Industry Committee on March 24th, 2011

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

I just suggested that as a possibility. I said if that's where it has to go, that's where it has to go, but we'd prefer it to go back to the House.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

We're fine with that. We'll do clause by clause.

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

I said I'd prefer it to go back to the House.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

You proposed going clause by clause, and we agreed to it.

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

No, no.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Yes, actually.

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

I may be able to provide some clarity here. There has been a bit of confusion, obviously, with the non-sustaining of the decision of the chair. I think our intention is very clear: we want this passed at all stages in this committee as an omnibus consideration, as Mr. Rota's motion calls for.

We would ask that the vote now proceed.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

We can only do it if debate is extinguished and--

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

You guys have an hour to talk, so go ahead.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

If there's no more debate, then we'll go to the vote.

Go ahead, Mr. Lake.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I support Mr. Rota's motion that we go clause by clause. I don't know if we want to work on the wording of the amendment that he proposed, but I definitely support it. I just thought that maybe we could have--

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

I have a point of order.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Excuse me--

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Go ahead, Mr. McTeague, on a point of order.

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

Chair, for clarity's sake, as Mr. Lake has referred to it, there is no motion by Mr. Rota to go clause by clause.

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

That was part of a discussion, but it was not a motion.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair; then I agree with Mr. Rota's suggestion that we go clause by clause and I'd be glad to amend the motion to do such. Maybe we could get a suggestion from the clerk or the researchers on a way to implement Mr. Rota's suggestion that we go clause by clause. Do we want a suggestion on how we might implement Mr. Rota's suggestion?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Mr. Lake, the fact is that if you want to introduce an amendment on this for the procedure, then that can happen, and we'll debate the amendment. However, if this motion passes after being debated, it will be deemed adopted, because it would be passed by the committee.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I'll move my amendment, then.

First of all, before I move my amendment, I just want to be clear that there's a normal process for clause-by-clause consideration. We would have a legislative clerk appointed to the committee to do that. You're here right now, so we would just need the officials.

I'll move that we strike the word “immediately” and say that the committee “call Industry officials to the current meeting and report Bill C-568 back to the House”.

Then we'll remove the line “without amendments” and say, “after conducting its clause-by-clause review, as per Mr. Rota's suggestion”.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

We have an amendment on the floor that says, “That the committee call Industry Canada officials to the current meeting and report Bill C-568 back to the House after clause-by-clause consideration, as per Mr. Rota's suggestion”.

Is there debate?

Go ahead, Monsieur Cardin.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Chair, the proposed amendment seems a little strange to me. In fact, it completely changes the meaning of the motion. From immediately reporting a bill to a clause-by-clause review.

I would like to know what the clerk or the analyst thinks. The motion is changed completely. We see the same thing in the House. When we try to make amendments that change the meaning of the bill that is presented, it's refused.

It's going to be refused. It changes the motion completely. We are no longer talking about the same thing.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Mr. Cardin.

We'll go to Mr. Wallace.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Chair, I'll speak in favour of the motion, based on a number of reasons.

First of all, I recall a very active discussion in this committee on the timing of meetings and on having to have meetings with witnesses to discuss this private member's bill, Bill C-568.

I think--and you can correct me if I'm wrong--that a fair number of witnesses have been invited to future meetings, whether they will happen or not, to deal with this particular item so that we can properly debate and discuss each clause. Now, we've only had one meeting, I believe, on this, and that was with some officials and with the mover of the motion--no; it wasn't officials. It was others from the group, but there certainly was debate.

What's very confusing to me is that we have the opposition parties wanting these meetings, setting them up, inviting people to come, and then all of a sudden, with one day left--I don't know who we're kidding here--in this Parliament, they're going to try to move this through all stages, without any discussion and without any further witnesses on the issue. They seem to want it both ways, and then, at the end of the day, we will be reporting back to the House that this has gone through here.

It won't go anywhere. The House will likely fall tomorrow afternoon at around 1:30. We'll go to an election starting on Sunday or Monday, and it will be a non-issue. It's a non-issue for me today.

We made the argument, Mr. Chair, that we needed more meetings with witnesses, such as the ones we have here waiting for us and the witness we had before, to deal with the Investment Canada Act. It was a study requested by the opposition parties, which we agreed to do. We only have to have one meeting this week, one meeting two weeks from now, and one meeting in another week. We need to fill in these other spots.

But all of a sudden, now that they've decided they're going to an election, we don't need those other spots. We don't need to have those meetings. We don't need to have those witnesses or to pass it here. I think it's a shame that in the 11th hour of this Parliament, we're playing these games.

I will be supporting the motion that we get a chance to go through clause-by-clause study, because on this committee and on my finance committee, on the last private members' bills there were a tremendous number of changes during clause by clause. In fact, one bill went to one four- or five-word sentence from one clause. Another one went from 12 or 14 clauses to two clauses. It was at this committee.

I think they're violating my right as a member of Parliament, as they like to say, to discuss those clauses and maybe convince my colleagues to make changes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Mr. Wallace.

We'll go to Mr. Lake.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I have just a couple of things.

I really wish the Liberal industry critic were here. He hasn't been able to attend these meetings because he's been so busy with the copyright committee. At least two other of our members on this committee serve on that one as well, but he's been too busy. Of course, we wanted to have more meetings with the copyright committee as well, but members of the opposition--the united opposition--have denied us that opportunity.

We thought that at some point the opposition parties would get together and implode this Parliament--as they have, or as they are about to do tomorrow--and we thought the copyright bill was so important that we needed to get it passed. Witness after witness came before that committee and said the same thing. Because of the games played by the opposition parties, we obviously haven't passed it, but certainly if the Liberal industry critic had been able to sit on the industry committee at this time or over the last few months, perhaps he would have added a different perspective to these proceedings today.

Just as we made the topic of the copyright bill a question of some urgency, we also said right from the start--I think from our first meeting in January after we came back from the break--that the study of the Investment Canada Act should be an absolute priority and that if we were going to be forced into an election by the opposition parties, perhaps it would be productive for our committee to at least get through the Investment Canada Act study and produce a report that might be useful to the next government, the next Parliament, after the election.

Obviously we're not there yet. The argument on the other side was that for some reason there was a real need to have meetings on this census bill, this private member's bill, that we're talking about today, but it turns out that actually we didn't really need any meetings from the opposition side of things because they just want to pass it as is, without even going through the regular clause-by-clause review. It's very, very odd, I must say.

So here we find ourselves. I've heard the suggestion from Mr. Rota. We can go back and take a look at the evidence, but it was a pretty unequivocal suggestion that we move to clause-by-clause consideration.

I agree with Mr. Rota, and thus I've moved my amendment to his original motion to reflect his own suggestion. I would encourage members of all parties to rally behind Mr. Rota and adopt his suggestion as well.