Evidence of meeting #15 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 staff.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
I wonder if we could quickly go to the budget for our hearings, which I think the clerk happens to have.
The budget proposed, which is just being handed around, is a standard amount of $15,500 basically to pay for the travel and electronics for our witnesses.
Is there any discussion before we vote on approving or not approving the budget?
I'll give you a minute to look at it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Is there any discussion?
(Motion agreed to)
Has everyone read the very brief proposed change to the Standing Orders by the Speaker so that he can handle emergency hours?
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Yes.
I took that to our former speaker Andrew Scheer, who of course is now the opposition House leader. I asked him to look it over, because the events that occurred actually occurred while he was Speaker. I gave my copy to him, and asked him to take a look at it and get back to me so that I could bring back comments to the chair.
It's my fault. I meant to bring them today and I forgot. I'll try to have them for Tuesday, if that's acceptable.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Has everyone read the guidelines that we asked the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner to provide for us, so that it's clear to members of the House when they can accept gifts? She doesn't like it, but it's our prerogative. At the moment, under our authority we have to approve those and report them to the House.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
No, not the forms, but the guideline we emailed to you about 10 days ago. It was further clarification.
We, as a committee, asked for further clarification as to what was an acceptable gift. She did what we asked and wrote out this document, which is a few pages long and which we emailed to you all.
NDP
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
I had a chance to look at it briefly. I haven't had a chance to go through it in detail, but I suggest from my brief look at it that the guidelines are still somewhat less than clear in my mind. I would encourage everyone to spend some time to look through it and see for themselves, but we may have to have some further discussion on it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
I want to remind people, too, about members getting information from the clerk. You are the ones who have given her instructions as to where it should go. I noticed that a recent email from her went to virtually all of our general emails that our staff receive. If you want these to go to your personal email address, make sure that clerk knows this. I have mine go to my personal email address and to my staff, but it's up to you. Make make sure that each of you talks to the clerk to clarify where your emails are going.
We'll defer our discussion on the conflict of interest guidelines on gifts.
Mr. Christopherson.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I appreciate that. I do have a wrinkle in my email system too, which may lead emails going to an account that doesn't regularly come before me. I did noticed that others had maybe not seen the email either, so I feel a little better, thanks.
I have been on this issue for quite some time and in different iterations. Mr. Richards is absolutely right, it is still not clear. I would suggest that we get out in front of this and invite her back in.
She's always had a suggestion that she didn't much like them, and I hope I'm not putting words in her mouth. Mr. Reid's been around the mulberry bush on this from the inception, I believe, so he knows more about it than probably anybody in Parliament. She had claimed that if we really want to make things simple, then we should just have a dollar amount where any gifts below that amount are considered okay and nobody would question these, and above that amount, there should be a reporting mechanism. I think she had suggested $35.
I would defer to Mr. Reid's expertise in this area, but it seems to me that from a common sense approach—and I guess this speaks to where Mr. Richards was too—we still have conflicting interpretations that leave it unclear. There's still no ability to look at it at a quick blush and understand what it is. For the life of me, I don't know why it evades us. We should be able to find a way that's nice and crystal clear, and yet we don't have it and it's so important.
I'm suggesting that maybe we ought to jump out in front, say yes that we're going to deal with it on the agenda, and invite her to come in and have that discussion and keep chasing this thing until we finally get it clear.
Those are my thoughts.
Thank you.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
On this, I have some sympathy for her because she's struggling with the fact that the rules themselves were not brilliantly drafted. They do create situations where two parts of the rules can be seen to some degree as one being more permissive than the other. This is true with gifts. As long as that's the case, she appears to be adopting the view that she will take the more restrictive of the interpretations, which I suppose I'd probably do if I were her too.
Having said that, it seems to me that the best way of resolving it is ultimately to change the rules to remove those restrictions. My own recommendation would be that we chat with each other—and we can do it offline if we're worried it will take up too much committee time—and see if there's a developing consensus. It would be to see if we can find a way of adjusting the wording of that part of the ethics code so there is greater precision.
I think that's the only solution.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Okay, it's understood that we need a much more detailed time on this.
Our time's up, but there are two things I need to mention. Could people get back to the clerk or me by the end of the week on particular names of witnesses we've recommended. We don't yet have the names. On the question of political staff, we have one from the NDP, but the Liberals and the Conservatives have not provided any. If there's someone on your political staff that you think wants to be a witness, could you get back to the clerk by the end of this week?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Well, we don't want the names right now.
Also, on House of Commons staff, if there's someone else who need to be consulted, please talk to the clerk or me about that.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I was a little surprised that somebody came up and asked me, “Do you know who the different unions are that represent the various works on the Hill here?” I was thinking that surely somebody has a registry of the unions. I was struck by that. I don't know why it's difficult. I'm missing a piece here: it should be straightforward. Go to HR, give us the names of the unions that represent workers on the Hill here, and we will extend an invitation to their representatives.
On the previous point, if I could offer up assistance to my colleagues among the Liberal and the Conservative caucuses, I would point out that it's a lot easier once your staff are organized and have their own representatives. I'd be glad to provide folks that could come in and help you with that process.
