Environment Committee on April 21st, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

It's for travel for them. It's not for our travel out to Alberta. It is strictly for witnesses appearing before committee.

Are there other questions? Mr. Warawa.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

We are going to be using video conferencing whenever possible. Is that correct?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Yes.

Are there any other comments, questions, or debate?

(Motion agreed to)

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Ms. Duncan, you have a motion. First you can move it to the floor, and then you can speak to it.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

My motion reads as follows:

That consistent with the practices of previous committees, the Parliamentary Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development contract the services of an independent consultant to provide assistance in the timely drafting of a report summarizing proceedings, findings and recommendations from the following: 1. Review of SARA, and 2. Study of oil sands and water issues, And to contract the consultant as soon as practicable to enable the consultant to observe the committee's proceedings.

I would like to speak to the motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Speak to it now, Ms. Duncan.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I have appeared before these committees previously, and it was my understanding that committees actually hired a consultant on contract to help do the proceedings. It's been suggested to me that on some occasions our Library of Parliament people do that report.

I brought the motion forward because I thought we should deal with it and have clarity to make sure we produce our report in a timely fashion, that we simply have agreement. My concern is that we haven't even talked about the framework of what a report might be coming out of either of those reviews. I thought it merited a discussion.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Before we open it up for discussion, I'll reference a couple of things to the committee.

Standing Order 120 does provide that:

Standing, special or legislative committees shall be severally empowered to retain the services of expert, professional, technical and clerical staff as may be deemed necessary.

Also in the binder, which I think all of you have, is the “Financial Management and Policy Guide for Committees”. Page 22 actually says:

Committees are authorized to retain the services of experts...as may be deemed necessary. Prior to hiring temporary help, the Committee Clerk must first verify with the Deputy Principal Clerk that assistance is not available internally. When budgeting for temporary help services it is necessary first to determine the nature and volume of work to be performed. The costs of hiring temporary help locally for a travelling committee are covered by the committee's travel budget....

And it goes on. And then there are guidelines on how much we can pay in hiring staff.

Now, I know that in the five years I've been here I've only been on one committee, agriculture, where we hired expert staff to do a survey of companies in Canada and in the United States that couldn't be undertaken by Library of Parliament. But other than that, it's not something that's been commonly done. All these reports are prepared by Library of Parliament, to my understanding.

I have Mr. Warawa and then Mr. Bigras.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

In addressing the motion, it says “consistent with the practices”. Chair, I don't believe this is the norm, as you've mentioned. So this would not be consistent with practices; this would be exceptional.

Also, the motion says to provide the report in a timely fashion. I've always found in the five years I've been here that the reports from the clerk and the analysts do come in a very timely fashion. I'm very happy with the service we receive from the Library of Parliament. I don't see any need for this motion, so I won't be supporting it.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Monsieur Bigras.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

I'm going to vote against this motion as well.

I've been a member of the Standing Committee on Environment for 12 years. And we have never called upon outside services. We should undertake a process to determine who the consultant should be. It's as though we were claiming that consultants were automatically independent. I believe that the Library of Parliament and its researchers do independent work.

I believe this is Parliament's responsibility. We have the necessary resources. So it will be very hard for me to support this motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Monsieur Trudeau.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Did you have a consultant in mind, Ms. Duncan?

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I don't have a particular consultant in mind. I assure you, in no way am I slurring the Library of Parliament staff--quite the opposite. It's just that it was not discussed at all in the committee.

I'm a new member of the committee. I have testified for 25 years before committees, and I know that consulting firms such as Stratus, previously RFI, for years worked with the committee in helping to develop the issues. If it's the Library of Parliament that is developing the report, I'm absolutely happy. But it has not been discussed by our committee, or even the steering committee, about what we see as the framework for the reports coming out of our two major reviews.

I would be more comfortable if we simply had a discussion about that. We're ad hoc bringing in witnesses, but it's not really clear to me what our expectations are or if at some point we're going to talk about recommendations out of our review. That's basically what I was generating. I simply wanted clarity on the outcome of these two reviews. Is there going to be a written report, and will it include recommendations? Do we need any additional help?

If the Library of Parliament staff are perfectly capable of doing it, I'm totally happy. I'm not necessarily for or against my motion; it was simply the way to get the matter on the table and have a discussion about how we're proceeding.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Braid.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Chair, I wonder if we could simply have a confirmation through our analyst that we do have adequate resources from the Library of Parliament to complete this work.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

There hasn't been any indication that they cannot. As you know, both our analysts have strong environmental backgrounds on the legal and academic sides, so I don't have any concerns at all in our ability to put this together.

On the oil sands study, we have laid out a framework for our direction. At the subcommittee on agenda and procedure, we talked about how we're going to move forward in hearing witnesses under the main themes. Those themes become the main focus of the report. I know that Tim and I have talked about that as well when putting that together.

It's also hard, until you have all of the witnesses appear, to prejudge the comments they're going to make and the recommendations they're going to bring forward for us to consider. So you pretty well have to hear the witness testimony first before you actually start fleshing out the recommendations and go forward with the report. I know the analysts are already compiling the information from the witnesses we've heard, and they have that information at their disposal for when they start writing the report as we get near the end of the study.

Mr. Woodworth.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Quickly, I do want to thank Ms. Duncan for raising this. As a new member, I had no idea how these reports were prepared or who prepared them, so it did merit some discussion. But having heard what I've heard about the role of the Library of Parliament, I'm quite content to let them proceed with the matter. Therefore, although I appreciate the motion, I probably won't be supporting it.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Are there any other comments?

Ms. Duncan, if you want, you can withdraw the motion—or do you want to vote on it?

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

We can withdraw the motion. It was simply my intention to generate a discussion. We've had a good discussion, but I do encourage the committee, as we're plotting our time in our meetings, to make sure we set aside time to actually discuss these reviews.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

That's what we're going to discuss next when we move over to our next meeting in the subcommittee.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Very good.

(Motion withdrawn)

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

If there's no other discussion, I'll ask for a motion to adjourn, so we can clear the room.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

So moved.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

So moved by Mr. Watson.

We're out of here.