I call this meeting to order.
Welcome to meeting number 93 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. Pursuant to the order of reference of Tuesday, May 2, 2023, and the motion adopted on May 16, 2023, the committee is meeting to discuss Bill C-47, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023.
Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.
I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses and members.
Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. Please mute yourself when you are not speaking.
With regard to interpretation for those on Zoom, you have the choice, at the bottom of your screen, of either floor, English or French audio. Those in the room can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.
I will remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair.
Members in the room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand. Members on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best we can. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this regard.
Members, before we begin, for the benefit of our members and of Canadians who are joining us and watching us today in the committee's proceedings, I'd like to inform you that, as per the motion adopted on May 16, 2023, through unanimous consent from all parties, we scheduled a clause-by-clause meeting yesterday that went for five and half hours, completing a total of two clauses out of 681 clauses total. Now, that's very unusual.
At the finance committee, we've worked on many report considerations in the past. Last year, clause-by-clause took a total of five hours to complete. Again, yesterday we could complete only two clauses in five and half hours. We scheduled this meeting to begin clause-by-clause consideration, as per part (b) of the motion adopted, again, by unanimous consent from all parties. It reads, “(b) Moving to clause-by-clause review of Bill C-47 no later than Thursday, May 25, 2023 at 11:00 a.m.”, which is what we did.
As of yesterday, we've completed a total of 46 hours, equivalent to at least 23 meetings, for the subject matter of Bill C-47. A few members mentioned yesterday that they had assumed there would be more witness meetings scheduled for this week. I reminded those members and all others that, as per the motion adopted with their unanimous consent—meaning all members were in agreement—there were no objections to that and to what was being agreed to at that time. There were no objections. We met with the requirements of the motion before we moved to clause-by-clause, again, as per the motion's part (b) that I read out a little earlier.
After consulting with our clerks, I also reminded them that, during our last witness meeting, during the late evening of May 18, 2023, I stated the following during my remarks: “You will be the last set of witnesses the committee will hear on this piece of legislation”. All party members in this room wholeheartedly thanked our witnesses, as well as our clerks, who had diligently arranged the witness testimonies in such short order.
To reiterate what I mentioned yesterday, as chair, I must interpret the motion as written. Given that there's still some confusion over part (d) of the motion and how the phrase “goal of accomplishing at least 20 hours of study prior to the beginning of clause-by-clause consideration of the bill” interfaces with the rest of the motion, I want to specifically read out the start of the motion and part (a):
That the committee continue its pre-study of Bill C-47, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, by:
a) Inviting witnesses to appear on the contents of Bill C-47 during meetings scheduled the weeks of May 1, May 8 and May 15, 2023
Our meeting 87, which was scheduled with the clear intent of proceeding with witnesses as per the motion, ran for approximately 27 hours—at least equivalent to 13 meetings—starting on Tuesday, May 2 at 11:00 a.m. and ending on Tuesday, May 16 at 4:24 p.m.
The members who spoke at length during meeting 87 were already fully aware that we had to cancel all scheduled witnesses in order to allow them to keep speaking for hours.
Canadians would have preferred instead to listen to testimony from witnesses, including the many individuals and organizations that were eager to appear in front of our committee to answer many questions from our members. I know all our members work hard to prepare thoughtful and intelligent questions for our expert witnesses.
We adjourned that meeting with unanimous consent from all parties to add, “and that the whips of the recognized parties, and the clerks, be empowered to seek as many meetings as possible, with the goal of meeting for 10 hours before the end of this week”. That was for the week of May 15, which was last week.
Thanks to our extremely hard-working clerks—I thank them—we were able to achieve the 10 hours of witness testimony last week, as required, with a full house of witnesses for every hour of those meetings. Everything was done in good faith and collaboration, as evidenced by it being carried with unanimous consent from all parties.
All parties submitted amendments in the same good faith, within the required deadline of 12:00 noon last Friday. This was an indication that everyone interpreted the adopted motion the same way that the clerk and I understood it. Also, this timely submission helped our legislative clerk and his team work towards the next step, to ensure that they prepared the required documents and package for clause-by-clause.
I understand that members who brought this up in the late afternoon on Wednesday had plenty of time to bring it up ahead of submitting their amendments. In spite of having my personal contact information, none of these members called, texted or emailed me to discuss or to clarify. You had an opportunity to reach out to me last week or all of this week, but you decided not to.
Again, I am happy to make myself available to all members, and I am glad that a number of you sent me messages yesterday. I have sent MP Morantz.... I apologized yesterday that MP Morantz did not have my personal information. I believe he has it now.
Marty, feel free to contact me any time.
Again, I hope what I mentioned has brought better clarity to the motion that was adopted on unanimous consent, and we can move on.
I would again like to take this opportunity to thank our clerks, our legislative clerk and their team of analysts, interpreters and technicians, who have made these 46-plus hours possible and still keep on working really hard.
Thank you.
Members, if this is good, let's try this again. We will go ahead with what's in front of us. Please refer to the package received from our clerk.
With us today, again, are a multitude of senior officials from various departments per division discussed. If you have any questions for them, you'll have an opportunity to ask those.
At this time, we'll get to our annotated agenda here. I'll look to the legislative clerk, but we were at clause 4. Is that correct? Yes.
We have some hands up. I see MP Morantz—his hand is up—and then MP Blaikie and PS Beech.
