Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 15th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much.

I don't really want to caution anybody. I'd like to keep this non-partisan and debate the issue before us, so perhaps we can stick to the focus of this particular meeting.

I am noticing that there seem to be no more questions for Mr. Silva, but there are comments, so we will continue with our second round of questions. This round will be five minutes.

Madam Robillard and then Mr. Lukiwski, please.

[Lucienne Robillard, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The subcommittee tells us that it considered the third criterion in declaring this bill non-votable. Something seems illogical to me. There has already been a bill on replacement workers before the House, but the Speaker rejected amendments made by a colleague on the grounds that they exceeded the scope of the bill. We were therefore not able to vote on the amendments because they exceeded the scope of the bill under consideration. Therefore, if we wanted to deal with these amendments on essential services, we needed to draft a new bill.

We had no choice, because the Speaker had ruled. Since we were not able to vote on the amendments to the bill, we put forward a new one. So a new bill was presented, and now we are using the committee's criteria to say that it cannot be votable. Basically, if we go by what is happening, we will never be able to vote on essential services. But the third criterion reads as follows:

Bills and motions must not concern questions that are substantially the same as ones already voted on by the House of Commons in the current session [...]

I repeat “must not concern questions that are substantially the same”. That is the crux of the discussion. Some, probably at the subcommittee, say that given that the general objective of the bill is about replacement workers—and here again, it is about replacement workers—it is the same thing and we cannot vote. Except that there was one very important element, essential services, where we were not able to vote in the House, because the Speaker ruled that this exceeded the scope of the bill.

Since we as MPs were not able to vote on the principle of essential services, and since the new bill includes the concept of essential services, we have to be able to express our opinion on the concept. In that context, I do not understand the subcommittee's decision when it declared that the bill was not votable.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you.

Mr. Lukiwski is next.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to advance a procedural argument. It is to say that the subcommittee had already ruled on this. Obviously the discussion the subcommittee had was in camera, so we're not privy to what their discussions were and why they came up with the decision they did; suffice it to say that they determined this bill was non-votable. Even though Mr. Silva has a perfect right to appeal to this committee, the larger committee, I think we should advance with a great deal of caution, because clearly there are political agendas at work here. It's no secret that the NDP would like to see this bill enacted in any form, because they don't want to see replacement workers during a strike under any circumstances.

For a standing committee to overrule a decision by a subcommittee is something we should take very seriously. Unless there is an entirely compelling reason for us to overrule it, I think we are bound to uphold the ruling of the original subcommittee. That's why they were put in place--to decide these matters, to begin with. Unless arguments can be advanced to demonstrate clearly that the subcommittee did not consider a certain aspect or a certain argument, I don't believe this committee should be in a position to arbitrarily overrule the subcommittee decision just because they have a political agenda at work.

Again, we are at a bit of a disadvantage because we don't know the discussion that took place--it was in camera--but I do feel comfortable that the subcommittee carefully considered both Bill C-257 and Bill C-415, spent a great deal of time examining the criteria established as to votability and non-votability, and came up with a decision based on those criteria. For this committee to arbitrarily say we want to overturn that because we like the bill in whatever form it may take is something we should avoid.

I believe the subcommittee did its work. I have not yet heard an argument around this table that demonstrates to me that there was an aspect of the bill that was not considered by the subcommittee; therefore, if they did their work with all due diligence, I think we should respect their opinion and their decision.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you.

Madame Picard is next.

If anybody else wants to speak, please just raise your hand.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Chair, I would like to re-establish some facts. The subcommittee was divided on the question of whether it was votable or not. In my view, it was votable because it was different from Bill C-257. Bill C-415 deals with essential services while Bill C-257 does not.

We wanted to make amendments, as Ms. Robillard explained. The Speaker said that that exceeded the scope of the bill. We came back with a bill that dealt with replacement workers, and that in addition dealt with essential services, which was not the case for the other bill. At the subcommittee, we were not in agreement because the chair had to make the decision. That is what happened. I am still in favour of Bill C-415.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

There is a point of order.

Go ahead, Mr. Preston, please.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

The actions of the subcommittee are in camera and are not to be discussed at this committee, I don't believe, while we're in public.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

That is correct.

Madame Picard, I'll have to caution you, or simply remind you, that you are discussing in camera proceedings. This meeting is in public.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I am really sorry, Mr. Chair. There was no malice involved. I really wanted to explain some facts. If anyone respects in camera sessions, it is me. I am sorry, I did not realize what I was saying.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Are there any other comments or questions around the table?

Go ahead, Mr. Reid, please.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I've got both bills in front of me. It strikes me that they are dealing with questions that are substantially the same.

I was trying to think of a homely analogy that makes the point about what it means to be substantially the same or to concern questions that are substantially the same, as opposed to things that are sufficiently different to be substantially different.

The analogy occurred to me as I was listening to Mr. Preston's reference to the Mustangs. I give an award every summer at an antique auto restoration show that takes place in my home town of Carleton Place. As you go around, you have to restrain yourself; you're not there to judge the work of the original designers. If I did that, the 1957 Ford Fairlane with the retractable hardtop would win every year.

