum of Canadian society and government agencies and departments. You raise something, for example, in the Argentina report. The economy there has taken a turn since we were there, but when we were there, we were optimistic that there were opportunities there for Canadian businesses. I know a business from Prince Edward Island took advantage of the opportunities there to export machinery directly to them.
It’s all about impact, it’s all about follow-up, and it’s all about raising awareness so that over time you can change perception and public policy and the executive branch will say, “Maybe we should do this.” They may very well take the credit for it, but the Senate doesn’t need any credit. The objective has been achieved at the end.
Senator Harder: I’d like to make a couple of points.
The first is, you enhance political literacy. That’s amongst parliamentarians, but also amongst, hopefully, the media that is covering it, and communicate indirectly with senior officials on subject matters that the Senate has identified as important. So, political literacy.
The other point is to choose the subject areas after some degree of consultation with Global Affairs Canada. I know that when I was on the other side, we encouraged some work in Asia for the very reasons I have just described. Obviously, that was independent work being done, but in a subject area that was ripe for some political literacy.
The other point I would make is that senators think it’s done when the report is done. There is an advocacy role that the committee ought to undertake. It seems a bit odd to me that sometimes we table reports in the Senate and never speak to them as though the literacy of a committee is sufficient for the whole Senate. The advocacy role isn’t just to the external audience, it’s actually to the Senate audience.
Senator Boehm: I want to add one comment, and it goes to the impact question of Senator Deacon.
We will, in the next few weeks, have a report that we will be finalizing on the sanctions regime, the Sergei Magnitsky Law and the Special Economic Measures Act, as mandated in those acts, a review after five years. There will be recommendations, and I would say that this is a very relevant and timely study. It goes to Senator Harder’s point that we will have to obviously do some advocacy on that and not forget about it, because it will suggest ways and means to improve the sanctions regime that we have right now, which is being tested like never before.
Senator M. Deacon: The advocacy piece of committee work is not strong enough in our language about the role of the committee.
Senator Busson: Thank you very much to all of you for being here. I want to mention that Foreign Affairs is on my wish list as well, like most others in the room. It’s incredibly important work, and I’m happy that you are here to help us get through some of the issues that you struggle with.
One of the things that I want to mention is that all three of you, with your experience and the work that you have done in this committee, have mentioned your frustration about travel and how it, in your view, seems to frustrate the mandate of the committee. I can’t help but to resist the opportunity to ask you, with your experience, and like many of us in the room, your other lives before the Senate. Could you suggest or would you like to comment on some other funding model that might work better, specifically for the work that you are challenged with in Foreign Affairs but in the Senate as a whole in dealing with specifically travel? You might suggest a more efficient way of funding travel specifically for the work and the mandate of each of the committees, but yours in particular. In my mind, I’m thinking about a model with a pre-existing budget and accountability. I’m just wondering if, in your frustration, you have come across a model that you would like to propose.
Senator Boehm: I don’t know whether a GoFundMe page is an idea or not in this instance.
I have not given a lot of thought to that, but I want to comment on the funding that we had asked for and that we’ll be talking about this afternoon at SEBS. This is in support of a study, as I indicated in my opening remarks, that’s been going on for some time, and nothing like it has been done since 1981, and at that time it was a Royal Commission. This is important and relevant work. It is not like the committee is looking for opportunities to travel. We can leave that to the parliamentary associations, at least those that are funded. We have to go to the central budget, obviously, to request, and it’s proper that there should be scrutiny there, but it’s not like we’re looking for opportunities to travel. I know that Senator Harder and I have had our share of travel in our previous careers. We’re not looking for that much more. But in this particular instance, where it is relevant to the study and where the study would be enhanced, it does make sense.
Senator Downe: The downside of travel, of course, is the public perception that it’s somehow a junket. I spoke earlier about the Africa study we did. I recall at the time we had a full day of meetings in Africa, and then we flew that evening to Europe — of course, everything was delayed — for meetings the next day. I was concerned about the health of some of the committee members at the time, quite frankly.
As Senator Harder earlier said, you have to be brave and do the work required. The foundation of the credibility of the Senate is the work of committees, going back to, in my recall, to Senator Croll’s report on poverty, which changed the face of poverty, particularly for seniors in this country because of the work at the Senate committee and other Senate committees’ reports after that. It had a tremendous impact on public policy. That committee, I know for a fact, travelled to every part of Canada to do the study. They were in Prince Edward Island at the time.
