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

[The Chair (Mr. Gordon Brown (Leeds—Grenville, CPC)), Conservative, Gord Brown]

Good morning, everyone. We are of course going to spend some quality time together over the next little while and we are here today pursuant to the order of reference of November 5, 2010, referring Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Copyright Act, to this legislative committee.

What I suggest is that we deal with the following items. Now, a special legislative committee is somewhat different from a standing committee, so I think the first order of business would be for our clerk to give us a little presentation on exactly what the differences are.

Madam Clerk.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Michelle Tittley]

Good morning.

Each of you should have received a package with a title page reading “Procedural information about legislative committees”. It provides some photocopied pages of procedural texts and some other references to Standing Orders, all of which are relevant to the functioning of a legislative committee. Should you have any questions about procedure or functioning, feel free to contact me in the office. In the meantime, I'm going to read a short text that will summarize some of the main points.

In terms of the role of the chair, the chair of a legislative committee is not elected by members of the committee, but rather appointed by the Speaker of the House, to emphasize that the role of the chair is that of a neutral arbitrator of proceedings. The chair of a legislative committee is responsible for ensuring the orderly conduct of business of the committee and careful attention to the clause-by-clause study of the bill. Like the Speaker, the chair of a legislative committee does not participate in debate in a committee.

Unlike chairs of standing committees, the chair of a legislative committee is not considered a member of the committee and is not counted as part of the quorum. The chair of a legislative committee votes only when there's an equality of voices. As in standing committees, all decisions of the chair may be appealed to the committee.

Unlike standing committees, legislative committees do not elect vice-chairs. If the chair cannot be present, an acting chair may be designated by the chair from among the membership of the committee. The clerk cannot elect an acting chair in a chair's absence.

For substitutions, all membership changes are made using the regular whip's substitution forms. Changes to the membership are permanent and are effective as soon as the appropriate form is received by the clerk. Chairs cannot be substituted, as they are appointed by the Speaker.

In terms of reports, legislative committees can only report a bill back to the House with or without amendment and cannot report observations or recommendations on a bill.

In terms of the budget, legislative committees are allocated an interim budget of $50,000. Should the committee need to increase its budget, it must seek the approval of the Board of Internal Economy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Are there any questions?

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Moving along, you have in front of you a list of potential routine motions. I would be prepared to entertain motions to that effect. Did everybody find that?

Mr. Lake.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Mr. Chair, I think that on this committee there are about five of us who are on the industry committee, and I think we find that our industry committee routine motions work very well for us. I don't know if we could just put forward the idea of adopting the routine motions we have in the industry committee and save some time here, if that's--

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Well.... The clerk will read those out, then.

Meanwhile, we'll carry on.

Mr. Rodriguez.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

I just wanted to know, what were the rules?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Okay.

Mr. McTeague.

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

Chair, it's a bit of a red herring, the rules of the industry committee, and I will take some responsibility for having changed them several years ago. In fact, this was done in 2006 to permit at the time an independent member of the committee to ask questions. This is all part of the consensus building my party attempted certainly in the first minority government of the Conservative Party. Those may not work, depending on the timing, and might not give additional time rightfully to opposition questions.

But they are certainly different. They are a different creature and animal. The change, which was done for very specific reasons in 2006, has now since changed. My understanding is that they were adopted. I sit on the current industry committee and it has the same rules that applied before. We may want to have a look at them, because we don't really have an idea of the timing when the witnesses will be allowed to appear. If we're talking an hour, it may advantage the opposition; if it's an hour and a half, it advantages the government.

I know that we want to achieve consensus here if we can, but we also want to make sure that we operate by rules that are relatively similar to those of most committees. That probably would not include the industry committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Well, in terms of the industry committee, the first round is a seven-minute round. So it would be up to the committee members if they wanted to have five-minute rounds, possibly.

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

Chair, I think it's subsequent rounds that tend to be the problem, so just be aware of it. A cursory look at those will demonstrate that after the first round the way it breaks down by party is substantially different on the industry committee and it does not tend to favour opposition.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Ms. Lavallée.

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

There is a problem with regard to the rounds of questions. I am okay with a first round of 10 minutes. I do not know how things are usually done at the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. I would suggest we disregard the rules of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology as well as those of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, and make our own. I would think that 10 minutes would be appropriate for the first round, and then five for the second. However, I do hope that we follow the normal order for the following round, i.e., Liberal Party, Bloc Québécois, NDP and Conservative Party. I would hope that the same order will apply to the second round and subsequent ones. That to me would be better.

I have other comments regarding the routine motions. I do not know how you want to go about this, but if you tell me, I will follow your instructions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Okay.

All right. In terms of proceeding, maybe we can start with this. You have the potential list of routine motions in front of you. Then we could get to the rounds and how long they're going to be.

Mr. Lake.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Actually, it's interesting, because I was talking more about the rest of the routine motions. In questioning rounds, this is going to be a little bit of a different creature in terms of how many witnesses we have to hear from. In terms of the meetings and the questioning rounds, we might change the timing a little bit anyway. Who knows?

But I was thinking more about the rest of the routine motions. Of course, routine motions are more than just rounds of questioning. There are a lot more routine motions in there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you, Mr. Lake.

Mr. Angus.

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

Yes, I think we have to go through a few steps here. I think we do need to go through these routine motions. I think the issue of questioning rounds is very important, but that's going to really be tied into how we structure the witness lists.

On the heritage committee, and I've been there for many, many years.... The five-minute round I think would be very ineffective for a legislative committee because we're going to be dealing with specific questions. If we're reduced to five minutes, where we have to throw in a generalization and there are three different viewpoints that might all be technical, I'd prefer an initial round of seven minutes. Because I want to be able to really understand what the witness is saying, because we're not in generalizations here. We're going to need to have very specific recommendations coming out of that.

But I do believe the issue of how we deal with the rounds in questions is going to really be tied to how we structure our witness list, so I'd prefer to go through the routine motions first and then deal with that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Okay. We'll proceed on that basis.

You have the sheets in front of you. I'll be happy to entertain motions, and potentially on the services of analysts from the Library of Parliament, to maybe get the ball rolling here.

The floor is open.

Mr. Lake.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Maybe we could just have the clerk read what we use in the industry committee for this.

[The Clerk]

I have in front of me here routine motions as adopted by the--

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Ms. Lavallée.

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

Mr. Lake has just said that the clerk could perhaps inform us on how things work at the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. I, for one, would not base our roles on those of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage nor of those of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. We have struck a new legislative committee and so let's make our own rules.

Mr. Chair, I would suggest that we begin with the motions that are on the table, starting with the first item, i.e., services of analysts from the Library of Parliament. If we agree on that, we can adopt it. We can comment and vote on each motion, one by one. That is how I suggest we proceed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Okay.

Mr. McTeague.

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

Chair, I agree. I should add that the routine motions before us are in fact just that--routine motions. I don't know of any committee that doesn't have these.

Rather than reading through every one of them, I would simply move adoption of the one, two, three, four, and five points that are made here, and then we can get on with the decision as to the timing and what model we adopt.

[A voice]

Those are...?

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

I'm sorry. Those are on staff, witnesses, televising, questioning of witnesses, and the last one. The last one is the only area that I think we would have a debate on.