Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 4th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Well, thank you, Mr. Julian. Had you been here earlier....members from the government side had brought forward points of order on repetition and relevance. I recognized them when they did so. I shared with them that, yes, we were getting there and I would keep a watch on it. That's what I'm doing.

Mr. Christopherson—

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

Point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

On the same point of order, Mr. Reid? Sure.

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

It is.

Mr. Chair, I've moved a number of points of order relating to relevance and repetition and so on, and I have to admit that I've been so taken aback by the aggressive responses from the other side, and the way in which they treat every attempt to adhere to the norms and practices of this House as being an outrageous abuse of democracy, that I've been more reluctant and reticent than I would normally be.

But if now the mood is changing over there and they're no longer going to use this attitude of intimidation and trying to attack people on this side when we try to bring attention to the rules, then we will do so with greater frequency, and certainly when they're justified. Because we certainly have not been doing so when these points have been justified, as much, perhaps, as we should have been doing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Reid.

Although I may agree with what you've said, it wasn't a point of order, so thank you very much.

Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Poor Goliath feels like they're under attack. Boo hoo.

So the motion—

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

This is the sort of name-calling I'm talking about.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I didn't call anybody—

[A voice]

It's a metaphor—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Very quickly, Mr. Julian.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Well, thank you, Mr. Chair, I'll take the time I need to express my concerns.

I believe Mr. Reid, when he referred to.... I believe the term he used was “intimidation”. I find that highly inappropriate in a committee that—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

That's not a point of order.

Mr. Christopherson, carry on, please.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

As I was saying, the first point in my motion is that we hear witnesses from, but not limited to, Elections Canada, political parties as defined, the Minister of State—and I made some comments about that—and representatives of first nations. Again, this is where we come to relevancy. I was talking about the grand chief. That's the kind of person we should call. Then I was backing up my argument by reading his qualifications.

Now, the government may not want to hear all that. I accept that. But there is nothing untoward when we make the case that we think representatives of the first nations should be there and then, in another breath, we describe the biography and the qualifications of that person or those kinds of representatives. I'm shoring up my argument, because if I were on the other side, you could ask the question, why would we invite him? So that's—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I did suggest that while we were picking witnesses that might be the case, and I believe it was I who suggested that relevance was not in order when you were reading his biography. So let's carry on and go back to relevance.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I hate to belabour this, but again I must insist. When we have a member who is speaking, it's not the role of the chair to regularly interrupt the person who is speaking, and I would request that you not do so. That's not the role—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you for the request, Mr. Julian.

Mr. Christopherson, let's get back to your motion, please.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I will continue: representatives of first nations, anti-poverty groups, groups representing persons with disabilities, groups representing youth advocates and students, as well as specific groups, which have been active in society on election rules, including Fair Vote Canada, Samara, Democracy Watch, and the BC Civil Liberties Association. I think one that we would obviously want to add now because of their involvement would be Leadnow. They would want an opportunity, and those are exactly the sorts of folks we like to hear from.

So I believe that talking about Mr. Atleo's qualifications is entirely in order, because I'm trying to convince colleagues to accept my motion. My motion calls for representatives like this, and in order to shore up that argument, I'm reading their credentials. Otherwise one could argue from the other side, “Why would we invite them? We'll invite...”. I was going to say, “Joe Blow down the street”, but I wouldn't do that.

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

On a point of order, there's no objection from this side to inviting Shawn Atleo to be a witness. I think he'd be an excellent witness with a lot of germane things to say, and he could do so either in person in this room, or by video link.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you. That's not really a point of order, but it's helpful.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

No, but it's an interesting point to talk about, because I have made the case a couple of times to Mr. Reid, and I'm not understanding why he's not grasping it, and if I'm wrong I'd like to be made right. The point is that the witnesses are in one bullet point in the motion. The travelling is a separate bullet point in the motion. Mr. Reid insists on combining the two by saying, “Well, we could invite Chief Atleo to be here, or to come by video conferencing.” I'm not disagreeing, because I'm not combining the two, as the honourable member is.

