Evidence of meeting #23 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Liberal
John Godfrey Liberal Don Valley West, ON
Right. And if we are to follow the practice of the House, when a question of privilege is raised, it does not mean that the House suspends its business. The judgment is reserved. In the meantime, we carry on as we were before.
I think that's why we should not suspend.
Conservative
Conservative
Luc Harvey Conservative Louis-Hébert, QC
Mr. Chairman, since the ruling you are going to make will impact on what will happen next, as long as you have not made that decision, we are unable to go any further.
We are being asked to approve the bill introduced by Mr. Cullen and the NDP without any studies having been done. There is a refusal to tell us if these studies should be done before passing or considering the bill. There is even the refusal to tell us if there should be a cost analysis.
Mr. Chairman, I do not see how one could talk about challenging your decision since it is not your ruling that is being challenged, it is Marleau and Montpetit. According to Marleau and Montpetit this type of motion cannot be made. I will not repeat what it says there.
We are caught in a paradox and I propose to simply adjourn this meeting until you come down with your ruling.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Mills
Again, Mr. Harvey, that's the same point as Mr. Vellacott's. I'm prepared to listen to these points, but put them as briefly as you can.
Mr. Watson--
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Mills
No, that's a different thing altogether.
I'll let Mr. Harvey consult with Mr. Vellacott....
Now I'm going to ask Mr. Harvey to clarify the last part of his statement. After that clarification from Mr. Harvey, I'll go to Mr. Watson and Mr. McGuinty.
Mr. Harvey, did you...? Okay.
Mr. Watson, if you could address exactly what—
Conservative
Conservative
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
Sure.
In terms of raising questions of privilege in the House, the decisions are usually put aside because the business of the House is much more multi-faceted. Here we're dealing with a very linear progression, in that the question of privilege pertains to the particular bill at hand.
I don't know if Mr. Godfrey is suggesting that we move on to Bill C-474, for example, and put aside the business of this particular bill in order to remedy the situation. I'm not sure if that's his suggestion or not. But in the business of the House, when a question of privilege is raised and taken under deferment, the House moves on to something else. The debate itself is not impeded in the House because a question of privilege is not raised pertaining to the matter being debated at the time.
In this committee it's very different. The question of privilege relates directly to the specific business and the debate at hand. So I don't think Mr. Godfrey's assertion holds up.
Mr. Chair, I think this committee has to either decide the issue or suspend, if you want to defer it, until such time as it can be taken up--unless the committee wants to move on from Bill C-377 to different business. If we want to apply the way it's done in the House, then maybe that's another way to solve the problem.
Conservative
Liberal
David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON
Yes, Mr. Chair, it speaks exactly to the point made by my colleague Mr. Godfrey, and that is the question of whether or not we ought to leave this table and not do our work pending a decision that you will have to come to.
I do want to pick up on the comments made by Mr. Watson and Mr. Godfrey about workload and about what Mr. Watson describes as the multi-faceted nature of the work in the House of Commons, as a somehow separate but apart and distinct workplace and work form as opposed to what goes on in this committee, Mr. Chair.
Well, when I looked last, when we all met as a subcommittee to agree on the work plan going forward, this was the work plan. This work plan is very multi-faceted, Mr. Watson. In fact your parliamentary secretary signed off on it.
Mr. Chair, it's very multi-faceted. You can let Mr. Watson know for me. It's very multi-faceted. It's an agreed-upon work schedule that embraces all kinds of multi-faceted.... That's my first argument.
Number two. Mr. Chair, you have an obligation, which you know well through your years of service here, not to be played like a violin. You know that. I've watched you now for four years, and you have never been played like a violin, and I respect you profoundly for it. Here we have a case where we're now at 12 hours and 22 minutes of filibustering by the government in an unheralded fashion. It's 12 hours and 22 minutes. So we have your responsibility to be neutral and objective on this, taking into consideration all of the facets, taking into consideration that this is costing taxpayers a lot of money; that we have an agreed-upon work plan; that it has been 12 hours or so; and finally, your neutrality cannot be put in jeopardy, Mr. Chair, in the attempts by the government to play you like a violin.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Mills
I do have a solution that I am prepared to propose, but I would like to very briefly hear Mr. Warawa and then Mr. Scarpaleggia. And then let me put my solution and see if that would be acceptable to the committee. So can I very briefly ask Mr. Warawa and Mr. Scarpaleggia?
