I call this meeting to order. This is meeting number 2 of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.
You have an agenda in front of you, colleagues, and it has two items on it. We're going to deal with them in the order they're listed.
Item 1 is the first report of your subcommittee on agenda and procedure, and it contains three paragraphs. For your benefit I would like to flesh out some of the information that was required in order for us, as a subcommittee, to make this report for you.
You will notice that item 1 indicates that the recommendation of the subcommittee is that this committee meet on Monday afternoons and/or evenings. The reason for this--and we've discussed this at the organizational meeting--is that rule 115 of the Standing Orders provides that this committee cannot meet at the same time as the legislative committee dealing with Bill C-2, the accountability bill, because it involves either the same subject matter or the same agencies. In order to accommodate that rule, we either don't have any meetings or we change the meeting dates. So the subcommittee went through a number of dates and we ruled out Thursday afternoon. Really, the only time we were left with was Monday.
We're talking about the period of time that we're going to sit until Bill C-2 completes its work. Once Bill C-2 completes its work, we will then go back to the times and slots that the whips have agreed to, unless we as a committee decide we're going to change. Of course, I have no information in terms of the future as to how long it will take the legislative committee to finish its work and report. How long it takes to go through the House is irrelevant, as long as the legislative committee has finished its work. In any event, our best guess would be that it would take us to the adjournment.
So when we put Monday afternoons and/or evenings, the suggestion I made was that we could meet for three hours--from 3:30 to 6:30--and not have a working supper, which would give us three hours instead of four, or we could meet from 3:30 to 7:30 with a working supper, which would give us four hours a week, which we would have if we were going to have our two regularly scheduled meetings. That's not part of the motion. I just wanted to give you the background of it, because as we deal with the points, we can discuss those issues.
The subcommittee felt that in the time remaining between now and the June adjournment, it would be a good idea for all, but in particular the new members, myself included, to get the four commissioners or the four people who report to this committee to come and brief us on their departments and their wish lists, I guess is the way I would put it. In that regard, if the committee sees fit to do that, I can report that our clerk has lined everybody up, more or less, so we would definitely be able to have meetings for the next four Mondays with those four commissioners.
Paragraph 3...the Registrar of Lobbyists also reports to this committee. I guess that's the fourth commissioner--I won't call him a commissioner, I'll call him a registrar. It was recommended that we invite the Registrar of Lobbyists to appear before the committee and do the same thing as the three commissioners.
So that is the first unanimous report of the subcommittee. Are there any questions? Would someone like to move it, and then we can discuss it?
Mr. Zed will move it.
