Industry Committee on Oct. 26th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

We can approach this in a couple of different ways—

[Alex Nuttall, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

I'm fine with whichever way you want to approach it, Mr. Chair. I'm not going to fight you on it if you want to take the two days and it comes back Monday or whatever.

To me it's more about something I think we should be conducting as part of this study. It was made very clear to me that this was not something the committee wanted to proceed with. I just wanted to put this forward and at least have the discussion and get my thoughts out there on the subject matter.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

What I'll do is ask for unanimous consent to deal with the issue right now. I don't have an issue with that.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

I believe the rules allow that if a motion arises out of the business presently before the committee, it does not require 48-hour notice. If this motion arises out of the failure to deal with this issue in this study, it would seem to me that the motion is in order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

No; the way the motion reads right now, it's a new study.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

I understand it's asking for a new study, Mr. Chair, but the rules say that notice is not required if the motion arises out of the business before the committee at the present time. What I heard Mr. Nuttall say was that this has been omitted from this study, so it would seem to be part of the business of the committee that is before us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

I clarified with the clerk, and from the way it's written, it would be considered as a separate study. However, we can deal with this right now if we have unanimous consent.

Do we have unanimous consent to move forward with this motion?

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I think the basic premise is a good one, and it is a big question mark. The only point I would like to make—and I don't know how it could be dealt with—is that we really can't study something until we know the mechanisms that are actually going to be put in place to determine what the impacts would be.

Personally speaking, I think we could consider something in the report that says this is a big watch-out and that this will, one way or another, have an intended consequence on manufacturing. Obviously we want it to have a positive intended consequence, but in life there are sometimes unintended consequences.

I would not have a problem with saying we need to look at this issue. To say we can look at it in the immediate future would not make sense to me, because I do not know the mechanisms that are going to be put in place. I would be open to having a footnote to say that this issue was brought up and identified as something not addressed that will need to be addressed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

I'm going to come back to the original question. Do we have consent to actually debate the original motion right now?

We don't?

Then we will take it as a notice of motion and deal with it at a later date.

We are going to move on. As we have Mr. Halucha, who is going to leave at 4:30, and the Department of National Defence—

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Yes?

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

I'm sorry. I'm new to the committee, but I guess I don't understand what kind of invitation was issued. Since the committee is meeting for two hours, the idea that senior public servants who reside in Ottawa would not be available for the full committee meeting is quite surprising to me, from all my experience in committees.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

They may have other meetings to go to.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

With due respect, this is a meeting of the House of Commons, and if we so desire we have the power to compel people to be here. I am not suggesting we do that, but it's the first time in my experience in Parliament that I've seen senior public servants who reside here not making themselves available for a full meeting to which they've been invited.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Throughout this whole committee, we've tried to be open and fair in our dealings with our witnesses, and we haven't had an issue. If by the end of this we feel we need to invite them back, then we as a committee can do that. As it stands right now, the longer we spend on this, the less time we have with Mr. Halucha and Mr. Fortin.

Yes, Mr. Lobb?

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

In the same vein, I mentioned this in the last meeting as well.

We brought back BDC. I had mixed feelings about that, because probably many of us on this committee had witnesses we would have loved to have appear. One that I thought of is the Huron Manufacturing Association. Their input would have served well. They could have been added on to the last part of this meeting today. They could have appeared the other day instead of the BDC. The Canadian Nuclear Association, although they weren't available the day that they were scheduled, could have been called back again.

The dairy producers of Canada is another group that does tremendous manufacturing and processing, not just in Ontario but in all the provinces. It would have served us well to hear what they had to say.

In some ways it's disappointing that in our final meeting on this study on manufacturing, we have members of this committee who we've heard are not getting orders from the whip, Andrew Leslie. What we've understood is that they're not, but for some reason they didn't want to hear Mr. Nuttall's motion on the impacts a carbon tax would have on manufacturing. That's unfortunate.

Then the final meeting today is scheduled from 3:30 to 5:30. No disrespect to our witnesses here today, but most of them are only going to be here until 4:30.

That's a pretty sorry end to our study, in my estimation. There's a lot more we could have heard. There's the chemistry association, and the testimony that they provided on Monday in regard to the uncertainty over carbon taxes, cap and trade, etc. in all the provinces, and then what the Liberal government is doing with the overarching carbon tax and the uncertainty that it's bringing. That should compel all the people at this table, all parties, to want to hear from people on this very topic.

It is true there are some jurisdictions that haven't implemented their system fully—

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Mr. Lobb, I need to interrupt. If you want to have your discussion about our witnesses, that's fine, but we were not unanimous on having the conversation about the carbon pricing, which you are referring to, so that's not for debate right now.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

My comment is on the overall conclusion of the study. I hope nobody is taking offence to my comments. It's just one member's opinion of some of the lost opportunities that we've had and about outstanding witnesses.

I don't sit on the subcommittee as well, but I'd also be interested to know the ratio of Liberal witnesses who attended or were invited, versus Conservative and NDP. There sure weren't too many on my list that were invited, and I'm sure Mr. Masse feels the same way.

Anyway, I won't belabour it any further, other than to say there are some lost opportunities.

The other one I'll mention again is the nuclear association. I understand they're going to send a written submission in. In the province of Ontario, other than the food processing sector and the auto sector, I would challenge if there is any other sector in manufacturing that is larger than the nuclear association and the nuclear industry. For them to not have a chance to come back and appear and provide the full input is unfortunate.

Maybe they had no interest. I don't know. Regardless, not hearing from people like this.... It's a huge industry. It's a huge growth industry. There are tens of thousands of employees in this sector in the province of Ontario—I'll just speak for the province of Ontario—and they're all good-paying jobs. The university sector as well as the colleges have come on board and are working with the nuclear industry to start to rejuvenate the sector.

It's a lost opportunity on the study. I'm sure that if we have a supplemental opinion to the report, we'll attach some of the missing pieces in there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Go ahead, Mr. Arya.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Mr. Chair, I will keep it very short.

I agree with Mr. Garrison. When we invite officials, we expect them to spend their full time here. You know, we may not get the opportunity to call them back, and we have three major departments all in one single meeting. The time may be very short for us to cover all three departments.

However, as I said, I'll keep it short. Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

It's my understanding Mr. Fortin has travel arrangements. Mr. Halucha has said that he can stay to the end, so it's up to you. We can keep going back and forth or we can go to our witnesses and maximize the time that they're here.

Go ahead, Mr. Dreeshen.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

I just want to quickly add to what had been mentioned. Because of the issues that we're having right now, and we've asked certain groups to submit written submissions to us, I'm just wondering if we could expand that somewhat so that perhaps all of those people on all the parties' lists could be invited to do the same, and that then could be included in our report.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Notices went out to all the witnesses. Some were able to come and some were not able to come. The clerk has no issue. We can send a notice to submit to the ones who didn't show up, and remember that we do have the link.

Is it still available, the link online for submissions?

[André Léonard, Committee Researcher]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

The link online is available as well, but we can definitely direct the clerk to do that.