LOCATION – Winnipeg, Manitoba
CHAIRPERSON – Hon. Myrna Driedger (Roblin)
VICE-CHAIRPERSON – Mr. Andrew Micklefield (Rossmere)
ATTENDANCE – 11 QUORUM – 6
Members of the committee present:
Hon. Mrs. Driedger, Hon. Messrs. Gerrard, Goertzen
Ms. Fontaine, Messrs. Lagassé, Martin, Micklefield, Moses, Nesbitt, Wasyliw, Wishart
APPEARING:
Ms. Patricia Chaychuk, Clerk of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba
Mr. Rick Yarish, Deputy Clerk of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba
MATTERS UNDER CONSIDERATION:
Proposed Amendments to the Rules, Orders and Forms of Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba
* * *
Madam Chairperson: Good evening. Will the Standing Committee on Rules of the House please come to order. This meeting has been called to consider proposed amendments to the Rules, Orders and Forms of Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba.
Our first item of business is the election of a Vice-Chairperson. Are there any nominations?
Mr. Greg Nesbitt (Riding Mountain): I nominate Mr. Micklefield.
Madam Chairperson: Mr. Micklefield has been nominated. Are there any other nominations?
Hearing no other nominations, Mr. Micklefield is elected Vice-Chairperson.
You will find before you copies of a document entitled Legislative Assembly of Manitoba Rule Change Proposals–May 2022, which we will be considering today.
Does the committee agree to allow the Clerk and Deputy Clerk to speak on the record to provide an explanation for each amendment? Agreed? [Agreed]
Does the Government House Leader have any opening comments?
* (16:10)
Hon. Kelvin Goertzen (Government House Leader): Only quickly to thank members of the opposition and independent members for the process that we've gone through on this, which is never a quick process or maybe an easy process, but an important process. So I thank both the member for St. Johns (Ms. Fontaine), the member for River Heights and the, of course, the clerk staff, the Speaker and all those who are involved in the crafting of these rules, which is not as easy as it ever looks, and so just to offer a thanks on behalf of the government caucus.
Madam Chairperson: We thank the minister.
Does the Official Opposition House Leader have any opening comments?
Ms. Nahanni Fontaine (Official Opposition House Leader): Let me just start by saying this has been a long time to get us just to this meeting. I remember that there were many, many hours, long, long hours of discussion on Zoom and calls, and so I think that we worked well together, alongside the clerks, and I'm glad to see today happen so that we can get some of these rules into force come September
And then, ultimately I just want to thank both Patricia and Rick for all of your hard work. As I have said, many, many times, we would be lost without you and your level of expertise and professionalism and push to get us here today. So to each and every one of you, miigwech.
Madam Chairperson: We thank the member.
Does the member for River Heights have any opening comments?
Hon. Jon Gerrard (River Heights): Yes, quite brief.
First, a thank-you to the clerks and to the House leaders for the co‑operation in going through this painstakingly and with great care and many times.
There is–after reviewing it carefully, it looks like a pretty solid document. I have one point that I will bring up as we go along, where I have a little bit of a concern, and aside from that, I think this is an important demonstration that we can advance the rules and that we can have enough meetings to move this along faster than it has sometimes.
Thank you.
Madam Chairperson: We thank the member.
We will now begin consideration of the document. We will consider these amendments in numerical order, and members may ask questions or comment on each proposal as we proceed.
For your reference, I will be referring to the proposal numbers listed on the left side of the page. And I will ask the committee, are you okay with me just referring to the proposal number rather than going into a whole bit of information about the rule that it's addressing? Can I just do it by proposal number, rule change proposal? I think we did that last time and it worked well enough. So if we're okay, then let's do that. [Agreed]
So proposal 1, which is Definitions.
Clerk (Ms. Patricia Chaychuk): As part of trying to have an evolution in various aspects of the rules, one particular aspect we are trying to introduce is having acceptance of electronic versions of documents instead of being paper-based only. And in order to aid that, we are having three of the definitions from the definition section of the rule book updated to include the ability for items to be either distributed, tabled or considered as a document to either be in paper form or also acceptable in electronic form as well. We have been doing that already, but it would be good to have this put into the rules.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
If not, proposal 1–pass.
Rule change proposal 2, related to: Removing references to the loan act–definitions.
Clerk: Bill 16 is currently before the House for consideration for concurrence and third reading and royal assent. Under the assumption that bill will be passed tomorrow and receive royal assent, it's going to require a number of changes in the rules that I'll be addressing today, because that bill eliminates having a loan act and a Capital Supply resolution. So we need to change the rules to remove references to the loan act.
