Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 3rd, 2016

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

He wants to have you say that again.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

It's on the record. This is public. Kady's going to tweet it out.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

He's calling his mom right now.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

So to know what the other priorities are of this committee.... Granted, I am only a temporary member of this committee, and happy to be here. But I do agree that it requires a substantive response from the committee. There are a number of other priorities, including establishing the family-friendly House of Commons, that are part of the work plan.

I just wanted to get a sense from the clerk as to what is before this committee now, because I do believe this should be dealt with substantively, and hopefully as a high priority. I'm not sure it could be the highest priority if there were other elements that need to be looked at by this committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Do you have this?

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

I do, yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

This is the schedule for the next few weeks, with open spots on it, too.

Okay. If everyone looks at this list, there are two additions to it. This just came out this morning, but there are two things that aren't on it.

Do you want to tell us what those are?

[The Clerk]

Members can see that the month of May is filling up. The informal briefing from Elections Canada has been rescheduled to May 12, and in the remainder of the meetings there are spare hours on May 5, May 10, and May 19. But now we have two positive responses from legislative assemblies who will appear in connection with the family-friendly study.

So two of those three spare hours will be gone if the committee agrees to hear those witnesses then.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Sorry, which are those witnesses again?

[The Clerk]

They're from two of the legislative assemblies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

In Canada?

[The Clerk]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

And for Australia or New Zealand, we're still looking at the late-night one, the evening one.

[The Clerk]

Correct. Those would not be in the eleven-to-one time slot.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Anita.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Without diminishing the importance of this privilege motion, we've done a lot of work on the family-friendly study. It's something we've heard a number of witnesses on, and I know the committee had hoped that we would be able to have a report back to Parliament before we rose in June. I just would ask that we take that into consideration, because a number of us have done a lot of work on it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

There's always the option to have extra meetings, too.

Mr. Reid and then Mr. Chan.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

With regard to—

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Well, June is empty on the schedule, except for looking at the interim report if it's drafted as we presently planned during our constituency week.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Sorry, the interim report is on family-friendly?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes, on family-friendly.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I have a suggestion with regard to family-friendly. When the minister was here, I asked him and he agreed that if we had agreement on some points and not others he would be happy, or any rate he would be okay, with our proceeding in a piecemeal manner dealing with the issues, the low-hanging fruit, the things that we had consensus on; and setting others aside until later. Maybe we can do everything, but I wouldn't want to sacrifice the time devoted to a matter of privilege in order to try to attain agreement on things that we aren't yet agreeing on as opposed to severing off the things we can agree on, especially anything that involves any administrative follow-through for potential implementation in the autumn.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

I think the idea of—

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Then we could have that done and then deal with other things as time goes on. That's just a suggestion.