Fisheries Committee on Feb. 5th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Yes, please.

I've already told Mr. Kerr, but I do appreciate the input from all committee members, and I look forward to continuing the same very collegial type of attitude we've had on this committee. I certainly look forward to continuing to move forward on the issues that we take on as a committee.

Today, as you probably saw, there's only one item on the agenda, the election of the chair and the vice-chairs. I do look for consent to move to routine motions at this point in time. We'll do committee business at this point in time to deal with routine motions.

Mr. Chisholm, you mentioned before the meeting that there has been some discussion in other committees around the routine motions and the order.

Before I go there, I thought it would be a good opportunity to do that today rather than putting it off until the first of the week. That will be the only other item of business that we'll do today, the routine motions.

I'm going to start it off and circulate copies of the routine motions that outline the speaking order and the designation of speakers.

In the text it's “Allocation of Time for Questioning”. I'm not sure who wants to start off the discussion around this today. I'll wait until we get the routine motions distributed.

Mr. Chisholm.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Chairman, I see that the order we're going to be doing is 10 minutes, seven minutes, and then five minutes, which I think is a good idea. I've been consulting with some of my colleagues. I see that we give Mr. MacAulay 10 minutes in the first round and then seven minutes in the second round.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

It's 10 minutes for the witnesses.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I'm sorry?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

When you read the routine motions, the 10 minutes that are referred to are for the opening statement.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I'm sorry, so it's seven.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

It's seven minutes and five minutes.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Let me start again, because I was wondering whether we wanted to start with a 10-minute round as our first round, and then maybe go to five-minute rounds. I also wondered, given that we seem to have had of late a number of witnesses in for only an hour, whether we want to continue with this order, or whether we want to push the Liberals back to the third round. What happens, of course, is if we do the one hour, then it's kind of out of proportion in terms of the participation.

Those are two things. One is the question of 10 minutes and then five minutes, and then the question of party order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Just to be clear, what you're suggesting, Mr. Chisholm, is that the first round would last 10 minutes, and it would remain the same for speakers: Conservative, NDP, Conservative, and Liberal. They would have 10 minutes each. In the second round, it would be NDP, Conservative, NDP, Conservative, and Conservative, for five minutes each.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

That's right.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Then a third round would be a five-minute round as well.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

For all of us, yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

For all of us again. Okay. It would be Conservative, NDP, Conservative, and Liberal. Is that what you're suggesting?

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

That's right.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Okay.

Mr. MacAulay.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

It's the same as it was in the previous committee, is it? Or have the order and the times changed?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

What the order is right now—

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

The order is the same.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

The order is the same. What he's suggesting is changing the first round. Rather than it being a seven-minute round, it will be 10 minutes. In the second round, it would be removing you, quite frankly, from the second round and moving you to the third round, and it would be a five-minute allotment as well.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Who was suggesting that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Mr. Chisholm.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Well, I oppose for sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

Mr. Kamp.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

I'm not sure that I have an opinion yet on the second half.

This committee for many years has had 10-minute opening rounds. One advantage of it was that you could split that effectively with two members if you didn't want to do 10 minutes with one speaker. A seven-minute round is hard to split, because you think you're going to split, but you get four and a half minutes into it and you don't leave very much time, depending on what kinds of answers are coming back from the witness.

I think we would be okay with that.

Also, with respect to the first round, if we're going to change that, we might be interested as well in having the Conservatives go last in that round and moving the Liberal up into the third spot. That's just our preference, I think.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rodney Weston]

You're suggesting to just change the bottom two. Are you suggesting changing the whole order so that the NDP would lead off, or would you still lead off with Conservative, and then have NDP, Liberal, and Conservative? Is that what you're suggesting?