Parliament will be recalled on November 22, 2022 and the government has pledged to introduce a bill to replace the former Bill C-6 on conversion therapy. The bill is likely to go back to the Justice Committee for hearings sometime in early 2022. Committee hearings provide a chance for the public to participate in the legislative process by appearing as witnesses or submitting written briefs.
This guide will explain how to prepare an effective brief. It focuses on the procedure in the Parliament of Canada but the basic principles are applicable in any democratic legislature.
The House of Commons website contains a guide to submitting briefs and appearing before committees. Further information, including a web portal for submissions, is often provided on the web page of the committee. The Senate has its own guide for briefs and witnesses.
You will need to supply your real name and contact information to the committee clerk. However, you can request that that your name not appear on the published version of the brief. An organization will need to provide the name of a contact person but the brief can be published in the name of the organization. Both the Senate and House of Commons committees will accept briefs from outside of Canada.
Briefs and the Legislative Process
Briefs are presented when the bill is being studied by a Parliamentary committee. However, there are other stages when you can influence the content of the Bill.
The most critical stage is the drafting stage, before the bill is introduced. Bills are prepared by the civil servants from the applicable department with assistance from the legislative drafting branch of the Department of Justice. You can write to the Minister responsible for the bill stating your concerns.
A bill goes through five stages in both the House of Commons and the Senate. First reading is simply a formality when the bill is introduced and printed. You will be able to find the text of the bill on the Parliamentary web site. Second reading is debate on the principles of the bill. Prior to second reading, you can write to Members of Parliament and ask them to raise your concerns in the debate.
After second reading the bill is normally referred to a committee for study. This is the stage when you can submit your brief. After the committee hearing, the bill goes back to the full House or Senate for consideration of the committee report and a vote on any amendments proposed by the committee. Members can propose further amendments at this stage. The bill is then debated on third reading and there is a final vote. The process is repeated in the Senate (or the House of Commons if the bill is from the Senate). If the Senate amends a bill from the House of Commons, the bill goes back to the House for debate on the Senate amendments. Once the bill has passed both Houses, it receives Royal Assent and becomes law.
The process can be accelerated with consent of all parties. Sometimes a bill is referred to a “committee of the whole” which means the whole House sitting under different rules. In urgent cases a bill can be passed by both Houses in a single day. The Senate sometimes does a pre-study of a bill where a committee hears witnesses on a the subject matter of a Bill that has not yet passed the House.
A Committee begins its study of a bill with a preliminary meeting, usually private, to decide the scope of the review. They decide how many days of hearings to hold and how many witnesses to call. Each party represented on the committee is allowed to choose a certain number of witnesses. There are usually some preliminary discussions between the parties before the formal meetings. Committee staff will start contacting potential witnesses well before the hearing begins. Submit your brief as early as possible if you want to be considered as a witness.
Each brief has to be translated before it is distributed to committee members. Most of the briefs submitted on Bill C-6 were not distributed to the committee until the very end of the hearing. If you decide to re-submit a brief on the new bill that has already been translated, let the clerk’s office know so they can tell the translators.
A committee hearing on a bill normally starts with testimony from the Minister responsible from the bill and some senior civil servants. The committee then moves into hearing members of the public. The usual practice has been to allow each witness a five minute opening statement followed by ten minutes of questions. If you are invited to appear, practice your opening statement and time yourself so you don’t go overtime.
Committee schedules vary. On the hearings on Bill C-6, the Justice Committee met for two hours on Tuesday and Thursday. Senate hearings tend to be more extensive and a committee may meet for eight hours a day for several days.
After hearing from witnesses, the committee does a clause by clause review and considers amendments to the bill. Representatives from the Department of Justice and the department responsible for the bill attend the meetings to advise the members.
Procedures in provincial legislatures are similar to those in the House of Commons.
What Makes a Good Brief?
The whole point of submitting a brief to a parliamentary committee is to persuade someone who does not already agree with you. This is incredibly hard to do. That is why lawyers and lobbyists who do it well make big money.
A good brief focuses on the subject matter before the committee. Sometimes committees hold hearings to study a subject in general and your brief can cover almost anything related to the subject area. However, in a hearing on a Bill, the scope of the hearing is limited to the terms of the Bill. The Bill has already received approval in principle and the function of the committee is to review it in detail and propose amendments. These amendments must be consistent with the original scope and subject matter of the Bill.
Parliamentary committees, at their best, are places where MPs dial back the partisan rhetoric and work to make a Bill better. Try to make this your guide. Avoid partisan language. Refer simply to “the government” rather than the “Liberal government” or “Trudeau government.” Build your case with facts and arguments.
