Evidence of meeting #1 for Subcommittee on Food Safety in the 40th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
As far as I know, we're not in the House of Commons, Mr. Chair, so I think we can note that Ms. Bennett is still here with us, even though Mr. Easter has left the room.
Why does the opposition not feel that the schedule is reasonable? Certainly they'll have some things to answer for. They'll probably go back to their whips and House leaders, and they'll be asked why they were not willing to go along with a perfectly reasonable schedule on the listeriosis issue. Their leadership is going to say them, “Look, these dates are fine. You can have your report by June 17. You can make whatever political hay out of that by then.” The leaders of their parties are going to say, “That's a good idea. Let's get this done as soon as possible.”
Instead they've apparently got together and decided--I don't know if their House leaders and their whips approved this or not--they want to go with a schedule that doesn't treat this issue seriously. It won't see the end of it for almost a year. It will be a waste of the committee's time if we're going to take nine months to come up with a final report on this issue when the crisis occurred last summer.
The government has already moved, as we pointed out, and Ms. Weatherill is in place. She's doing her investigation already. There's no reason why this committee can't take up the schedule we presented in order to get our stuff done.
NDP
Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My honourable colleague is speaking to an amendment that isn't before us, talking about a report that will be at a period of time when.... If he reads the amendment that he says isn't there, he will find out that the report is actually in June, and the final report on food safety will be later on. That's the way it reads. But of course it's not before us so we can't discuss it. Yet my honourable colleague continues to address it and read into it what he wants because he's not addressing it.
I suggest, Mr. Chair, you ask him to confine himself to the motion before us, which is his. If he truly wants to discuss this motion, let him vote on his motion. We'd be more than happy to have the vote. We'll move on to the second one. We'd be more than happy to let him address it.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
I'm certainly very happy to ask Mr. Anderson to speak to his motion. I believe it speaks to a report in June, which you referred to.
Mr. Anderson, you have the floor.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Mr. Allen just challenged us to vote on our motion and then move on to the second motion. I'm not sure what motion he is speaking about, because we don't have one here. He's been spending the last half hour interrupting me to point out that there isn't a motion. Obviously there isn't a motion on the table
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Yes, and that's what I'm trying to talk to. I'm also trying to give the opposition some options and some opportunity to find some middle ground. To me and to Mr. Shipley, it's important that we find that middle ground so that we can make this committee start to work a whole lot better than it's worked today.
Mr. Chair, I sympathize with you and the position you're in, having to deal with these constant interruptions. But again, this subcommittee is going to hear this issue. How long are we going to take to hear it? Does the opposition actually think it's valid for us to hear from now until December on the issue of listeriosis, which occurred last year? It doesn't even make sense, unless they're trying to play some more silly tricks or to make some kind of point.
So our suggestion has been a positive one, to come back and say, look, we can do this in the next three months. It's not complicated. This is not a tricky motion. This is one that at least two of the three parties were familiar with before we got here today and that we assumed they were going to be fairly supportive of, which obviously turned out to be the wrong assumption. But to say that this needs to go on two to three times as long as we've suggested here is just inappropriate. It doesn't respect what happened last year during that whole situation. It doesn't respect the food safety system. It doesn't respect the people who were affected by this crisis.
Mr. Chair, again, this committee could go back to the agriculture committee if it wanted to, because in Marleau and Montpetit it says, “Where a sub-committee requires additional powers, it may put its request in the form of a report to the main committee.” So again, if the subcommittee here has made a decision that it wants to change its own mandate, which is apparently what they wanted to do earlier today, then they can come to us and talk about it. Let's go back to the main committee and have them change the mandate of the committee to accommodate the directions the opposition wants to take. But to me, it seems that we have a clear mandate. It isn't one that we have to argue about, and it's certainly one that's mentioned in our schedule.
Actually, if the subcommittee wants powers even beyond what the main committee has, it has the right to go in a report to the House of Commons and ask for those powers. So if we want to change the direction of where this committee is going, there's nothing stopping us from getting together to sit down and do that, but there doesn't seem to be any indication that the opposition wants to do that. We have a mandate, we have a schedule. I think we should be moving ahead. Certainly we want this to be treated fairly, treated quickly, and treated seriously, and it seems that the schedule we've presented does that.
If it doesn't, then I think the subcommittee needs to go back to the regular committee and approach them and say, “We've changed our mandate. We think there are some things that are more important than what you gave us to do, so we're going to completely refocus this committee. So we're going to deal with a very narrow issue for a certain amount of time, then we're actually going to broaden out at some point in the future, maybe six, eight months from now, and we're going to do what you actually asked us to do.”
I don't know why we consider ourselves able to work against the issue that was given us by the main committee. What right do we have to change that issue? I would argue that we do not have that right. Again, if Mr. Allen's amendment comes forward as a motion, I would think that it's the kind of motion that would have to go back to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food for approval from the committee so that it can come back here.
Liberal
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Am I being interrupted again, Mr. Chair? There was no—
Bloc
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
I feel that Mr. Anderson has already shown us his talent for delaying committee business. He did so each time we talked about the Canadian Wheat Board during the meetings of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. However, he is now also showing us his talent—which I know well—for demagogy. He is saying that the subcommittee is going above and beyond its mandate, but this is totally false. The mandate of this committee specifically includes the study of the listeriosis issue. At the Conservative Party's request, the mandate has been broadened to deal with food safety as well. My view was that to broaden the mandate too much could pose a problem. However, it is only natural that when we talk about listeriosis, we also talk about food safety.
Mr. Allen's proposal, which we are not supposed to discuss, but that Mr. Anderson has been talking about for the last several minutes, allows us to discuss both issues. That is why the timeline is a little longer. This does not mean that the subcommittee is going above and beyond its mandate, far from it. Mr. Anderson should stop saying that.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
I took it, Mr. Bellavance, that he was suggesting, maybe not appropriately, that the proposed amendment was away from that direction. I did rule that amendment was out of order, because it was.
Mr. Anderson.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Actually, Mr. Chair, to address that issue before I go back to the schedule, because I was challenged on it, I said that if the subcommittee desires extra powers and wants to go in a direction that's different from the mandate given to it by the standing committee, it can go back to the standing committee and ask for that. That's a fairly clear suggestion. I did make the suggestion that if we're not careful we could end up outside the bounds of the mandate we've been given.
Actually, I'm very surprised to hear Mr. Bellavance say that he opposed studying food safety, because, as I understand--
Bloc
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
No, this concerns me directly. I never said that I was opposed to talking about food safety, far from it. I never said that. It is a lie. It is totally false. I know that Mr. Anderson is only trying to provoke us; sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. But I want to put it on the record in the blues that I never said that. People reading the record of this meeting will also see that.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Mr. Chair, I heard that he opposed this idea of studying food safety. I'll take a look at the blues, and I'll apologize if that's not what was said.
I understood he wanted to study something more narrow; that's what he seemed to imply. He wanted to study listeriosis and not food safety. That's what he said in his--
