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July 15, 2020                      House of Assembly Management Commission                                No. 77

The Management Commission met at 9 a.m. via video conference.

MS. RUSSELL: Okay, Mr. Speaker, we're ready to go.

MR. SPEAKER (Reid): Okay, we're ready to go.

First, I want to welcome all Members of the Commission who are here today. I want to welcome the viewers who are watching this through webcast or the broadcast.

We're making a bit of history here today; this is the first virtual broadcast of a proceeding of our House of Assembly. It's the first time that we've ever done this, so it's a little bit of history.

With that, comes some of the issues that may arise that we're not familiar with. We're all sort of learning how to Chair a meeting in this format and how to recognize people as we go through. We have to be aware that we may have some technical issues that might arise during the meeting, but we're going to proceed and see how things go. It's all about doing things in new ways, I guess. If there's anything positive that can come of the situation we've found ourselves in, that's caused a lot of people hardship, maybe the good things that can be found in this is that it pushes us to do things in different ways than we've done before and to explore new possibilities. So it's great to do this today.

Part of the proceedings as we move ahead, if Members want to speak, I'm going to ask you to raise your hand so I can see it. I'll recognize people, and if more than one person wants to speak, I'll indicate the line up of speakers we have for each of these items.

When we do a vote, as well, we traditionally do – when we're in-person meetings, we do a voice vote. This time, as well as the voice vote, I'm going to ask you to hold your hand up so we have a record of who voted which way and things like that.

I want to welcome Members of the Commission: the hon. Siobhan Coady, Government House Leader, is here; Ms. Alison Coffin, the Member for St. John's East - Quidi Vidi, is here; the hon. Dr. John Haggie is here, the Member for Gander; Mr. Elvis Loveless, the Member for Fortune Bay - Cape La Hune, is here; Mr. Barry Petten, Member for Conception Bay South, is here; Mr. Derek Bennett, the Deputy Speaker, is here; also we have the Clerk of the House, Ms. Sandra Barnes, she is also the secretary to the Commission; and we have Ms. Bobbi Russell who's the Policy and Communications Officer with the House of Assembly here with us today.

So we've got an agenda and we have a little less than an hour now to get through these items so we're going to proceed right into the items. A lot of these items are routine matters, reporting issues and things like that. So we'll start this off.

This is the first public meeting we've had of the Commission since last year; we've had a number of in-camera meetings, and as required by the House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act, the Commission is required to report decisions of in camera meetings to form part of the public record.

The Commission held in camera meetings on December 4, 2019; December 18, 2019; and July 8, 2020. Members of the Commission have received the minutes from those meetings as part of the notes for this meeting and I think that material is also on the House of Assembly website.

Is that correct, Bobbi? Yes?

MS. RUSSELL: Yes, that's correct.

MR. SPEAKER: The material is available. Yes, that's correct.

The material that details the decisions that we've made are on the House of Assembly website.

Part of the thing we have to do today is we have some draft minutes from the meetings and we need to have approval for those minutes. So first we'll do these each by date, in case people want to talk about them.

For the December 4, 2019, meeting, does anyone have any comments they want to make related to that one? Any comments?

We need a motion to approve those minutes if no one has any.

Dr. Haggie, moved. And we need a seconder. Ms. Coffin. Okay.

So we'll just do the vote on that. The minutes of the Commission meeting on December 4 are approved as presented, as read.

All those in favour, 'aye.'

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay.'

Carried.

On motion, minutes adopted as circulated.

MR. SPEAKER: Okay, so next we'll move on to the minutes for the December 18 meeting.

There were some minor adjustments from the original – there were some errors that were picked up in the minutes that were originally circulated. We circulate them very closely to after the meeting, but there were some typos or something like that in those that were corrected.

We have the corrected version in the briefing package. Does anyone have any comments on those or questions? No.

We require a motion. The recommended motion is that the minutes of the Commission meeting held on December 18, 2019, are approved as read with revisions to CM 2019-037 as discussed.

Mr. Loveless moves the motion and Dr. Haggie seconds the motion.

