There was a great deal of excitement among MPs over Twitter on Monday as they all posted images of the trial run of the first "virtual sitting" of the House of Commons, pronouncing how very historic this all was.  The problem of course is that while there may be a certain amount of novelty to it, and while it may be historic from the sense that it may be the largest "virtual" gathering of MPs in a formal, parliamentary setting, it is not in fact a sitting of the House of Commons, and this needs to be reiterated.

What wound up being agreed to by the government motion bullied through on Monday, April 20^th, was for in-person sittings on Wednesdays, and "virtual" sittings on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  None of these are actually sittings, but rather special committee meetings.  As a particular fudge of parliamentary procedure, the government proposed that a Special Committee on the COVID-19 Pandemic be created, and that it would be comprised of every sitting MP and chaired by the Speaker.  More confusingly, the "virtual" sittings are special committee meetings whereby the Speaker will be in a specially outfitted committee room within the West Block that has a slight resemblance to NASA's Mission Control.  While this actually reinforces that this is not an actual sitting of the Commons, what confounds that understanding is the fact that the Wednesday in-person sittings are still actually considered meetings of this special committee, only they're being held in the Commons Chamber in a quasi-Committee of the Whole situation, which is what one would imagine that these "accountability sessions" could actually have been procedurally had they all been held in-person and not in the Commons.

But wait it gets even more convoluted, because when the in-person special committee sessions end at 2:30 PM, they have the option of then having an emergency sitting of the Commons to consider legislation that has been agreed to by the opposition parties and that's exactly what's going to happen on this Wednesday, because there will be new emergency legislation presented that revolves around the measures developed for students as part of the pandemic response plan.  Under the terms of the motion, that special emergency sitting will last for no longer than four hours for "debate" of said bill, which means it's pretty much going to be a series of canned speeches from each of the parties that if we judge by the previous emergency legislation, these speeches will have very little to do with the actual bill itself, but will be the parties giving their general and accumulated concerns and grievances about how the government has been handling the pandemic response, and how the government haven't listened or acted on the "brilliant" suggestions (read: implausible or impossible, like universal payments without a magic database or "send money now" button on the CRA's computers), or back-patting for supposedly being the first to suggest measures that were eventually adopted (like the eventual decision to close the borders).  And it will still be a bill negotiated and amended in the back rooms and then passed at all stages without a proper transparent legislative process, like they could have had if they had actually had the three skeletal sittings a week.

In other words, despite the boasts of certain MPs, there will not actually be any virtual sitting of the Commons.  These special committee sessions will allow members to question the prime minister and other ministers, but one suspects that it will happen more in a committee format, meaning seven-minute rounds, followed by five-minute rounds, and around and around we will go until the clock has expired.  (While the virtual meetings are supposed to last two hours each, as would most committees, it looks like this Tuesday it will be a four-hour meeting with no Thursday meeting this week, but two-hours each next week).  If anyone has observed Commons committees before, backbench questions will largely consist of "Tell me how great our government is doing on this file," while most opposition questions will consist of five-minute speeches followed by a rhetorical question with little time for the person being questioned to answer, or conversely an attempt to get the witness to badmouth the government.  Given that it's ministers on the proverbial hot seat, I suspect we'll get a lot of the former, sprinkled with some of Pierre Poilievre's smarmy attempt at a Matlock impression as he tries to get a witness box confession.

The other reason why the committee fudge is a workaround for the moment is because it avoids a few of the trickier aspects of parliamentary privilege, which is designed to ensure that MPs can speak unencumbered.  As of Monday's trial run, only about 250 of the 338 MPs were able to join, given technology and connectivity limitations.  Because this is a committee and not a proper sitting of the Commons, it likely heads off some of the privilege questions by those MPs who aren't able to join in, because it's not a true sitting of the Commons.

The more important aspect of the committee fudge, however, is that it is the last bulwark from creating an actual virtual sitting, which would be the death knell of our parliament.  So long as these virtual meetings are relegated to committee status and not actual Commons sittings, it makes it easier to compartmentalize them for when this pandemic is over and they can be treated as an emergency measure.  As I've stated before, the real danger here is of social contagion that MPs will demand that because they sat virtually during this crisis, that they should be able to do so on a regular basis, and because the Liberals have been pushing for this kind of thing before under the rubric of being "family friendly," (and were shot down more than once), it is all too conceivable that they will use this as an excuse to push through the back door what they weren't able to through the front.  If they do that, Parliament will very quickly depopulate as MPs prefer to stay in their ridings, and it will become a hollow shell.  Let's hope this bulwark lasts, and that these virtual meetings remain an emergency committee.

