• Charlie Feldman, Unparliamentary: Tales from Canada’s Colourful Parliamentary Past

• Charlie Feldman, UK Political Studies Association Specialist Group on Parliaments, Unfit for Hansard?, 20 October 2025

• The House with Catherine Cullen, CBC News, The "unparliamentary" stories you've never heard about the House of Commons, 27 June 2026

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Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm.

Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy.

Ruth Fox: Today we journey to another neogothic Parliament, the Federal Canadian Parliament in Ottawa. Our guide is Charlie Feldman, the author of Unparliamentary, tales from Canada's colourful parliamentary past.

Mark D'Arcy: A legislative drafter or parliamentary counsel on secondment here in the UK for a few months, he joined us in the studio to talk us through some of the occasionally alarming tales from a very different political culture.

Ruth Fox: And listeners, it's a little bit more earthy than you might imagine.[00:01:00]

Mark D'Arcy: So Charlie, before we get into the substance of your book, if you like, all the stories that you tell about what has gone on in the Canadian Parliament, just evoke for us the atmosphere of the place. What is it like, because it looks from the outside, and I've only ever seen a few TV shots of it, it looks a bit like the Westminster Parliament.

It looks like the building was to some extent inspired by that kind of Victorian Gothic ideal.

Charlie Feldman: Yeah. If you came to Ottawa and walked around Parliament Hill, you'd think, oh, are we trying to be London? I tell the story that several years back we had a department that tabled a report and wanted to put a Parliament picture on it and actually put big Ben's clock instead of ours on it.

So we have a House of Commons that's elected much like yours. We have a senate that, while they are appointed, much like your House of Lords, we have a mandatory retirement age at 75 and say, we don't have the clergy or some of those elements that you do, all these peers and whatnot, peerages, I should say.

And so we really did inspire from you at the very, very beginning. And in fact, our first Standing Orders and whatnot, basically say, if we don't have a rule, look what they're doing at Westminster. And that's evolved from there to give us the [00:02:00] traditions that we have. So it's a very lively place.

Unlike Westminster, it's quite bilingual these days. English and French are our official languages and proceedings happen in both. In fact, quite recently we've changed our rules to also permit use of indigenous languages in our House.

Just to say it's very much like Westminster. You certainly see the echoes of it with our committee system and our three readings and heavy reliance on our Speaker for enforcing certain things, but differences.

Mark D'Arcy: And if you're walking down the corridors, does it have a Westminster feel as well or is there something quite different in the atmosphere?

Charlie Feldman: I would say you don't think that you're in historic Palace. No one can confuse even our, old building for that. And we're right now in temporary quarters, which we'll talk about I guess a little later.

But you certainly get a sense of both the English tradition and the French heritage as well, because we have elements of both throughout the old building.

Mark D'Arcy: How does the French heritage fit into this?

Charlie Feldman: You certainly see some of the English influences, and there's some of the French influences as well and some of the art.

And so for example, if you walk into our Senate building, you'll see portraits of both English and French monarchs who were once on the throne during the time when canada was being ruled. [00:03:00]

Ruth Fox: And how big is it? How many members are there in each house?

Charlie Feldman: Yeah, so we're 343 members of the House at the moment.

We expand after every census and we're 105 senators. However, the nerds listening will immediately say, but. And that's because there's a provision in our constitution, which allows for the temporary expansion of our Senate to deal with an impasse with the House of Commons.

It's only been invoked successfully once during an impasse back in the eighties, I wanna say. However, there was a Prime Minister who quite famously wanted to use it to expand the number of seats to give them to his friends. And as we understand, London said no, you're not doing that, sir.

Ruth Fox: And what's the atmosphere like in terms of relationships between members and staff and, is it a very open building for the public?

Thinking at the moment about the old building, I know it's being restored at the moment, but what was it like beforehand? Is it quite open to the public or is it a little bit stayed and closed off?

Charlie Feldman: Yeah, certainly there were tours that would come in and out, but I, coming to Westminster is always surprising me to see just how many other people have the bright orange visitor badge walking around and doing different things.

There would certainly be [00:04:00] plenty of mingling between members in the building that had both chambers. You would certainly see members and senators interacting and whatnot. And there were less, I find for the Westminster things that were off limits to one segment or the other, if I can put it that way.

It had this giant central area, I'm trying to think of the proper name for it now, and my brain completely goes blank, where sort of the two Houses met and it would go into the library of Parliament. So you'd see all sorts of different things happening there.

Ruth Fox: Like a lobby?

Charlie Feldman: Yeah, like a lobby. But it's actually this really beautiful sort of dome and all this art around it.

All that to say you'd see members in one corner meeting a school group and you'd see some politicians in the corner having a chat. And certainly the House would have lobbies where you'd see members interacting all the time. Not necessarily across party lines so much with the government and the opposition, but the opposition lobby is certainly a fun place to hang out in my early career on the Hill.

