Evidence of meeting #67 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was products.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Bloc
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
Mr. Chairman, before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that on the orders of the day, there are two notices of motion. Then, we are to hear from witnesses. Given the fact that at our last meeting there was a great deal of discussion on notices of motion that did not result in a vote—that can happen from time to time—I fear today's discussions may drag on and we may not be able to hear from the witnesses.
Some witnesses are from Quebec. They are agricultural producers. Out of respect, I would like us to invert our orders of the day. We could hear from the witnesses first and then discuss notices of motion.
As for the other scheduled witnesses representing the department, since they are from Ottawa, it is easier to connect with them. So, I would suggest we spend the first hour hearing from the agricultural producers on the matters we want to discuss and that we discuss the motions during the second hour.
I personally have nothing planned for tonight. If you want to go on until 2 a.m., that is not a problem for me, but at least, we will have heard from the agricultural producers who travelled here to present their testimony. If we don't have enough time to hear from the departmental officials, we could set aside some other time, outside of regular committee hours as we've done for Mr. Miller's witnesses, or we could add another hour to one of our regular meetings for that purpose.
If we were to divide the committee's time in half this way, we could meet the needs of all committee members.
Conservative
Bloc
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
If I must do so, yes. We could proceed in this manner.
Liberal
Charles Hubbard Liberal Miramichi, NB
Mr. Chair, are we saying one hour for the second item on the agenda?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
That's what they are on for right now. Or do we have them all at one time?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
They're not listed as to time. We have all the witnesses listed as one group.
Mr. Easter.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
I think, Mr. Chair, André's concerns are right. If we can work out an arrangement whereby we hear the witnesses for the first hour and then move to motions, that would be agreeable to us. We know that the government seems to be on a trend of government members filibustering, and we think that's what will happen with the parliamentary secretary today—
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
—so we would agree to the first hour for witnesses, either by motion or by agreement.
Liberal
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
So we'd make number two number one, and number one would become number two.
Mr. Anderson.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
I will just make the point that I want to thank Mr. Bellavance for having the courage to take this position, because if he did not do this, we would not get cooperation from either the Liberals or the NDP to do it. He has stepped forward and suggested this, and so for Wayne to suggest otherwise is ridiculous, but we would go along with his suggestion.
Liberal
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
We talked with André beforehand. The government is responsible, and they're the ones that are doing the filibustering—the government, for Pete's sake.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
I support my colleague's position, but we need to have sufficient time to address this motion.
I would say, whether it's an hour or half an hour, it's not a problem.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
Let's move on, then. Since we have agreement around the table, we'll switch item one and item two.
I'd like to call our witnesses to the table right now. Thanks a lot for appearing today to talk about the issues on the egg and chicken import situations.
We welcome to the table Martin Dufresne, from the Fédération des producteurs de volailles du Québec. From the Chicken Farmers of Canada we have Urs Kressibucher and Mike Dungate. From the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency we have Laurent Souligny. From the Fédération des producteurs d’oeufs de consommation du Québec we have Serge Lefebvre and Serge Lebeau.
Martin, please kick it off with your opening comments.
To each group, please keep your comments to ten minutes or less so we have more time for questions and answers.