Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 11th, 2013

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

No. You need unanimous consent to change the agenda. Sorry.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Since there was no opposition at the time when you allowed our witness to commence—

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

We had just started.

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

Excuse me.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

—there is no real case. It's truly an unfounded case for our members opposite to interrupt the witness at this point, I believe.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

Kevin.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

On the same point of order, Madam Chair, the concern I have is this. Typically when we have presenters come before the committee, we provide them the courtesy of dealing with the presenters.

My invitation went to the Philippines and Chandigarh. I know that they're going to be doing a telephone conference. I would like to get through the witnesses, first and foremost, as we have done in the past. If there are additional agenda items that we should be talking about, I would just as soon do that after we hear the presentations. I think it's fair. It's very costly to get our witnesses in. We want to make sure they're afforded the opportunity to have the dialogue.

I don't know what it is that the government side wants to see, but I think we should stick with what we've done in the past. Let's deal with the witnesses. After we've dealt with the witnesses, if we need to set aside a half-hour towards the end of the meeting, let's set aside a half-hour or 15 minutes. It doesn't really matter to me, as long as we deal with these witnesses. My suggestion is that we deal with them first.

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

The chair walked into the room. The chair saw the witness already sitting in the witness seat. It was 8:46. The chair called the meeting to order and proceeded with the witnesses.

The witnesses were told to be here for 8:45. They are here. They're sitting in their seats. So the chair, when the committee business issue was brought up, said we would deal with that in the last 15 minutes. If we need half an hour, the chair is willing to say let's set half an hour aside at the end and deal with it, so that we can get on with hearing from our witnesses. I would hate to interrupt the witness at this stage.

Mr. Dykstra.

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

Thanks.

We did have agreement to deal with the issues as per the agenda. I would like to get a guarantee that we're going to deal with this issue today and vote on all motions, and that we don't leave until they're completed. That's what I'm asking. Otherwise, we're going to vote, and we're going to do it right now, and the witnesses can wait. Those are the two options.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

If there are assurances—

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

The only thing I remember from last weekend is that we did agree that we would be dealing with committee business today, but we did not agree on the order. The chair is saying the committee business will be the last 30 minutes, and I'm sure we have enough time in those 30 minutes to deal with the issues we have.

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

So am I being told I have a guarantee that we're going to deal with these issues and complete them before the end of today's meeting?

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

I have to hear from other people as well.

I'm going to go to Madame Groguhé, and then I will go over to Mr. Lamoureux.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Madam Chair, if you think it is important to hear from the witnesses who are already here, out of respect for them, we should perhaps proceed in this fashion. Clearly, as you said, we would have to defer our 15 minutes of committee business until either before or after the end of the meeting.

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

Mr. Lamoureux.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Chair, I think it would be highly irresponsible to expect members of the committee—

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

No, I'm going to move to go in camera and we're going to deal with it now. I gave you an option.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Chair, I think that at the end of the day it wouldn't be responsible for committee members to in fact agree to pass motions not necessarily knowing what the motions are. It would be very irresponsible of us to do that.

If Mr. Dykstra would like to provide us the motions he's hoping to be able to pass...I too have motions. If he's trying to say that we will pass our motions too, well then I think we can have that discussion.

We have individuals on conference call from the Philippines and from Chandigarh, and I believe it's very important for us to hear all of the presenters. There's a substantial cost involved when we have these types of teleconferences. Time has been set aside here, let's deal with the witnesses first and as soon as we're done with the witnesses, then we can go on to other agenda items.

Rick, if you want us to deal with the witnesses in the first hour and fifteen minutes and then we'll go into other business, I'm open to doing that. But I think it would be a disservice for the committee to actually set aside our witnesses and deal with other agenda items when I believe there could be four, five, or six other agenda items. If we start dealing with those items, the chances are we won't even be hearing from the witnesses.

