International Trade Committee on Aug. 21st, 2024

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

I still stand by my proposal to reduce the time allotted to ministers, but I'm okay if it doesn't pass.

I agree with the request by my colleague, Mr. Williams, that we allow the possibility of holding more than three additional meetings. We could do so by including the words “a minimum of” to set the minimum number of meetings, the way we often do.

Obviously, the committee is free to decide for itself. If the vagaries of current events require us to study the matter further, I wouldn't object to adding more meetings.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Savard-Tremblay, the interpreter was not able to get your last couple of sentences to translate them. Could you repeat, towards the end, what you were saying?

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

My colleague, Mr. Williams, asked me if I would be open to the idea of holding more than three additional meetings on top of our meetings with the ministers, depending on the vagaries of current events. My answer is yes. So, we could use the words “a minimum of three meetings”, as we often do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

That's a minimum of three, so rather than eight meetings, we're talking about having seven meetings. Is that right? Your proposal is to have seven meetings, and those would include the minister and the minister's officials.

Is everybody okay with having the seven meetings and having the officials here with the ministers for their meetings? If nobody's objecting, I'm assuming everybody's okay with that. It would be the ministers coming for an hour and then the officials for the other hour, and they are the four officials who are listed.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Then we're cutting down industry stakeholders, because it was to be four and four before.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We've got Ministers Joly, Champagne, Freeland and Ng.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

I think it's important to hear from industry.

Anyway, Terry has his hand up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Okay, do you know what? I'm going to suspend the meeting for a few minutes while we try and sort out a few of these things, because it's going to take too long and we're not going to get anything accomplished today. I'm just going to suspend the meeting for a few minutes while we try to get clarity on how we're moving forward so we all understand it.

Hold on. I'm suspending for a few minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I call the meeting back to order.

My apologies to everybody online. It's frustrating here, and I'm sure it's more frustrating over there.

Mr. Savard-Tremblay, you had made some suggestions. I'm going to ask Mr. Williams, who has had discussions with you as well, if he would like to clarify what has been agreed upon.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to everyone who's online, including committee members and the public.

Certainly you want to have all these discussions in public. Obviously, there's a lot of nuance to this, so in the spirit of good faith and talking about this publicly, this is what we feel is the best amendment to this.

We've agreed that we would have one hour for each minister who has been listed to attend the committee.

There would be five meetings held in total, and the rest of the time would be filled by stakeholders pertinent to this study.

If there were further meetings required based on new evidence or based on a priority that this committee deemed acceptable, those would be added.

However, for this committee, it would be five meetings with one hour per each minister and officials, and stakeholders would fill the rest of the slots.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Is everyone clear on that motion? Is there any further discussion?

Terry, you flashed off the screen.

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

Thank you.

I'm trying to get some clarification here. I have an intervention later on, but on this particular point, is the mover of the motion stating that they're not asking that, whatever they submitted to the consultations, which ended three weeks ago...the call was on June 24, it started on July 2, it wrapped after the 30 days were done and it's all part of a process. Obviously, our government is fully supportive of the auto industry, EVs and the up-and-down supply chains.

The reason I bring that up is I'm in a steel town. They've made the move to green steel with a major federal investment, but some of these folks have said to me, “Well, Terry, we'd like to share with you what we have submitted, but do not give it to anyone,” because, quite frankly, the unintended consequence of the original Conservative motion would be that very confidential information would be floating out there. You can understand why businesses would be very concerned about their competition getting a hold of it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Sheehan, I appreciate that, but could you just help us for one minute to see if everybody's okay with the proposal that has been put on the table by Mr. Williams and Mr. Savard-Tremblay as regards the one hour?

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

That's the clarification I'm asking for, Chair. I'm just asking if they're demanding these private submissions be circulated across this committee to everybody.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

This is referred to farther down in the motion.

Can you just hold your thought? I'll come back to you when we get to that part of the motion.

Is everybody okay with the minister coming for one hour and there being a total of five meetings? Is everybody good with that?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Okay, I'm moving on.

The next part of this motion that we need to speak to.... I've got a speaker's list, so I don't know whether I'll.... I guess I had better go into the rest of the motion.

Tony, you're next on the speaker's list.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Do we want to discuss changes to the motion?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We heard what Mr. Williams moved, which everybody has agreed to for the five meetings. Each minister will come for one hour with their officials. Is everybody okay with that? I'm not seeing anybody jumping up, so everybody's good with that part.

Now we'll go back to my proper speaker's list. Tony, I have you down as the next speaker, and then Mr. Arya, and you're speaking to the motion that's in front of you as agreed upon and that has been amended.

Tony, do you have anything to add to this?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Chair, I'm sorry to jump in here with a point of order, but if it has been agreed upon, then aren't we done discussing it?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I wish we were. No, I don't believe we can say that. We've agreed to a couple of changes and amendments in that part of it, but we still have members who want to speak to the motion as a whole that has been amended.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Okay. It seemed as if maybe they were approved.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I wish you were right, but we're not there yet.

Tony, go ahead.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

I have a point of clarification as well, Madam Chair. Should we not discuss those proposed changes on the other aspects of this motion before we go to the general comments of the full motion for approval or adoption?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I think you can speak to the whole thing as amended.