Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 29th, 2014

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

To my knowledge, they don't, but....

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Do our officials know the answer to this?

[Marc Chénier]

I don't think they get remuneration right now, but I do think they get their travel costs covered if they come from outside the national capital region.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Costs: that would now make me have to rule that this amendment is out of order. There will be costs involved in—

[An hon. member]

Sorry, but how do we know they're going to be paid?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

They're not paid, but they get travel costs. We now know that.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Before you move on—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I will not move on until you tell me.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

—they can certainly use a video conference or a conference call, or even a telephone conference, for that matter.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

They very much could, but you're pointing to a body that gets these other things. So the ruling is that—

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

I guess what I'm saying is that they're not forced to have travel costs, so that doesn't really make it part of—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

No, I understand they're not forced to do that. They could also live next door to where the meeting is being held, but we don't know that to be a fact, and therefore, in all eventuality, there would be a cost.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

I'd like to challenge your ruling, sir, with all due respect.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Okay.

There's no debate on challenging the ruling.

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

Mr. Chair, this is a very quick question that might help.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

There's not supposed to be any debate on challenging the chair.

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

Very, very quickly, this is just so that we can all understand better.

Is it the case that the ACPP now is requiring a new budget line and therefore there's a royal recommendation?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

It's including people on it, which would have to be—

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

No, but in general the ACPP.

I thought the Speaker ruled in the House that as long as there's already a budget line somewhere in the system that would pay the new people, it wouldn't necessarily need a royal recommendation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Your suggestion is that if there's a power to appoint, that means there's a power to assign costs to those people.

You're challenging the chair.

I always get mixed up on this. It's a tough one. If the chair's ruling is sustained, would that mean that they all agree with me or disagree with me?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Jean-François Pagé]

If they sustain, they agree.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Shall the chair's ruling be sustained?

(Ruling of the chair sustained: yeas 5; nays 4)

Okay, so the chair's ruling stands. We will therefore not deal with LIB-8.

We're on amendment PV-19.

Let's go to our master list and see what fun comes of that.

Ms. May, amendment PV-19, please.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you, sir.

We're now looking at the makeup of the committee that we were just debating, the advisory committee of political parties.

My amendment, Parti vert 19, is all about the scope of the work of that committee. My amendment proposes to expand the scope of the work by adding these words after what is found on page 11. At lines 8 to 9, it says, “The purpose of the committee is to provide the Chief Electoral Officer with advice and recommendations...”. My amendment would pick up to say:

—related to increasing voter turnout, public participation in the political system, electoral reform and fairness of the electoral system, and upholding principles of fairness and access with regard to political financing.

That encompasses more than the words that are currently in Bill C-23.

As you can imagine, Mr. Chair, there's a substantial movement across Canada that believes that any fair elections act starts with actually making elections fair and making sure that every vote will count. While it would have been beyond the scope of this bill to put forward an amendment that Bill C-23 actually put in place proportional representation, say, mixed member proportional, this amendment would at least draw some attention of the advisory committee of political parties to the issue of electoral reform, among other topics that are listed here in PV-19.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the chance to present this amendment, deemed presented by others in a process which I oppose, but here I am.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

There you go. I like the last part. It slaps them good now.

On PV-19, I see Mr. Scott's hand.

I'm tending to look that way today. I better start looking both ways.

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

Mr. Chair, it's the enthusiasm on the other side that's propelling you this way.

I have a quick question for Ms. May.

In hearing your explanation on electoral reform and fairness of the electoral system, is it the fairness wording that you were linking to proportional representation?