Bill C-11 Committee on Feb. 16th, 2012

[The Chair, NDP, Glenn Thibeault]

I call the meeting to order.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our second meeting of the Legislative Committee on Bill C-11.

Obviously, we have received lots of information today, and we have to go through as much as we can. We have to go through the witness list. I'm also going to suggest that at some point we talk about a work plan and how we want to manage that—if we want to come up with the work plan, or if we want to hand that off to the clerk and the analysts, who'll put that together for us over the break week. That's the process that we will go through today.

Again, welcome, and we'll be starting this off, I believe, with witnesses.

I'll open it up for discussion.

Go ahead, Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

I'm looking at the lists from each of the three parties. Have we had a chance to see if there is any overlap, just to make it more straightforward? Some of them may be on at least one or two other lists, and it might make our job a little easier if any of that has been done.

[The Chair, NDP, Glenn Thibeault]

Here's a quick overview. There is some overlap, and if we have the opportunity, the analysts will make sure that there is no overlap through that process.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

That's good to know.

I think one of the outstanding issues in terms of fairness is that we have a number of witnesses who did not appear in the previous round, who had requested to speak, and who are on our list.

I think it's fair to move those witnesses forward since they were not allowed to speak the last time, or weren't able to speak. We should move them up and look at the new names as we see fit, based on the issues that are coming forward.

[The Chair, NDP, Glenn Thibeault]

Thank you, Mr. Angus.

Do we have any other discussion on witnesses?

Go ahead, Mr. Del Mastro.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Before we get into an actual discussion on witnesses and name them specifically, we have to recognize as a committee that these are simply invitations. The practice in the previous committee was that the invitations went out to potential witnesses prior to those names being circulated publicly; then we publicly circulated the names of the people who were, in fact, going to attend.

I'd move that we move in camera for the discussion on witnesses, have a discussion as a committee, and then authorize the clerk to send those invitations out to everyone the committee sees.

[The Chair, NDP, Glenn Thibeault]

All right, Mr. Del Mastro.

You're moving that this committee move in camera. There is no debate on that motion. We will call the motion to a vote.

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

We'll give everyone a few minutes to clear the room. We'll suspend for a couple of minutes.

[Proceedings continue in camera]