THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON RULES, PROCEDURES AND THE RIGHTS OF PARLIAMENT
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, May 21, 2024
The Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament met this day at 9:35 a.m. [ET] pursuant to rule 12-7(2)(a), in consideration of possible amendments to the Rules; and pursuant to rule 12-7(2)(c), in consideration of the orders and practices of the Senate and the privileges of Parliament.
Senator Diane Bellemare (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Good morning, everyone. Before we begin, I would like to read a few notes related to our committee procedures.
Please note the following preventive measures that have been put in place to protect the health and safety of all participants, including the interpreters.
Whenever possible, please ensure you are seated in a manner that increases the distance between microphones. Only use black approved earpieces. The previous grey earpieces must no longer be used. Keep your earpiece away from all microphones at all times.
I would like to ask all senators and other participants here to consult the cards on the table for the guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents.
When you aren’t using your earpiece, please place it face down on the sticker provided on the table for this purpose.
Thank you all for your cooperation.
Today, May 21, 2024, we’re going to continue our discussion on rule 12-3, which deals with the number of senators per committee, and rule 12-7, concerning the mandate and structure of committees.
My name is Diane Bellemare, and I’m a senator from Quebec. I’m chair of this committee.
Let’s go around the table, starting on my right.
Senator Mégie: Marie-Françoise Mégie from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Kutcher: Stan Kutcher, Nova Scotia.
Senator Yussuff: Hassan Yussuff, Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Saint-Germain: Raymonde Saint-Germain from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Black: Rob Black, Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Ringuette: Pierrette Ringuette from New Brunswick.
[English]
Senator Busson: Bev Busson, British Columbia.
Senator Wells: David Wells, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Woo: Yuen Pau Woo, British Columbia.
Senator Al Zaibak: Mohammad Al Zaibak, Ontario.
[Translation]
The Chair: Thank you very much for being here. We’ll start with the rules. You have received a number of documents, including the working document that Adam prepared, which deals with proposed changes. By way of introduction, I will explain how we proceeded.
We’ve already had two meetings on this; at the last meeting, I made some suggestions, and you made comments and other suggestions. We’ve taken all of those suggestions, we’ve tried to arbitrate between them, and that’s what these new suggestions are about. These are not yet proposals, but rather suggestions. For today, the idea is to go around the table to try to agree on changes that we can include in an even more formatted document than this at our next meeting.
So today, we’ll go around the table again to hear what you have to say, and next week, we’ll try to come up with concrete proposals to table a report in the Senate, with a view to making changes to the rules. It goes without saying, and I say this in advance, that these changes cannot be implemented next September, even if they were passed by the Senate before the end of June. These changes involve many amendments to the mandates of certain committees. Furthermore, if we also accept the changes to the number of senators per committee, they will be implemented in the next Parliament or in the next session.
We’re going to start with the first page of your document, which contains four columns. The first two are in English, and the second two are in French. I see that Senator Saint-Germain would like to say something.
[English]
Senator Saint-Germain: Before we go to the first page, you have spoken a bit about the process. I would find it more useful that we discuss the process. I would like to hear more about the rationale of this document first. Second, I would like to be back to the original mandate that we had and see what’s the link with of the original mandate where we studied mandate of committees, how to revisit some of them, update some of them. I would like to see where this is part of our mandate included in this document.
The Chair: Okay, thank you. Then I will tell you that previously we have spoken about the structure and the mandate, which is rule 12-7, and this is on page 3 of this document. It starts with the suggestion on each committee and the structure is on page 3.
On the first page it’s 12-3, which is the number of senators per committee. This document has been produced in the order of the rules that we have. We have discussed previously on the size of the committee that the size of the committee may not be proper for each senator to have a task that is normal. I was going to introduce this proposition, these suggestions, with a few numbers just to put it in context.
On page 3 you have what we discussed in the last meeting. We discussed the mandates of each committee and we said that we had option A and option B. In one option, the numbers of committees would remain the same, and we were proposing that the Human Rights Committee be divided with Foreign Affairs and Legal. In this document, we took that aside because we understood that that was not what the committee wanted. The committee wanted to keep the Human Rights Committee. In this suggestion, we keep the Human Rights Committee and we add a new committee on human capital, with the understanding that perhaps at the beginning, depending on the resources, we could alternate between Human Rights and the new committee on human capital.
These are things that will be discussed when the time comes. In here, we have a new committee that is added to our Rules, so the structure is changed in this way. But we did not deeply amend the structure. We discussed that in our understanding, some committees are more administrative, so we keep them that way, and they are the first in the order.
