Agriculture Committee on Dec. 8th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Bellavance, we have Mr. Lemieux's motion on the table. Do you want to speak to it?

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

I really thought I had made a motion to discuss my motion, and I will do so in a few moments. But I am opposed to Mr. Lemieux's motion. It is quite ironic to hear someone make a motion for there to be no more motions; any time we are dealing with opposition motions, people from the Conservative Party do everything they can to delay them. They say that they are no good, that they are out of order, they speak for inordinate lengths of time in order to stop them coming to a vote.

Basically, the Conservatives see democracy as a problem. In this committee, up to now, each time motions have been presented, we have not agreed, but we have moved to a vote. We did that with Mr. Lemieux's motion on the same issue, the SRM. I had my say. In my opinion, the motion was too weak, but I still agreed with what it was proposing. We had a vote, and there was no undue discussion about it. We have just passed one that Mr. Valeriote introduced. Everyone seemed quite happy to begin this meeting of the committee with that motion; we all agreed.

But the moment the Conservatives do not agree, like here, for example, we hear them say that the opposition is creating problems and that the opposition is trying to hold up our good old report on competitiveness. I repeat, Mr. Chair, last week, I was at the UPA congress. Not a soul talked to me about the report on competitiveness. But a lot of people talked to me about SRM, and about AgriFlexibility and about the agreement with the European Union, given that supply management is still on the table. I had a lot of discussions about matters like that.

We have to think about the present and respond to the requests from our producers when they are faced with an emergency, as they are with SRMs. That is all I am trying to do by introducing my motion. I am not trying to play games. The motion is the direct result of a request from Quebec producers. I feel sure that Canadian producers are making the same request because we heard testimony on this very subject that said the same thing: they are looking for a program to compensate for the competitiveness gap between Canada and the United States caused by our SRM standards.

So I do not see what is so terrible about the opposition that makes people on the government side incapable of holding a vote and moving on. We have to finish by discussing the report. So I am opposed to Mr. Lemieux's motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

Mr. Storseth.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I'll say just a couple of points to Mr. Bellavance, who I have great respect for. You know, I think if he looks back to the blues of November 19, I believe, he'll see how he and the other members of the opposition participated in a filibuster of their own motions for two hours before they then voted for them. So let's not pretend the games are being played on one side or the other. We genuinely disagree with some motions. You genuinely disagree with some motions.

But the one thing I do take umbrage at is this constant talk about democracy. The only time you guys ever talk about democracy and abiding democracy is when you've got six members sitting on your side, and the only time you complained about our forcing the majority on you is when we have six on this side. So the games are being played all over the place, Mr. Bellavance.

At the end of the day, I actually disagree with the motion Mr. Lemieux has put forward. I disagree with it on a couple of fronts. One, I believe it's against the member's privilege to not allow him to bring motions forward in committee. I believe it is a privilege we all have extended to us through the House of Commons that we should be allowed to bring motions forward. I believe members should be responsible with their motions and not use them in a dilatory manner, which sometimes I believe happens—mostly from the other side, but nonetheless.

Two, I believe the committee has already genuinely set the direction in which it wants to move. The committee has said we want to move in the direction of the report. We want to get the report out of the way. We've said that for a year now. I don't know what it is about the report that the opposition is filibustering. They're adding amendments; they're basically redrafting the report. They're delaying; there are five or six opposition motions in the queue to delay. Now today we're trying to work on the report, and they then go and hijack the agenda of the meeting, move it to committee business by a vote, which I did not agree with, and move towards getting all these motions out of the way. And they know it's going to take an entire meeting, if not two meetings, before we can get back to the report.

So I don't know what it is about competition in the agriculture sector that the opposition is opposed to reviewing, but it is clear that the committee has already set the agenda for where we want to go. That's why I disagree with Mr. Lemieux's motion, because it has already been stated. We have stated it not only once but twice. I mean, we've already passed a motion very similar to this. And I will get into my disagreements with André's motion if and when André brings his motion up. But at the end of the day, committee members are using their own individual freedoms as members of Parliament to hijack the agenda of the committee, the agenda that has already been put forward by the entire committee stating the direction we want to go. I could do what Wayne loves and quote out of the new O'Brien and Bosc as well as Robert's Rules of Order as to how this is out of order, but I'm not going to.

At the end of the day, I really do believe we have a job to do, and that is to move forward on this report as expeditiously as possible and to get something done on the report. I wish we saw some good faith on the other side, either by dropping some of their amendments they're continuing to bring forward, or, if we agreed to deal with one motion, by allowing us to move on—

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I believe I just said I was willing to set mine aside until after.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Point taken.

Mr. Storseth.

[An hon. member]

It wasn't really a point of order, but anyway.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I didn't say it was.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Mr. Chairman, I just do believe we need to make sure we get this report done. Maybe what we need to be talking about doing is setting extra time aside before we leave for the Christmas break to get this report finalized.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Shipley.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I want to take about a minute. I agree with Mr. Storseth. In terms of the timing, we have pushed to get all our witnesses in on the report, to get the witnesses to come in so that we could actually set a schedule. In fact, we set aside business to the end of January, which is fine, which was touched on in terms of beginning farmers, which would have the same impact in terms of the competition we're dealing with--waiting for a report from the minister on beginning farmers. We also did all those things to get our schedule in place so that we would have time to not be dealing with motions that keep coming forward, but to be dealing actually with this report we have in front of us.

