Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 13th, 2010

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

A point of order, Mr. Chair.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

It's my time.

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

The parliamentary secretary should give the witness the courtesy of letting him finish.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

He did, and now I want him to clarify.

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

He didn't. You kept cutting into it.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I have news for all of you. We're out of time.

Mr. MacKinnon, we'll let you say a few concluding words, and I'm afraid that's it.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Nobody has--

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Could we have some order? Mr. MacKinnon is about to speak.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

We've talked to more people than--

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Young, Mr. MacKinnon is going to speak.

[Wilfrid MacKinnon]

All I'm saying, sir, is that for years Sydney has been staffed with temporary employees. Yes, they sign a contract. I sign a contract for a six-month term and it turns into a 12-month term that turns into an 18-month term that turns into a 24-month term. Then when the government doesn't want to hire me indeterminately, they lay me off. Then the backlog starts to grow again, sir. Then the government throws emergency money at us again and we start the same cycle. It's time to stop the cycle, sir. It's time to stop looking at the symptoms and look at the problem, and the problem is understaffing.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

I'm sorry, Mr. Dykstra, but we're well over.

Mr. MacKinnon, thank you very much for coming all the way from Cape Breton to tell us about what's happening.

[Wilfrid MacKinnon]

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I thank all of you for coming and giving us your comments.

We will suspend for a couple of minutes.

Thanks again, ladies and gentlemen.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Okay.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Chairman, I have a question before we start.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Yes, you may.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

When we talked about doing the wait-time study and the process of it, we sectioned off these meetings in hour-long blocks. That works out, I guess, to a disadvantage for the government, because we all basically get just one round, especially when there are three or four people here. I'm asking, I guess, through you to the clerk, why we would not be considering this a continuation of the meeting. What we would do is go to five-minute rounds and then just continue to follow through with our process in terms of questioning.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Well, this topic has been raised before; Mr. Young has actually raised it before. We have our standing orders or rules, whatever they're called. In fact, at the last election--I don't know how many elections this committee has had--I asked members of the committee whether they wished the rules to be changed, and there was silence.

I'm going to try to be fair, but I have to be fair on the rules, and there was no change to the rules.

Quite frankly--if I could just finish--the process has always been, for any committee that I've chaired or any committee of which I've been a member.... It's like an inning of baseball. For the second inning we start all over again, and this is the second inning.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Well, let me use your analogy then, because I think it's a very appropriate one. The first three batters in the first inning who come to the plate--

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Well, no, unless it's a point of order.

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

It's a point of order.

I don't think this is an appropriate time for this discussion. Certainly we can take this discussion up in the subcommittee, not when we're televised and we have people here from the department. I'm sure this discussion can be brought forward at another time.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

It's not a point of order, but I appreciate that you'll--

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Perhaps you could finish. I'm going to allow him to continue.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Very quickly. If the first three batters, if you will, come to the plate in the first inning, then in the second inning the first three batters don't come to the plate again. Numbers four, five, and six do.

I suppose what we could do--or perhaps what we do in the future--is when we have a two-hour meeting, we call it a two-hour meeting and just have all the witnesses give their presentations at the beginning of the meeting and then just continue to go around the table for that period of time.

I'm just suggesting.... And I'll take Thierry's comments about bringing this up at subcommittee. But it certainly would seem to me that there are times--for example, when the minister is here for an hour and a half or ministry officials are here for two hours--we could just continue to go around the table according to the order that we've established.