Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 31st, 2014

[David Shannon]

It would depend largely on the nature of the home or institution, too, and what confidentiality...whether it's agreements or even laws such as the Health Care Consent Act in Ontario, that applied to that particular facility. It would change with each. I guess since you've had the benefit of the Chief Electoral Officer being here to speak to it, he could speak with greater expertise.

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

He didn't provide an answer to that question, unfortunately. It was one of these things where it was mentioned in a manner that did not permit me to get back to ask further questions. I thought you might have—

[David Shannon]

I can tell you I like in principle your idea, though, and that's the greater penetration through mobile polling to institutions or palliative care for people who are housebound.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Reid.

I think we'll stop there and we'll suspend. We'll allow our witnesses to say goodnight. Thank you very much for your comments and your help today. We've taken all of it in. Thank you very much.

We will suspend for a couple of minutes and let our witnesses leave. We'll go on to some committee business and see if we can leave here sometime this evening.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We can come back to order, please, and see if we can get a little bit of committee business out of the way before we go.

I was thanking Mr. Brown for his analogy of how you can't always trust who you might take into the voting booth with you. I was certain if I went in with my wife, we would have an argument over where the X went. So he's absolutely right.

We have a few things to cover tonight. One is we have talked about when amendments would be due, and we have said noon on the 25th would be an appropriate time to have those amendments in.

From the committee, we need approval to start clause-by-clause study, and I'm going to suggest that it start at 11 o'clock on our Tuesday meeting of that last week, on the 29th.

Mr. Christopherson, on that?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, on that: we don't like it. Surprise.

What we were hoping to do was at the very least to match up for clause-by-clause study what we're doing this week and next week in terms of time commitment. We have a lot of amendments. It's a big bill, and at five o'clock on the 1st it's all over, so we would like as much time as possible. I would just ask for us to replicate the timing in that third week. It's five, if you count the weeks, but in terms of our third week of work, it's this week, next week, and—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

So what are you suggesting?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Regular hours, Tuesday and Thursday, and then Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, evening hours.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I guess if we had the amendments in by the Friday.... There's some thought they can't be back up to start to do that on the Monday.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Then we should back it up one day, and make the deadline the 28th.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You would have the amendments due on the 23rd?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, enough that we could start on the Monday.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Does anybody have any comments?

Mr. Lukiwski, do you want to speak to this?

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

I don't have a big problem with that, Dave, assuming that everything is in and we're ready to go in the evening on the Monday.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I have one issue with it. We have asked Monsieur Drouin, the chief electoral officer from Quebec, to visit us. He cannot possibly come, because he's in the middle of an electoral event, until that night, until the 28th, and so we had scheduled him then.

I think we can work around that. We could still have him and then go on to start our clause-by-clause study, if that's what the committee wanted to do.

Mr. Lukiwski.

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

Chair, had you planned to give him an hour?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Yes.

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

If we had him from 7:00 to 8:00, then we could go from 8:00 to 10:00, we could get in two hours of amendments that evening instead of three. Then we could do the regular 7:00 to 11:00 or 7:00 to 10:00 or whatever—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

When is the Quebec election? Is it on the 7th?

We're talking about his coming in on the—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

—on the 28th. He has some wrap-up that he has to do. Obviously, he has to—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, we don't want to have him during their—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I'll bet he's probably getting a day of sleep in there someplace too.

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

My point is if that you had him scheduled for that Monday, when David wants to start dealing with the amendments, we could have him for an hour, and spend two hours on amendments on the Monday, and then spend three hours on amendments on Tuesday evening—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

If that's the only caveat, we can live with it, Tom.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Scott, are you speaking on this?