Folks, we made a commitment almost a year ago to the agriculture community about going ahead with this report, and I will support whatever we can do to get to that process before we break in two days.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Go ahead, Mr. Eyking.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Mr. Chair, we have about three hours left before Christmas break. Here's the scoop: if we continue in this manner, we're not going to have anything done by Friday. We're going to be down as probably the most dysfunctional committee on the Hill--

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Oh, no, we're not that.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

No? Are we not that bad yet?

We'll be leaving with not a lot of love in this room. I think Alex has a great idea. I know it's a little different from most, but let's get these motions done. Let's limit the debate to maybe two minutes for each party and get the motions done--

[An hon. member]

Is that democratic?

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

I want to raise the point of order that I had to listen in the House of Commons for hours yesterday about how the NDP hated to see debate limited. I really find it hypocritical to hear it introduced here today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Point taken.

Order, please. Go ahead, Mr. Eyking.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Mr. Chair, you know as a farmer that you need to get the harvest done. You see the clock ticking and you have to make tough decisions. I think we should get these motions going here and get them done. If not, by Friday...well, I don't know if there'll be much shaking of hands, but we'll just leave. We won't have the report done. The motions won't be done. I might as well bring in the rest of my Christmas cards and sign them for the next three hours and make some use of my time while I'm here.

We have an hour today and two hours on Friday. I think we have to change the direction of the wind here a bit and get it done. Mr. Chair, I think you should try.

At the last meeting I chaired, maybe I should have been a little easier on the opposition and let them debate their motion, but I pushed through two motions and they were voted on. The Conservatives won; that's the way it rolls. You can't always have it the way you want it.

That's my suggestion, Mr. Chair. Maybe we can limit some debate here and get these motions done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Eyking, any time I tried to limit debate in the past I got chastised for it. You can't suck and blow at the same time. I'm not suggesting you are, Mark, but you can't do it.

Unless we change our... On the way over to the House today, Wayne made the statement that we're not going to get the report done. If that's the attitude, then it'll never get done. That's like saying we're not going to get it done. With anything I ever tackled before, I went out with the attitude that, yes, I'm going to get it done.

Go ahead, Mr. Lemieux.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

I just want to highlight that the motion I put forward is meant to focus the committee on the work at hand, which is finalizing our report. As I mentioned, I think this is the underlying desire of all MPs around this table. It is not a partisan motion. It throws no rocks. It's simply a motion trying to focus this committee on the work at hand, which is finalizing the report. I want to make that clear, because in the debate we've had so far, it sounded somehow as if it was more than that, and it's not more than that.

The other thing is that I understand what Mr. Storseth is saying about MPs having the right to table motions at any time. They can continue to table motions. I am only suggesting that we defer their debate. I am not suggesting we overrule their debate or not allow their debate; I'm only suggesting that we delay the debate until we're done the report.

I think this is quite reasonable. We do this at committee and with witnesses all the time. Often we have motions sitting on the agenda, Chair, and we don't discuss them. Why? We have witnesses in front of us. We'll go through a whole meeting with two sets of witnesses, give them one hour each, and never quite get around to the motions. We are de facto agreeing to delay debate on those motions, and this will happen time and again.

In fact, one of my criticisms of the way we work is that we often don't leave enough time for the committee to do its work. The committee has to do work that is outside of listening to witnesses. I'm saying that in the normal course of the work of our committee, we willingly delay debate on motions. We do it all the time to listen to witnesses, to move ahead with our report, to collect information, to do all sorts of things; now, when I put forward a motion that simply puts into writing what we've already done throughout this last year, it's somehow an affront to the opposition. It just doesn't make any sense.

What does make sense is focusing ourselves on the report. If they have motions, let them bring them forward, but let's delay debate. In fact, that's exactly what my motion says: that we call forward no more witnesses. Let's not fill up our schedule with more witnesses at this point, because we're trying to focus on the work that we've done over the past year, and let's debate no more motions. It doesn't say not to table any more motions or not to give any more notices of motions; it just says not to debate any more motions until the review of our competitiveness report is completed. It's simply asking the committee to delay debate on motions until we've done this more important work of finishing our report.

I think it's quite reasonable, Chair, and I'm appealing to my colleagues to support it so that we can get on with the business at hand and finalize our report.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Okay.

I would just make a suggestion to try to accomplish something here.

I would ask, Mr. Lemieux, whether you would agree to an amendment to your motion, that instead of having it until the report is complete, at least allow us to spend the rest of today--and hell, maybe we'll get lucky and finish the report today--but not to delay it past that.

It's just a suggestion, because I'm getting the feeling around the table that you're not going to get support for your motion. It's your decision.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Chair, I'm not against it. It's just that I'm worried that we'll relive all this on Thursday.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

It's a possibility, but, again, it's the will of the committee.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Let me look at my colleagues. Will they support this motion if we at least today go back to the report without moving on to motions again? No, they're shaking their head, Chair.

So I thank you for the friendly amendment, but your amendment is not moving or swaying the opposition members at all.