Building Connections and Sharing Best Practices: Parliamentary Service Organizations

Parliaments do not operate as silos. Parliamentarians are keenly aware of debates occurring among their colleagues across the country and internationally. Legislation adopted in one jurisdiction is often studied and consulted when another parliament is considering a similar issue. And, every year, parliamentarians attend meetings and conferences, such as the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association’s gatherings, to meet their counterparts, discuss their roles and systems of governance, and forge important networks to exchange information. Many parliamentary service staff have developed their own organizations for similar reasons. In this roundtable, the Canadian Parliamentary Review invited representatives of some of these groups to discuss the work their membership does and how their membership benefits from participating in groups that facilitate networking and information sharing.

Participants: Gerry Burla, Andrew Henry, Deanna Wilson, and Bruce C. Young

Gerry Burla is the Legislative Librarian for the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly and president of the Association of Parliamentary Libraries in Canada (APLIC). Andrew Henry is Manager of Broadcasting Services for the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia and a former member of the Legislative Broadcasters and Recorders Association (LRA). Deanna Wilson is Executive Director of the Administrative Branch in the Manitoba Legislative Assembly and president of the Canadian Association of Parliamentary Administrators (CAPA). Bruce C. Young is Head of Parliamentary Publications for the House of Commons and former president of the Canadian Hansard Society.

CPR: Could you let us know a little bit about when and why your parliamentary service organization formed?

Bruce C. Young: In the Canadian House of Commons, we have been doing Hansard transcripts since 1885. It was a decision of Parliament at that time to have an internal department provide that service. At the time, Members of Parliament were not happy with what the media were transcribing and publishing.

But, in terms of an association with other parliaments who produce Hansards in Canada, we’ve had a group for about the past 48 years that has included all 10 provinces, the three territories, and at the federal level, the House of Commons, Senate, and Translation Bureau.

Gerry Burla: Specialized libraries tend to be few to begin with, and as far as legislative libraries go, there are only 13 across the entire country. The Association of Parliamentary Libraries in Canada (APLIC) formed in 1975 so we could support each other as a peer group, share resources, information, and best practices, and essentially to reduce the sense of isolation.

Library directors, or head librarians, meet in person to exchange ideas and get a sense of each other’s work spaces each year. In 2022, the meeting was held at the National Assembly in Québec City. Ottawa hosts this year. In 2024, the librarians will be visiting Yellowknife. Over the years, more and more library staff have been invited to attend, and it has actually grown into a mini-conference.

We’re also part of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions’ Library and Research Services for Parliaments Section – IFLAPARL. Most often, it’s national libraries that get together, but not always. This group discusses research, public communication, and education topics that tend to be universal in nature.

Deanna Wilson: I’m the executive director of the Canadian Association of Parliamentary Administration (CAPA). We represent human resources, finance, IT support and other administrative staff behind the scenes for the legislatures. CAPA was founded in 2001 and, much as Gerry was just saying, we were trying to form a connection to get rid of that feeling of isolation, of being the only ones who are dealing with an issue. Working within our environments is very different from most HR, IT, and finance departments, so it was about the exchange of data and ideas on jurisdictional issues and facilitating communication between members and serving as professional development for members as well.

Andrew Henry: I’m the manager of Broadcasting Services at the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. As far as the broadcasting portion of Hansard is concerned, we go back to 1991 when the initiative first came forward to start making a permanent video record of the assembly sittings.

We have been a member of a somewhat informal association called the Legislative Broadcasters and Recorders Association (LBRA). As Diana mentioned, this was an opportunity to meet with like-minded professionals to discuss things that pertain to what all of us experience.

LBRA was formed at the suggestion of a vendor who was dealing with all of us individually. They suggested we might want to connect with our peers and share information. That loose organization continued until the pandemic when things kind of fizzled out. A suggestion was made to amalgamate the LBRA members within CAPA. This will be my first year attending CAPA as a legislative broadcaster, which will be interesting.

