Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota looks on during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on June 16.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota is calling for clear rules on when MPs can participate in hybrid sittings of Parliament to avoid a “willy-nilly” status quo where members just decide they would prefer to stay in their ridings and not show up in person for work.
Mr. Rota made his points Tuesday in testimony before a parliamentary committee looking into the issue two years after hybrid participation was launched because of the pandemic.
“What we don’t want to see is someone getting up one morning and saying, ‘Well, I am not going to fly across the country’ or ‘I am not going to drive into Parliament. I’ll just participate’ – and it’s willy nilly,” Mr. Rota, attending in person, told members of the standing committee on procedure and House affairs.
“I think there has to be parameters for each and every participant in the chamber on when they can go for hybrid, whether it’s illness, whether it’s special occasions, that we’ll have to decide as a Parliament.”
The Liberal MP for Nipissing-Timiskaming said a lot of the guidance on the issue will come from decisions made by the committee. The committee was asked to conduct a study on hybrid proceedings in a June motion.
That motion, passed by the Liberals with support from the NDP and the Green Party, says hybrid sittings will continue until June, 2023, and that any MP can participate in proceedings, either in person or by videoconference, as long as members are doing so in Canada.
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The Speaker said the committee may want to make recommendations on challenges that have arisen around issues such as decorum, dress codes and backgrounds to videoconferencing as well as guidance on how to proceed when members, witnesses or interpreters face connectivity issues and challenges relating to interpretation services.
Mr. Rota declined specific comment on a question from Conservative Blaine Calkins about the propriety of MPs discussing making their own lives easier while Canadians are struggling to make ends meet.
“The way I am looking at it is we want to make sure we have a Parliament that will work in the best capacity possible and the role of this committee, in my eyes, is to find that best way of doing things, the best way of proceeding with Parliament so it works so that Canadians get good democracy,” he said.
Mr. Rota said democracy has continued to work with a hybrid Parliament.
“I haven’t seen anyone say, ‘OK. We’re going to stop democracy from working.’ Over all, people have been working well together,” he said, noting that every member has routinely had the opportunity to express their views despite the limitations of the format.
Former Conservative MP Dona Cadman offered her views to the committee in an impassioned presentation about the situation of her late husband, Chuck Cadman.
Ms. Cadman said she is in a position to speak as an MP – she represented the Vancouver-region riding of Surrey North herself from 2008 to 2011 – and a spouse, given she is the widow of Mr. Cadman, who was an MP for the same riding.
“Our point of being elected is to be the voice of our community that elected us. Sitting in Ottawa does us no favours. The jetlag of back and forth travelling can play havoc with your health,” she said.
She specifically referred to Mr. Cadman, who had cancer and faced challenges dealing with the travel between British Columbia and Ottawa while his health was failing.
“The back and forth was way too hard and his last flight out was very hard for us, and he came home and he was in bed for, like, five days, could not move, just worn out, and that’s a hard thing when he loved his job,” Ms. Cadman said by video link.
She said the hybrid option would have been an emotional tonic for her late husband, allowing him to be in touch with his colleagues.
“The thought of staying in the riding, but still participating in government proceedings, well, this sounds so good,” she said. “He was cut off and that was just hard.”
In 2005, as an Independent, Mr. Cadman cast the tie vote that saved the minority Liberal government from defeat in the Commons. He died later in the year.