Ruth Fox: And one feature of Westminster is you've got quite a number of bars and essentially restaurants, dining room areas. Some of that is reserved for members only. Some of it's a bit of a mix, but do you have that in the [00:05:00] Canadian Parliament or does everybody have to leave Parliament Hill and go outside to eat?

Charlie Feldman: Yeah, this has been one of the biggest differences I've noticed.

So there's certainly cafeterias in every building that staff and sometimes members will show up to. Although often I see staff running to get food for their members instead, and there is a parliamentary restaurant, which typically is just members. There are occasions where it's open to staff for various things, but it's not nearly the food and drink culture that you see at Westminster.

In fact, our Parliament did once have a basement bar in the old building, but that led to a number of squabbles and mishaps, if I might put it that way.

Ruth Fox: There's been a few at Westminster.

Charlie Feldman: Yes, exactly. And the building burned down and after the 1916 fire, certainly there's no trace of saying, we need to have a parliamentary bar in the basement.

Again, I would say when I walk around Westminster and I say this with a lot of love, I certainly feel like there's still a bit of hierarchy and a bit of sort of stateness where I find the Canadian parliament's a bit more open and friendly in that way. But I think there's probably another, a number of other factors that lead into that.

And one of the things that comes up a lot is just our geography. We're the second largest country by landmass in the world. And so [00:06:00] members who come to Ottawa to be in Parliament, they're not going home necessarily for just a weekend depending on where they're from. Obviously some fly back and forth at the weekend, but some of 'em really do hang around and I think they interact differently as a result.

Ruth Fox: So what are the sittings like? Do they have terms like we do and extensive recesses or how many sitting days would they sit in a year?

Charlie Feldman: Oh gosh, we actually have a fairly light calendar this year and I say that with no shade to anybody on the House side. So typically it's a few weeks on, a week off, and we don't typically sit until the end of January.

We start up, go through to having a bigger Easter recess for a couple weeks, and then they're usually gone before Canada Day, which is July 1st. So mid to end of June they'll go home, they'll come back in, say September and sit through Christmas again a couple weeks on, a couple weeks off.

The House sits every day. In fact, we have an hour to go to private members business every day, which is a big difference between us and the UK House. The Senate typically sits three days a week, the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, although in recent years they've been sitting more on sort of a Monday afternoon or Friday morning where have you to discharge business.

[00:07:00] But, we sit, I would say, as often as they need to sit and certainly they have provisions on things like recall that allow them to play with their calendars that they need.

Ruth Fox: One of the things that is different is the chamber, because you've got the members, both sides, they face each other. This is not a hemisphere Parliament.

You've got the Speaker at the end of the room. But they sit at desks, they have chairs, they sit at desks, they can put papers and presumably laptops and iPads and so on on them. Not at all like Westminster in that regard.

Charlie Feldman: So yes, no one's fighting for space during question period. They have their assigned seats.

The whips actually determine where the members will sit. If you ever go to the gallery, you can get a little attendance sheet and see which desk is where. They used to sit at their desk at the end of a session and work through all their correspondence and whatnot, until eventually they got offices and staff going back into history over there.

And same for our senate. One of the big differences though is that we've always had a Senate Speaker. And so the thrones that sit in the front sort of very different than watching the woolsack and self-governance in [00:08:00] action. And we've always had an authority figure on that side guided.

Mark D'Arcy: And every year in Westminster you have the King's Speech, or before that the Queen's speech, the sovereign comes to Parliament.

It's a bit of a rarer event for the Canadian Parliament. But you have had King Charles over there.

Charlie Feldman: We had. We've had Her Majesty in the past come over. And it's certainly great when the sovereign comes. We had the sovereign come as well to sign our constitution as part of the repatriation in 1982 on the front lawn of Parliament, which is a great, exciting event for all of us.

And we certainly do the throne speech regularly. Our sessions are not, I would say they're maybe less predictable as yours in terms of their time. Some lasted as many as four years without having a single prorogation or getting to the dissolution. Others have been incredibly short.

We had an infamous one in December of 2008 when I think it was 13 days in we had a prorogation. As there was a bit of a crisis about whether there would be a coalition of the opposition trying to form the government instead of the government that was continuing from the previous Parliament. So I will say though, in terms of the sovereign and sovereign's [00:09:00] representative doing the work in Parliament, we were one of the last Commonwealth countries to move to having royal assent by written declaration instead of needing the Governor General to come down.

And I think it was only maybe 2005 that we finally said, we could probably do this in writing instead of having to put everything on pause and have the Commoners come over to the Senate and do the full ceremony. But it still is nice to do when we do it, which we have to by law at least I believe once a year.

Ruth Fox: And how many bills pass through the Canadian Parliament and you haven't got an average session. Clearly if a session can last four years, but in a year, how many bills would you expect to see?

Charlie Feldman: It is so varied. I will say one of the biggest differences legislatively that we have is that it's become tradition to do a giant budget bill every year.