Some committees are more legislative because they have been doing much more legislative work than others, and we said that some committees are more thematic. Some do studies, quasi exclusively, but it depends on the time. It also depends on the event. It depends on the actuality.
We didn’t change anything, so this document is the wording that we would have in our Rules, okay? They are the same suggestions that we made earlier — not the last time because the last time we discussed we had witnesses of the Privy Council, and we discussed mainly the written question and the delayed answers. When we met April 30, we had the suggestion that I tabled, and it’s the same thing, but formatted more officially, okay? They are formatted more officially, as we did when we studied stylized changes in our Rules two years ago. We changed the Rules so that each committee would use the same type of wording.
In this document, you have the current rule on the left in English and on the right in French, and in the middle you have the suggested or proposed new rule. It’s kind of a summary of our discussion, but the first page is rule 12-3, which is related to the size of committees and 12-7 is related to the mandate of the committee.
Senator Ringuette: Madam Chair, first, we need a lot more research and discussion in regard to committee mandates because I am not one who will — after 40 years that we have had these committees like this, if we do a review, we do a proper review and we do it accurately and with substantive research. I honestly believe that we have done a good thing so far by hearing from chairs and vice chairs of committees. That is good.
But I believe that we need to dig further; I honestly believe that. So I don’t know how you propose to have additional research done, understanding what is happening in other chambers elsewhere with regard to committee work. This is my first question for you, and I have a second one afterwards.
The Chair: I don’t really understand your remark, but I will answer. We had witnesses for many weeks last year on the mandate and structure of committees.
Senator Ringuette: Chairs and vice chairs of committees.
The Chair: That’s right. We had a report on that.
I introduced the idea a few months ago that we could have an overhaul of our mandate and structure, but that would take more time, but I didn’t feel the committee reacted positively on that. So we decided to amend the mandate of the committees as they are so that we have something in our Rules to process that will be more efficient and more up to date with the 21st century.
We had this kind of discussion the last two meetings we met. If you now want to say, “We will wipe completely our Rules and start anew looking at what other countries do,” that’s up to you. This was not my understanding. I thought we would review the mandate and the structure.
I think you know the Rules, Senator Ringuette. This document is only the actual rule with changes in the mandate of committees. For instance, for Foreign Affairs we add “development” to Foreign Affairs, but if you want to proceed otherwise, speak clearly because I don’t get the message.
Senator Ringuette: I will speak clearly then, Madam Chair. From my perspective, I didn’t view our review of committee mandates as putting on a plaster, and so far I think this is where we’re heading. I didn’t view that.
I think it is more important that, after so many decades, we do what we must do as a committee. That is my personal view. Honestly, we had this little conversation. I don’t feel that we are fulfilling what we should be doing in regard to committee mandates.
The Chair: Okay.
Senator Kutcher: As someone who is still very new to the committee, I have a couple of observations. I did go back and do my homework and read all the transcripts of the discussions. One of the things that struck me is that this committee has done an incredible amount of hard work and has been grappling with how we should change committee structures so that we have significant and substantial improvement at the end of the process. That has been there.
As someone who is new and looking at this, a couple of observations I would just like to share, and maybe my observations are not correct, so please give me that feedback.
One is that it wasn’t clear to me how we are defining what the outcome is that we want to have. Are we trying to make committees more efficient? Are we trying to improve the quality of work of the committees? Whatever it is, are we trying to ensure that the structures and types of committees we have will meet the needs of the next century instead of the needs of the last century? It wasn’t clear exactly how those things were there. Although there was lots of discussion around that, there was the lack of the clarity about what the goal was, and so that was one thing.
The second thing that really struck me, and maybe this is what Senator Ringuette was getting at — I don’t know, so please let me know if it was — was when I looked at the input into the work of the committee, it was primarily chairs and vice chairs of other committees. We didn’t have independent people looking at what a committee structure could be like.
I don’t want this to sound wrong, but there’s no way around it. I got the impression from the witnesses, every witness wanted their committee to stay and nobody wanted their committee to get disbanded or anything like that. But we didn’t have an opportunity — just add this piece or add that piece, and the rationale for adding something wasn’t there.
The other thing that came to my mind — and again this is probably because of my bias and I’m happy to share that, and people know that bias — is that there’s no science in any of this or research that the health and wealth of Canada is going to be built on science and research. It doesn’t exist anywhere in our mandates.
The House of Commons just put it together. The House of Lords actually has a Science and Technology Committee. So I think that there are components here that we really need to study a lot more carefully. I think this has been a really good start, but I think that the necessity for more careful study is potential.
