Evidence of meeting #1 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 39th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was subcommittee.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Mills
Eugene suggests that when he has a large number of witnesses he advises them and automatically reduces their time.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
In the case of the two committees on which I served, it was less than ten minutes. In one case, it was five minutes, and in the other, seven minutes. I think that's quite a bit of time, especially for a first round of questions. When each party is given ten minutes for the first round, 40 minutes elapse before we can move on to another topic, not to mention the 10 minutes allocated for the presentation. That means we're left with one hour. Would committee members agree to seven minutes or five minutes for the first round of questions?
Bloc
Bernard Bigras Bloc Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC
Mr. Chairman, I think it would be to the Liberal Party's advantage to have 10 minutes for the first round, given that there are four Liberal members on the committee. If they are allocated 10 minutes, that will not leave much time for the third or fourth committee member. To my mind, the approach used thus far has allowed committee members to ask as many questions as possible. However, I do think it would be to your advantage to have 10 minutes for the first round of questions.
Liberal
John Godfrey Liberal Don Valley West, ON
If everybody asks, that means the initial round would be two hours.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Mills
No. There would be ten minutes for yourselves, ten minutes for the Bloc, ten minutes for the NDP, ten minutes--that's the first round--per party.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
That's what I'm saying: 10 minutes per party. The Liberals would get 10 minutes, the Bloc Québécois, 10 minutes, and so on. The first round of questions would last 40 minutes.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Mills
That's correct. Then the second round would be for five minutes. If you want to try it and see how it works, I think we generally found it worked pretty well. I don't think there were any major times....
To take a witness and shorten their time very much.... You sometimes bring them in from quite a distance at quite an expense, and it's pretty tough to tell someone they have five minutes to cover all they want to cover that you want to hear from them. That's a tough call.
Are there any questions or comments?
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC
In the spirit of cooperation, we want to make sure every person also has an opportunity to ask a question before another member of the committee asks multiple questions of the witness.
I've sat on about three different committees. I've experienced the ten-minute first round and the five-minute first round. There are advantages to both, but in each case there were some problems when one member had multiple opportunities to ask questions before others were given a chance. So perhaps we could work into the policy and the procedure that everybody has a chance to ask a question before a member of a party has multiple opportunities.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Mills
Well, we rotate. As I say, we go one, two, three, four, and then start the second round for five minutes. In the third round we go five, five, five, five--
I'm sorry, we alternate back and forth.
Liberal
John Godfrey Liberal Don Valley West, ON
I think the principle that members who haven't been heard from should have a crack at it before we go back to people who have been heard from is generally a good idea. Otherwise, with all respect to Nathan, you'd get four rounds before people began to--
Bloc
Bernard Bigras Bloc Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC
When deciding on how to allocate time, we shouldn't assume that each committee member has to ask a question. In committee, we operate on a party basis. Given the composition of the committee, a certain number of seats are taken up by each political party and it's the responsibility of the Bloc Québécois, the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party to manage the time allocated to their respective parties.
If each political party is allocated 10 minutes and each member gets two minutes, it's manageable, because you manage your own time. However, we needn't think that we have to wait until everyone has spoken to go to the next round. It's up to each political party to manage the time allocated to it.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Mills
The other thing I would add is that again the chair's prerogative is that when he sees someone who just desperately wants to speak, we're not going to leave this room without that person having an opportunity to speak. If you happen not to have any friends in your own party and they won't let you speak, we'll make darn sure you get to speak.
Again, we haven't had any problems with that before. There are often times when within our ten minutes we would share five and five. That's fine. If someone goes seven minutes and there are three minutes left, someone else in your party can fill in the remaining minutes.
Can we give this a try and see how it works?
Liberal
John Godfrey Liberal Don Valley West, ON
All you're trying to do is to balance the rights of parties with the rights of individual members of Parliament.
Liberal
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Mills
The witness will be given ten minutes for an opening statement. At the discretion of the chair during the questioning of witnesses there will be allocated ten minutes for the first questioner of each party. Thereafter, five minutes will be allocated to each subsequent questioner, alternating between government and opposition parties.
(Motion agreed to)
