International Trade Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2007

[The Clerk]

Mr. Chair, thank you for the question.

I wouldn't presume to know the members' intentions. My reading of the rules is that once any report is reported back to the House, if any member wants to give notice of concurrence in that report they can do so. And once the notice for a motion of concurrence is given, it's added to the list.

Someone mentioned the list in order of precedence, and there is quite a substantial list of motions in concurrence. The way the Speaker selects which motion is going to be debated is if there is more than one motion proposed during the motions rubric in routine proceedings, then the Speaker selects which one is higher on the order of the ones that have been moved.

So if two people have expressed an interest to move a motion, the Speaker will select the one that's higher up, that was given notice earlier. So that's the way that would work.

[Lui Temelkovski, Liberal, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

And then?

[The Clerk]

And then once that motion is moved, then there's a three-hour debate on that.

[Lui Temelkovski, Liberal, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

And would that stop the signing of the agreement?

[The Clerk]

I wouldn't presume to know that. That's....

[Brian Pallister, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

No, you can't stop the signing of the agreement. You can't stop anything with a debate. We get to debate it when it's signed. It's the way it's always worked, under your government too.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

So why report it?

[Brian Pallister, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

It makes no sense.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Is that clear?

[Brian Pallister, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

If I could, I can address--

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

Can you answer my question?

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Let's be clear. That's the whole point here, John. Your question was...?

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

We want to study this issue, we want to prepare a report, and we want to send that report back to the House of Commons. What we don't want to have happen is that the government sign an agreement while we're doing this--or if they do, they do it perhaps at their peril.

I think it's unfair that they should sign an agreement--

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

But frankly, I think it's beyond the realm of this committee if they do that.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

But how do we give them notice that we're settling this without opening up the whole can of worms of a three-hour debate?

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Frankly, I don't think it matters. You can have a three-hour debate or not have a three-hour debate, and it isn't going to make any difference whether or not the agreement is signed or not signed. There will be a debate on the agreement in any event, I would presume, but I don't think this committee can change the course of it--other than to make recommendations, as we intend to do.

We've got three weeks until Christmas. You're presuming that the government is going to conclude an agreement with Korea before Christmas, before we report.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

They've been negotiating for some time.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

The possibility is there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Frankly, I just can't imagine that whether or not we report this motion to the House will make the difference. If we get at it and do the report and send the report to the House, the sooner we send the report to the House, then the debate can commence. If you want, we can have a concurrence motion on our report, rather than on our intent to have a report.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

Mr. Pallister thinks he has a compromise position.

[Brian Pallister, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Well, I hope so, if I may.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Yes. There are four ahead of you on the list. It's Mr. Cannan, Mr. Dhaliwal, Mr. Pallister, Mr. Laforest, and then Mr. Julian. But I think there was a specific question asked of the mover of the amendment. Do you want to respond to Mr. Maloney?

[Brian Pallister, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

I think this addresses the concerns that John and Navdeep expressed. I'm not sure if it will address Peter's entirely or not.

I'd suggest that the committee agree that we as a committee--because you know my feeling about delegating our job to the House, I think it subverts the work we're here to do....

My compromise is why don't we do a press release as a committee, send that out, say this is the work we're undertaking as a committee, and in that way it addresses your concerns about making sure it's on the record that this is being studied by this committee now.

We don't get a debate out of it. I know that's apparently what one of our members wants, but we do as a committee keep control of our own agenda and at the same time we communicate openly and clearly that we're studying this issue. Ultimately, if the negotiators arrive at an agreement--which we don't know here and shouldn't pretend to know--while our study is going on, you would all have the right as committee members to say we want an emergency debate or we want to adopt a motion censuring the government. You can do any number of things as a committee to express your concerns at that point.

But I don't think we can cover off all the possibilities here. So if we do a press release as a committee, we are doing our job, and we're keeping control of our own agenda, gentlemen, which I think is very important here.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

And also informing the minister--a press release to the letter to the minister. Right?

[Brian Pallister, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

I think so.