You raise a couple of interesting points, and I thank you for doing that.
I will point out that the Historic Sites and Monuments Board is not actually responsible for commemorations. The mandate of the board is to make recommendations to the minister. The approval of any commemoration currently exists exclusively with the Minister of the Environment. A former environment minister is sitting next to you, and I know he's been involved in actually signing off lists that have come forward from the Historic Sites and Monuments Board. The current act has exactly that wording. The only change that's being made is to make “chairman” gender neutral by changing the term to “chair”.
What I understood when I was involved with Parks Canada and the reason for this part is that the minister would simply have a say from this one on setting, as it says, the time and location. There may be times that the minister wanted to meet with the board or wouldn't be available to. There could also be the optics of how if the committee wanted to meet somewhere in a remote location, which would incur lots of costs. The minister could say, “You know what? This is maybe not fiscally prudent and we would prefer that you meet in a more central location to reduce the costs of operation of the board”. I think it's a good safeguard politically to have.