Agriculture Committee on June 21st, 2023

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Shall the chair report the bill to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you, colleagues.

I'm a little bit awkward, because this is very procedural and you know I'm very laissez-faire, but there you go. Good job, everyone. That bill will be reported back to the House.

My understanding is that Mr. Barlow did some pretty good work in my stead on Monday, but there is still some work to be done on this.

It's up to you, colleagues. If you want to go through the report to try to get it done tonight, that's fine. The reality, based on my understanding, is that we're not likely to be here tomorrow, but I may be wrong. I'm not a House leader.

This won't get tabled until September anyway, so if you want to take some months over the summer to see how we can pare it down and make it even better, I'm all for it. It's really up to you.

Mr. Barlow.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I'd like to thank the committee for working well together in your absence on Monday.

Looking through version two, and maybe another deeper glance at the recommendations, we're now at 33 recommendations. I know we talked initially about trying to pare this down. Significant new amendments were also added regarding neonicotinoids and bees. I would prefer to have a little bit more time to look at this to try to pare down these amendments, which I don't think we can do today.

I would suggest, and this is my suggestion only, that our teams go back and find ways to try to amalgamate some of these amendments. Some of them are fairly close. It would be my preference that we take this back—it's not going to happen anywhere between now and September, unfortunately, despite our best efforts—and try to pare this down into something that's a bit more manageable. We now have almost as many amendments as we do pages in the report. I just don't think that's constructive.

That would be my opinion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Also, thank you to our witnesses. I apologize. I should have done that sooner. Thank you for your respective work for the government.

Monsieur Perron.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

I realize that I won't get anywhere by trying to settle this tonight. I would, however, like us to agree that this should be our first order of business when we come back. It's been lingering since the election, and that is unacceptable. We have to get this done. It's fine if nothing happens between now and September, but we can't wait until November. That has happened before, as everyone recalls.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Mr. MacGregor.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

I agree with Mr. Barlow. It's makes no sense to try to rush through it in an hour. Let's give ourselves the summer, with the condition that this is our first order of business when we come back.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

I'm happy to make that the case. We'll see how the summer goes.

Monsieur Lehoux.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I completely agree with Mr. Barlow, but we have way too many recommendations. This is not the first time in the course of our studies that I've said we need to really pare down our recommendations. I think we should get it down to 15 or so, and that's being quite generous. I'm not sure that it's all that effective to propose 30 recommendations. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

I agree.

I think most of the committee members agree.

Look, if we need to this summer, I can always call a subcommittee, I believe, to discuss business. Otherwise, I will come ready when Parliament resumes. For our first meeting, this environmental report will be on the docket, and then we can have discussions if we need to to plan out our schedule.

Indo-Pacific, of course, is extremely important. We want to make sure that we don't delay that any further. There might be some legislation referred to our committee, etc., but we will leave it here.

Monsieur Perron.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

I still encourage everyone to use the time we've just given ourselves to think about how we can eliminate or combine certain recommendations. We may want to have a discussion before we come back, so that things run smoothly when the committee returns.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

I think we're all in agreement, colleagues.

Mr. MacGregor, I'll go to you, and then if we have no other business, what I'll make sure of is this will be the first thing on our agenda. We can discuss how we would maybe go between, as we've done in the past, finishing environment and getting started with Indo-Pacific, as we move to the fall.

Go ahead, Mr. MacGregor.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

I just wanted to take this moment, Mr. Chair, to thank you, to thank our clerk, thank our analysts.

I hope all colleagues have a great summer and we come back rested and ready.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Wonderful. Thank you very much.

Yes, let me echo that to our wonderful clerk and to our assistants. I won't leave before, but while I'm on the topic, to our technical team.... But Stéphanie came in new as our clerk, and she's done a tremendous job. I can say that.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Our analysts are old hat, but they're also very good as well, so thank you so much.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Monsieur Lehoux.

[Richard Lehoux, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

I have a question, Mr. Chair. Did we get a response to the letter we sent to Mr. Fraser, the immigration minister?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

I'll reference our clerk on that. I think, no. What I've said to this committee before is that from my understanding the deputy minister and officials have committed to coming. If we're serious about getting the questions answered, I do think the committee can take up the deputy minister, Ms. Fox, who is tremendous. I've seen her appear before parliamentary committees and I'm sure she can get the answer. Being very close to the flame, I'm sure she could be accountable to this committee. I don't know if Mr. Fraser has been available. I don't think that has been the case yet.

Am I correct, Madam Clerk? Okay.

I have Ms. Rood, Mr. Barlow and then Monsieur Perron.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to take a quick opportunity to thank all of the staff who work so hard for us on these reports, and say thank you to the committee members for getting Bill C-280 passed. I know our fruit and vegetable farmers will be happy to see this go back to the House. It's great to be able to work together to get something done, so congratulations, team.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Mr. Barlow.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

I didn't think we had to thank everybody, but I would just ask the chair, I think you're right in that maybe we should have a subcommittee meeting in the summer. I would just ask all of us with this environment study to make a concerted effort to try to whittle down these recommendations between the four or five of us so we don't come back in the fall and at meeting one say, “Here we go. Let's start right now.” Again, to be efficient, maybe we can just commit to one another to start sharing some of these ideas over the summer and get her done.

Thank you to everyone.