It’s very important to get out of Ottawa. It’s very important to have expenditures. I’m very enthusiastic about all committees travelling, and all members should travel. It’s impossible to have a committee of 12 and say that 8 can have allocations to go. That’s totally unacceptable, in my opinion. If they are participating in the committee meetings, they should participate in the meetings outside Ottawa as well.
The other thing is — and I alluded to it earlier — other parliaments have additional funding for members for outside activities related to parliamentary activities. We used to have that in the Senate, but it was eliminated a few years ago. The key point is transparency and accountability. People can’t just go off. The committees have to submit to other senators what their intentions are, and a report is tabled when they come back. The same should be for any individual senators travelling on Senate business. You have to be able to justify what you are doing, and I think we can justify it.
[Translation]
The Chair: Thank you. I think we clearly heard your message on travel. It’s well understood.
[English]
Senator Batters: Senator Downe, in your opening remarks, you stated that you could not be a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee until one of your group senators from our own Atlantic region came off that particular committee. Could you tell us a bit more about that? I’m just wondering if your group — maybe past or present — has certain practices in place about regional representation.
Senator Downe: I was new, and at the time I was advised that there would be a seat coming available for Atlantic Canada, where I’m from, when Senator Al Graham retired, and I was allocated that seat. I was an Atlantic voice. I can’t recall if there was anyone else from Atlantic Canada on it, but we did that at the time to balance them all. They did it on that committee. I was new at the time and just interested in getting on the committee.
Senator Batters: With all this discussion on travel, I do note that we have the Foreign Affairs Committee’s current chair and current deputy chair here today. If there is a concern that there is some important, worthwhile reason for committee travel, the process, of course, in the Senate is that they would put forward a proposal to the Internal Economy Committee for CIBA committee to decide on.
I also note that, of course, the last three years there has been minimal travel because of COVID restrictions for not just the Senate but for Canadians. I think some of those things are just getting back to normal, and perhaps it would be better to look at the past years of that particular committee and the travel that they may have undertaken.
Senator Downe, I wanted to ask you another question about a more general perspective. You are a very experienced senator, and you’ve chaired and deputy chaired many Senate committees. In that time on steering committees, you have probably had many different important committee reports that you have been a part of. In your experience, what was the most efficient and best process that was used when drafting reports and determining recommendations?
Senator Downe: Well, the way it worked at the time was the chair and the deputy chair and other members of the committee would obviously have the input of the witnesses. We tried to make sure that the witnesses that were called reflected the interests of individual members and the suggestions. Obviously, the steering committee had some key people, Global Affairs and others, that had to appear. Afterwards, there would be a general discussion among the members about what our understanding was of what we had heard and what the understanding was of possible recommendations. Then the steering committee would go off with the analysts and the Library of Parliament researchers and produce a draft report. The steering committee would review that and then submit it to the members for comments and suggestions. There wasn’t always agreement, but there would be a general sense of what we heard. When you hear a witness, you can’t say, “Well, you didn’t hear that.” You heard it, that was the testimony, and that’s reflected in your report, and the recommendations are a different category altogether.
Senator Batters: Comparing with other committees, can you maybe give us a particular example where there was a committee that you were a part of, whether it was Foreign Affairs Committee or a different committee because you have had experience on many, where you thought, “Okay, on that particular one, that was something that we really should emulate for years to come. That went very well. That was something we should continue to do.”
Senator Downe: Yes, that would be Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committee. That was the committee I enjoyed the most, and Senator Busson and I are hoping to get back on it.
Senator Batters: Is there a committee report you were thinking of, or just in general? I am looking if there was any particular committee report that you worked on and you thought that went very well and how we handled the witnesses and the report that we produced and the feedback that came out of it later.
Senator Downe: I think the principle was the more time we had — the sober second thought really means a deep dive. The longer we had to study an issue, the more aware we became of all of the nuances of that issue. The Africa study I think was the longest when I was there. It took years. I mentioned 12 or 14 countries, hundreds and hundreds of witnesses. That took a long time, and that was probably our premier study when I was there.
