Committee Systems in Quebec and Ontario: Part 1: Structure and Organization.
By Canadian Parliamentary Review
- Release Date: 1996-03-22
- Genre: Law
Description
The year 1994 marked the 10th anniversary of the adoption of new Standing Orders by the Quebec National Assembly. A project to analyze the impact of this reform was undertaken to determine whether its initial objectives had been met, and whether those objectives reflected Members' current needs. The result, a report called Parliamentary Reform Ten Years Later, included a comparative analysis of the committee systems in Quebec and Ontario based on the information available in 1993-94. This analysis, like the rest of the report, was designed to provide the Members of the Quebec legislature with the means to analyze the reform and redefine their own needs. The first part of the analysis of the committee system has been translated and is reproduced here to make it available to Members of other legislatures. The second part, dealing with the functions and resources of committees in the two legislatures, will appear in a future issue. The numerous similarities existing between Quebec and Ontario, and between their parliamentary institutions, make Ontario's parliamentary committees a useful point of comparison in any study of the Quebec system. The comparison is aided by the fact that the two provinces have the same constitutional and parliamentary regime, identical constitutional responsibilities, common origins, and a similar number of constituencies, as well as being geographical neighbours, having related economies, and enjoying a comparable level of public resources. Although the two provincial legislatures have evolved differently over time, they have nevertheless done so in response to similar needs.