This first change in item 2 removes the reference to Capital Supply and the loan act.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House Leaders have any comment? No?
Proposal 2–pass.
Moving then to rule proposal 3: Removing reference to the loan act–sitting periods.
Clerk: This is another change that will be required as a result of the passage of Bill 16.
The–this portion of the rules deals with all of the financial material we have to pass before the House rises at the end of the sittings in November. And one of the items we had always had to pass on that evening was the loan act.
Since we will no longer have a loan act, we are now changing the rule to take out reference to both the loan act and the appropriation act, and leaving in just a reference to the appropriation act.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment? No?
Proposal 3–pass.
Moving to rule change proposal 4.
Deputy Clerk (Mr. Rick Yarish): Thank you to everyone for being here today.
This is a larger change, it takes up a couple of pages here. For reference, this deals with specified bills, which is one of the categories of bills that we have in the Assembly. It's–those are the bills that are guaranteed to have the question put before the end of the spring session.
So, this is changing how we're dealing with specified bills.
Previously, we used to have two separate days with different purposes for concluding second reading of the specified bills. On the first day would be debate on all of the bills, but none of the questions would be put, nor would there be any bell-ringing; then on the second day, it would just be putting questions and bell-ringing. That's how the rule was written in 2015, and we used it that way for about four years.
But in the last two years the House leaders have decided–and the member for River Heights (Mr. Gerrard)–have decided to try doing something differently, which maximizes the time, and that is: on both days, we have debate on the bill, then the question is put, then we vote. Then we move on to the next one. And then we have two full days, afternoons and evenings, which allow us to do that.
We've done that by sessional order for the past couple of years and it's worked much better than what we had in the old rule, so this is incorporating those changes into the rules and making that permanent. So, that's the overview.
A couple of things I'll flag for you. Again, the general point of it is that there's debate and voting on both days, but it also has a provision in 2.10(b) which allows the Government House Leader to call an order of the bills.
Previously, we used to do them chronologically, which wasn't necessarily the most convenient way to do it. And two House leaders, over the last couple of years, have used this provision in the Sessional Order, which allowed them to, basically, sort of strategically organize how they want to do them, kind of leaves the ones that are requiring the least amount of debate to the end of the list–allows you to basically maximize the use of the time.
There's also a provision in 2.11(c), which is a couple of pages ahead, and that is also something we used in the recent sessional orders, which says that on the second night–so this is after you've had two afternoons and two evenings of debate and voting–when we get to midnight on that second night, there's no more debate.
We–if we have bills left over, the questions will still be put, and you can ring the bells on them, but you only get to ring the bells for one minute as opposed to the usual hour.
Again, all of this is designed to maximize the use of time, the most amount of debate for members and, again, the less critical bills are left to the end. So, this is how we've done it the last couple of years and everyone has found that it has worked much better.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Mr. Goertzen: Just quickly, I think that this, you know, commends the good work of the members for St. Johns (Ms. Fontaine), who–and River Heights (Mr. Gerrard), where we didn't change the rules but we changed the practice, and then we used it several times and realized it worked well and we should change the rules.
And it's often not a bad way by which rules can be changed, by just trying things in the Legislature by agreement and then moving them into the rules.
Madam Chairperson: Any other comments?
Proposal 4–pass.
* (16:20)
Moving then to proposal–rule change proposal 5: Sessional calendar–specified bills committee completion deadline day.
Deputy Clerk: Madam Speaker, this is related to the previous one, and it relates to the deadline or the completion of the second reading for specified bills.
The previous rules, again, which have the second day as what we used to call the completion day, where the votes would happen, that triggered the next event in our sessional calendar. All of our events in sessional calendars are a certain number of sitting days after one of the provisions happens.
This is–the provision here is to ensure that whether or not we use one day or two days for the completion of the second reading for specified bills, the next day in the calendar cycle will still be the same.
So, in most sessions you're going to use two days because you're mostly going to have 20, 30, maybe 40 bills you're dealing with. But this allows for a provision, you know, if it was a light year, maybe it was an election year and there was a very light election package–or legislative package, then you might only need the first night of those two nights that I've talked about in previous rule.
Whether or not we use one night or two nights, this rule will ensure that the next event, which is the committee completion, will be on the same day so that we don't have to be adjusting the calendar as we go. It just makes it more consistent and a little easier to understand.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Proposal 5–pass.
Moving then to proposal 6: the–Intersessional meetings.
