Foreign Affairs Committee on June 8th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

To our witnesses, thank you very much for taking time to come and visit us today.

We're going to suspend the meeting for just a couple of minutes to let the witnesses disperse and then we'll come back to discuss the business we've been talking about.

Once again, thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Let's get back to business.

We had a motion before the committee that Mr. McKay brought forward. Did you want to continue?

Hold on a second. Do you have a...?

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Chair, I have a motion I would like to read. It seems to me that the motion Mr. McKay has put changes the orders of the day.

My motion is that, pursuant to Standing Order 97.1(1), this committee recommend to the House of Commons that the House not proceed further with Bill C-300, an act respecting corporate accountability for the activities of mining, oil, or gas in developing countries, because the committee has heard sufficient testimony that the bill will not properly address corporate social responsibility and poses an unreasonable risk to legitimate Canadian business interests operating abroad.

My argument for putting the motion.... I'm aware of the rules and that Mr. McKay has put his motion at the beginning of this meeting. But I'm suggesting, Mr. Chair, that in terms of the orders of the day, this motion I am proposing does not change the orders of the day, whereas Mr. McKay's motion does. I believe you should find that my motion should take precedence and be debated and handled first, before Mr. McKay's motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I'm going to rule against you, Mr. Abbott. I want to say that we do have a motion on the table. We have been talking about Bill C-300, so his motion was well within it. So we are going to debate that particular motion at this particular time.

I would suggest that if your motion had come beforehand, we could probably have debated yours first.

I'm going to go back to Mr. McKay just to have his opening comments on that and then I will open that for debate. So we will be debating Mr. McKay's motion.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As you know, this bill has been around since January or February of 2009, and because of prorogation we've had this before this committee somewhere in the order of at least a year. I'm sure members are getting heartily fed up with this bill. Nevertheless, it is a bill of great significance and of tremendous importance to a lot of people.

I dare say we've had pretty well as much testimony as the committee needs to hear, and frankly minds have been made up. The government has made it abundantly clear that it will not support this bill in any way, shape, or form. I could amend this until the cows come home and there still would be no area in which I can amend this bill to satisfy the concerns of the government.

We also have a drop-dead date of Friday, June 11, and my preference would be to give the committee an opportunity to amend the bill so it is stronger, so it does reflect some of the testimony we have heard. I'm sure, Mr. Chair, you've read the various amendments I propose, two of the most significant of which have to do with a grace period for the companies.

I think, given the testimony of people like Mr. Shrake and others, that my preference as a proponent and those who support Bill C-300 is that there be a grace period for companies to bring themselves back into compliance. We're proposing an amendment to create a grace period so that could happen.

The second most significant amendment, Mr. Chair, has to do with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. I do take the testimony of CPPIB at its face, which is that legislation cannot be unilaterally amended by this Parliament because it is joint legislation of the provinces and the federal government. Therefore, we have amended the legislation, Bill C-300, to reflect that testimony.

Effectively, Mr. Chair, we have responded, I think, in some manner, but the government has given its unequivocal view that there is nothing we can do to amend this bill in any way, shape, or form and will use whatever parliamentary procedures to prevent it coming before us to do a reasonable clause-by-clause--to wit, Mr. Abbott's latest motion in his attempt to jump precedence.

I'd ask, Mr. Chair, that we go to a vote more quickly than less quickly, because we are running out of time. There are about 25 minutes left in this session to deal with these clauses, so I'd ask for a vote at this point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Goldring.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Thank you.

I tend to agree with the member when he says we're fed up with this bill. But I want to expand on a few of the reasons why. I'm not alone in this. I note a number of former Liberals from the other side, such as Mr. Don Boudria, who works as an expert on federal parliamentary procedure for Hill and Knowlton as a strategic communications consultant and as vice-president of the firm. On his blog he has a posting entitled Bill C-300. He happened to be out in the hall before this meeting, and I talked to him. He confirmed to me his concerns about this bill and how it might kill the mining industry. He related the example of Talisman. When Talisman moved out, China moved in. That same scenario could happen again and again.

