Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Oct. 18th, 2011

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Miriam Burke]

Honourable members, I see a quorum. We can now proceed to the election of the chair. Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the chair must be a member of the government party.

I'm ready to receive motions for the chair.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

I move that Scott Reid be nominated as chair.

[The Clerk]

Are there any further motions?

Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?

(Motion agreed to)

I declare Mr. Reid duly elected chair of the subcommittee.

Before inviting Mr. Reid to take the chair, if the subcommittee wishes, we'll now proceed to the election of the vice-chairs.

Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the first vice-chair must be a member of the official opposition.

I am now prepared to receive motions for the position of first vice-chair.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I'd be delighted to nominate my colleague and friend Wayne Marston to be the vice-chair.

[The Clerk]

Moved by Mr. Cotler that Mr. Marston be elected first vice-chair of the committee.

Are there any further motions? No?

Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?

(Motion agreed to)

I declare the motion carried and Mr. Marston duly elected first vice-chair of the subcommittee.

Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the second vice-chair must be a member of an opposition party other than the official opposition. I am now prepared to receive a motion for second vice-chair.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

I feel that this is almost unnecessary, but Mr. Irwin Cotler would definitely be the one.

[The Clerk]

Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?

(Motion agreed to)

I declare the motion carried and Mr. Cotler duly elected second vice-chair of the subcommittee.

I now invite the Chair to take the chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Just give us a minute. The clerk and I will have a little conclave.

What we're going to do, if there is no objection, is to pass around the routine motions that were used in our last Parliament by this subcommittee. I assume nobody objects?

These may, if the subcommittee chooses, serve as a template for what we do this time.

While we're waiting for that, I just want to ask members of the subcommittee to deal with an issue that's always been a little bit of a problem for us, and that is picking the right time for all of us to meet. In the last Parliament, we met from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I guess that by default that is what we're doing this time around. But it may not be the most convenient time for members, and it's be reasonable for us to have a discussion on this. Our experience was that the discussion on that was itself very time-consuming.

So what I'm going to suggest is that everybody sit down and the those who find this current time problematic submit to the clerk the times that do and don't work for them. Obviously, I'm hoping that this will be conveyed to Mr. Hiebert, who isn't here today because this time is problematic for him.

The clerk will—and I don't envy her in this role—seek to come back with a range of different options. Hopefully out of them we will arrive at something that works for everybody or that is not, at any rate, hugely problematic. It could be this time; it could be a different time.

Please get those to her as soon as possible so that we can have that discussion either at our next meeting—or offline, between meetings, we can bounce options back and forth.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Both meetings.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Right now.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

This isn't an appropriate time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Let's leave it to be done separately.

In the last Parliament, these were the routine motions that were used. I think everybody has two sheets. One says "Principal Routine motions, Principales motions de régie interne”. The second one says....

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

We have principal routine motions, but we don't have anything else.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

All right. Just wait until the second sheet gets passed out.

You've now got the two lists. The one that says principal routine motions is basically the standard, one-size-fits-all proposal that is put out for all committees to consider. The routine motions adopted from the last Parliament were the ones we used last time.

There are a couple of suggestions that the clerk has made on her own. If I've got this right, she thinks these suggestions might be useful to add to the routine motions we adopted last time. I'm saying this all by way of pre-empting a possible motion that someone may make to adopt all of the rules from last time.

Do you want to go ahead and mention what those are?

[The Clerk]

Sure. The first would be....

Actually, wouldn't it be better if we just go through them and then when we get there—

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Okay.

Mr. Marston, were you going to say something?

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

What I was going to say is that I'll move the previous rules that we had, and then amendments can be added to that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

All right. That's in order. So we have a motion on the floor.

Mr. Marston is proposing that we adopt the rules we had last time. He then makes a further suggestion that having done that, we would be able to discuss the proposals that the clerk has and go through them one by one.

First of all, is there debate on that?

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

There is no debate on it, but can we go in camera then, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

We have a motion to go in camera. That takes priority. That's a simple yes-no vote.

All in favour of going in camera?

[Some honourable members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

[Proceedings continue in camera]

[Public proceedings resume]

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Mr. Sweet, you indicated you had an item of business.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to say that, of course, I'm grateful to my constituents for trusting me again and re-electing me, and I'm certain that's the case with every member of Parliament who's here. There's one member of Parliament who isn't here, who did some great work with us, and we developed a very professional relationship. I would like to make it known that we will miss MP Mario Silva at our future meetings. He was one of the great examples of our working in a conciliatory fashion. He definitely had a big heart for human rights. He was a big champion in the last weeks of our meetings of the Christian minorities persecuted around the world.

I want to put on the public record my expression of gratitude for his work and, of course, my best wishes for him in the future as well. I would also make it public for the members as well that we do have him as our main speaker at the national interfaith breakfast that's coming up in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the United Nations declaration against religious intolerance. I'm certain he'll be a good keynote speaker.

I wanted to say that, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the opportunity.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Okay. Thank you.

Does anybody else have items of business? If not, I have something.

Professor Cotler.