Deputy Clerk: This rule change actually comes from the Public Accounts Committee, and the idea here was to allow some flexibility for the Public Accounts Committee to be able to call meetings intersessionally.
We have a rule that exists which says that if–for any intersessional committee meeting you need 10 days notice, and part of the reason for that rule when it was brought in, I think, close to 20 years ago now, was to ensure that a government couldn't, you know, in the middle of summer or even in other intersessional periods, sort of surprise an opposition with a meeting on a bill. That was–maybe it was a contentious bill and they tried to kind of make it happen quickly. That was agreed years ago by all parties to have 10 days notice for–it was intended primarily for those kind of bills, but it was written to apply to all bills.
It's less important for Public Accounts to have 10 days notice because the Public Accounts meetings are called by a steering committee and it's organized, kind of, backstage, so the 10 days notice isn't really required, and it gives much greater flexibility to the Public Accounts Committee, specifically the steering committee, which I'll be talking about later, to make–to call meetings of the Public Accounts. So the change was originally brought in for that.
In discussion we also decided that it made sense to do it for the Rules of the House Committee–this committee–to also give that committee some flexibility. So, say it was in February and we were in the midst of one of these rule-change sessions, and we decided the House leaders were–said we're ready to go; we want to have a meeting tomorrow on this. Under the current rule, we'd have to wait 10 days. Once this is changed, the Government House Leader (Mr. Goertzen) could call it and we could do it right away.
It gives us the flexibility for those two committees and just those two committees.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Mr. Gerrard: The––I have a concern here. It's a little bit less for the Standing Committee on the Rules of the House because by tradition all three of us would be involved in making that decision. But I'm particularly concerned about the Standing Committee on Public Accounts because that date is set by the Chair and the Vice-Chair, right, which is the two major parties, and presumably, with the Auditor General, or whoever is coming before the Public Accounts, also in that decision.
But there's no requirement to give the Liberal party representative that 10 days notice, all right, so that it becomes a problem for us to be–ensure that we've got the flexibility to be at–in a one or two-days notice for a PAC committee.
And I'm not convinced that there doesn't need to be, you know, 10 days planning with the Auditor General or whoever in any event. So I am–I really think that the requirement of 10 days should stay for the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. I think that people should be able to plan far enough ahead. That would be my recommendation.
Ms. Fontaine: I'm–I just have to put this out here, like, why are you bringing this up now? We all agreed on these changes. We went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, which you agreed to these changes. So I don't understand why you're doing this at this particular moment when you've had this, and we all agreed that we would move forward with this meeting based on the agreement for all of these rule changes.
Mr. Gerrard: I mean, we're all continually reading through them and checking as we go, and in discussion this was a concern. I think I probably should have brought it up earlier, but I think that it's a realistic concern, and so that I'm bringing it up now.
Deputy Clerk: So, I understand your concern, Dr. Gerrard. I'll say a couple of things: this did come as a request from the Public Accounts Committee, which currently includes the member for St. Boniface (Mr. Lamont), one of your colleagues. So, I'm not trying to speak for him but I'm–believe that he was aware of this change as well.
And you're correct that Public Accounts committees definitely take a lot of time to organize, but that happens through the steering committee, and the steering committee meets regularly with the entire committee where they will map out–and I know that Mr. Nesbitt is the Vice-Chair of Public Accounts and he might want to mention this as well–but I know the steering committee, in discussion with the entire committee, does–you know, they have a fulsome discussion of their current and future agendas and plan things out, usually weeks, sometimes months in advance. Currently, we have a meeting called for later in June, and that was decided weeks ago.
So all of that is worked out, if you like, backstage. And so the idea behind changing this–and again, it did come from the Public Accounts Committee–was that they wanted, after they'd done all of their backstage discussions, they didn't want to have to wait another 10 days to call a meeting; they wanted that kind of flexibility.
That's my understanding of it, as it came to us from the Public Accounts Committee.
Mr. Nesbitt: I think that's the essence of it, and I think, in reality, I think there would usually be more than 10 days notice given because of the requirement to have deputy ministers and staff at the Public Accounts meetings. So I guess it gives some flexibility. I don't see it being used very often, maybe just in extenuating circumstances. I don't think there's any desire to leave the Liberal representatives out of any committee meetings or make it tough on you.
Madam Chairperson: Any further comments?
If not, proposal 6–pass.
Moving then to proposal 7: Disorder in committees.
Deputy Clerk: So the current wording of this rule creates a situation where one MLA could shut down an entire meeting of a Standing Committee by disregarding the authority of the Chair. If, for instance, they used unparliamentary language and refused to apologize, that could create, effectively, sort of a blockage in the committee.
