Fisheries Committee on May 9th, 2006

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

That meets Mr. Stoffer's concern that quite often he may get left out in the second round.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Monsieur Blais.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Keddy, I am appealing to you as chair of this committee to ensure that we do this in an orderly fashion. We cannot all of a sudden amend an amendment that has been put to a vote. We will not get very far in terms of procedure, since we can very well subamend an amendment that was put to a vote. That is what I am gathering.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Monsieur Blais, you are absolutely correct. We have an amendment on the floor.

The amendment is to maintain the first round, to change the second round so the official opposition will have five minutes, the government will have five minutes, the Bloc will have five minutes, the NDP will have five minutes, and back to a government round.

(Amendment negatived)

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Now to the main motion. As it was listed originally, the witnesses under this motion will have fifteen minutes, the official opposition will have ten minutes, the Bloc will have seven minutes, the NDP will have five minutes, and the government will have ten minutes. In the subsequent round it will be five minutes, five minutes, and five minutes.

(Motion agreed to)

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Could I just beg a bit of tolerance from the committee for a second? I ask for some direction, as chair, that when we have more than two witnesses appearing, the chair have the discretion, through the clerk, to ask those individuals to present for ten minutes, and therefore leave all parties more time for questioning. Is that doable?

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

I would ask, if you're going to do that, that it be done well before they appear before the committee--

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Guaranteed, absolutely.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

--because they have to come here prepared.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Yes.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

I suggest they be limited to ten minutes. People should know they've got to get to the point of their argument--don't come in here with a dozen pages and read them. If you're going to make a presentation, get to the nub of your argument, and then move on. I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be limited to ten minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Just a second, gentlemen.

We have the right, of course, to bring future motions on procedure before the committee at any time. I just wanted to have a feeling, as chair, from the committee members, on limiting witness time when there is more than one witness. And we can bring that today or we can bring that at another time. It's strictly on that, on time for the witnesses.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Mr. Chair, I think I would agree with John's synopsis that ten minutes seems to be a pretty sufficient amount of time to give an opening statement. The bulk and quantity of the data or information we would receive would probably be derived through questions and answers. I would be in favour of an amendment to our agreed-to motion, simply to amend our previously agreed-to motion, to limit witnesses to taking ten minutes--

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

The witness time only.

On this motion, Mr. Stoffer.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

The one snag in that argument is you could have five people from five different organizations saying one thing and they could combine their time to fifteen minutes total. One of the guys could speak for three minutes, the other for four minutes, etc. We have that sometimes where somebody presents an argument, and then they pass it on to the next person, and fifteen minutes would then collectively total fifteen minutes for all of them combined. So you could end up with that problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Mr. Stoffer, we've certainly had a number of occasions when we've had three, four, and five witnesses appear, and one witness spoke on behalf of all of them. Again, we could certainly have the clerk speak to all the witnesses ahead of time, and in the case where we have multiple witnesses, why don't we try to keep it to twenty minutes or have a predetermined amount of time?

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

At the discretion of the chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

I think it almost has to be, but I'm asking for direction here, gentlemen.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

I would agree with having it at the discretion of the chair, but not having it as a rule of the committee, because there could be a time to come where we'd have a witness we would certainly want to hear more from and probably even extend the time.

I would leave it at the discretion of the chair.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

But the objective, though, is to get them to spit it out, because some of these guys ramble on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

I'm going to address that in a minute, Mr. Cummins.

We've heard Mr. MacAulay, and Mr. Manning is next on deck here.

[Fabian Manning, Conservative, Avalon, NL]

I agree with the ten-minute limit, and over and above that at the discretion of the chair. I think that would be the best route to take.

An international telephone call is three minutes, and after that, you're repeating yourself. So this can be combined into ten minutes and--

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

I would simply state to the committee that we will work very closely with the clerk of the committee and to the best extent possible make sure that all the witnesses appearing have information before them where they understand that they have ten minutes to present. If there's more than one witness, if there are four or five witnesses, we'll try to keep it to no more than twenty minutes to allow time for questions.

I assume that's normal procedure, but somehow or other we'll send that information, maybe even separate from all the other information, or include it twice, to make sure we speak directly to the individuals so they understand very clearly what the time constraints of the committee are.

Monsieur Roy.

[Jean-Yves Roy, Bloc, Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Mr. Byrne has moved a motion to this effect. Shall I call the question?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

It took me a minute to think of what we're voting on, Mr. Roy.

Mr. Byrne has asked that we amend the original motion so that the time for witnesses will be ten minutes instead of fifteen minutes.

(Amendment agreed to)

(Motion as amended agreed to)