All those in favour, 'aye.'

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay.'

Carried.

On motion, minutes adopted as circulated.

MR. SPEAKER: We have draft minutes for the July 8 meeting as well. Does anyone have any comments or questions related to those minutes?

Seeing none, we need a motion to approve those minutes.

The hon. the Minister of Natural Resources and Ms. Coffin has seconded it.

All those in favour, 'aye.'

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay.'

Carried.

On motion, minutes adopted as circulated.

MR. SPEAKER: The next agenda item is the budget transfer ratification. These budget transfers were required. Basically, what we're doing is transferring from one heading to another heading in the House of Assembly allocation.

The transfer policy delegates authority for approval for transfer of funds if it's required in an urgent matter and there's not sufficient time for the Commission to schedule a meeting. We have six budget transfers approved using this method at our last regular meeting. The details of these transfers are outlined in the briefing package.

Does anyone have any comments or questions related to those budget transfers?

Maybe I'll ask Sandra if she can give us a quick overview of what these – these were mostly related to the transfer of funds in relation to the election, and mostly it related to the fact that the election was held in the previous fiscal year rather than in this one. Is that correct, Sandra?

CLERK (Barnes): Well, as indicated in the notes that were sent around, the election was held in May as opposed to October so the Chief Electoral Officer had expected most of the subsidies to occur in this particular year, simply because of the filing times. So they occurred earlier than anticipated, but as it happened there were usually sufficient funds in his salary vote that he was able to transfer in to cover off these subsidies, because, of course, they're not paid out until all the papers are filed and reviewed. Most of them are those.

We also had one to cover the payment of legal fees and another one to cover off the severance payments. That's a result of caucus staff departing after the last general election so there was a pay out of severance required for that.

MR. SPEAKER: Okay.

Mr. Bennett.

MR. BENNETT: Just a quick question.

Sandra, do you anticipate there's more – will there be more grants come forward with regard to the subsidies for the candidates or is that all? This will be concluded after this?

CLERK: I don't think there's that much left. I can check with the Chief Electoral Officer and get back to you on that. I think most of it is actually done by now because there are timelines associated with that.

MR. SPEAKER: Any further comments or questions?

Okay, seeing none, I have a recommended motion here: The Commission ratifies the following transfers of funds approvals in accordance with section 5 of the House of Assembly Transfer of Funds Policy. The items are: House of Assembly budget transfer 2020-023, -026, -027, -030, -034 and the final one is House of Assembly budget transfer 2021-IS001-IS. I'm assuming, Sandra, that IS is Interim Supply, the way it's coded? Yes.

We need someone to move that motion.

Mr. Bennett and seconded by Mr. Haggie.

Any further discussion?

Sandra.

CLERK: Mr. Bennett can only vote if he is in the Chair, so we will need somebody else to move the motion.

MR. SPEAKER: Okay.

Minister Coady will move the motion and Mr. Haggie will be the seconder.

Seeing no further comments, all those in favour, 'aye'?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay.'

Carried.

With the last item, we were ratifying some decisions that had already been made in terms of transfers. For the next agenda item it's somewhat similar in that it is a transfer, but in this case we're requesting to have it dealt with so it's a new approval.

The transfer of funds from Members' Resources – Allowances and Assistance to Members' Resources – Supplies to that heading, the amount being transferred is $2,300. The details of that are in the briefing package.

Anyone have any questions or comments?

Okay, so we need a motion to that effect. The recommended motion is the Commission approves the following transfer of funds from Subdivision 1.1.04.09 Members' Resources – Allowances and Assistance, $2,300 to Subdivision 1.1.04.02 Members' Resources – Supplies, $2,300.

Dr. Haggie will move that motion; Alison Coffin will second that motion.

All those in favour, 'aye.'

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay.'

Carried.

The next item on the agenda is a request for approval for the Member for Grand Bank, an invoice from the previous fiscal year. This item was not submitted within 30 days of the end of the fiscal year prior to the system cut-off, because of this it requires Commission approval to reimburse the expense. It totals $50, is allowable under the Members' Rules, and is rebated to the purchase of the ticket for the constituency assistant to attend an event on the Member's behalf.