And whereas I think a lot of legislatures would just have the whole thing focused on the budget, we have a part literally called other measures that have a whole bunch of other things. So some parliaments have a budget bill that has been over a thousand pages, for example, all sorts of, environmental law, criminal law of fisheries changes and whatnot.

So I don't know that the bill number is necessarily helpful to know, but I can tell you that in the most recently completed parliamentary session, so this is going [00:10:00] from I think, end of 2021 to start of 2025, if my math is right. We had 93 bills receive Royal Assent, of which 26% were non-government in origin though.

Ruth Fox: So you have a lot of bills from backbenches.

Charlie Feldman: Yes. The stats on that are interesting because we've seen more senate initiated non-government bills than at any point in the Senate's history, barring private bills for divorce, which the whole Senate cottage industry once upon a time.

Mark D'Arcy: Come on to that one in a bit.

Charlie Feldman: I'm sure.

Ruth Fox: Why has there been that increase from the Senate?

Charlie Feldman: The speculation has to do with reforms that started in 2015 to have independent senators appointed, whereas it had previously been very clear that they would be of the Prime Minister's political party, that's moved on to having commissions and making recommendations.

And you might imagine that people who are appointed based on say long careers in particular area might want to advance that area and that cause through legislation as well. And we also had reforms to how our PMBs work. So unlike your Friday system, which I always find quite interesting,

Ruth Fox: Our private members bills.

Charlie Feldman: Yeah. We actually debate them for an hour every day. And so more of them will come up for debate and a vote. And now we've [00:11:00] had reforms that sort of force the question to be put on those bills.

Mark D'Arcy: But the point of your book is not so much to point out the kind of constitutional differences between Westminster and Ottawa.

What it is is a collection of stories about the bizarre, the wacky, the strange that occur on the fringes of parliamentary life. One of the things that struck me going through it was that the iconography in some ways is quite similar. There are lots of portraits of impressively bearded Victorian states persons standing in suitably solemn poses, but you start getting stories as one goes through your book of how these people have fistfights and tear chunks out of each other's impressive Victorian beard.

Charlie Feldman: Yes, I mean this is the thing, so this year marks my 20th year since first getting a parliamentary pass. And when you start working on the Hill, you get stories every once in a while and they're not in the procedural books and they're certainly not in the great biographies of Prime Minister and political parties.

And you think, did that really happen? Did a member really pull out a chunk of another member's beard? Yes. Arthur Bunster [00:12:00] from, British Columbia known as a brewer of beer in that province in a brewer of trouble in Ottawa, got his feelings a bit overwrought when someone was making some sounds during his speech. The exact nature of the sounds is not unfortunately captured in Hansard. This is of course the era where we didn't have audio visual recording.

So whether it was a cat in distress, a juice harp, which is sort of a mouth metal instrument that you play and makes vibrations, or whether it was a kazoo, I believe was the other speculation. He was quite incensed and sent a missive out to whoever made the noise to see me in room 13. And as we know from all the reports, he understood that it was another member, Mr. Cheval, who promptly upon arriving to room 13, found himself in a physical altercation, was actually in a headlock, and as he decided there was very few ways out, he ripped patches out of Mr. Bunster's beard. There was a whole bunch of side stories there, whether or not the Prime Minister was also in this room with a knife upon his arrival. Whether other members watched the fight and encouraged it. We don't really know. But we do have indications that [00:13:00] Cheval paraded around the Commons with the beard patch in his hand as a sort of trophy to celebrate his victory.

Although banter insists that no, in fact, he'd gotten some maybe mattress stuffing and was creating that instead. Although I do wonder who carries mattress stuffing and did it really look like a thick beard? Suffice it to say that's clearly not a story that you're going to find in Hansard, in the journals, but digging through old newspapers, we can piece together the details of these amazing things that happened once upon a time that are just out of sight and out of mind for most people.

And I do get why we would not necessarily highlight the less savoury parts of our history, such as the fist fights and the drinking and whatnot. But they are a part of the parliamentary story. And I think it also highlights the fact that these are just people that we elect. And sometimes people don't behave in the ways you might hope.

Sometimes their fists do the talking. And I should say, that was neither the first nor the last fist fight that we saw in our house.

Ruth Fox: One of my favourite stories is the member who brings in literally a full-size salmon. The tale is slightly different depending upon who's telling it, but [00:14:00] bangs it down on the table of the Prime Minister or whirls it round with a view to hitting members with it. Salmon smell for a start. What on earth was going on?

Charlie Feldman: Yes. Jim Fulton was from British Columbia, and the government had done a salmonoid enhancement project, which I will be quite honest, my fishery knowledge is limited. So I dug into this and they basically wanted to modify fish to make them spawn better.

