Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 14th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Sure, okay.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

That's my suggestion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Can I make a suggestion, just for the sake of speed? I can change it to asking if anybody disagrees. If anyone disagrees, then they can verbalize it at that point. I'm just thinking of trying to get through these motions as efficiently as possible.

Is that a good compromise?

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

I agree.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Okay, that's excellent.

I'm sorry; I lost my place. I'm not sure where I was at, to be honest.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

You were on meals.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

I was on notice of motion, I think. I was not on meals.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

No.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

That was a nice try.

Is there any discussion on notice of motion? No, we haven't read it yet.

Go ahead, MP Lalonde.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

I'm starting to be a little confused myself, Mr. Chair.

This is the motion regarding notices of motion:

That a forty-eight (48) hours notice, interpreted as two (2) nights, shall be required for any substantive motion to be considered by the committee, unless the substantive motion relates directly to business then under consideration, provided that (1) the notice be filed with the clerk of the committee no later than 4:00 p.m. from Monday to Friday; that (2) the motion be distributed to members in both official languages by the clerk on the same day the said notice was transmitted if it was received no later than the deadline hour; and that (3) notices received after the deadline hour or on non-business days be deemed to have been received during the next business day, and that when the committee is travelling outside the Parliamentary precinct, no substantive motions may be moved.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

Is there any discussion? Does anyone disagree with the motion?

(Motion agreed to)

MP Lalonde, please continue.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

The last routine motion concerns orders of reference from the House respecting bills:

That, in relation to orders of reference from the House respecting bills:

(a) the clerk of the committee shall, upon the committee receiving such an order of reference, write to each member who is not a member of a caucus represented on the committee to invite those members to file with the clerk of the committee, in both official languages, any amendments to the bill which is the subject of the said order, which they would suggest that the committee consider;

(b) suggested amendments filed, pursuant to paragraph (a), at least 48 hours prior to the start of clause-by-clause consideration of the bill to which the amendments relate shall be deemed to be proposed during the said consideration, provided that the committee may, by motion, vary this deadline in respect of a given bill;

and (c) during the clause-by-clause consideration of a bill, the chair shall allow a member who filed suggested amendments, pursuant to paragraph (a), an opportunity to make brief representations in support of them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

Is there any discussion? Does anyone disagree with that motion?

(Motion agreed to)

Seeing no other routine motions, does the committee wish to discuss future business at this time?

I don't know if this is an old hand up, but I see that Sean Casey has his hand up. Please go ahead, MP Casey.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

It's about 58 years old.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

I have a motion to present, Mr. Chair. This is what I would call a continuation motion, I guess.

The motion is as follows: I move that the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs agrees that all substantive motions adopted by the committee to undertake studies or hear from witnesses in the first session of the 43rd Parliament are hereby readopted by the committee without modification or amendment.

That's the motion I wish to present. Perhaps I can offer just a little bit of colour, because I know that we have some new members on the committee.

Essentially, the committee had adopted four specific motions as a work plan and had assigned priorities to each of them. As the first order of business they covered, first and foremost, the backlog, and they dedicated no fewer than four meetings to that study. The second was to undertake a study of federal supports and services to veterans, caregivers and families, with no fewer than three meetings dedicated to that study. The third order of business was to undertake a study of the efficacy and use of psychiatric service dogs, with no more than three meetings devoted to that study. The fourth was a study on commemoration, with no fewer than three meetings.

That's just by way of background, Mr. Chair. The motion is essentially to readopt all of those four substantive motions as our work plan.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

I see that a few other people have put their hand up.

Just for clarification, Monsieur Desilets, you had your hand up very briefly and brought it down. I just want to make sure you're good.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Everything's fine, Mr. Chair. We're just looking forward to moving the next motions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Okay.

MP Blaney, is your intervention about MP Casey's motion or is this an additional motion that you'd like to bring forward?

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

I will speak to Mr. Casey's motion first.

I agree that of course the studies this committee put forward earlier in the session are important ones. I do think we need to revisit these. I have some additions that I would like to look at, so I'm not comfortable supporting the motion unless I have more clarity about the process.

My understanding is that the subcommittee would be able to meet, review what had been done, look at any new motions that are applied, and then create a work plan based on that. Things have changed. I think it's important to continue a study on the disability backlog, but it has been a significant number of months. There is a PBO report that all of you know, and I'm very interested in following up on that and in making sure we get more clarity on that issue.

I guess what I'm saying is that I want to know the process before I commit to agreeing to anything. I don't think moving forward with the old work plan makes sense until there is a more substantive debate about where we need to go.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

You're welcome.

If I can add to that, I would agree that things have definitely changed. Not to speak for Mr. Casey, I believe the focus is to get us moving and back up and running—to hit the ground running, so to speak. I agree that a subcommittee is a very good idea to flesh out the specifics of each of these studies to make sure they're substantive enough and have the right focus, but I think that would be determined in subcommittee, not in relation to MP Casey's motion. I think it's not completely necessary to have the subcommittee before we can move this motion so that we can give direction to the clerk to get moving and get back up and running.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

I would like to hear the motion again. I might want to make an amendment so that the first meeting, prior to the whole committee meeting, is a subcommittee meeting to put forward work plans. Then we'd be bringing a plan about how we're moving forward to the first meeting of all members. It's to have that discussion in our second committee meeting after this one.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

We have to discuss Mr. Casey's motion and vote on it first. Then we can discuss what the next meeting looks like. I don't think we have to defeat Mr. Casey's motion in order to have a subcommittee meeting.

Mr. Casey, do you want to elaborate?

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

The only thing that I wanted to do was reread the motion, as Ms. Blaney suggested. It is as follows: That the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs agrees that all substantive motions adopted by the committee to undertake studies or hear from witnesses in the first session of the 43rd Parliament are hereby readopted by the committee without modification or amendment.

I would take that to mean—exactly as you indicated, Mr. Chair—that at our next meeting, we would start in with the backlog study because that was what was adopted in the last Parliament.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

A subcommittee meeting could also be held in addition to our next scheduled meeting, if I'm not mistaken.