Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 9th, 2012

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Chair, as in the previous government motion, I will vote in favour of the amendment. Having said that, I must qualify it, in the sense that the reason we support the amendment is that we ultimately believe it will improve the bill. The issue of the bill itself is something we still do not support. But we recognize that the government has recognized that the point we suggested needs to be amended to at least improve it. Our first preference, of course, is to see the bill go back to the drawing board.

I just wanted to qualify that, in anticipation of there being a very good chance that this amendment will pass and I will not be able to comment on the Liberal Party amendment we were going to propose, had the government not proposed this one.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ms. Sims.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

We will be supporting this amendment, because, as I said earlier, it is a step in the right direction and an acknowledgement by the minister. However, we continue to have concerns about this particular section. We would have been much happier if our amendment to the amendment had been accepted. We continue to have some very serious concerns about the way this legislation is playing out.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We're going to vote on the amendment.

(Amendment agreed to)

(Clause 19 as amended agreed to on division)

Ladies and gentlemen, the chairman's clock indicates that it is 7:40. My understanding is that the consent to extend the time beyond 7:30 has been withdrawn. Therefore, I am going to adjourn the meeting.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Chair, a point of order or clarification. Call it what you will, but please indulge me.

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

Sure. No problem. Fair enough.

We had agreed to continue for one reason alone, and that was that there was going to be a vote at 6 o'clock, and we were going to have four votes. We were going to be gone for approximately 40 or 45 minutes.

A lot of activity happened prior to that, which took away much more time than I had hoped. Those were issues that had nothing to do with this committee but had a lot to do with politics in the House of Commons.

Quite honestly, I think we've made a lot of progress today. In fact, if we want to carry the four other clauses, because there are no amendments, I'd be happy to do that before we rise. Clauses 19, 20, 21, and 22 have no amendments, so from that perspective, I'd be happy to carry those. But I think we've had enough for today.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ms. Sims.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Chair, I was actually going to be speaking up soon and asking for an extension, because originally when we added an hour to go to 7:30, it was with the understanding that we could lose about an hour, but as a matter of fact, we lost three and a half hours.

We have very little time to go through this clause-by-clause, because as you all know, there is a guillotine that is going to drop at 11:59 tomorrow night. Because of that, I have to say that I am objecting very strongly, for one thing because we had what I think was a gentlemen's and ladies' agreement to have that extra hour, which we should honour. I was actually going to be asking for more time, which I won't be now, obviously.

But I also want to say that it took unanimous agreement for us to come to that decision this morning. The new adjournment time became an hour later—7:30 became 8:30—so surely, Mr. Chair, procedurally it should now require unanimous agreement to change what we agreed to before we broke.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

My position is that the government has withdrawn its consent.

However, I'm going to suspend for a few moments so that the two of you can have a little chat, and if you can't agree, then we will be adjourning.

We are suspending.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Okay, we have now started the meeting again.

Ms. Sims, do you have news?

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

The chair will do what the chair will do, but I really want to put on record that the agreement we had at this meeting—and it needed unanimous agreement—was that we would extend adjournment time by one hour. It doesn't matter to me what has transpired in the meantime; that's the agreement we had.

As far as I know the rules, that means it now takes unanimous agreement to alter that time, and we are not giving that unanimous agreement.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Dykstra, do you have anything to add?

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

I don't, except to say that Jinny and I had a very good conversation.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I heard you laughing. I thought we were all going to be friends.

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

We've agreed to disagree. I think that while she doesn't agree with the lack of an extension, she does agree that I do have a perspective on this in terms of what happened in the House, and that's the reason for our decision.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Lamoureux.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You're not going to filibuster this, are you?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I wouldn't even think about something like that.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I'm not going to give you the floor if you do that.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

How much time do I have?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Chair, I can appreciate it, and I understand, because of what was taking place in the afternoon. The government knows how we voted on what was taking place inside the House. We, too, share concerns in relation to that.

I do have one question for the clerk. When we did come up with the agreement earlier today, was it determined that there was no obligation whatsoever?

I just want to make sure that we're clear on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

The chairman takes the position that consent was given to extend the time by whatever it was the House was voting...the time the voting was on.

Mr. Dykstra has advised me—and I'm not going to have anymore, because I'm going to bang this gavel—he is withdrawing that consent.

The meeting is adjourned until tomorrow morning.