THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON RULES, PROCEDURES AND THE RIGHTS OF PARLIAMENT
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, October 17, 2023
The Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament met this day at 9:30 a.m. [ET], pursuant to rule 12-7(2)(a), for consideration of possible amendments to the Rules.
Senator Diane Bellemare (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Welcome, everyone, on this October 17, to the Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament.
My name is Diane Bellemare, and I’m the chair of the committee. I am surrounded by the following senators.
[English]
Senator MacDonald: Michael MacDonald, Nova Scotia.
Senator Omidvar: Ratna Omidvar, Ontario.
Senator Busson: Senator Bev Busson from British Columbia.
[Translation]
Senator Ringuette: Pierrette Ringuette from New Brunswick.
[English]
Senator Kutcher: Senator Stan Kutcher, Nova Scotia.
Senator Black: Rob Black, Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Saint-Germain: Raymonde Saint-Germain from Quebec.
Senator Mégie: Marie-Françoise Mégie from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Cordy: Jane Cordy from Nova Scotia.
[Translation]
The Chair: Today we will continue our study of committee structure, mandates and associated practices. I remind everyone that the overall objective is indeed to improve the effectiveness of committee work within the broader context of Senate modernization.
We have hosted a number of current and former chairs and deputy chairs with a view to hearing their perspectives on committee work. Two committees remain to be heard to complete the review. These are the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Commerce and the Economy, and the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance. I’ve been assured that the chairs of these committees will be able to testify next week, correct?
[English]
Adam Thompson, Clerk of the Committee: I have confirmed with Senator Wallin that she will be prepared to appear on behalf of the Banking Committee, and I’m just waiting for word from Senator Mockler on behalf of the National Finance Committee.
[Translation]
The Chair: All right. This future testimony will be added to the body of information we have gathered so far.
[English]
To this effect, I would like to thank the analysts, Erin Virgint and François Delisle, for their remarkable work. It has been very difficult to take into account all the comments that have been made. They have relied on the format of a question from the start to the end, insofar as they provided the witnesses some points that will be discussed that reflect the ones we have in our report.
The report has been done in a rational way. It’s an editorial choice, and I respect it. I think it’s very useful to have done it this way.
I also want to thank Ms. Shaila Anwar for the work she has done. She assured me that she will also provide any useful information that we may need in the future to make some recommendations. She will listen, in one way or another, to our deliberations, and she will be able to accompany us all along our future agenda.
[Translation]
The steering committee met on September 27. We talked a bit about how to continue our work. It’s not necessarily straightforward. We agreed on a general plan to follow for the next few weeks.
What I want to do now with you is present this overall plan point by point. It won’t take very long. I wanted to give you a general presentation and then listen to your comments point by point. I’ll present the whole thing first, and then we can get general comments on the whole plan as well as more specific comments on four points of this plan, which I’ll explain just now.
[English]
My objective, insofar as our committee work is concerned, is to be able to report to the Senate on this important work of revision that we’ve done. It is a piece of information where, no matter what happens in the near future, at least we will have a trace of all the weeks we’ve spent. We heard a lot of witnesses, and we will hear others. It is important for me that, at least, we have a report on what we have heard.
I propose that, for the future, we have four reports. We will go along each one so that we table and finish our work at the end of May, at least. If we have some weeks where we want to take a break, we could discuss other issues that we have on our bigger list of things to review in this committee, but we want to aim at the four reports being tabled all along the future weeks and finish in May, and maybe even a wrap-up in the Senate in May.
The first report I would like us to table very soon would be a report summarizing the evidence that we heard, without any recommendations. It would follow the line of the documents that you have received on the structure and mandate of Senate committees. The general report has been amended and will be amended to take account of the future testimony that we will be hearing next week. It is dated June 8 in English and June 15 in French.
This summary of evidence that you received many times — it was sent during the summer and it was sent recently — gives a summary of all the evidence according to a list of items. We have an annex to this report where you also have the summary of each meeting we had with specific items that are pointed out in this annex. We would use this material for our first report, which we could be tabling in a couple of weeks from now. We will discuss that more generally after I finish the others.
