Evidence of meeting #20 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was employees.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:45 p.m.
Bloc
Mario Laframboise Bloc Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC
I understand the meaning of Mr. Volpe's motion, but I am wondering if it is being tabled before the right committee. The motion deals with international trade, interprovincial trade and the best value for Canadians. Theoretically, it the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology that should be looking at this. I see that the Liberal Party has chosen the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities to study this. We however do not have the necessary expertise. In any event, the Department of Industry will most certainly have to be invited to appear, etc.
I would ask that my Liberal colleagues give this some thought: is our committee really the appropriate one to be studying this type of motion? That is what I am asking myself. The Bloc is in agreement; that is not the issue. The issue is whether or not we have the necessary expertise to not make some error in matters of international relations. At first blush, I would tend to think that our committee should not be the one to discuss this, but I remain open to the possibility. The aim is that this be discussed. It is not a problem for me, but I would not like this work to be done by the wrong committee.
12:50 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
I'm generally supportive of moving forward on this, but I want to make sure we do a proper job. I wouldn't want us to just skim over it with a few witnesses and produce a couple of points or a small report and then that's it. If we're going to do this, I think it should be done properly. So to me, I think it would probably deserve more attention.
Given what the Bloc is suggesting, I don't know whether it would be appropriate for us to talk about this at a steering committee meeting when we have all our other information in front of us. I'm flexible, but I want to make sure that, if we're going to do this, it's going to be done properly. There's no point in doing something superficial that doesn't get to something that we can recommend to the whole of Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
Actually, I'd just like to commend Monsieur Laframboise for the comment. At first blush, I was very interested in it, just simply because it was passed unanimously in the House, but it certainly would appear to me that this is probably not the right venue to study this. I never really thought about that before, to be blunt, and certainly with Mr. Masse's comments put in there, it seems to me that if this is going to be studied, if it's going to be done in depth, it certainly should be done in the proper venue, and this is not it.
With respect, Mr. Volpe, I never really thought about that before, but if it's going to be done, it should be done properly, and I don't think this is the proper venue to do it.
I'm wondering whether the mover would be prepared to hold off on dealing with this and not have a vote on it at this stage, so maybe we could talk behind the scenes a little bit about what the context of it would be, and maybe even at the end of the day, we might have one meeting on it and then make a recommendation that it be something that the industry committee study.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Joe Volpe Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON
I appreciate the input of all of my colleagues. Mr. Masse is right, of course--you either do something right, or you don't do it at all.
My speculation on the amount of time that one might have spent on this or might spend down the road really has everything to do with the calculation of time allocated for other things this committee has dealt with in the past and how much time those have taken. This being a motion of the House and not a bill of the House caused me to reflect on the chronology, so my speculation is not designed to be dismissive or restrictive. It's one of pure calculation and logistics.
With respect to Monsieur Laframboise, I know that those issues were raised as well in the debate, and in fact, as I understood it, the reason the debate ended up with the result that it did is because Mr. Allison also, along with the Bloc, took into consideration, first of all, federal-provincial jurisdictions and the provincial interest in this, and secondly the question was raised as well about whether this committee would be the appropriate one.
Because there are issues related to industry and industrial strategy, and because there are issues also related to public works and procurement issues, and because there are issues related to international trade and obligations under WTO and NAFTA, etc., one could imagine that the motion might not appear to be focused on this locus as the most appropriate forum for debate.
However, it's all begun as a result of transportation-related issues, and I think there's general agreement that the department responsible is the transport, infrastructure, and communities department, the minister and therefore his department, but it was born out of a desire to move the transportation issue along.
It's not for me to judge whether the motion was appropriately crafted in order to ensure that it focused directly on the specific responsibility of one minister and one department, because as you can see, even with the amendment proposed by Mr. Allison, it tried to capture as many of the issues as possible in a motion based on principle, the principle being that with respect to issues related to transportation technology that it be dealt with, keeping in mind the interests of Canadians--and it doesn't matter where they live--and that those transportation issues be held front and centre by the department and the minister responsible.
So that really is the intent of the mover of motion 183, that it come to this committee rather than to any other.
I suspect, Mr. Jean, that while your observation may have merit, all the other committees are probably going to say that they're sorry but they are going to wash their hands of this one too, because it's not really all theirs. There isn't a precision associated with a bill, with legislation that's passed in the House, and I acknowledge that. I grant that, and I dare say that perhaps Mr. Allison, who may wish to speak to it, because he moved the amendment, may even agree, but it doesn't really advance the issue for us to put it off to another day. That's why I gave Mr. Masse and Monsieur Laframboise a little bit of flexibility and the background for having this discussion as to why this should come to this committee and nowhere else.
If it's a motion that was deemed by the House to be worthy of consideration and voted upon, then it has to end up in a particular place, and I dare say that the best place for it would be with this committee.
Does it have to be done at our very next meeting? I've already acknowledged on behalf of Mr. Boshcoff and Mr. Allison that we'll take it in accordance to the schedule that we have already definitively planned out and that we have implicitly accepted.
Mr. Jean, I don't think we need to discuss it down the road. We simply accept the principle that I laid out for you: that is, that we have this motion that received the unanimous support of the House; it seems to be focused more on transportation than other issues; and it's not going to impinge on the schedule from this committee. We accept it on that basis, or not.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed
I have a lot of people who want to speak on this. If there is agreement among the committee, we might defer it to the next meeting to finish the debate, or we can call the vote now.
12:55 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Yes. For the record, I want to be clear that I'm not opposed to this committee looking at this.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
Mr. Chair, I would suggest deferring it and asking the mover to provide a list of witnesses that he would suggest might be appropriate, and then maybe we can deal with it in the next meeting or a steering committee.
Frankly, it seems like it's something that would really be more appropriate in the industry committee, or the international trade committee maybe even more so than industry. I agree with you that it touches on all of them, but certainly I think it touches on those two committees much more than this. Maybe if we could see somewhere to focus....
I'm even open, and the government's open, to having extra meetings to deal with it if necessary.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed
For the information of the committee, we do have Thursday set aside to talk about the report, but also we could probably find a little time....
Again, if Mr. Volpe, who is presenting the motion, wants to vote on it, we can do that.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Joe Volpe Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON
As I said, Mr. Chairman, all it is, for me, is the establishment of the principle that we are going to deal with this. I'm quite prepared to deal with when it will fit in our schedule at a subsequent meeting, but I'd like to deal with the issue today.
1 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed
Okay, Mr. Volpe has called for the vote.
(Motion agreed to) [See Minutes of Proceedings]