Also, we had before us the Honourable James Peterson. He spoke against the bill here in committee and said it was flawed in its construction. It is highly prejudicial to Canada's mining sector. We have Bill Graham, another member, co-chair of the Canada-Mexico Initiative, a think tank led by Canadian Foundation for the Americas, FOCAL, which has said that Bill C-300 has to be in the running for the worst piece of legislation before Parliament. These are significant people commenting very negatively on this bill.

If we review the bill, we can see why these concerns would be put forth by even some of the former Liberals themselves. We can start with the title of the bill. I believe it had been suggested and talked about before. In question is the relevancy of why we would want to have something so constrictive affecting only one portion of industry, while leaving other types of industry wholly out of account. If you're going to have a bill on corporate social responsibility, I believe the operative word should be “corporate”. It should apply to any corporation that would be engaged in other parts of the world, not just mining, oil, and gas corporations. I think it was suggested that it could be the service sector, the shipping sector, the forestry sector. I would make the argument that the forestry sector would—

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We have a point of order.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

It would be appreciated if Mr. Goldring could go to the substance of the matter. The motion is whether we do or do not go to clause-by-clause. The views of the Liberals or former Liberals on this particular bill are not relevant. As far as I know, not one of them is sitting in the House as we speak. The second thing has to do with merit. Whether he likes the title or not is irrelevant. Mr. Chair, if you could direct your colleague to speak to relevance, to materiality, to the motion itself, it would be of great assistance.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I would certainly like to direct all my colleagues to observe relevance at all times, but I don't think that's going to be possible.

I have another point of order.

Dr. Patry.

[Bernard Patry, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

With all due respect to my colleague, if he wants to filibuster, we'll close the meeting, and that's all. It seems like that's going to be easy. If that's what you want, just tell us. That's it, that's all.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Make it a part of the record. So we'll vote on the filibuster.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Obhrai.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

I've been sitting on this committee for a long time with Mr. Patry, Madame Lalonde, and everybody else. One of the purposes of this committee is to allow people to discuss the issues. You say you're going to go away if there's a filibuster. That is not the way this democracy works. We should be allowed to speak.

Mr. Goldring is speaking, putting down points that are relevant to this issue. Some of these points were made by former Liberal colleagues that he does not like. If you don't like something, you want to change the whole thing and shut him up to prevent him from saying what it is his democratic right to say. If you don't like what your former Liberals said—

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I don't think that's a point of order.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

No, it's a point of order. He should be allowed to speak—

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Well, no, we're going back to Mr. Goldring. We're going back to him.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Thank you.

And Mr. Goldring, go ahead, you're doing a great job.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Before we totally lose control here, there seems to be a good indication, because now I've got more than one person on the list, so I'm going to go back to what Mr. Patry says. If this is going to continue on, do we want to just call the meeting now? I guess that's the question. If we're going to continue to talk it out for another 20 minutes, we can decide if we want to go clause by clause on Thursday. But we've got Rights and Democracy, so I'm assuming that's not the case.

Mr. McKay has indicated he would like to make some amendments, which I'm sure the Speaker will take into account when this goes back to the House, because we haven't.

So it's your time. I'm here till one. I'm getting paid the same whether I'm here now or I'm here till one o'clock.

My question to the committee is, do we want to call the meeting on this point?

I'll continue on.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

I still have a comment I'd like to make.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Okay. Well, it looks like we'll get a chance to be right here till one.

Mr. Goldring.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Mr. Chairman, in all due deference to the opposition, we did have some witnesses who appeared here in the last session. Due to the constraints of how the meeting is conducted, I didn't have the opportunity to be able to have this discussion with them. There are some points of relevancy from some of the testimony from those witnesses that I would like to bring up and have a discussion on. I believe some of these relevancies have not been thoroughly threshed out before, so I'd like to have the opportunity to bring them up.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

On a point of order, we're not here because of pent-up supply from anyone on the other side. We're here to discuss, on point and without making this committee a total joke again, why you were against the motion put before.

What Mr. Goldring seems to be saying is, “I didn't get to speak enough, and now I want to speak more”. I think the cogent argument here from him should be why you're not in favour of dealing with this clause by clause.

Let's get it together. Let's grow up about how we behave around here. It's really—

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Oh, I object.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

No, no, I'm sorry, I'm not—