Bill C-39 Committee on Oct. 9th, 2026

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Ms. Desrochers, I'm sorry. We have a point of order.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

The point of order is of a very technical nature. A subamendment has to be within the scope of what was previously amended, which was only (e), (f) and (h), according to my Bloc colleague, so any subamendment needs to deal with only those points rather than start at the beginning.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

All right, Mr. Leslie, we can do this that way if you want.

Ms. Desrochers, please finish.

[Caroline Desrochers, Liberal, Trois-Rivières, QC]

I thought Mr. Ste‑Marie wanted to withdraw his amendment.

Mr. Albas, excuse me, but you say you want to work together and that you want things to move forward quickly. Are we really going to get bogged down in trivialities? We are trying here to work together on the motion you have proposed.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Do we have unanimous consent to allow Mr. Ste-Marie to withdraw his amendment?

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna, BC]

No.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

We do not have unanimous consent.

All right, we're going to play by the rules. We're going to have a very strict debate on Mr. Ste-Marie's amendment. Any other submissions will be dealt with later.

I have a speaking list. Ms. Desrochers has the floor. Then I have Mr. Ste-Marie, and then I have Mr. Albas. We are speaking specifically to the issue of the three date changes proposed by Mr. Ste-Marie and nothing else.

[Caroline Desrochers, Liberal, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Regarding Mr. Ste‑Marie's amendment, we propose that the meeting be scheduled for Wednesday, November 4 instead of October 29.

Mr. Ste‑Marie, you had proposed a week later. This is a little sooner. We propose November 4 for submitting the amendments to the clerk.

Next, regarding the clause-by-clause consideration, you had proposed November 9. We propose November 16, which would give us a little more time to validate all the amendments.

As for the receipt of written submissions in both official languages, you had proposed October 29. We propose October 26 to give the analysts a chance to receive all the documents.

This is the subamendment we are proposing to your amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, Ms. Desrochers.

Mr. Ste-Marie, go ahead.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I had previously spoken on the amendment currently under discussion. It aims to allow time for witnesses and civil society groups, and to ensure they can take part in the debate. I welcome Ms. Desrochers's remarks, which are very much in line with this. I fully support her.

For us, what is important is being able to hear from witnesses before this committee. I also understand that my political group could have one witness per group, which we welcome, if there is scope for that. The three parties have discussed what would be proposed in the motion as amended by Ms. Desrochers. I would like to say that I am in favour of it and that I support it.

Unfortunately, we are currently at the stage of working things out. Perhaps this won't help, but I can suggest a possible solution. Where there seems to be a sticking point between the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party is on the possibility of hearing from the ministers concerned for one hour each. I think we are close to an agreement. We are now just one or two hours away from the committee meeting. I think that if the parties could talk to one another and find a compromise—that is the art of politics—we could begin examining the bill quickly, because it is important that we hear from as many witnesses as possible.

I would like to withdraw my amendment and support the agreement on what Ms. Desrochers is proposing. I do not think unanimous consent is required. I withdraw my amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

You've already proposed withdrawing it. We need unanimous consent to do that. It's already been denied, which I think was probably Mr. Albas's point of order, so we can skip over that.

What we are discussing now is Ms. Desrochers's subamendment to the amendment, which is the change to the three dates that your member proposed.

I have a speaking list now of Mr. Albas and Mr. Leslie on this point.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am always happy to hear from Mr. Ste-Marie, and it appears that he's been quite effective at convincing the government that there should be more time made available for Canadians and for witnesses. I understand the merit to that argument, so I will thank Ms. Desrochers and Mr. Ste-Marie for their contributions on this front.

I will simply say that we are quite happy to support the subamendment. We think that any extension of time would probably facilitate a better process. However, I would also make the point, Mr. Chair, that facilitating a longer process means it takes a little less wind out of the sails for the government to say that the ministers can be made available only at a certain time. If we're going to be giving more time for Canadians to weigh in, I think this certainly allows for the ministers to appear.

I'll make a quick reference, Mr. Chair, to the fact that a minister doesn't need to come on the very first day. There's a lot of flexibility. To my understanding, ministers do show up in Ottawa. They are here. To slice out an hour of time, I would be willing to wake up a little earlier or stay up a bit later.

