Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure Committee on May 10th, 2016

[The Chair (Mrs. Deborah Schulte (King—Vaughan, Lib.)), Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I call our subcommittee to order, please. Thanks for everyone's patience today. It's been an interesting day.

There are three things I want to work on, and we've already taken care of one.

We're going to hear the witnesses on the 17th. There were two meetings on our schedule. One was to draft instructions, and the other was to review the report. There's another week out there that we may need to think about, but I am aware that there may be some stuff coming to us in June that may end up taking up that spot. I just wanted to put that out there.

We now have four witnesses who are coming on the 17th. There were some other people who were trying to get in to talk to us, and I want to possibly get Penny's and Tim's assistance at this part of the meeting just to suggest four. Five is not bad. I don't want to go back to six, if we can avoid it, because it really doesn't give us that full time that we need. So we have four on the 17th. Is there one other group that has requested to come forward to us?

If you want to look at your package, there's a sheet of all the people we approached to try to have come forward to us. They're on that list, and we approached as many as we could—almost all of them—to try to see if we could fit them in. Some couldn't come; some declined. Just the way it worked out, we couldn't fit everybody in. However, there are some highlighted in yellow who were a priority for the members of the committee. We have an opportunity for one more spot. I wouldn't mind hearing from Penny and Tim if there is anybody who has come forward, because we had people who also approached us who might be appropriate for having that one other spot that we have available on the 17th.

John.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I was just going to say, given that we've heard a lot about seeing a need to consult with indigenous communities, I'm wondering if the Assembly of First Nations could be seen as a priority. We've heard from some panel, but not anybody with that umbrella voice, and I would find it to be very useful to hear from the Assembly of First Nations.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

We invited them, and I don't think they even got back to us.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Could we try again?

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

We could try again, but they did not respond.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

A lot of these requests, I think the challenge—

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

They just get so many.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

They get bogged down, and it comes down to the persistence of us to have them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Cynara did persist. However, if one of you has a contact that you want to try to use to see if you can get them to come forward, I would say let's try because we've tried through the formal channels.

Mr. Stetski.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Kevin Van Tighem would be a good witness. He's been a superintendent with national parks, I believe, in the past. He has a lot of history so it might be interesting to get his perspective.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

We did have a couple of witnesses who came forward with the parks already, right?

I'm open to discussions around the table.

Mr. Eglinski.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

It's very important to kind of give a twist to our people and talk to the mayor of the town of Jasper, which is a municipality operating within a national park, about the demographics of how that works, the controls that are placed on him, and the things that they're doing as a municipality within a park that oversees them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I'm open to that.

Mr. Stetski.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

It would be interesting to hear from the town of Jasper, but so far we've been hearing from groups that have a very broad perspective around conservation. The town of Jasper.... There's only Banff, Jasper, and Waterton. They are the only three communities that are inside a national park.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

There's Prince Albert and Riding Mountain.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

I'm just not sure what the overall value to the committee would be. It's a relatively small percentage of conservation that gets impacted by a town like Jasper.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I think a lot of it deals with the conservation that they're doing within the town itself, the town limits and the impact of tourism, which is part of the discussion that we've held here. Tourism is impacting on our parks, and I think that they have a very strong perspective in that regard.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I wouldn't mind turning to Penny and Tim just for a second because they're looking to see what we have heard so far and where our study is going.

Do you have some suggestions, or anyone that we haven't heard from who you think would be very important for us to hear from?

[Tim Williams, Committee Researcher]

There was a potential for a completely new meeting to be held in the next weeks and that was going to be discussed at this subcommittee meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Yes, and that all went to heck in a handbag.

[Tim Williams]

Yes, I understand.

When members of the committee were asked to submit their witnesses, they were asked to prioritize them. As possibilities, we suggested the three who were prioritized and had not been heard.

There was a request from West Coast Environmental Law. From our perspective, we haven't heard a lot about marine protected areas. We've heard a lot about terrestrial. One of the focuses of West Coast Environmental Law is on the marine side of things. That's why Penny and I suggested West Coast Environmental Law as a possibility as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Amos.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

To respond to Mr. Eglinski's point around usefulness of municipal input, I would agree. I would simply suggest, though, that if we do succeed—and I think we will—in getting some travel, it will be a great time to meet with the municipalities in this particular context.

If we go to a particular protected area that involves a municipality, then we can have a meeting then and there. The opportunities to meet with Jasper or elsewhere aren't solely in the next couple of meetings.

I would recommend that we prioritize Stewart Elgie, whose experience on these issues is extensive to the point of having been involved for 35 years, and having litigated all sorts of different cases. He will have a legal perspective that would at least be the equal of West Coast Environmental Law. They're both great.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

The point that was being addressed by Tim was that we hadn't heard a lot from marine. Do you think Stewart Elgie is going to talk about marine?

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Having been a colleague of his at the University of Ottawa...He was the founder of Ecojustice and Boreal Canada. He is now the founder of Sustainable Prosperity. They are all major national institutions. His expertise spans the gamut, including marine, so to the extent that we want to focus on marine, we can.