Looking at the restoration work, yes—

[An hon. member]

What colour? Is it blue or red?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Actually, red is a good colour for that.

[An hon. member]

With a white interior?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I have limited time here, so we'll try not to get too far down that track.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Order, please.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

The point I'm trying to make is that you're looking at substantial similarity. So let's say there are two 1957 Ford Fairlanes, and one of them has a retractable hardtop and one doesn't. If they were in a world where everything else was a Ford Fairlane, then you might say, well, there are all kinds of differences. That's one has a nick; this one is better. That makes them different. In a world where you're dealing with cars ranging from Model Ts up to now, when they're restoring cars from the 1980s, they are substantially similar.

I think that's what we're looking at. We're looking at a world of many different pieces of legislation on many different subjects. If you go through these bills word for word, the greatest parts of them are identical. One part is different, and that's the part dealing with the question of essential services. But essentially the bills are about the same subject. When they're dealing with replacement workers, they're substantially the same. The essential services part is different, but essentially the bills seem to me to be dealing with substantially similar questions.

This brings me back to the difference between what the Speaker was trying to do in his ruling, as to Standing Order 86(4), and what we are doing today, which is to make a ruling under Standing Order 91.2...I think that's right.

[James Robertson]

It's Standing Order 91.1.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Right, 91.1(1).

The point here is that he has a stricter criterion because, Mr. Chairman, he is looking at having the item removed and returned to the member, without having it appear on the notice paper. This is obviously a much stricter and tougher sanction, if you like, than what we're dealing with, which is simply to say that an item would become non-votable.

On this basis, Mr. Chair, I think there is a difference between what the Speaker was doing.... He had a more restrictive test. We have a broader test, because the action we will take is less drastic.

When you think of these things within the universe of bills out there, you'll see that they overlap substantially, rather like two items in a Venn diagram that overlap for the most part and leave a bit at the exterior. That is not enough to cause them not to be substantially similar.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you, Mr. Reid.

I have no other members on my list, but could I ask Mr. Silva if he would like to make any comments at this point?

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you. I have observations from the comments that have been made by the members.

Whether or not the issue is the same subject is in fact irrelevant, because there have already been several rulings by Speakers saying that it's not the question of the subject being the same, but whether the content is different. Bill C-257 did not deal with section 87.4, which talks about the issue of a central service. My bill addresses section 87.4. That really is a major difference in the code. The Labour Code is extremely vast. It deals with several different sections. You can have 15,000 bills dealing with the Labour Code. If all of them deal with a different section, a different part of it, then it is votable.

It's the same thing, to use the analogy of the car. You can talk about 15 bills on a Mustang, but if all of them address different issues, whether it be tires, seat belts, or whatever, it's still different issues that you're dealing with, even though the subject may be the same. That already has been ruled on.

I've quoted you from Speaker Fraser, where he said that “there could be several bills addressing the same subject but if the approaches to the issues are different, the Chair could deem it to be sufficient and distinct.” That's a ruling of the Speaker in 1989.

Mr. Chair, I just want to appeal to the committee. Notwithstanding the fact that you could have the same subject, if the issue and the content are different, which is what I'm trying to address in my remarks, then it is votable.

Finally, I would say, quite frankly--and this is a totally different issue, Mr. Chair--that I don't understand the nature of the subcommittee and why it deals in camera. I don't see why it's so confidential that members who put a bill forward cannot even attend these hearings to defend their own bill. I don't know what the arguments were that were used in the committee, for and against my bill. Quite frankly, I was a little stunned by the fact that there is even a subcommittee that meets in camera, that does not inform the authors of the bill that they're having a meeting, and you cannot even present arguments.

I think this committee should in fact look at changing that. I don't think it's fair that there's a committee that meets out there, in camera, and you can't, as a member of this House, bring arguments forward to support the votability of your own bill.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Mr. Hill.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll start out where Mr. Silva left off. I guess I have the advantage, or some might say the disadvantage, of having been here for nearly 14 years now. Through you, Mr. Chair, I can tell him that the way that private members' business is dealt with has evolved substantially, certainly in the nearly 14 years that I've been here. We had a process in place before where all bills were non-votable. The individual member went before a subcommittee and had to argue long and hard to try to convince them to make it votable.

After much discussion amongst all parties, that was changed. In other words, the process has evolved somewhat. I think, at least at the time the changes were made, most members of Parliament, from all four political parties, believed those were positive changes. Now I hear Mr. Silva saying, wait a minute, the member should be able to go in front of the committee. Does he want to revert to the way it was, where members had to almost throw themselves at the mercy of the court?

I went through that, as did many members. It wasn't because I was a Reform member, or a Canadian Alliance member, where my name happened to be chosen at lottery out of the bucket and I got to go and make my appeal. I'm not saying I was discriminated against any more than a member of the Liberal Party, or the Bloc Québécois, or the NDP Party, because the statistics would clearly show that in those days very few private members' bills or motions were deemed votable. The odd time it happened was reason for celebration, just to actually get your bill to a vote in the House of Commons, even though, even then, under the majority Liberal government, it just seemed that a lot of times there were very few. Again, I'm not casting aspersions; the statistics would bear this out.

