Industry Committee on Oct. 15th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Are there any questions or comments?

(Motion agreed to)

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Now, regarding the transcripts of in camera meetings, I move:

That one copy of the transcript of each in camera meeting be kept in the committee clerk's office for consultation by members of the committee or by their staff.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Members, are there any questions or comments?

(Motion agreed to)

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

The next routine motion is on notices of motion:

That 48 hours' notice be required for any substantive motion to be considered by the committee unless the substantive motion relates directly to business then under consideration; that the notice of motion be filed and distributed to members by the clerk in both official languages and that completed motions that are received by 4 p.m. be distributed to members the same day; that 48 hours' notice, interpreted as two nights, shall be required for any substantive motion to be considered by the committee unless the substantive motion relates directly to business then under consideration, provided that (1), the notice be filed with the clerk of the committee no later than 4 p.m. from Monday to Friday, (2) the motion be distributed to members in both official languages by the clerk on the same day the said notice was transmitted if it was received no later than the deadline hour; and (3), notices received after the deadline hour or on non-business days be deemed to have been received during the next business day, and that when the committee is traveling outside the parliamentary precinct, no substantive motions may be moved.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Is there any debate on that motion?

(Motion agreed to)

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

The next motion is on orders of reference from the House respecting bills:

That in relation to Orders of Reference from the House respecting Bills, (a) the clerk of the committee shall, upon the committee receiving such an Order of Reference, write to each member who is not a member of a caucus represented on the committee to invite those members to file with the clerk of the committee, in both official languages, any amendments to the Bill, which is the subject of the said Order, which they would suggest that the committee consider; (b) suggested amendments filed, pursuant to paragraph (a), at least 48 hours prior to the start of clause-by-clause consideration of the Bill to which the amendments relate shall be deemed to be proposed during the said consideration, provided that the committee may, by motion, vary this deadline in respect of a given Bill; and (c) during the clause-by-clause consideration of a Bill, the chair shall allow a member who filed suggested amendments, pursuant to paragraph (a), an opportunity to make brief representations in support of them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Are there any questions or comments?

(Motion agreed to)

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Madam Chair, another routine motion adopted previously by this committee reads:

That all meetings of the committee, other than those deemed to be in camera, be televised or, if that is not possible, be webcast.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Are there any questions or comments?

(Motion agreed to)

Thank you very much, Ms. Jaczek.

Seeing that it is 11:33, we do have some time still for this meeting. I'd like to open the floor for any questions, concerns or anything that anyone would like to bring forward.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Chair, I have a couple things to inquire about concerning timelines, our meetings and availability in the House.

We have estimates in front of us as well. We've received some appointments and also a report from the parliamentary budget officer that might require some scheduling. Then we have our previous business to discuss.

I don't know if you have a plan for that. I would move a motion that all previous work of the committee be adopted and returned.

This way we could, number one, table our fraud report, and number two, bring back any of the evidence and testimony we had with the previous studies under COVID-19 that might be relevant for any subsequent work.

If that's in order, I would move that to start with, because I'm concerned with some timelines of reporting back to the House and availability of meeting space.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you so much.

I'll just clarify, with respect to the orders in council, the report and the main estimates, that we do have the dates that those are required to be handled by. If it's the will of the committee to do so, we will schedule them accordingly. We will use the subcommittee much more this session than we had a chance to in the past session to make sure that we schedule all of these things.

Now, Mr. Masse, you brought forward a motion to return to the work of the previous session. I think it's important that we clarify which studies you're referring to. You referred to the report on fraudulent calls. I think it's probably the will of the committee to table that one. I would like you to clarify which studies you would like to bring forward, so that we can open it up to debate with the members.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The simple one is the fraud one that we had, which was basically ready to go out the gate, so to speak. I'll leave that aside and thank members for that.

The other one would be with regard to COVID-19. I think we were in discussions on that and in getting something more concrete, so I would entertain that as the next priority.

I'm open to the other work we've done. We can have further discussions on it, but with respect, it would be the COVID-19 work that we were almost getting completed on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Do we have any debate on the motion?

I see Mr. Erskine-Smith.

