Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 25th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Fine. The motion is in order.

It's admissible. It's quite perfect in terms of its form and it met the notice requirements, so we'll entertain any discussion on the motion at this point.

Mr. Duncan.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

I got hung up a little bit at the start of this conversation, after the northern economic development witnesses, so I've got two things that I want to speak to. One is directly related to the motion and the other is that we have the visit from the minister on estimates. The supps (A) should be in place by that time as well, so I'm just thinking we should try to wrap the two together.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

We're going to have to separate those two issues. We've got this one. We'll take Mr. Lévesque's motion as moving that and putting that forward. If we have time, we'll come back to that other motion as another scheduling issue.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Okay.

The other thing is on the specifics of this motion. We have the minister here this week. I think it's totally reasonable to ask the officials and the advisory board to come before the committee. I just think we have an opportunity to question the minister on this, this week, so why not, once again, wrap that together at that time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Madam Crowder.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

I guess we will only have the minister here for an hour, and with the estimates and everything else that's before us, it seems to me this northern program needs more attention than that, particularly with the committee's focus on northern economic development. So it doesn't seem reasonable to try to deal with estimates and this motion at the same time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Ms. Crowder.

I'll make just a brief comment before we go to the next question.

The committee has already adopted one motion of business, the child family services motion. That is a future business item that we agreed to push off to a later time. We also have a relatively full schedule from now until the end of the session. So the options would be to either find a gap with the existing schedule between now and the end of the session or, alternatively, we could look to provide or open up another time slot in addition to the two two-hour meetings we currently have. It's up to the committee—it's your committee, it's your schedule—how you wish to do this.

Now we'll go to Monsieur Lemay.

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

Mr. Chair, I completely agree with my colleague, Ms. Crowder. It is an entirely different point. It is completely different. In fact, we should adopt the motion here, today. The subcommittee could then decide when we will study it in more detail and which witnesses we will invite.

We cannot get rid of a $75 million program that grows 5% to 10% per year. It is a very important program for northern development. It is also consistent with what we are currently studying. Food and transportation are among the major development problems in the north. That is why we should pass this motion. Then we can decide when to study it in depth. We will find a date.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Lemay.

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Just to add to my earlier discussion, my concern is if we don't ask questions on it when we have the minister before us, we may not get an opportunity before the summer break. If you want to push it off to the fall, that's not an unlikely situation.

I think we should try to use Thursday with the minister to ask some questions on this program. There's a lot of literature out there. There's been a lot of Q and A, and there's been a lot of very solid, positive reaction from the north to the announcement last week as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Mr. Rickford.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Just a comment, Mr. Chair.

A number of my communities are listed as potential serious participants in this program. I'm thinking that while the minister may introduce and make some comments about it and answer some questions, I'm really interested in the program officials, who will speak more to the implementation issues that I'm concerned about. I'm sure we would, or we could, find time to explore with them. I have a series of questions. I've been through the preliminary literature we have been supplied with. I think they are the ones who are going to be most capable of answering. So they would be available for the longer period of time for questioning, and I'm sure far more able to answer some of the technical questions we might have around administration and implementation of this very important program.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Mr. Rickford.

Monsieur Lévesque. He will be followed by Madam Neville and Mr. Russell.

Go ahead.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

I just have some additional points.

When the minister appears before the committee to study the budget, we always run out of time. It is just for the budget. We never have enough time to ask him questions. He always has to leave too early.

I think we have to accept the motion. The subcommittee will discuss and develop a work plan based on it. We will work with that. It is important to have a separate discussion, because there will be different stakeholders. I am sure that Ms. Copland will not be here for the study of the budget. She is a very important person for the current program. I think we have to adopt the motion today and talk about it with the subcommittee in order to adapt the work accordingly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you.

Ms. Neville.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I think it's important that we deal with this topic separately and quite apart from the estimates process. I've been part of an estimates process in which we got consumed with the food mail program and did not get a chance to answer a number of what I think are quite pressing issues in the department. So I would not support incorporating this into it. Let the subcommittee find the time. There's always a way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you, Ms. Neville.

Mr. Russell.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

I share some of the sentiments that have already been expressed around the table. This affects many of my communities--although the department wasn't off to a great start; it listed six Labrador communities as being from northern Manitoba. I would think they would want to look at least at Google Earth or something that might be available to them. It doesn't instill much confidence that they know what they're doing with the program. I think we need to deal with it.

Maybe if there is time available under the northern economic development study--this is an integral piece--then we can fit it in there. That would accommodate not having to add an additional meeting. It would give Mr. Lévesque and all of us who are concerned, Mr. Rickford and others who are impacted by this in our communities, the time to address it adequately. Then it's up to the minister to find the time to be here with us. He took the time to be in Iqaluit, and I understand how important it is to him. It's only a hop, skip, and a jump from his office over here. He should be able to accommodate us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay. Seeing no other speakers, I recommend--if the motion is adopted without any specific direction as to when--that the subcommittee have a meeting next week and look at the schedule. We need to do that anyway. We generally have one subcommittee meeting for each series of sitting weeks. So we'll try to schedule that for next week, to look at this issue and other scheduling issues between now and the end of the session.

I would say only that because we're getting down to the wire here, the next three weeks, I'm not so sure we'll be able to get the minister. I don't know whether members have any opinions on whether the minister is absolutely necessary. Is that a make or break? Should we go ahead with the meeting even if we can't get the minister, bring the senior director for the program?

Monsieur Lemay.

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

We will see what the minister has to say on Thursday. If we can ask him a question on Thursday, so much the better. Otherwise, we'll see. The minister implemented the program, and theLeader of the Government in the House of Commons decided this morning that ministers have to be accountable.

I am sorry, but that was too easy.

[Some hon. members]

Ha, ha!

[An hon. member]

Question!

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Okay. Are we ready for the question?

[John Duncan, Conservative, Vancouver Island North, BC]

I was waiting for Monsieur Lemay to actually come forward with that. I do want to say something.

I sat on this committee through parliaments when it was like pulling teeth to get ministers to come before this committee. I want to say for the record that this minister has bent over backwards to accommodate this committee. There are a lot of assumptions being made here. I think we're maybe prone to taking it a little bit for granted that a minister can be as available as you're suggesting. It seems like every whim of the committee is suddenly absolutely essential. Our work schedule is getting further and further behind, and we do have legislation.

I would like to ask a separate question--once again not related to this motion. I'll wait until we have dealt with the motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Are we ready for the question?

This is the question on the adoption of the motion.

Oh, you want a recorded vote? Okay, we'll have a recorded vote.