Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll try not to take too much time. There are a couple of quick points I want to make.
I hope you can hear me. I'm trying to speak a little more quietly. For those who didn't have the benefit of a previous discussion, I've moved around in my house to make sure I can hear my daughter if she wakes up. There are some unique things that arise when you're dealing with Zoom meetings and scheduling concerns.
On the point of the motion, I find it a little bit odd that the Prime Minister is coming to the finance committee, as opposed to the other committees that are studying the same issue, given the nature of the motion we've passed. In any event, he has agreed to come. I think that's terrific. I made the point in our last meeting that I think three hours is a stretch. I think that some will agree and some will disagree with me on that point.
I want to take this opportunity to speak to the previous point of order. Again, I'm not trying to drag this on forever. I did take a different interpretation, not as a result of the Zoom meetings or the technical capacity, but based on the standing orders in Bosc and Gagnon. I found it a little bit odd that we had a disagreement on the way the meeting ended previously. Obviously, Mr. Chair, you were acting on the advice of the clerk at the time.
I looked into it, and I'll give you my thoughts. The standing orders in Bosc and Gagnon, as far as I can tell, don't explicitly rule that a committee meeting needs to continue after the scheduled hour of adjournment because there is debate ongoing.
The closest thing to a defined practice that I could find came from page 1,099 of Bosc and Gagnon, 2017 edition. It says:
A committee meeting may be adjourned by the adoption of a motion to that effect. However, most meetings are adjourned more informally, when the Chair receives the implied consent of members to adjourn. The committee Chair cannot adjourn the meeting without the consent of a majority of the members, unless the Chair decides that a case of disorder or misconduct is so serious as to prevent the committee from continuing its work.
My interpretation of this passage, unless I can be corrected, was that the chair can't, in the middle of a scheduled meeting, announce that the meeting should be adjourned and say, “We're halfway through; it's over”, without canvassing the membership first to see if, in fact, they want to adjourn.
This meeting would be a useful example. It was scheduled to end at 7:00. My argument would be that, Wayne, you couldn't have said at 6:30, “Hey, we're done folks, too bad if you disagree”, but at the time 7:00 rolled around, it would have been appropriate.
This is my personal interpretation. I'd be interested in what the clerk's finding on it may be. Honestly, my real concern—now that I think I'm managing with my daughter upstairs—is that I don't fall into this trap again. I don't want to create a scenario where every committee can become an indefinite exercise that we haven't planned for. If that was going to be the case going into a meeting, I think it would be helpful to know that it's possible we could be sitting indefinitely, so we could all plan accordingly.
I said I wouldn't speak too long. I have probably exceeded that expectation I set for myself, so I'll cut it off there. I would be interested in what the chair or the clerk's ruling may be, now or at another time.
Thank you.