Evidence of meeting #38 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 cepa.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
The first of December. That would mean on December 6, we could actually have some discussion around CEPA, and how we might want to have the report formulated. That's a possibility.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Madam Chair, I don't get the feeling that the CEPA report is anywhere close to being ready to give instructions. I think you're saying we wind this up on December 1—
Liberal
Liberal
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
We need to have a discussion, but are there any gaps in the evidence that we have? That's typically what happens in these studies. We try to determine whether there is some information missing. Then we have the government officials come in.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
That's the point of having the discussion on December 6. It's to talk about where we're at, what we have.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
Potentially, it's stock-taking. It's an issues and opinions paper that we might start to give some instructions to help. Otherwise we have all of January—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
It's not necessarily a cold stop, but it's a discussion of a stop and it's taking stock.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
This is very important legislation, and I think all of us want to get it right.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
What is it that you want to accomplish by December 1? We'll move a motion if we need to.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
What I'm saying is that on December 6, we now have an open space, so I thought we would discuss the CEPA report and where we go with that on that date. That is so we can ascertain how we're going to move forward with the committee.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
We have to fill that spot because we don't have the report.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
In the interest of expediency, though—and I recognize my colleagues want to get out of here, and so do I—if we can have a full agenda, which includes not just whether we are ready to finish, because if Mr. Fast wants to bring a motion to bring in more witnesses, that's fine. I know which way I'll vote on a motion like that. I believe we're done. I agree it's very important, but I think we're done. We've heard a lot.
I want to make sure we have more than just that, because I don't want to spend more than five or 10 minutes debating.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
The other one would be, then, where do we go from there? Then we're looking at our future, and where the rest of the work is.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
We can evaluate some of the issues and see where we're at, actually getting into some of the substance.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
That's possible, too.
I'll lay something out. We have two witness panels next week, and then we'll work on laying out an agenda for December 6, which we can discuss next week. But I just need to make sure that I know where we're going. Otherwise, if we were going to do something else on that date, we'd be running out of time.
I now have a plan for December 6. Thank you very much.
Have a good trip back, and we will start again next week.
The meeting is adjourned.