The Chair–under the current rule, the Chair would be obligated to suspend that committee right in the middle of the meeting, and then report to the Speaker at the next sitting day.
The revised version of the rule still allows a Chairperson to deal with an MLA who is disregarding the authority of the Chair, but it doesn't mean they have to suspend the meeting. It still allows them to suspend the meeting if they feel they need to, but it also gives a version of the proceedings where the Chairperson could say: MLA X, you are disregarding the authority of the Chair, therefore, I'm empowered to no longer recognize you. So they could still be in the meeting, but the Chair just can ignore them, basically, and the rest of the committee can carry on.
Further, the rule does empower them to actually have that MLA removed from the committee, if they were continuing to be unruly. I'm talking about extreme circumstances here, but sometimes we have to write these rules in order to have a contingency for such circumstances.
So, the idea behind this is, it removes–which I'm sure wasn't in the intention of this rule when it was drafted decades ago, but it did have that circumstance where one MLA could, effectively, derail a whole committee. Even if all other members, all the parties at the table wanted to carry on, one MLA could do that.
So, this removes the possibility that one MLA could interrupt a meeting, but it gives the Chair wider powers and broader, more flexible powers to deal with an MLA who's disregarding the authority of the Chair.
* (16:30)
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Mr. Goertzen: I was tempted to say I'm sort of discouraged I never thought of this in opposition. But I would say, more seriously, in the 19 years I've been elected here, I've never seen the need for this, but I've seen it get close enough that there probably is a reason for this to be changed.
And so, I don't think we're addressing a current problem, but we're addressing a problem that, you know, could be an issue at some point, based on past experience.
Madam Chairperson: Proposal 7–pass.
Proposal 8: Members' dress code.
Clerk: In discussion between the House leaders, there was a desire to do something in terms of formalizing a dress code for the House, because one currently does not exist.
And based on those discussions, we've put in provisions to provide for several categories including professional, contemporary business, traditional Indigenous and traditional cultural or ethnic that does not offend the dignity of the Assembly, which would mean that members would no longer have to require permission of the Speaker to enter the Chamber wearing traditional Indigenous clothing or traditional cultural or ethnic clothing.
The committees of the House have a little bit more of a casual dress code, so that's where the term business casual dress code is permitted. And it, finally, still gives Speaker–the Speaker the authority to oversee dress code exceptions and provide guidance if members have questions.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Proposal 8–pass.
Proposal 9: Land acknowledgment.
Clerk: I am so proud to see this come into our rule book because we are the first jurisdiction in Canada to be doing this in terms of having a daily land acknowledgement. And this makes it permanent in the rules, we will have a land acknowledgement.
The House will have the ability to change what is in the land acknowledgement over time, but we've got it. We're the first ones and I'm proud to see it come to our rule book.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Mr. Goertzen: Only that I know that the actual text of the acknowledgment is often an issue, and one that was resolved through consultation. But that doesn't mean it might not come back up as an issue of consultation. So, this prescribes that an acknowledgement happens, but there could always be further consultation of what that acknowledgement is.
Madam Chairperson: Any other comment?
Shall proposal 7 pass? [interjection] Oh, nine. Proposal 9–pass.
Proposal 10: Opposition day motions.
Clerk: We're providing a clarification in the rules here for circumstances where, when we're considering an opposition day motion, if there are no more members who wish to speak before the time when we might normally be adjourning, it directs that the Speaker puts the question.
Because there had been some confusion with what would happen if no more members got up to speak to it. Well, then the Speaker does put the question. It clarifies that.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Proposal 10–pass.
Moving then to proposal 11: Budget debate–speaking time exceptions.
Deputy Clerk: This actually is the same as a couple of other changes which we'll see in the next moments. This is a provision that clarifies, in conjunction with the other rule changes, how we refer to leaders of recognized parties. In this rule, it's already saying leaders of recognized party, and some of the ones following it had a different terminology, so we're changing it all to this.
The other thing that it does here is, this is the rule that grants leaders of recognized parties to transfer their unlimited speaking times to other members, and this change clarifies that they can only do that to members of their caucus, not to members of another caucus. So, the Leader of the Progressive Conservative Party could transfer to another member of that same party, but not to the Liberal Party; an unlikely circumstance, we're aware, but it's good for rules to be very clear.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Proposal 11–pass.
Moving then to proposal 12: Reducing paper-based processes–tabling documents quoted.
Deputy Clerk: This relates to one of the first rule proposals that the Clerk spoke about a few moments ago. So, we're changing the word printed to just a copy of a document. So that means it could be either an electronic version or a hard copy.