I am very happy that the Bloc member offered the hand of friendship to the Liberals and that the Liberals have taken it. I hope the Liberals can do the same on the issue of ministers' coming to the committee.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

Let's hope we can carry on in this warm and fuzzy spirit and get this done.

We have Mr. Leslie and then Mr. Lake.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will try to continue on in the warm and fuzzy spirit, and I will say that, yes, I am a big fan of procedure and rules and following them in this and every committee.

I think it is important. We have Robert's Rules of Order for the average board meeting, and we have a big green book that is meant to be followed. I will continue to advocate for us to follow procedure, and I appreciate that we have in this case.

I would echo my colleague in terms of the subamendment. It's great to see the government showing some willingness to extend dates.

I'll throw out a general question, although it will not impact how I would vote on the part (h) subamendment. Moving up the deadline by which submissions from stakeholders must be received by three days seems a bit contrary to the intention of the initial point of an amendment and a subamendment, but I'm not going to quibble on that. I think it's reasonable to support, and I certainly hope, as my colleague alluded to, that we can continue this show of collaboration and working together to make sure that we have the appropriate ministerial witnesses show up whenever they can.

I'm an early riser; I will have early meetings. I'm also a night owl; I will stay late. I will do whatever is necessary to make sure we have the appropriate ministers before this committee.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

That's inspiring. I think we all feel that way.

Go ahead, Mr. Lake.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Leduc—Wetaskiwin, AB]

I'm taking a look at the implication of (e) as amended. It looks as though it will free up eight more hours of committee time for witnesses. I think we'd resolve a whole bunch of things, because now the committee could sit on the 2nd and 3rd. Is that correct?

The amendments' not having to be submitted until the 4th would allow a bit more time to fit some witnesses in and, therefore, solve the time crunch that Ms. Desrochers was talking about for the ministers appearing. I think we'd solve a lot of problems with this.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

We're going to vote on Ms. Desrochers' subamendment to Mr. Ste-Marie's amendments. I will repeat what my understanding is.

In paragraph (e), it will be changed from “October 29” to “November 4”. In paragraph (f), the date will be changed from “November 2” to “November 16”. In paragraph (h), the date will change from “October 22” to “October 26”.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna, BC]

I'd like a recorded vote.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Do I have that correct? Perfect.

(Subamendment agreed to: yeas 11; nays 0)

The subamendment carries, which takes us back to Mr. Ste-Marie's amendment as amended. We'll start a speaking list.

Mr. Albas has his hand up.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am sincerely happy to see some changes made to the amendment by Mr. Ste-Marie.

Again, I want to reiterate Mr. Lake's point. There is considerable time that has opened up for further witnesses. If the Liberals want to increase the amount of witness testimony we can have come in, I'm very supportive of that, but guess what else, Mr. Chair. I have a deal for them. This also allows the three ministers extra flexibility to come and attend.

The Conservatives are intent on scrutinizing the bill and having those ministers come and explain the provisions of the bill and how they will affect their work. They are the ones who are going to be charged with the ongoing carriage of these amendments. We are intent on doing our jobs while having an orderly process.

I really want to implore my Liberal friends, though.... Having this accountability is the baseline. I hope they're going to be looking to hop over the bar and support the main motion once Mr. Ste-Marie's amendment is passed.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Go ahead, Ms. Desrochers.

[Caroline Desrochers, Liberal, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Albas, in a spirit of co-operation with our colleagues, so that we can move forward, I think we are prepared to revert to your proposal that the ministers appear for one hour each. So, the four ministers will each appear for up to one hour.

However, Mr. Chair, I must say that this is very disappointing, because our colleagues arrived here this morning saying they wanted to co-operate. We have shown flexibility. We have already invited the ministers responsible for introducing the bill. Now, as I was saying earlier, we are once again getting bogged down in procedural details. We are resorting to procedural manoeuvres to slow down proceedings, when we ought to be able to get down to work as quickly as possible. We are in complete agreement that the ministers must appear before the committee. Indeed, we have already scheduled the ministers' appearances so that they can be here in the committee. So, I think we have shown a great deal of willingness to compromise and co-operate.

We will therefore not be making any amendments to paragraph a, except to add Mr. Dominic LeBlanc.

Mr. Albas, we are even giving you one more.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Hold on. To be clear on what we're talking about, for my understanding, are you proposing...?

Right now, we're debating the motion as amended—

[An hon. member]

No. We're on the amendment.