But the programme was too successful. There were too many fish, so they held some of them back in the river so they couldn't go upstream. He was upset that this meant lost profits for fishers who would otherwise benefit from having all these extra fish. So the question he's asking at the time, while he's in question period, is, why should the government make it illegal to possess, he pulls out the fish, salmon? And the interesting thing is the editor's note in Hansard reads, quote editor's note, where upon Mr. Fulton crossed the floor and placed salmon on the Prime Minister's desk. And I'll just note, the Prime Minister was luckily not present. He was at a conference elsewhere, and depending which paper you read, either it fell to the Clerk or a [00:15:00] page to remove the bloodied fish.

We are told, which I'm sure other duties as required, covers that somewhere. There's two interesting things to me about this. One is the Speaker barely reacts and just like this, just move it along, guys, this is gonna be a long day, I don't wanna deal with this.

It is a question of how he actually brought it into the chamber. A later MP said, on good authority, that it was in fact in Ziploc bags, in the trousers of Jim Fulton as he walked in the chamber. Another story says that it was actually wrapped in newspaper in his briefcase. Either way, I have questions about how those trousers or the briefcase must have smelled afterwards.

Jim Fulton, of course, got, ejected from Parliament a little later for another incident. I believe he called the Prime Minister a quote, fat chubby sucker, end quote, just to say he was quite the character, while he was still there.

Unfortunately, I thought that fish should be preserved in the library of Parliament, but regrettably, that has not happened, although for the fans preserved food, I do need to note, Alberta's legislative assembly has a hamburger in its library that is still preserved to this day, tabled by a member during a discussion about how bad the parliamentary cafeteria food was. Add that to your tourism list next time you go. [00:16:00] But I will say the benefit of the fish incident being in 1985 is we do have the video.

It's a little grainy, but you can see him haul out the fish and, bothered in sort of a kind of unhappy looking Speaker. And, I do like that on the audio, but not in Hansard, you can hear someone say, holy mackerel, which I don't know how intentional that might've been.

Mark D'Arcy: What you do get is an impression here that the Canadian Parliament is not, how can I put this delicately, as stayed, as formal as even the UK House of Commons even today.

Charlie Feldman: I think there's a bit of a perception problem that we have when it comes to parliaments because if you read the formal debates or you look at legislative outcomes, you don't get the silly side and Parliament don't necessarily advertise it.

So one of the stories in there is about a unhappy constituent who came to the gallery one day with a container of her faeces, and I apologise to listeners at home on this one, throws it in upset and it lands poorly on a backbencher, had nothing to do with anything she was concerned about, not everyone's aim is great and it spoils his [00:17:00] clothes.

And I thought that's gotta be a first in the world that this has happened, that a parliamentarian's been splattered, and no, you had a manure throwing incident in Westminster once upon a dime. And once I dug into that more, I was surprised to learn that one of the perpetrators was the daughter of the Prime Minister of Malta.

Just to say parliamentary history has many quirky and fun things that we just don't talk about. I do think that we are maybe a bit more, I don't wanna say more fun, I don't wanna say more rambunctious, but we might have more stories in the recent era, perhaps, than you do. But I'm certainly well aware that your early history is full of perhaps more bloody feuds and whatnot than perhaps we've gotten to.

Mark D'Arcy: I like the story that comes actually from quite a while ago now. I think sort the late 19th century about a divorce. This was one that revealed that some Canadian senators found themselves performing a somewhat unusual and not particularly attractive duty after a particular lady attempted to get a divorce on the grounds of non consummation.

Charlie Feldman: Yes, [00:18:00] this is one of my favourite stories to talk about, and I recognise that this is a family pod.

Ruth Fox: I was going to say, I'm looking at you, Charlie, this is a family podcast.

Charlie Feldman: How to tell this story.

Mark D'Arcy: So mom and dad will be sitting down with their children to listen to this podcast later on.

Charlie Feldman: Apologies in advance to everyone.

So back in the early days, you needed to come to Parliament to get a divorce. Same as in Westminster, Canada, you might be surprised to learn that the last divorces that Parliament had to deal with were as late as 1969, we took our time with some province within that one. And so in the early days, they were used to hearing adultery cases and they thought, let's have a committee to hear the evidence.

And so people would come forward and say, oh, I saw his carriage leaving her house at an ungodly hour, and his hat was off his head, and no matter what were you doing in an ungodly hour, staring at their house, but, okay, we'll leave that aside. And I should note there were fraud trials because there are all sorts of people working together to create fake evidence, whatnot.

Anyway, 1888, Mary Matilda White of Port Dover, Ontario becomes the first person to present a petition for divorce in the grounds of non consummation of the marriage. And I believe she says that he has a rigidity or malformation of the parts holding incurable by [00:19:00] craft or skill, I believe is the wording on that one, and keeping with the times it hangs in the Senate door for 14 days during which time every parliamentary journalist, of course, takes a great interest in this particular case.

And the question becomes, what do we do? So the senators say, we have a committee that has to hear the evidence on these matters, so we'll send it to that committee. The divorce committee says, what kind of evidence do we need to hear about his potential impotence? And a decision is made to ask two other senators who had medical training to essentially do an examination.

