Finance Committee on May 11th, 2021

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

Okay. What I'd like to suggest.... I just got a copy of the motion and I'd like to consider it, of course. I don't want us to make a decision today. I would suggest that it would be useful to have the steering committee meet on Thursday, at least in a portion of the time that we have allotted, so that the steering committee can make decisions.

In the meantime, I'm certainly open to—I'll see what my colleagues say—having an initial list of witnesses by this Thursday so that the clerk can get going on it, but I'm not prepared for a final list of witnesses because I think we need to map out the coming weeks.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I'll go through the list.

On the steering committee, Peter, I'll just mention that one of the difficulties there is that if the steering committee meets and we pass a motion or we decide what the steering committee decides, then it really has to go to the full committee to be official. That puts us into Monday. That's the difficulty with that process versus the full committee meeting to deal with it on Thursday. That's just a technicality.

I have Pat, Sean and Gabriel.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

I agree more or less completely, I think, with Peter. I don't think we should debate the motion right now. If necessary, if there's no other way to get a steering committee meeting together, then, yes, devoting a portion of the Thursday meeting to it.... I might even say, just as possibility, that we could have the steering committee at the beginning of that meeting, if that helps us get toward passing a motion earlier.

I don't know.... I'm in the room with the clerk. I'm not sure if there's a possibility of extending that meeting, or if we were at a hard stop on it. If not, we could extend that meeting and have the steering committee meeting at the beginning of Thursday's meeting. Those are just my suggestions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We can have the clerk check it out. I do know we tried everything to get a steering committee meeting, and this is what complicates things so darn much; we can't get time slots available.

Sean.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you, everyone, for looking for flexible solutions.

I'm just wondering if there's any concern about having to have the whole committee effectively ratify the steering committee's report. Would it be more advantageous to take Peter's proposal and make a decision on this on Thursday when everybody's had time to review it, but to do it by setting aside committee business time where we can all be part of that discussion and decision?

I don't feel that strongly about it, but I do recognize, Wayne, the challenge that you've flagged about the potential of spilling into next week. I also just got a flag here, and I think I know where people stand on this. If the committee wanted to refer portions of this to HUMA, I think we've got to make that decision pretty quickly because we're going to lose the ability for them to take it.

As I mentioned before, I'm agnostic as to whether we do that or not. If other members of other parties feel differently, then I would be more than happy to accommodate that point to avoid the pitfall that Wayne flagged. We might be able to take Peter's approach to deal with it in committee business for the first chunk of the Thursday meeting, or something like that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay.

Gabriel.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I agree with what Mr. Julian and Mr. Kelly are suggesting. The Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure could meet Thursday, at least for the first part of the meeting, and the committee could adopt its report afterwards. That would allow for a full discussion of the work plan going forward.

I do appreciate Mr. Fraser's efforts to find a solution, so I want to thank him for his constructive input.

I'm in favour of having the Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure meet during the first hour on Thursday. Between now and then, we could submit our preliminary witness lists.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Sean.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I have one more point here. The one fear I have right now is that if there's a steering committee meeting at the outset of the Thursday meeting, and the remaining members of the committee have ideas or issues that the subcommittee may not have addressed, it could end up taking over a significant portion of the meeting. I hope that will not be the case.

I would invite feedback from all of the critics from the other parties. I think you all have my cellphone number, and I'm accessible at my P9 address. To the extent we can work this out informally going into that meeting, I think it will save all of us a major headache.

I have a slight preference to do this through committee business for that reason, rather than having a steering committee meeting and then having the whole committee having to revisit the decisions of the steering committee. Obviously we're going to need the preference of at least one other party to land on that. It's not my most important thing. I just want to solve this problem.

