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Message from the Secretary General of the CPA
Sir Robin Vanderfelt

At the time this article was written Sir Robin Vanderfelt was Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.

Canada has 13 Parliaments and nearly 1100 Members, of whom 950 belong to the CPA.

Thousands more people serve those Parliaments or its Members as clerks, executive assistants, Hansard writers, library staff, secretaries, security and catering staff, as engineers, messengers, telephone operators and in countless other ways.

The country is vast, it does not know itself; still less do its Parliamentarians know each other. True, there are far more meetings between Ministers at different levels than there were. Some 80 Members meet annually in Canadian Regional Conferences (in CPA parlance Canada is a Region). The Speakers meet for just a day or two as part of the Canadian Regional Council and yet those gathering in Ottawa one year are not always the same as those who met a year ago In some cases elections, in others promotions, have seen to that.

Clerks of Parliament have met annually since 1969 having formed their own Association of Clerks at-the-Table. Yet I have been privileged to attend Canadian Regional Conferences in Regina, Charlottetown, Ottawa and Quebec to name but four of the Conferences which have taken place and most of the Members present did not know each other and were visiting Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, Ontario and Quebec for the first time.

This ignorance has to be overcome for the sake of Canada and for the sake of the institution of Parliament itself which must be more finely-tuned to the present day and to tomorrow. There is not too much time.

This Review will help I wish it all success.