Stand-in Committees
Ottawa Report
BY Aaron Freeman
One of the lesser-known developments in the new minority Parliament is how House of Commons standing committees have changed to allow backbench MPs to rise above the moniker of “nobodies” once given to them by Pierre Trudeau.
Parliamentary committees have made significant amendments to government bills, including the Anti-Terrorism Act in 2001, the Species At Risk Act in 2002 and last year’s new law overhauling political fundraising rules. In each case, Liberal backbenchers and opposition MPs took on either government bureaucrats or the Liberal leadership to modify government legislation.
With a minority Parliament, more activist committees could become the norm.
Negotiations between the federal political parties in the early fall illustrated the new reality in stark terms. For one thing, the Liberals no longer dominate committee proceedings, as they have since 1992. They are now the minority around committee tables, with only five members out of 12 on each committee.
Opposition MPs succeeded in creating two new committees: Status of Women and Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. MPs who chair committees wield tremendous control, and Conservative MPs now chair three committees—Access to Information, Public Accounts (which was previously the only committee chaired by the Official Opposition) and Government Operations and Estimates.
But playing a more meaningful role means being organized and well-resourced, two qualities often lacking in parliamentary committees. The Access to Information committee, for example, still had no agenda or mandate by late fall, more than six weeks into the new Parliament. The mandate has to be approved by the Procedure and House Affairs Committee, which previously oversaw the ethics file. It appears a turf war prevented a finalization of the agenda, which would have enabled the Access to Information committee to proceed.
The potential for committees to move issues forward in this Parliament is huge. But whether MPs who sit on these committees can organize themselves before the minority Parliament is dissolved may be what matters most.
