Agriculture Committee on March 22nd, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Order, please.

Guys, I have a heck of a cold and my hearing is bad enough. If we have a whole bunch of conversations going on, I'm going to have trouble and I'm not going to be in a very good mood, so I might as well just be clear.

Mr. Lemieux, I have you on the list for debate on the motion.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Chair, sorry, I want to start with a point of order. The point of order has to do with the schedule for today. I must admit, when I received the schedule a week and a bit ago, I was very concerned to see that the committee business had actually been constrained to resuming debate on the motion by the Honourable Wayne Easter, moved on March 10, 2011. The reason I say this is because having been on committees for five years, I have never seen that type of constraint placed upon committee business right at the start of a meeting.

What I have seen in the past is debate on motions during a particular meeting, and when that meeting comes to an end, if there was no vote called, if the debate just ended because the meeting had to be adjourned, because it was the end of the meeting, we all went our ways and when we came back we started with a new schedule. The new schedule might list committee business, but it did not force or constrain the committee to go back to the business that was being discussed at the previous meeting. Every meeting is a new meeting. So this is somewhat alarming to me.

I'd like to know where this came from. Where did this exact wording come from, “resuming debate on the motion”? Did it come from you? Did it come from the clerk?

The other thing I'd like to state is that we're in the middle of a study, Chair--

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Can I answer your first question?

I was not aware this was going out. It did go out from the clerk. After the fact, basically, I could have asked them to recall it--

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

--but under the circumstances.... To put it in simple terms, something everybody can understand, I'd have been between a rock and a hard place no matter what I had done.

Regarding the agenda, whether we agreed or not, the clerk and I did discuss this. I think any time an agenda goes out we will discuss it again beforehand. But ultimately, I made the decision that once it's out there, it's there; everybody has seen it. All it would have caused is more debate, which I guess is happening right now.

But no, I did not authorize it to go out, ultimately, and I think I've explained that to you.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Let me continue, then, on this same point of order. What concerns me, Chair, is that all the rules and procedures we're following with respect to this particular motion seem to be exceptional and extraordinary. We spent some time in the last committee meeting explaining that normally, in order to move a motion that's last on the list up the list...we don't normally do that. Normally you need unanimous consent to do it.

Why is that? It's because it's usually first come, first served on motions. There was a list of 10 or 12 or 13 motions that were sitting in front of Mr. Easter's. We have a well-established procedure and protocol on how to deal with motions. I've been on this specific committee for two years, and we have a way of handling this. My understanding is that it was also the way in which this committee operated previously, before I became part of this committee. Yet this motion is special for some reason.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Can I speak to that?

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Well, I'd like to finish.

Okay, you can speak to it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

On that you are right. The practice of this committee has been to deal with motions in order. From time to time, as we went through the order I would do that. I would ask each motion, and at various times most, if not all, members of the committee have said, “No, Mr. Chairman, I'm not going to deal with that one today”, but we always did it in that order. You are correct.

Where my problem was when I had to rule that the motion was eligible is that basically this committee was acting in good faith with that practice. I did not have it in writing; therefore, I had to make the decision that I did.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Chair, I'm not blaming you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

No, I know you're not.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

What I'm saying is that the manner in which this committee—which includes you, it's all of us—is dealing with this particular motion is extraordinary and it runs against the very procedures and protocols that we've set up within this committee. I'm referencing us back to our last meeting. You're right, Chair. When we normally have 10 or 15 motions, you run through each and every motion, and on number one, the top motion on the paper, you ask if that person is ready to move that motion. In the past, you're quite right, we've had people say, “Not today. I'm going to leave it there.” They have a choice of either withdrawing it, leaving it there untouched, or moving the motion, and oftentimes some people have said, “I'm going to leave it there. I do not want to move on the debate.” And that's fine. It stays there for the next time we come back to motions.

We went through some of the people who actually had motions in front of Mr. Easter's. Mr. Hoback is a great example. Mr. Hoback expressed a strong objection to being jumped by Mr. Easter. It didn't matter.

Chair, let me finish. This is important because--

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Okay. I'm going to let you finish, Mr. Lemieux, but I'm just putting it out there that we had this debate, and I don't think there's much productivity in rehashing the same thing we did before we got to the motion.

I am going to ask you to be brief, and we'll move it.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Chair, you are constraining me again.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

No, I'm not.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Then don't make the comment.

The next point...and this was under the chair's direction. Mr. Richards had a motion that sat in front of Mr. Easter's, and Mr. Richards wasn't even allowed to speak about it.

This is exceptional and extraordinary that an MP who has a motion sitting in front of another MP's motion is not allowed to speak as to what the impact might be or what his feelings are on his motion being jumped by another MP's motion. I call that exceptional, extraordinary. I call it unfortunate.

Then the committee--I'll call it the opposition members--banded together and forced their will, and we ended up debating Mr. Easter's motion despite the bad will it sowed among committee members. They forced the hand of the committee, Chair. They forced your hand on top of it, and we ended up debating this at the last meeting. It did not come to a vote because we were not done expressing ourselves, and now we find another extraordinary measure, Chair.

The wording of the agenda is exceptional, extraordinary, and, I'll say it again, it's unfortunate, and you, yourself, have admitted it's unfortunate. The question I have is this. What is it with this particular motion that all rules, regulations, agreement, procedures, and protocols are thrown out the window and trampled underfoot for this particular motion? We might say, “Well, it only happened the once. We'll make sure it doesn't happen again.”

Chair, the reason I'm explaining what happened at the beginning of the last meeting right through to where we are today is to show you that this is not isolated. This is not just one instance of this happening; this is the third thing that has happened with respect to this motion, and quite frankly, I completely disagree with the way in which this meeting is being conducted.

We are supposed to be studying biotechnology. That was on the agenda until it got rewritten by the clerk into what it is today. We should be having witnesses today. Surely farmers are more important than Mr. Easter. Isn't that why we have farmers come in front of the committee? Isn't that why we have farm groups come in front of the committee? To share their expertise?

I can talk to Mr. Easter any time, and so can other committee members.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Lemieux, you have the option, anybody on the committee has the option, of moving a motion to go to other business. The agenda is out. I've explained what happened. I don't believe that will happen again, but it's happened. As I said, if you or anybody else wants to move a motion to move to another item of business right now, that's completely allowable.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Okay. I'll move a motion that we move to other committee business.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Any specific...?

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Chair, we should have witnesses here today. This is what this committee is about. This is what we're studying right now. We're studying the biotechnology sector, and our aim is to produce a report that we will submit to Parliament. We do very good work, in general, when we work together cooperatively on these types of studies.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

So the answer is nothing specific. Is it just other business?

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

No, no. There you go again. Would you let me finish?

I'm telling you--

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I'm asking you to detail your motion, Mr. Lemieux.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Yes, so let me finish.

What I'm saying is that we should have witnesses here today and we don't.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

But we don't.