Those were my observations as I spent chunks of the last couple of weeks going through, and I must say that reading all the committee reports was scintillating and exciting. I would like to say that, but I can’t. Thank you.
The Chair: If I may react, I am very pleased to hear you because I personally would have liked to start a process of wiping what we have and to do something very big, but when I started to talk about it here, Senator Ringuette, I remember your reaction. You said, “Oh, what is that?” That’s a long time ago.
I was telling you that from my own understanding of what’s going on elsewhere, committee work is done very differently than here. In many countries you have legislative committees, and we have it in our Rules. We have the possibility to have a legislative committee in our Rules as a special committee. We have never used it, so our approach has always been organic. We were never thinking about our committees because in other countries, as you know, most of them are elected senators. Sometimes they change and the government also. Here, because of our own way of doing things, we are appointed, we are there for a long time, we adopt certain attitudes, we are comfortable in our tradition, so we haven’t been evolving through the creation of the Confederation with committees that have evolved with the needs of the day, never taking out what we had before.
So we have a house of committees that’s really bizarre. Each time we have been trying to reorganize, we have never been able to do so. It’s not because of consensus. It’s because of politics that are going on in our way of doing things.
We are an organic parliamentarian institution. We don’t have any boss; we are doing the things the way we want to do them, so we need a probation. We need not necessarily unanimity, but we need to accept having this done or not.
We have been organized this way, and I wanted us to go through something much more ambitious. Because looking at what other countries do with legislative committees, special study committees, they receive their order from the Senate. The committees are not necessarily what we are here, which is the master of our own committee. I heard that so many times in committees. The committees decide what they do. They have an order of reference that is general, and they do what they want to do.
If we want to do it differently and be more responsible towards Canadians, then we need a bigger study. I agree with you completely, but what we have done right now, I agree with Senator Ringuette, is a plaster, yes. It’s helping us to be more efficient rapidly if those little changes are adopted and to continue a bigger study on what we want to do.
Doing that will take time, and personally I don’t have the time. I am really sad about that because that’s a subject that I have a passion for, so somebody will have to take the lead, organize and think about what we really want to do with our committees.
For the moment, these changes are there only to heal some kind of frustration amongst senators who don’t have the impression they can tackle subjects of the 21st century because they are not mentioned, frustration because the size of committees are too big and we are never a full house. We have an average of 95 senators, minus four who don’t participate in committees, the Speaker and the GRO. We are really overloaded, so I thought that maybe looking at this aspect would make each senator more available to do their work differently. It will ease the load so they get involved in the Rules Committee or other committees much more.
This is what we were thinking to do today. I told you many times that an overall would be very good for the Senate.
Senator Woo: I want to give you credit for taking us as far as we’ve come and to say that you have always been an advocate for the more analytical, objective approach to reforming committees. At the last meeting, you tabled a discussion paper on a totally different way of thinking about committees, which is, as you briefly described today, the idea of having legislative committees specifically working on legislation and other committees that deal with thematic issues on a more episodic basis.
I don’t know if that’s the right way to go, but it’s an interesting way of thinking about the problem. You’ve said to us that there is no time to do that, certainly not before the summer and probably not before you retire, but I want to say that you have planted the seeds for that discussion. Whatever comes out of this document, I can assure you that there will be senators who want to think along the lines you are thinking, a more broad-brush, rational, scientific approach that’s based not just on — “organic” is not the right word. We’re trying to renovate the house by putting legal structures in parts of our house, and the house looks really quite unsightly now.
So I want you to take some credit and comfort in the fact that you have set the stage for us to do a proper review of committees.
The Chair: Thank you, senator.
Senator Yussuff: I’m here intermittently, so I’m not even sure I should say anything. Just in the context of observation from the last three or four times I’ve been here, I think reading the document and what was suggested by a number of us kind of reflect the sum degree of our parochial bias on how we think we can improve how committees function. It’s wise because it’s coming from our observations and experience in trying to understand how committees could be a little bit more efficient in their work.
The bigger problem we have, though, is that, generally speaking, committee chairs are very parochial to their responsibilities, and anytime we try to come up with ideas on how a committee can add or take away from responsibility, we get into this way of people getting very upset because you think you’re not reflecting in a very wholesome way of their experience. The Human Rights Committee is a good example. Adding something to it or taking something away from it tends to lead to — the bigger challenge, of course, we have is that legislative committees do really important work when we have legislation. The problem is that the thematic committees also do important studies that help shine a light on issues that have been really important for the country and that can help us evolve but also understand a different way of looking at things.
The problem with the Senate is that, given its history, it tends to add to things rather than take things away, and that becomes a real challenge because it doesn’t necessarily reflect, to a large extent, a better way we can do work.
