Information & Ethics Committee on Aug. 14th, 2008

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

No. This is what I want to clarify.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Order, order.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Order to you, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

You don't have the floor, and don't say “order” to the chair.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

This is the problem with this committee, the way in which you're operating it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

You don't have the floor, sir, and I'm asking you to behave yourself and stop interrupting. We have another colleague who has the floor.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

It's a kangaroo court.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Stop interrupting, Mr. Lemieux.

Mr. Goodyear, please.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Chair, I will debate the amendment. But before I do that, Mr. Chair, you know full well--well, maybe you don't know full well--that the chair is here to oversee the proceedings, not to steer the committee and offer his defence of his actions at every opportunity.

Mr. Chair, in the last number of meetings on this issue you have spoken 420-something times. If you divide that by the time we've spent on this issue, you yourself have participated about every 90 seconds. That's steering a committee, not overseeing it.

Now, to the point of the amendment--and I'm going to appeal to the committee--I want people to know that when the chair says, “the committee did this”, if you look at the records, it's the tyranny of the majority. However, I'm appealing now to the tyranny of the majority.

Please hear me out. Please, Mr. Proulx.

We had Mr. Doug Finley--not even our witness--show up on Monday. He told the committee that he couldn't come at the time agreed upon. He was offered another time, but he wasn't able to appear at that time. There was an opening for him to sit at the table because a witness didn't show. So there was no reasonable need to not hear Mr. Finley.

We have a gentleman at the back of the room who was summonsed. The fact is very simple. It's a very simple thing. The gentleman was summonsed. He tried to make an accommodation to appear. I would suspect--I'm quite sure--when we speak with Mr. Beardall, who obviously is a senior counsel with an extremely busy schedule, that some accommodations were made, as all chairs make with all witnesses.

We have a gentleman here. We have a seat sitting right there. This gentleman's doing his best to honour the summons in the best way he can. This gentleman is not unemployed. He doesn't have freedom every single day. Mr. Martin might think it means nothing for people to cancel their clients or their patients, to tell their patients, “I'm sorry that you're ill; we'll have to see you another day.”

This is ridiculous. The gentleman's here. It's plain and simple. He's not the witness of the committee; he's your witness. None of our witnesses were allowed by the committee to be here. And we want to hear from your witness.

Is it possible that because the testimony of your witnesses so far is going so badly for you--they're proving our case--you don't want to hear from this witness?

Now, I'm hoping I'm wrong on that. And you can prove I'm wrong on that by allowing this gentleman his right to tell his story, the story you originally wanted to hear, right now, not later. Because--I'm going to tell you something the chair mentioned yesterday--once Mr. Mayrand is up, he's here to close. He's here to wrap it up, to hear any questions we have outstanding. And that, to me, means--you know what?--this game's been planned all along.

I absolutely feel that it's a simple thing. I do not support the original motion. I think this witness was called by the opposition.... Mr. Chair, you summoned the witness. You failed to make reasonable accommodation. The witness is here. There's room. There's time. There's no reason not to hear this witness immediately.

I support the subamendment. I will not support the motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

We'll go to Mr. Pacetti.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm relatively new, and I feel an air of compromise. Perhaps I can help. I'm going to make a quick point, maybe just a friendly amendment.

Seeing as Mr. Tilson was looking at putting slots in, perhaps after we hear the witnesses that have been called, out of courtesy to them, we can ask Mr. Goldstein, but we slot him in for half an hour, between 12 o'clock and 12:30, before our lunch break. Maybe everybody would be open to that compromise.

The only thing is that I also feel strongly about what Mr. Martin said about the fact that we aren't ready for him, and perhaps our questions will not be as in-depth as we would like. Perhaps we have an option to call him back at a later date.

It is a friendly amendment, if you guys want to take a crack at it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Thank you.

There is no friendly amendment, and you forgot about Mr. Mayrand, who is also a scheduled witness.

We now have Mr. Lemieux.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I have nothing to add.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Thank you.

There being no further speakers, I'm going to put the questions on all of the matters necessary to dispose of this.

Mr. Del Mastro has a subamendment to basically remove all of the words of every other motion after the words “that Mr. Goldstein”. So the subamendment basically wipes out the amendment and the motion, and just says that Mr. Goldstein shall be heard immediately.

Is that correct, Mr. Del Mastro?

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

That's right.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Is everybody clear on that question?

(Subamendment negatived: nays 6; yeas 5)

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

I'll now move to the amendment that Mr. Goldstein be heard after the committee has completed its agenda items for the day. That means after we deal with all of the matters that are on our order notice paper today, including our discussion of future witnesses. So it would be at the end of all other business.

Mr. Martin.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

If I could make it clearer, I'm not sure what the clerk heard me say, but I meant to say “at the conclusion of the witnesses and the other agenda items”, which is talking about the possible consequences of failing to appear.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

That's understood.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Then we would debate whether or not to hear Mr. Goldstein. That was the intent of my motion. We would deal with the matter after all the other agenda items, and the result might be that we would hear him at that time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Unfortunately, we're having the debate now on hearing him. So it's effectively that we will hear Mr. Goldstein today after we finish the agenda items we had originally scheduled for today.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I want to make sure I understand. You're saying it would be at the end of everything, including business matters.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Yes.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I can't agree to that. You may never hear the guy. You'll be hearing him at midnight.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

But does everyone understand the amendment? We would put Mr. Goldstein at the end of whatever business we discussed yesterday that we were going to do today.

(Amendment agreed to: yeas 6; nays 5)