Any comments or questions on this item?

No. Okay. So we need a motion to deal with this.

The recommended motion is that the Commission approves payment of the expenses totalling $50 for the Member for Burin - Grand Bank with the expense to be paid within the appropriate allocation for the 2020-21 fiscal year.

Moved by Dr. Haggie; seconded by Alison Coffin.

All those in favour, 'aye.'

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay.'

Carried.

The next item is a reporting item to the Commission. It doesn't require a motion. One report is related to rulings on allowance use approved by the Commission under section 24 of the House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act since our last regular meeting. There are 10 items that are included in that and they're in the briefing package that we've received.

Basically, these are items that were beyond the 60-day limitation. In some cases, there were invoices that were late coming in, sometimes invoices that were misplaced and things like that. But the Commission has the ability to look at these and to approve them, even though they were beyond the 60-day limit, so we've done that in a number of cases. That's the first component of this.

The second related to the delegated authority as well in an urgent matter to administer to the House of Assembly and Statutory Offices since the last regular meeting. This relates to the end of fiscal year and the requirement that we report online within 80 days Members' expenditures. This year, because of COVID-19, there were some issues related to getting everything prepared and ready to post within the 80-day time period. We extended that by a month to 110 days from the end of the fiscal year.

Does anyone have any questions on these items? No.

That's part of the requirement that we bring this to a public meeting in relation to those. Those items, the Members have them and the items that were dealt with there are all part of the material that's on the website as well, if members of the public wish to have a look at those.

We're at the final item, I believe. Our last agenda item: The House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act states that the Commission must regularly, and at least quarterly, review the final performance of the House of Assembly, as well as the actual expenditures of Members compared with approved allocations.

I'm going to ask Sandra to give us a little bit of information on that item.

CLERK: This is standard reporting; we're required to report every quarter. So there are two sets of reports. One is the overall accounts of the House and the other is the Members' expenses as required under the act. I think they're fairly straightforward. I don't know if you have any questions about any particular expenditures.

You have two sets of reports, just simply because it's two quarters that needed to be filed.

I don't know if there's anything more than that, unless there are specific questions on any of the accounts.

MR. SPEAKER: Any questions or comments? No.

Okay, so those are the items that we had on the agenda for today. No motion is required on that; it was just a reporting issue that we have to bring forward to this public meeting.

Any other items that Members of the Commission would like to bring up at this point?

Minister Coady.

MS. COADY: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

I just want to say thank you for your guidance through this, I guess, initial meeting by public broadcast. I think, as you pointed out earlier, it is a first for Newfoundland and Labrador, but, of course, it won't be the last. We'll be doing more of these as we move forward, I'm sure, specifically, I guess, around COVID, but I think this does enable us to be in districts, to be around the province doing the work as a Member of the House of Assembly, yet coming together jointly to address matters of the House, especially during July and August when the House may not be sitting.

Great job today. I just want to recognize our team: Sandra, Bobbi, all the Table Officers and all the team at the House of Assembly for their work in making sure that this was seamless today as we move forward.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: Thank you.

Any other comments or questions?

I would, as well, like to thank the staff, the people in the Broadcast Centre and the people at the House of Assembly. They've been working on this for quite a while. We deliberately kept the agenda a little bit light for this first meeting, to give us a chance to get comfortable with it and to maybe work through some of the bugs.

Things seem to have gone well. We've proved that we can do the voting and that we can do a little bit of discussion on some of these items.

As the minister just said, we're going to do more of these in the future. We'll be scheduling some other meetings in the weeks ahead and we will be in touch in terms of setting the dates for those.

Anyone else? Any comments before we adjourn?

Seeing no further comments, we'll have a motion to adjourn.

Dr. Haggie and seconded by Mr. Loveless.

All those in favour, 'aye.'

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay.'

Carried.

Thank you very much.

On motion, meeting adjourned.