Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 8th, 2006

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

It would happen when there are significant pieces of legislation that are introduced, that go into another committee, but that fall within the mandate of this committee as well. I can think of potentially two, at the moment, including the Federal Accountability Act. There are potentially other issues that could go to other committees, for instance, health or status of women.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maurice Vellacott]

Okay. That's significant. That has been moved.

Is it a friendly amendment from your point of view, Mr. Bruinooge or should we just proceed to discussion?

[Rod Bruinooge, Conservative, Winnipeg South, MB]

It wouldn't be a friendly amendment. I think it substantially changes the motion I made. I think perhaps it might be a subject for a new motion, so I suppose the next step would be some discussion of this amendment.

Ms. Neville, go ahead, please.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Mr. Chairman, I will withdraw the motion and introduce it as a separate motion and give 48 hours' notice, which will make it a little simpler.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maurice Vellacott]

Okay. You would endeavour to do that, so we will have that withdrawn at this point.

We go back to the motion as it stands here unamended, with the undertaking that we will have a new amendment put forward subsequently, with the 48-hour notice. So we're back to the main motion now.

Do we have agreement in respect of this? Are there any suggestions for tweaking it?

Seeing no indications of anyone wanting to speak to the motion then, do we have agreement around the committee table, with just a quick show of hands, or do we have any discussion in respect of this?

We'll call the vote on that unamended motion.

(Motion agreed to)

[The Chair, Conservative, Maurice Vellacott]

We have gone through all of those for which we had the adequate 48-hour advance notice. Now we can proceed to our workplan.

Would everybody grab that in hand and consult that? It was passed to you. There are some additions being distributed as well. Roger has some additional ones here too. There are suggestions by Yvon Lévesque, Colin Mayes, and Harold Albrecht. There are two by Yvon, three by Mr. Mayes, and three by Mr. Albrecht.

As we proceed to that, I should first report that we did contact the minister's office and the minister is prepared to come, which is encouraging. He is not dodging us, and he has committed to come as soon as we require. He could come as early as a week from Wednesday. That may be something that we should look at, discuss, and respond to very quickly.

Could you give me some direction in respect of what you want in regard to the minister coming--whether that is your wish or not? Is there any response to my contact with the minister, who is prepared to come to this committee a week from this coming Wednesday? Are we agreeable to that?

That is a week from Wednesday, Nancy. The minister is prepared to come and lay out his--

[Nancy Karetak-Lindell, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

May 17?

[The Chair, Conservative, Maurice Vellacott]

Yes. He is prepared to come and respond to the committee, and you can put him on the hot seat and query and quiz and challenge him with respect to vision and those types of issues and priorities he might have.

Anita.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I have no problem with that, but my question to you is, do we know if the minister is tabling legislation that will be coming to this committee?

[The Chair, Conservative, Maurice Vellacott]

I defer to the parliamentary secretary.

[Rod Bruinooge, Conservative, Winnipeg South, MB]

Mr. Chair, I did indicate at the last meeting that as soon as I have indication of legislation that is forthcoming, I will bring it before this committee as soon as possible.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maurice Vellacott]

So there is nothing at the present time and we should just proceed with our plan.

[Rod Bruinooge, Conservative, Winnipeg South, MB]

There is nothing for me to report currently.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maurice Vellacott]

Okay, there is nothing currently to report, Anita.

Monsieur Lemay.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

If we receive the minister on the 17th, will we have a briefing session with the officials from the department first?

[The Chair, Conservative, Maurice Vellacott]

C'est une bonne question.

I guess that's a possibility if you propose to do that or for us to proceed in that manner. I guess, first off, my question is this. Do you want the minister to come a week from this Wednesday?

Of course, under that scenario, we have this Wednesday and Monday in terms of open dates. If you want to propose at that point that we have department officials in prior and preparatory, as some would suggest, then that could be done or it could be arranged to be done. We would need to have those people given notice to be here on the scene.

I have a further comment. I have invited the minister to appear. He is prepared to appear at the earliest opportunity and to come on Wednesday, the 17th of this month. Are we agreed to that?

Okay. Seeing no dissent, we'll schedule that on May 17th to have the minister appear before this committee.

On the next order of business, as we get into this, we're kind of moving into this in an interesting fashion. Monsieur Lemay proposes that in view of the fact that we've got a “book end” of a sort occurring on the Wednesday of this week and the Monday, because we can't launch a full bore study on something, you're implying that we should maybe have the minister on the Wednesday and the briefings by departmental officials on the Wednesday and the Monday prior.

Mr. Albrecht.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

I was only going to say, Mr. Chairman, that I would wholeheartedly support having the briefings prior to the minister appearing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maurice Vellacott]

Okay. On the nature of these briefings, to again be clear, I need to understand what you all intend by that.

Monsieur Lemay.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I would like us to have a briefing session with the official representatives of the department this Wednesday. If we haven't finished after two hours, we can resume the meeting the following Monday. That way we'll be sure we have a clear picture of the department before we meet the minister.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maurice Vellacott]

Are you suggesting, Mr. Lemay, that we only have one meeting in respect of the issue of the department officials coming to give us a scan of things?

There has also been a suggestion from our good clerk at the table that at one of these meetings, it has been suggested, there should be a scan in terms of the geographical layout of the various First Nations. That's a very big, tall order. Is that what you're talking about?

Our clerk has a suggestion. She will make that suggestion and then you can respond to it, but we need to proceed as quickly as we can.

[Mary Hurley]

The discussion I had with the clerk was in relation to briefings that were done in the context of the First Nations governance bill in 2003. I believe the composition of the committee was quite different at that time, but members of the committee found it very useful at that time to have a general briefing on demographics: that is, on the populations of the various aboriginal peoples in Canada; where the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis settlements are in Canada; employment levels; education levels, etc. I think this kind of basic information was considered very useful at the time.

I believe Mr. Lemay was interested in getting an overview of the department's function and organization, so that could be a second briefing.

I think the demographic information is readily available to the department and could probably be available in short order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maurice Vellacott]

We're talking about maps, charts, and graphs with respect to laying it out visually for us, I assume.

[Mary Hurley]

The way it was done in 2003 was with a PowerPoint presentation. It had maps and graphs, but it was also very accessible information. At the time, I thought it was useful.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maurice Vellacott]

Okay. Do we want to move to a scenario where we have, as you've suggested, the demographic material across the country for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people? Or you could go right to the department in terms of their scan and the outlay of what they'll do and the organization, programs, and services of DIAND. Do you have a suggestion?

Mr. Lemay, do you want to go with your suggestion first, which turns up as one of the suggested topics here? Do you want this on Wednesday?

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I think so. Our researcher's idea is a good one. It would be good to have a PowerPoint presentation to explain how this department operates. That way, we could ask more in-depth question on Wednesday and put much more specific questions to the directions general. I find this is an interesting idea. I want to have a clear understanding of how this department operates throughout Canada.