Evidence of meeting #58 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was amendment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
Mr. Chair, if it's a point of order, I can do a point of order.
Legislative Clerk
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Bergeron, the new amendment that came in this morning amends lines 14 to 31 on page 2. Mr. Genuis's amendment amends line 15. Since amendments are always taken up in the order of the lines in the bill that they propose to amend, we have to deal with government amendment 1.1 first because line 14 comes before line 15.
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
I thought it was a point of order; therefore, I was going to respond to the point of order, but I don't need to, because the clerk has responded, unless the point of order is continuing.
Liberal
Liberal
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
I have a point of order.
Is my amendment on the floor or not? It's fine. I just don't understand if it was on the floor or not.
Was it not on the floor? Could it not be moved?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ali Ehsassi
Yes. It is the chair's prerogative to go back to what should have been the appropriate way of proceeding.
Go ahead, Mr. Oliphant.
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I move, and this would be G-1.1 or G-1(a):
that Bill C-281, in Clause 3, be amended by replacing lines 14 to 31 on page 2 with the following:
ister must table a response in accordance with the Standing Orders of the House of Commons or the rules of the Senate that apply to government responses to committee reports.
What we're attempting to do is to harmonize the way the government would respond to this committee so that it would respond as it would respond to any other report from this committee or to any other report from any other committee, so that there is some predictability. Also, as the Standing Orders evolve, which they do, we would simply always be in line with the Standing Orders, as opposed to having a stand-alone procedure that doesn't necessarily add to predictability or add to the good and strong functioning of the House of Commons or the Senate. That's why we are attempting to harmonize this with the other reports that would be made to the House of Commons.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Chair, I suppose the committee will then have to ultimately determine if they want to adopt Mr. Oliphant's amendment or the amendment I proposed, or neither, but I will be moving the amendment I thought I had moved after this one is disposed of, if I am able to.
The original version of the legislation has a mechanism that prevents the government from using prorogation or dissolution to get around responding to this report. Normally, the process in the Standing Orders is that the Standing Orders apply unless a Parliament is dissolved or prorogued.
The original language in the bill says:
If Parliament is prorogued or dissolved before the response is tabled, the Minister must post the response in a prominent location on the website of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development within the time limit referred to in subsection (2) regarding the tabling of the response. The response must be tabled as soon as feasible after the commencement of the next session of Parliament.
It means that if a committee makes a recommendation, the government does have to provide a response. The amended version would also set out a requirement for the government to be substantive in that response and to provide reasons around their decisions.
Effectively, this government amendment guts the existing proposal because it simply says that the government has to comply with the Standing Orders. Well, the government has to comply with the Standing Orders anyway. There's hardly any point in putting this in legislation. It's not about harmonizing anything; it's about removing any substantive effect of this section.
What we would like to see is a meaningful parliamentary trigger that the government can't avoid through prorogation or dissolution that applies regardless, one that gives the committee some flexibility of setting a timeline that's urgent. I know that there was a concern about the 40-day timeline and whether it's appropriate. My amendment proposes to remove the 40-day requirement and leave it entirely up to the committee to set a timeline that's appropriate under the circumstances. It also proposes to address any concerns about giving information in advance of sanctions that might be coming.
The amendment we were going to propose cleans up those issues. Again, what we're seeing with this amendment is fundamentally a gutting of any substance to the provision, and the revised version would say that the government has to follow the Standing Orders.
I would encourage the committee to take a stand for an effective parliamentary trigger to defeat this amendment and then to subsequently deliberate the alternative we would like to propose.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ali Ehsassi
You are correct. In the event that G-1.1 is adopted, CPC-4 cannot be moved due to a line conflict, since any given line can only be amended once.
Go ahead, Mr. Oliphant.
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
To be really clear, in fact there is no intent on our side to circumvent anything to prevent this activity from happening. Our concern is that....
Prorogation is a tool that has been used by successive governments, as dissolution also is the allowance of the people of Canada to speak. That is what happens. The reality is that we attempt during dissolution to not engage in certain activities. We move into a caretaker government mode, and I think that is something all of us need to respect, because it is part of the parliamentary process.
The case I would need to hear is why this is significantly different from every other piece of work done by Parliament. That case has not been made for me. This is important work, but so is every other single piece of work that Parliament does. The case needs to be made for why this is unusual, why it is different from other pieces of legislation that arrive from private members, from public bills, from the Senate or from government legislation, why it is different from every other report that is tabled in a response from the government to committees that are as important as our committee. I think that case needs to be made, because I think there's a supremacy being put on this that is inappropriate and belittles the work of other committees and other groups.
If that case can be made, I'm willing to listen to it, but I don't believe it's been made. That's why I think the standing order should prevail and we should treat this as ordinary parliamentary work that is embedded in our lives and gets done appropriately.
A significant issue we have is with the 40 days. We heard from government officials that this would be problematic for them. I respect our public servants, and that's why I think we need to listen to them, but that's not the only issue here. Part of the issue is that 120 days is our norm.
Generally speaking, we think the Standing Orders should be followed because every committee follows them and every parliamentarian is subject to them, and I just believe government and Parliament work better that way.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Thank you, Chair.
Respectfully, I'll respond to a few of the points that were made.
Mr. Oliphant said that it's not the intention of the government to avoid this reporting requirement through prorogation or anything like that. I know there's a lot of curiosity around here about intentions regarding prorogation, but I won't speculate about that either.
The point of this legislation is—
Liberal
Rob Oliphant Liberal Don Valley West, ON
I have a point of order.
Some of us lived through the longest prorogation done to save a government. Mr. Chong and I were there at the time.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
That was meant to be lighthearted, Mr. Oliphant. Clearly I failed at being lighthearted.
The point is that this legislation is designed to be timeless. It's designed to bind governments of all stripes and ensure that any government of any stripe will have the accountability requirements associated with this parliamentary trigger. I think that's important.
In terms of the 40 days, again I would like to move an amendment that responds to that concern. I will if I'm able.
To the question of what the difference is here between the work of other committees, I would be very open to a broader conversation about beefing up the requirement around government responses. Too often, we get government responses to committee reports in which the government “takes note of this recommendation”. A government response shouldn't be, “Yep, we read it; we'll think about it.” It should provide some degree of substantive response. In this particular case, if the amendment is defeated, this provision would beef up that requirement.
There's an argument to be made that this could be done in other cases, but there's no reason not to do it in this case. If we simply gut this, as proposed, then we're back to a situation in which a committee makes recommendations and the government can say that it takes note of those recommendations.
Well, that's great, but what we think is important for meaningful accountability is a parliamentary trigger for sanctions, like those that exist in other jurisdictions, such as the United States, for example. It's so that if Parliament thinks it's important enough to say that this person should be sanctioned, the government has to provide a response explaining why they have taken a decision one way or the other. That response has to be provided. It can't be avoided through prorogation. I think that makes this a meaningful check on government. It's one that I think members will find useful, regardless of who the minister or who the government is.
