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

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

Just while I have the floor, there's one other thing I would suggest.

It's with regard to the meeting this Thursday, as well as the meetings on the 8th and 10th. I see you have the minister being televised, and I believe that when we had the chair of the advisory board here, we had a televised meeting. We should probably extend the same courtesy to the two other appointees, so for this Thursday's meeting, as well as the meeting on the 8th with the two Senate advisory board appointees, we should have televised proceedings for those two appointees as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

You have to remember, though, that they're both appearing by video conference, and the only place you can video conference and televise is at 1 Wellington, so we would have to move over there.

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

I think it's important that the same courtesy be extended to them, so if that's what is required, I think we should do it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Are there any comments on that?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Maybe we could do the conferencing over at the Valour Building.

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

But we couldn't televise at the same time.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm not sure about that, but okay, it doesn't matter.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Then we go to 1 Wellington for Thursday's meeting and the March 8 meeting. Then the second hour on March 8 will be the estimates. Then the first hour on the Thursday will be the minister. The second hour might be the officials; if not, we would move up the caucus reports and the planning of the study, and then whenever all that stuff is finished, we'll move on with the study for the rest of that week. That takes us up to March 24.

Are there any other comments on agenda?

Go ahead, David.

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

I have a technical question. Is it possible to have this thing on an ongoing basis on the committee mobile page? I don't know if it's a technical possibility.

[The Clerk]

Yes. There are times when it changes frequently and rapidly, and I do my best to keep it up to date.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

That's the agenda we'll go with so far. That's the draft of the ever-changing agenda.

We'll go now to our discussion about whether we do anything related to the changes to the conflict of interest code, partly pursuant to the commissioner's priorities, which she has sent us and you got yesterday, or anything else that people have that is related to that conflict code.

I'll open the floor to anyone who would like to start discussions on this matter.

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

This is just a quick comment. As a committee, do we need to approve the changes she made to the forms?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Oh, yes. Let's do that. That's a good point.

We'll take a motion from Mr. Reid that we, the committee, approve the two forms.

Is there any discussion?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

One of the recommendations that the commissioner made was:

That the requirement for approval of forms and guidelines by the House of Commons upon recommendation of the Procedure and House Affairs Committee set out in section 30 of the Code be removed.

I didn't know whether this is a good time to jump into that one, since we're actually dealing with it. I just raise that point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

We could vote on this, because it's happened in the past, and then we'll deal with that motion and decide for the future.

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Mr. Christopherson, do you want to lead the discussion on that one?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

There's probably an argument to go back to the beginning and start at the first one, rather than pull this one out of sequence.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Do people want to go...?

This isn't the limit of what we can discuss. These just happen to be her preferences. Maybe we should have a quick discussion as to whether or not we do anything. Are we going to make some recommendations?

Since we approved the forms, I have to report that to the House. Does anyone have a problem with that?

Do you go to House leaders' meetings, Mr. Reid?

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

I do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Could you suggest that somehow the Bloc should learn about our reports, so they don't deny them all without at least knowing what they're denying?

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

That's a good point. I noticed that you got shot down. It was obvious that it was from the Bloc side, but when they did the all-party consultation, they didn't bother.

What happened the second time? Did you just wait until there was no Bloc member in the House?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Our whip talked to them and explained the report, and they agreed to leave the House.

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

You would be the most frequent victim of this, given the number of reports we generate here. It will eat up all your time.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Call Joe, after all the times that Joe would stand up, get shot down, stand up, get shot down.

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

There were only four Bloc members then.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

To be fair, it wasn't always the Bloc doing the shooting.