There is a bullet point about witnesses. I just finished reading it. I could read it again, but even I don't want to hear it again. But if I have to, well, you know, we could make it a little more interesting with a little more flexibility. So I won't at this moment read it, but I may have to return because it's not getting through. So that's about the witnesses, a separate bullet point.

The other bullet point takes me right to the motion. So Mr. Reid was very helpful in allowing me to segue from the first bullet point to the second bullet point of my motion, because there seems to be so much consternation about whether I'm relevant or not. I want to come back to the original motion to make my argument that what I'm saying is relevant. It may be bothersome. It may be boring, but it is relevant in my view.

So the second part is, Chair, and this is where I believe Mr. Reid is uncharacteristically confused:

That the Committee request to travel to all regions of Canada, (Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, Northern Ontario, the Prairies, British Columbia and the North), as well as downtown urban settings (such as the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver) and rural and remote settings, and that the Committee request that this travel take place in March and April 2014;

These are two separate things.

The third one, because it's separate again, is:

That the Committee shall only proceed to clause-by-clause consideration of this bill after these hearings have been completed, with a goal to commence clause by- clause consideration for Thursday, May 1, 2014.

You can see, Chair, that there are three distinct points. When I'm talking about witnesses I'm giving examples of the kind of people we would invite and why they're relevant to this study.

Then, when I return, which I shall, to travel, that's a separate subject. And so we need not combine the reference to National Chief Atleo and the desire for the committee to travel and blur them into one because they aren't. They are two different points.

On the first point I'm in the process now of explaining why having representatives like the ones mentioned in the motion are yet one more good reason why the government should support my good motion. Even though they don't want to hear the details, it's relevant because it's the argument I'm making about why you should pass my motion. I'm still at the point of theoretically—nobody's conned by what's going on, we all know—but theoretically the premise is, I'm trying to convince enough colleagues to win my motion.

So if I have a part of my motion that speaks to the number of witnesses we want and gives descriptors of what part of society they would come from, and I tend to expand on that to a level of detail that the government doesn't want to hear, does not automatically, in my respectful submission, put me out of order or not relevant to the point.

So staying just with witnesses and who we asked for.... For instance, Chair, relevancy, I'll give you relevancy. One of the groups we've asked for to come before the committee because we believe we should hear from them are anti-poverty groups. We believe—and the government, and we'll see what happens in hearings—that the new bill disadvantages people of low income, the poor, especially the homeless. We give a reference in another part to the Vancouver east side, which my good friend Peter Julian knows all too well because he's from that part of our great country.

When we want to bring in an anti-poverty group we will be thinking of someone like this.

This is why this part of our motion is important, in our view. Now I realize the government may not think it's important. They may think it's boring and they may think it's a whole lot of things, but we believe, and that's why we put it in the motion, that we should specifically have representatives from at least these demographic groups within Canada, and it's a logical question to then ask who.

Well, like Leilani Farha, who's the executive director of Canada Without Poverty. I apologize if I have mispronounced her name again. Luckily I have a hard name to pronounce so I think people give me a little latitude when I mispronounce theirs, given some of the variations on my name that I've heard. Some of them are even printable. She's the executive director and she's a leading expert and advocate on economic and social human rights, especially for women. It wasn't that long ago women got the vote, by the way, and I wonder who resisted that along the way.

She has a long history of promoting the right to adequate housing, equality, and non-discrimination in housing in Canada and internationally. Prior, she was also the executive director of the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation for 12 years. So again, she's an expert in the field of people who live in poverty, an expert in the field of programs that affect people—

Welcome, leader. I didn't know who was coming there beside me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You didn't come to interrupt him, did you?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

If he tells me I'm out of order, watch how fast I bounce.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Oh, okay, don't listen to Joe.