Mr. Bigras--no, I'm not giving you the floor--I'm asking whether your hand was up.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC
Thank you, Chair.
I spoke for about five minutes. It was a point of privilege, that I believe my parliamentary privileges have been violated by the opposition motion, and I believe Hansard will show that.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC
I'll try to, but it's difficult.
So what I brought was a point of privilege for discussion. I'm fine with your ruling, Chair, that you will consider this and report back, but ultimately it will be a decision of this committee and we will be voting on it. You'll be making a recommendation, but we will be voting on it as a committee, and I'll be calling a recorded vote to find out whether the same people who changed the rules now want to say the rules were not violated. It would be very interesting to see what happens when we vote. That may be in a week or two or whenever, and I will patiently await.
The second issue, Chair, is whether or not we have disorder and misconduct, and during my presentation, during the point of privilege, I did read from Marleau and Montpetit, page 858, and it said, Disorder and misconduct in a committee may arise as a result of the failure to abide by the rules and practices of a committee”--that happened--and also, “or to respect the authority of the Chair”. That's happened. And in the event of a disorder, the chair may suspend the meeting or it may be adjourned. And that is your option, sir.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Mills
I'm going to propose an alternative.
Thank you, Mr. Warawa, for your advice.
Mr. Scarpaleggia.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
I would like to add to Mr. McGuinty's words, Mr. Chair.
I think what we have here is the government breaking its word in the most serious manner. They agreed to this work plan knowing what was in the bill, having discussed the bill, having even started clause-by-clause. And now they're going back on their word. They're saying essentially, “We didn't agree to this work plan, and the opposition is doing something unfair.”
Mr. Chair, I think the government is just trying to prevent this committee from getting to issues that could be embarrassing for the government, including the study that we should be doing on the impact of the oil sands on Canada's water supplies. We passed that motion in February, Mr. Chair. And all we see now is stalling to protect the interest that this government is protecting in the Alberta oil sands and to prevent Mr. Godfrey's sustainable development act from going through.
I think that's wrong, and I think Canadians should know about that. And I think we should continue to work.
Bloc
Bernard Bigras Bloc Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC
Mr. Chairman, since the beginning, I have been rather disappointed with the governing party's attitude with regard to Bill C-377. I must conclude that the governing party—and I will not name its members—is acting in bad faith. They keep filibustering in order to torpedo Bill C-377 and this is totally unacceptable.
If the member believes that his privileges have been breached, look into the matter and take it under advisement. Nothing prevents us from continuing to consider the bill as it is. I find Mr. Watson's demand to move to other business, namely Bill C-474 , completely ridiculous since the point of privilege does not deal with the bill but rather the rights of the member.
Mr. Chairman, I ask you to take this point of privilege under advisement. For the time being, we must continue with our consideration of Bill C-377. I am very disappointed in this government and the way it behaves. We are here to work for the public good and the government is having us lose precious time. This wastes taxpayers' money and I do not believe the people of Quebec and Canada expect us, as parliamentarians, to behave in such a fashion. So I ask the government to get a grip and to work constructively in order to make Bill C-377 acceptable to both the government and the opposition.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Mills
Thank you.
Basically, my option would be, because you've heard the arguments on both sides, that obviously the motion that was made at the end of last meeting is the controversial one, the one on which there is the point of privilege. So where I see it coming to at this point is that we have two options. One is that we go back to clause 10 and debate that until we have this ruling down, and then we come back to this motion after the ruling and vote on that, or we suspend and we go to work on this ruling, because we're at an impasse, in effect. How can I chair a meeting where we're at such an impasse?
So it would seem to me that those are our two options. One, we simply hold this motion and we carry on today--and we have less than an hour--and proceed with clause 10, or we adjourn.
So we'll carry on with the amended clause 10 that we are now discussing. We have suspended this motion temporarily, and we'll come back with this ruling as quickly as we can.
Liberal
David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON
On the same point of order, Mr. Chair, perhaps I could just say that I appreciate the constraints you're in, but as the official opposition we really want to get to work and continue on this bill, so let us proceed forward.
But for a real point of order, can I just revisit this with you again, please? We actually did not adjourn the meeting yesterday. What did we do, effectively?