With the spring sitting of the House of Commons now complete, we were treated to the biennial self-congratulatory press release from the Government House Leader, Pablo Rodriguez. These particular releases are generally full of back-patting about all of the good work that the government accomplished over the past several months, and this one was no exception. What was different, given the current pandemic context, was the level of assurance about just how much they have respected parliament and kept it in operation despite the pandemic, insisting that the Conservatives were wrong, that they've been very productive throughout. The problem, of course, is that Rodriguez, like his prime minister, Justin Trudeau, have been using a rather distorted metric when it comes to just what has been accomplished.
"As the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and Canadians did their part by practicing physical distancing, MPs also adapted and showed leadership with virtual and hybrid meetings where all MPs could participate," Rodriguez claimed. "We believe that we struck the right balance of following the advice of our public health experts and ensuring that the role of the House of Commons was strengthened during this crisis."
The idea of the hybrid sittings was largely lifted from the UK, which has very different challenges when it comes to how their House of Commons operates as opposed to ours, in particular because they have a much smaller chamber and some 650 MPs to worry about accommodating in some capacity. The idea of the hybrid was something of a compromise, and it was, like Canada's, a kind of special committee focused on accountability questions, of which the UK has far more focused mechanisms than we do. But theirs was also more temporary, and soon transitioned to regular sittings with enforced social distancing, and an adapted voting system where MPs were physically present to do so. (They don't use the same rollcall system that we do, because it's prohibitive with 650 MPs who can't physically fit in the Chamber).
Whereas we began with virtual sittings of the special COVID-19 committee, comprised of all members of the Commons, in a compromise that largely demonstrated that these sittings were explicitly not official sittings mostly conducted out of a committee room in the West Block, with all MPs on Zoom, but one day a week having a skeleton crew in the Chamber as they frequently had to deal with emergency legislation on those days the clamour for MPs to adopt the hybrid model out of a sense of feeling left out also made it convenient for the government to pretend like these sittings were able to be passed off as real sittings.
In his release, Rodriguez praised the "lengthy Question Periods" (which were not actually Question Periods), and that eleven of the Commons standing committees were able to hold 134 virtual meetings, which he neglected to mention were denuded of most of their powers.
"Our government is committed to parliamentary accountability and we took steps to ensure the opposition had greater opportunities to hold cabinet ministers to account through unprecedented meetings that ensured MPs could question cabinet ministers," Rodriguez said. "In a normal spring sitting schedule, MPs would have asked a total of 1,800 questions in Question Period. This spring, the opposition asked more than 3,000 questions on a range of topics, including the government's response to COVID-19."
It's a deceptive bit of marketing, because it pretends that this is what accountability is MPs engaging in the political theatre of asking performative questions for the cameras, and the government giving their scripted talking points of "good news" pabulum in response. Actual accountability would have meant additional parliamentary tools, like Order Paper questions, the follow-ups provided for during Adjournment Proceedings, Supply Days, and even to an extent, Private Members' Business (though MPs have largely ceased using that for accountability, but use it for private hobby-horses instead). There would also have been actual proper legislative scrutiny and debate, and ministers called before committees to answer about the Estimates in their departments. In fact, of the ten bills that passed, which Rodriguez patting himself on the back for, only one of them the implementing legislation for the New NAFTA saw an actual proper legislative process, and it too was truncated at the very end in order to pass in time to suspend for the pandemic.
Looking ahead to September, Rodriguez sounds ready to normalize these hybrid sittings as the way to carry on proceedings.
"If public health advice means that it is unwise for 338 MPs to travel to Ottawa and sit in the House of Commons chamber, we are committed to the option of a full hybrid House of Commons with its regular daily business, and with all MPs able to cast votes electronically," said Rodriguez. "Electronic voting is the only way of ensuring that every Canadian has their vote represented in a full hybrid Parliament."
This is also demonstrably false. There is no need for all 338 MPs to sit in the Chamber, and Rodriguez knows it. All MPs could be in Ottawa and spread out between committee rooms that can be appropriately distanced to carry on their work while regular contingent of MPs on House Duty often little over the quorum of 20 carry on with the usual legislative speeches. All MPs don't have to attend Question Periods, and voting can be modified to be done in shifts and the results applied to subsequent divisions. It simply hinges on MPs having enough fortitude for the sacrifice of staying in Ottawa for a few weeks at a time rather than constantly travelling back and forth between their ridings.
"It's time for the Conservatives to put politics aside and support proposals to modernize the House so that MPs can vote electronically," Rodriguez called out, but in doing so, lets slip the ultimate agenda "modernization" that has thus far eluded the Liberals in their quest to allow more MPs to stay in their ridings and not be in Ottawa, and that should be concerning to everyone. If we want a properly functioning parliament once this pandemic is over, then we should be saying no to the insistence on hybrid sittings and electronic voting, and ensuring that we have proper sittings, rather than this facsimile that Rodriguez and Trudeau are trying to pass off as the real thing.
Photo Credit: CTV News
