For the first time since the pandemic hit in mid-March and shut down parliament as we know it, all standing committees of the House of Commons are now up and running. Over the past two weeks, each committee has had their membership named and has, at a minimum, held their “organizational meeting” to elect a chair and vice-chairs.
There are at least a couple new faces on each committee to reflect the shadow minister portfolio changes made by new CPC leader Erin O’Toole in September. The official opposition critic shuffle has also resulted in the election of new chairs on the handful of opposition-chaired committees (ETHI, OGGO, PACP, FEWO), and vice-chairs on others. The government has made very few changes to their committee memberships, and has returned almost all previous committee chairs to their posts. The one notable exception being the Foreign Affairs committee, where Sven Spengemann replaced Michael Levitt, who resigned as the MP for York Centre on September 1st, triggering one of the two upcoming by-elections (Oct. 26th). For their part, the NDP and Bloc Quebecois committee members are unchanged.
These inaugural meetings mark a return to business almost as usual for the House of Commons committees. All committees can now continue to hold regular meetings in a hybrid format, meaning that members can participate either in person or by video conference, with witnesses by video conference only. Through the spring and summer, only a select few committees had been granted the power by the House to hold virtual meetings. All committees are also now back to being masters of their own proceedings, with one caveat. Committees’ ability to hold meetings is limited by the priority use of the House resources, which is to be negotiated by the whips on an ongoing basis. This is because these new hybrid committee meetings are rather resource intensive, requiring a sizable House administration team to run them. Meaning that fewer committees can hold concurrent meetings, and they have to set a reasonable limit on the number of meetings per day/per week.
This limitation will likely end up generating some degree of controversy. But for now, committee members, especially the opposition parties, seem pleased to be back in business.
MPs in most committees leapt directly into committee business following their elections and standard process motions. Government and opposition members alike came out of the gate in many organizational meetings with several motions on future business for consideration. In most cases, after some discussion, the members agreed to make decisions on future business at the next meeting of the committee or their subcommittee on agenda and procedures. There were very clear signals, however, on what the priorities for the are (inquire within).
While most committees got up and running, FINA, ETHI and PROC are stuck in the muck of the WE sandal – presumably until such time as one of them, or a special committee, is approved to study the matter thoroughly. To that end, the Conservatives aim to use their opposition day (Tuesday) to force a vote on a motion to establish a special Anti-Corruption Committee to study the Canada Student Service Grant debacle, as well as other areas of the pandemic response where there have been allegations of impropriety. Among other things, this special committee would free up the Finance Committee to proceed with pre-budget consultations.
Parliamentary committees are often where the rubber hits the road for a minority government. And from the first few meetings, it looks like this government is in for a rough ride.
