Technical glitches plague first electronic vote in House of Commons history

OTTAWA — Members of Parliament have completed their first-ever remote vote in the House of Commons, a historic occasion marked by numerous technical glitches, lengthy delays and cameo appearances by some of their kids and even a family dog.

The vote was on a Bloc Quebecois sub-amendment to a Conservative amendment to last week’s throne speech, a routine matter that normally would have taken 15 minutes.

It was roundly defeated by a vote of 293-33 —.with help from one Bloc MP who accidentally voted against his own party’s sub-amendment “due to all the confusion” over voting by videoconference.

But it took almost two hours to arrive at that result.

Right off the bat, a system failure by Microsoft delayed the vote for about 40 minutes.

For the eventual vote,  only a few dozen MPs were physically present in the Commons while the rest joined in from remote locations in an excruciatingly slow, roll call videoconference vote.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2020.

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Joan Bryden, The Canadian Press