Evidence of meeting #2 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was going.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

12:35 p.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

—building codes, innovation, that sort of thing.

The last one around CEAA will be informed by their coming to the committee with their report.

I think Ed's right. Some of these you can dive into for the entire session, and while increasingly engaging you start to saw sawdust after a while if you're not careful. The committees can get so into the minutiae, and every single group wants to comment on something like climate, or CEAA, or any of these. Any of these committee studies can go, not off the rails, but so deep as to be not increasingly effective.

I don't know how you want to handle this, Chair, but I think when you get down to brass tacks, it starts to be about what the priority is for each of the committee members and where the consensus is. If there's a consensus or a near consensus, then what comes first, what comes second, third, and so forth, and then what amount of time is available to us in this session until the summer, and how much time we want to spend on each. Do you want to try to get all...what I have here is five. There may be more or less depending on how you break it up. It would be probably unlikely to do all five, I would guess, based on previous experience, because it's not that heavy a sitting schedule.

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

Well, we do have budgets...we haven't a lot of time and estimates are coming.

12:40 p.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Yes, estimates aren't big.

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

One meeting.

12:40 p.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

It's the sitting schedule we have. It's two weeks on and one week away. It's very scattered and that's not going to allow for a lot of meetings. Some are going to get bumped. There are going to be emergency resolutions people bring forward from time to time because of some panic or crisis going on in the news.

All I would put to committee members is that I don't look at this list with a big bias one way or the other, but think about what your priority is and then allocate time to it. When you start to add up the committee days between now and summer, at a rough guess, there are probably 15 days.

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

Are you talking about meetings?

12:40 p.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Yes.

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

We're doing the math here. If you consider it's nine weeks then we have 18 meetings and one of those is going to be for estimates, right?

12:40 p.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Yes, and then one's for the commissioner and Parks and CEAA.

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

Yes, and we have next week—

12:40 p.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

Then we have the minister.

12:40 p.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Then we have the minister

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

We're not including that week in the number.

12:40 p.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

The minister blocks off one.

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

Right.

12:40 p.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Is the commissioner coming down with another report later this spring? I can't remember. Anyway, you run down to about 15, give or take, without breaking a sweat.

Committee members should think of it that way. You have 15 meetings. You have four or five main thematic topics. You're probably not going to get them all, unless you do two or three meetings per topic, which would be for some of these things probably a challenge. I might as well stick my vote in while we're talking—while I'm talking.

Climate seems to be pressing and important.

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

Yes.

12:40 p.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Contaminated sites is a topic that's popping around on the news right now, which is kind of interesting to me. That could be a niche one. That could be something pretty tight and bright that you get through without going on forever.

Water is big. As soon as you start to get into water, it gets big, although it's incredibly important. For CEAA there's going to be some sort of requirement, and parks can also go because every national park has a constituency group around it that will want to come talk to us about why they're the best, but also in the greatest need.

I put some caution around that.

One last thing I'll say before I stop talking, Chair, is that I wouldn't mind if before the end of the meeting we could at least speak for a second to the motion that I have, and I have a recommendation to it. I notice on the 18th you have the commissioner coming along with Parks and CEAA—

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

Yes.

12:40 p.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

—and then on the 23rd the commissioner again on the audit report. No?

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

Remember that what I sent out yesterday was proposed. We didn't agree on anything.

12:40 p.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Yes.

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

We haven't invited her yet.

12:40 p.m.

NDP

Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

To your proposal, the commissioner is going to speak to her audit. That would be what the commissioner speaks to.

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

Right. Absolutely.