Industry Committee on May 30th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Crête.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

If I understand correctly, Mr. Chairman, you are the one who ruled on the admissibility of requests. For my part, if you consider that we are discussing the original motion and that there is an amendment from a member with the other wording, we will debate it accordingly, but that is important for what follows. As you said earlier, if this practice develops, anybody here could give notice and show up with something different when the time comes to debate the motion. In that regard, the clerk has provided us with information that is more or less...

Nowhere in the routine motions have I seen anything about alternate motions, unless I am losing my memory. Perhaps I forgot, but I would like the situation to be clarified on the basis of the principle and for us to subsequently agree on the relevance of accepting it or not.

If you accept the motion and the amendment, I will follow the chair's decision of course. However, at first sight, it seems quite odd to accept to consider this motion as an alternate motion for the other.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, is this the same point of order?

Mr. Holland, Mr. Fontana, and then Mr. Carrie, on the same point of order.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Chair, there's a matter duly before the committee, and as I understand it, a motion of substitution would be in order. It has been rephrased now to simply be an amendment.

The committee has an issue before it and it can take actions on that particular issue. This is not a totally new issue or an unrelated matter. It's directly germane to the issue at hand, and now the motion has been amended to say what action the committee should take in relation to that item.

If you want to deal with it as an amendment as opposed to a motion of substitution, then it certainly would be in order, because it's dealing with the same matter. It's simply how the committee is dealing with that particular matter and what direction it is taking on a go-forward basis. It's absolutely in order.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Fontana.

[Joe Fontana, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

I would suggest the same thing. I think we're getting into semantics here. I understand Paul's concern. We weren't prepared to deal with a specific motion, but during the course of any discussion, any member could essentially put forward an amendment. The fact is that the Standing Orders allow for amendments or substitution. That's the way they read. If you don't like that, change the standing order. The fact is that they fall either under substitution or amendment.

I think, to make everybody happy, we're saying let's do it as an amendment so that we don't get into the substitution discussion now but talk germanely about what I think is a very important issue with regard to natural resources in this country and how it is that we want a level playing field. Surely this benign--because it seems that way--motion essentially says to the minister, take all the time you need beyond 45 days in order to make a good decision for what's best for Canada. Vis-à-vis what the Europeans are doing as they look at Inco and Falconbridge and what the Americans are doing with regard to Inco and Falconbridge, we're asking Canada to do the same thing as it relates to Xstrata and Falconbridge.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

We have Mr. Carrie and Monsieur Crête.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I was just going to suggest, Mr. Chair, in light of the time, that perhaps we just approach this as a new amendment or a new motion and handle it first thing Thursday morning. Would that be appropriate?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

We have Mr. Crête and Mr. Julian on the same point of order.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Just to that point, Mr. Chairman, there is an amendment now before the committee, and I would suspect that we are going to have to deal with it. But to help the chair, I would point out that the minister has the prerogative of extending an additional 30 days. That is within his power at this stage.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Crête.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

I am coming back to this, because the chairman himself raised the issue regarding the difference between the two motions. I will read the wording of the substantive motion:That forty-eight (48) hours' notice be required for any substantive motion to be considered by the Committee, unless the substantive motion relates directly to business then under consideration; and that the notice of motion be filed with the Clerk of the Committee and distributed to members in both official languages [...]

The motion we received in accordance with that talks about holding public hearings, making recommendations to the House, and reporting to the House. In parallel, we have another motion that simply asks the Minister of Industry to wait for the decision. In my opinion, the two motions are very different on the substance of the matter. In light of the precedent that may create, I think that we could wait until Thursday. If it is the right version, the other will be withdrawn. If this one becomes the member's motion, we will examine it then, at the right time. It seems very clear to me that this is not the same motion and that it must not be considered as a motion in accordance with our regular procedures.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Julian.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Chair, I am not a regular member of this committee, but in other committees of which I am a member, when an amendment is in order, we simply move on to questions and to the vote. To my mind, this is absolutely consistent with committee rules. I believe that several members of this committee have said that this is completely consistent with the rules of this committee as well.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

It is up to the chair to make a decision.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Chair, the Standing Orders take precedence here. There is an amendment now before your committee, sir, and I suggest that it be considered here and now. I understand that we may get into a question of tests of what constitutes substantiality, but I think that is more than discretionary. The amendment, I think, has to be heard and has to be voted on.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Point of order, Mr. Chair. My question was asked before we said that this was an amendment. I would like you to answer my initial question before we start to talk about the amendment, because I raised it before it became a motion to amend.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Crête is correct. He did ask the question or put it to the chair before the amendment was made. Frankly, if we allow amendments of this type, you're basically eliminating the 48-hour rule and there would be no point in this committee having that rule, because any member of the committee could simply come before us, have a motion in their name, and make an amendment to remove every word after the word “that”, and submit whatever they wanted, whether it's on the same subject or not.

Frankly, on the motion by substitution, the clerk talked to Mr. Holland without consulting me whatsoever. I will review the Standing Orders and the rules regarding motions by substitution, but it seems to me that we unanimously adopted a rule for the committee that we would have 48-hours notice for motions in both official languages, and that we would only allow amendments that are not of such a substantial nature that you basically change the entire motion.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Chair.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

That's his decision.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. McTeague.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Chair, to the very point of the question of substitution, I'm dealing with an amendment, whether or not you and Mr. Crête have understood this to be correct or incorrect with respect to the Standing Orders. If I am to look at both the amendment that I provided, as well as Mr. Holland's original motion, they deal substantively with the same issue, an issue concerning the takeover; they deal with Investment Canada; they deal with a series of companies; and they are in fact very much in keeping with the same notion.

The real question that you have attempted to address here is whether or not the amendment itself is in fact receivable, given the way in which it was first presented by Mr. Holland. My view is that that is not negotiable, and that the amendment has to be heard here now.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I'm guided by what the committee adopted in its first meeting, which was to allow for motions to be presented to the committee only after 48 hours' notice. Mr. Holland properly did that for his first motion. I believe Mr. Masse also did so for his amendment; he gave the 48 hours' notice. That's what I'm guided by here.

If we are going to allow this, then the committee is basically saying that the 48-hour rule is not in effect. As you know, Mr. McTeague, you could have the issue of gasoline prices as a motion, but you could take every word after the word “that” and change it and substantively change the entire tenor of the motion at one committee.

So what I'm recommending--and I will rule if need be--is that this committee therefore perhaps sit for an extra half an hour on Thursday to discuss the new motion moved by Mr. Holland. We will sit at the end of that because we have not even got into the substance of this motion and we're already 10 minutes over.

[Joe Fontana, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

If that's your ruling, Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, then I challenge the ruling of the chair, because I think you're confusing two issues. Any amendment, as ridiculous as it is...and believe me, your party has been known to put some crazy amendments even on the floor of the House of Commons and the Speaker has stood by it. But let's not get into this.

I think the amended motion is helpful and could attract the support of all the parties on a very significant issue. If in fact we want to get into the original motion, there may very well be some problems. I think this committee could do some very good work today by simply adopting the amendment that was proposed. I think if you set this precedent that any motion can't be amended from here on in, it is pretty dangerous.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, Mr. Fontana. My ruling is that this is the second motion. You've challenged the chair, so we will have a vote on the challenge of the chair.

All in favour of the challenge of the chair?

The committee is the master of its own house. It can abide by the ruling of the chair, or it can challenge the chair and overrule the chair.

All those in support of Mr. Fontana? All those opposed?