Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 17th, 2007

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

Okay. I'm sorry, I went and put my papers away. I'll slowly get them back out.

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

Hopefully, we'll adjourn at two o'clock for question period.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Talk to the chair, please. I have the floor to Mr. Preston.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think I'll go back. I can't use the word “summarize” because you chastised me the last time. I think we'll go ahead and talk about the great work the subcommittee has done. I'm not certain I had a chance to—

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Mr. Preston, you have the floor.

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

Certainly.

We'll talk further about the subcommittee and the work that it's done. I'm certainly losing my audience again, but some of you weren't here for some of my dissertation.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Ask for a quorum call. Maybe we don't have quorum.

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

I love the suggestions, but I think the real answer here is that we'll talk some more about the subcommittee and the work that we did in changing the criteria and coming up with these criteria, and then we'll talk a little bit more about the remedies. I think it really comes down to the point here that the answer for Mr. Silva here isn't a finite no. The answer here is that your item is non-votable because it didn't meet the rules and regulations of the subcommittee. But you have chances to move forward. Mr. Silva still has chances to take a piece of legislation of his choice—just not one that has been deemed non-votable—and move forward, or he could take his piece of legislation that has been deemed non-votable and move it through the House, and have full discussion on it at each level, at each reading. At the end of the day, it would not be called for a vote by the Speaker.

It would indeed, also, through that period of time, have the ability to end up at committee. Even though it's a non-votable piece of legislation, it could still go to committee, where it could be fully looked at, and it could be determined whether some changes could be made, whether there would be some small amendments. Certainly, because this one is non-votable, what would make it votable in the future could be fully discussed so that the next time it came forward it could, in fact, work. That is the role of this committee.

That's truly, Mr. Chair, the role this committee has been charged with. We feel we've gone forward and done our work properly. There are other members of this committee who sit on the subcommittee, and I feel somewhat bad for them because they also will be told by this whole committee that the work they did was for naught or that the work they did was incorrect. I think it's up to this committee to actually move forward and tell its subcommittee that it believes in what they stand for and it believes in the work they've done.

So we will continue to stress that point. I would have to think that, then, the next time the subcommittee was called forward to look at this type of legislation, we would have—I hate to say reservations—We might not walk as quickly as we might to go ahead to do that work because we're simply being told you're fulfilling a role that's just going to be overruled by the committee of the whole the next time you come back.

Sometimes you get a bit down about it. It's just not going to be what you look forward to. I know that in a previous committee, I sat there and listened once to Mr. Lukiwski talk about his dog Sparky, and how it had gotten to that point at a meeting, because I think we were talking about honour at the time. We were talking about how he had once perhaps told an untruth—I'm getting back to the focus part—to his father. Although it might not have been a whopper of a lie, it was an untruth. He said he would feed the dog, and he did not, and when his father found out, there certainly were some sanctions. Around here we call them “sanctions”, because of course, under another motion, we're looking for what sanctions could be used.

He was sanctioned for doing it. I think that truly, the members of our subcommittee would feel a lot like Mr. Lukiwski—see, notice how I'm now bringing this back, Chair, I'm reeling it in—felt that day. He didn't mean to do wrong, nor did the members of the subcommittee. I don't in fact think they did anything wrong, but they went forward and spent some true time on putting forward this report back to this committee on procedure and House affairs.

I probably should mention that, too. I've been taking to calling this procedures and House affairs, and if you really look at the title of this committee, it is procedure and House affairs, singular. It's not procedures. It's procedure and House affairs. If anything, we should probably move a motion for sanctions for anybody who says “procedures and House affairs”.

But back to where we were—That is the role of this committee, it is the committee for procedure and House affairs, and we report to them as the subcommittee on private members' business.

So we have reported back to them and are awaiting that group hug that we should expect as a subcommittee, when we bring things back, that says we did our job properly and we did what we're supposed to do. We can only wait for that.

We talked earlier about “substantially”, and I'm not certain we've talked fully about the definition of “substantially”. Well, I know we have, but I'm certain that we may need to bring it back again, because I'd like to talk some more.

But “substantially similar”, I suppose if I were allowed, I could go around the room and ask for each member to define in their own mind what they think “substantially similar” means. Is a set of twins “substantially similar”? I think they'd be more than substantially similar.

We talked about the two candy-apple-red Mustangs being substantially similar, even though they had different options on them. We talked earlier about my two memories pens—these are the best things—and the fact that they may be “substantially similar”, both in name, because they have the same names and stuff written on them, but the fact that they're both pens. So we did talk about the “substantially similar” parts of that.

That's truly the criterion. That's truly all we have to establish on these two pieces of legislation: is there a bill that has been voted on in this House? In this case we're using Bill C-257, the bill from Mr. Nadeau. We're using that as the comparator. It's there. And then Mr. Silva comes forward with Bill C-415 and we're charged with asking is one substantially similar to the other.

We're not asking, are they exact? We're not asking, are they two different bills? We're asking, are they substantially similar? That's the criterion. And I think that as a group we have decided that they are exactly that: substantially similar.

I may go through life now calling things “substantially similar”. It's not a term I've used in the past, but I think when you find things truly that alike, then you call them “substantially similar”.

It wasn't hard when we were certainly discussing this. Of course, it was in camera. I can't tell you how the discussions went, but you can imagine that the researchers had some piece to tell us why these may be or may not be substantially similar. Some discussion would take place and we'd talk about whether they were similar or substantially similar. We maybe even discussed a little bit about the words “substantially similar”, are they or are they not?

But they truly are pieces of legislation that accomplish or attempt to accomplish the same thing.

We talked about the fact that one bill has the word “essential” written in front of the word “services” in two or three spots. That was what is supposed to make it different. Well, I understand it's different. Those are different words. I'm not saying they're not. They are different words. But they don't make the total substantially different. They remain substantially similar.

I think we truly need to look at the essential service piece in these pieces of legislation. I know this isn't about what's in the legislation and not in the legislation, but here we are faced today with a strike on another one of our railways. Are we to establish whether that's an essential service or not? I guess that's another piece for another day, Chair, on this.

When we talk about the essential services, I think it's an essential service when any person, any good employee out there, has to go home without a pay cheque because somebody's on strike. That's truly what we're talking about here, whether the management team fills in.

I see the chair brought lunch today. That was very good thinking.

This House will need to look at the essence of the bill and the parts of it that—

[A voice]

You can try your motion again.

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

I just have this feeling that comes over me from time to time, because I'm a bit clairvoyant. If I tried my motion to adjourn, we could probably vote on it.

Mr. Chair, although we probably have more to cover yet on the substantially similar parts of this bill, I think it's in our best interests if we move a motion to adjourn. I'll stop at that point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Just for clarification, is it a motion to adjourn the debate or to adjourn the entire meeting?

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

To adjourn the meeting, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Colleagues, we have a motion on the floor to adjourn the entire meeting.

(Motion agreed to)

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

The meeting is adjourned.