Here in Canada it's a reasonable time. In India and in the Philippines it's actually quite late, so we have staff who are from two countries around the world where it's close to midnight. I think the responsible thing to do here is, at the very least, to allow them to make their presentation. I think we have many interested individuals who are watching these proceedings, and at the end of the day, if we don't allow the witnesses to speak we're taking a chance, because we don't know when the next committee meeting will be. We assume it's going to be next Thursday. We don't know the availability of the staff in Chandigarh and in Makati. I would like to be able to hear from them.

There are some very serious issues and questions surrounding visiting visas, we all recognize that. We know that because it wasn't that long ago when we had the assurances from Mr. Dykstra saying that, yes, visiting visas are an issue and we're prepared to do a study on it. When that commitment was made I was told we would all be able to invite witnesses. The two witnesses I had chosen were representatives from the Philippines and from India. Now this morning is that window of opportunity for them to be able to make a presentation, and if we don't allow them to make the presentation I think I would be denied the witnesses, unless Mr. Dykstra is prepared to guarantee that if by chance we don't deal with them, we will get another opportunity before the study concludes. Because I think these two embassies are of critical importance for us to be able to have a discussion and have questions and answers.

So I look across the way and I ask members to be reasonable. We've already started the meeting, and given that we've started the meeting and we've had Sharon already and she was 30% into her presentation, she should be allowed to conclude her remarks. Let's do at least one round in terms of questions and answers. Then we can go onto the other two witnesses.

Really, what we're talking about is maybe an hour and fifteen minutes, then we can deal with the different types of motions that are there, Madam Chair. That would be my suggestion for the committee.

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

The chair would like to deal with the point of order that's there, and I think we have gone into quite a bit of discussion on this.

I do have Ms. Sitsabaiesan on the agenda.

Did you have anything you wanted to add?

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Yes. I was just confused, Madam Chair, because Mr. Dykstra was proposing that we deal with motions that are before us, but as far as I've been advised by the clerk, we don't have any motions in front of us.

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

That's not correct.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

I'm not sure what it is that we want to actually look at. As I said earlier as well—I don't want to be repeating myself over and over. I know that last week, Madam Chair, you had given notice of a motion and we got an e-mail from the clerk for notice of other motions from Mr. Lamoureux. But we don't really have any motions on the table before us that are moved and so we are not dealing with any motions currently. We are dealing with witnesses who are present, mid-sentence and at midnight, waiting for us. I just find it utterly disrespectful to our witnesses who are here that we're sitting here bickering about who gets to talk first. I don't know what it is exactly we're bickering about at this point.

What I'm saying once again, Madam Chair, is that we don't have a motion that has been moved and in front of us on the table right now. We have witnesses who are here for us at our request. We invited them to come to provide their expert testimony for us and now we're being disrespectful to them. I request to you, Madam Chair, that we do continue to hear from our witnesses because that is why we're here today. Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

As the chair, I'm going to actually say something here myself. Our meeting begins at 8:45. I walked into the meeting room at 8:45, a little bit late, so I do apologize. We already had the witness sitting in the chair, and two of them sitting on the screen—hello, Lillian; hi, Kent. What I did then was I proceeded with the business. I had already started with this agenda item.

Now, in the interest of compromise I have a suggestion here. I'm hoping every side will listen. We hear from this set of witnesses. We deal with the questions and answers for this set of witnesses. Then we move on to the committee business before we go on to the next set of witnesses, in respect of the fact that we do have witnesses here from different time zones and we have one witness who definitely had finished her introduction. I think that would give us more than enough time, more time than we ever allocate for committee business. That would be the chair's ruling in this case.

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

To be clear, we had agreed at our last meeting that the first thing we would do was deal with the motion that we had tabled and had spoke about. We were going to be dealing with it at the beginning of the meeting. There's one motion. All the motion is.... We could finish this in two seconds. All we're doing—

[The Vice-Chair (Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims), NDP, Jinny Sims]

Mr. Dykstra, I think what we agreed to at the last meeting was that I gave notice of a motion as well. Well, I wanted it discussed last week, but I was told it needed notice. I didn't have the 48 hours, so we would be discussing those at this meeting. No timing was determined, whether it would be first or last.