Evidence of meeting #107 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was travel.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Conservative
NDP
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Welcome back to meeting 107. I forget who had the floor when we left.
Ruby.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
Thank you.
I honestly don't remember. I would like the floor once we move on from the travel, but I think we were in the middle of—
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
The last thing Filomena asked was whether there is anything we can do to facilitate the planning of the travel. Are there any other questions you have? I don't think facility location was one of them, but having witness lists would probably be a big one.
By when would you need those from us?
The Clerk
I agree that with the work Jill's team has done and the discussion we had here, we have a pretty good sense and are confident that we'll be able to move west to east and hit all the major centres.
The witness lists are very important to me. I think that's the big piece right now, if our meetings are going to be successful. We need to get people before the committee in those locations, so it's as soon as possible, please.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
The deadline was today. We need lists for those communities. The clerk doesn't want the House of Commons to be embarrassed, to have a meeting at which there are no witnesses. I looked at the Liberals' list, and almost all their witnesses were from the Ottawa area. That is not that helpful.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I'm wondering, through you to the clerk, about organizing our witness lists, if we can, by region, just to focus the mind. We have a few folks in Halifax, Toronto, etc. Now that we've chosen the cities....
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
It's one thing to put a witness list together overall for a study and another thing to put one together for specific locations. We may have a list now that you can look at to see whether there are a couple we could pull from here or there that would fit a particular location, but we may all now need to go back to see who we know in a particular area and really didn't think of before who would still be a good witness. That probably means the lists we now have need to be augmented for that purpose.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
I think that's also why Filomena raised the issue of giving the chair some discretion and authority, especially if things happen as they popped up on electoral reform, whereby somebody can't make it and then we can substitute somebody in without having to reconvene the committee in order to figure out how to do it, as long as there weren't some big veto.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
That's a different issue from what I'm talking about, though. I think we're talking about giving the initial lists of witnesses. I don't disagree that, if one person drops out, the chair and the clerk should have the ability to slot X into that spot in the schedule. That's different from their coming up with an entire list themselves.
Liberal
The Clerk
I would say from my point of view that, tomorrow being Wednesday, if we're having meetings on Monday, it's probably important that I start calling people tomorrow for Monday.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
We could give you our initial lists. We can do it in tranches. We have some that we're winnowing down.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Yes, and we could just keep updating them as we have them.
The Clerk
Yes, and prioritize them, if you could. Monday's meetings will be in Vancouver. If you could, as early as possible, get me your witnesses for Vancouver, the rest of them, hopefully, will come shortly thereafter.