Senator Ringuette: Thank you for all your comments because they kind of reach where I’m at in regard to our tasks right now in putting forward efficiencies and highlighting the impact of committees. Tenure is the follow up to the Senate institutional memory that you have to live and exercise in committee, and so is the regional representation issue. I have some quick questions.
You said that you were reviewing the Magnitsky law. We have quite an extensive list of mandatory legislative reviews. Do you agree that the legislation — most of them are five-year reviews — should be part of the different mandates of committees within the sphere of, should I say, scope of study?
You mentioned three hours of committee instead of two hours twice. I find that is a lot more efficient in regard to everyone’s time, administrative times and our witnesses’ time too.
There is a question that you didn’t raise yet. Do you find that the number of senators in your committee is sufficient or is it too much in order to be efficient?
We have heard that Tuesday meetings sometimes fluctuate because we’re not sure on Tuesday when the Senate will rise in order for committees to sit. Do you see that we could change the rules for Tuesday’s sitting so that these committees could sit while the Senate is sitting, giving proper time to attend any votes?
My issues are efficiencies and impact.
[Translation]
The Chair: Could we hear the answers? Your question has three aspects: the number of members per committee, Tuesday sittings and scheduling, meaning the opportunity to schedule one or two time slots.
[English]
Senator Boehm: Thank you, Senator Ringuette. My colleagues will want to respond, I’m sure, so I will be very quick.
Twelve on the committee is a lot if you want to give everyone a chance in a one-hour meeting to ask a question, and often there is not time for round two. We’re on a four-minute rule, basically, and that’s particularly tough when you are getting into substantive issues. That’s one comment.
On review and mandatory aspects, on Magnitsky, SIMA in the legislation it says “parliamentary review.” It does not say “Senate” or “House of Commons.” I put my hand up because I thought we could do a pretty good job on this, so that’s why it came to us.
Meetings are Wednesdays and Thursdays at the moment. It was considered safe, but recently we had to drop a meeting on a Wednesday because it was agreed that the Senate would sit longer. I do like the idea of a long meeting and maybe one per week.
Senator Harder: Let me make a defence of 12. I don’t know how you can have regional representation and make it much narrower than that, but I appreciate the comments Senator Boehm made with respect to the questioning. There might be better ways of having the committee itself coordinate the nature of the questions so that it doesn’t go from one senator to another aspect. You could perhaps focus on a subject area within the witness. I leave that to others. My point is you can’t have it both ways in terms of numbers. I certainly wouldn’t go higher, and I value the regional component to it.
On timing, I have to speak for the other side, and that is to say that the committees have traditionally not sat when the Senate is sitting. That leads to a broader informed Senate on the subject matter of debate. Now, of course, you could argue that perhaps not all debate is edifying in that sense. That would come as a shock, I know. We are a more intimate chamber than the House of Commons, and I wouldn’t want to get to the point where, in the Senate itself, we have the kind of quorum only for the Senate debate. Maybe there is a way of leadership structuring the mandates such that on a particular day, a Tuesday, for example, that there could be sittings when we wouldn’t schedule a vote, essentially, but I leave that to others. There is another side to this, and I wouldn’t want to go so far that we become a mini House of Commons and have a diminished chamber.
Senator Downe: The Rules Committee may want to consider — and it leads to some of the points already raised today — having committee chairs give a brief report weekly in the Senate of activities of the committees. I’m very interested in foreign affairs and international trade. If I happen to see them on CPAC on the weekend, I might even watch them. Otherwise, I’m not quite aware, other than reading the transcript. The Rules Committee may want to consider taking one of our Question Periods and using half of it for committee chairs to give a very brief, two- to three-minute report on what the committee is doing, and senators could say, “Oh, I want to read that or follow up.” That is just a comment.
[Translation]
The Chair: Our hour is up, but we still have questions to ask, and I have one that I’ll ask right away.
You spoke a great deal about the merits of regional representation. Specifically, Senator Downe did indeed say that it was a very particular and demanding practice, even when there were only two groups. We now have several groups. In your opinion, is that possible, in spite of the principle of proportionality between those groups on different committees? Is there a mathematical exercise that could make those additions and subtractions, without any fractions?
