Canadian Heritage Committee on Feb. 6th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Okay.

Mr. Fast, then Mr. Scott.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, with respect to Mr. Angus' comments, as I recall the record...and Mr. Bélanger's comments, in fact Mr. Bélanger went to great efforts to try to get the federal government to pay the costs of the Quigley litigation. To me, that's clearly an indication that he felt there should be an obligation on the part of the government to pay for that.

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

Why are we talking about this now? I mean, you guys have run out of options and excuses.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

No, hold on. I have the floor.

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

We're pulling out this Quigley case. This is absurd.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Angus, I listened patiently to you. I would request that you listen patiently to me.

The point I'm making is that the actual motion, which I don't support in any event, has a number of preambles. I take issue with the second and the third preambles. The second one, which states that “it came to light that the reasons cited by the government to justify cancelling the Program were unjustified”, doesn't correctly reflect the record.

There were allegations made by some of the witnesses that one of the reasons the government gave for cancelling the program—in other words, the issue relating to whether Liberal lawyers were involved. That issue clearly resonated around this table. But the government gave other reasons as well for the cancellation of the program. I myself articulated some of those during testimony.

So to suggest the reasons cited by the government to justify cancelling the program were unjustified casts the net too broadly.

Secondly, it also says that “all of the witnesses stated that the political allegiance or non-allegiance of the lawyers was never a factor in the hiring of lawyers”, but in fact not all of the witnesses stated that. We had at least four witnesses who never raised the issue at all and who probably would have taken issue with that contention.

So if you're going to have a motion based on a preamble, typically a preamble will state matters of fact. My suggestion is that prior to voting on this, in order to reflect the record properly, we should clarify the preamble.

I'll be voting against the motion in any event, because I support the government's decision to cancel the court challenges program.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Mr. Scott.

[Andy Scott, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you very much.

I will be supporting the motion. I think the issues of justification or no justification are subjective.

Certainly my experience, limited to the last meeting, where the court challenges program folks were here, satisfied me that my original understanding of the government's rationale was in fact the rationale. I think that was repeated by the government members as well. As I said then and I say now, these are legitimate arguments that I don't agree with; it would appear that perhaps most of us on this side don't.

The one point I'd like to make is that an assessment was done. I think the arguments that were put were all addressed in the assessment. The assessment called for greater accountability. It was accepted that it was necessary. But generally speaking, to be fair to the assessment, the conclusion reached was that the program was working and it should go forward. That was the assessment.

As I said last week, I spoke to Gérard La Forest, who did an independent review, to explore this further, because it's an important program to me in terms of Canadians with disabilities, aboriginal Canadians, and minority language challenges across the country, but in particular in the province of New Brunswick.

It's a critically important program, and I was not close to being convinced of the merits of the government's case in terms of its cancellation. That's basically what this says, so I will be supporting my colleague on his motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Okay.

It has been mentioned that we would go forward with this motion, and I will take the vote.

(Motion agreed to)

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

We're going to move forward to discuss the budget for study on the mandate, the role, of the public broadcaster in the 21st century. The clerk has broken it down into two parts. First is the operational budget, which is paying for witnesses' expenses as they come to Ottawa. That has been proposed at $37,100, and we ask that it be adopted.

The second is the travel budget. The first part would be Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, and Vancouver, British Columbia. That is $95,747. The second part is Winnipeg and Toronto, at $65,097. For St. John's, Newfoundland, and Montreal, it's $62,221. The total travel budget would be $223,065 for public hearings and site visits in Yellowknife, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, St. John's, and Montreal on our study on the role of the public broadcaster.

So we have those two budgets before us. I would expect a mover and a seconder on these motions.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

As a point of clarification, there was some debate or discussion as to the number of people who would be going. I guess it's been decided that six members will go to each location. Is that correct?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

That's what it determines here.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

So the final decision was just to have six members.

[A voice]

And nine staff?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Jacques Lahaie]

For public hearings we need interpretation, console operators, me, the researcher. For public hearings, that's the minimum. It's standard for each committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Yes, Mr. Fast.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Chair, do the clerk's estimates take into account the opportunity to do teleconferencing to perhaps reduce costs to the taxpayer?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

I don't think that is part of this right now. Having been on a committee that travelled previously, I think it's very important that for some of these things we do hands on. I think it's very productive for a committee to be in communities and to do side visits to see what really goes on.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Chair, perhaps I could just finish.

Just for the record, I want to say that I have great difficulty spending that much money on hearings when we do have technology available that could significantly reduce the cost to taxpayers. I know that face-to-face meetings are the ideal; however, given the fact that our government is running on a platform of accountability, of fiscal prudence, I think before we agree to a budget like this, we need to explore all possibilities to reduce the burden on our taxpayers. Clearly teleconferencing is one of those options, and I'm a little disappointed that we hadn't explored that prior to this matter coming before us today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

I'll just speak to the matter. I think if you recognize—At the last meeting, we talked about how, if we travelled, the cost would be less than if we brought all those people here or even if we got into teleconferencing. The difference—or we're looking at a budget of somewhere around $200,000 to $225,000.

That's what I understood from the last meeting. We felt that if we—

What's maybe changed this a little wee bit is that at that particular time we weren't planning to travel to Yellowknife. We were just looking at St. John's and Montreal, and Vancouver and Winnipeg. Yellowknife is a wee bit more. I think that putting this thing together, as it is, we've stayed within that budget range.

Mr. Abbott.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Just so I understand, at the top of the first page it says, “Operational budget request (not requiring Liaison Committee approval)”.

I just need some understanding of the process. From here, if this budget is approved by this committee, what then happens?

[The Clerk]

For the operational budget, any budget under $40,000, there's a new rule. In the past, every budget, even it was $6,000, had to go to liaison to get the funds. But all committees request budgets under $40,000 all the time so as to minimize the red tape. The money's there, so it's automatically agreed—if it's under $40,000. The comptroller's office puts the money at the committee's disposal.

For any travel budget, whatever the amount, it has to go through the liaison committee.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

I'm not clear on this; maybe everyone else is, but I'm not. The liaison committee consists of—?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Chairs of all the committees.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

So the chairs of all the committees would meet to consider this.