Canadian Region of CPA: a personal memoir.

• Author: Imrie, Ian

Ian Imrie was Executive Secretary of the Canadian Region of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association until his retirement in December 1995.

The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (founded in 1911) is an international association of parliamentarians in the national, state, provincial and territorial legislatures of Commonwealth countries. The CPA organises conferences, seminars, exchanges and other projects designed to assist members in their work as parliamentarians. The Association, which has its own Secretariat in London, is made up of eight geographic regions including Canada, the only country that constitutes a CPA Region. This article outlines the development and activities of the Canadian Region.

My involvement with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association goes back to the 1960s. The minority Liberal Government of Lester Pearson was in office and Alan Macnaughton was Speaker of the House of Commons. He came from a business background and was shocked when he discovered the rather amateur way the House of Commons was organised. He ordered a complete study by a special branch of the Public Service Commission. They made a number of recommendations including creation of three new House of Commons positions - a Director of Finance, a Director of Legislative Services, and a Co-ordinator of Parliamentary Associations.

I was working in the historical sites and monuments division of the Department of Northern Affairs when Speaker Macnaughton interviewed me for the position of Co-ordinator. Shortly thereafter I was offered the job. In those days Canada belonged to only four parliamentary associations - the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the NATO Parliamentary Association and the Canada-United States Inter-Parliamentary Group. One of the first things Speaker Macnaughton told me was that two separate Canadian parliamentary delegations had just informed him that they had committed Canada to host major conferences in 1965 and 1966.

The task of co-ordinating Canada's interparliamentary relations had fallen to various table officers on a part time basis but with the House sitting almost non stop in those years there was no way they could make the kind of commitment necessary to organise these conferences. I quickly put together a team for this purpose. It included Monty Montgomery a veritable mine of information about CPA. When he retired in 1967 I replaced him as Secretary of the federal Branch.

Macnaughton's successors, Lucien Lamoureux (1966-1974) and James Jerome (1974-1980) both made it clear to me that they saw great value in Canadian legislators, getting together more frequently. They saw CPA both as an entree to the international community and an institution devoted to improving the parliamentary profession within Canada. Subsequent Speakers also supported this view but the creation of new parliamentary links with many other legislatures and the increasing demands of the Speakership gave them less time to devote to CPA. Eventually federal Speakers ceased to be Co-Chairmen of the federal branch. This position is filled by election.

In most provinces the Speaker is still the head of the CPA Branch although I believe the Quebec branch now also elects a Chairman. These...