Evidence of meeting #1 for Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was going.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair (Mrs. Deborah Schulte (King—Vaughan, Lib.)) Liberal Deb Schulte
Could we get started?
I want to remind everybody that we are in open session. Often these things are done in closed session, but I didn't necessarily want to do so unless you decide you want to have this in closed session.
Can I put that out first to the subcommittee: how we want to proceed, going forward? Do you mind whether it's open or closed?
Liberal
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Yes, I think it's a reverse onus question, which is to say that if somebody needs to bring it in camera, they can propose that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
The only reason is that often we will be discussing witnesses, and people's comments about the witnesses may impact upon the discussion. We'll go open, but be mindful, as we're discussing witnesses, that we're in open session.
I thought you had at least a day to go over what I sent you this morning. The reason it took me a little while is that we had just had the subject of looking at the sustainable development strategy added to our agenda, and we were asked to bring that study back by late June. I had to try to work that in, because at first we were going to do CEPA and do the natural spaces and the protected areas. I tried to work it in. We also have a bit of a change with the minister, so I wanted to make sure I got that in there.
I took a shot at it, but it is very preliminary. You can see on the sheet how many weeks we have. I I really want to ensure that everybody understands what is happening this Thursday.
We have Environmental Defence, Maggie MacDonald, coming in. We have Ecojustice, Dr. Elaine MacDonald. We have Chemistry Industry Association of Canada, Bob Masterson and Pierre Gauthier.
Thank you very much to each of you for sending me your lists. Will Amos sent quite a few.
Thank you, Mr, Cullen.
Mr. Eglinski, you also brought some great suggestions in terms of the industry and how we may get them in front of us.
I want to make sure we're all good with it, because this is what we have planned.
Mr. Cullen.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
This is on the CEPA lists.
This is one we didn't add, but coming out of the meeting today, the suggestion was made by Ms. May—it seems that it will be difficult for her to ask witnesses—to include her on the list. Rather than go through emails, because I know time is tight, we'd like to add her to our list as a potential witness, which we've done in the past. We've had MPs come forward as witnesses, sometimes on their own private members' bills but occasionally on topics that in a previous life they had worked on, which is obviously the situation in this case.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
That sounds reasonable to me.
Does anybody have any opposition to that proposal?
We'll add her to the list of speakers or witnesses coming forward on CEPA.
If you're all good, then that is what we're going to do on Thursday.
Let's move forward with what I sent today. I know we talked about trying to do CEPA and trying to do the parks and natural spaces study, but we have this issue with sustainable development. I suggested that we might put it in after the ministerial mandate and estimates meeting that is going to happen on the 24th. We continue with CEPA, not next week but the week after, concerning review of past studies and recommendations—we were getting at a bit of it today with the questioning—and then do a scoping, because it's quite vast. I think we need to come to a handle on what we want to do with it and how we want to tackle it.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
No. I'm sorry; I jumped. This is the CEPA review. Not this Thursday and not the following week, because we're back in the ridings, but after that, on the 22nd, we will be back on CEPA review and we would get a review of the past studies and recommendations.
Tim, you've been quite involved for many years on this. I don't know how you feel about coming forward and doing a bit of a review of past studies and recommendations that have been made. Is this appropriate?
Tim Williams Committee Researcher
Certainly, if that's the committee's wish, I'm more than willing to do something like that. Penny might also help to make language a little more precise on the legal front.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Good.
Just to get your suggestion here, Chair, do you want to have a meeting on that or do you want a report submitted to the committee?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
We can have a report submitted to the committee, but what I also get is a chance for people to ask questions that we're all around the table hearing. I heard quite a bit of questioning today on past studies and what the challenges may have been for the staff, and you've been at it with different committees for quite a while.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
If that's the case then my recommendation was going to be that we receive a report from Tim and the analyst, similar to what I think we're going to get from CEPA, which is that of the 31 recommendations this is what was done. That's going to be from a departmental point of view. Our analysts will go through the history of the committee's work. I don't know if we need to discuss it at a meeting because our time is going to be so short.
Conservative
Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB
I follow Nathan's train of thought. If we asked the questions and they came back with the answers, do we want to waste a lot of valuable time going over each one of those specific things? I think we have a tight schedule and not a lot of time.
I don't know what we would gain by having a discussion here if they did 20% of what they were supposed to do, and they tell us what they did in that 20%.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
In that session, I was going to do the scoping and figure out how we want to peel this onion and which way we want to go. Maybe we only want to do one piece of it. How do we want to tackle this big beast? I thought we would potentially do that together with the advice and support of Penny and Tim, but that's up to you.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Sorry, Chair. That feels like a subcommittee thing to me again. What we've done in the past is important, and what recommendations were and weren't followed through on, but in terms of what we want to get into on CEPA, it's just informed by what was done in the past. It's not directed by what we've done in the past because times have changed since the last committee reviewed this 10 years ago.
That's scoping out, “Oh, we want to do pest management control acts for a meeting because that seems important, or if we want to look at CEPA's implication on air quality then that's a meeting.“
I think that comes back to this type of a forum rather than have witnesses and the whole committee here discussing it. It's strategizing how we would want to tackle CEPA.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
I'm fine with that. We can do that in the subcommittee meeting and do a strategy together with the support of the staff.
Okay, if that's the case, what would you like to do with the idea that we're looking at CEPA review for March 22?
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I think we can start to bring people in. As a subcommittee, we can develop those broad themes if we have something in hand from the analysts suggesting key categories.
What works best for me in looking at an act this big is themes. You can have a panel of witnesses drawn from the witnesses we've already submitted. We will say this aspect of CEPA will be studied today, and if there is anything we want to recommend to the government in terms of changing the act, we can go theme by theme.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Air quality seems to be a big piece of what they do. Pesticide management was a big piece. I'm referring to the environment commissioner's report that also looked at the administration of some of these things. I think our analysts could probably come up with three or four broad themes, or at least one broad theme to get us started on that March 22 meeting.
Committee Researcher
We've had a meeting with the departmental officials. On Thursday we'll have some fairly central figures and stakeholders bring forward their ideas. Perhaps we can come up with a summary of testimony based on themes from that discussion, and it'll at least start a focused discussion of where the committee wants to go.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I feel very comfortable with that, Madam Chair, with your proposing, “If we have x number of meetings to look at CEPA, here is our suggestion: one on this, half a meeting on this.”
