Evidence of meeting #55 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 opposition.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Arnold Chan Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
I would direct the chair to consider O'Brien and Bosc, chapter 20—I have the floor now, gentlemen—page 1087, that this would normally be done informally; however, a “committee chair cannot adjourn the meeting without the consent of a majority of the members”.
Liberal
Arnold Chan Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Given how riveted I've been with Mr. Reid's presentation, I am prepared to continue to listen to this. I would also direct the chair to consider the ruling of Speaker Lamoureux in the Debates of March 26, 1971—
Liberal
Arnold Chan Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
—on pages 4639 to 4640, that “no committee meeting can be adjourned unless a consensus, or the general consent of a majority of the members then present, is obtained.”
I assume that Mr. Richards is moving a motion to adjourn.
Are you moving a motion to adjourn?
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Mr. Chair, what I was suggesting is per the usual practice, of course. If you note our agenda for today, you'll see that we were to sit from 11 o'clock to one o'clock, so I was indicating to you that your ordinary practice would probably be to end the meeting at one o'clock. That's what I'm suggesting.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
And you think you're going to win this? Suddenly you're Harper, all of a sudden, and you're going to get away with this, and everything else is still going to be sunny and wonderful?
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Forgive me. Normally, the meetings just....
I'm still on the point of order, before I go on. I just want to make sure I understand it. One thing about these things is that they are a great chance to improve your understanding of the rules and the practices, so this is my chance to do so and make sure we are in order.
What I'm trying to find out, Mr. Chair, is just this. Normally when the committee ends, we don't go through a motion to adjourn, as one would have us do under Robert's Rules of Order. Does not the meeting simply end?
When I was chairing the international human rights subcommittee and we had a witness who wanted to go over the time, I always made a point of seeing the clock. We'd have our meeting, starting at 1 and ending at 2, and I'd say that I saw the clock as being not yet being at 2 p.m. Now the clock said something else, but this was done according to the practice that clocks used to be unreliable and that the time was whatever the House or a committee said it was. We still do a version of this; usually we see it as later than it is. We can therefore all agree, it being 3:30 on a Friday, or whatever it is, that the House adjourn.
That was a way of getting the consent of everybody to set aside the actual time—because our clocks are pretty accurate nowadays—and to agree. As this might give us our only chance to hear a fascinating witness on human rights, who had gone through terrible things or witnessed terrible things, our reasoning would be, “Let us extend ourselves all the way to question period.” I always did that.
In all fairness, I never sat down and had a discussion with the clerk on whether this was the only way of extending the meeting, so I'm just asking the question. I thought that was the only way to extend the meeting—to pretend that you had not yet arrived at the time—or else to ask, “Do we have the consent of the committee to push on?” I'm now asking that question.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Sir, the clerk has pointed out to me that according to House of Commons Procedure and Practice, page 1087, “The committee Chair cannot adjourn the meeting without the consent of a majority of the members”.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Mr. Chair, I appreciate that it says that, but my interpretation of those words, unless I'm corrected, would be that the chair cannot in the midst of a meeting—say at 12:30 rather than at 1—say, “I'm adjourning the meeting”. He has to get consent. This committee has ended its meetings early on numerous occasions under your chairmanship. You've always seen whether there was consent to end the meeting, and then we adjourned at that time.
My understanding is that the purpose is to prevent you from adjourning early. It's not to say that a meeting scheduled from 11 to 1 is actually an indefinite meeting at the call of the government.
I stand to be corrected on that, but I'd like to actually be corrected on it, if I'm mistaken.
Liberal
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
I follow that, but the rule is that you can't adjourn the meeting early without the consent of the committee. It's not a matter of the scheduled time for the meeting to end.
Liberal
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
No, I understand that. The chair cannot.... It doesn't say the meeting can't end. There's a distinction.
Look, the clerk advises you—not me. I don't want to seem inappropriate. I'm turning to the clerk. Could you advise the chair as to whether I am misunderstanding or correctly understanding the way the rules work in this regard?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
In response to your question, the clerk informs me that the committee adjourns with the consent of the committee and, unless that's available, the committee doesn't adjourn.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Does it not take a motion to extend the committee to allow it to keep going? Again that is my understanding, and I stand to be corrected if that is not the case. I would have thought that what is required is a motion during the normal hours of the committee, and that would have taken precedence over the motion I was presenting, to extend the....
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
The clerk says that's not the practice.
You have the floor, Mr. Reid, on the amendment.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
That's correct. I'm not in a position to challenge your ruling, although I must say that is not the way I've ever seen things done, but perhaps I've never been in a parallel situation. I am racking my brains.
NDP