Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Feb. 23rd, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Good morning. I call the meeting to order.

This is meeting number nine of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in the first session of the 42nd Parliament. This meeting is being held in public.

Following from last week's appearance of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, our business today is a discussion of what, if any, work the committee wishes to undertake regarding the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons.

The commissioner sent in a letter and attachments outlining her priorities, etc., as we requested, which were distributed to the committee members yesterday afternoon. As mentioned at last Thursday's meeting, we are in public now, but we may decide to sit in camera depending on the issues we're discussing.

Go ahead, Mr. Richards.

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

Before we move to that, I wonder if we could get an update on the minister's availability.

We've made two requests now, and we've been put off by the minister. It really seems as though the minister is making every effort to avoid the committee. I hope she's had a change of heart and is going to make an effort to be here and answer for some of the decisions that are being made. Can you give us an update on that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

I'll get the clerk to do that. I forgot to mention that I'd like to save 10 minutes at the end for readjusting the schedule a bit because of various appearances.

Would you like to report on the minister?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The minister's office has confirmed that she and senior officials will appear for one hour on Thursday, March 10.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Go ahead, Mr. Reid.

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

Did they give a reason for not being present today? As I think you know—and I'm not referring to the clerk here, or the chair, obviously—we felt it was crucial to be able to ask her about the phase 1 Senate appointment process before it's expired, because of our constitutional concerns. It's all over by March 10. What's the pressing need that made it impossible for her to come today?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

I wasn't involved, so the clerk can answer that.

I have Mr. Christopherson on the list.

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

Could you give an explanation as to why she's not available?

[The Clerk]

The minister's office had simply informed us that she had been given notice of cabinet meetings which conflicted with the committee's meeting time.

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

That was Thursday. Are you saying for today as well? Remember that last week I intervened, and we went back and asked if she could come today if she couldn't make it Thursday.

[The Clerk]

This was not possible, and my instructions were then to inquire about a date when she would be available to appear.

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

They indicated she wasn't available today for sure?

[The Clerk]

Yes.

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

Okay, that's all I wanted to know.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Go ahead, Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I want to underscore that when I agreed to support this motion, I said exactly this was my concern. I saw all the sincere, earnest looks on the part of the government, and “Oh, no, we wouldn't do that.” I can't point to that and say she's deliberately dragging her heels, but I have to tell you that it's not like this wasn't predicted, and that was the problem with leaving the motion open-ended where it said “at the minister's availability”.

Madam Clerk, when did we originally invite the minister? When was that decision made?

[The Clerk]

I can check.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Would you check that while I'm talking? I believe it's been at least a few weeks, and by the time the minister gets here, I have to believe that will have been a month. The whole thing was time-sensitive; there were deadlines to this issue. The motion, as I understand it from the official opposition, was to try to get the minister in before some of those critical deadlines, or at least as close to them as possible.

I just want to underscore that I did say, if you check the blues—not that anybody cares—that there's a good chance we're going to be in this situation, but I'll trust them anyway. I hear everything they're saying. However, the reality is that here we are again, and it's not unlike what we experienced with the last government, which is why I was so worried. I just underscore again that this government talks a great game about change, but we sure have to fight to get them to change any one little thing from the way it used to be done back in the dark ages in the last Parliament.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

The clerk says it was February 4.

Mr. Chan is next.

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

I just simply had a question for the clerk.

I believe the last time we scheduled the Chief Electoral Officer to appear was on March 10. Are we still proceeding with that? I think the Chief Electoral Officer wanted two hours. With the minister's appearance and now that we know when she's available, is there an implication with respect to what we'd previously scheduled?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

We were going to discuss that at the end of the meeting, but I think....

We've asked the elections officer to find another date so that we can get the minister. We'll talk at the end of the meeting about when we'll have the elections officer, etc., because of these changes. We're just jiggling things around.

I guess the other thing you can think of during the meeting—it gives the staff in the back something to do—is the new item you have in your mail. It's with regard to the estimates. There's a fairly tight timeline for when we're allowed to do that before they're approved by default. Keep that in mind when we discuss the schedule at the end of the meeting.

Is that okay, or do you guys just want to do that now? Since you brought it up, maybe we'll just get that over with.

The clerk will give you a schedule that you can write on. You may have it already. They'll just pass it around so that we can write in what we're doing.

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

I note that for procedure and House affairs, the Parliamentary Protective Service is our only reference. When do we have to deal with that? What's the deadline to react to that in terms of the estimates?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

It's related to the last allotment day. I don't think we know what it is yet.

For the estimates, it is as follows:

...no later than three (3) sitting days before the final sitting of the supply period ending March 26 (Monday, March 21, 2016) or three sitting days before the last allotted day in the current period (which has not been allotted yet).

We don't know when the last allotted day is.

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

Then we don't have to deal with it today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

No, we don't have to deal with the estimates today, but if we want to do it, we have to do it soon.

For the Thursday meeting, it on depends how long we take today on conflict of interest; otherwise, the first hour would be in the Valour Building. We're doing a video conference with Daniel Jutras for one hour on the appointment to the independent advisory board.