Evidence of meeting #1 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was routine.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
In my past municipal experience, we had the activities of walk-on motions. This mentions 48 hours in advance. Is that an absolute standard for the committee?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
I will speak from my personal experience and then I'll let the clerk address it and how it's administered.
In every committee that I've been on, and I've been on dozens of committees at the House of Commons, and on joint standing committees, this is a standard routine motion that we see all the time. It doesn't mean there are certain things that the committee can't discuss at any point in time. It just means that when we're going to depart from our working agenda in any significant way, a motion has to be presented in this fashion in order to do so.
That's my general interpretation of it, but I'll let the clerk expand on that with the more technical details.
The Clerk
That's exactly what it is.
If we're doing a study on, for example, bus transportation, and someone wants to move a motion on that topic, then you don't need notice because it's already part of the discussion topic. But if you say that you want the committee to do a study on birds, well, that's not really the topic of the day. The idea behind the 48 hours' notice is to make sure that every member knows what might come up out of the blue. It's just to prevent any big surprise.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
The microphones have frozen, colleagues. This one has, anyway.
You should know that we have some very fantastic people who look after our every need, so much so that we don't even have to turn our microphones on, usually, but in this particular case, if we have to, we have to. We'll blame this on whoever programmed the system, not the person operating it.
We're dealing with article VIII, notice of motions.
Mr. Bratina, are you satisfied with that? Then I'll ask the question.
(Motion agreed to)
Article IX is about rounds of questioning.
I won't read this one out, because I think we're going to change—
Liberal
Joël Lightbound Liberal Louis-Hébert, QC
Mr. Chair, I think we've missed the reduced quorum provision. Perhaps we should do that before we move to rounds of questioning.
Conservative
Liberal
Joël Lightbound Liberal Louis-Hébert, QC
It's the same one on reduced quorum that was in the former Parliament. It's article II in the document you have. I don't mind what number you want to place it at, but I just think we should adopt it before we move to the rounds of questioning.
I would like to move article IX, the reduced quorum provision.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
A motion has been moved by Mr. Lightbound. Is there anybody who wants to comment on this?
(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Thank you very much. That takes us back to rounds of questioning.
Go ahead, Mr. Jeneroux.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
I would like to make the motion so it's similar to the PROC committee, as you mentioned. I'll go through it, if that pleases the chair.
What PROC agreed to was seven minutes for the first four of round one, and that's Liberal, Conservative, NDP, Liberal, and then round two of five minutes for Conservative, Liberal, Conservative, Liberal, NDP. Sorry, the last one, number five of round two, is only two minutes according to PROC's decision. I believe they agreed to two. That's my proposal.
Conservative
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
I'm less clear just because the information I have from PROC says three minutes for the NDP at the end.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
The committee has heard the terms of the motion. Is there any further discussion?
Go ahead, Mr. Blaikie.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
I would humbly move to amend the round two speaking order to switch the last two spaces.
One of the properties of this committee that's different from many others is that we have an opposition chair. I think the government has rightly expressed a desire to work across the floor with members from other parties, and I think it would be appropriate in this context to ensure that there is some more time given somewhere to opposition members to speak, given that we have an opposition member in the chair.
I propose that we make the last spot in round two a Liberal spot, and the penultimate spot in round two an NDP spot.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
Mr. Blaikie, considering that is a switch with a Liberal speaking position, as proposed, I would look to the governing party members to see if they would be interested in that.
Liberal
Joël Lightbound Liberal Louis-Hébert, QC
We respectfully disagree with that amendment. Considering there's only one NDP member on this committee who already gets more time than probably each of us does individually as Liberals, we would respectfully disagree.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
Was that a friendly amendment, or did you actually move an amendment, Mr. Blaikie? We have to vote on the amendment, if it was an amendment. We know where it's going to go, but if you want it on the record....
February 4th, 2016 / 9:15 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
We have an amendment moved by Mr. Blaikie that the original motion proposed by Mr. Jeneroux be changed to switch the order of the last two on the round two.
Is there any further discussion?
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
I would just note one thing, Mr. Chair, with all respect to my friend. When you look at the percentage of the breakdown between the three parties, you see that the NDP is at 13.5% overall and is going to have 17% of the speaking time already. I think we're already being pretty generous with the time as a matter of course.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
Absolutely. I appreciate that intervention, Mr. Erskine-Smith. For future reference just to make the committee proceed a little more smoothly, if you raise your hand, I promise I will recognize you, and if you start speaking after I recognize you, then it makes it a little easier for preparing the transcripts and the blues and stuff later on. If we could adopt that policy, that would be great.
(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])
That takes us back to the original motion proposed by Mr. Jeneroux.
Is there any further discussion on the original motion?
(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
That is unanimous. Thank you very much. The rounds of questioning and the times allocated have been discussed and accepted.
The last issue on my document that I see we have to deal with is article X, time allotted to witnesses:
That the witnesses from any one organization shall be allowed 10 minutes to make their opening statement; during the questioning of witnesses, there shall be allocated seven (7) minutes for the 1st round of questioning and thereafter five (5) minutes shall be allocated to each questioner in the 2nd and subsequent rounds of questioning.
It seems to me we've already dealt with the time in the previous routine motion, so I'm wondering if we need to amend this one to just deal with time allocated for witnesses. I think we would be better off if we did that.
Does somebody want to propose that?
Conservative
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
If we just ended it right at the semicolon, I think we would be fine.
