The notion of introducing a "second chamber" to the House of Commons has been floating around for the past couple of years, and this past week, Deputy Speaker Bruce Stanton made the case for it in Policy Options.  I'm dubious on the notion, but it's worth going through Stanton's arguments regardless, given that he's got a bit more of a unique perspective on the House of Commons given the fact that he sits in the Big Chair a fair amount of the time.

To refresh your memories, the notion of a second or parallel chamber to the House of Commons is an innovation that has developed both in the UK and Australia, with the advent of Westminster Hall and the Federation Chamber respectively.  They are essentially committee rooms, and used largely for take-note debates by backbenchers on issues that MPs think are important for the day, but don't necessarily relate to government business.  They are seen as less contentious, and don't take votes, so it's not like it's detracting from the work of the House of Commons.  But with this in mind, I think there are a couple of things to remember in their creation one of which is that the UK House of Commons is double the size of Canada's, with some 650 MPs compared to our 338.  That means that there would be far less opportunity for backbench business in the UK than in Canada, which is important context for us to bear in mind as we consider the arguments to recreate such a space in our Parliament.

To begin with, Stanton argues that a parallel chamber would allow for more generous time limits for some aspects of debate, which on the face of it could be true.  I'm curious that he singled out Adjournment Proceedings as something that could be placed there and given additional time.  For those who are unfamiliar, Adjournment Proceedings, also known as the "Late Show" in the Commons, is when MPs can follow up on responses from Question Period, and allows for questions and responses up to four minutes in length, with one additional minute to reply on either side, as opposed to the 35-seconds of QP, for a maximum of three such debates per day.  Requests are made in writing to the Table, which then schedules a time for the MP and minister to appear at the Late Show.

While on the one hand, it may seem like a good idea to expand the Late Show to a second chamber, this goes to the issue of holding government to account something that should belong in the main chamber by its very definition.  I also think that if MPs are so concerned that they're not getting enough time in the Late Show to do what needs to be done, that they have the power to simply amend the Standing Orders for the Commons to sit later every day to accommodate a longer Late Show.  There is no hard-and-fast rule that says that 6:30 is when the House of Commons must rise they used to adjourn for dinner at 6 and return to the Chamber at 8 three nights a week for late night debates, but eliminated those debates to be "family friendly."  If they want to extend an extra thirty minutes or so for additional Late Show debates, which doesn't require all MPs to be present, they can do that without creating a second chamber.

Stanton points to Members' Statements as a place where they could get more time in a parallel chamber.  By his example, Australia allows for three-minute statements for thirty minutes daily, which are frequently extended to a full hour, in their Federation Chamber.  This contrasts to the fifteen minutes allotted daily in our Parliament for one-minute members' statements in advance of Question Period.  While sure, the opportunity for more MPs to recognize additional people and events in their ridings sounds great, we have to remember that this is something that has been abused a great deal over the past few years.  In the previous couple of parliaments, it became a war of words, first between the Liberals and Conservatives during Members' Statements, and then the NDP once they formed opposition.  The closer it got to QP, the more heated the rhetoric and attack lines, so much so that the Speaker had to call on them to tone it down on several occasions, after Conservatives tried to be clever and make jibes at "someone" who turned out to be the Liberal leader.  If MPs were so concerned about needing more time to do the actual celebrating of people and events, then they would stop abusing the allotted time for statements.

Stanton's final argument is that a parallel chamber could be used to expedite "less contentious" government bills, by allowing MPs to debate those bills in the second chamber to free up time in the Commons for the more contentious bills, which again strikes me as a bit of a wrong-headed argument, given that we have a problem with the way we manage debates currently.  For example, we spend days, if not weeks, at second reading debate of bills when the UK example is to spend an afternoon at that stage where the general principle of the bill is debated and then it gets sent to committee for better scrutiny.  Our debate rules, with twenty-minute speaking blocks that are used by parties as requirements to fill time rather than a maximum for briefer points to be made, mean that we're not seeing substantive debate on any bills.  That, more than a second chamber, would expedite debate and make what happens in the House of Commons more meaningful.

While I can appreciate Stanton's line of thinking, I think we need to take things back to basics.  The whole point of Parliament is about holding the government to account.  It's not a debating society for MPs to speechify the whole day on particular policy hobby horses, much as they may wish it to be.  While creating a second chamber may give them far more opportunity to do so, do we need more excuses for MPs to neglect their duties about accountability and studying the Estimates and Public Accounts, or to avoid committee duties?  I think that we have bigger problems with the way our parliament functions to tackle than to create new ways for MPs to shirk their constitutional duties.