I suggest that the second report would be on what came out of the discussion. And it came out as a consensus, it seems to me, from of all groups, that there is a problem that we could cope with quite rapidly to increase our efficiency in committee, the predictability of our plan. It is the meeting on Monday for those committees that meet on Monday and the committee work on Tuesday where we could, one way or another, or by a change in the rule or by a sessional order that we will discuss.
The second report will be on those two items. That could be done quite easily. We could table this report in the Senate to have those changes made so that the committees that work on Tuesday, they could meet between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., even when the Senate sits. For the committees that meet regularly on Monday, they would not need permission to sit on a Monday when we come back.
This would be the second report and it could perhaps include some comments that have been made by Senator Marie-Françoise Mégie about the French/English. It could be something that does not include a change in the rules. It is only a way to operate, to have our documents translated more like the bills are; you have the English and the French version. We may talk about that in the second report.
The third report would take more time, because it would be addressing the issue of the real meat about the mandate and the structure of committees. What can we do to improve our work, to improve the efficiency of our work? I think we could go along with those discussions, taking the summary of evidence point by point.
I would offer you a methodology that’s very practical, so that we would go line by line, but I won’t hide my preference for some changes. I may have already put them on the table, not to discuss but maybe you can think about some changes that would evolve the way we work and would reflect the actual practices that we’re using. In fact, in our list of committees, we have three types of committees. We have administrative kinds of committees like CIBA, Rules, Ethics and Audit, which cannot really be changed. They have to be thought of as managerial committees. Perhaps the principle behind those committees could not be the same as others.
The second kind of committee that we have — this is what Shaila Anwar’s reports show and if you look at the statistics — are more legislative than others. Some committees only do review of bills. They can do some research, but they don’t travel often. They really are pressed by an agenda of bills that they have to study.
In our Rules, it is funny, because we have an article that says a committee can be a legislative committee. Maybe when we study the structure, it would be interesting, as some countries do, to have legislative committees, per se. There could be four or five of them — a public finance committee, social committee, economic committee, and maybe one or two others — that would mainly address legislative work, as it is done. Clearly, they could meet while the Senate sits. The way we select the membership would take that into account. Those are thoughts to be taken into account.
Finally, another kind of committee in our seven is the thematic committees that do research. Maybe these committees could be populated with all kinds of principles.
We will present you with some paperwork on this way of thinking about the structure of committees. It could be an interesting way to approach many of the problems that have been discussed with us.
That’s the third one, and I think this one could take a bit of time. I don’t foresee that we will have a report on that in 2023, but maybe at the beginning of 2024.
Finally, there would be a fourth report — I don’t know if it would have recommendations — but I think it would be interesting to have a discussion with witnesses on the way we populate our committees, how we select membership in committees. The process that we are using, and the Rules, don’t necessarily reflect one another, so having a discussion on those issues could put on the table some of the issues and contradictions that we have to take into account to improve the efficiency of our work on that.
Four reports would bring us to the spring or summer of 2024, which is my date for bringing the agenda to a term on those issues because, as you know, I will be saying goodbye in October 2024. I don’t have any personal interests in those changes, but I want to push some ideas so that it is at least discussed.
On this note, I invite you to give your comments. First, I think we should talk about the general comments on this process.
[Translation]
Senator Mégie: The plan is good and bold. It’s bold on the timeline, but still realistic, like reports 1-3. There are still two interviews to do with two different committees.
Should we wait for them? That will be next week, but should we wait for them before we start writing the testimony summary part of report 1? That would make sense.
The Chair: The question is this: Can we take what you’ve received? Can we use the document you have in hand, with the necessary editing, to file it as a report for information purposes?
[English]
Can we take the summary of evidence that you received and add any other evidence that we will gather from the two other committees that are waiting to be heard? Can we work on this document to work toward our first report tabling, as it says, a summary of evidence? It’s not written in a format that is usual. Should we only use the summary? Should we include the annex?
That’s the general question. We may want to think about it until next week and, after our witnesses, have a little meeting to discuss yes or no. If we do that, then we could take your comments that you send to the analysts to edit the report and then table a draft report. That’s the issue.
