Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 19th, 2007

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

—in Saskatchewan and one city in Manitoba, we would make representation to the clerk as to which city that should be.

Certainly Mr. Batters and I can work at trying to find where the best location would be for what we want to accomplish. It may be Moose Jaw, it may be Regina, or it may be Estevan. But let's just leave it open at one city from Saskatchewan and one from Manitoba, which would likely be Winnipeg, and let us work it out with the chair. I think we can probably resolve which city that should be in Saskatchewan. It would be the one most—

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Do you want to repeat what you have there, Bill?

[Blair Wilson, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

I think it would be fair if you let the committee work it out for the committee, not just you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Just one moment, please. I'm going to let Bill repeat his amendment to see what we have here.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Chair, the amendment was to add the other issues we're working on in the fall: the points system; Iraqi refugees and immigration consultants; and adding Whistler, one city in Atlantic Canada, and I'm going to say Regina or Winnipeg, Chair, because once we depart from major air centres, our travel schedule will be shot all to hell. I just don't think smaller cities are possible, given the kind of travel we'll be doing. So I'll say Regina and Winnipeg, and the dates would be from the 15th to the 26th.

[Dave Batters, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Regina and Winnipeg?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Yes.

[Blair Wilson, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Chair, if I may....

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I have Andrew on the list first, and then we have to move on.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

I'm just trying to get this clear. Are we going to be listening to Iraqi refugees when we're in Toronto as well? That's incorporated. I think we're going to need two days in Toronto, and I think we should go on either side of it.

I'll disagree with Bill in the sense that there are a lot of people in the country who don't live right at airports, and if we drive a little bit and accommodate some of the members of the committee, well, so be it. I do find that when we go to the centres, when we go into Vancouver and have hearings, everybody pretty well ignores it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Well, we have 10 days in nine cities, so we could add an extra day if it's cramming it a little bit too much.

Let's vote on this amendment, because if we keep going around the table on this, everyone has their own cities that they want to get into. We could do this for the next two hours, I'm sure.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

All right, but just as a comment there for Mr. Siksay, picking Regina just because it is Regina...it might be inconvenient, but in fairness to Mr. Batters, Moose Jaw is about a 45-minute drive and it does have a lot of amenities there and things of interest and perhaps the types of issues that we might want to raise. So if we're going to make it Regina, we might want to make it Moose Jaw and go from there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Is there any objection to Moose Jaw here? Is there any possible way we can resolve this by putting Moose Jaw on the agenda, please? Is everyone in favour of putting Moose Jaw on that agenda? I'd love to see Moose Jaw, by the way. I've never seen it.

I'm not entertaining any more discussion on this. Let's put Moose Jaw on the agenda, and an extra day in Toronto. Will that satisfy everyone, some time in Moose Jaw and an extra day in Toronto?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

That's fine with me, Chair, as long as instead of Vancouver, we meet in Burnaby, B.C., then, which is central. If we're going to go to everybody's riding, then I want to go to my riding too.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Absolutely. Let's extend this for another week.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

No, instead of Vancouver, Burnaby is the first suburb out of Vancouver. The Metrotown Hilton hotel is not in my riding but right on the edge of my riding. It's a great place to meet. Let's go there. We'll have the Vancouver hearing there.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

It's gone too far, Chair. Is this part of the Conservative playbook?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I understand everyone's concerns here. You want to get the committee into your own particular area, your own particular riding, and that's fair ball. But I don't know how we can accommodate so many different concerns unless we're going to be on the road for three or four weeks, or a month.

Mr. Telegdi.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Doing Burnaby or doing Vancouver is no big deal.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Yes. What's the big difference? Let's do Burnaby instead of Vancouver. Is that what you want to do?

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Well, yes, that's what we meant.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay. That's fine with me. We'll let the people from Vancouver who want to be heard come over to Burnaby. I'm easy with that.

So let's leave it at that and try to accommodate Burnaby and Moose Jaw. It seems to me that if we can get a little bit of extra time in Toronto, that might solve your problem as well, Andrew.

Let's leave it there. Let's not even comment further on this until—

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Well, Mr. Chair, if you're going to do that and have two days in Toronto, stick one in Mississauga and stick one in Scarborough.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

That's right.