Evidence of meeting #1 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 40th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Bloc
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
I would like to point out to Mr. Lemieux that with the consent of the committee, any motion can be debated, even without the 48 hours' notice. This has happened in the past, when it was unanimous.
Bloc
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Is there further discussion on the motion?
(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Now that we've dealt with routine motions, something that was brought to my attention beforehand by Barry is that we don't have a table for the media. I know we always have had one, so maybe we could request that.
I'm not sure, Madam Clerk, who we talk to about that.
We'll try to address that, Barry and Alex.
Mr. Bellavance.
Bloc
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
I suggest that we put it under Barry's name, because he is always there. In that way, it would be a table in his honour.
Conservative
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Chair, I'd like to put forward another motion concerning rounds of questioning. It's not here in the bilingual sheet we have, but I think it's important that we devote some time to discussing how long we'd like witnesses to present. When they come before us, I think it's fair that they know what their time limits are, and I think it's fair that we know what their time constraints are as well, because you'll be managing that, Chair, of course.
Secondly, although it's not a hard and fast rule, I think it's good for us to simply decide at this point how long the rounds of questioning may be. Of course, we can always deviate from that if there are particular circumstances, but at this early point in the life of the agriculture committee, I think it's good to have a game plan that we can agree on regarding how long witnesses are going to speak and our rounds. I've put forward a motion in that regard, called “Rounds of Questioning”. I'll just read it out. It's on the English form. It says:
That witnesses shall be allowed up to ten (10) minutes to make their opening statement. During the questioning of witnesses, there shall be allocated seven (7) minutes for the first round of questioning, and thereafter five (5) minutes shall be allocated to each questioner in the second and subsequent rounds of questioning.
That is my motion, Chair.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
You've heard the motion.
I just have one comment, if you'll allow me. From time to time, in our two-hour meetings, we sometimes have them as split meetings, where our first witnesses are here for an hour and what have you. Of course, it would have to be approved by everyone, but as chair, probably in that case it would be my goal to request that the presentations may stay the same, or I might even ask the witnesses to shorten them a little bit to allow for more questioning, but maybe shorten all questions to five minutes, instead of seven and five minutes, just to try to make the rounds in that hour.
I don't think it needs to be part of the motion, but I just think it's fair to put that in front of everyone now, in case that happens down the road. And of course if the committee as a whole decides that that day it doesn't want to go that way, so be it. I take my direction from you.
I have Mr. Storseth and then Mr. Atamanenko.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
I believe that's what we had last time, wasn't it?
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
We haven't had a problem in the past with being flexible if we were splitting a meeting up. I think it's worked, and if we adopt this and we're flexible, we're fine.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Madam Clerk has just added at the end of the amendment you wrote, “at the discretion of the chair”. That comes from the clerk. I don't know whether that could be accepted as friendly or not.
Conservative
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
I think that's implied anyway, Larry. When we had more witnesses here last time we worked well dropping back to five minutes for all rounds.
Brian made the point that this is the same as was done previously.
One issue that I do have a problem with, which is not in this motion--and maybe it doesn't have to be--is when we sometimes have six witnesses and we only have an hour; they never really have time to put their case. I think for the subcommittee, at least, we need to be conscious of that. If we're going to have a witness in, we really need time to do the in-depth inquiry that's needed rather than just passing them over.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
If I could, just to clarify, Wayne, where you're coming from on this, I'm wondering if we could direct the clerk in advance, when contacting our witnesses, in case we're down to an hour's time, to maybe explain to them how beneficial it might be to give the committee a hard copy in fairly good time—48 hours isn't bad, but even more than that is better—in order to review it. It's basically to try to cut down their verbal presentation at the start of the meeting, in order to allow for more questioning.
Is that kind of where you were going?
Conservative
Conservative
