Human Resources Committee on June 21st, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

That's a fair point.

Before we accept that motion, we'll deal with this one. We'll come back to a motion to actually appoint the specific member.

He makes a fair point. He indicates that by virtue of the two vice-chairs, you will have members from the opposition on the committee.

Go ahead, Jean.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

My comment is on the quorum part of this, that the quorum of the subcommittee shall consist of at least three members. It does not say “one of which should be an opposition member”.

The subcommittee itself, yes, has representation. But when you look at the quorum part of it, it doesn't require that there be representation from the opposition, which I think is pretty standard practice.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Yes, and it may be a fair point. You have the chair, and you could have the parliamentary secretary. And if Mr. McColeman happened to be the third one, you'd have three Conservatives. You're saying that you would like to entertain a friendly amendment that would allow for one of those members in the quorum to be from the opposition.

Are there any thoughts on that?

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

That's fine. We'll accept that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

We'll have it amended to read “one of which shall be a member of the opposition”.

With that amendment, is there any further discussion?

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

It would be that one would be a member of an opposition party.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Ms. Crowder, is that what you've said?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Yes.

(Motion as amended agreed to) [See Minutes of Proceedings]

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

That takes care of item two.

Item three has to do with meeting without a quorum. You can just read through it. This primarily deals with receiving evidence particularly when you have witnesses “provided that at least four members are present, including one member from each recognized party”. So that would sort of address your concerns.

The second paragraph reads:

In the case of previously scheduled meetings taking place outside the parliamentary precinct, the committee members in attendance shall only be required to wait for 15 minutes following the designated start of the meeting before they may proceed to hear witnesses and receive evidence, regardless of whether opposition or government members are present.

I would only assume that if you have a meeting outside of Ottawa and the witnesses attend but the members don't, you will still proceed with hearing the evidence.

Can I get a mover for that motion?

That is moved by Colin Mayes.

(Motion agreed to) [See Minutes of Proceedings]

Let's go to number four.

Now, this one is always a bit interesting. I'll maybe preface with some of my own remarks. I know there have been some discussions as well on this one, which has to do with the time for opening remarks and questioning of witnesses.

It begins as follows: “That the witnesses from any one organization shall be allowed five to ten minutes, at the discretion of the chair, to make their opening statements”.

My view would be that if we had two panels in one hour, we would probably limit the witnesses to five minutes. But if we had one panel for a whole hour, we'd probably go with the ten minutes, and then something in between if it seemed necessary.

It goes on to say:

During the questioning of witnesses there shall be five minutes allocated to each questioner; and that the order of questions for the first and subsequent rounds of questioning shall be as follows:

That would be Conservative, NDP, Conservative, NDP, Conservative, and Liberal, and equally at five minutes.

I would entertain a mover and a seconder for that motion, and then we can have a discussion.

That is moved by Phil, seconded by Brad.

Is there any discussion?

Carol, and then I think Jean is next.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Certainly we have some concerns with respect to this motion.

The first part, although it says at the discretion of the chair, and you're indicating that it is depending on how many witnesses there are, that statement is not in here. Depending on who the chair is, when it says it's at the discretion of the chair, they'll make it the way they want. So I think we need to be a little bit clearer on that part, if that is the intent; otherwise, we will leave it at ten minutes.

The other part I'm concerned about is with respect to the changes that are actually occurring here. In the past we've had seven minutes. Our position is that we would like to stay with the seven minutes.

The other part I have some concerns about, or I don't agree with, is that the Conservative Party should go first. In previous committees it's always been that the opposition goes first, and then it goes to the next. So I would prefer that we stay with the status quo from before.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Jean.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

I agree with Carol. I think it's problematic to have witnesses come for just five minutes. I know you and I had chatted about it briefly. Many times witnesses travel from a great distance. I know there's an opportunity for them to provide briefing notes in advance, with sufficient notice, but we all know that sometimes witnesses are scheduled fairly tightly before the meeting and there often isn't time for them to submit their documents in sufficient time to have them translated into both official languages.

And when we bring people here and just give them five minutes to speak, particularly when they've travelled from a distance, I know that in other committees I've been on it's been problematic. Even when we have several witnesses and we only give them five minutes, it's very difficult for the chair, as well, to keep them to five minutes if it's on complex issues.

I know there could be occasions when we want to keep them to five minutes, but I think the general rule would serve us better at ten, to allow them to fully present their case or their particular point of view.

On the questioning round, again, it's the same piece. On all committees I've served on their initial practice has been a seven-minute round on the first go-round, and then a five-minute round on the second. Again, that seven-minute round allows you time to fully explore an issue with a witness, which is very difficult to do in five minutes.

I think it's to the committee's benefit to have as much time as possible with the witnesses before us to really explore some of these issues.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Okay. You raised some good points.

I'll just indicate that there's something behind this. I know that in human resources we've had times when we had one panel in one hour, and certainly everybody had an opportunity to question. At times there were a lot of people who wanted to come into the hearing, but we had only a limited number of meetings, so we've had two panels of witnesses. What happens in that case, where you constrain the time to five minutes for the witnesses, is it gives more members an opportunity to question.

Now, when you have one panel in two hours, it gives a lot more time and the seven minutes is a little easier to administer and everybody gets an opportunity to speak. That was somewhat the reasoning behind that.

I know we've had some discussion about that, but before we turn it over to some other comments, I see Rodger had a comment as well. We might as well hear you on this too.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

This will be my fifth Parliament. I've sat on all those seats over there, sat in the first three up here, sat in that seat, sat down in those seats. This is the first time in this seat, but, like they say, there's not a bad seat in the House. I'll grow into this role, I'm sure.

But as was mentioned before—and it's in our hands anyway, we can do as we please as a committee—traditionally the official opposition does start off the first round of questioning. I look back at my first Parliament, the 37th Parliament, where we had the Bloc, and, before the merger, the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives. In the first round there was a full seven minutes given to each. The rotation would have been Canadian Alliance, Bloc, Liberal, NDP, Progressive Conservative. Everybody was included in the first round.

I think the official opposition should probably start the first round, and then the government after that. The seven minutes for the first round makes sense. In any committee work that I've done to date seven minutes works best.

From our perspective, I'm hoping there's some generosity on the part of those around today. If we might be able to get included in the first round that would be great, but certainly we would hope to be included by the second round anyway.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Just so you know, Rodger, the way it's set up here is if you go for five minutes--and let's talk about one hour for one panel, as opposed to two hours--in the one hour, you would have five minutes. It would go in the order as you see it. It would be Conservative, NDP, Conservative, NDP, Conservative, Liberal. That would be the first round. You would always get that in. So you'd have five minutes. If you went to a longer term, obviously you would keep repeating the rounds in that fashion. You would always be up on the first round, especially if the witnesses were 15 minutes and 30 is 45, in the hour, and you'd keep going.

The way this was designed is that essentially the Conservatives get about 50% of the time and they have 53% of the seats, almost 54%. The NDP gets 33.4% of the time. The NDP has 33% of the seats. The Liberal Party would get 16% of the time although the Liberals have 11% of the seats.

It generally gives everybody more or less their distribution. Everybody speaks in the first round and then starts the second round. In the hour, that works fine. For the two-hour panel there may be some merit to the seven-minute idea.

I'll turn it over to Phil, because we talked about that. You raised an issue about seven minutes, five minutes. Phil, give us your thoughts. We talked about it, so maybe you would want to add to this conversation.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Yes, we did, Mr. Chair. The distinction here is between a one-hour meeting and a two-hour meeting. A lot of us who were on other committees in the last Parliament were used to the normal practice of two-hour meetings, but in discussion with the chair, as the former parliamentary secretary apparently in this committee, it actually can break down into two one-hour sessions. You'd have three witnesses and then they would be removed and three new witnesses would come forward.

In the thinking of five minutes, it was all around that one-hour scenario where we had two separate groups presenting for an hour. That is how we came up with the five to ten minutes, first of all, as presenters to make sure as many members could ask those questions as well. It gave the chair that discretion.

Also, I put together another proposal which we discussed. I'll pass it around. This motion as revised would allow for seven minutes for questions in a full panel discussion for two hours. If we have a full panel for two hours, we move to seven minutes for questioning. That accommodates getting around the table, the principle being every member at this table should be able to ask questions in any of our meetings. We should try to get through all of the group.

If I passed this proposal around, Mr. Chair, would that be appropriate?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Sure, it would be appropriate to pass it around and let everybody have a look at it.

While he's doing that, what it does is if we had the two hours, everybody would get on in the first round at seven minutes. It would just continue in the same fashion, round after round, until we were done. You'd get at least two rounds plus some more. In the one-hour session you wouldn't complete two rounds.

Of course, in the two-hour session it would be my view that the witnesses should be given a little more time. In the one-hour session they should be constrained somewhat in time to give more opportunity for questions.

Although that's been the practice, we might want to move to one panel for two hours, if we have the time for that, to give more time for questioning. There is nothing to prevent us from doing that.

Does everybody have a copy of the new motion?

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Mr. Chair, I would add to that. Relying on your experience from the last Parliament, to give the committee members a sense of it, were there more one-hour two-panel meetings than two-hour sessions? How did that break down?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

It seemed toward the end we were doing a lot of legislation, private members' bills. There were other subject areas we were looking at. There were more witnesses who wanted to testify than we had room for. We decided to double up on the panels, which had its negatives, but it had its positives as well, in the sense that more people could actually express themselves before the committee.

Toward the end we increased them, but everything being equal, if we had the time, I think we would do one panel for two hours.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Okay, there is a preference, a kind of tradition in the committee that if there is the time, we do the two-hour meetings. That is what most of us on other committees have experienced.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

There is also the complexity of the issue as well. You would try to balance that.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Yes. This is written kind of backwards from the way it was written originally, because it refers to the seven minutes in the first part. That's typically with a panel that's with us for two hours. Then we would move to five minutes, which is on page 2, when we break it into two one-hour sessions. That's the distinction.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

I think Kellie has a point, and I'm going to suggest that if we are getting some consensus we might withdraw the motion and proceed with the second. But before we do that I guess there are more speakers.

Jean, you had some comments.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Just again about the speaking order, in fact that speaking order doesn't actually give everybody an opportunity to speak. It gives each party an opportunity to speak but not every member.

That's the rationale for it, the order that used to be used with the official opposition and the opposition parties and then the Conservatives and then the five-minute round. In fact if you do the traditional speaking order that many committees have had, you would have had three people speak at seven minutes each and then you go into the five-minute round.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

That would be quite disproportionate according to the seats in the House, which is the new reality. So this is closer.