Bill C-32 (40th Parliament, 3rd Session) Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Tomorrow, Wednesday, we will meet at 3:30, and we will hear from our analysts. In the second part of that meeting, we will work on the work plan. On Thursday, we'll meet with the ministers. That will be the plan for this week. Out of tomorrow's meeting, we will have a plan going forward for next week

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

If I may, Mr. Chair, the only thing is that the three of us are meeting with our leader at 4 o'clock tomorrow.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Well, the committee already decided and voted that we were going to have meetings at 3:30 to 5:30 on Wednesdays. So—

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Okay. So this is the first regular meeting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

That is correct.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Okay. I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Mr. Angus.

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

Yes, in terms of going forward, I'm ready to bring a witness list tomorrow. I haven't provided the committee with a witness list because we hadn't met, so I thought I would wait.

I'm not sure if we're going to get all of it through tomorrow. I'd prefer that we actually take a bit of time. I can see getting a witness list ready for next week so that we hit the ground running on Monday, and I'm perfectly fine with that. I'm amenable to whatever witnesses come first, but I would actually prefer to take a bit of time, and I think Monday would probably be better for us.

But if we circulate the list amongst each other, we probably have many similar names, and we might be able to come forward and talk about grouping them. Because what I'm worried about is bouncing all over the place. We might focus this committee better if we could sit down and say, “Let's take the two hours needed”.

Once we've all seen each other's lists, we can talk about them. We can ask each other questions. We can say, okay, are these going to be necessarily on fair dealing? We'll start to put people into that general group. Are they generally going to be on digital locks? Are they going to be just generalists? That's fine. I don't have a problem with that. But I think if we have people who are going to be specific on issues, we might want to try to get a committee scheduled.

I think that might take a little bit more than just being able to pull that off tomorrow, because I have my witness list, but nobody else has seen it, and I haven't seen yours. I'd say let's take the time between Wednesday and Monday to do that, and then I think we're ready to start getting down to business.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Ms. Lavallée.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Chairman, why the rush to hold a meeting tomorrow? When I arrived this morning at 9:00 a.m. I assumed that was the opening they had found in the agenda, and I assumed that from now on, we will meet on Tuesday and Thursday. When our colleague Charlie Angus said earlier that he would suggest we meet Monday afternoons and Wednesday afternoons, I thought that is all the better, as it suits me rather well. But not this week. This week, when I received the notice of meeting, I assumed we would be meeting on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. So, I set up my meetings and all other work-related business based on having meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Now, there is a suggestion that these meetings be held Mondays and Wednesdays. Give me a week, in other words until next Monday, for me to reorganize my schedule.

A meeting tomorrow afternoon would be too complicated for me. I do not see what we could get done then that we cannot do next Monday. Then again, we could spend Thursday morning meeting, working on future business, as suggested by my colleague. That is a joke, I wanted to see you smile.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Madame Lavallée, the committee has already voted that we're going to meet with the ministers Thursday and that we're going to have meetings on Mondays and Wednesdays, so we'll go in that direction.

Mr. McTeague.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Chair, as the critic for industry, Mr. Garneau, has quite rightly pointed out, we have a bit of a conflict tomorrow for the 5:30 p.m. time slot. Although we have agreed to it, I'm just wondering if the committee might allow 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. as opposed to 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Mr. McTeague, we do have votes scheduled right now, with a 5:30 bell and a six o'clock vote.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Good point, then, Chair. Thank you for that.

Sorry. Is there a point of order?

Excuse me, Ms. Boucher.

I share Mr. Angus' view to the effect that we should study the issue by sector. Nevertheless, I believe it is important for us to have witnesses for the various sectors. So if the issue revolves around the film, music or writing industry, we should invite relevant witnesses. It is very important because we would hear the pros and cons of some positions, obviously, which would be of great help in our decision-making. So, I fully agree with Mr. Angus' proposals.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Okay.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

I just want to make sure that you have that on the record.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you. We can deal with that when we work on our work plan.

Mr. Del Mastro.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you.

We were just mindful of the appointments that our colleagues in the Liberal Party had set up. We're happy to work with them on that and suggest that we could meet after the votes on Wednesday. That would allow you to still have your meetings.

We can discuss our witness lists and set the time schedule so we can start to move forward on Monday.

If that's agreeable to you, we could meet Wednesday after votes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

That's problematic for the chair.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Mr. Angus.

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

Thank you.

We don't have a subcommittee, as far as I'm aware. Or do we have a subcommittee? Because I would suggest that.... We have agreed to meet, so I'm ready to meet, but I understand that our colleagues are surprised that we're going to meet, and it's a problem.

I think we need to start building some trust here. I think one of my concerns would be trying to blow through a witness list before we're ready, but if we can start the discussion and start talking about how we're going to do next week so that we aren't lost.... If we meet Monday, that's my only concern. If we meet Monday and start doing our witness lists then, we're going to be really lost on Wednesday. If we could have even a partial meeting tomorrow, just to ask what we need to do and on Wednesday start getting some of this stuff done.... Otherwise, it's going to take us a while to get out of the gate.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

All right.

Mr. Garneau.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Launching special committees like this, or any committee at the beginning of a session, is always problematic in the sense that we're all planning ahead. We have an extremely important meeting with our leader, planned quite some time ago for tomorrow, to talk specifically about Bill C-32. His availability of course is much tighter than our own availabilities, which are quite tight.

Given the comments from the Bloc and from Mr. Angus as well, if the committee is amenable, we're ready to take off like a bat out of hell on Monday, and to be there Thursday morning, but tomorrow a bunch of things complicate our lives, because we did not know, coming into this today, where the slots were going to be. I'd ask for a little bit of--how shall I put it?--compassion on the part of the committee with respect to tomorrow's time slot.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Mr. Lake.