The "Administrative" Parliament Is No More Accountable Than the "Normal" ParliamentThe House of Commons was adjourned on March 13 following the advice of health officials that people avoid large gatherings, travel, and close interactions amid the COVID-19 outbreak. The House partially resumed sittings in April, with a plan for one sitting in the House of Commons each week, and weekly virtual sittings as soon as the House administration can work through the technical barriers to holding them, the Hill Times reports. Besides the limited virtual "accountability sessions," other virtual meetings and teleconferences have replaced various meetings and other functioning of Parliament and government ministries. According to news agency reports, all MPs and Senators are receiving a daily technical briefing on the COVID-19 global pandemic seven days a week. Daily teleconference briefing is coordinated by Health Minister Patty Hajdu's office and takes place at 4:30 pm EST. The briefings, which are about 30-45 minutes long, started a few days after the House adjourned in mid-March. In the briefing, between 10 and 12 senior public officials from different departments, including Health, Finance, Global Affairs, the Canada Revenue Agency and others, answer questions from Parliamentarians. If they don't have the information to answer a specific question, these officials take note of questions and provide answers the next day. Since the suspension of the House in mid-March, all parliamentary caucuses have been holding virtual weekly meetings. The Liberal caucus holds a teleconference meeting every day, giving MPs an opportunity to question Cabinet ministers and sometimes the Prime Minister about specific government programs and provide them with feedback from their constituents, the Hill Times reports. As for the briefings to MPs who form the Loyal Royal Opposition and the Senators, a Conservative MP was quoted as saying that technical briefings are better than nothing, but these briefings have very limited utility in terms of improving legislation or a government program. These briefings are presumably also designed to provide opposition MPs a platform to inform government ministers "of their constituents' concerns." Technical briefings are useful only to understand the mechanical aspects of a piece of legislation, or a government program. They do not involve back and forth exchanges, an NDP MP told the Hill Times. But Green Party Parliamentary Leader Elizabeth May is gushing over the arrangement. She said that "she has been impressed by the briefings and the cooperation from the government on COVID-19, because the government pays attention to issues raised even by opposition MPs," the Hill Times reported. "I get direct personal contact [with Cabinet ministers] at a level that's far more than the normal when Parliament is in session," May said. "[T]he flow of information and the degree of collaboration is frankly off the charts," she said. In addition to the daily 4:30 pm briefing, offices of other Cabinet ministers, including that of Finance Minister Bill Morneau, also hold teleconference briefings for Parliamentarians to update them about the government initiatives to mitigate the damage caused by COVID-19, the Hill Times reports. Brian Masse of the NDP said that these briefings are helpful but are too short, not leaving enough time for all politicians to ask questions. "Depending upon the group you are with, the session could be dominated either by the parliamentary secretary or a Liberal that seems to be occupying a lot of time on the phone and eliminating Members' time to raise questions," said Masse. "If it's a bureaucratic meeting, then there's no policy direction really formally passed on to the political direction. So, it's for information gathering, it's not for a two-door process for legislative changes." A Conservative MP said that at least MPs can question senior government officials in those calls, but based on his experience, mostly, they don't get any information that's exclusive or unique, and not available through other means.
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