Agriculture Committee on Nov. 14th, 2007

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Jean-François Lafleur]

Good afternoon, everybody.

Honourable members of the committee, I see an obvious quorum.

We can now proceed with the election of a Chair. I am ready to receive motions for the position of Chair.

I must inform members that the clerk of the committee can only receive motions for the election of the chair. The clerk cannot receive other types of motions and cannot entertain points of order, nor participate in debate, of course.

Right now I am ready to proceed with the election of the chair.

Are there any motions?

Mr. Miller, you have a motion for the chair?

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Yes, I nominate James Bezan.

[The Clerk]

Thank you, are there any other motions? No.

Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?

(Motion agreed to)

[The Clerk]

I declare the motion carried, and Mr. Bezan duly elected chair of the committee.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[The Clerk]

Before inviting Mr. Bezan to take the chair, if the committee wishes, we will proceed to the election of the vice-chairs.

I am now ready to receive motions for first vice-chair, from the official opposition.

Mr. St. Amand.

[Lloyd St. Amand, Liberal, Brant, ON]

I am pleased to nominate my colleague, Mr. Paul Steckle.

[The Clerk]

Thank you.

It has been moved that Mr. Steckle be the first vice-chair of the committee.

(Motion agreed to)

[The Clerk]

I will now proceed with the election of the second vice-chair from an opposition party other than the official opposition. I am now ready to receive motions for this position.

Mr. Roy.

[Jean-Yves Roy, Bloc, Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

I nominate Mr. Bellavance.

[The Clerk]

It is moved by Mr. Roy that Mr. Bellavance be elected as second vice-chair of the committee.

Are there any other motions?

Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?

(Motion agreed to)

I declare the motion adopted and Mr. Bellavance duly elected the second vice-chair of the committee.

I will now invite Mr. Bezan to take the chair, please.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you for re-electing me as chair.

I'm looking forward to working with my vice-chairs, of course. We had a fairly productive last session, and I'm looking forward to this session being even more productive as we continue to deal with the issues we're all concerned about and care deeply about, and those concern our farm base across this country from ocean to ocean.

The thing next we need to do is to go through routine motions. We do have some motions that we need to....

Do we need to circulate these?

[The Clerk]

Yes, if it's not already been done.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

We've worked on a few ourselves.

Can we get these circulated as well?

[The Clerk]

Sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

We've got to go through these routine motions so that we have a proper procedure established for our committee meetings. We have a copy of the routine motions circulated by the clerk, and I've made a few proposals or amendments to those so that things, in my opinion, would run a little bit better.

The first one is on the services of analysts from the Library of Parliament. It is that the committee retain the services of one or more analysts from the LIbrary of Parliament.

Do you have a question?

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Do we need a motion in order to discuss this, Mr. Chairman? Procedurally, do we need a motion to put this whole document on the table for discussion, or do we deal with these individually?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

We'll deal with each one as we go through it.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Okay, that's fine.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

If you want to deal with it all in one motion, we can, but I think it's better for debate that we do it one by one.

Go ahead, Mr. Martin.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Chair, if you are moving the change, could you explain the effect of the language change that you're asking for in the first piece?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I won't be moving these motions, because I'm the chair. They'll have to be moved by somebody other than me.

Go ahead, Mr. Anderson.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Are we just dealing with the services of analysts from the Library of Parliament right now?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Yes.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Basically that's just to clean up the language a little bit, but it allows the committee to retain the services of analysts from the Library of Parliament. We thought the language was a little clearer, and services may be requested at the discretion of the chair. It's just to clean that up, so it's basically the same thing.