[Translation]
Senator Saint-Germain: In general, I agree with the plan, including the principle of tabling the summary of testimony heard, perhaps with a preliminary note on what the committee’s plan is going forward. I think that would help clarify things. Otherwise, members will have questions. When you read it, it’s a summary of testimonials. You can say: “I don’t agree with point 3 or point 4.” It needs to be clarified. It’s obviously an information document.
As for my comment on the plan, that is to say the other three reports you’re proposing, I agree in principle with the relevance of the division you’re making. However, and this will be the key in the other three reports, our comments and recommendations as committee members will be decisive. There are a few elephants in the room that don’t make it into this report. One of them is the number of senators.
Of course, it’s not our job to appoint senators; we have limited control over that. Since I’ve been here, since December 2016, there have never been more than 94 senators, that’s 11 senators short. Secondly, the situation means that some groups have smaller numbers, which is not to the detriment of quality, but of representativeness. We’ll have to work on this issue.
I see report 3, Structure and Mandates of Senate Committees, as crucial. We haven’t gone far enough in comparing it to the House of Commons, with its 338 members, generally all in office — vacancies never last more than six months, by law — and which has a number of committees comparable to ours. We have a problem here. This must really influence our efforts in the third report to make precisely the distinctions you’re making and deal very clearly with the notion of representativeness, and mandates that correspond to the contemporary issues facing Canadians. It’s going to be complex. We need to go further than what’s in the summary of testimony.
The Chair: Your comments are very interesting. If you would allow me, I’d like to respond to some of the senator’s remarks.
[English]
I thought it would be useful to have an exercise when we approach this third report — I’m talking as an economist — on the supply side of the question. What are the numbers of senators that we have, the number of resources — everything. I have already talked a bit with Ms. Anwar so she could provide us with a possible scenario on the supply side of the question and what is possible to do. When you build a house, you may want to have many bedrooms and many things, but if your budget and the field where you are building are not wide enough, you have problems. We have to take into account those elements.
She told me she has some good information and she can provide us information on that.
[Translation]
Your point about the number of senators is very relevant. We could do the exercise on the assumption that, on average, over the past 10 or 20 years, there have never been 105 senators present. We could do the exercise on the assumption that the actual number of senators is never the same as the potential number. It’s an exercise we need to take into consideration.
This can be a fairly lengthy exercise, during which we may invite witnesses from the House or other bodies. I think it’s difficult to anticipate as long as we haven’t started discussing each point. I hope we can get to report 3 as quickly as possible.
[English]
Senator Cordy: Thank you very much for all the work that has gone into this. I really like the plan. There might be some tweaking that I would suggest. The summary of evidence is a great report for senators to get a sense of where we are coming from and what we’ve heard. I like Senator Saint-Germain’s suggestion that, along with that, we put in an upcoming plan so that people don’t think that we are presenting a summary of evidence, but that this is step one of at least four phases to come about with it.
On report 2, will some of those things come from what we’ve heard from chairs, deputy chairs and past chairs who have come before us? I jotted down irritants or things that people would like to look at. You talked about committees that sit on Mondays having to get permission after break weeks, which is something that some may find an irritant and others may not. That would be one of my questions.
On report 3, the mandate and structures of committees, I really like how there are some new ideas here. I would hope we would have some witnesses to talk to us about jurisdictions where they have committees, where there are administrative committees, like the Ethics Committee, CIBA — and there may be a couple of others — that deal with administrative things rather than legislation. I think we all understand that part of it. I would like to see people who have committees that just deal with legislation, and that they would be allowed to sit when the Senate is sitting. There are some really good suggestions here. I would just like to hear of some places that are doing that. We have talked about this for a long time, either at this committee or just amongst one another, that there must be a better way of doing these things.
On report 4, which looks at things and how to populate committees, it can be challenging when we have five groups in the Senate. How do you make sure that every group gets it so that there are men and women on the committees when — if you have only one or two positions on it, it may be hard to do if you have someone in the group who wants it but there are already five men or five women on a particular committee. We do have committees, like SOCI, which tend to be predominantly women. Other committees tend to be predominantly men. That’s not right, but that just tends to be the way it is. How do we make changes to that?
It’s good to have a plan as we look forward to the end of 2024, which is pretty scary; it is not that far away. It’s a good plan and I thank you.
