Industry Committee on Feb. 25th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Do I have approval of the committee?

Monsieur Lemire.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I think the idea was to make the sentence flow better.

Ultimately, I'm not opposed to it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Are there any other comments?

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I think they were already reflected in the long version, so I think it's fine.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Just to explain, the short version is literally what would go out on Twitter and social media. If there are enough characters to include “affordability and accessibility” and if it's the will of the committee, we can do that.

Thank you very much.

With respect to the telecom study—not the fraud study, but the telecom study—we are going to have a written brief, or a backgrounder. Would the committee be interested in having a briefing from the department?

Thank you.

We will see if we can line that up for March 24 before we see witnesses.

Mr. Erskine Smith.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

The only other thing would be this. I had asked the analysts if we could get a list of proposed witnesses for March 6, I think, and we want to make sure that we set some time aside on March 10 or March 12 to discuss witnesses or that we have a subcommittee meeting to do so.

Again, March 24 will come up on us pretty quickly, and if we don't have witnesses lined up, we should make sure there's some timeline advice so that we have a deadline for witnesses on that front, too.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Your suggestion is to use some time on March 10 or March 12, or would you prefer—

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Or just now set a deadline to get our witness list, say, post March 6. Get witnesses in for at least a preliminary—it doesn't have to be a final—cut-off, but at least we have witnesses that we're proposing because we have a calendar to build out by, say, March 11 or March 12.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Okay.

Madam Rempel Garner.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I like that.

Maybe what we could do, because we're starting on March 24, is have maybe half an hour at the end of the meeting on May 5—it doesn't have to be a hard date, but somewhere within the first week of May—where we can regroup after a few meetings to consider whether we need more witnesses and that sort of stuff. Maybe we could do a soft list with the understanding that there might be a desire to invite more down the road.

Also, I'd ask whether we need to talk about a formal travel submission today because that will inform this as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

I just want to double-check. We had allocated eight meetings towards this study, so that brings us to May 5—

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Okay, sorry, I didn't count properly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

—if we are starting back on March 24.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

It's fine.

What was being proposed for the witness deadline?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

We have a proposal from Mr. Erskine-Smith.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I said an initial soft deadline.

I was thinking that if the analysts got us a proposed list of witnesses for March 6, then some time the following week we could have a deadline where we come back with the witnesses who we want to prioritize.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Sure, okay.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Then we could revisit it at the end of April or whatever the case may be.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Mr. Erskine-Smith, your proposal is to have a preliminary list of witnesses submitted to the clerk on March 6.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

No. The analysts, using their research, would get us a list of witnesses who would be relevant to this committee. We would then have a few days to look it over, and maybe by March 12 we would have a proposed list of witnesses that we would submit. There's no magic to it. March 10, March 11, March 12.... I don't really have a strong view on it. It's not going to take too long, I don't think, to identify the key ones from the analysts' list.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Is that acceptable?

The goal is that we receive some time at the end of the week of March 3—

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

—a potential list of witnesses from the analysts for review the week of March 10, with a deadline of Friday, March 13, for members of the committee to submit to the clerk formal lists of witnesses who they would like invite to those meetings starting March 24. Is that correct?

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

If that's sufficient time to get everyone in place, then yes, I think that would be a good schedule.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Is that acceptable to the committee?