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

For the sake of our time and being efficient and more focused, it would be useful if we adopted Brian's motion very restricted to say, let's move forward with the one on fraudulent calls and get it out of the way, and then to punt the rest of the work for scheduling purposes and getting things done this fall to the subcommittee. We can then map out a proper agenda of what we're going to tackle, when we're going to tackle it, and seeing what time we can actually allocate to the different issues.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Mr. Erskine-Smith, are you suggesting an amendment to Mr. Masse's motion?

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

Yes, if Brian is open to that.

It would be useful to hammer out the fraud report, which is done, and away we go. I think that should be returned. However, for the remainder of the work, because with COVID it was not entirely clear what we were thinking of ultimately landing on in terms of recommendations, more time will be required there. I've just received a lot of notices of motion. That, in conjunction with the new notices received, could be a focus of discussion at the subcommittee on agenda and procedure.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I consider that a friendly amendment. The only thing on which I might give clarification is that I was just worried that none of that could be discussed in the subcommittee if it wasn't actually formally adopted in this group.

I agree with what you're suggesting and how to get there. The only thing I was concerned about is whether we had to formally somehow adopt that work for it to be relevant in the subcommittee.

I don't know. I don't think I've ever been down that road before.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

The purpose of the subcommittee is, in fact, to discuss agenda and procedure. What would happen is that the motion would be sent to the subcommittee, the subcommittee being the five members, who would discuss, debate, and then bring it back to the full committee for fulsome debate and ultimately a vote. That's the purpose of the subcommittee.

The motion does not have to pass here to be sent to subcommittee. It gets dealt with at subcommittee and then comes back to us to debate and to vote on.

Mr. Masse, you didn't have a perfectly worded motion on the floor, but the clerk can work with us to have that worded out.

Right now, we have an amendment on the floor that the committee reintroduce the fraudulent calls study that was pretty much finalized in the last session, reintroduce it to be able to table it in the House in the second session of the 43rd Parliament.

Is there any other debate on that? Mr. Dreeshen, I know you had your hand up, but is it on the amendment or the original motion?

Mr. Dreeshen, on the amendment.

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

Thank you.

I suppose it's on the amendment, because the amendment has taken off some of the other potential studies we have. My concern is that if we don't put the rural broadband onto it and it simply becomes an add-on where the discussion would take place in subcommittee, and it might then be thrown into the mix of all the other motions we've seen. I believe it is a critical one for us to put in.

From that position, I'm more inclined to consider Brian's more all-encompassing type of motion. Therefore, I believe this is simply restrictive.

Taking that into account, I also recognize what you've just mentioned as far as the subcommittee work is concerned. I just don't want to see some of the studies we've done get mixed in with new things that we're going to be discussing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Okay. Is there any further debate on the amendment to the motion?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Sorry, Madam Chair, but as just a point of clarification so we might avoid a vote, it is a friendly amendment. That's why I appreciate what Earl said, but it is friendly. The main motion is just, let's deal with fraud, and that's it. Then I think it's just one vote.

Earl's sentiment has been expressed. That was really what I was trying to get to. I think we all agree that this work and the way he expressed it is where we want to get to.

I don't know if that makes sense, because again, as I just mentioned, the amendment by Mr. Erskine-Smith is friendly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Mr. Erskine-Smith, you wanted to intervene.

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

Yes.

I don't think the intention is to drop any of the work we did before, but just to make sure that we deal with it in a focused way. I personally found our COVID study to be very wide-ranging and all over the place and I think it would be very useful to have a subcommittee meeting just to say, how do we focus our efforts and what product are we delivering to the House?

There are lots of new motions and we need to discuss how we are going to usefully spend our time in the months ahead, whereas the fraud report is clearly done and can be tabled and away we go. For the rest of the work, though, we are going to need, as a committee, to have some agenda in front of us for how we knock things off.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Is there any debate on the amendment?

Monsieur Lemire.

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

Thank you.

I obviously agree with the spirit of the discussion currently taking place. In this spirit, I prepared a motion, which was sent to you yesterday. We can also adopt Mr. Masse's wording or something that can be comprehensive.

Remember that we added an aside regarding the Investment Canada Act. I'd like this to be included as well. In terms of the Internet and so on, this was part of our Canadian response to COVID-19. I think that we must ensure that this work isn't lost in order to start our proceedings.