Senator Busson: I find myself agreeing with what my colleagues said about the plan that you are laying out and the way it might proceed. Much as other people have commented, to start with, report 1 is an excellent way to put everything in front of the Senate so that they know where we are coming from as we begin.
I would recommend that we add the annex of what was reported by each committee because I believe there is some clear consensus through a number of those reports. I took the time to go through and skim and highlight some of the things that seem to be much like the report 2, which talks about Monday and Tuesday meetings. There are certain things everyone finds that they want addressed. So I agree with that.
In report 2, on the Monday and Tuesday meetings, I hope we might, if we can’t conquer the problem, at least raise the issue again. There are some really important committees with Monday slots. A number of people are just geographically excluded from being on committees like National Defence. If we can’t fix that, we should at least highlight it for posterity or for next steps because there are many issues that go with the Monday/Tuesday issue, around seeing the clock, around the committee sittings. I sit on one of those, which is POFO, so I agree with raising that.
Report 3 is a huge bite, but I think we can make some interesting movements there. Again, as Senator Cordy was saying, with report 4, selecting people for committees is incredibly complicated, but we need to address the numbers and our striving for the balance and the regional representation that we all want.
In each one of the reports, we might want to do what we recommend for now and then show what we see as the agenda for next steps, just to keep a focus on moving forward.
Senator Batters: Chair, are you proposing that we go through this summary of evidence document today?
The Chair: No.
Senator Batters: Next week? Okay. It would be better to go through it next week. Last week, I spent an hour and a half on the phone with the Library of Parliament analysts noting a number of different changes that I thought were necessary to this report. A very small number of those have been reflected so far but not yet. I’m hopeful that more of them can be included before we look at this. I look forward to that.
The Chair: Do you have any other comments? Maybe we could have more specific ones; I heard a lot of general comments.
Senator Ringuette: I have no problem with report 2. I believe we need to have more information in regards to what you are seeing as immediate changes. You mentioned three, but are there more from the witnesses that we have. We have to move it that way.
I might be wrong — sometimes I am — but, for instance, I questioned most of our witnesses in regard to moving to three hours of committee meetings for the sake of efficiency, for us, for senators, for employees, for interpretation and so forth. I believe that we need a pilot, a trial, on this issue to understand how it would work. We need a pilot period that would be put in place, and it would be evaluated after a certain time to see if it’s more efficient. I believe it would be, but the proof is in the pudding, as we say.
I believe that should be in one of those reports. I don’t see it in report 2, and I don’t see it in report 3.
The Chair: It’s in report 3.
Senator Ringuette: I don’t think that we can make mix the mandate and the structure into this new organization element of doing pilot meetings of three hours. I believe it would be mixing apples and oranges and maybe too soon because, technically speaking, report 3, which is on mandate and restructuring, describes a major overhaul. That is the way I see it.
I don’t think we can envisage that being put in place this September. If you look at the time frame, I don’t think that we can put it in position this September. I think it will probably have to occur following a prorogation or an election in order to move the committee from its base to what has been proposed.
I don’t know. Am I clear in what I am trying to transmit here? I see the issue of moving from two four-hour slots to three-hour slots. From my perspective, that should be a pilot that we should test to see the result of that with the current committee framework that we have. Then the structure, the new mandate and all of that would have to start in a new Parliament or a new parliamentary session. We have to consider that in our planning.
The Chair: There are many things in what you said. There is planning, the restructuring, the implementation.
In report 3 — I am sure I was not clear — I just presented the first single hypothesis that we could take into account. But my objective in report 3 would be to examine all those issues that were listed and that we have heard about — the numbers of hours that we meet and so forth.
When I talked about the supply-side scenario, I would like us to have a chart with all the possibilities, including the number of hours that are available for us to meet during a week. In doing that, we would know that it cannot be more than, let’s say, 100 hours or 200 hours. We know we have three kinds of committees. Maybe the thematic committees could meet only once, three hours per week, or maybe once for two hours or maybe only once for four hours. We would see with our supply‑side scenario what we can do.
We are limited in our choices. That is the reality, because we are limited by the number of senators we have. We are limited by the numbers of hours in a day and in a week. We are limited by the buildings. We are limited by translation. We are limited by our resources. But we shouldn’t be limited in our thinking. That’s the difference. We should think out of the box with consideration of what’s possible to do.