[English]
Senator Harder: I don’t think you can have a formula for this, but I do think that if you have a Selection Committee, it doesn’t necessarily just have to be formulaic. It can talk about, in the round, are we allocating regional representation, and can there be a discussion? I don’t think it should be impolitic to have that conversation across groups. But that’s just my view.
Senator Downe: I share that. Many of our parliamentary associations already say we have to have more diversity, and you define what that diversity is in a representation going to conferences and association meetings overseas. The Selection Committee could easily do the very same thing: “Here are some principles we want in all our committees.”
[Translation]
Senator Saint-Germain: Before I ask my question, I’d like to make a comment. I’m less uncomfortable about doing so because all three of you are here, and you thoroughly illustrated the words that I did not hear very often this morning: expertise and competence in the field. When it comes to the number of members, I think that if we want continuity, expertise and competence to all be at the top of the list of criteria, and we want regional representation, it’s clear to me that we must have 12 members. That’s my comment.
My question is on one of the aspects of your mandate, which we did not address this morning, namely international development, international cooperation, and the links with not just foreign policy, but also with our international economic and trade interests.
I’d like to hear about your vision for exercising this mandate, which sometimes relates to other committees’ mandates; I’m thinking of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, for instance. What link do you see between the crucial role you hold and possible domestic ramifications on our other international interests?
Senator Boehm: Thank you for the question, senator.
[English]
I had proposed the change of the name of the committee because many of the issues that we are engaged in fall into an international development sphere, and when CIDA was amalgamated into the department by the previous government, it set up very rational means to have greater policy connection. For example, if we’re looking at the restructuring of the Ukrainian economy afterwards, whenever the after comes, or even during, that will require a lot of development assistance. We had focused on development assistance in a more generic sense during international development week. I’m sensitive to this as a former deputy minister of international development.
With respect to the expertise question, I think that is developing over time. For example, in our study on fit-for-purpose of Global Affairs Canada, senators have developed a lot of expertise. What makes it a little tricky sometimes — and nothing against those who are coming into substitute — but they’re only getting bits of the picture. For example, if we’re then looking at a travel projection, I would be reluctant to say we would have substitutes for permanent committee members. That doesn’t work, in my view, because you’re building up this expertise which will lead to the report.
Senator Harder: I share the comments made and would add one more point. In our study of the fit-for-purpose Foreign Service, to your point, we’ve had witnesses from each of the departments that have overseas representation in our embassies — so Agriculture, Immigration, Public Safety, the whole range. We have a perspective that’s in that sense global, but perhaps the senators on the committees that those normally report to don’t, which would be a perfect opportunity, once our report is tabled, to have a broader conversation in the Senate itself. That’s where the nexus between domestic and international can come together, but it’s certainly a deliberate part of our committee’s work where it’s appropriate.
Senator Downe: Briefly, I may have misunderstood the question, but I would be careful of the competence comment because, if that was the criteria, then everybody on the Legal Committee would be a lawyer. We should have a cross-section of senators who represent the regions of Canada. We’re not an extension of the Public Service, for example. It’s very helpful to have the expertise of the two colleagues beside me, but we also need others that have a business background or regional development background in all the committees to develop expertise in the area over time, hearing the witnesses and so on. I’m not sure if I misunderstood the question.
Senator Saint-Germain: To be clear, this is the most glamorous committee, and it can attract frequent flyers. We need to have expertise. I agree with you that expertise can come from many fields and we can acquire expertise. But this committee is complex. Many issues are so complex. We need experience and expertise, first and foremost, from my standpoint.
Senator Downe: I just want to quibble with that. I think it’s more important that we have like a jury, a cross-section, judged by your peers, so a cross-section of senators on it and not people who have expertise in that field. That defeats the purpose. We have to have new voices with new opinions, in my view. So we disagree on that.
Senator M. Deacon: It’s a challenge. We have in Foreign Affairs a study of our fit-for-purpose work right now. At the same time, the minister is also doing a review. Particularly at this moment in time, this is going to be an interesting learning for this committee too on how those come together, how the advocacy and the understanding and the awareness all pushes forward with two equally parallel and important projects going on at the same time. That was not my question.