Very seldom did a private member's bill ever make it through all those hurdles of being deemed votable, actually coming to a vote, actually passing, and actually becoming law at some point. Either it got lost in the committee process and the committee members at the committee it was referred to never called it for debate at the committee, even if it did pass second reading, or it didn't pass the vote and it got dropped right there in the House at the second reading vote.

So I think the system has evolved considerably. If there are still faults in it that we want to discuss, I don't think this is the time. I don't think we want to look at the process in light of one particular bill. In other words, I don't think we want to say, because of the way this bill was handled or the subcommittee ruled on this bill, therefore we're going to call into question the entire process. I don't think that's the correct way to proceed. I think if any member believes the Standing Orders should be changed, they could bring forward the arguments for that. But I think we should look at that in the broad spectrum rather than saying, because of the way I personally feel about Bill X, Y, or Z, therefore I call into question the entire process.

That's the first thing I wanted to comment on, where Mr. Silva had kind of left off with the current process.

I also want to comment on Mr. Lukiwski's statement, because I think it is valid. I think, were I sitting on that subcommittee...but I wasn't there, and obviously I haven't been made aware, because as we already noted, those discussions were in camera. I guess the irony of some of that coming out right now is not missed by many of us around this table, because we've just had a long discussion. In fact, we've deferred some debate to a future meeting about whether we should actually bring in sanctions for those members who would release in camera discussions to the general public. So we could be at the point where this particular committee is charged with actually discussing that issue.

We had a perfect example where someone inadvertently did. I take the member at her word. She got caught up in the debate and inadvertently revealed some of the discussion that took place at the subcommittee. I can't challenge her about the veracity of her comments, because I wasn't there and I have no knowledge, because our member of that subcommittee has kept those discussions confidential, as he should.

My concern is the same as Mr. Lukiwski raised earlier. I came to this meeting today of the opinion that if information--evidence--was brought forward for our consideration that the subcommittee had not considered, or if there was some extenuating circumstance that the subcommittee had not considered that would weigh on us to make us change our minds and overrule our colleagues, and if the vote goes that we will indeed reverse that decision and make this particular bill votable, we will be overruling their opinion, their decision. After deliberating for some time, I presume, and hearing, discussing, debating, and kicking around all the various aspects, they came to that conclusion. Were we to overrule it, I would think that, in fairness to them, we would want to be able to point to some arguments they had not considered.

If I had been sitting on that subcommittee and the committee overruled us for no reason other than their belief that we had made a mistake, and they were therefore going to change the ruling.... I don't think that's the way we should proceed. If we're going to do that, then I think Mr. Preston and the others who sit on the subcommittee would quite rightly call into question why they bothered to meet at all. All of us have lots of things to do with our time, and we're constantly torn between conflicting priorities as members of Parliament. If I had been sitting on a committee and another body decided they thought we were wrong and overruled us, it would be hard not to take that personally, in that somehow they thought they were smarter than I am. I think that's of concern.

The last issue I want to raise during this round, Mr. Chair, is Madame Robillard's earlier statement that in her view this is substantially different because the amendments weren't allowed consideration by the chair.

The problem I see is that we could enter into a situation such that every time the Speaker makes a ruling on the admissibility or inadmissibility of an amendment, we could then just go ahead and change the bill and bring it back. If he rules again that this section of Bill C-415 is beyond the scope of the bill, or whatever, or somebody brings forward an amendment and it's ruled again beyond the scope of the bill, then someone else can just go away and draft up a new bill with those amendments in it, and that way they can bring it back again. How many times would this go on? Would it just go on repeatedly throughout a Parliament?

The reason we have a rule--to my mind, at least--is that in one single Parliament a myriad of potential legislation by all 307 members can be brought forward and can seize the House of Commons on any given day. If we allow the time of the House of Commons to be continually taken up with something the House of Commons has already ruled on and voted on, then by extension, obviously other things will not be dealt with.

It's just logical. We only have so many hours in a day. They are attributed either to private members' business, government orders, opposition days, or the debate of those motions. Were we allowed to continually bring back the same subject matter over and over again, obviously other issues of importance to members and to Canadians, issues they want to see their Parliament deal with, would fall off the table. There simply isn't enough time, if we're going to continue to revisit the same issue that Parliament has already dealt with. It's already been debated. It went to committee and was debated there, and it came back; people tried to amend it, and it came back.

Can you imagine the number of hours, the tax dollars, Canadians have invested in this issue already in this Parliament? I think the rule is there so that Parliament isn't continually seized with the same subject matter. You move on at some point. You say that if you want to address that, you address it in a future Parliament. We don't continually argue the same thing over and over again until somebody who didn't have their way two weeks ago finally gets their way.

Those are my comments at this point.