Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Sept. 8th, 2013

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Chair, I also wouldn't mind testing the room as to the level of interest among committee members. I understand about setting the date and that we oftentimes have modified witness lists as we go along. I think there is something about a deadline though that helps everybody to focus their minds a bit. If teachers say, “Have your homework in at some point”, they don't tend to be all that satisfied.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

That reminds me of the work this chair has had to do in the past—

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I'm sure it does remind the chair—if the dog ate the homework. That's why I wouldn't mind just testing my colleagues in terms of those two things.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I'm fine with having a small amount of discussion on this, but I'm caught by the procedures that this committee tends to follow on agenda and planning for future meetings, which take place in camera and not in public. So I ask the committee to take that into account as we have this discussion also, please.

I'm looking for other members to comment on what Mr. Cullen has said, or to agree to it.

Mr. Lamoureux.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I note that December 2 is the final date—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

That's correct.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

—that's being suggested. Nothing prevents us from actually reporting a little earlier than December 2, if this gets done.

I don't see anything wrong with our trying to organize meetings for this September going into October. I don't think we have to wait until we're back in session, necessarily. We are going to get prorogued by the looks of it.

I would be open to setting some actual dates if we could, Mr. Chair. I think there would be a great benefit for us in terms of a planning perspective and from a witness perspective. We're here to set an agenda. I'm prepared to open up the calendar and see if we can set some dates.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Lamoureux.

I'll give a bit more of a comment at the end, but I'm not sure I'm quite able to set an agenda until I know what the workload looks like. That tends to be how this committee works.

Mr. Lukiwski.

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

You've said what I was going to say. It's pretty difficult, if not outright impossible, to set an agenda until we find out how many witnesses people are suggesting we have. That's the way this committee has always worked. That's how every committee works. You get the witness list, and then the chair, with the support of the analysts and the clerk, tries to get a work schedule based on how many witnesses we're going to have to hear from. I think that's the proper way to proceed here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Lamoureux.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I've only served on one committee, the immigration and citizenship committee. I know that when we set our agenda, Mr. Chair, what would often happen—not often, but always—was that there were government witnesses, official opposition witnesses, and third party witnesses, and it was determined in terms of what sort of numbers we were looking at.

This is the appropriate time and place for us to be able to talk about those numbers. That then allows you to get a sense of what sort of time is going to be required to do the review. I don't believe that we have to wait indefinitely for you as the chair or for the government to come back and say that we're going to have x number of witnesses. I think now is the most appropriate time to try to resolve that if we can.

How many government witnesses do you yourself expect to have, Tom?

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

I don't know until we.... I can't answer that, Kevin, because we haven't sat down to try to determine exactly where we want to go with this. Similarly, every time we've tried to set an agenda at this committee, we've handled ourselves in the same fashion. We have a week or whatever it is to come up with witness lists. You will be speaking with your staff, I'm sure, and with other members of your caucus, as will the NDP, as will we. We'll submit the lists, and only at that time will the chair and the clerk then be able to say okay, we have 20, 30, or 40 witnesses. Then they set a work-plan and an agenda based on that.

I think it's pretty presumptuous and very, very unwieldy to try to force a particular agenda without having seen what we're all suggesting in terms of the witnesses. That's all I'm saying. Plus, the fact is that we've already passed an amendment saying that we're going to reaffirm the motion as soon as Parliament resumes. As was mentioned—and I think both Craig and Nathan said it—with prorogation, the initial motion as unanimously agreed to on June 18 basically goes away, so we're going to reaffirm.... We're going to write a letter to the House leader to bring it back. Let's just do things in an orderly fashion. That's all I'm trying to suggest.

We want to get it done. We've all agreed upon that. We know that we want to have certain witnesses appear before the committee. Let's find out who they are and go from there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Scott.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

If I could, I'll cede this to Mr. Cullen.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Cullen.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

In that vein and on the orderly fashion, because I agree this thing could get unwieldy if you look at all seven proposals outlined here, what I would suggest to the committee is something specific, Chair, to allow this to be orderly and to allow us also to hit the ground running in whichever fashion, whether it's coming back early, as I've suggested, or not “early”, but starting work when we're meant to, if we follow the parliamentary calendar, or early if the Prime Minister prorogues.

That is, I suggest that by this coming Friday we reconvene with a preliminary witness list, because five working days should give people enough time—if they haven't already started. We've started. In terms of what witnesses we're looking to have, some of them are obvious, but some other ones would cover that off. Secondly, I suggest that we have a preliminary set of themes to allow the analysts and the clerk to start to build that working schedule you need, so that when Parliament does get back, either at our own behest as a committee or as a normal function—as Parliament is sitting when the Prime Minister calls it—we have a work plan, we have witnesses set up, and certainly we have the first tranche of themes to be dealt with. By Friday, people should have a good sense of it.

We've been sitting with this issue for months—for some years—so it's not as if it's new. Maybe it is new to some parties, this idea of accountability and transparency, but as for the notion of who it is that we need to call and what expertise we need, I think it's pretty obvious.

That's what I've suggested. I've put that forward. I don't know if you need it in a formal motion, Mr. Chair, but that's my suggestion as an outline: that we return and meet with a set of preliminary witnesses and a set of themes that probably follow along the lines of the seven topics outlined here. There may be fewer or there may be more, but we can leave that to committee members to help decide. The committee can then send our analysts and clerks away and they would be able to build that kind of agenda so that we hit the ground in an orderly fashion, but also hit the ground running.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I'll let you know that in the past and today it's always been your chair's thought to try to pre-think what you might ask and to move forward. We've been doing that. As I said, before we left for the summer we discussed what was in the motion and talked about what could be pre-done or at least looked at. I agree with you 100% on how great the staff is at anticipating our needs and moving forward, but I think without the steering committee actually doing this in the normal way we do it, we will try to do the schedule by whole committee and witness list selection by whole committee. I've seen how that's turned out, and you've been there.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

You're saying the agenda should be set by a subcommittee?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Right.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I totally agree. So amend my thinking, then, to a deadline with the subcommittee setting it up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

At some point, once we have gathered some substantial part of witness lists, we'll move forward with a study of the plan, knowing what days we have going forward to look at it. I'm suggesting that we move in our normal fashion. That, I think, would work best.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Specifically then, because I talked about this Friday coming to give committee members and staff five days to gather those kinds of witnesses, my suggestion is that the subcommittee gather on Friday, pull those pieces together, start making those decisions, and outline the plan.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I'm going to disagree with you, Mr. Cullen.

I'm not going to speak from the chair if there are hands up.

Mr. Lukiwski, go ahead.

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

I'm just going to ask for some advice from the clerk regarding prorogation. Parliament originally was scheduled to resume September 16, so I assume this coming week the Prime Minister will make some announcement on that. Once that occurs, what is the status of those committees? I'd like some advice from the clerk.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Go ahead.