Now, I need to remind you, this is in the period where senators served for life. I believe almost being 81 at the time or something. And so the gentleman in question, we get press descriptions and I regret the word I will use, as a press word at the time, that he was a quote unquote dwarf. And so essentially as we understand it, he says, my parts are functional, but they might not be scale that you're used to.

And he says, perhaps you need to. Yeah, I know it's quite the story, right? And he says, perhaps you should take a look at her. And this is where things really go off the rails because we get essentially a [00:20:00] terse committee statement that her physical condition is inconsistent with her petition.

So if you're looking through that and trying to think it through, okay, what physically could they have looked at to determine that her marriage wasn't consummated and no it wasn't that she was pregnant. We can certainly think that medical thinking has evolved since 1888. However, the scandal erupts there because other senators thought, we can't really work off the basis of this very terse committee report what actually happened.

And wow. There's a discussion on that. It turns out the committee evidence has somehow leaked and has been seen in the hands of a boy of only 15 summers. Senators are outraged wondering whether or not they'll get prosecuted for obscenity. They want charges against whoever leaked the evidence, and ultimately a motion is moved to destroy any remaining copies of it.

Now, if a copy had been kept, unfortunately it would no longer exist after the parliamentary fire in 1916. However, we have press reporting on what happened after the fact. So she gets sent home with her marriage licence, and you can imagine how exciting marriage must have been to this guy, continued after the fact that she told everybody in the world, and [00:21:00] the press across the country, of course, picked up on this story, that he was impotent. What we understand that apparently the gentleman who might have supported her petition because it costs money to do might have actually been another lover who was trying to take her from her husband. And one of the stories we have from a local paper that at some point he later shows up on their doorstep and shoots the husband in the face. So there might have been a little more happening in Port Dover, Ontario.

And this story, suffice to say, it is the first and only example I could find of a parliamentary genital exam in our system. However, interestingly enough, our practise on parliamentary divorce says this particular practise comes from Westminster.

So thank you for what you might have given to us. I will freely say I've not gone down the road of Westminster genital exams.

Mark D'Arcy: I'll have a look through Erskine May now.

Charlie Feldman: Yes.

Ruth Fox: I don't recall seeing anything as such.

Mark D'Arcy: One of the other points about the Canadian Parliament is that it's bilingual. And this has its uses, it turns out. I gather that there is an [00:22:00] example of a Canadian parliamentarian writing a book and attempted to use the translation into French that's provided in Hansard as a cheap way of getting a French translation of his publication.

Charlie Feldman: When I said I was writing this book, this story came up and people, oh, you're talking about the guy who I believe one rendering is he held the Senate captive overnight to read his book in, or had arranged with the Speaker to hold a session just to get the Hansard copy the next morning and whatnot.

The story's a little more complicated than that. So we're in an era where there's a lot of friction between the Senate and the House over a controversial tax bill, and it's being filibustered in the Senate. And Senator Gigantes, I'm not quite sure how to say his name, so apologies to his family on that one, starts reading a text and it's unclear exactly what he's reading.

And some senators say, sort of point of order, can you tell us where you are, what you're doing? He's like oh, I'm only on page 31. There's only 180 left, and you eventually start to realise it's sort of a book about economics. He starts reading in some formulas and whatnot. The story takes off because there's eventually a pause in the Senate sitting during which the opposition says that [00:23:00] what he's doing is fraudulent because he's just trying to get a French copy of his book.

If you read the Hansard debates, he says, several times and a bit indignant, I would never use a translation from this place if I want to be something someone would read, which is not so much meant as a dig at the translators, although I did read it that way the first time essentially means you'd still have to edit it.

You still have to use it and all that stuff. So the truth is, he does read extensively from his book. Does he actually publish that translation? No. The French in the subsequent book, I can tell you, is quite different than what was answered. He actually doesn't even finish reading the thing. But because he takes so many hours reading this thing with the footnotes, the popular narrative has sprung that he in fact used the Hansard in that way.

A thought exercise I've asked people to do is to say, if it were really Hansard, could he get the copyright on it and could he turn a profit? And there's a whole bunch of parliamentary law nerd geekery behind that question and the answer to it. Suffice it to say that people like to tell this story, and it's, in fact, I believe in a book from the former Language Commissioner. It is example of when official languages can go and go the wrong way. And [00:24:00] it's just unfortunately been misreported. I am confident that there are people who have put portions of their speeches for the purpose of getting them translated, but the story that an entire book was done and perhaps done on the sly or an overnight thing, or just him and the Speaker for the purpose of the thing, that's not true.

But official languages do have their fun in Parliament in other ways, both positive and negative and keeping with the family pod theme. I'll try to tell this story very delicately. One of my recent favourites, we had a committee dealing with a non-government bill about access to pornography. And a campaigner who's a witness says, I'd like to make sure we all know what we're talking about.

