Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 4th, 2016

[The Clerk]

It's been moved by Michael Levitt that Madame Hélène Laverdière be elected as the second vice-chair of the committee.

Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?

(Motion agreed to)

I declare the motion carried and Madame Laverdière duly elected as second vice-chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Colleagues, I assume there are other procedural motions we could get into. I wanted to get some feedback from you as to how far you want to go today. I was thinking we might want to get the subcommittee sorted out for the purposes of discussing how we will do our business and how we will operate as a committee. Once that discussion is had, then we could come back to full committee with some recommendations as to how we will proceed and then move some of those motions. We can do that or we can move on some of the motions that are already before us, depending on what your wishes are.

Dean.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Why don't we work on the routine motions? We could get started on those and then maybe have some discussions, as you said, on the subcommittee and all those other things afterwards.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Colleagues, you'll see in front of you the first motion being proposed, which deals with analysts. For the sake of the committee I'll read it:

That the Committee retain, as needed and at the discretion of the Chair, the services of one or more analysts from the Library of Parliament to assist it in its work.

(Motion agreed to)

[The Clerk]

Would you like to invite the analysts to come to the table now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Are they here?

[The Clerk]

They are.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Come on over and we'll have you introduce yourselves.

[Allison Goody, Analyst]

Hello. My name is Allison Goody. I'm one of the analysts from the Library of Parliament. I have been working for the foreign affairs committee since September 2009 and am very much looking forward to working with all of you.

[Brian Hermon, Analyst]

Hi. My name is Brian Hermon. I'm also an analyst with the Library of Parliament. I worked with this committee during the second session of the last Parliament, and I'm very much looking forward to working with everyone as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Welcome, and I'm looking forward to working with you.

The next motion is on the subcommittee on agenda and procedure. It may have to be changed as our party has changed the way we are going to approach this. It should read:

That the Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure be established and be composed of five (5) members: the Chair, the two Vice-Chairs and two government members.

Are we in favour of that?

Dean, do you want to speak to the motion?

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

I guess my question is about the two other members. Would it make sense to have one from the opposition and one from the government? I'm just asking that question.

It can't hurt. If you don't try, it never happens, right?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

It might make sense to certain sides of the table, but we would prefer to have two members of the government, as was the case under the previous government. The two parliamentary secretaries were from the government, so there is no real difference, except in our view, because of our changes as a government, they will be committee members.

As you know, parliamentary secretaries are not official members of the committee, or voting members, but that was one of the reasons I wanted to talk to the agenda and procedure subcommittee. I think we could have a discussion about the role of parliamentary secretaries for our benefit as a committee. As you know, we can decide on our own how we want things to be done, so I would like to have that conversation with you as we work our way through. The parliamentary secretaries have a lot to offer. I'd hate to think they were just going to keep looking at the chairman the whole time over the next years.

The motion would read:

That the Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure be established and be composed of five (5) members: the Chair, the two Vice-Chairs and two government members

(Motion agreed to)

Thanks for trying, Dean. I appreciate that.

The next one is on reduced quorum:

That the Chair be authorized to hold meetings to receive evidence and to have that evidence printed when a quorum is not present, provided that at least three (3) members are present, including one member of the opposition and one member of the government, but when travelling outside the parliamentary precinct, that the meeting begin after fifteen (15) minutes, regardless of members present.

That has been sort of standard practice for as long as I can remember. Are there any issues with that?

(Motion agreed to)

On the questioning of witnesses, this is a discussion. Basically, I'm very interested in this discussion later on, but let me see if I can just break this down:

That witnesses be given ten (10) minutes for their opening statement; that, at the discretion of the Chair, during the questioning of witnesses, there be allocated—

—and if everyone here is willing, I'd like to defer this one and have a conversation about how you want to do the questioning. For example, if the committee is at all interested, there is nothing stopping us and I'd like to know what your views are if other members come to the committee on a specific topic on which they have interest, and even though they are not committee members, whether we will allow them to ask questions.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Is that recognized parties?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Yes, that's recognized parties and otherwise. That's the conversation I would like to have to see what people's views are of that, whether it's Elizabeth May or the Bloc. If no one is in favour of that right off the bat, then we won't spend a lot of time talking about it, but I thought we would have a discussion about the allocation of time.

Obviously, the standard time for the parties will be adhered to, but there's also the opportunity for other members of Parliament. I include parliamentary secretaries when I say that.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Chair, could I just ask a question on that? My understanding is, if other members come—from a recognized party at least, or even other members in general—that members who have existing allotments in terms of the rounds of questions could, without any problem, defer their time to those members, right?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

I am referring to others.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Members could defer their time if they wished in those cases as well, right?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Well, what I was really talking about was, at the discretion of the chair, allowing people the opportunity to participate, but as long as it doesn't affect the time of the official parties.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Wouldn't that necessitate one side or the other relinquishing one speaking position?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Yes, it would.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Mr. Chair, I'm happy to have that discussion another time, but I think it should be for the full committee to have that discussion. What I mean is not the subcommittee but the whole committee, so I'm happy to defer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

This is just so people see what took place in PROC, the procedure and House affairs committee. These are the changes based on the changes to government and the parties, as far as their time goes. We can proceed with looking at it from this perspective or otherwise.

Let me read it for you:

That witnesses be given ten (10) minutes to make their opening statement; and that during the questioning of witnesses the time allocated to each questioner be as follows: for the first round of questioning, seven (7) minutes to a representative of each party in the following order: Liberal, Conservative, NDP and Liberal; for the second round, five (5) minutes be allocated in the following order: Conservative, Liberal, Conservative, Liberal; followed by NDP, three (3) minutes.

Peter.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

PROC generally doesn't follow the same meeting time frames that we occasionally do in foreign affairs, in terms of one-hour or two-hour blocks. Would the second round simply be repeated as many times as necessary? For example, the last time the rotation did change certainly on some committees depending on how many rounds were necessary.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

I think the objective of the exercise is to reflect the majority on the government side, so we want to make sure we get a fair number of questions or the ability to ask questions, based on the percentages. That's the idea of this motion.

I'm at your disposal as far as what you might think goes.

Michael.