Subcommittee on Food Safety Committee on May 27th, 2009

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Chair, I will just comment. I would think that if there are other committees that also want to be televised you run into a conflict situation. If there are two televised committee rooms and there are three to four committees that want to be televised on any given night, decisions have to be made. I don't know what makes Canadian heritage a higher-priority committee. Perhaps it is that they are a full permanent standing committee and we are a subcommittee. I don't know, I'm just guessing.

I would just say that there definitely could be conflicts if there more than one committee want to be televised, and then decisions have to be made. That's what I would imagine.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I think it is fair to say, though, myself included, Pierre, that there is considerable dissatisfaction that not enough meetings were televised. We're upset, André's upset, and when they were supposed to be televised, every attempt should have been made to do it, and I don't know if they have been or not. But in any event, we'll leave that issue aside.

Mr. Allen, you had a couple of points.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

André has obviously raised the issue of the time review and the timeline and the required witnesses. The clerk has indicated a motion that I made, which seems to me was at the beginning, about a timeline about what we were going to do and when it would end and that sort of thing. So that's not a new motion, which seems to indicate that it maybe was made last week or the week before.

We knew these timelines quite some time ago. We had witnesses call us today and say they were coming on June 11. That's what they said, Mr. Clerk. So whether they got the thing wrong or not, all I'm saying to you is that there are some folks out there who think they're being called after the fact. They don't know it's after the fact, but we certainly know it's after the fact because we passed this motion during the second meeting we had because we couldn't get the first one through. Mr. Anderson filibustered all night, so I didn't get the first motion through, and we compromised on that particular motion. That developed the timeline. Mr. Lemieux and I, with you, Mr. Chair, and Mr. Bellavance, worked that out.

So we didn't pass that last week or the week before. That got passed months ago. It got passed last fall. So to raise that as the issue now about some motion that just got passed and that affects the timeline is, to be honest, duplicitous at best. Come on, let's be serious here.

I'll leave that.

The other part is this. Did we get the information that I talked about the other night from the CFIA, which were specific questions that I asked of Mr. Cameron Prince, which were going to be here forthwith? That donkey made it a long time ago, and it must be dead by now if it's still carrying those papers.

Did we receive them? If we have, where are they? Are they out to translation or what are their whereabouts? Have we received the other documents that my motion spoke about? Depending on whether you say today or tomorrow, are we in possession of those or are they coming on the same donkey that carried the last ones?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I certainly can't answer the question, because I'm not the regular chair.

On the scheduling, you're basically assuring us you'll give us the witness lists tomorrow on the rest of the schedule.

[The Clerk]

The witness lists may be out before I head home tonight. The schedule should be out tomorrow.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

When the CFIA was here, Mr. Allen asked for certain documents to be provided. Do you know whether we got them? Are they in translation?

[The Clerk]

Off the top of my head, I can't determine which specific documents he's referring to. I thought they had already been sent out.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

No.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Can you check on that? If CFIA has agreed to provide us with documents, we do expect them.

Carolyn, you have a point.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

My concern is that from the original motion that was agreed upon on March 31, there could have been a number of hearings from four to 10 o'clock on Monday.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Can I leave that for the regular chair? I think that issue should be raised with him.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

My concern is that some of our priority witnesses have not been heard, including Minister Clement and Minister Aglukkaq, on the future of the listeriosis roles. I also want to ensure that we will have time for CFIA to return before we try to do a draft report, so they can provide answers on the testimony we've heard today.

When we see this report, I would remind the clerk that we originally agreed to meet from four to 10 o'clock on Mondays and Wednesdays if we needed the time. That's six hours twice a week. In each of the weeks until now, we have done nowhere near 12 hours a week. I am asking that when the schedule is circulated tomorrow, we make sure that Kumanan Wilson, Amir Attaran, the two ministers, and CFIA--a number of the priority witnesses we need to get to the bottom of this--will be on the schedule before any of us are prepared to look at a draft report.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We will see the schedule tomorrow again.

Mr. Lemieux.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

We were discussing witnesses a little in the House. On the one hand, my colleague is saying we need to have more witnesses come; on the other hand, she wants CFIA to come yet again. I believe CFIA has been here three times.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

It's only fair.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

My only point is that if CFIA comes again it will bump another witness. The committee can decide that, but we can't have two arguments being tabled at the same time: that we don't have enough witnesses, and we want repeat witnesses to come back again.

The other point is that the committee decides how long its meetings will be. We're outnumbered here, as you well know, but if the committee says it wants to go to 10, then we go to 10.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

We just get a notice of the meeting and it says seven, or eight, or somebody goes home.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Allen has the floor.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

I agree with Mr. Lemieux. I certainly know how to count, and I don't have to take my socks off either.

The bottom line is that the chair and the clerk are establishing the witness list. Each time we ask for an additional witness list it seems to be, “Oops, maybe we'll get the calendar.” Mr. Bellavance has been asking for weeks for an updated calendar. I've asked for updated calendars. We constantly wait for an updated calendar. It's difficult to work until 10 o'clock when we show up and we have two sets of witnesses that are going to take us to eight o'clock. If we knew in advance how many would be here, we could make a call to the clerk and the chair and say we want to work until 10. Add additional witnesses and we'll stay until 10. If we want to keep Mr. Hodges here until 10 tonight, we could probably think of enough questions to ask him, but that doesn't get us additional witnesses.

I appreciate, Mr. Lemieux, what you're saying. You're right that the numbers favour us to vote that way. But if the witnesses aren't called, it's pretty tough to have those people stay until 10. They're not there. Hello, there aren't any witnesses sitting in those chairs. I'm willing to stay until 10. If we vote on it we can stay until 10, but we'll be looking at one another. We don't have any witnesses, Mr. Lemieux. That's the problem.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Lemieux is next, and then we will try to adjourn.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

If this has been a long-standing problem, I'm surprised the committee is only addressing it now. The first time it happened, if it was truly of concern to the committee, the committee would have raised it and said they wanted witnesses booked right through to 10 o'clock. I don't understand...well, I do understand. It's a priority now, but it wasn't earlier.

I want to finish on that note. The committee determines its own future, and my colleagues had opportunities to participate.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

If you check the blues, you will see that a lot of complaints were raised with the chair that we weren't going to 10 o'clock. But I think there is some direction, at least to the clerk here, that we get the schedule out tomorrow. Concerns have been raised about televised meetings, and I think that should be noted. Carolyn's point should be noted by the formal chair.

With that, I'll adjourn the meeting.