So I've gathered titles from the most popular pornography websites to let you know what the videos are of the day. And I can just say that some of the language that followed was untranslatable and the poor interpreter in the booth trying to provide a simultaneous translation of some of the most vulgar things you could possibly think of.

It was quite fun to listen to. Someone fights for their life and getting through that. But I can say that official language is the other way have also raised concerns about quality of [00:25:00] translation, members complaining the Hansard excerpt where someone says, Mr. Speaker, I'm happy that they're putting the cafeteria in French. However, here are the five words they've misspelt this week on the signboard and whatnot. So it's been an interesting struggle since day one. And in fact, when I say day one, the very first Speaker of the House, there was a government and opposition deal to have that person, the Speaker, and you can see an objection raised immediately about the lack of french ability and that person.

And I would say since we've had a bit of an alternation between French and English speakers, and now the expectation, of course, is that they're fully bilingual, but it was a problem in the early days, and we obviously didn't have a translation system back then. So there was an informal practise where if a French speech was made, someone would essentially get up and translate it for the members who weren't able to follow.

And obviously a lot got lost. And our early debate records are very incomplete for what happened in French, unfortunately.

Ruth Fox: One of the things that often excites journalists and watches of the Westminster Parliament is when there's a row about language, when something's ruled out, it's not parliamentary, it's [00:26:00] unparliamentary, because they've used words that you're not supposed to use. What kind of words in the Canadian Parliament that, family podcast.

Charlie Feldman: Yeah.

Ruth Fox: What kinds of rows break out in Parliament Hill about language?

Charlie Feldman: Oh gosh. It depends which era you're talking about. There's a great press kerfuffle and parliamentary kerfuffle over the word fourflusher, which I immediately have to admit I had to look up and it's someone who cheats at cards.

Mark D'Arcy: I am relieved to hear it.

Charlie Feldman: Yeah, I thought, oh, this is an interesting one. No, I think one of the more famous ones is a member who calls someone a Canadian Mussolini, and then he's asked to withdraw and said fine, I'll correct myself, he's a Canadian Hitler. And I can assure you the Speaker wasn't a fan of that correction either.

So there's certainly questions about where profanity is, and there is a off reported incident of our Prime Minister, back in the day, Pierre Trudeau Sr, whether or not he actually used the expression fuddle duddle or something slightly stronger. I can tell you that Hansard does not actually record fuddle duddle on that particular date.

It's [00:27:00] later interventions about it that raise ire. But certainly a lie was a common thing to raise or synonyms for it, and mendacity and this, that and the other, hypocrite still remains one of the ones you can't go near, provided you're being clear about attributing it to a member and not so much this policy would be hypocritical, this that and the other.

But certainly to say members have skirted near the line, perhaps more often than they ought to have in the early period. So there is a great list from once upon a time with things like the end of the political sewer pipe, someone gets called a pompous bag of wind.

Sometimes you do admire the creativity of a member, especially lack thereof. I'm not sure what the most recent one has been, but the rule that people seem to forget is that it has to provoke reaction in the moment. It's not just that you can come five days later and say I've noticed in the Hansard this, that, and the other, was said.

And so there's an example, I believe we're on the anniversary of it now, on the recording of this podcast. There's actually one that's quite interesting where it's after the fact, a member gets up a couple days later to raise the Speaker, someone [00:28:00] said that this particular member was quote, deservedly acquiring a reputation for being one of the thickest and dumbest members of the House of Commons.

And while the Speaker says that language should not be used and is deplorable, you needed to raise it in the moment as a point of order, and certainly language can evolve over time. Communist was off limits at a point, and now, if it's an applicable label, you can certainly use it.

Mark D'Arcy: It's striking a bit of cross pollination there because the Westminster has its list of words that you're not supposed to use. It's slightly apocryphal. There's actually a black list of bad words that may not be uttered in the chamber, but there are words that Speakers have ruled out of order in the past, and that seems to have translated over a bit into Canada completely off the politics.

One of the stories that particularly caught my eye was that for quite a while there was a colony of feral cats living on Parliament Hill, and there's another splendid photograph in the book of these two rather happy looking cats sitting on a bench sunning themselves. Contentedly. And their paws tucked in, staring at rather arrogantly at the photographer.

And what happened [00:29:00] about that? How did that come about?

Charlie Feldman: Yeah, this is a great story. Visitors to Parliament Hill over the years, pre say 2010, were always like, where are the cats? I've heard about the cats. And then they'd see these cat condos at one point built where they go in and out and whatnot.

So it started that once upon a time, as a story goes, the building had way too many mice, and so cats were employed to clean the building of the mice. And we do have records of newspaper columnists saying, one of the pastimes in Parliament was listening to the cats fornicate. but I'll leave that aside. Sorry, Ruth. So lucky, this is just audio and not video for the reactions in the room but no. So once the cats were no longer needed for that particular purpose, the question became what happened? And they were roaming the hill and eventually some volunteers came along and started caring for them.

