Evidence of meeting #18 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 clerk.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
The prima facie case is that there is an “appearance of”. Let's get the law clerk in here to break it down and see whether there actually is one in order to see how to investigate further. That's my take.
Liberal
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Yes, but I think before we call more witnesses, let's start with that.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Just so the law clerk, who no doubt is paying attention, knows this, a technical description of what is meant by “appearance of” would be helpful. Obviously law clerks can't present new evidence, but law clerks can explain how the rules work.
With regard to the schedule, I may be wrong here, but I'm just looking at this, and according to the schedule just handed out to us, we have some blank spots. I just went down it: May 5 from twelve to one o'clock; May 10 from eleven to twelve o'clock; on May 19 there's an hour, possibly, although I think drafting instructions in an hour might be optimistic.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Likewise, the 31st is just a deadline.
We have potentially five spots. I realize that other things may fill them in, but these witnesses, the law clerk and so on, are very available, so we have the option of slotting them in.
What I'm getting at is that I think we're imagining a scheduling conflict that is not.... I think we're imagining a worst-case scenario. I think we'd probably do a good job of getting these things done in tandem, simply because the privilege stuff lends itself to having holes in the schedule, given the availability of witnesses.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
So we could have the law clerk on the 5th?
Oh, he's not available this week. Sorry.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
We also have the two provincial legislatures that have agreed. We can put them both in an hour, probably. If they're available, maybe we could have them on the 5th, and have the law clerk on the 10th.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Mr. Richards was suggesting the Clerk of the House, or the Deputy Clerk of the House, because the law clerk deals with law, and the Clerk of the House deals with—
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Okay. We'll ask them both, if they're available.
Tentatively we would ask the two provincial legislatures this Thursday. It's short notice, but we'll see if they're available. They'll be on the TV. Then, on the 10th, we'll have the clerk and the law clerk in that open hour.
Is anyone opposed to that?
No? Good. That's subject to availability, of course.
Mr. Reid made the good point that we also have the 31st, which is totally open, when we get to that date.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
I would also suggest, given our experience with the Minister of Democratic Institutions and how difficult it seemed to be for her schedule to be cleared up to come before this committee—we've made numerous requests, where we haven't even been able to get the government to agree to have her come at all—I would suggest that we want to give the justice minister, in case she has the same kind of scheduling conflict as the Minister of Democratic Institutions seems to have, as much notice as possible that we do require her appearance here. Then we can make sure that gets scheduled in the time we have available to the committee as well. We don't want to have the same problems arise.
Liberal
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
It's so that we can determine her available dates and make sure there's not a scheduling conflict for each and every meeting, as there has been with some ministers in the past.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Is anyone opposed to that? We'll get the clerk to contact the justice minister.
Liberal
Arnold Chan Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
I'm fine with it, but whether we decide to call her or not, I still think we should have the law clerk here first and get established what the baseline is on members' privileges. Agreed?
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
We have to establish the question that we want answered before we ask people.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
This is good what you've done, I think, because that'll be the end of the witnesses for family-friendly. We'll start on privilege, we'll get some direction from the clerk and the law clerk, and then we'll fill in the blanks from there. We'll get this all done before the summer, for sure. If we have to do extra meetings, I think we should do that.
Liberal