Now that the Liberals have secured a majority, controversy is swirling over whether they will assume control of committees that scrutinize government legislation.
Earlier this week, Government House leader Steven MacKinnon said that committees should reflect the party membership of the House of Commons.
His comments came in response to Conservative calls for the committees’ composition to remain unchanged.
“Canadians elected a strong opposition — the strongest official opposition in Canadian history,” Conservative House leader Andrew Scheer said at a press conference Thursday. “They wanted a tight check on a Liberal government.”
A Liberal majority on committees could allow the government to “shut down investigations and sweep scandals under the rug,” Scheer said.
Political experts say parliamentary committees are a crucial part of government accountability, and a change to their structure would lessen government scrutiny.
“Committees are at the front line of the day-to-day accountability,” said Philippe Lagassé, Barton Chair at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa.
Committee composition
Since the current parliamentary session started last May, membership on House of Commons committees has been divided equally between the Liberals and opposition parties that have official party status.
On 10-person committees, the Liberals have five members, the Conservatives four and the Bloc Quebecois one. On nine-person committees, the Liberals and Conservatives have four members each and the Bloc one.
Parliament would need to pass a motion to now change the composition of committees. With their majority, the Liberals could easily do so.
The Prime Minister’s Office did not respond before press time to questions about whether the government intends to introduce a motion to change committees’ composition.
Elizabeth McCallion, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, thinks it is unlikely the Liberals will introduce this motion.
“It would be possible for them to do it, but they’d really have to finesse politically their approach so as not to look like it’s a power grab,” she said.
But Lagassé says it would make sense for the Liberals to do so.
“I would find it odd for them to have a majority in the Commons and not attempt to modify the committee structure,” he said.
‘Depth’ of scrutiny
However, Lagassé agrees that a change in the committees’ composition could lessen government accountability.
“Anything that’s embarrassing [to the Liberals] that they don’t want the committee to look into, they just shut it down,” he said.
Lagassé says committees allow for a “depth” of inquiry not possible in Question Period, where MPs debate legislation and ask the government questions.
During committee meetings, members can question ministers and government officials at length about proposed legislation or government decisions. They also give parliamentarians opportunities to hear what experts, organizations and affected individuals think about legislative proposals.
“The executive in Canada does not tend to consult widely with experts, whereas committees do tend to call in expert witnesses,” Lagassé said.
“You have that function being performed where the committee is calling people in. You get a good sense of what civil society thinks about an issue.”
The committee then writes reports on proposed bills and may suggest changes to them.
Committee scrutiny is especially important for controversial bills, Lagassé says. He referred to some of the Carney Liberals’ bills as “not uncontroversial.”
Right now, only two government bills are before House of Commons’ committees.
The justice committee is studying whether to make coercive control of an intimate partner a criminal offence. A separate committee is studying legislation to create Build Canada Homes, a government entity that would be tasked with ensuring more homes are built.
Two significant bills will soon proceed to committee hearings after they pass second reading in the House.
Bill C-2 would toughen security of the Canada-U.S. border and make changes to the refugee claim process. Bill C-22 would allow the federal government to compel telecommunications companies to keep individuals’ metadata. This so-called “lawful access” bill has prompted significant privacy concerns.
‘Clip farming’
For her part, McCallion says committees work best when they are used to scrutinize legislation — not score partisan points.
Committees were originally intended to give MPs, often backbenchers, the chance to seriously and thoughtfully study legislation, McCallion says.
But now, they are often used for partisan purposes, especially since they are live-streamed and parties can use committees to generate social media content.
“The committee rooms are a lot less private now than they used to be, meaning that there is some clip farming going on in committees,” she said, referring to MPs using clips from meetings to get a reaction on social media.
It is possible that government legislation will still pass, regardless of which party has the majority on committees, says McCallion. But there still needs to be scrutiny from other parties.
“It’s important for different viewpoints to have a full hearing in the public sphere,” she said.