So in report 3, I suggest that we will tackle the problem of the structure, the number of hours we can meet and the number of committees we can have. We know that we can have at least what we’ve got, because we are doing that. We know this is what we can do. Maybe we can do a little bit more. What we know is that we have to divide our number of hours of work differently to be more efficient. We know that some committees don’t meet twice a week, but it’s planned as if they do.
So the kind of approach in report 3 would be to understand what we can have — the number hours per week. Then, to make it pragmatic as a discussion, after comprehending the issues and what we can do, we will discuss them point by point. I think we will be arriving at something that is interesting and innovative.
Then, for the implementation side, we can have trials; we can have those, perhaps. But at least for the sake of having a report that addresses the issues that have been pointed out by our witnesses, we have to discuss it in a rational manner. This is what I’m proposing.
Report 3 will need a guideline of discussion right from the start. We will be working on that, when the time comes, to start our debate on report 3. We would have a guide of how we will approach the problem, if you agree on the best way to proceed.
Everything is interrelated, so my suggestion is that at least we have our first report. We have our second report, which is really on pragmatic issues that are short term. Then we address all the issues that we have talked about, but when we start to talk about numbers of members, representation, expertise members, meeting schedules. The Monday meetings would have been addressed. The Tuesday evening meetings would have been addressed. On the duration and frequency of meetings, we would have considered that rotation. We would go with the list that was defined in the first report.
So we will be logical in our conversation. But to start that conversation, we need some specific questions to be addressed. For instance, do we treat the Committee on Fisheries and Oceans and the Banking Committee the same way as we treat CIBA? I think the answer is “no.” CIBA is a very important committee — a managerial committee — and we cannot apply the same rules to CIBA that we will apply to other committees.
I am asking you to take a bit of a leap of faith, because you don’t have, at the moment, the skeleton of the discussion of report 3, but it will come. My task today was to see if you agree that we have report 1; that we work on report 2 in the future weeks; and then, when we address report 3, you will have a list of the questions two weeks in advance — a list of how we will proceed — so that we can advance step by step.
As you know, an elephant, you can eat it, one mouthful at a time. This is a big elephant. We have to see how we cook the different pieces before we eat it.
Senator Omidvar: I like everything we have heard on reports 1 and 2 — those are the simpler reports — with the addition of the suggestion of Senator Saint-Germain that we append to report 1 our next steps.
Report 3 is complex. I’m attracted to your proposal of looking at it through the lens of supply and demand, and structuring the report around that. But I’m sure when we come to that, you will be able to provide us with more information of the structure and guidelines.
The Chair: Are there other comments or issues?
Senator Saint-Germain: I just want to be back on the third report. I believe that we should not pre-empt now on the substance of this report. I will try to be very diplomatic, but we will have witnessed all the committees’ chairs and steering members. It is relevant to do so, but we also have to make our own comments, because some of them are in conflicts of interest and they will not see the whole picture; they will promote or defend the current mandate of the committee.
We will need to have some analysis and make decisions that may go otherwise or that may amend some of the comments that we receive. This is why I concur with you, Senator Ringuette, but at the same time, I believe it’s premature to make any decisions on the substance, the analysis and the recommendations, accordingly.
The Chair: That’s really wise, because we are in a political environment and every committee has its own logic. It’s very hard.
This is a question I have been asking myself for a long time: How do you make changes in the Senate? How can it be done? It’s a political institution; it’s a parliamentary institution. We have to go back to our mandate, which is the legislative work and to promote public policy. We’re not a private enterprise where changes come from top to below. We are not a cooperative where change come from below to the top. We are parliamentarians. It’s really complex, and this institution has grown organically through time to answer questions that have often been political issues.
To change this kind of institution that has grown organically and that might not now — organically is not necessarily healthy through time — we have a bit to make some changes. It’s going to be hard. I don’t think we will switch things like that, but my objective — and I hope you concur — is that we put the issues we have been addressing in a logical manner on efficiency and equity, and with all the principles that we concur to make the Senate a better institution, more related to Canadians and more related to the 21st century.