And, just to add a little bit more context to what the Clerk said a moment ago, part of the reason this has emerged is because, in the last two years, as members are aware, we've been sitting virtually, and when a member is sitting virtually, when they want to table something, they have to send electronically.
So the rules that we brought in especially in the Sessional Order to deal with virtual sitting included such a provision as this. So we're sort of borrowing that language, and it appears a few times during the rules.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Proposal 12–pass.
Moving then to Proposal 13: Speaking time exceptions.
Deputy Clerk: So again, this is what I was referring to a moment ago. This rule change also adds the provision when a–with regards to general speaking provisions–about the leader of a party being able to transfer their time to a member of their caucus.
This also changes the wording in this rule to the same as the one that we looked at a minute ago: to the leaders of recognized parties. Currently this rule said leader of the government or other recognized opposition party. Just for clarity and for consistency, all of these references will now be leaders of recognized parties.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Proposal 13–pass.
Moving then to proposal 14: Throne Speech debate–speaking time exceptions.
Deputy Clerk: And this is the last in these three changes. So, the same thing is happening here, transferring to a member of–the leader can transfer their unlimited time to a member of their caucus, and also making it uniform–leaders of recognized parties–as this one had yet a third variation: it said leader of the government or of the official opposition or of a recognized party.
So we're just making it consistent and the same.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Proposal 14–pass.
Moving then to proposal 15: Reducing paper-based processes–reading the question.
Deputy Clerk: And again, this is a rule that has a reference to a document being printed and distributed. So we're just changing that to distributed.
It's not changing the intent of the rule at all, or how the rule works. It's just allowing that to be an electronic or a paper copy.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Proposal 15–pass.
Moving to proposal 16: Committee of the Whole House.
Deputy Clerk: This is a bit of a wholesale rewrite of one of our rules, and that specifically refers to Committees of the Whole House. And I will mention for members' reference, that Committees of the Whole House is defined already in our rules, and the first rule has a set of definitions.
So we didn't need to state that again, but for your information, Committees of the Whole House refers to two different committees: one is called the Committee of the Whole, which is actually sitting as we speak, and the Committee of Supply, which sits for a great number of days in the year. Those are both called the Committees of the Whole House.
So this is, basically, a rewrite of a number of provisions which apply to any of those committees that I just described. The only–they're all the same provisions as existed before, they're just written in what we believe is clearer and easier to use language. The only new provision in here is codifying, which–something which we've already been doing for many years, that refers to the Committee of Supply.
When the Committee of Supply meets to consider departmental Estimates, we sit in three sections and not three rooms. And when there's a quorum call in one of those rooms, the practice has been for many decades to count all of the members in all three rooms, and that is now in the rules. Used to be practice, now we're adding that in here.
And the rest of it is all of the same provisions, just cleans it up, makes it easier to use and easier to read.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Proposal 16–pass.
* (16:40)
Moving to rule change proposal 17: Removing references to the loan act–business of Supply.
Clerk: That pesky loan act shows up so many different places in the rules and this is yet another place where we have to remove the reference to it. This is taking away the reference to Capital Estimates because we'll no longer have a Capital Supply bill or a capital resolution, and it just simply refers to Main Estimates and Supplementary Estimates.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Seeing none, proposal 17–pass.
Moving then, to rule change proposal 18: Determining the Estimates sequence.
Clerk: We are having a redraft in terms of explaining how the Estimates sequence is determined. It had only made reference to a Government House Leader and the Official Opposition House Leader. It's now making reference to House leaders of recognized parties in order to be a little bit more inclusive, and it also provides that if they're–the House leaders are unable to come to an agreement, the Speaker would then step in.
We're hoping it would not have to come to that point. That's like a step of last resort–no offence, Madam Speaker–but it's helpful when the House leaders themselves can come to an agreement on what the sequence should be.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Seeing none, proposal 18–pass.
Moving then, to rule change proposal 19: Removing references to the loan act–reports of the Committee of Supply.
Clerk: Lo and behold, there it is again: the loan act, showing up in rule 77(14). We are removing the reference to Capital Supply here so that it's basically interim and Main Supply because Capital Supply will no longer exist.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Seeing none, proposal 19–pass.
Moving then to rule change proposal 20: Removing references to the loan act–concurrence motion in Committee of Supply.
Clerk: I beg the indulgence of the committee. You're probably getting tired of me saying here's another loan act reference. But we will no longer have a Capital Supply bill, so we are removing that provision because a Capital Supply resolution would have had to have been passed in Committee of Supply before we could do a concurrence motion. There will no longer be a Capital Supply motion.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Seeing none, proposal 20–pass.