At the same time, I would argue that some of the thematic committees do some really important work. I think it’s important not to lose that because it really brings a fresh perspective to issues that may not get attention because legislation doesn’t necessarily reflect some of the challenges. I see that the Agriculture Committee did some important work on soil, which is important for the country, but also what we’re dealing with, droughts and other challenges we’ll face. We need to figure out how we can do a better job.
I think the Human Rights Committee has done some good work around issues that don’t get general attention from legislation. Islamophobia is an issue that really concerns the country. The country is really diverse. How do we deal with this as a modern-day challenge? At the same time, how do we give justice to those wanting to see us doing a bit more of a refined recommendation to try to improve the protection of a large portion of our population that are very dependent on being treated fairly and equally in our society?
I think if you look back at some of the documents and some of the things that have been suggested, they’re great in the context that they can lead to immediate improvement, but again, not all committee chairs would agree. Some of these recommendations are something that they see in a very harsh way. I think a large part of change is to recognize that sometimes you have to get out of your own comfort zone. And in the Senate, we’re very good in our comfort zone. We’re very protective of it.
The Chair: If I understand you correctly, I understand that we will not pursue — for the moment — the way we approach things. We will not go through this document. We had a round table, and I feel that the members of this committee are not ready to make any small changes to the mandate and the structure of committees, including not having a new committee on human capital.
Senator Black: If that’s the case, I would like to see us put a cover on this that just indicates it was a round table discussion. I’m specifically looking at the agriculture and forestry section and the recommendation or the suggestion or the discussion of changing to “agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture.” I wouldn’t want someone to look at this a year from now or two years when we maybe get into further discussions with this committee and think that we wholeheartedly agreed with it, because I was going to speak up about this change significantly.
I think we should cover it by saying this was a discussion, round table, some ideas that were generated. I don’t want my name associated with changing agriculture and forestry to agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture and striking out the “forestry.”
The Chair: I think I’ve been clear, senator, at all times saying these are suggestions and discussions trying to move for some change. I knew in advance that it would be very difficult to have any change in our Rules on that, even though there is a lot of frustration expressed by many senators. I understand.
Senator Black: I’m not even sure it was a suggestion.
The Chair: A discussion.
Senator Black: It was raised as a discussion point. That’s all I’m saying.
Senator Busson: In furtherance of what my colleagues were saying, I think it’s significant that we all recognize that there need to be changes in the mandates. For myself — I can’t speak for the other people on the committee — I think this is perhaps going in the right direction generally in the discussion.
Although I’m not on steering, I’m wondering if perhaps we might wrap up this topic with a request that steering find a path with more science and more research, because I think we’re all anxious. It’s like a chicken we’re having for dinner — we have it plucked, but it needs to be gutted. Maybe we need to dig deeper and — I should have used the fish analogy on the Fisheries Committee.
Certainly, without getting too deeply into the discussion, we are definitely hoping to make some positive changes to the mandates. I’m sensing that, certainly from my own perspective, we need to have some data and some foundation to make sure we’re making the right choices.
Senator Batters: First of all, I agree with Senator Black’s suggestion, as I’ve spoken about many times at this committee whenever these suggestions get made, such as, “Oh, let’s just combine Agriculture and Fisheries. Let’s get rid of the word ‘energy’ in any titles of these committees.” Those have never been things to which I have agreed.
I voiced this at the last committee meeting where we discussed this, particularly in light of our very important role as senators with respect to representing our regions and all of the people who have very serious concerns about all of these issues.
When the chair says that these were suggestions, just know that these were not my suggestions. These were not suggestions from the steering committee as a whole. These were the chair’s suggestions as to how to proceed. She was pretty clear about that when she sent out the emails, but just for anyone who may not have known about that — because in addition to the discussion that happened already this morning, I have very serious concerns about what was contained in these documents about limiting the numbers on several committees from 12 senators down to 9. This is particularly in light of the proportionality discussion that happened at our April 9 meeting where Senator Woo said, “Proportionality means math is math,” which potentially limits the opposition Conservative caucus to maybe one senator on several different Senate committees. That’s not a good way to proceed at all, and I’m not in favour of it in the least.
Senator Wells: First and foremost, we’re legislators, so we have to study legislation. That’s our primary focus; that should be our focus in any committee on which we sit.
Our job is not to be experts on committees. That’s why we bring in witnesses. We can be experts; we could have a particular interest in a committee mandate, but our job isn’t to be experts. Our job is to be legislators.
