Evidence of meeting #12 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 process.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
NDP
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
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NDP
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
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Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Mr. Chair, I just want to confirm that we're not going to find that we're restricted in what we're allowed to ask the.... For every witness who has come here, every single question I ask or almost every single question, I am being told it's not permissible to ask this question and the witness is only here to talk about one thing not the other thing. I assume we get to ask him about everything or do the Liberals have plans to shut that down too?
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Mr. Reid, you've been here long enough to know that when we give the notice of meeting, it says what the person is called here for and that's what you should respect.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
This particular person has offered to come and report on the election, an informal briefing.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Does that mean that it is your intention to rule out of order questions dealing with the statement he made yesterday regarding the timeline issues he would have with regard to implementing new electoral systems because of the fact that it involves electoral boundaries or redistribution, and the potential for the timelines that are involved in having a referendum should one occur? Would that be considered out of order or would that be considered permissible to ask?
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
12:55 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Before you answer that, can I provide some input because that's pretty important?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that's one of the agents of Parliament, and if so, normally the experience is that there's a broad breadth of questions you can ask because they're answerable to Parliament, not to government. If you deny parliamentarians an opportunity to ask any question.... They're pretty sharp. They'll tell you pretty quick whether that's germane to the points they're raising.
I wanted to jump in, Chair, and just caution that I would be very surprised and have a bit of a problem if you were to rule that ahead of time you were going to start contracting the questions that we can ask an agent of Parliament. To me, that's really starting to speak to the rights and privileges of members and the separation between Parliament as the legislative arm and government, which is the executive arm.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
This is a briefing. We haven't called them. They're offering us a briefing and we were supposed to have it today but we postponed it. Other than that, I had no thoughts on it.
So we'll do that May 3.
The other thing I asked you to think about for this meeting was that letter, which you now have, from the Speaker—
No, you haven't got it yet.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Mr. Chair, we have two minutes left. We have time to have a vote on bringing back the members of the advisory committee to answer the questions that were ruled as being out of order at our previous meetings. These are questions that are absolutely germane to their mandate and to the oversight we practise on their mandate, and on the minister, and on the portfolio of democratic renewal, and they are questions that the minister now confirmed today she could not answer.
The sole reason that was given by Arnold Chan for saying that the government did not want to pursue this and this was all unnecessary—I think actually it was the main reason given by Mr. Graham as well—was that the minister could answer these questions, something that she confirmed today she cannot do. This is information to which she is not privy. Therefore, I would like us to go back to this.
The Liberals could talk it out if they want to spend two minutes doing it, but it would be nice to get a vote. This was a motion to bring them back before the end of March. We are not going to be back in this place, if I'm not mistaken, until March 22, thus the reason for the urgency to vote this up or down today.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
I'm happy to go to this in a minute, but we have to decide what we're doing. There are two days before Easter break. The first one is budget day, and we've agreed to meet that day. The second day is the Thursday before Good Friday, and the House leaders have not yet decided whether that will be a Friday-type schedule.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Well, I haven't been told.
If it is a Friday-type schedule, then we wouldn't have our meeting, but if it's not, we would have our regular meeting.
12:55 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
My understanding is that the decision was made that the Thursday would be treated like a Friday.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
According to the calendar it is a regular Thursday.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
It would be like a regular Thursday, so we would be having a meeting that day.
12:55 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Apparently that's not finalized. They're kicking that around. I thought that was finalized. We do it quite frequently.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Minimally, we have to decide what we're doing on the Tuesday when we come back. We haven't decided that yet, unless we do these witness lists, which we obviously haven't had time to do today.
Does it sound good to do the witness list?
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Some hon. members
Agreed.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal