Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 30th, 2023

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

A record like that will be hard to beat.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you, Mr. Gourde.

Ms. Romanado has said that she didn't have any questions to ask on behalf of the Liberal Party.

So it's over to you, Mr. Therrien.

[Alain Therrien, Bloc, La Prairie, QC]

I wanted to ask Ms. Bibeau a question earlier, but she told her colleagues that she had nothing more to say, and so I didn't dare.

We've heard a lot of talk about the RCMs, which are specific to Quebec. Each of you mentioned them, but I'd like to have a final round to talk about and obtain a better idea of the importance of RCMs in Quebec. I will give each of you time to say why they are important and why they need to be taken into consideration. In particular, I would like to hear what Ms. Bibeau has to say, because I think a riding is going to be split.

[Marie-Claude Bibeau, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

It's very important, because the small municipalities of only a few thousand, or even only a few hundred, inhabitants work extensively with their RCM and receive shared services. Many community and economic organizations are developed around their RCM.

With respect to services, with a view to future changes, it would be interesting to compare the role of an MP who represents an urban riding of six square kilometres to the role of an MP like me, who represents a riding of 5,000 square kilometres, with 35 municipalities and five RCMs. I'm aware of the fact that some MPs have ridings that are even larger.

It's true that when there are several municipalities in a single RCM, whether 3 or 15, the same work needs to be done with the RCM management team. Conversely, for the director of an RCM, the work is already being done with a riding team. This means that the management team has to work with two or three MPs, which also increases their workload.

I believe I gave a good explanation in my address of the dynamics between MPs and the RCMs, including how we work together, and in my view, the less RCMs are split, the better it is, for us and for them.

[Louis Plamondon, Bloc, Bécancour—Nicolet—Saurel, QC]

When the Government of Quebec created the RCMs, its goal was to establish an economic, social and cultural development framework that would make it possible, in order to deal with things like health services, for these RCMs to have a budget and to operate in alignment with regional interests. Often, when the commission's members look into redrawing the boundaries strictly on the basis of the number of inhabitants, they do not take this highly effective administrative structure introduced by Quebec into account.

For example, the Pierre-De Saurel RCM had some wind farms built, the only ones in Quebec, and they are owned by the community, not private interests. This brings in net earnings of $1.2 million to the RCM, which redistributes this money to address collective needs. If two municipalities from a neighbouring riding are added as a result of the redistribution, they will also want their share of the pie, even though they had not taken on responsibility for the loan and had not contributed to the project. That's how complex things like this can be.

Something should therefore be done along the lines of what the minister just said. It's very important to take these economic structures into consideration when redrawing electoral boundaries in the ridings

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Blaney, you have the floor.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

I have no questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

We took some of Ms. Blaney's speaking time to listen to this remarkable answer.

Mr. Berthold, Ms. Bibeau and Mr. Plamondon, thank you very much for spending so much time with us. If you have any other comments, please send them to the clerks, who will pass them on to everyone.

We wish you a pleasant afternoon.

[Louis Plamondon, Bloc, Bécancour—Nicolet—Saurel, QC]

Thank you for hearing us out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

PROC committee members, I will just say that Miriam will be back next week, so kudos to Sophia and Christine for keeping us on track this week.

During the two constituency weeks, as we are heading into two constituency weeks, within one of those weeks we will be having the Prime Minister's chief of staff appear. I am under the impression that there is a little bit of back and forth going on to confirm resources and the date. It is feeling like it will be the second week of the constituency weeks. The minute I have a date and time, you will have a date and time so that there's ample time for us all to participate.

The second thing is that we've seen the Right Honourable David Johnston added to the list of individuals who were in the letter. We also have another list of people we've invited. When Miriam returns, we will get the list consolidated and shared with all members in case it needs a refresher or anything like that, so that we can satisfy the intentions of this committee when it comes to foreign election interference.

Because we have had such a fruitful committee so far on foreign election interference, I have mentioned to some of you that there is a supplemental budget that would need to be passed. I have been given that budget and ask for your support in seeing that passed. I will also mention to you, based on what the intentions of this committee are, and the added time we've asked for, I'm confident that these resources will not be enough, because we are adding meetings and I want to make sure that the resources are here for us, including coffee and snacks.

With that, can I make sure that everyone is okay with the passage of this budget? Perfect.

With that, to anybody celebrating Ramadan, Ramadan mubarak.

Easter is coming—my birthday is coming—so I wish everybody a happy Easter as well.

Keep well and safe, and I'll see you after becoming a year older, after the constituency weeks. Thank you. Take care.