Photo Credit: Toronto Star

The ways in which some various Westminster parliaments have been handling the global pandemic and the emergency legislation related to it has been the subject of some emerging study as well as some fairly facile comparisons between countries.  The advent of "hybrid" sittings in Westminster itself this past week has prompted a number of online loudmouths to declare that if they can do it, so can Canada, without necessarily understanding some of the unique capacity challenges that Canada faces or even looking at the fine print of what is actually happening in Westminster and why it's not what they think it is.  If we're going to actually do some comparison, then we should also examine some of the capacity challenges that may be unique to each country's parliament.

The Samara Centre for Democracy released a new report this past week which compares the emergency responses of the four main Westminster parliaments the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, both in terms of how they enacted any pandemic-related emergency legislation, but how they have tried to ensure any kind of ongoing oversight whether in person or by some sort of "virtual" means.  Unfortunately, as is not unexpected with a Samara report, most of the findings are surface-level observations without actually looking into some of the substantive differences, or reasons in which countries may be reacting in different ways particularly when it comes to the advent of "virtual" sittings.  It's also a bit galling that they simply accept the notion of virtual sittings as "Use 2020 technology" rather than questioning any of the underlying assumptions or even desirability of them just because we can (maybe) do a thing, it doesn't mean we should do a thing.

For example, with the UK, which has been the most robust with its emergency legislation procedures, and sitting longer than other parliaments (while making adjustments and precautions to do so as safely as possible), has some particular differences with how some of its comparators operate, in particular because it's already used to not being able to fit all 650 of its MPs in their tiny chamber at any particular time, and they have their lobby voting system rather than standing votes.  When looking at how different parliaments are adapting, this starting point is worth noting.  As well, with the "hybrid" sittings that they have begun, whereby the key government and opposition figures are in the Chamber with the Speaker and the Mace, and other MPs have dialled in by video, it's also important to remember that this has not been extended to all 650 MPs, but a mere 120.  They also have specific and different accountability measures that Canada doesn't employ, like Urgent Questions, and these virtual sittings won't be regular legislative debate or votes.

While Australia had a more robust debate that included amendments from the floor on their emergency legislation, they have suspended until August and have no ongoing scrutiny measures, in-person or virtual, planned for the duration.  Australia has vast geographic distances like Canada, but the Samara report mentions nothing about their regional considerations should they have any kind of parliamentary sittings during the interim period.

New Zealand has followed the same kind of process that Canada has with their emergency legislation where it has been negotiated and amended behind closed doors before being voted on at all stages, but they have been using committees over Zoom, including an Epidemic Response Committee led by the Leader of the Opposition.  But New Zealand, unlike Canada, has a relatively tiny unicameral parliament, and they don't appear to have simultaneous interpretation of their proceedings (it does seem that an attempt was made in 2011, but I don't see evidence that it has carried forward, though apparently one can address their Speaker in Maori).

And this brings us to Canada, where our capacity challenges are unique compared to some of the other comparators, when it comes to our geography, the need for our proceedings to carry on in two official languages with simultaneous interpretation, and the fact that if we want to hold virtual sittings (and we don't really), then we have to be cognisant of the fact that a great many parts of the country have spotty internet connections that make it difficult to do video conferencing particularly at a time when broadband connections are already being taxed by everyone being at home streaming and doing their own video conferences.  If we are so concerned that all 338 MPs be able to participate remotely which is more than the UK has been able to do with their reportedly faster and better internet connections this limitation matters.

This said, I do find the Samara fixation with the regional representation during our skeleton sittings to be frustrating, because these MPs are not debating or voting based on their regional concerns all of the negotiation for our emergency legislation was done beforehand and behind closed doors, so all MPs simply allowed the bills to sail through stages with unanimous consent.  As well, we also need to repeat what has been stated at the Procedure and House Affairs committee's hearings on "virtual" sittings this week, that the technical and staff capacity of our parliament is that they can only handle about ten virtual committee meetings per week, for both the Commons and the Senate.

This having been said, we in Canada find ourselves in a position where the government on Monday bullied through a motion in the Commons with the support of the Bloc, and the NDP, to hold once-a-week sittings on Wednesdays with the promise of "virtual" sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays but knowing that the Clerk has stated that they won't actually be able to set these up until mid-May at the earliest.  This while the Conservatives had a perfectly reasonable proposal of thrice-weekly in-person sittings that would have allowed for these "accountability sessions" to actually carry on, and any future emergency legislation (possibly relating to the new student measures) could actually have proper legislative debate rather than the need to be passed at all stages in order to sit as briefly as possible.  Parliamentary scrutiny matters, and for the government to have evaded it based on a disingenuous premise of virtual sittings that they knew weren't going to happen, it shows that they don't quite live up to their insistence that parliament matters.