Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) Committee on June 14th, 2006

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We don't have anything, Mr. Dewar.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

For clarification, to have a subamendment read out where it wasn't that long is in order, is it not?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Oh, it's in order. That's not the issue.

What does the committee want to do here? Do you want to debate this, even though you don't have a copy?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Dewar, the committee seems to be prepared to go ahead, so you go ahead.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you for your indulgence. I just want to explain the reason for the subamendment as it relates to the original amendment. During the time we had witnesses coming forward, they were talking about the fact that--including the Auditor General, for that matter--there wasn't a requirement to have the scope and the reach of the Auditor General to our first nations people.

I think it's really important that we underline the relationship here. This isn't like an agency, a board, a commission; this is a very different kind of relationship, constitutional in nature. I think when you look at the track record--and I go back to my comments before about what was the intent of this bill, what in fact are we doing here. When we were talking about the sponsorship scandal, when we were talking about the concerns around accountability, the concerns people had weren't around first nations.

I should add that when you look at what first nations are doing, the Assembly of First Nations has come forward and they're putting their own processes in place. It would be an act of redundancy, in effect. So what we have put forward is this amendment to make sure that there are no unintended consequences by removing this part and to make sure that the respect of first nations and the relationship we have continues. Therefore, that's why this amendment has been put forward, and I would ask my colleagues on all sides for support.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Owen.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you. We certainly support the objective of this subamendment and amendment, and you'll see by our amendment....

I just have a couple of technical questions, Mr. Wild.

When we put forward and perhaps when the NDP put forward the original amendments, because they're the same, we had in mind that paragraph (c) on page 194 mentions:

the government of a foreign state, a provincial government, a municipality or an aboriginal body named in Schedule VII,

--which is coming up--

or any of their agencies;

Because an aboriginal body named in schedule VII is in fact an aboriginal body that is party to a self-government agreement given effect by an act of Parliament--that's what the definition is--it seems like the subamendment is redundant to the amendments we've both put forward. I just want to make sure from Mr. Wild that this is so; however, because I have some idea of Mr. Wild's aversion to too many schedules in acts, if we were to find that schedule VII was not necessary, is there a preference of doing away with schedule VII and putting the language here, or limiting the language here to the original amendment and keeping schedule VII?

[Joe Wild]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The preference certainly is to do away with the schedule if what's captured in the schedule is going to be done through definition. It's certainly easier I think from any reader's perspective to understand what's captured through the definition. If you have a schedule sitting there, along with the definition, then you can run into legal interpretive problems, as you have a schedule listing certain bodies, but they're all captured by a definition, and then, if for some reason more bodies get captured by the definition but they're not scheduled, it starts to become very confusing and difficult to figure out what's going on.

So certainly if the motion that creates (c.1), so you have a separate stand-alone exclusion, if you will, for the council of a band and so on.... The schedule at that point becomes redundant, and certainly from a technical perspective and for those of us who have to live with trying to interpret the Financial Administration Act every day, it would be a welcome gift to remove the schedule.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Okay. Then perhaps I could suggest what might meet that preference is a friendly amendment to the subamendment, which would--

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Dewar, something is happening here, so you may want to—

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

To get a final package that achieves everything we want, including eliminating schedule VII, we would have to amend proposed paragraph (c) so that it read in part, “or an aboriginal body that is a party to a self-government agreement given effect by an Act of Parliament or any of its agencies”. That would be the amendment to proposed paragraph (c), and then we would go back to our original NDP and Liberal amendments—which are the same—to add a proposed paragraph 42(4)(f).

Does that tie it up?

[Joe Wild]

If I may, actually the amendment proposed by the NDP takes the currently proposed paragraph 42(4)(c) and reduces it to just say, “the government of a foreign state, a provincial government or a municipality or any of their agencies”. Then the NDP introduces proposed paragraph (c.1), which addresses “the council of a band as defined” and so on.

So the only issue after this amendment goes through is the fact that you've got schedule VII still sitting there, as created by a different clause in Bill C-2—clause 272. I don't know that it can be removed out of that clause at this point or not, but that would technically be what you would want to be doing—removing the creation of the schedule in clause 272 by simply deleting the reference in clause 272 to schedule VII.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

We haven't got there yet. That's fine.

Can you advise us of how to deal with this, knowing the joint objective that probably all of us are trying to meet?

[Joe Wild]

From a technical perspective, in terms of what I believe you're trying to accomplish—and the legislative clerks may have a perspective on this as well—my suggestion would certainly be that if you went with the amendment proposed by the NDP, as long as you dealt with clause 272, that would accomplish what you're seeking to do.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Okay, we need some help up here.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Chair, if I may?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We've done clause 272, so the question is, do we need to amend the schedule with this?

[Joe Wild]

The only reference to schedule VII in law would be in proposed paragraph 42(4)(c). This is effectively removing that reference to schedule VII, in which case it no longer makes sense to have a schedule VII to the Financial Administration Act. So you would need to do whatever you might need to do procedurally, if the committee wishes, to re-open clause 272 and strike the reference to schedule VII from it, and that would effectively delete the schedule.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I'm going to suggest a break for a couple of minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

The chair is going to make a ruling. We have had some discussion trying to sort this out. There are several issues. The amendment to remove schedule VII from the schedule to this act is consequential to Mr. Dewar's amendment, NDP-26.1.

So for coherence, the committee should also remove the reference to schedule VII in clause 272, which we've already dealt with. To do this we'll have to have unanimous consent of the committee to reopen that clause. Otherwise clause 272 will need to be amended at report stage. Do you understand what I've just said?

Do I have unanimous consent with respect to those items? Mr. Dewar is now going to have---

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Wait a second. We are just going to caucus for a second before we offer our consent.

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Unanimous consent is given, so Mr. Dewar, you're the hero. You're going to clean all this up with Mr. Owen, of course. I do thank both you and Mr. Owen and Mr. Wild for working with this end of the table.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I think we'll have a group hug after.