Evidence of meeting #111 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 identification.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
In eight months, you have gone through 100 hours. We've gone through about almost 80. By Monday we'll have 80 hours completed, when it comes to looking at the subject matter.
I think it's also very important that we have an independent person, the Chief Electoral Officer. He has guided us through a lot of these different issues in his recommendations, all along the way. He really knows how these rules impact people, day in and day out, from experiences they've had in the past, through previous elections.
I think being able to hear from him previously, when we studied his recommendations, and then now, before committee, has been a really effective use of our time. We've learned a lot.
I just put it out there that we leave spots open. We've asked hundreds of people to come forward. I think a lot of those who had valuable information have come forward. There might be a few others. That's why I'm saying let's leave that spot open, to see what they have to say.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
As much as I'm enjoying seeing these numbers inflate by the minute...the number of hours that are claimed we have heard from witnesses. I think it started at 30 a few minutes ago, and now we're up to 80.
Liberal
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
That's really accelerated. That's even faster than Mr. Graham's pace of speaking.
Having said all that, I certainly would disagree with the numbers. I'm just boggled at where they might possibly come from. I've done the math, and we've heard this week from witnesses for nine hours. I think we've made some progress thus far in hearing from witnesses. We're getting more for the next couple of days. That's a positive thing. Following this week there are two more weeks before Parliament rises for the summer. Why don't we take those two weeks, let the clerk utilize those two weeks, and we can decide on what the schedule will look like for those two weeks. I'm open to whatever works for everybody. In those two weeks, we could offer whatever spots we determine to those witnesses. That would give them a choice, so that it wouldn't be just a few days from now; there's a second week there as well. I would suggest that, beyond inviting them for those two weeks, for those who aren't able to come in that two-week period, we ask a follow-up question—maybe they could be asked at the same time—that, if they're not able to appear in the next two weeks, if there were more time available, whether they would be interested. At that point we could get through scheduling for those two weeks. We would determine what we will be able to hear during that two-week period and then make a decision at some point during that time as to whether there are more witnesses we need to hear from, and we could schedule those meetings for the future. If not, then we could have a discussion about what comes next instead. That gives us a couple of weeks to hear from a very large list of witnesses who remain unheard. It might get us somewhere near the numbers we're hearing on the other side now.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
We're studying this bill. Of course committee members know that I was quite keen on something that would have taken us around the country. For various reasons, that didn't happen. We're now at the point where we've had a number of meetings. I don't know what we're currently at in terms of hours of studying this particular legislation, but I'd say it's 10 or 15, or maybe it will be 20 by the end of the week, give or take, which would not be great for me. The government is under pressure to get the bill back into the House at some certain point. They're probably not happy. Until everybody is equally unhappy, we probably haven't arrived at the right calendar. I'd rather cut to the chase than circle around this thing. The Conservatives have proposed something that would not have the bill returned to the House prior to the end of the spring sitting. The Liberals are obviously—I don't want to speak for them—not going to be willing to agree to that. Some point in the middle of those two proposals is where we're.... I guess we just need a motion eventually from you guys as to what you want and when you want the bill back. I would really avoid saying we've exhausted the witness list, because we've exhausted it with the very tight constraint that we had, which was, whether witnesses could come in within two days or three days. A bunch of people said no. For a normal committee, we would have submitted witness lists and we would normally have had two or three weeks of witness hearings and people slotted in. We've taken a very aggressive approach in terms of the number of hours, but they were all very immediate.
All I'm saying is in order to not have this go on forever, find out what the government wants. When do they want the bill out? How many more witness days do they want to have? We can agree, disagree, have votes, and then move on. I just don't know if we're going to get super productive arguments back and forth philosophically. I think this is going to come down to brass tacks at some point.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Yes, essentially. We had one, and it was withdrawn. There was one that was floated around for a while, and it wasn't submitted for a vote. I don't know if there is another version of that ready or if tomorrow there could be one ready. I just don't know if we're getting anywhere.
Liberal
Chris Bittle Liberal St. Catharines, ON
I think I'm going to propose to adjourn. Maybe we should all take Nathan's suggestions under advisement. I'm going to use the time to go through Hansard and check out the Bill C-23 debate and check all of Blake's references for there not being enough time in committee to study the bill. I'm sure there will be lots of those. I do propose a motion that we adjourn right now.
Liberal