CPR: Are there a lot of differences in terms of the experience of members of your associations who are working within the different parliamentary precincts? For example, are there major differences in terms of the work in large or small jurisdictions, or the number of workers on contract versus permanent employment?

BY: We’ve found that the steps everybody follows are, certainly at a high level, very similar if not identical. But how we do each of those steps tends to be very different. And this goes to your question about staffing –specifically part-time versus full-time and accessibility to the necessary staff. But, generally speaking, the steps are the same.

GB: All the libraries provide balanced, nonpartisan information to each of our clients, regardless of political stripe. How we do that will vary. It won’t just vary based on the library, but also based on the resources. Every library has its own subscriptions and its own resources behind the desk. There are also additional tasks that are sometimes assigned to the library staff. These differ across the country. Some librarians have responsibility as far as editing goes and some handle website development.

DW: I think, similarly, we find that the basic function is going to remain similar across all the jurisdictions; the differences we see, of course, are within the larger jurisdictions. They have much more specialized positions. In some jurisdictions you may have one director of HR who’s looking after everything. In other jurisdictions you’re going to have a Director of Talent Services, a Director of Employee Relations, etc. Some jurisdictions have an immense amount of staff; the House of Commons, for example. Whereas other jurisdictions, such as Newfoundland and Labrador, there’s one person who’s essentially doing all these roles.

Getting together as a group is a good opportunity for us to be able to learn from the larger jurisdictions, because they’re quite often ahead of the curve in terms of new and innovative ideas and ways to handle things. Eventually smaller jurisdictions are able to catch up with that.

AH: I’m going to follow the common theme. There are similarities in the final product, but the structure of how we fit within the organization or separate organizations is different between every assembly. That, in turn, affects the roles and responsibilities to a degree and the services that we offer. Some legislatures have smaller crews responsible for broadcasting and streaming than what you would have in Ottawa, Edmonton, or Victoria. In our case, we work closely with our colleagues in the Publishing and Reporting units of Hansard Services. This situation may be different from the type of workflow that some other legislatures experience.

CPR: Do you find that there’s a lot of movement between provinces in terms of employees?

BY: I can say, from our perspective, it’s happened a few times. It tends to be more permanent in nature as opposed to a back and forth – you know, do some work for one legislature, then do some work for a different legislature, then go back to the first. At least from what I’ve seen so far. And there is typically a location requirement most of the time. It’s nice to say that we’ve got work, but you’ve also got to be here to do it. And that doesn’t obviously work for everybody, which makes sense.

GB: I cannot think of an instance where, for example, the librarian in Queen’s Park was traded to Victoria. But there is some movement in library circles themselves. In my brief experience, and I’ve been in the room for six years, the positions are long term. The librarians serve for decades.

DW: I haven’t known of any movement across parliaments. We do certainly share job postings when there are openings within our assembly. We circulate them through our listserv, but I’m not aware of any movement that has happened.

AH: In our case, I would say it’s the exception rather than the rule. Specifically, within the broadcasting unit, it’s not very common at all.

CPR: What would you say is probably the most important current or emerging issue within your particular profession or group? When you’ve gotten together in the last year or two, has there been a hot topic of discussion?

BY: This question is probably the easiest one for me to answer. It’s one that has the most uniform response, I think, from within the Hansard Association, both the Canadian and British associations. There are two things. One is voice recognition technology and the second is staffing. Staffing has been a long-standing issue for people. It has to do with the seasonal or sporadic nature of the sitting schedules of the various legislatures and finding qualified people who are available to work for only part of a year. Voice recognition software has been something that has been in the periphery for years; but, within the last two years, it’s really grown dramatically and it is actually now a viable option that several legislatures are using. We’re all dealing with how best to incorporate that software into our own processes.

GB: Emerging technologies are big for us. Often the smaller legislative libraries are more reliant on these new technologies because there’s fewer staff, and the gizmos must work harder. Libraries have been on the demise for my entire career, you know? But don’t count us out just yet. Artificial intelligence is the next supposed threat. Will that replace reference librarians? No. I mean the interface is improving for sure, but the results are still questionable. You know, “garbage in, garbage out.” You still need that human interaction to filter what’s produced. Will it be a tool used in libraries? Absolutely. I mean we’ve used it up here. The way people are going to be searching in the future will change and our metadata is definitely going to be enhanced, particularly with methodologies to incorporate Indigenous languages and Indigenous scripts. Not all our software can even support some of the characters in these scripts. Right now, that is one of our challenges.

DW: Within the HR side of things, I think remote work still is a current issue – especially with the whole shift over the pandemic to a lot of places offering remote work. We’re still discovering the impacts of that. The expectation of employers and employees going forward is quite different. From the IT perspective, it’s the ongoing process of moving to cloud based technology, and making sure the information is secure. For finance there is a focus on comptrollership, safeguarding the public trust, and providing transparency with where the funds are going. I think that’s a current and continuing issue, not necessarily an emerging one. It’s been there for a while.

AH: Technology, of course, is always at the forefront of what we’re doing, and there are challenges inherent with rapid advances in technology. Many of us are still dealing with supply chain issues and have made infrastructure investments that can present challenges when we’re trying to expand that to meet the needs of our assemblies. There are also challenges maintaining a virtual platform into the business of the Assembly on many levels.

CPR: How well do you think parliamentarians understand the services that you provide? Is there a lot of behind the scenes work that they’re not aware of? Or, once they’ve been in the environment for a while, do you think that they have a good understanding of the work that you do to support their work?

BY: I can only comment specifically on what I think federal Members of Parliament understand about Hansard. Some understand very well what goes on behind the scenes, and some don’t. While I would suggest that the second group is larger than the first, that also makes perfect sense. I mean, they’ve got so much on their plates that the nuances of how we edit their text is never going to make it onto their priority list.

GB: Libraries tend to be a mystery to most people, not just parliamentarians. I know our MLAs and our staff are very appreciative of the work we do, but I agree that it’s unlikely that they know all the background that goes into the tasks that we actually perform. You know, the metadata fairy doesn’t come in the middle of the night to create discovery targets. (Laughs) Somebody has to go in there and put this information in.

The strange thing is, libraries and librarians don’t mind; we acknowledge that our products are our own success. The magic just seems to happen. People really do not comprehend the number of staff hours that are involved behind the scenes in research and reference tasks.

Library workers tend not to be glory hogs. This is a type of work that’s my calling. And you know, most of us find the work incredibly rewarding. Not being acknowledged is not necessarily a detriment for us. You know, we know that our efforts are appreciated and quite often that suffices.

DW: I think with the support services that we represent, the work is not fully understood by the members. There’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes for everyday operations. As long as everything is going well, the members really don’t need to know about what we’re doing. If there were any issues, then you know the members would know, and then I’d be a little worried. But I know they appreciate what we do. They certainly recognize the support services every time they do any sort of appreciation event.

AH: We’re very much in the same situation. When staff go with travelling committees on the road and members have an opportunity to see our staff at work first hand, there is a level of appreciation and understanding over and above what occurs when members are in the Chamber. If we do our jobs well and everything clicks, they’re appreciative of that and they can get on with doing their work.

CPR: Is there anything you’d like to add to our discussion?

GB: The library services that have been discussed are not isolated to a particular area of the building or any particular individual. Library staff have worked hard to increase accessibility to their collections – to provide information wherever and whenever the client needs it.

With that said, we’re also very privileged to work in some of the most beautiful and iconic structures in the country. Library staff go to great lengths to make the library – the building, the room, or the reading area – a welcoming and inviting place for everyone. I consider myself lucky to be part of that; to work with warm, intelligent, and thoughtful individuals.

DW: I would add to that, in general, our membership feel privileged to work within these environments. Even if you’re behind the scenes, to be part of this is pretty amazing. And, we tend to have long-term employees who stay and who do this because they love the environment and they love what they’re doing.