Hon. Diane Bellemare: Honourable senators, first, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the senators, clerks, Library of Parliament analysts, interpreters, pages and other staff who participated in the work of the Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament, which I have had the honour and privilege of chairing since December 2021. I will be passing the torch to Senator Audette, the newly elected chair, who will take over when I leave the Senate.

As you know, senators carry out their constitutional responsibilities in the chamber and in committee. It is in committee that the bills tabled by the government, senators and members of Parliament are examined in detail. In committee, senators also carry out special studies, some of which can take several months or even several years. Most senators really enjoy committee work, which is generally carried out in a relaxed atmosphere.

To shorten my speech, I will refer to the standing committees of the Senate by their informal names rather than their official ones.

We currently have 18 standing Senate committees. Five of them are administrative or procedural in nature, such as the Internal Economy Committee, the Rules Committee, the Ethics Committee, the Audit Committee and the Selection Committee. The remaining 13 committees are what I would call thematic committees because they focus on specific themes, such as social affairs, or specific sectors, such as transport and communications. These 13 standing thematic committees examine bills and carry out special studies.

The Rules also provide for the possibility of creating special temporary committees and legislative committees.

Senators also sit on standing joint committees and other temporary committees.

I would note that the special studies that committees do aren’t academic research undertakings. They make use of available information from academics, scientists, associations and institutions. The goal is to identify public policy directions that can improve Canadians’ well-being.

The structure and mandates of the Senate’s standing committees have not changed since 2002, and the purpose of the sixth report is to outline the first stage of a new study on committee structure and mandate.

The sixth report summarizes the testimony heard during a special study undertaken in early 2023. The aim was to propose substantive changes to the mandates of the 13 thematic committees in order to better address the concerns of Canadians.

It follows the committee’s third report, which proposed minor stylistic changes to rule 12-7 in order to standardize the description of committee mandates. This report was adopted on May 12, 2023.

The first step in the in-depth study on the committee mandates was to hear from the current and former chairs and deputy chairs of the 13 standing committees, which I refer to as thematic committees. These individuals were asked whether any changes should be made to the mandates, the number of members per committee, the membership, the meeting schedules, the operating procedures, the workloads, the effectiveness of their work, or the matter of Senate orders of reference. They were also asked to comment on their technical and material capacity to properly fulfill their mandate. Some witnesses also took the initiative to suggest changes of all kinds, such as changes to the processes of witness selection and legislative follow-up, to better ensure the independence and quality of our work.

Several witnesses expressed their appreciation for this exercise and suggested that the Rules Committee regularly conduct such an exercise at fixed intervals. The clerks of the Senate, Shaila Anwar, Till Heyde and Adam Thompson, also participated and appeared before the committee. I thank them for their thoughtful testimony. A comprehensive witness list can be found at the end of the report, and I invite you to read the report for more details. That being said, due to the apparent difficulty of proposing consensus-based changes to the existing mandates and structure of the standing committees, the committee’s work on this subject came to a halt after this first step.

Adapting committees’ structure and mandates isn’t a new challenge. There have been many committees since the Senate’s inception. Some of the current ones, including the Banking Committee, the Internal Economy Committee, the Rules Committee and the joint Library of Parliament Committee, were created in 1867, and the Transport Committee was created a few years later. From time to time, the Senate has changed the committee structure, names and mandates, and it has eliminated some and created new ones.

According to the documents we consulted, after 1945, major restructuring happened in 1968, 1985 and 2002, so it’s time. It’s 2024. According to the Library of Parliament research services, the 1968 reform was the most significant. As summarized in Senate Procedure in Practice:

Certain committees were renamed, new ones created and general areas of jurisdiction defined. After this reorganization, there were eight Senate standing committees and three standing joint committees, with the numbers gradually increasing during the following years. In 1983, the size of most standing committees was reduced from 20 to 12 members, with a corresponding reduction in quorums.

To sum up, after 1968, the number of committees went up, which forced the Senate to reduce the size of each committee because we have only 105 senators to do the work, after all.

Since my appointment to the Senate in 2012, there have been few significant changes to the structure and mandates of the committees, apart from the creation of temporary special committees, such as the Special Committee on Senate Modernization, the Special Committee on the Arctic and the Special Committee on the Charitable Sector.

As a senator and committee chair, I have seen that even though the challenge of adapting committee work to the current economic, social, climate and political environment seems urgent to me, the Senate still has neither the capacity nor perhaps even the firm will to change its ways.

The sixth report does not contain any recommendations. The committee met 18 times, and all those meetings were held in public. You can consult the transcripts of the meetings, if you like.

It was not possible to reach a consensus to make changes because, given the Senate’s limited resources, any change generally involves reallocating existing resources. Some see these changes as a loss, but I remain optimistic and I believe that major changes are coming soon.

The last time the committees’ structure was reformed was in early 2000, predating the technological advancements in AI, the extreme events caused by climate change, and the major demographic upheavals. Three committees were created as part of these main changes made in 2002: the Official Languages Committee, which had previously been a joint committee since 1984; the Human Rights Committee; and the National Defence and Veterans Affairs Committee. In addition, the mandate of the Fisheries Committee, which had been a single-theme committee since 1986, was changed to include an “oceans” component.