And eventually out of that grew the cat colony. And so there was a cat woman of Parliament Hill, Irene Desormeaux I believe. That was her title. That was how she was known.

Mark D'Arcy: Quite like the birdman of Alcaraz.

Charlie Feldman: Yes, As the story goes, she was one of the few people let past the security cordons [00:30:00] after a national security event because she was like, I need to feed the cats.

And yeah, we see you up here every day, you're fine. And then when she passed, it was handed over to her neighbour, who as kind of an odd comment here, used to have a different pastime on the hill, which is he was famous for going around with a metal detector, picking up tourists' lost rings and coins.

In any event, he starts taking care of the cats and the cat colony becomes such a sort of attractive tourism feature that eventually they actually closed the donation box because they had too much money coming in. And for many years you could just, parliamentarians would come out, the tourists of course loved them, and they were cute cats.

And I have vivid memories of seeing them. There's actually there's a whole blog devoted to them.

Ruth Fox: I was gonna say. They'd have social media the cats now.

Charlie Feldman: Yeah. Now they definitely would. However, as we've done renovations on Parliament Hill, that space need to be reclaimed for other things. So the cats eventually rehomed.

And there was actually a New York Times writeup on the death of the last cat of the cat colony quite recently. I know it's tragic. But they were certainly a staple on the hill for many years. And it's funny to think that one of the features of Parliament Hills, you'd say, here's this colony of cats, and they did have to plead [00:31:00] with people to stop abandoning any cats there. Because it didn't turn out the colony would take them in. In fact, it'd be rather traumatic for your cat if you just let them in and they'd be treated as a bit of a leper, but yeah.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. They were ejected with extreme prejudice.

Charlie Feldman: Yes. that's fair to say. But the pictures of the cat colony, there's only the one in the book, but if you get online, you can see a whole bunch of just cute little guys going about, and I, just, the cats were certainly better received than the rabbits. And this is of course, a story that needs to be told.

Speaker George Black is famous for being involved in the Yukon Gold Rush and having a gun in his desk. And one day, as the story goes, saw some rabbits nibbling at some freshly cured Parliament lawn, and decided he should shoot six of them from his office window. There has been doubt cast about whether he actually did this or just bragged about it or what have you.

But the Toronto Star says that it sees some hanging up from one of the ceilings in the parliamentary kitchen to be served at the dinner and that his gun looked well used. So yes, apparently our Speaker once upon a time did in fact start shooting out of his window and getting rid of the rabbits.

Ruth Fox: Let's not give [00:32:00] Lindsay Hoyle a gun.

Mark D'Arcy: Famous animal lover, of course, Mr. Speaker Lindsay. Charlie, you are a bit of an aficionado of Parliament and governments, currently with the Scottish government, you're previously the Canadian Civil Service. One of the reasons we can't ask you about some of the interesting developments in Canadian politics just at the moment.

And you've travelled a lot through Europe while you're over this side of the Atlantic, visiting lots of other parliaments as well. Do you have a favourite Parliament?

Charlie Feldman: Ooh, favourite is asking me to choose between my young here. I can't do that because I love visiting Parliaments just for the variety that you get. It's everything from what the seating structure looks like, to what do they choose for art, and, if they have commemorative monuments and whatnot, what do they choose to celebrate?

And I think you pick up something different with every Parliament. Sometimes it's those hilarious anecdotes that you weren't expecting. So there's one where I was in Copenhagen and they hired an artist to paint these murals, and he ended up putting political messaging in there that was a bit of a dig at some of the politicians at the time.

And there's things that you might not expect as sort of facts of history. So if you've [00:33:00] gone to Berlin and see the German Parliament, there's a whole bunch of graffiti, which is left behind from the troops that were there at the end of the second World War, which is super interesting to see. But I think every one of them just makes you think about something a little bit different.

So I was in San Marino of all places, and they were talking about how they have two leaders at once because their thought was that power should never be concentrated in one set of hands. And so if I followed the system correctly, the co-leadership role last six months and will essentially rotate through the entirety of the legislative body.

So that, or the elected body, so that everyone gets a chance to experience that. So I think I'm partial as somebody who speaks French to the French one, just because I went to l'Assemblee Nationale, you're like, wow, this is so beautiful and wonderful and special, but, even there, the unexpected. So the person showing me around took me to the library, which is the spectacular room. If you've not seen what just the main reading area looks like, you really should google a picture. She said, look in the corner, and I thought, okay, what's in the corner? I go, and there's this little display box, and I said, it's a replication of Joan of Arc's trial record. And I thought, oh, that's not what you'd [00:34:00] expect necessarily to see.

Mark D'Arcy: One of the issues that Parliament in the UK is facing is whether or not it ought to move out to some sort of new building. Do you like parliaments that are in old, long established centuries old venues? Or is there something to be said for having a spanking new architect designed, glowing, modern venue with all mod cons?

