Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 3rd, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

I think the fact that the June report would be interim is exactly for the reason you just said: it would be the low-hanging fruit and the things we could agree on.

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

I'm sorry, I misunderstood. It's not like we're saying we're so far but we're not going to.... We actually could say that these are the things we actually agree on, and we're now sending them off so that the House can approve of those things.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes.

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

Okay. I misunderstood.

Thanks. That's great.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

That was my sense of the interim report, because there were some really big items that obviously we can't agree on right away.

Mr. Chan.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I'm just simply going to echo what Mr. Julian had to say. I recognize the importance of dealing with this in a relatively expeditious manner. I'm really just following on Ms. Vandenbeld's comments. Particularly when we're dealing with potential witnesses from other legislatures that have circumscribed available time in order to meet with this committee, we don't want to put that off somehow, just given how difficult it is to schedule it.

If we can at least stick to those ones, then we can use what available open times are coming up in June to deal with this. If we have time in between we can talk about it, and we can get the clerk to squeeze it into whatever hour we can squeeze it into. But I don't want to get off the time track that we're proposing to get the interim report on family-friendly back to the House.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Are there any comments?

Maybe we could start looking at the schedule and putting in things.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

One other point I want to raise is that although I note the comment Mr. Richards made about one of the past investigations having taken about five sitting days of the committee, the other one only took about two, so it depends on how efficient we want to be. Right now we don't have a lot of evidence of a lot of anything, other than these two alleged media reports.

I think we can do this a little bit more efficiently, hopefully, than taking five committee sitting days.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Ms. Sahota.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

I have to echo my colleague's comments. I too would like to get that interim report out. We've done a lot of work on it.

I think we could take a look at this matter quickly. From the article that is the main base of the evidence we have right now, we can't really see any particular contents of the bill, which is what we're supposed to be looking at, or precise legislative information, and that's exactly what the library has told us is the determining factor of whether a breach has been committed.

Since the article itself is quite vague in that regard, I don't think it's going to take us...or I don't think we should spend 10 meetings on this matter. I know it is important, but in the evidence that we have in front of us so far, we don't have much content.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Richards and Mr. Julian.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I hope I'm not hearing, and I'm not saying I do, the government saying that they don't take a matter of privilege seriously. I hope I'm not hearing that.

I understand that we have another thing that we're dealing with, and there's nobody here who doesn't want to try to deal with it. But we have a matter of privilege, and that's a very serious thing. We need to take it seriously.

Can we talk about some witnesses who have been difficult to schedule and maybe work them in as part of this? Yes, of course; that can be discussed. But what we need to understand is that this should be dealt with, and we should make sure that we're dealing with it before we rise for the summer, certainly. I think it should be the highest priority.

In terms of the number of meetings, I'm hearing, yes, we need to deal with it as quickly as we can. Well, you know, we need to take it as seriously as it needs to be taken. Should we waste time on something? No, of course not; nobody would ever suggest that. But if you look at the witnesses we probably need to have here, I don't see how we would hear those particular witnesses in less than about three meetings. Then you have to have some time to look at a potential report.

So I think you're looking at probably four meetings here. I don't see how we would need any fewer than that. Maybe you could get away with doing it in three, but I think we need to give it the seriousness it's due. A matter of privilege is a very serious thing and it needs to be taken that way. I hope I'm not hearing the government saying otherwise. This does need to be a priority.

Everyone appreciates the work that has been put into family-friendly and wants to make sure that it is given consideration as well, but this is a serious matter, and it needs to be taken as such.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Julian.

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

I find myself agreeing with Mr. Richards again. I'm going to have to wash my face with cold water.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[A voice]

A floor-crossing issue.

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

No, I don't think that's ever going to happen.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

I do agree that this has to be taken seriously. The Speaker has ruled that the premature disclosure of the content of Bill C-14 impeded the ability of all members to perform their parliamentary function. We can't minimize what has been a decision of the Speaker of the House.

To have at least the same thoroughness that we've seen from previous questions of privilege of this nature is important, and that would mean probably at least four meetings; there's no doubt about that. I think that for putting together the witness list, in looking again at previous cases we can see the pattern: the department, the minister, is called in; the member who raised the point of privilege is; as well as potentially the law clerk. Those are all important witnesses to bring forward.

The area in which I think we're coming to some consensus is in agreeing that we'd be doing this as a committee after the family-friendly study is completed. I sense from the other parties that this is the direction we're going in. We have a good sense of a time line: we have a June calendar that is empty, which should allow us to schedule the number of meetings that takes this with the seriousness with which the Speaker has referred it to this committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

I don't think anyone would want this to go past the summer. It has to be finished before the summer break, for sure.

Ms. Vandenbeld was next, and then Mr. Graham.

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

Thank you.

Just on Mr. Richards' point, we're taking this very, very seriously, and we absolutely want to do this as a priority.

If you look at the calendar, my comments are coming from the fact that we're at May 3. We have two and a half meetings scheduled of witnesses in order to give the drafting instructions on May 19 on the family-friendly study.

If you look at the calendar, you see that there are nine empty meetings after that point. Then, of course, there's also the possibility of doing extra meetings.

So there is time, I think, to be able to do both. In order to have the drafting instructions by the 19th.... We're almost there with this report; we have only two and a half scheduled meetings left. I think we can do both: we can finish the witnesses for the interim report on family-friendly and still give the due amount of attention and seriousness to the motion on privilege.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

This is remembering that at least one June meeting would be looking at the interim report, and that of the hours available before the instructions on May 19 there are two open hours at the moment, but there are also two legislatures that have agreed to appear before us; we just haven't told them the times yet.

Mr. Graham.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I don't think anybody here doesn't take privilege very seriously, but I think the very first step, as we discussed last meeting, is to get the law clerk here and establish whether or not there actually was a breach of privilege, before we invite everybody. If there is clearly one, then we'll have that long conversation, but let's establish that privilege was actually breached before we decide the who and the how.

I don't think we've gotten to that point yet, because as Mr. Chan mentioned, the articles mentioned what is not in the bill, not what is in the bill. I'm not clear that there was a breach of privilege there. Let's get the law clerk in here to discuss what's going on and then decide how to proceed from there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Except that the Speaker has already ruled that there is a prima facie case—

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

There's a prima facie case; there's an “appearance of”.