Photo Credit: CTV News

On Thursday, Bank of Canada Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Wilkins addressed the Toronto Regional Board of Trade to talk jobs and wages.  In particular, the Bank has been concerned that in an economy with as tight of a job market as Canada's is nationally, we haven't seen wage growth that should be associated with it.  As Wilkins outlined, there are a myriad of factors that have been suppressing that growth, outside of the way in which the current oil price difficulties in Alberta have skewed the national numbers, but even with an eye to those factors, is this something that the federal government can actually manage to do anything about?

In her speech, Wilkins pointed to three main factors as to why we're not seeing the wage growth we should be that there is a skills mismatch in the economy that isn't able to be solved by just throwing more money at people; that people who have jobs are reluctant to look for new or better ones, and that means that the job churn that the willingness to "trade up" leads to is restrained; and that Canadians are reluctant to move to other parts of the country for new opportunities, with a big factor being housing affordability.  There were a few other issues of note as well things like "superstar" firms that dominate markets and essentially becoming the only employers in town, so they feel less need to raise wages to attract talent, as it's coming to them regardless.  And then there's the gig economy all of those Uber drivers have found themselves in a position where their bargaining power has been reduced, which again, keeps wages low.

Wilkins was confident that as the economy gets back to growth after the current detour caused by the temporary oil price crash that Alberta has been suffering through, that we would see the return to job churn and employers finding it worth their while to offer higher wages.  Nevertheless, these three main factors offer interesting policy challenges for the federal government to try to deal with as they look to keep the economy growing in the face of the headwinds of low oil prices and potential trade disputes between the United States and China our two biggest customers.

We know that they are aware of the skills issue, because just this week, Minister of Women and Gender Equality, Maryam Monsef, was doing the rounds in the press to talk about how removing barriers for women and minorities, like the LGBT community, can lead to economic growth.  This is a message that the Bank of Canada has sent on numerous occasions, so it's good to hear that the government is listening.  But are they actually absorbing the message?  That's often the bigger question.  An early warning sign is that around the issue of immigration in Quebec.  The province is dealing with a labour shortage, and yet the newly elected CAQ government came in on a pledge to cut immigration by 20 percent, and there has been some agitation around the notion that they should be allowed to insist that any immigrants be able to speak French upon arrival to "help integrate faster," natch.  And this is before François Legault's open musing that they want more Europeans to immigrate (no coded signals there).  Ensuring that the barriers that immigrants face are lifted has also been part of the Bank of Canada's cautions around the job market in the past but acceding to these demands by Quebec would be putting up more barriers for those immigrants (though, to be fair, the federal government has been pretty hostile to these demands in Question Period over the past week).

It should also be noted that the government has been chasing those "superstar" firms like Amazon quite openly, despite the fact that there are demonstrable problems with the wages that Amazon pays its employees particularly in its warehouses.  By inviting in companies that dominate markets to the detriment of wage growth, it would seem antithetical to their stated goals.  Add to that, housing affordability may be an intractable problem for them to solve with any of their own policy levers particularly if everyone keeps looking at it from a demand-side problem (and this isn't just the government it's all federal parties who keep making these promises, which will only serve to raise housing prices even more, as they fill the vacuum left by the removal of whatever tax each party seems to think will "stimulate" the housing market).

Amidst this, we're hearing the rumours bubbling up that the upcoming federal budget may be dubbed as a "skills budget," likely with targeted investment into training programs and a lot of positive language about breaking down those barriers that people have been identifying, and given that it's a pre-election budget, anything they can do to make it look good in terms of spending promises will likely be put in the window (so long as it keeps the debt-to-GDP ratio on the decline they've long-since made it clear that eliminating the deficit is not a priority).

But, this having been said, I suspect the even bigger challenge this government is going to have, even if they put a "skills budget" in the window, is that they won't be able to actually sell it to Canadians, or to those who need those investments in training.  This is a government that can't communicate their way out of a wet paper bag, and they manage to step all over their own messaging whether it's a good news story or a bad one.  If they stay true to form, any discussion around breaking down barriers to employment and closing the skills mismatch is going to be swallowed up in their vacuous pabulum about "helping the Middle Class and those looking to join itâ„¢," which will serve absolutely nobody's interests.  They can't seem to help themselves, and our national discourse over serious issues like depressed wages winds up poorer for it.