Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 11th, 2006

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Precisely, Mr. Chairman, I know you would appreciate my insight, but unfortunately, my duties prohibit me from sitting on such a subcommittee.

The colleague who was replacing me suggested my name in good faith. I gave him $20. But seriously, the member for the Bloc Québécois will be Mr. Gérard Asselin, the member for Manicouagan. Once again, there may be a change. Subject to the subcommittee's agenda, I could suggest another candidate.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

That's acceptable to me. Does anybody have a concern?

Then what I would like to propose is that the first subcommittee meeting be next Tuesday morning at ten.

I see that doesn't work for Monsieur Proulx. All right, we will then leave it up to our clerk to set up a meeting. So that's carried.

Just as a reminder, the next meeting, on May 16, is on electoral reform. I was hoping not to have witnesses at that meeting; it would be a round-table discussion. So could we approach our colleagues and get ideas on what concerns they have, and we will have a discussion at that meeting as to what concerns we have with respect to electoral reform? Then we may want to decide on what other witnesses we want to call. Does that make sense to everybody?

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Is that the whole meeting, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

It likely will be the whole meeting. I'm recommending that it be in camera, but that's up to the will of the committee.

Mr. Godin.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Chairman, should we not strike a subcommittee on electoral reform? Last year, the committee spent a great deal of time studying electoral reform. We had the feeling that this was no longer the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs but rather the Committee on Electoral Reform. I personally would rather have another member from my party study electoral reform.

The problem is that if, for instance, the committee sits on Thursdays and part of the meeting has to do with electoral reform and the other part has to do with the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs regular business, we will have to change the members mid-way.

I've given you my opinion, and I would like you to consider it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Mr. Hill.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Just on that, I would agree, Mr. Chair, with your suggestion that we devote that first meeting to developing—hopefully through consensus—what our objectives are on that topic and on how we proceed or go forward. Obviously it could be part of the discussion as to whether the most effective way would be to have a subcommittee that would be ongoing and what the mandate of that subcommittee would be, because it would be looking for direction from this group, obviously.

In that light, I'm not sure that everyone currently sitting on the procedure and House affairs committee has reviewed the report that was prepared in the last Parliament, following our trips overseas when we were looking at different electoral systems. Perhaps that could be dug out of the archives and be circulated to everyone prior to that meeting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Do you remember what report that was, Mr. Hill?

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

I'm sure Jamie can find it. I don't remember the title.

[James Robertson, Committee Researcher]

We will circulate that report this afternoon. That was a report on the process for reforming--reviewing--the electoral system, primarily the question of whether Canada should look at a proportional representation type of system and the process for making that kind of change.

This particular proposal of the chair was to look at the legislative changes for the Canada Elections Act that have been recommended by Mr. Kingsley in the past and that various other members have raised, both at this committee and elsewhere--changes to the existing Canada Elections Act that there's a certain urgency to make, given that this is a minority Parliament. The idea would be to try to get some of those changes reported by this committee to the House and to the minister in a timely way so that if legislative changes were to be introduced, they could be done so in a short period of time, and the changes could be implemented at the earliest opportunity.

But we will ensure that all of these materials are put forward to the members of the committee this afternoon.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Including the summary.

[James Robertson]

We have a summary of the changes that have been recommended by Mr. Kingsley.

We have a background paper on the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, which Mr. Proulx, Mr. Godin, and Mr. Guimond have all indicated should be addressed at some point in the near future. We will also circulate the report from this committee from the last Parliament.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Mr. Hill, please.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Chair, as a whip, there's another issue I know about that a number of colleagues have approached me with, and I'm sure I've had discussions with the other whips on it. It's the whole issue of renaming and the different constituencies. I would hope that's part of our discussion as well, how we'll proceed with that issue, whether we can reach some sort of consensus on a process to proceed with that. Could we throw that in the mix?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Do you mean versus using a private member's bill?

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Exactly. Because if we have a number of people who want to consider that, we should have a process that everybody's agreed to, rather than have 12 private member's bills or something.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

I'm going to go to Mr. Reid now. Did you have something?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

With regard to the electoral redistribution, I think one of the factors that needs to be taken into consideration is that we have to deal with the court case that Monsieur Godin participated in, which related to the adjustment of the boundaries of his constituency. There was a court ruling that I think has some bearing. Presumably, we would have to take into account what the court ruled, so I was hoping our researcher could provide us with a copy of the judgment.

If it's one of those judgments that is hard to read--because unfortunately, good writing skills are not necessarily a requirement to serve on the Canadian bench--he might be able to give us a little summary of it. In particular, I think the question here is whether certain indicators of community of interest, language in particular, are now regarded by the courts as being privileged over other considerations. If they are, then we have to take that into account in how we deal with this legislation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Mr. Godin.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

I just wanted to add that I think we should probably have the report that we wrote up on the whole issue of distribution and the recommendation. We did lots of work. This committee formed a subcommittee, and we spent week after week on it.

We had a good report, and I think that report should come back and they should be able to look at it. If we all agree to support it, we can send it back to the House and ask the government to pass a bill on it, if it's what needs to be done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

I would have to agree with that. So I'm assuming we're going to get all these reports to all members.

The good news is it sounds like we have work that we will get done. The bad news is it sounds like it's a lot of work. But let's make sure we're all prepared to be here on Tuesday to discuss that issue. And again, speak with your other colleagues to see if they have any concerns. Let's get this thing done.

I have one last note. May 18 is the Australian Prime Minister's visit. Does the committee wish to cancel that meeting? Question period has in fact been moved up, I believe, to 11:15. So are we just going to cancel the meeting?

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

All committee meetings will be cancelled.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

That's good. We're the first to do everything on this committee. I'm going to assume there's consensus that the meeting be cancelled.

Please, Mr. Godin.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

I'm not sure if we should cancel all meetings. Let's think about it. He's going to speak at three o'clock in the afternoon.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

We're not cancelling all meetings, Mr. Godin, just our meeting for May 18. I'm sorry, I may have misled you. We're just deciding on cancelling our procedures and House affairs committee meeting for that day.

Are we okay?

Please, Monsieur Guimond.