Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 14th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Good morning. This is meeting 28 of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in the 1st session of the 42nd Parliament. The meeting is being held in public.

We have Pierre Paul-Hus here for a little bit, and then the regular member will be back.

I have a couple of items of business to mention first. Our report on making the House more family friendly will be tabled tomorrow, hopefully. The West Block tour will likely be on Tuesday, June 21. For that, the clerk is going to pass around a sheet asking for your boot size. The pants, safety vests, and hard hats will all fit everyone, but for boots, we need to know your size. She'll just pass this out now so that you can fill in your boot size. There will be a 10 to 15 minute orientation on Tuesday the 21st, a week today.

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

On Tuesday? So we're sitting next week?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes.

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

It depends on when we get to Bill C-14.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

The meeting on the West Block will be at this time, 11 a.m., as far as we know.

Madam Clerk, did you hear anything about the briefing?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Joann Garbig]

Overall, I think it's going to be one and then the other.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

The clerk is going to find out. She's not sure yet.

So stay tuned, we'll get you an email on that. But it looks like it will be Tuesday at committee time, maybe for both the tour and the briefing. But the clerk will get back to us as she finalizes that.

In my understanding, there's general agreement to go ahead with David's motion.

Arnold, did you want to...?

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

Yes. I was going to yield the floor to David.

What I proposed, David, is that we simply withdraw both your version and my version of the motion. We'll read in the amended version that will be moved by you.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Perfect.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mr. Chan.

I just want to compliment Mr. Chan and members of the committee. You'll recall that I created quite a little kerfuffle at the beginning when we were setting up the rules and we set this aside to let us adopt all the other rules. We've been negotiating ever since, because words matter in these kinds of things. I would remind members that we had a huge problem in the last Parliament with the government of the day consistently using motions to go in camera with no excuse and no debate, but just going straight into camera where they would do whatever they wanted. So this is an attempt to provide some structure that creates thresholds as to when this committee is legitimately entitled to go in camera, and a couple of related matters to it.

So again, thanks to everybody. I think we've got agreement, but we'll see.

Chair, my intent would be to read the motion. I formally withdraw all of my former documents in relation to this, and I assume Mr. Chan will do the same. We've got a clean slate, and there's been consultations with the government and with the official opposition. My hope is that we finally can get this cleaned up before we rise. So here we go.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Hold it, David. Hold it.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Sorry. Yes, I agree.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Do I have unanimous agreement to withdraw all the previous motions on this?

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

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Okay.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thanks, Chair, I appreciate that.

The motion is as follows:

That the committee may only meet in camera for the following purposes: (a) to consider wages, salaries and other employee benefits; (b) to consider contracts and contract negotiations; (c) to consider labour relations and personnel matters; (d) to consider a draft report or agenda; (e) for briefings concerning national or parliamentary security; (f) to consider matters where privacy or the protection of personal information is required; (g) when conducting an inquiry pursuant to the Code of Conduct for Members of the House of Commons: Sexual Harassment; (h) to receive legal, administrative or procedural advice from the House of Commons' Administration; and (i) for any other reason, with the unanimous consent of the Committee. That the Chair may schedule all or portions of a meeting to be in camera for the reasons listed above; That any motion to sit in camera shall be subject to a debate where the mover, and one member from each of the recognized parties, be given up to three minutes each to speak to the motion; and that the mover shall then be given one minute to respond.

That's the motion, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Okay.

For this motion on the debate...is that for the move to go in camera for all these reasons above?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Is it still debated?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

As per the last paragraph, yes, it is, for three minutes.

In the past, what happened was you got a motion to go in camera, and the chair.... When I was the chair of Public Accounts, I had no choice but to accept the motion and move straight into the vote. This provides some discussion, again, giving the opposition a chance to raise the alarm if they think the government is trying to pull a fast one.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Okay.

Is there any discussion?

Arnold, go ahead.

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

I have nothing to add, other than that I am prepared to proceed on unanimous consent, unless the official opposition has anything to add.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Okay.

Are all in favour?

(Motion agreed to)

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Finally, some real democracy.

Mr. Chair, I have one last thing to add, if I could.

I didn't want to raise this as part of the debate, but verbally.... The rule that we have adopted now.... By the way, I am hoping that other committees will now look at this as a template. If they have something better, fine, but if they can't reach this bar, hopefully they would go to it, because this committee plays a leading role in Parliament.

I wanted to mention to you, Mr. Chair, that the motion says

That the Chair may schedule all or portions of a meeting to be in camera for the reasons listed above;

I only hope that, when you do that, you would show in the notice which clause it is that we are going in camera for, so the public—as well as we—knows what part of this motion gives us legitimacy for you to schedule us directly in camera.

Other than that, I want to thank colleagues.

For those of us who lived through the last regime.... I won't go on and on, except to say that democracy really was left at the doorstep. This is a real breath of fresh air. I want to thank the government. They said that they were trying to do things differently. It took us a little while to get here, but we did, and I thank the government for their willingness to consider this and to bring more democracy to our proceedings. It is a credit they deserve.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Chan, go ahead.

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

I also want to thank Mr. Christopherson for working collaboratively with the government on this. At the end of the day, we meant what we said.

I would simply agree with Mr. Christopherson as relates to the final point he made—that the chair should note which provision he would be relying on in terms of going in camera. I think that would be an appropriate disclosure before we actually go in camera.