International Trade Committee on May 3rd, 2007

[The Clerk]

“provincial and federal”

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Under the International Boundary Waters Treaty Act the provinces cannot export bulk water, so is a motion in order if it's factually incorrect?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Cannan, in response to your question, it's certainly my responsibility as chair, with advice from the clerk, to ensure that the process is followed. The accuracy of motions certainly isn't something we can.... It's up to the committee to decide what they want to pass at the committee and put before the House.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

In good conscience, knowing that it's illegal, it's not proper to support something that's contravening a treaty act that's already in place. So I won't be supporting—

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

You will have to convince the committee members, of course, that that's the case.

Mr. Lemieux.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

A point I'd like to bring up is that this is quite an amendment, and very hard to follow. I'd like to have it in front of me, actually. Not just I, but I think all members should have it in front of them, so we can understand the amendment and what its impact is on the motion, and then we can have a proper debate on it. Otherwise, we're going to be questioning, what was that part again, or, I couldn't quite follow the fourth part of the amendment.

So I'd like to have it in front of me.

[A voice]

We do that with bills.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I would also like to have a French version. So, we need to be given a copy in both English and French. Both languages are spoken here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Lemieux, you feel that all of the amendments made here are not perfectly clear to you, so you would like to see them in front of you. We'll arrange that, so just hold on a minute here.

I remind the committee that we have about a minute left.

It sounds like all the members—certainly on the government side—want copies of the changes made to the amendment. That's certainly reasonable, and we'll try to accommodate that.

Monsieur Cardin.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Chairman, as I mentioned in my introduction, this motion was tabled more than 48 hours ago. A copy was provided to every member. So, they should all have had an opportunity to examine it.

The changes proposed by Mr. Julian are not terribly important, in the sense that they do not change the essence of the motion. Rather, they are intended to introduce minor changes to the wording, and some of those changes are clarifications. I do not believe they fundamentally change the motion. Government members are aware of the motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Monsieur Cardin, I want to make it clear that I'm not ruling the motion out of order.

However, I think there were three or four changes made to your motion. It would have been very helpful to have those changes prepared ahead of time, if you knew this was going to happen—I guess I should be directing this at Mr. Julian—so we could have copies for all the members. The members have indicated they're uncomfortable not having those changes.

We're out of time for today. We're going to have to come back to this at the next meeting. Certainly, if we could have those amendments, Mr. Julian, brought to the committee, it would be extremely helpful.

Monsieur André, we are out of time.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Chairman, I would like to move a motion to extend the meeting by 10 minutes.

[An hon. member]

I second the motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Monsieur Cardin, at the start of the meeting I indicated we are going to end on time, and we will. We'll start on time the next time, and we'll end on time at the next meeting too.

The meeting is adjourned.