Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 7th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Good afternoon, everyone.

This is the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. It is meeting 12, Thursday, February 7, 2008, and we are meeting here this afternoon to discuss committee business.

I'll tell you right now my intentions are that this committee will be stopped at 5:30. There are planes to catch and places to be.

Does anyone have a problem with that? We're okay that at 5:30 or before we will adjourn?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right. That would be wonderful.

The first order of business is to ratify the report that came out of the steering committee prior to this meeting. Your steering committee met and made two points. First of all, it recommended that the list of witnesses on Afghanistan from the previous session be resubmitted to the committee and agreed to, that new names be added, and that the meetings on Afghanistan be held next week, which would include the February 12 and February 14 meetings. The second point in the steering committee report recommended that the committee hear from the department, as well as other witnesses, dealing with Sudan, on February 26.

Are we all in favour of accepting that report as read?

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

What do you mean by “other witnesses”?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

People may want to submit some witnesses. There have been a couple already. We're uncertain as to the timelines, but we'll hear from the department and in the second hour we'll hear from witnesses. I know we have STAND, some of those students, and we have others who want to attend.

Is that carried?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right. The report is adopted.

I'm going to ask you to look at item 2 on the agenda. This is what we were discussing when your committee last met, that following the tabling and release of the government's response to the advisory group on the national round tables on corporate social responsibility in the Canadian extractive industry in developing countries, tabled on March 29, 2007, the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development invite the Minister of Foreign Affairs to appear before the committee to explain the government's response.

We did make an amendment to that, which stated that we would invite the relevant ministers, and as I recall, at the last meeting it was with regard to the time of the invitation to go out to these ministers.

We'll go Mr. Obhrai and then Mr. Wrzesnewskyj. I believe Mr. Obhrai was speaking when we left the other day.

Go ahead, Mr. Obhrai.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Mr. Chair, upon reading the main that motion Madame Barbot put forward, which is “that, following the tabling and release of the Government's response” and changing the motion to say “all relevant ministers who are responsible for the file”, I think the government would have no objection to this motion on the basis that the government is committed to giving a response, number one, and the government has no problem responding to the issue.

So if this motion remains as is, with the change to “the relevant ministers” from the “Minister of Foreign Affairs”--as I indicated, the Minister of Foreign Affairs is not responsible for this file; it is better to have the relevant ministers who are responsible for this file. That is fine. The government would have no difficulty supporting this motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Now that the clerk reminds me, I'm not certain we even did have an amendment that came forward, other than what we talked about. Does that reflect what the amendment was, in the opinion of members of the committee?

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj had also moved an amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Is it to that point, though, Borys, on the amendment?

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Yes. An amendment was accepted as a friendly amendment, and I believe the clerk may have noted the exact wording of that. If not, I can repeat it.

Does the clerk have the wording?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mrs. Angela Crandall]

I don't have it.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

The amendment was as follows. It began with the sentence, “As ten months have passed since the roundtable—”

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Now that you read it, I remember it. You're right.

Continue.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

So the insertion was:

As ten months have passed since the Advisory Group on the National Roundtables on Corporate Social Responsibility in the Canadian Extractive Industry in Developing Countries and the government has not tabled a response, the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs....

And it continues thereafter.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

I disagree with, and cannot accept at all, that motion. When he put that motion, the time was up, but I can tell you that the government would absolutely have—

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

On a point of order, the time was not up. At the time the amendment was made, it was accepted as being friendly, and we were already getting into a bit of a discussion about it, and that's when time ran out.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I guess we are hearing that there is a disagreement. It may be accepted as a friendly amendment. We were very close there for a moment to having a unanimous motion passed, and with it I think probably the urgency expressed to the minister to appear....

[An hon. member]

It does say when it was tabled.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

It does already mention the tabling date. It seems like a double whammy there.

Are we going to debate this?

This can go on endlessly. There is no record from the clerk that the friendly amendment was there.

[The Clerk]

I would like to clarify that the friendly amendment does not exist in committee; it's an amendment or it isn't an amendment. If it's an amendment, then the committee debates it and votes on it, procedurally.

I wrote it down, but as far as I was concerned, a decision had not been made at the end of the meeting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

And it hadn't.

We have an amendment, and we can debate this endlessly—what's the right word for this? Forever?

[An hon. member]

Interminably.