Canadian Heritage Committee on April 4th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

With respect, I may read—

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

—assuming you're reasonable.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

When I read your motion, Mr. Vandal, looking at the way it was written I thought that you were speaking of 10 meetings for hearing witnesses, gathering evidence, etc.—because I read it with the commas and semi-colons and stuff—and that then, once those 10 meetings are over, we would look at the drafting of the report and the tabling of the report in the House.

That's how I saw it fitting in. The problem we have is that we still have to finish a report that is extremely important. We discussed at our last meeting finishing our report and said that we hoped we could finish it today and tomorrow, but unless we agree to extended hours, I don't think we will.

Then we would move straight into this looking at scope, etc., which I didn't count, based on reading grammatically the commas and stuff, as being meant to be part of the hearing of the witnesses. I thought it was a “scope of” meeting thing that we always do. It could take one meeting; it could take one hour, if we're all in agreement with a lot of things and if the analyst—I'm putting him on the spot here—gives us the instructions he thinks we need to move across into this nicely.

Then we get 10 meetings, and I think the “as necessary extended hours” means that it may be that we say, instead of doing two meetings on a Tuesday and Thursday, that we'll do three hours' worth of meetings on a Tuesday and Thursday in order to fit in the kinds of things we need and then get this put away.

I really feel that we have had the patience of Job with some people like Mr. Van Loan and Mr. Vandal and a whole bunch of people who are waiting for now for almost—what?—six or seven months to even get into their studies.

I just would like to see us finish the work of this committee this year, and that means going into the fall. We talked again at the last meeting that going into the fall we would deal with all of our other studies and put everything to bed in the meantime.

Mr. Nantel.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you so much.

The motion adopted by the House specifies a deadline for tabling the report, November 23, I believe. Therefore, I don't see why we have to work on it right away.

If we sit until 6:15 the evening of June 23, we will have at most 14 meetings left, if I'm not mistaken. That gives us just enough time to do our work. We have the report on the media, the report on museums, the report Ms. Dabrusin wants to propose, and the wrapping up of the other study. On top of that, we would like to meet with the minister at some point. We certainly have a full plate.

Given all that, could we not postpone this until the fall?

I believe the motion adopted in the House specified that we had to report back by November.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Madam Chair, may I respond?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Yes, Mr. Vandal. You may answer the question, and then I have Mr. Samson.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Thank you.

The motion refers to 240 calendar days from the adoption of the motion, which was about three weeks ago. If you add the 240 calendar days, that brings us into November.

We are quite a bit behind on our studies, particularly those dealing with museums, sports, and indigenous peoples. The idea behind the motion is to finish the media study and deal with motion M-103 and, then, tackle the rest. It's just that we have a heck of a lot of work to do.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

May I respond?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have a second question, because Mr. Samson is next and then Mr. Anderson, but go ahead.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

That's very kind. I'll keep it short.

In that case, I would ask committee staff to tell us whether that's realistic and how many meetings it would take. I don't want us to wind up in another hodgepodge, where we meet five times, break, and pick things up in September. Enough is enough, as I see it. We have to clamp down and take a disciplined approach.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

I think it's doable with extended sitting hours.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

You know my opinion on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Samson.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Thank you.

To Mr. Nantel's point, I would say that we have time restrictions, a deadline, and studies to complete. As committee members, we must make sure that wisdom prevails. We do indeed need to put a structure in place and set aside enough time to hear from witnesses and draft the report. I think it's entirely reasonable to say that between now and the deadline, we can spread out the work over 10 meetings. If a problem arises, we'll take that into account.

I, for one, was not elected a member of Parliament to do half a study on the media and then move on to another topic. It seems to me that we are all professionals with extensive support to do the research and report on our findings. It is our job to decide on the individuals and groups we want to meet with, in accordance with very specific categories; to hear from those people; to ask questions; to report on our findings in a professional manner; and to table the final report in Parliament by the deadline, if not before. If we make just the right adjustments, I think we can complete this work by the end of the sitting in late June. If we make that our goal and structure the work accordingly, we should be able to make it happen.

I respect what Mr. Reid said, but we could debate the issue for two, even three, years. What matters, though, is that we structure the work appropriately, do it effectively and efficiently, and stick to the time frames. We've done some fairly serious work on the reports dealing with the media, women in sport, and so forth. We have no choice but to structure our work to make sure we accomplish what we need to within a limited amount of time.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Anderson.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have a suggestion, or maybe a couple of them, that might work with the committee, but I just want to go back. It was Ms. Khalid who moved the motion, and she spoke to it a couple of times.

She said a couple of things. At one point she said we need to make “certain that all voices are able to be heard”, and included words about shedding “light on areas in which the freedom of speech of Canadians belonging to racial and religious minorities is currently curtailed”.

We have a pile of things here that we need to do and need to cover. Ms. Khalid even talked about taking a look at the charter rights that people have been given. It is one of the responsibilities of this committee to examine those, so that the government has a better idea how they might enforce them.

Another Liberal MP talked about the need to re-evaluate language, saying that we need to talk about language around this motion.

If we're going to go into those areas, we're certainly not going to have enough time with six to 10 meetings to do so. I would like to make an amendment—I'm going to propose it in a couple of minutes—that we just remove the clause “devote a maximum of 10 meetings to the study, using extended hours as necessary”, at least until we have our scope meeting. We're going to sit down perhaps this Thursday or perhaps a little bit later to try to put parameters around this study.

What is it that we're trying to do? What are the goals here? There's no possible way we're going to be able to achieve all the things that are on this page in six or 10 meetings. At some point—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

And your amendment, Mr. Anderson...?

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I haven't made it yet. I'm just giving notice that I'm going to do that, but the reality is that we are going to have to do something other than what this motion has said in order to cover it effectively. We're going to have to pick two or three areas of it that we can actually do, because there are six or seven things there. If you add in talking about language, which one of the Liberal MPs had wanted to do, and if you talk about making sure all voices are heard, we're going to be here for a while. I think we need to sit down with a scoping meeting and figure out what it is that we are going to attempt to reach on this.

I think that taking this clause out, as I'm going to suggest in a couple of minutes, actually removes the restrictions we have on ourselves right from the beginning. We have 240 days to get this done, but the reality is that we should not be restricting ourselves before we even sit down and talk about what is the content of our report and our committee hearings.

We have a maximum of six to 10 hearings, apparently, so far, with six meetings, and probably a maximum of 36 witnesses. Look at the six or seven things we've been assigned to do. You're going to divide that among 36 witnesses. It's just going to be bouncing a stone right off the top of something. I guess I still have that question: can it be done?

I would make a suggestion on timing, if you folks want to wrap up a couple of things. I think we have two meetings before the Easter break. We have Thursday and next Tuesday. I think next Thursday is going to be seen as a Friday, if I'm understanding correctly. There are two meetings. Does that give you the time to wrap up a couple of these things that you've been working on for such a long period of time? If it does, perhaps you can get them out of the way. We can come back after Easter, have our scoping meeting, our witness meeting, and then begin to take a look at this study after that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

All right. Before I go to Mr. Waugh, who is next on the speakers list, I'd like to answer a couple of your questions.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Have you finished? You were going to bring your—

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Well, before I lose the table, I'd like to make the amendment, so go ahead.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Okay.

I just want to say that the reason I have repeated over and over that we can extend our hours, that we can work, is that there's nothing that says these two weeks for Easter are a holiday. We are MPs. We work. Other committees work through it. Last week, when we had the week off, one of my colleagues emailed me something or other and then said he couldn't talk to me on that because he was at a standing committee meeting in the holiday.

I don't want us to ever walk away from the idea that we could work during holidays. Other committees do it. I've done it. I've been here for 22 years. I've done it time and time again. It is in fact in the standing committee rules that one can do this as a standing committee. I'm suggesting that we try to really discuss if we cannot fit this in by extending our hours and by maybe even looking at.... We have two weeks off coming up, the weeks of the 18th and the 25th. You know how everybody likes to say that teachers take a whole summer off and never do anything; we don't want people suggesting that as MPs we take all these weeks off and never do anything. We could come for one day and spend five hours.

The other thing is that you don't need to have four people presenting per meeting. I have been at standing committee meetings in the past where we've had round tables. In other words, we would say “let's just do the academics”, who were going to give us definitions and so on. They can be a round table; they don't present, but it is an interactive thing where we ask them questions pertinent to what we're doing and they answer them.

There are a lot of ways in which we can conduct this study within the allotted time if we decide that's what we really want to do. I'm suggesting this because as a chair I feel that I've gone through this for all this while and we're still putting a lot of people on hold for this. They have been waiting. When we come back—and who knows when in September we're coming back—we have until November. We don't have a lot of time to get other people's things done. The other studies are waiting.

I must say that Mr. Van Loan has been extremely generous with us, because we have bumped him over and over. We still have Ms. Dabrusin, and we have Mr. Van Loan, and we have to finish stuff this year.

Anyway, I'm saying that there are ways, Mr. Anderson, in which we can cut our coats to fit the cloth, as my mother used to say. We can fit our work into the time we have.

Mr. Waugh—

Oh, I'm sorry. Would you like to move your amendment now?

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Yes, I would like to move the amendment—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I'm sorry, Mr. Waugh. The amendment will have to take precedence.

All right, would you please read what it would be like? We then have to debate the amendment and vote on it.

Just a second. Before we do so, I notice that Mr. Waugh and Mr. Anderson are discussing what they're going to do. Maybe we could take a three-minute break for everybody to talk about how they see this and what they want to do with it.

Mr. Nantel, you can speak to yourself.