Charlie Feldman: I am partial to flooding ceilings, broken electrical, mice potentially gonna fall into a river. I don't know if anybody knows any Parliament like that might be nearby and worth visiting to say this. I think you have to have the right balance, but you obviously need a safe workplace for the employees and the members.

You need something functional. And certainly with technological advancements, trying to fit a very old chamber into the modern times is a bit of a challenge. I love seeing the old ones for sort of the accomplishments of design and creativity and just grandeur, but I certainly think a modern one is much more practical.

And I was recently in Liechtenstein, which I think did theirs in 2009, I wanna say. And, oddly enough, the building is shaped like a [00:35:00] Toblerone. If you look at the side, it's really high triangle, but it's absolutely beautiful and they tried to blend it in with the surroundings and whatnot.

So I think there are definitely ways to do it. I really think Australia is a bit of the gold standard there. So you have the old Parliament House, which is now the museum of Australian democracy, which is devoted to exhibits all about Parliament and now government's work. And it's just a wonderful place.

And then you have the new built for purpose Parliament building, which is fantastic to visit if you've had the chance. So I'm torn on the answer to your question. Suffice to say, I don't think you should tear down old Parliament just for the sake of saying, it's old, let's build something new.

But there is a certain practicality if everybody's being afraid of ceiling chunks falling. And obviously I have the Canadian bias, we are currently renovating our big Parliament building and have moved into temporary quarters for our House and Senate. They are really worth seeing. They're both stunning for different reasons.

I obviously look forward to the main building coming back online whenever that might be. Hopefully I'm still around for it. That's not a dig at anybody. It's just able to take the time it takes. But I am hopeful that somehow we'll be able to preserve all of [00:36:00] it.

Ruth Fox: And, so you think the temporary buildings that they've decanted into are as stunning as well as the main building?

Charlie Feldman: Oh yes. The House of Commons in particular, not to say the Senate, it's in a building that used to be the train station then became the government conference centre. It's done a really nice job of turning it, the House of Commons building, the temporary chamber of the House Commons in the building that used to be house offices previously was the Department of Justice.

They've done just an outstanding architectural thing. I think it's won several architectural awards. If you didn't know there was another apartment building right next to it and had never seen it, you would still think, wow, this is really beautiful and whatnot. So it was very deliberate. The whole project and what they've done, I think is, not to say that any other Parliament should take lessons on restoration and renewal, but if you're looking for inspiration, perhaps a trip to Ottawa might be worth it.

Ruth Fox: And what will they do with those buildings then, once the MPs have gone back into the refurbished Parliament Hill? Is there a plan for those buildings?

Charlie Feldman: Oh gosh. That is not a question for me to say, I don't think. I don't think anybody has quite the answer yet. I've heard different theories floated, if I can say [00:37:00] that.

Some have said the temporary space should become a parallel debating chamber like Westminster Hall. Some have. Said that maybe just treat the original like a museum maybe. Have them rotate around so everyone can experience everything. So I don't think there's a decision on that yet. But I don't think the final end state of the main building is known yet.

Ruth Fox: And it's been expensive. So what's been the sort of reaction in terms of the public opinion?

Charlie Feldman: Oh gosh. I've not seen any public opinion to suggest that people think we should just stop in our tracks now that there's bulldozers.

But to say, I think everyone understood, we had a building that was ravaged by fire in 1916. There were things like asbestos risks and phone closets that didn't really serve their function. And it was really time to update. And, if I understand correctly, and I'm stepping probably on the toes of a lot of people at the House and Senate administrations right now, there are parts of this centre block that we weren't even sure what they were constructed with.

No one had documented it. So there were all sorts of questions. I remember I [00:38:00] was on the hill in I wanna say 2010. We had an earthquake and they asked us to evacuate. And it wasn't because they were actually worried about the structural integrity of the west block, which we were in at the time. They were worried that the asbestos in the roof would go airborne.

And so it's just a completely different, I think, reason for doing some of the work that's been done. That said, though, we are going to be putting in a giant visitor centre. And I'd say, if you're a nerd about this sort of thing, there's some great documentary stuff on YouTube where you can see drone footage and going inside as right now they're doing the seismic stuff and whatnot.

It's really interesting to see how you renovate Parliament from the outside in.

Mark D'Arcy: Charlie Feldman, thanks very much indeed for joining Ruth and me on the pod today. It's always an absolutely fascinating exercise to journey into a different branch, if you like, of the Westminster parliamentary tradition, and see how things have evolved differently for different circumstances.

So the book is called Unparliamentary, worth a Read for anyone interested in how the Canadian Parliament's subculture operates.

Charlie Feldman: Thank you so much for having me.

Ruth Fox: Thanks Charlie.

Mark D'Arcy: [00:39:00] Thank you.

Outro: Parliament Matters is produced by the Hansard Society and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. For more information, visit hansardsociety.org.uk/pm, or find us on social media @HansardSociety.