How do we do that? We are the committee that can at least put forward a blueprint or different scenarios. I don’t know if we’ll be able to have a consensus on those different scenarios in report 3, but at least they will be there. We’ll be able to discuss those things in the Senate as a whole when the time comes. That’s the thing we can try to do now; it is to at least have an informed report, because we have heard all the testimony. I agree with what Senator Saint-Germain said. The testimony may sometimes be in contradiction with what we may be proposing because you have so many dimensions to this puzzle.
The way I thought about it was to have at least a summary of evidence and a consensus to make the Senate better work, the report too, and then attack the big piece from what we heard, with the list of the items, with the supply side that Shaila may provide us with, how we can divide the hours and to discuss how we can make the Senate relevant with a new structure.
I don’t know where we will go, but I know if we do it this way, we have the chance to have an interesting report, at least with different kinds of scenarios.
Senator Batters: My comment was just dealing with Senator Saint-Germain’s point, and I think it’s an important one. Part of what I was bringing up in going through the summary of evidence was a number of points I thought were noteworthy to include an additional sentence or two on certain points. There were times where witnesses might have been saying one thing, but then other senators, of course, questioning those witnesses were pointing out points of view that may have contradicted what they said or may have just added some different context to what they said. Those things also need to be included in this report.
It shouldn’t only be a summary of what was said by the senators who happened to be sitting in those few chairs, but also there were some important points made by other people who perhaps didn’t sit as a witness — or didn’t for those particular meetings — and brought up some very important points about different Senate committees that also need to be relayed.
Senator Cordy: Senator Batters has raised a really good point. Some who were former chairs spoke about the way it used to be. We now have four groups — if we include the government group — who have 16 or fewer members in their groups. That’s totally different from years ago when you had two fairly significant groups populating committees and then a number of independent or non-aligned senators at the time. She has raised a good point that things have changed in many ways, so we have to be aware of that when we’re reading it. I read it awhile ago, but I will read it again next week.
The Chair: Senator Batters, your point is well taken, and according to what you just said, next week we are supposed to have witnesses from Banking and Finance. But the week after, can we have a commitment that everyone will have completed a careful reading of this document? Maybe give some comments to the analysts, and when we will come back in the committee, we’ll do it page by page, if we are in agreement with the report, if we think that some little word should be added or not. Having done that as a committee, as a whole, will help us to put in some perspective in relation to the context.
Senator Black: Will it be this document or will it be one that’s updated after next week?
The Chair: Good question. I think you have to update it.
Erin Virgint, Analyst, Library of Parliament: It’s updated as of last week’s meeting. We have another document almost ready to go in English currently, but we can add in the testimony from next week. If a lot of comments come in from members over the couple of next weeks, it might take a little longer to translate. That is the only question.
The Chair: If we look at in terms of timing, next week we will have some witnesses. But can we start a discussion on the document in two weeks that will be updated up to now? Could we start with a document and then a final one after what we will be hearing in Banking and Finance so at least we will advance?
I suggest that two weeks from now — not next week but the week after — we will go through an updated summary of evidence that — preferably — could verbally be indicative of what Banking and Finance said.
Senator Ringuette: I agree with the comments that Senator Batters has just put forward. There was testimony from chairs and vice chairs, and these are all in the appendix. I don’t know how difficult it would be to review the documents of each meeting and add questions. You are the writer. You are the best one to decide which format to add those questions that had not been identified immediately in their presentation, but were identified later in their comments because there was quite a number. For instance, they talked more precisely about the mandate of their committee and what they have been doing. But then we questioned them on the duration, the number of members in their committees and so forth. Anyway, yes, if we want to present this kind of document to the Senate, it has to be all-inclusive.
The Chair: Doing that exercise as a committee, as a whole, will be very helpful for officials for the kind of issue we will raise — at least we will have the document, which everyone will have read and added their comments to, because as a committee, we may want to nuance some of them. So we’ll do the exercise. And I think it will be a useful exercise. Everyone will have to be ready for that meeting that will start not next week, but the week after.
If there are no other comments, then we will wish ourselves good luck, and hope we’ll be able to achieve our plans. Thank you very much.
(The committee adjourned.)