Whatever committees we have, the titles and mandates should be broad and not too specific because the legislative work and the studies that we do — but mostly the legislative work that we do — are not chosen by us. They are sent to us. Whether it’s industry or social affairs, the broad category is better.
We’ve never had a situation where legislation comes to us and we say, “Well, we don’t have a committee for that.” It always fits in somewhere. Sometimes, there are conditions of availability of scheduling for a committee or negotiations may come in front of us, but no legislation has ever not had a committee, unless it was decided that it wouldn’t be read aside from its committee focus.
Things like defence and foreign affairs and legal — those broad categories are better for us to consider, rather than very specific ones that can fit under a broad category.
Think about the ministries in the government. I remember in the previous administration, we had Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, or HRSDC, which included labour and a bunch of other things — even seniors, I think. We should think about it in those terms, and we can fit.
The other thing is, yes, keep the administrative committees separate because they don’t do legislative work, or very rarely. That would be Rules, Audit and Internal Economy and Ethics and Conflict of Interest.
Often, the emphasis on legislation will come from the emphasis of the government in power. Some governments will be solely focused on economic issues, and we’ll see a lot of economic issues come to the chamber. Others are more focused on social issues, and we’ll see more social issues come to the chamber in the form of legislation. We should consider that, too, when we think about committee names, mandates and structures. They should be built for the long term. I’m not saying we should keep what we have now, but, like what we have now, we should have a view to the long-term. We should adapt as they come and adapt where necessary. Different governments will have a different focus on different things.
As I said it to Senator Woo a moment ago, the name “human capital” is cumbersome for me. When I think about it, I guess I know what it means, but I like a more broad category. I like the idea because that’s a really important topic, but maybe a better name would be better.
The Chair: Labour markets, human resources, many ways. I understand your points, and I think they are right. We must have broad categories; I completely agree.
With what we have now, I don’t see the categories as broad enough. We did have a bit broader categories when we stylized our first review and we stylized the first mandate. We tried to make it broad. We introduced the term “economy” to Banking because “banking” was really narrow.
I do understand you want the steering committee to produce a kind of a road map after a review of mandate and structure. For the moment, we close the debate on that. We won’t have a road map next week. We need to think about it, and it will probably only come up in September, after we study what the road map could be, what kind of witnesses we could have, what kind of countries we want to study. That’s a big thing to do. It’s not necessarily overnight that we can have good witnesses.
In the coming weeks, with the load of bills we must study in the Senate, we will not have our minds set to prepare the road map.
Maybe the steering committee could take the engagement to propose something in the first week of September when we come back.
Senator Kutcher: I want to support the comment you made about discretion being the better part of valour. It makes really good sense to do that. We haven’t had an opportunity for a full steering committee meeting because of the activities going on. This would be a wonderful chance for us to do that. If other people agree, I want to support what you’re saying.
The Chair: Thank you. Are there any other comments? If not, we have time for a steering committee meeting now.
Senator Ringuette: On another issue, Madam Chair, two months ago, I introduced at this committee a proposal for a pilot project for the committee. I would certainly like to further that discussion. I’m asking to have it on the agenda next week for further discussion.
The Chair: The pilot project is not comprised of the structure and mandate. It was to be the second point on our agenda today. Are you ready to discuss it now? Have you made your consultations? No? So next week —
Senator Ringuette: Just for your information, I have reached out to Senator Patterson. Originally, I asked everyone to have some discussions with their groups so that I could have some feedback if there were some adjustments needed or whatever. I’m hoping that this week, I will have the proper feedback.
The Chair: So you will combine the consultation?
Senator Ringuette: No. The purpose of consultation is for everyone to be aware and to be able to make comments. I also offer my services. If there are further details or comments that need to be brought, I’m open. This is not a permanent structure that I’m proposing. This is a pilot to see if we can achieve efficiencies in other meetings.
Senator Batters: With respect to that previous proposal that was brought here about a pilot project, yes, it was brought here about two and a half months ago. I raised concerns that day with a number of parts of it, which to this day I still haven’t received answers on.
I also indicated the last time we discussed it that, due to the massive Rules changes that were forced through in the Senate in the last week we sat using the government’s time allocation motion, we felt that did considerable damage to us as the opposition. As a result, we’re not inclined to undertake a pilot project with respect to changing our committee structure, and that hasn’t changed.
Senator Woo: It’s on the agenda for next week, so we’ll discuss it.
The Chair: It’s on the agenda for next week.
Now, we understand that for the first part of our study, we finished our conversation on that. We’ll come back with a plan of an overall study. On that note, thank you very much for your participation. I hope that the people in the steering committee will remain in the room. Thank you very much.
(The committee adjourned.)