Visitors taking a tour of Canada’s Parliament are often told: This is your building. This is the people’s Parliament. But Parliament will soon be less open to the people.
When the House and Senate convene later this year (if things stay on track) in new, temporary quarters, there will be no public tours while those chambers are sitting. The Library of Parliament, perhaps Canada’s most beautiful room, will be closed for a decade.
Those in charge say the buildings that will temporarily house the House and Senate are too small to accommodate both parliamentary business and guided tours and that there simply is no way to open the Library to the public while Centre Block itself is closed.
Perhaps. But these restrictions also suggest a less-than-complete dedication to ensuring public access to Parliament. In a time when people feel increasingly disconnected from government and public institutions, closing House and Senate business to the public is the last thing we need.
The decision to refurbish and restore Centre Block has been a boon for the country’s capital. Office buildings in the parliamentary precinct have been renovated and modernized to accommodate the members of Parliament, senators and their staff who will be vacating Centre Block.
The West Block has been transformed, its courtyard converted to a glass-ceilinged chamber where the House of Commons will sit while Centre Block is restored. Several blocks to the east, the old railway station, which had been used infrequently as a conference centre and which had become very run down, has been refurbished and will house the Senate.
There’s no question that Centre Block needs to be thoroughly restored and updated. The building is a century old and badly in need of modernizing. There is, for example, no air conditioning. Behind the surface splendour the public sees, the place is falling apart.
Also, there is a legitimate need to tighten security on the Hill, as we all learned in 2014 when Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was killed after he shot his way into Centre Block, coming within metres of the room where then-prime minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative caucus were meeting.
But the final plans restrict access severely. The Library of Parliament will be closed entirely. Gazing at the circular room, with its Gothic dome and white-pine tiers of stacks, is the highlight for many of the 335,000 people who take a parliamentary tour each year. For at least a decade – longer if there are delays – there will be no access at all.
Under the new regime, there will also be no tours of Parliament when the House and Senate are sitting, although groups and individual citizens can view proceedings from the public galleries, if room is available and they have cleared security screening at the new visitors centre.
Benoit Morin, who is director of public-education programs for the Library of Parliament, insists that public access was a front-and-centre priority while planning for the new House and Senate.
But “they are smaller buildings,” he pointed out. Accommodating public tours while parliamentarians are meeting just isn’t feasible, he said, adding that full tours will be available on days when the House and Senate aren’t sitting, which includes break weeks, weekends and the entire summer.
Conservative MP Mark Strahl isn’t satisfied. He sits on the Board of Internal Economy, which oversees the House of Commons. He wants to review the question of public access to the West Block when the board next meets on June 14.
“It’s the people’s House and we want to make sure we have reasonable access to people who are visiting the Hill for what is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for many of them,” he said.
MPs and senators need to press the public service to look at their plans and look again. Is there absolutely, positively no way to permit the public to view the Library of Parliament during pauses in construction? And is there absolutely, positively no way to permit tours when the House and Senate are sitting?
Is public access a top priority, or somewhere down the list? Does everyone involved remember, every day, whose Parliament it is?
John Ibbitson