Evidence of meeting #15 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was clerk.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
No, you just came and gave it to me as if this is what we're doing from now on.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
No, what I said was that this was a list that was given to me, and I gave it--
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
Yes. And I suggested that this was a list that was submitted, and I asked the--
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
No, no, no; I said no such thing, because I wasn't even here. I said you guys had had a motion from the committee, and Ms. Coady had--
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
You two have colluded to take over this committee so you could grandstand for the first half hour after you brought in CBC and CTV.
NDP
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
Order.
Mr. Martin, when I gave you the list, I said that this was a suggestion from the Liberals.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
I sat down with you, that's why. I never put down on any official paper that this was...this was a suggestion, and if that's a suggestion, the committee has to follow the suggestion, number one. The committee is a master of its own destiny. If you wanted to change the 10th, the 12th, the 15th--
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
You weren't here. That's exactly what we tried to do, but we were unsuccessful. We were told it was impossible because we must deal with the main estimates and those witnesses were lined up and they were coming.
Ask your clerk.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Now all of a sudden that's not important, because you've colluded, with your Liberal Party, to bring us....
All these witnesses in fact we did put forward; all the parties agreed on a pile of witnesses. The clerk has them, and then it's up to the clerk to assemble those witnesses in some logical order based on availability and based on the type of testimony they might give. That's the way committees work.
You guys don't meet in between meetings and decide on what witnesses we're going to hear and when just because they happen to be your same political stripe.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
Mr. Martin, I can appreciate what you think, but I'm just going to consult the clerk, because the clerk had received from you guys a list.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
And whatever your lists were, he has them.
Now, if you wish to continue the study on the green technology that you were studying, that's fine. If you want to continue studying on the freeze, that's fine. And the first two, PBO....
NDP
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
That's the freeze. That's the freeze study that we had agreed to do. There was a request from Madame Bourgeois that we get Corrections done, and when we were doing the study for the freeze, the PBO and Corrections Canada were part of our study.
When we were doing our framework for the studies, we had put down May as a potential time to look at the estimates. Now, on the 10th and the 12th, if you want to still look at the estimates, you're welcome to, because you are the master of your own destiny. Nobody can tell you--
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Somehow everything has changed, because we're called “government operations and estimates”, and the main estimates of the Government of Canada are going to come before this committee, and they have to be dealt with by the end of May, by June 1, and you've scheduled one meeting for the PCO, on May 31, 24 hours before the deadline, before they're deemed to be adopted by the committee anyway.
I accepted what the clerk told us, that we had to deal with those estimates on the 10th and the 12th. I accepted the logic and the reasoning, and I accepted that a motion to that effect had been passed and witnesses scheduled. And then I find you get off a plane from wherever you were and you set up a meeting with your Liberal colleagues and you rewrite everything.
I'm not going to tolerate it. I'm a vice-chair of this committee. I won't be left out of the planning of this committee.
