Evidence of meeting #2 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
I'd like to convene the subcommittee meeting if I can.
There is something in front of us that I believe needs to be done in camera. There's a discussion that needs to happen in camera.
Do I have agreement from the subcommittee to go in camera? You don't know what it's about but please trust me that it needs to go in camera.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
I need everyone to leave the room. I'm sorry. We're going in camera.
[Proceedings continue in camera]
[Public proceedings resume]
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
Thank you very much to all of you who brought forward witnesses so that we could have a sense of how many witnesses may be coming forward, which will help us schedule. I do need to say that we did not get as many as I thought we might get on climate change. I know that was one of the topics where we didn't get too many.
I'd like to make sure I have the agreement from the subcommittee that we can have more time and that we don't make it strict that these are the witnesses and no more will be entertained. I'd like agreement that, ongoing, throughout the work of the committee, we can add witnesses as we go.
Is everybody comfortable with that approach? Obviously we want to have some rigour, but we may be made aware of somebody as we move along, and I don't want the witness list to be so strict that if you're not in the hopper now then you're not getting to come before us. Is everybody okay with that approach? Okay, great.
We had a couple of motions that came forward, talking about different approaches on how we may proceed. I wanted to have a quick discussion before we actually get into that, to just get an understanding from the committee. I know some of the comments before, when we talked about spending a little bit of time on the SDGs, was that it really wasn't valuable, it wasn't really working, you didn't see it to be an important tool, and you didn't want to spend a lot of time on it. I kind of got that sense.
I saw the benefit and the value in that if we changed the way the act was done and the strategy was right, it could actually be a very powerful tool. I wanted to see if this discussion today generated a bit of interest in the committee to not just give it a cursory look, but to spend a little bit of time while it is in front of us. I know it means that there will be a little bit of difference in the order in which we had agreed we would move forward, but the CEPA is under way and we will continue to move that one forward. I do think that we want to move the other one along as well and I'm intending to do that with my suggestion that I had sent out to everybody before.
I'll open the discussion. Do we feel comfortable spending a little bit of time in April just wrestling this one to the ground so we can come back with some suggestions to improve the legislation?
Mr. Cullen.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
My feeling was never that it was useless, just that the tools employed were not that good. What I got out of today was three or four suggestions, and I think other committee members tweaked on them, that if it were housed here potentially or if included this measure or “measurables” as was talked about earlier.... The question is only hard for me because I don't know the context.
Ultimately we need a proposed calendar with two here, one there, three there, four there—
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
—and that negotiation. But when you just say “more time”, it's easy to say yes to but I don't know what I'm giving up.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
No, I think we'll work through the details of what might work as a game plan for going forward. I just wanted to make sure that....
We had originally said that we would do CEPA, we would do the—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
—protected areas, and then we would do the SDGs. Then the minister sent it over to us for a review because she set a deadline in April. As you heard, they're already doing consultations around the country and she wanted to have our input. That's on the strategy. I had thrown in a bit about the act, and that's why we had people coming today talking a little bit more about the act because I think it's not just the strategy that we want to report on. It may also be the act and that's what we heard today.
We'll go through the days and what we think might work, but I wanted to get the understanding that the priorities that we chose—two in concert and then three—might need to be relooked at because if we do the SDGs, then they'll be coming in on top of the other two.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
If that's the specific question, I don't feel dramatically moved after today. There is benefit. I worry about the rabbit warren of holes in the federal bureaucracy that one can slip down for months and years potentially. It's a very complicated, interesting, yet “in the weeds” type of discussion.
I pulled three or four things that I thought would be useful to pass on to the government as they're doing their public consultation, and those were the actors that you'd want to talk to. I mean those were the people at IISD, the environment commissioner, the former environment commissioner, the author of the bill for the act, the department....
Conservative
Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB
We got some very good information today, but I think things could be repaired quite quickly. They came up with a couple of suggestions that wouldn't be difficult to do, so I don't think we need to spend a lot more time on it. To tell you honestly, I think we have a good picture. I think everybody got a pretty good picture today of where the problem is, and it is easily repairable. I don't know if we need to do that or if it just has to be referred out on a report.
