Evidence of meeting #1 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 39th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was motions.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
No, I don't think so.
It is a good point. To me, when you invite guests in, it doesn't look as good when you've got 17 hungry members of Parliament chowing down while listening to witnesses. So I think you have to work out those details, but it is through the lunch hour.
Do we want that, a working lunch? They can eat as well.
All in favour?
(Motion agreed to)
In camera meetings.
Mr. Martin.
Liberal
Keith Martin Liberal Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC
I just have an amendment to the in camera meetings motion.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
In camera meetings:
That, unless otherwise ordered, each Committee member be allowed to have one staff person present at in camera meetings.
Mr. Martin.
Liberal
Keith Martin Liberal Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC
I have a friendly amendment, Mr. Chair. After “to have one staff person”, I would add “and each party one additional person present at in camera meetings”. This enables each party to have another person if they want someone from their research department or their whip's office to be there, and it allocates that one person from each party would be there.
Bloc
Vivian Barbot Bloc Papineau, QC
That is interesting. Sometimes we need to be accompanied, for whatever reason. This allows us to count on that person.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
The difficulty is sometimes in.... I guess that's just up to the chair to make sure that it's all in order. I know in the past we've had to ask people to leave because there were two or three extra from a party. That would be all parties.
Are we in favour of the amendment to allow one more per party?
(Amendment agreed to)
In camera transcript:
That one copy of the transcript of all in camera meetings be kept in the Committee Clerk's office....
(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Gifts for foreign delegations.
(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Notice requirements:
That, except for amendments to bills, twenty-four (24) hours' notice be given before any substantive motion is considered by the Committee....
Mr. Allison.
Conservative
Dean Allison Conservative Niagara West—Glanbrook, ON
Once again, I think in light of what happens in other committees and the fact that you will be meeting on Tuesdays and Thursdays, it should be 48 hours, which is standard procedure across all committees. That would be my recommendation.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
This 24 hours, if you remember, was put in place because we were meeting on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. On occasion we were meeting on two days back to back. So this 24 hours was changed from the routine proceedings to allow motions in 24 hours. This basically gives them the 48 hours.
Are we all in favour of going back? If all of a sudden we get a timeline of Tuesday-Wednesday again or Wednesday-Thursday, then we'll come back and re-address this.
Are we all in favour of having that at 48 hours?
(Motion agreed to)
All right.
Deferral of consideration....
Yes, Mr. Goldring.
Conservative
Peter Goldring Conservative Edmonton East, AB
If I might make a comment, perhaps we should have a prioritizing of legislation. If we do have government or private members' bills, could they be somehow worked in here to have a priority over non-legislative examinations? Then we can move private members' bills and government legislation and give those priority in meetings. Is that possible?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
It's my understanding that government bills--anything that's referred from Parliament--has precedence over an individual study, regardless. In fact some of the private members' bills have a timeline in which they have to be dealt with. Those would then become the priority.
Conservative
Peter Goldring Conservative Edmonton East, AB
Through the last session the concern was that we had government bills, but we also had the non-legislative studies on Haiti and democracy development. I want to be sure that the government bills, government legislation, and private members' bills would be given priority should those two conflict in any way.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
All right. That's noted, and I think that is taken care of here.
Next we have deferral of consideration:
That for motions requiring (48) hours notice, the Chair be authorized to defer consideration until 15 minutes prior to the adjournment....
Do you agree with that?
(Motion agreed to)
Regarding these motions, I want to clarify something that I spoke to the clerk about just before our meeting began. It came up in another committee this morning that was going through the same things. Please, if you can, submit your motions in both official languages. The motion is not finished when you give it to the clerk. If the clerk has to then take it to translation and she doesn't get it back for a day, all of a sudden...the 48 hours doesn't begin until it's back from translation. So for any political party, if you want to have a motion, it certainly does speed things up if it is submitted to the clerk in both official languages. Otherwise, the clock does not begin ticking until it comes back from translation and the members receive it. You can say, well, we phoned it in and I got it to the clerk at.... Well, wait, it came in one language, it had to be translated, and it didn't get out in time because of that.
This is a heads-up to all members. We all have to be aware of that.
All right. Creation of....
Yes, go ahead.
Conservative
Peter Goldring Conservative Edmonton East, AB
Perhaps we should have consideration for the possible abandonment of motions should they not be dealt with in a certain number of meetings and find some way to remove them from the list. Is there a possibility of a mechanism for removing motions?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
If you remember, we dealt with this in the last parliament because we had so many motions there that we even forgot about them. Well, the clerk didn't forget about them. But sometimes they would come up and then all of a sudden members would say, “Well, we want that motion that's been on there for two months”, and we weren't really prepared for it.
Are you making that a motion?
Conservative
Peter Goldring Conservative Edmonton East, AB
I suppose I will make it a motion that it be dealt with by the committee within two meetings of their first being listed on the agenda, and failing that, the motion should be deemed abandoned by the mover and shall be dispensed with and no longer be subject to committee consideration, which would leave it open if somebody wanted to resubmit a new motion to that effect.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
Okay. I'm going to go to Madame Barbot, Mr. Patry, and Mr. Dewar.
Bloc
Vivian Barbot Bloc Papineau, QC
Mr. Chairman, I think that once a motion has been tabled it should be kept right up until it is dealt with. We cannot just decide that it does not exist simply because we did not have time to deal with it, or because of any other reason.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
In the past, if I brought forward a motion, it would be on the books and I could bring it forward at a meeting. Sometimes, however, we can cut our committee business short, and in cases like that it might be a difficulty.
Mr. Patry.
Liberal
Bernard Patry Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
I don't think it's feasible, Peter. You have 15 minutes each time we meet. You've got two meetings a week, that's 30 minutes, and you might have 12 motions. I mean, we have problems all the time dealing with one motion in 15 minutes. At the time it happens it might not be the problem of the members who pass a motion, because there's no time. At that time we just cannot delete any motions. I really feel the motions should be there.
Now, it's up to the standing committee. If one day they want to have a meeting of just the motions, they could have a two-hour meeting with just the motions. It's up to the standing committee to come back and say we've got so many motions and we're going to deal with them in two hours on one day. But in 15 minutes? If you have five motions, you're not going to pass through one, even in two days.
NDP
Paul Dewar NDP Ottawa Centre, ON
Just for the record, I wasn't really keen on changing the 48. I think we should keep it as it is. I think it has the potential to take away from committee members the ability to have their issues on the agenda, so to speak, particularly if we use words like “abandonment”. Notwithstanding, we can still submit the motions.
I'm concerned that we're trying to put too many controls on things here. In fact, that's the job of the steering committee. If there are concerns about too much on the agenda, that's something they should be dealing with, to help clean up, if possible. I think we should keep it as it is.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
I want to be very clear about this because I want to be certain that I do this correctly from the chair. If the government, for example, and we'll pick on the government, were to submit six motions--and they are always in order of precedence--and all of a sudden you have a motion that you've submitted, it might be the fifth one we deal with, and if you aren't bringing forward your motion and the government isn't going to bring forward their motion, they can then just sit. All of a sudden, we could talk out the 15 minutes on our motion because it's in first.
In my opinion, motions are there to deal with something fairly quickly because of timelines. It's very easy, when we have a regulation like this...motions always end up on the paper, on the agenda, and you deal with them in priority.