Moving then, to rule change proposal 21: Standing committee membership reduction.
Deputy Clerk: So, this rule changes the way we determine the size and the composition of our standing committees. For many decades–really, many generations–the size of our standing committees has been fixed at 11 for each of the 11 standing committees that we have. We found through COVID that we didn't necessarily need as many members, because during our COVID era we reduced the number from 11 to six, and that was done by a Sessional Order.
And the clerks found, I think the whips found, members found that you could still get the business of committees done with six as opposed to 11. I imagine it was probably easier for whips, then they have to wrangle fewer members.
So we are incorporating that change into this rule. We're changing a few things about how this works.
Basically, this rule empowers the House leaders of the day to–they've always been empowered to determine the composition, like, how many members from each caucus are on a standing committee. Now it also gives them the ability to determine the size.
So, as I said, right now we've been using six under those COVID provisions. That works–has worked for the current composition of the House. If there were three recognized parties or a very different composition, you might need it to be seven or eight or nine. This empowers the House leaders of the day to make that determination based on the circumstances that they're facing after a general election, and then it gives them the ability to effect those changes.
It also has a similar provision to what was referred to a moment ago, where if the House leaders can't decide, then the Speaker will decide. That's, again, not the ideal. It's much better for the House leaders to decide this. But we have to have some sort of provision because if we're after an election and the first day of the House sitting is coming up and the House leaders haven't been able to decide, and we need the Legislature to function, then the Speaker is going to be empowered to do that.
So there's mechanisms to allow that. There's mechanisms to allow all this information to be reported. And, again, it allows them to set the number of members on a committee.
Not all committees would need to be the same. Committees that deal with legislation, maybe the House leaders would decide we only need seven for that, but for, say, this committee, Rules of the House or Public Accounts Committee, we might want them to be 11, as they're always has been or even more than that. The House leaders would all be–would be empowered to make all of those decisions, and they'd be able to make those decisions based on the circumstances of the day, not, you know, as is the case now, something that was decided decades ago.
And, yes, I think that covers most of the changes. Yes.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Mr. Goertzen: Just for clarity and certainty, but the composition is still based on proportionality, based on the number of seats that each party has achieved in an election. And it doesn't, of course, prohibit any member who's not a member of the committee but a member of the Legislature from coming to committee. All members can come to committee and participate; they're just not members of the committee for the purposes of voting.
Deputy Clerk: Thank you for raising that, Mr. Goertzen. That's correct. All of that is still allowed under this rule, absolutely, and it's–the key point of it is the proportional representation in the House. That's what is supposed to be reflected in the standing committee. So, yes, that remains, and it just really gives more flexibility on all of that.
Madam Chairperson: Any further comment?
Proposal 21–pass.
Proposal 22: Standing committees–Q and A with presenters.
Deputy Clerk: This rule deals with how we manage the question-and-answer period that we have in standing committees. And just for general context, as members know, when we consider bills in standing committees, members of the public are able to come and speak. They get 10 minutes to speak, and then there's also a five-minute question and answer. Now, it's been an uncommon circumstance, but it is a possible circumstance where one member might try to dominate that question period if they just keep putting their hand up and ask long questions. So it might not allow more members to ask questions of the presenter.
The purpose of this rule is, as it–has a few purposes. The primary purpose is to keep the questions short, 30 seconds. There's only a five-minute question-and-answer period, so it really doesn't seem fair for a member to spend a minute and a half using up–of that five minutes. So all questions will be 30 seconds.
The minister or the bill's sponsor–we actually have two versions of this. Primarily it's used for government bills, but we also have an alternate version for private members' bills.
So, for a government bill, the minister gets to ask the first question; the critic from the official opposition gets to ask the second question. After that, if there is a second opposition party, that critic would get to ask a question. After that, an independent member could get to ask a question, and then we would continue in that rotation.
Usually, you're only going to get three or four questions in in five-minute question period. So the idea is to ensure that the minister and the critic,–the official opposition critic, are ensured of getting a question, and then–maybe even two–and then ideally, the member from another party or an independent member would be guaranteed at least one question as well.
Now, we can't, and we didn't think it was right to govern the length of the responses from the presenters. We hope that they will keep them concise, but we didn't feel that it was appropriate to put that in, in the rule, because we don't, you know, we didn't want to restrict the presenters on how they respond. In the future, if the Rules Committee decided they want that after we try this rule for a while, we could certainly add a provision like that, but for now we thought it just made sense for the governing of the questions.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Proposal 22–pass.
