Finance Committee on May 29th, 2014

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

If the government was in one way or another involved in a civil action—for instance, if an event took place on land belonging to a department or the government—don't you think it would be problematic that the minister could decide whether an inspector, who would be asked to testify, could do so?

[Donald Roussel]

Mr. Chair, since this is a hypothetical question, I will not answer it. That would be decided on a case-by-case basis when such a situation would arise.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Okay, thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Caron.

Clause 225 will be dealt with separately?

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Chair, we call for a recorded vote, please.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay.

(Clause 225 agreed to: yeas 5; nays 4)

Is there discussion on any clauses from 226 to 230? No?

(Clauses 226 to 230 inclusive agreed to)

Colleagues, we have clause 231.

We have amendment PV-13, which is deemed to have been moved. I have a ruling on this amendment.

Bill C-13 amends the Railway Safety Act by removing section 50, which requires prepublication of certain proposed regulations in the Canada Gazette. The amendment seeks to re-establish the prepublication requirement by expanding it to every regulation made under the act.

As House of Commons Procedure and Practice, Second Edition, states on page 766:

An amendment to a bill that was referred to a committee after second reading or a bill at report stage is out of order if it is beyond the scope and principle of the bill.

In the opinion of the chair, the amendment seeks to maintain the prepublication requirement, which is contrary to the principle of the bill; therefore, the amendment is inadmissible.

I shall move to clause 231.

Is there discussion?

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Caron, over to you.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

I will be brief, Mr. Chair.

Once again, this is about the decision to stop announcing regulatory amendments in the Canada Gazette. We feel that this causes unacceptable problems in terms of process transparency and information availability. This time, the change applies to railway safety instead of motor vehicle safety. For that reason, we will also vote against this provision.

We call for a recorded vote.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Caron.

We'll have a recorded vote.

(Clause 231 agreed to: yeas 5; nays 4)

We do not have any amendments to clauses 232 to 238.

May I group them together, Monsieur Caron?

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

We still have clause 232 to discuss.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

There are clauses 232 to 238.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Chair, you can group up to clause 233.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

I would like to say something about clause 232.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

I will be very brief.

The reasons are the same ones I just mentioned—in other words, a lack of transparency and cohesion in terms of regulatory amendments. This time, the issue has to do with the transportation of dangerous goods by rail.

We will once again vote against this provision. We call for a recorded vote.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, recorded vote.

(Clause 232 agreed to: yeas 5; nays 4)

We'll go to clause 233.

Is there discussion?

(Clause 233 agreed to)

May I group any more, or do you want each one?

(Clause 234 to 238 inclusive agreed to)

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Up to clause 238.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I want to thank our officials for being here tonight. Thank you so much for participating, and for your patience.

We've had a request for a five-minute break, then.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I call this meeting back to order, as we continue our meeting 39 discussing Bill C-31. We are at division 16, Telecommunications Act.

There's a request for a number of recorded votes, so I'm going to propose that we could do it as we do in the House, but I need the unanimous consent of the committee. We can do anything we want by unanimous consent, but if people want a recorded vote, I could say, “Mr. Saxton, how are the Conservatives voting?” and I could say, “Monsieur Caron, how are the NDP members voting?”, and “Mr. McKay, how are you voting?” That way everybody is recorded, but we can hopefully speed it up, because the concern is that colleagues have amendments on issues that we may not get to before 11 o'clock, and as you know, at 11 o'clock I just put every clause forward without any discussion. So that's my proposal, but I need unanimous consent to do it that way.

Go ahead, M. Caron.

Mr. Caron, do you have something to add on that?

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

I was also about to propose a motion to speed up the process.

It was just to have this vote applied to the next vote. Usually, it's consecutive. My suggestion is simply for you to ask to have the vote applied to the next vote. We would agree to doing it that way.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

So we would just apply it.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

So we do it once and then we apply it for the others.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

But people might switch votes from yes to no.