If folks are willing to chat with me over the next 48 hours, I would relish the opportunity to make sure that everybody knows what we're getting into from all perspectives in advance of that meeting, so we don't have things going off the rails on Thursday and we can make the most of our time we have for witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Pat.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

I understand Mr. Fraser's concern about being efficient and trying to avoid a protracted debate with the entire committee on Thursday. I don't share his concern. I think there are reasons we have these steering committees, and the presumption is that the steering committee can hash out an agreement with the support of caucus members of the parties on that steering committee. I think from our side, as the member on the steering committee, I don't think that should be a problem. I think if we have a proper steering committee meeting, we should be able to have committee business ratified very quickly, at least from our side.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

The option is certainly open for a discussion on the side with Mr. Fraser, as well.

I think where we're at is that we've agreed that the parties will submit a reasonably extensive preliminary list of witnesses to the clerk for the week of the 17th. It would be really helpful if we could have those by noon on Thursday. That gives us a day and a half to contact witnesses for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I think we're agreed on that.

We'll have the subcommittee at the beginning of the meeting. The clerk will scour the time available to see if we can get squeeze another half-hour out of that time frame.

The one problem we haven't dealt with is whether to farm those 10 divisions out to HUMA. I think we have to decide today or we'll end up doing it all ourselves. If there is another committee meeting, that will allow more witnesses to be heard because we're not going to be able to hear them all. I counted them up and there are 10 sections that could apply to them, but we really need to make them that offer today. They can accept or refuse; it's entirely up to them. If we do it on Thursday, they won't have time to organize it.

What are your thoughts?

Ed.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I had made my thoughts clear to Sean that I believe it's in our best interests to keep all of this with the finance committee. Just so you know upfront, we haven't changed our minds on that. I don't know about the other members. On our side, that's certainly our position.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay.

Peter.

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

I have two points. First off, I agree with Ed. Let's keep it all with the finance committee. I would prefer not to parcel any of it out. I also wanted to pledge the support of the entire NDP caucus on the finance committee. Any decision made by the steering committee will bind all of the New Democrats on the finance committee. I want to make that very, very clear.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Peter Fragiskatos.

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

Thanks, Chair.

It's more of a question for you, actually. What has been the practice in previous years? It's my understanding that parts of the BIA have been delegated to relevant committees apart from ours, but I would be interested to hear your view on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I guess what makes me kind of keen on it is that I think the decision has been made. We're not farming it out. However, I really regret at a previous finance committee meeting that we didn't farm out one section to the justice committee. We should have. It related to the SNC-Lavalin issue. In any event, it's been done both ways. Sometimes it's farmed out to four or five committees because they may have more knowledge of a particular section of the budget than we do at the finance committee. It's been done both ways—farmed out sometimes and sometimes not. It's always the decision of the other committee whether they want to accept it. Then there are reporting-back deadlines, as well.

I see that people are not wanting it to be farmed out, so we'll do it ourselves.

Gabriel.

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

I just wanted to second your point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay. Thank you, Gabriel.

Peter, did you have something else?

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

Yes, I did, Chair.

Based on what you said, I would urge my colleagues to think carefully here. We want to do good work, we want to be serious about that work, but it's been a standard practice of the committee to “farm out” sections—if we're going to use that expression again—to other committees. It could help us here in the sense that we'd be able to complete the work efficiently and effectively. It would also open the door to other work that we've considered in the past, including studies that members have suggested.

Mr. Chair, you did say that you were hoping that the committee would lean in the direction of delegating parts of the bill to other committees. I would just urge colleagues to think about that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

All right.

Peter, I'm sorry that I didn't see your hand there. Go ahead. The last comment goes to you and then we'll close debate.

You have one minute.

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

Thanks, Wayne.

About Peter's comments, the trend has been that when there's a majority government, the finance committee parcels it out because that's the direction from the majority government, but in minority governments—and certainly we lived through a lot of them a decade ago—it has not been the practice. It really depends on what the composition of Parliament is, and this Parliament is a minority Parliament.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Could parties have their preliminary lists to the clerk by noon on Thursday. We will hold a subcommittee meeting at the beginning of committee on Thursday. The finance committee will go it alone on all parts and divisions.

With that the meeting is adjourned.