I don't think anything in this motion would change that ordinary practice. I think all of the committees on the Hill meet every second day, Tuesday to Thursday. If you submit your notice of motion today, by the time the next meeting is convened you will have satisfied the 48-hour notice. I think this is for the extraordinary ones, where you get an idea at 3:30 on a Friday afternoon, you fire it off to the clerk, and the rest of us don't get the advantage of knowing about it.
So I think that's reasonable. The motion, as amended by Mike, says that by 4 p.m. on the same day the motion is received, it be circulated to all committee members.
Is there any further debate?
(Motion as amended agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
That does it for the pro forma rules or bylaws of our committee.
There's some interest now, while we're here--it's only ten minutes to ten--that we talk about future business. I might just introduce this reality that we're the first committee that's been convened by the House of Commons specifically to deal with the estimates. We have to give government the parliamentary approval to keep spending money over the summer recess. Therefore, they're only allowed to operate on Governor General warrants for 60 days after the writ has been dropped. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but that date is rapidly approaching.
The clerk has just reminded me, do you want to have this talk...? I think if we limit our talk to scheduling the meetings to deal with the estimates only, we can remain in public. If we want to talk about any future business, we might want to turn the cameras off and make this an in camera meeting.
How does the committee feel about that? Is there any interest in going in camera, or are we okay to keep this meeting public?