In 2011 — it was right before I arrived in the Senate, but I know that the meetings were important — the Rules Committee, chaired by Senator David Smith at the time, proposed other changes in its fourth report to the Senate to expand the scope of certain committees and modernize their mandates. For example, the report suggested grouping transport and banks together, with a mandate that would also encompass international trade. It also suggested combining national defence with foreign affairs; creating a natural resources committee that would include fisheries and oceans, agriculture and forestry; and creating a new science, technology and communications committee. This committee’s fourth report, published in 2011, was not adopted.

In 2019 and during the pandemic, a group of independent senators led by the late Senator Josée Forest-Niesing took a closer look at committee work. An informal survey was conducted to gauge senators’ appetite for change. The results indicated a broad range of opinions.

I’d now like to share my own thoughts on the subject. I was inspired by the evidence I heard in committee, as well as the analysis of the data gathered on committee working hours. The data was provided by the Library of Parliament and the Committees Directorate, and I would like to thank them both for helping me structure my ideas and better understand how work is distributed among senators.

This is a partial statistical analysis, but it does identify problematic situations that could be enriched by a broader statistical analysis. I compared the working hours for each of the 13 thematic standing committees. I looked at total hours, as well as the time devoted to studying bills and special studies. I compared three different years, specifically 2018-19, so before the pandemic, as well as 2022-23 and 2023-24.

Here are a few key findings. First, hours of work vary greatly by committee. The Finance, Legal Affairs and Social Affairs committees always worked far more hours than the average. Second, in each of those years, legislative work took up, on average, between 40% and 50% of committee hours. However, the percentages varied significantly depending on the committee.

The National Finance, Legal Affairs and Social Affairs committees devote most of their time to studying bills and, in the case of the Finance Committee, to considering supply. As a result, those three committees have little time for special studies, whereas six standing committees devote a large part of their time to special studies.

They are the Human Rights, Official Languages, Indigenous Peoples, Agriculture and Forestry, Fisheries and Oceans, and Foreign Affairs and International Trade committees. I’d like to offer a few comments in connection with this information.

First, the different division of duties in committee will translate into a different division of duties for each senator. Some senators will do a lot of legislative work, and others will mostly do special studies.

You may wonder whether these findings are specific to the periods that were studied. Is this a permanent situation? Is it related to the increase in public bills? Should we perhaps take a closer look at the data? I hope that the Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations will be able to do just that at a later date and expand on the number of years studied.

What’s more, I don’t mean to pass judgment on the importance of each committee’s mandate, but the fact of the matter is that the scope of the standing committees’ mandates varies considerably. On the one hand, we have two committees that take care of all the legal affairs and all the social affairs involving health, science and technology as well as issues relating to labour. On the other, we have some committees with specific mandates, such as the Fisheries and Oceans, Transport and Communications, Agriculture and Forestry, National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs, and Official Languages committees. In this context, it’s inevitable that the study of bills happens mostly at the Legal Affairs and Social Affairs committees. Most bills fall under these areas.

We can understand the frustration of some senators who would like the Senate to be able to study broader pressing issues, such as artificial intelligence, employment-related problems — at the request of Senator Lankin — immigration, social media, and economic, political and social polarization.

What should we do about this? I think we can do better, and I have a few suggestions.

The Hon. the Acting Speaker: Senator Bellemare, your time has expired. Are you asking for a few extra minutes to complete your remarks?

Senator Bellemare: Yes, I have two minutes left.

The Hon. the Acting Speaker: Honourable senators, is leave granted?

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

Senator Bellemare: We could go through the exercise that Senator MacDonald suggested in committee on April 16:

It would have been made easier if we had taken the approach that we are dealing with a blank slate. If . . . we were creating all new committees for the first time, we would find this to be a much easier exercise.

It’s true: Everyone applauded when he said that.

My second suggestion is to analyze committee structure and mandates in other senates around the world. We might come across solutions, or at least the beginnings of solutions.

We might find that some senates structure their committees to have legislative and special committees in addition to administrative and procedural ones. Legislative work is done by committees created for that purpose. There are many of them, and all senators can contribute. Special committees do special studies. Our Rules provide for the existence of such committees, but that provision is rarely used.

I’ve seen that, on paper, those governments can have quite a lot of special committees dealing with all kinds of subjects. However, they’re not all active at the same time. They’re only activated when the senate refers a special study to them. These special committees are presented to the senate following discussions among the leadership.

We need to look at how that works, which is why we need to have a committee do a practical study on what’s being done elsewhere.

There’s one thing I know for sure, though. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: The Senate is a very important institution, perhaps even more so during this time of uncertainty and upheaval. The Senate of Canada must be bold. It must take its place at the forefront of public debate on the big issues of the day. It can do great things, but it has to change the way it operates.

Thank you. Meegwetch.

Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!