Committee members pay attention to three types of witnesses and briefs. The first are from organizations with lots of money and/or large memberships. The second are individuals and groups who will be personally impacted by the proposed legislation. The third are people or groups who can provide the benefit of expert knowledge and research into the subject matter of the legislation.
If you are with a group that falls into the first category, you probably have professional communications staff with extensive experience in writing briefs.
The personal impact brief can be quite simple. Introduce yourself and state your concerns. Tell your story. Finally, explain how the proposed legislation would affect you. Because you are writing about your own experience, you don’t need a lot of references. This short brief on Bill C-6 by Erin Brewer is an excellent example of a personal impact brief.
The expert knowledge brief is like a university research paper or formal legal argument. The format is similar to the personal impact brief but with more detail. Start by introducing your organization and presenting a summary of your concerns. Ideally, someone who reads no further than the first page should understand your main points. Next, develop your case and present your supporting evidence. Conclude with recommendations for action.
You need to set out your case and support it with references to appropriate authorities. Provide a source for each fact you state. If you are an expert in the subject matter, you can offer your own opinions. Set out your qualifications in the brief. Otherwise, you will need to back up your statements with references to publications by recognized experts.
When you write a brief, you have to keep two different audiences in mind. First, there are the committee members themselves. They are very busy, with many issues to respond to each day, and will not have a lot of time to devote to any one piece of legislation. You need to write in a way that gets their attention on a fast read. If you are lucky, a committee staff member will read your brief. These are experienced policy analysts who actually prepare the committee’s report. You need to be sure that your facts and arguments will stand up with a staff researcher does take the time to read your brief closely.
Researching Your Brief
Choosing references in your brief is like choosing witnesses for a trial. Trial lawyers are careful not to rely on witnesses who are untrustworthy and could be discredited on cross-examination. One tactic that lawyers use in cross examination is to refer to past statements by the witness which are damaging or inconsistent with the witness’s present evidence.
Scrutinize your sources in the same way. Look for media outlets with a reputation for strong fact-checking and peer reviewed academic publications. Avoid outlets with a reputation for bias and promoting fake news. Sites like the Media Bias Chart are a good starting point for screening your sources.
When you are assessing a source for bias, you need to look at it from the point of view of the people you are trying to persuade. In the case of the conversion therapy legislation the target group are the Liberal, NDP and Bloc members who will need to be convinced that your concerns about the scope of the bill are not rooted in general hostility to the rights of LGBT people. This means that you should avoid quoting sources that have a history of opposing LGBT rights.
This would have been difficult to do a few years ago, when it was difficult to find any critical discussion of gender transition of children outside of a few conservative religious sources. Fortunately, change is coming. There is a lot of good discussion in the British press and mainstream medical sites like Medscape are starting to provide balanced coverage.
Here are some websites to start your research. All of these sites are LGBT friendly.
Use these sites as a starting point for research. Go back to the primary sources whenever practical and do not have too may references to a single web site.
Last Words
Keep language simple but formal. Avoid both excessive technical jargon and slang and popular expressions. The brief is going to have to be translated and it is easier to translate simple standard English into simple standard French.
Short words. Short sentences. Short paragraphs.
Read the instructions for preparing briefs on the committee website and keep within the maximum length. Make the brief visually attractive but not too elaborate. The font should be between 10 and 12 points and the page margins around 1 inch (2.5 cm). Some committees may have specific requirements for briefs. For example, the Ontario Legislature asks for all briefs to be double spaced.
Use properly formatted footnotes or end notes for your references. Include web links to your original sources when available. Consider using a free reference management program like Zotero to assist in organizing your materials and formatting your notes.
Longer briefs should have headings and subheadings. Number the pages. Check your spelling and grammar and proofread it several times.
Dear JustDad7. Is it too late to submit a brief for Bill C-11? Please contact me directly if you are able to.
- Simone
https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/c-11
I sent out over 100 emails to MPs this past week, containing an open letter I had published in Women Are Human on Tuesday. How do I actually get them to read it?! Their auto-responses are problematic in two ways. Firstly, they suggest that we should include our full names and addresses, but given the very real threat of violence to gender critical women, I prefer to remain anonymous. Secondly, they state that constituents from that MPs riding get priority. This is problematic particularly when writing to MPs who are on committees that are pertinent to the content of our emails, like Marci Ien, who is supposed to represent women, as the Minister Women (and Gender Equality). Am I not a woman? How do we avoid being brushed off by her staff who censor her emails? Or that of any other MP on the committee for Women and Gender Equality? How can we be heard? Aside from ridings, every single MP has a vote at the first and second readings and an opportunity to influence bills that directly effect women in Canada.
- Simone XX