Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) Committee on Dec. 14th, 2006

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

January 15 or 20, I believe.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Normally, it would be departmental officials probably in the first meeting anyway, which gives us a little bit of something to work on potentially.

Mr. Cullen.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

The main intention of this is that when the House does come back, we don't spend the first couple of weeks dithering with the agenda. If there's some agreement within the committee to take the clerk's suggestion for the first couple of witness meetings, and give us maybe an extended meeting on our first one to both hear some witnesses and decide on the future agenda, then it accomplishes what we're looking for.

I just don't think that we're going to get a date. That's what I'm hearing. Everyone has caucus meetings.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Mr. Jean.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

First of all, we're forgetting that we're going to be the steering committee, and I think at our first meeting we should already know what witnesses we're going to have. We should already have submitted their names to the clerk and he can come back with some sort of idea of when they are able to testify.

The first meeting should be a short, sharp meeting focused on where we're going and how we're going to get there. That's what we had talked about before, I thought. And then certainly the clerk or the chair could have the department come for the next available meeting, which would be the first week in February, I think, or the second week in February. The first week of February would be my preference, for sure.

The first meeting would be, in essence, a steering committee meeting to make sure we're focused and we're going to get this job done for Canadians, and then the second meeting would be with the department, if indeed the chair feels that should be the first meeting. And by then certainly we'll know where the witnesses are going to be and how we're going to get there.

Does that sound reasonable?

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Okay.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

And we can always add witnesses later on. It's at the discretion of the chair, anyway.

[An hon. member]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

I thought the witnesses were at the discretion of the chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

It's with you.

Mr. Godfrey.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Let's do this in step function, here.

The first decision we have to make is by what date we want to submit things, and I've heard the 15th, the 20th. I don't think there is much in it, so let's pick a date by which it has to be done.

And then it obviously makes sense that on the 29th we have a business session that establishes some pretty fundamental issues, such as how extensive we're going to make this, based on the number of witnesses who have been submitted, whether they're going to travel or not, how often we want to meet. There are a whole bunch of things that will have to come into play, so I think we'd better set aside a pretty good chunk of time.

It might be possible, one would hope, then, that even in that first week we could hear the officials, say, towards the Thursday or so. I don't know that we need to wait around until the following week to hear the standard officials who would come before us, anyway.

Why don't we just pick a date for the submission? I don't know—the 20th? Is the 20th okay?

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

That's a Saturday, as a matter of fact.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

All right, let's call it the 19th.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Mr. Cullen.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Seeing the extent of that type of conversation, I'd make a suggestion that committee members take it as they would a motion, and bring forward ideas and have them submitted ahead of time to suggest what Mr. Godfrey has raised as fundamental questions, rather than arrive and have what today has been a very long debate over relatively small things, considering the larger questions put before us.

In the sense of transparency and openness, why don't we have suggestions put forward to the committee prior to the time so they can be distributed and thought about, and we can come here ready to make decisions as opposed to going into a four-hour session over particulars?

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Mr. Godfrey.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

One way of doing that, which means extra work for everybody, would mean suggesting a sequence of meetings with relevant witness names attached for each of those meetings. At least we can see how far apart we are when you see the structure of the meetings filled out with the names of potential witnesses for those meetings.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

What the clerk has just advised is that he can take all the suggestions and put them into a memo format that goes around to everybody, with the list of suggestions, and so on. And that gets us a step ahead when we come back on the 29th.

Monsieur Bigras.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Jean provided the momentum and Mr. Godfrey followed suit.

I believe that we need to set a deadline by which our list must be sent to the clerk. It can very well be January 19, which would give the clerk time to get organized. At our first meeting, immediately upon our return, we can discuss organization and how we want to proceed.

Let us decide upon a date. I propose January 19 as the deadline to submit our list of witnesses, and during the first week upon our return, we can meet to discuss organization.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Ms. Redman, do you have something to add?

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

My only observation was going to be that often witnesses are subject to availability. While I think it may be helpful to articulate what issues we need to talk about, the mention of it being in a motion seems somewhat formalized to me. I would hope we could all just meet together, share the names, and talk about the information the clerk will have gathered as to their availability, because I would assume that's what he will be busy doing between December 19 and when we meet on January 29.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

The lists may be substantial, of course, so we can get the process started with the obvious ones, like the departmental officials and so on. It may take a little while to get each of the witnesses if we have long lists from all sides, but we can get the process started, surely.

Mr. Warawa, and then I think we're getting close.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the good discussion on this. December 19 is fine with the government. We'll all have our list of witnesses. As Ms. Redman pointed out, as we each prepare a list of potential witnesses, only a percentage of those will be available.

Also it depends on the topic that the witnesses are going to want to speak on. At the CEPA review, we as a committee created the list of topics, the agenda. On the last topic before the round table, only one witness wanted to speak to it, so they're going to be picking what they would like to come and speak on.

I would also hope we would consider not having a single witness at multiple meetings, that we would hear from them one time and not multiple times. There may be an argument for them to be at more than one, but I think the norm would be that they would be picking a meeting that they could be witnessing at.

So I think we'll be fine. We'll be providing the clerk with a list of witnesses and a suggested agenda, and we can discuss them fully on January 29, at our first meeting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

I have two more small items, but we'll go to Mr. Cullen first.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Just on Ms. Redman's point, I'm not suggesting increased formality, just prep work, as it were, to put into this.

I'd also really encourage committee members who weren't involved in the seven- or eight-month study that we did last year on Kyoto to read the report, because we heard from just about everybody in this country who cares about climate change. Many of the witnesses have already talked to us. They've seen us again this year already on CEPA and Bill C-288. If they're willing to constrict their areas by not having 15 suggested people all from one theme, one topic.... Transportation has said they're ready. The environment groups have said they'll come, as they did on Bill C-288. I'd have to check over the notes, but I think we had six meetings for Bill C-288 in total, and part of the reason we were able to do so was that we had five witnesses a day and didn't have six people speaking to the same topic.