Proposal 23: Standing Committee on Public Accounts–steering committee and announcing meetings.
Deputy Clerk: So this provision will actually modernize the Manitoba Public Accounts Committee. Currently, we are the last jurisdiction in the country that still has the Government House Leader calling meetings of the Public Accounts Committee.
Public Accounts Committee, of course, is meant to be an oversight committee. It's meant to function as–in an–in as non-partisan a manner as possible. And in almost–in all other jurisdictions the chair and the vice-chair of the committee are allowed to call meetings.
The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee is always an opposition MLA and the vice-chair is always a government MLA, and the two–those two individuals are effectively the ones who make the–they're the quarterbacks for the Public Accounts Committee, if you like.
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So, this empowers the two of them to make announcements for the Standing Committee on Public Accounts–not one of them; it has to be both of them. So that ensures that the official opposition and the government are always going to have equal input on both the timing of committees and also the agenda.
And to refer back to Dr. Gerrard's question from before, again, this also puts into the rules the steering committee for the Public Accounts Committee, which has been in place since 2007. And I will say, just for historical reference, you're actually looking at two long-serving Public Accounts clerks over here, back when we were both in committees.
We each managed the Public Accounts Committee for a long time, so we're–this is–this speaks to our roots, and the idea is that the steering committee, which has been in effect since 2007, is now–and that's happened by practice–it's now in the rules and it exists and therefore it can't go away because it serves a crucial function of making sure that the Public Accounts Committee functions most–as effectively as possible.
And this, again, gives–this, in conjunction with the timing rule that we passed earlier, gives the Public Accounts Committee more flexibility to do what it does, and that is–and I can say also that recently the Public Accounts Committee's been meeting quite a lot, and they–everybody involved seems to be in agreement that things are going pretty well there. So, this will give them a little bit more flexibility and authority.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
See–oh, Mr. Goertzen.
Mr. Goertzen: I commend the members of PAC from all parties. I think they're doing a really good job of holding more meetings and functioning in a way that PAC does–not exactly like it does across the country, but more in line with other jurisdictions.
Mr. Nesbitt: Just a question on rule 110(4) there: minimum of nine PAC meetings per year. What's the penalty if you don't call nine PAC meetings a year, and why is it nine?
Deputy Clerk: Excellent questions. First answer is, there is no penalty. Someone might get upset, but there's no provision in the rules that, you know, no one's pay gets docked. It's really meant to be, I guess, more of an encouragement.
Why it's there? That was introduced in the mid‑2000s, I believe, and the–and at the time it was introduced, Public Accounts Committee was almost not meeting at all. Sometimes they met once a year, and that had been going on for decades through different governments. So it was meant to sort of spur the committee.
And the number was arrived at, as there–are many things in this building, through negotiation and compromise. I think somebody wanted–at one time it said eight, and I think another time it was 12, and then it's been changed a few times, the number. This has been in place, the nine meetings, for a number of years now. And it was a–it was basically a compromise that a few–that a previous version of the rules the committee came up with.
Clerk: It was also put into a numerical form on the basis of consultation with public accounts committees across the country, because every year they meet in conference and talk about developments in each jurisdiction. And Manitoba would often come back feeling kind of like poor country cousins because we met the least, compared to other jurisdictions. So there was a desire to have a minimum number of meetings a year.
Madam Chairperson: Any further comments?
Proposal 23–pass.
Moving then to the next proposal, 24: Three readings–wording update.
Clerk: This is simply plain-languaging in action. The current rule says three several readings. Nobody talks about several readings. It's really three separate readings, so we changed the word separate and put that in there.
And it also notes that every bill other than a Supply bill, because when we were doing, like, Interim Supply or if we're doing the appropriation act, we often do that all in one day, so that's an exception to the provision of it being done on several different days.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Proposal 24–pass.
Moving, then, to rule change proposal 25: Reports list.
Clerk: Honestly, this is not a case of the Clerk trying to get out of work. It is a case of–it's an administrative matter that really doesn't belong in the rules because it's not procedural. This is a report that is prepared every year and given to members, and it was felt, especially from the Journals office, that it probably shouldn't be in the rules because they just do it as a matter of course.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Seeing none, proposal 25–pass.
Moving then to rule change proposal 26: Reducing paper-based processes–duties of law officers.
Deputy Clerk: This is another one of the rule changes that is allowing us to deal with both hard-copy and electronic versions. This rule, 148(2), specifies the duties of the law officer who is Legislative Counsel.