I am concerned that we have limited time and there are some areas of great concern to us. Conservation is one of those and we want to make sure we give time to that.
Liberal
Liberal
John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Are you going to give that to us and what would that reordering and the reallocation of time look like?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
I sent an email out to everybody on March 8. That was before our previous meetings and I'm still sitting with that in front of me. We changed the March 22 meeting to the SDGs, to give people a sense of what the potential might be for discussions. This was focused on the act. We didn't get into the strategy at all. If you look at the strategy, there are some things where, having now had the opportunity of a week immersed in SDGs with the Commonwealth parliamentarians, I see an opportunity. We might want to add something to her SDGs to focus it.
In discussion, we may want to suggest that, but that's something that we would have to explore in a committee. I could write my own comments to her, but I think we could explore making sure that the ones that have been brought forward are the ones that we are comfortable with and that they're going to meet the intent of where we want to have things go.
Here's what I was thinking. We might need a little bit of time just to look at the strategy, even if it's one meeting, one meeting to focus on the strategy and maybe one more meeting to refine a little bit of what we heard today and how we may consider those changes a little bit more deeply around what was put forward in terms of the act to make it stronger. That means at least two more meetings, so let's go through what—
Do you have that in front of you?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
Okay, my apologies then.
We are finished in March with the Minister, her mandate, and the main estimates coming on Thursday. We have the 12th, the 14th, the 19th, and the 21st in April. We have to report back anything that we're going to send.... Well, we're being asked to report back on the strategy by the 24th, so we have four possible meetings where we could have these discussions. I would like to at least have two of those weeks to discuss, first, more details in the act so that we have an understanding of what we would like to propose in terms of changes, and second, in terms of the strategy, where we could have a little bit of delving into the direction that she's taking, the focus that she's come in with for the strategy, and any comments we want to make on that.
That's two meetings to cover the federal sustainable development strategy in April. I had four. As you said, I don't think it needs to be going down a rabbit hole or a rabbit warren. We just need to flesh out those comments so we can have them come back. One of those meetings will need to be covering the report that we send in. Our help here will put together our report and then we will need to accept that report in the meeting. We probably don't need to have the whole meeting.
The report has to be written so we can't just expect that to happen within the week. The staff are going to need a little bit of time to make that happen. If we had the two earlier meetings, April 12 and 14, it doesn't give them much time but we could potentially have something to assess on the 21st and then submit in time for the 24th. That's what I'm trying to do.
Go ahead, Mr. Amos.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
I agree with Mr. Cullen to the extent that I don't think we want to spend more time than we have to on this. I think we're all quite ambitious in terms of what we want to achieve with our time.
I just want to make sure that there's enough time to discuss not just a response to the strategy that has been proposed and that we've agreed to comment on.... I think what today's discussion started to reveal, and I think this goes to Mr. Cullen's earlier desire to focus on climate as a matter of priority, is that the Federal Sustainable Development Act can achieve more for climate and we can do more by recommending, if the committee agrees, that certain specific measures be taken to ensure that the federal House is in order in regard to climate considerations in its operations.
I think we might need at least a meeting to talk about specific provisions we would want to see in an amended FSDA.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
I identified four meetings, because I had talked with the commissioner and others to figure out how much time would be reasonable to get it done well but not necessarily bury ourselves in the deep blue sea. I came up with four sessions to do that.
Are you agreeing with that or not? Did you agree that we needed a little bit more time than the two sessions? I was trying to follow what you were saying, and I think that I didn't get clarity.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
I think that what we need to do is to ensure that we have time. You've identified a particular witness we want to listen to. I think that we just need to make sure that we have time to actually discuss specific legislative changes as a group.
I don't know if that takes one meeting. If we come prepared and there are specific proposals on the table before we get to the meeting, we're going to be a lot faster. If there aren't and all of a sudden we're confronted with language we've never seen before and we're trying to review at that time, we're going to be a lot slower.