Evidence of meeting #56 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was easter.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
So this would be a deviance. This would be a substantive motion that would have changed what we were talking about.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
A point of order, Mr. Chairman. We should not be having this debate about the adequacy of a ruling that you've already made. It's been made.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
I don't think any more time should be given to anyone who wishes to deal with that. Deal with this motion now.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
I think you did make the right call at the last meeting. The argument to go through them one by one by one, as if it was the practice of the committee always--that is not absolutely the case. There have been other times that motions have been brought forward earlier. If you went back through the blues, I think you'd find that. I don't have them here, but in your ruling you abided by the practices of the House and the practices of committee. So let's get on to debating the motion, rather than playing games here.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
A point of order. Just to respond to Mr. Easter's comments on the normal practice of this committee, he is right, sometimes we have moved to other superceding motions, but that was only at the unanimous consent of the committee.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Okay. On this, I think enough has been said about it. There is other information here. I have made my ruling, and if it turns out to be wrong or was wrong, then I have to live with that. What I'm going to use is the analogy of a referee in a hockey game. We all know they make mistakes from time to time, but they call it as they see it at the time, based on whatever. In this case it was based on information.
So we're going to continue the debate on the motion.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to raise a point of order, though, Mr. Chair. I would like Mr. Easter to withdraw his unnecessary, unparliamentary comments that he made earlier in the committee meeting. I don't want to reiterate the words he said. They were very unparliamentary. If he withdraws them publicly now, I will not bring it forward to the House.
The other issue is that on this he has called us on this side liars. This is a pattern that happened yesterday in the veterans affairs committee. When the minister brought forward Bill C-55 and accused the Liberal opposition in the Senate of blocking the expedition without giving unanimous consent, the Liberal critic, Ms. Sgro, accused us of being liars. She has yet today to find out that she was wrong. In fact, the Liberals did block Bill C-55 in the Senate, with unanimous consent. Here, once again, we have a member, a Liberal critic—
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Mr. Chair, I might have used one word out of order, so I'll withdraw it.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thank you.
Mr. Lemieux, the floor is yours to debate the motion.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Yes. Thank you, Chair.
Before all the points of order were raised, I was in the process of saying we've had many witnesses come in front of the committee. We've been discussing biotechnology as our subject matter, of course. We've had discussions on GM as well, which we've always recognized as being a subset, quite frankly a small subset, of the biotechnology study. Everyone has been in agreement that we have to be careful that our biotechnology study does not immediately gravitate to GM and gets stuck on GM because it's just a small portion of the biotechnology sector.
Alfalfa is a small part of GM, which is part of a bigger biotechnology sector. What we have here is a microscope going in on one tiny aspect of our study. To be quite honest, Chair, and to be fair to the committee, to pass a motion like this it would only be right to have witnesses come in front of committee to discuss that aspect of the motion. It's not really fair to the committee for witnesses to come in to talk about biotechnology in general and a few specifics here and there.
One of the specifics they dwelt on, perhaps only momentarily, had to do with alfalfa, and, bang, that's what the opposition latches on to and we have a motion in front of the committee dealing with this specific issue. Yet we've had no witnesses come to talk specifically about what the impact of a moratorium might be, to talk about GM alfalfa at length. Some discussed it for more than just a moment.
We should be getting a number of different witnesses in front of committee to present their point of view on this very motion, yet that hasn't happened. They just want to ram it through, let's get to the vote. Why do we have to get to the vote? We have to get to the vote because Mr. Easter has to appease those whom he has disenfranchised.
I would say, Chair, that this motion is not well presented in front of the committee. If Mr. Easter had wanted to present this in a positive way, he would have raised this at steering committee. You're chair of the steering committee. That's why we have a steering committee--
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
A point of order, Mr. Chair.
My memory may not be as good as it should be because of my age, but I would say we had ample witnesses talking about precisely what the motion is dealing with and the dangers of genetically modified alfalfa. To say it was slighted I think is not correct.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
I think it's probably correct that we didn't have witnesses speaking directly to this motion. That is fair, but some witnesses did comment on GM alfalfa. It's still not a--
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
To go back to Mr. Atamanenko, what he just said is what I just said. I said we had witnesses come in front of committee and they did talk about GM alfalfa, but as a small subset of GM, which is a small subset of biotechnology. There's no conflict between what I'm saying and what Alex is saying.
What I am saying is that when you read this motion, it's very strongly worded. If we're going to have a motion like this, with a very categorical type of language, I think it's fair to the committee and the agricultural sector to have witnesses come in to talk about this motion, and not everything else that we're studying on biotechnology. But that doesn't seem to be acceptable.
If I were to draw any inference from what Mr. Atamanenko said, he's not interested in that. We are interested in that. Why wouldn't we be interested in hearing what impact this motion might have on the agricultural sector?
I am not prejudging how this should play out. I'm just saying it's a strongly worded motion. We should have people come in front of committee to talk about it. That's why we have a committee. We have a committee so that people can come in front of it to talk and share their support, lack of support, or thoughts--pros and cons--on things like this.
Yes, we have had some discussion, but it wasn't focused discussion that looked at exactly what this motion is proposing. That's what we should have had.
On what triggered this, Mr. Chair, if this motion had been brought in front of committee in a more respectful and positive way, it would have started at steering committee. We've done this before. Again, I do not understand why everything is so exceptional and destructive with this one motion. It would have come up at steering committee.
It would have come to the committee and we would have allocated proper time for it. If it's so important and urgent, we would have allocated proper time. We would have put together some witness lists. We would have had the committee call some witnesses. We would have allocated the proper amount of time, instead of just trying to ram it through, which is what's happening today. They just want to ram it through.
I'm going to finish my comments there.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I might be back, but I'll end my comments there and simply say that if this is so urgent and so important, then the committee should perhaps have a more thorough look at it. That would include having witnesses.
Thank you.
Conservative