So, we didn't change any of the provisions about what the Legislative Counsel does, we just changed the words printed or reprinted, to published and republished. And we also added: in paper and electronic form–which Leg. Counsel already does because, as many of you would be aware of, everything that they produce goes on their website and our website, as well.
So, this is already happening. It's just making it–it's putting into the rules that it can be paper or electronic copies.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House–[interjection] Oh.
Deputy Clerk: And, out of an abundance of caution, we did run this wording by Legislative Counsel, the law officer, and they were fine with this.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comments?
Seeing none, proposal 26–pass.
Moving then to rule change proposal 27: Reducing paper-based processes–remittance of fees.
Deputy Clerk: In the same vein, this is make a change that relates to remittance of fees for printing of private bills, which is a whole other process. Again, we're not changing that process, we're just changing the word printing the bill to preparing the bill, and also adding in both hard copies and electronically, for the same reasons I've already described.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Seeing none, proposal 27–pass.
Moving to proposal 28: Removing references to the loan act.
Clerk: We've saved one of the best for last because we will no longer be doing the loan act. We will only be considering one bill when we are completing the entire financial process, and I invite members to look at the current rule and the new rule, because you will notice that a number of steps are no longer there.
And so, on that evening, we're just dealing with one bill, and hopefully that puts a smile on members' faces, because it can get kind of long and, even as a Clerk, I'll admit, tedious trying to 'div' with two bills.
Madam Chairperson: Any comments from the House leaders?
Proposal 28–pass.
Moving to proposal 29: Speaking times–correction.
Deputy Clerk: With this rule, I guess I have to admit that the clerks are not perfect; you might be shocked by that.
In 2021, when we were going through a set of rule changes, one of the rules that was proposed and ultimately removed from the final package was to put a specific time on how long the first reading speech could be. The current rule says brief, but we were proposing changing it to 30 seconds. Ultimately, the rules group decided not to proceed with that.
So we removed that rule from the package, but we had a secondary reference to that rule in the–we have an appendix in the end of the rule book which sort of lists all of the speaking times in one place, and we had added this into the appendix, and when we deleted the other provision, we forgot to delete this one.
So it's still in the rule book, and it shouldn't be there, so we just need to delete it.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Seeing none, proposal 29–pass.
And moving to the final rule change proposal, 30: Appendix E–Private members' resolution question period revision.
Deputy Clerk: This is just fixing an oversight. Again, this is in that speaking times appendix at the end of the rule book. The–when we do a private members' bill debate and a private members' resolution debate, we have a question period–after the sponsor speaks, we have a question period. And in that question period, our rules state that independent members only get one question.
And in the appendix, again, from an oversight, this is from many more years ago, in the private members' bills section, we had only one question for independent members, but we didn't reference it in the spot where we were referencing the question period for resolutions.
It's–it doesn't change the rule, the rule is elsewhere in the rule book, this is just a reference to that rule. And for some reason we didn't include that in this reference, the spot in the appendix for resolutions. So we just wanted to add it in there so that they were uniform and they were both equally as informative.
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So, it's not changing any provisions as to how those questions bear–are conducted, it's just updating the appendix to make it more accurate.
Madam Chairperson: Do the House leaders have any comment?
Seeing none, proposal 30–pass.
Does the committee agree that the amendment to the Rules, Orders and Forms of Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, as agreed to by this committee, will come into force on September 28th, 2022? [Agreed]
Does the committee agree that the Clerk be authorized to renumber the Rules, Orders and Forms of Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba and make other minor corrections that in no way alter the intended meaning of these amendments? [Agreed]
Does the committee agree that the Clerk be authorized to make minor corrections to the French version of the Rules, Orders and Forms of Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba to ensure the equivalence of both versions of the rules, ensuring that they in no way alter the intended meeting–meaning of these amendments? [Agreed]
Does the committee agree that the Clerk be authorized to prepare revised rule books incorporating all amendments, additions and deletions? [Agreed]
Does the committee agree that these amendments to the rules are permanent? [Agreed]
Does the committee agree that for future reference the document entitled Legislative Assembly of Manitoba Rule Change Proposals–May 2022 be appended at the end of the Hansard transcript of this meeting? [Agreed]
Does the committee agree that the amendments to the Rules, Orders and Forms of Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba as agreed to by this committee be reported to the House? [Agreed]
This concludes the business before the committee.
The hour being 5:02, what is the will of committee?
An Honourable Member: Rise.
Madam Chairperson: Committee rise.
COMMITTEE ROSE AT: 5:02 p.m.
