Finance Committee on Jan. 29th, 2020

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I was going to move an identical motion, but I do have a practical question for the analysts. With the February 28 deadline, if we're going to give you any breathing room to put together something meaningful, what's our stop date for hearing evidence from witnesses?

[Michaël Lambert-Racine, Committee Researcher]

Ideally, that would be Friday, February 7, which would give us following week to draft the report to send to translation. Translation would likely take a week. That means we would be able to send your report around February 21, which would leave committee members a few days to look at the report and consider it in time for February 28.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Just to build upon that, let's say we were to take an approach similar to the one the chair has just described, where we essentially send a summary of topics with a more fulsome report to follow. Could that summary of issues we've heard about be done in a short amount of time? It just seems that having one week of hearing witnesses, when we have 261 reports already in, is not feasible.

[Michaël Lambert-Racine]

That's what the report would be about. It would contain a summary of the topics we addressed. We would also include tables from witnesses about proposals they made and on what topics they made them. That would mainly be the content of the report, along with the recommendations.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Sorry; in the report you're describing, it's just the summary of what we've heard about, or if—

[Michaël Lambert-Racine]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

It would be a summary, though, including the submissions.

[Michaël Lambert-Racine]

Typically, we include the submissions in an appendix to the report.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Yes.

Is it clear, or do you want further clarification?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

It's clear, but it feels like you may have undersold it when you said the time pressure challenges were immense. I think they border on the impossible.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Ste-Marie.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Mr. Fraser, who represents the government.

I want to make sure the work we will do that will be presented to the Minister of Finance will be taken into consideration in the budgeting. On February 28, copies will not yet have been printed, but I want to know whether the work we will do in committee will have a real impact and whether it will actually be taken into account in the budgeting.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Sure. To be clear, I'm not here as a witness, but I think the whole purpose of this exercise is to ensure that the feedback of the committee can be properly factored into the deliberations of the minister before the budget is made public.

Mr. Chair, it might help if we took a two-minute breather to discuss things. I think the time challenge, with the amount of time the analysts require, is something that we might want to have a brief informal discussion about amongst members, if that's okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

If you want to, okay.

Let's suspend for a couple of minutes so that parties can talk amongst themselves.

I don't know if the clerk has factored out the number of witnesses each party would be able to have out of 100. If they could do that as well during this time frame, then we would know how many witnesses there would be for each party—just roughly. We have never been been sticky at committee about sticking completely to the proportions based on the allocation of party seats in the House. If it's been an important witness, we've tried to hear them regardless of whose list they were on. So perhaps the clerk could give us some rough figures on that well.

We will suspend for five minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We will reconvene.

Mr. Fraser, the floor is yours.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I've just had a few informal conversations with some of our colleagues. I think, given the advice of the analysts on the time constraints that we're under, we're probably just going to have to sit longer days than normal, probably in the range of six-hour days, Monday through Thursday, and jam-pack in as many witnesses as we can, and also consider what written submissions may come in. We'll trust the analysts to do their best job to respect the appropriate proportion of witnesses from each party.

Obviously it's not ideal, but given the timing of the election, I don't really see another choice.

I don't know if that requires a formal motion, Mr. Chair. I'll take your advice on that point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I think we can go by agreement, if that's possible and agreeable.

Figuring out the numbers, I think, is a fair suggestion. Monday it might be difficult to get enough witnesses to go for the six hours because they're not going to have much notice. They're going to be called on Friday—although there are a lot of national organizations in the city and we do video conferencing as well.

The breakdown, just going by proportion, would be for the Liberals to propose 46 witnesses, the Conservatives 36, the Bloc 10 and the NDP eight. I would suggest that every party perhaps propose 10 more than what they've been allocated, because there will be a number who refuse or can't do it during the time frame.

As we establish lists of proposed witnesses, we'll find in some cases that all four parties will have the same witness, so we'll need at least 10 more than the number you have been allocated.

Could you forward those to the clerk? By Thursday night would be best, or by Friday morning if necessary, but put them in priority order. Who do you see as your first priority, second, and on down the line through your list? That makes it easier for the analysts and the clerk to work with.

As I said earlier, the department would be willing to come tomorrow, but I understand a number of people would have difficulty being here in our meeting tomorrow afternoon because of other plans.

What are your thoughts on that? We could go with the Finance officials as the first witnesses on Monday. It would be fair to everyone, maybe, but I am a little worried we might not get all the witnesses we want on Monday, anyway.

What time should we start on Monday? The House opens at 11. We could start at 11 and go for a couple of hours, and then from 3:30 to 6:30 in the afternoon would be normal.

Just give us your thoughts and we can come to some kind of an agreement.

The other thing Mr. Fraser mentioned was the submissions. Normally we don't reopen submissions. I know there are some out there. If we reopen submissions, we'll probably get 500 now that we're back in Parliament again. I know—and we always run into this—that some things change by the time the deadline comes in August. They submit submissions by August 15 and then by the time we get around to meeting them in September or October, some things have changed and they change their submissions. The ones that have already submitted will be given first priority in any event, so as witnesses they could tell us what differences they want to massage in their submission.

Mr. Fragiskatos.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

I may have missed what you recommended there, Mr. Chair. Did you propose 11 to two o'clock and then 3:30 to 6:30?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I didn't. I was wondering where people might be at on Monday.

I understand that people have difficulties tomorrow, but will people be here by 11 o'clock on Monday? Some won't, I know. Could we go from 11 to two o'clock on Monday and from 3:30 till 6:30 on Monday if we have enough witnesses?

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

That would be fine for me, and I think our side as well, if I can.... Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Julian.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

In terms of travel plans, a number of us are from western Canada. I think it would be better to go from 3:30. We could prolong it past 6:30 to eight o'clock, if we wanted to, just to get that extra time later in the day in a concentrated period. I know it's tougher on folks, but this will be a tough week next week.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

You know, Peter, sometimes it takes me 12 hours to get to P.E.I., if you can believe that. They fly to Toronto and then go back.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

That's nothing.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!