Senator Harder, you said something at the beginning of your comments today about human rights and human rights as it falls under the broader Foreign Affairs mandate. As you were speaking, it occurred to me, or I wondered in this scenario if it would make sense for AEFA to absorb Human Rights as a subcommittee, like Veterans Affairs is absorbed by Security and Defence.
Senator Harder: I’ll let that architecture be reflected in your deliberations. My point is that the international aspects of human rights ought to be connected to Canada’s foreign policy, and I could see a subcommittee on any subject area within our mandate. It could be development or — that’s not my point. My point is that the subject area ought to be integrated and forced to be brought into the context of the broader Canadian interests.
Senator Omidvar: There is much food for thought there, but I’ll be very brief with my question.
Senator Woo mentioned the various forms of diplomacy embedded in the Westminster model. There is another expression of diplomacy outside the purview of this or any other committee, but it touches on your work, and that is the Speaker’s travel. I wonder, Senator Boehm, if there are any post-mission debriefings or pre-mission debriefings, because that is another form that is, to me, completely opaque.
Senator Boehm: Senator Omidvar, thank you for the question. I agree that it is opaque, and certainly in my time as chair there have not been any sort of formal pre-meetings or discussions or post-meetings. I know there are reports that are tabled usually at the end of a session on the Speaker’s travel, but in a broader context — and some of us have been discussing this — the travel of funded associations, Speaker’s travel and indeed the international presence of the Senate is probably something that we can usefully discuss in terms of how to improve it.
Senator Cordy: What would you expect from him? He is always very diplomatic.
Senator Boehm, I believe it was you who said that advocacy to the public begins after the report is tabled, and I agree with that. Somebody suggested that maybe it should be part of every committee’s mandate that there be follow-up on whatever it is we’re doing. We’ve had some incredible reports from the Senate, but it seems they’re presented and they’re tabled and then we think that everybody knows about it, but Canadians don’t necessarily follow that.
One of the committees that I recall that did an excellent job on that was the Social Affairs Committee when Michael Kirby was chair, and Mike was adamant that we had to have dialogue with all Canadians. Every member of the committee was given speaking engagements across the country. Of course, the more you do, the more you’re asked to do, is what seemed to happen. We also had op-eds in large and small newspapers, like weekly papers. The op-eds, for all of the Atlantic Canada newspapers, would be from members on the committee who were from Atlantic Canada so people would recognize the names, and across the country it went.
Is a mandate enough to do, or do you have a suggestion for committees that we actually do that follow-up so that Canadians are aware of the excellent reports that senators are part of?
Senator Boehm: Senator Cordy, you’ve hit an important note. The traditional communications plans are not sufficient for what our committees do. I think that behooves us to be more creative. It’s not just post-report; it’s perhaps during the report and planting some seeds, both in the sense of what conventional media can do but also using social media to greater advantage.
I agree with the op-eds and the work that we can do, but particularly reaching out also to regional news outlets. We get a little bit captured by the bubble here in Ottawa. I have nothing against The Hill Times. We all read it, and there’s a lot to digest in there, but we have to go broader than that.
Senator Harder: There is another part of the advocacy. Not every report has it, but those reports that cause the government to respond in 150 days give the Senate another opportunity. It also forces — because I’ve been on the other side — the government to have a more collective understanding of the report that they are now pronouncing on. While the responses are often more anodyne than the discussion, it does give the Senate the opportunity to actually engage the executive in a more deliberate fashion. That ought to be incorporated in our sense of communications planning.
[Translation]
The Chair: I have a quick question to round out the subject of your committee’s mandates: the committee’s legislative agenda. You analyze bills, but not as much as other committees. In the past — Senator Downe may remember; I wasn’t there — national security was also part of the committee’s mandate. Later on, national security became part of a separate committee. Now that we have a joint national security committee, do you think we can go back to the way it was, meaning foreign affairs that include security and defence?
[English]
Senator Downe: No. I can elaborate, if you like.
Senator Harder: If you want an elaboration, I would say no.
Senator Boehm: I’m with my colleagues.
[Translation]
The Chair: Perfect, that concludes our meeting. You’ve given us many suggestions to streamline our proceedings, specifically by talking about scheduling and the number of hours per time slot. That’s a suggestion we will look into. Thank you very much for your participation, it was exciting.
(The committee adjourned.)