International Trade Committee on Oct. 14th, 2020

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

I don't know the order in which the motions were sent to you. Since we don't have much time, I would suggest the first two, meaning the first motion and the second motion.

[The Clerk]

Could you tell me what these motions are about?

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

One is about transparency, and the other is about the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Go ahead, Mr. Hoback.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

How are we going to handle this? If we haven't seen them, it's kind of hard for us to decide how to proceed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

That's what I was about to say.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Is there any advice from the clerk on how this was done in other committees?

[The Clerk]

As committees are different, there have been different ways committees have worked. Some have taken motions; others do not. Maybe we could send all the notices of motions to the members, and those can be discussed at the next meeting, or I could send right away the two motions that Mr. Savard-Tremblay would like to present to the committee. They can be discussed today or later, as the committee wishes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I would suggest that if anyone wanted to discuss further business, they could suggest it today, or send it to the committee. I don't think it's practical for us to receive an email off-screen, try to read it and understand the implications and agree to it today. We need the time to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to send different points of thought on different projects or studies they may want to do.

Not having received that information prior to today's meeting, it's very difficult for the chair to make any kind of decision on anything without having had sufficient time to look at it.

Go ahead, Mrs. Gray.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

We have submitted three motions as well. They're topics that I believe will receive a lot of consensus, as there have been some significant conversations. I have two motions, and we have another member on our side who has also submitted a motion.

My motion relates to the main estimates, which is a normal practice, because we do have a timeline for that. Many committees have been voting on that at their first meeting, as we are today. I have a motion to invite the Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade to the committee. That's a very brief and simple motion that we could potentially address today, because it's very simple, and other committees are doing that as well.

The second motion has to do with hearing from stakeholders with regard to the Canada-U.K. transitional agreement. As we know from, the U.K. agreement will not be applicable to CETA at the end of the year. This motion is extremely timely.

Those are the two motions I have submitted. Perhaps there might be a desire to discuss those today, in particular the one about having the minister appear, because other committees have been addressing that as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you.

Can I go back to Mr. Savard-Tremblay for a minute? We were trying to clarify what we were going to do, so I need to go back to him to give him an opportunity to reference the motions he submitted to the clerk.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

First, we did submit them. I understand the situation, given that the committee wasn't re-struck and that we just did this. Of course, we couldn't send the motions earlier to submit them in advance.

Madam Chair, you're recommending that we table them. I'll ask the clerk to send everyone all the motions by the next meeting so that we can really talk about them.

That said, I still want to ask for a level playing field. In other words, if we can't discuss my motions today, I want this to also apply to everyone else. It's a matter of fairness.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you, Mr. Savard-Tremblay.

Rest assured, Mr. Tremblay, issues of fairness are really important to me. I will always go out of my way to make sure I am fair to every member of the committee.

Ms. Bendayan is next.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Given the discussion around the table, I think it would make sense for all members to have the opportunity to read the motions that will be sent by email and be able to digest and assess those motions and their ideas for future studies.

However, as Ms. Gray indicated, I would like to propose that we could discuss the study on main estimates and the invitation to the minister during the time we have today. I would welcome that discussion and I certainly think we could deal with the proposal on the main estimates today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thanks.

Mr. Sheehan is next.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you very much.

Again, it's a pleasure to be here today. It would appear, just on our first meeting, that we are continuing these very collegial efforts on moving forward on what's important to Canadians and our constituents.

I was entertaining putting forward a motion as it relates to alternative energy. However, I know how important this meeting is with respect to creating the ground rules, if you will, on how that discussion would happen going forward. I determined I would not put forward that motion now, in order to deal with very important issues regarding our comfort levels, how we will deal with each other and with witnesses and other very important matters.

As Mr. Savard has already said, he is willing to go forward. We have heard the parliamentary secretary and the new vice-chair talk about one particular matter that would be almost automatic unto itself, which I think we could discuss now. I myself will not put forward my motions until the next meeting.

Why I brought that up, Chair, is that I would like you to inform the committee and the people watching when we will meet in the future. When will these meetings be? I know there have been great discussions among various people. David Akin was talking about how our committees are now meeting on non-Ottawa days and meeting during constituent days.

Chair, perhaps you could clarify when we will be meeting and entertaining these various motions going forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you, Mr. Sheehan.

I will just comment quickly that the House leaders are still dealing with what the schedule is going to be for the committee. As of today, we still don't know. They have not resolved those issues as of now.

Mr. Blaikie, I believe you had your hand up.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you.

I'll address Mr. Savard-Tremblay's point.

It would still be good to decide what the committee could do today, since we don't know when we'll have another meeting. Even if we just work on the main estimates and send an invitation to the minister so that she can start arranging a date together with the clerk, it would be good to at least get this done today.

That way, I could wait for another meeting to introduce all our ideas for various studies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Go ahead, Mr. Hoback.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I too have a motion, but it sounds like we're just going to table the motions as we normally do, so there is no reason for me to read it into the record at this point if that's the course of action we're going to take.

Mr. Blaikie, I think you have some interesting ideas there. The main estimates have to happen anyway, and we have to have the minister in front of us for the main estimates, so that's a no-brainer. That's an easy one to get off our checklist and get done.

Why don't we work around that right now? It gives us time to have everybody else's motions put in place so that we can all read them. Then maybe at our next meeting we can have some time set aside to look at them and prioritize them accordingly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

That's a terrific idea.

Go ahead, Ms. Bendayan.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Madam Chair, I have had my hand raised for quite some time. I have hit on the button.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I'm sorry, Mr. Arya. This is an all-new system here, so I am having to look to see where there is a hand out or if somebody is shaking their head. Mr. Blaikie is on a rocking chair, it seems, and that's what caught my attention. We'll figure this out as we go through the process.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

What I have done is click on the “raise hand” button. You will note that it is a raised hand. I don't know whether it's visible to you.