Agriculture Committee on March 22nd, 2011

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

I can too.

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

No, you can't.

[An hon. member]

You can't decide who can--

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Order, order!

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

You guys are so full of shit it's unbelievable.

[An hon. member]

Come on, man, a little respect.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I will allow you, but they're right, he's....

I just want to deal with this one--

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

How can we respect you guys over there? There's an important motion on the floor. Why don't you just debate it instead of playing games?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Order, please.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Why don't you just debate it instead of...?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Order, or I'm going to adjourn this meeting right now.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Have you not enough backbone to debate the issue?

[An hon. member]

Show some respect.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Order!

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

You played a game to get it in front of committee. That's what happened, and that's what we're objecting to. You're the one playing games and you got it in front of committee. You're playing games.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Lemieux, order.

To answer Mr. Storseth, it says on page 1052, under “Moving Motions”, that:

A member of a committee may move a motion at any time in the normal course of a meeting, provided that:

the notice period, if any, has been respected;

the motion is not a substantive motion or a subsidiary motion where such a motion is already being debated (a committee is required to deal with such motions one at a time);

the member has the floor to move the motion and is not doing so on a point of order; and

moving the motion does not violate any rule the committee may have adopted in respect of the period in which motions can be moved.

That is the one that I....

[An hon. member]

Mr. Chair, what--

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

No, just hear me out.

The reason I made my ruling as I did, Mr. Storseth, is that even though we practised it, we did not actually adopt a motion with respect to that. In hindsight, to your earlier comments, maybe that was a mistake, but--

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

Perhaps you could spare me a couple more seconds of your time, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Yes.

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

This does go to my motion for you to rule this out of order, in my point of order, because, as you explained from page 1052--I will quote you, Mr. Chairman--“the motion is not a substantive motion”. That is what you said.

I refer you to page 1055, where it talks about substantive motions:

Independent proposals, divided into two types:

2. Resolution: motion in which the committee expresses its opinion on a specific matter.

That, sir, is a substantive motion. Therefore, as it says:

A member of a committee may move a motion at any time in the normal course of a meeting, provided that...the motion is not a substantive motion....

And sir, I do, as O'Brien and Bosc....

I'll wait until you're finished talking to the clerk, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chair, perhaps I could finish. Clearly in O'Brien and Bosc, on page 1047, it does give you the latitude to take under consideration practice that is typical practice of the committee. I think this is very important.

Mr. Easter, I don't want to get into the politics of this. I do think this is very important to parliamentary privilege.

My privileges as a member of Parliament, Mr. Richards' privileges, even Mr. Valeriote's, Mr. Bellavance's, and Mr. Atamanenko's privileges--even if they agree, they are giving up their privileges as a member of Parliament, and that supercedes anything we do here for political parties. That is why I do urge you to consider page 1047 and the practices.

That's not saying that Mr. Easter can't get to this very quickly, but he has to pass over these other motions.

That is the only thing I would bring forward to you, sir. I will respect your ruling. I do regret that I didn't have this information for you on the day on which we initially talked about it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I will get to you, Mr. Easter.

I have ruled on this. As you just said, some of this information I probably wish I might have had. However, on the clerk's interpretation, and I have two of them on my right here, the fact that there was no other substantive motion—call it whatever you want—being debated at the time did not contravene that substantive motion thing. That's the interpretation there, so....

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

But, Mr. Chairman, I would say that we were actually undergoing a study. The committee business of the day was actually a study of biotechnology, which committee business was what we were moving forward with. Mr. Easter didn't move his motion on the point of order, I agree with that, but he did move his motion while committee business was to be looking at the study on biotechnology. So this would be a substantive motion that would be dealing with something other than that—

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Actually, that day was not to be dealing with the study, Mr. Storseth. It was actually set aside for committee business at the request of the committee. It was to deal with motions. Obviously nobody, unless maybe Mr. Easter, knew what motion was going to be coming forth, so that point is probably moot.

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

But that needs to be according to normal practices. I'm not arguing with you; I'm just continuing the thought process here. We were debating committee business. Under normal practices, page 1047, that committee business would have been, number one, the hog industry motion by Mr. Easter.