Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 15th, 2007

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

That's right. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Everybody's good. Thank you, colleagues. Thank you very much. And a special thanks to our witnesses for coming out today and being prepared for a plethora of questions. We certainly appreciate that.

Colleagues, I want to clarify that in checking with the clerk, I confirm that the Green Party was not actually extended a formal invitation. I recall one of the members of the Bloc made a note that that would be a good idea. However, it did not end up on the Bloc's list of requested witnesses, and as such a formal invitation was not made.

If it's the wish of the committee, I have a couple of suggestions based on some conversations with members. We have had the Bloc request, perhaps, that the invitation be extended again to the Bloc representatives. If that's the wish of the committee, we can do that. We can invite the Green Party. We can also extend the wish to the Conservative Party of Canada as well, in that framework.

The other suggestion that has been brought to me is that we offer an invitation to the authors of the study we reviewed. In fact, one of the authors has been invited already. They're on the list to be invited. So if it's the wish of the committee...I just want some direction. Do we extend the invitation at this point, re-extend the invitation to the Bloc and the Conservative Party and include the Green Party? Is that something the committee wants me to do?

All right. I'm seeing you're okay with that. We'll instruct the clerks to do exactly that.

Secondly, we have on the witness list already one of the researchers.

[A voice]

We have two.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Do we want to invite...we have two? We have two of the three. Shall we invite the third researcher? Let's do that too.

Thank you very much, colleagues. That solves two problems. Please, before you go, I have two other things.

You have received, and you will receive again, a letter from me regarding the ethics commissioner's invitation to show up at one of the meetings for perhaps the final 20 minutes, simply to introduce herself and become familiar with members of the committee. I'll send that out. We don't need to make a decision on that today.

We've had the same offer from Monsieur Mayrand for the committee to actually go over to Elections Canada and visit the facilities and meet some of the folks.

I'll send you a letter out regarding those two matters. Give that your attention, and we'll make a decision on those two at one of the future meetings.

At the next meeting, colleagues, we're hoping to get a group of witnesses here. That will be next Tuesday, and it will be...we're not sure, but it will be a full list in panel style; one hour followed by a second hour. With that, I think we're finished with potential business.

Monsieur Godin.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Chairman, I would like to clarify something, because just now, there was some confusion. When we meet witnesses, as we did today, I think that we should follow an established list for deciding who puts the questions. I think that we have already drawn up a list to avoid confusion. Otherwise, it goes to whoever is the first to raise their hand. A party could well raise a hand three times and get the floor three times.

To avoid confusion, we must make sure that we alternate. It is not as if we were at a simple ordinary meeting for discussing future work and things like that amongst ourselves. That will make things easier for everyone, especially when we hear witnesses. This is my recommendation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

I appreciate the suggestion. Just for clarification, we do follow the list. I look around, though, to see which members want to speak first. I do make it a point to try to get eye contact with just about every member or a representative of the party when there is no one on the list.

So what happened today was, of course, we were going through the usual procedure, and since there weren't certain parties on the list, because I did not see any hands go up, I just went to another round, and we ultimately ended up in the same....

But I appreciate your comments and we will follow the list. If there are no members who wish to speak or ask questions, we will just move on.

As I see no further business, Madam Redman, please.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I recognize we have legislation before us, and this is of great interest, and I'm fully in support of hearing from witnesses. I would also recognize that we have a motion before us that had an amendment that was on the floor at our last meeting, and perhaps this is an issue that the steering committee could take up. But I know certainly there have been committees that put on extra meeting times or have dealt with an issue on a Tuesday, for instance, and have dealt with the legislation on a Thursday, and there would be some division so that we could move forward. We have been dealing with that other issue since August and we have not moved forward with it, so I would respectfully request that some accommodation be made in our time schedule for that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

What I could suggest, as chair, is, as agreed by all members, we will move forward on the legislation, but I won't make a decision for the committee. It's my suggestion we stick with legislation; however, I'm not opposed to meeting with the steering committee.

I'm seeing some nods that the steering committee would be okay with a meeting, and perhaps we could set up additional meetings. Either way, we can get our work done. But I'm open to that, and I'll just make that mention.

While some of the members of the steering committee are here, you can contact me and we can set something up, if that's acceptable.

Thank you.

No further business?

Thank you, colleagues.

The meeting is adjourned.