Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a point of order this morning. Once we have reviewed the documents that have been submitted to us—
I would like to assert that this Standing Committee on Justice lacks the authority from the House to propose amendments to Bill C-45 or to issue a report to the Standing Committee on Finance, and that therefore we should not hold this farce of a clause-by-clause hearing.
I would like to remind this committee of where we as a committee derive our authority to do the things we do. We derive our existence and our authority from the House of Commons itself. The House creates our committees specifically through Standing Order 104, and the Standing Orders further regulate how our committees are constituted and governed under Standing Order 106. The House also sets out the specific mandate of each standing committee under Standing Order 108.
An excellent summary of this regime can be found in House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, commonly called O'Brien and Bosc, on pages 960 and 962, which say, referring to standing committees:
They are empowered to study and report to the House on all matters relating to the mandate, management, organization and operation of the departments assigned to them. More specifically, they can review:
the statute law relating to the departments assigned to them;
the program and policy objectives of those departments, and the effectiveness of their implementation thereof;
the immediate, medium and long-term expenditure plans of those departments and the effectiveness of the implementation thereof; and
an analysis of the relative success of those departments in meeting their objectives.
In addition to this general mandate, other matters are routinely referred by the House to its standing committees: bills, estimates, Order-in-Council appointments, documents tabled in the House pursuant to statute, and specific matters which the House wishes to have studied. In each case, the House chooses the most appropriate committee on the basis of its mandate.
The key word is still the "House".
Please note that all abilities cited in this citation flow from the House, not from another committee.
So let us look at what we have here with Bill C-45. On October 18 this year, following the adoption of ways and means motion number 13, the Minister of Foreign Affairs moved on behalf of the Minister of Finance that Bill C-45 be read a first time and be printed. On October 24 the Minister of Public Safety moved that Bill C-45 be read a second time and referred to a committee, and after using time allocation, the debate on the second reading of Bill C-45 ended with the passage of the following motion on October 30 this year.
The motion, which passed, read: that Bill C-45, a second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures “be now read a second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Finance”.
As a matter of record, Hansard, on October 30, specifically quotes the Speaker as saying “I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Finance”— immediately following the passage of the motion in the House.
The reference of this bill to committee was always only to the finance committee. The motion passed in the House only referred to the finance committee. This is important. Under the legislative process that the House of Commons follows, a bill can only be referred to a single committee, the committee assigned by the House itself. This does not preclude any other committee from studying the subject matter of the sections of this omnibus bill.
The official opposition has always advocated that this bill be split up and effectively studied. The official opposition actually proposed a series of motions in the House to split this bill, using the same method as was used to pass Bill C-46, the MP pension plan provision. Sadly, the House did not adopt those motions.
Those motions would have allowed this committee to actually study the separate bills, which would have been referred to them. Then each committee could legitimately hold hearings, calling a variety of witnesses with multiple viewpoints, and, after hearing these points of view on the sections of the bill referred to them, could have formulated reasoned amendments for debate and decision in a clause-by-clause meeting. Then the decision of the committee would be reported to the House in due course.
Traditional practice of committees to allow witnesses to be called from a variety of sources is being overridden by this fake belief that our committee will somehow have a meaningful clause-by-clause consideration of the parts of the bill referred to us by the finance committee. We are being asked by the finance committee, not the House, to study and propose amendments to a bill on such a short timeline that there is no opportunity for reasoned debate. What we have here is a bastardization of the process.
I wish to relate to you all one line from O’Brien and Bosc, which I will repeat later on, on committee reports. On page 985, it states:
In the past, when a committee has gone beyond its order of reference or addressed issues not included in the order, the Speaker of the House has ruled the report or a specific part of the report to be out of order.
In the past, when a committee has gone beyond its order of reference or addressed issues not included in the order, the Speaker of the House has ruled the report or a specific part of the report to be out of order.
I submit to you, as the chair, that the finance committee is unable to refer any parts of Bill C-45 to anyone. Its only duty is to study this bill and to report back to the House with or without amendment.
Let me review quickly how a committee is supposed to deal with a complex bill referred to it by the House after a second reading.
Normally after passage at second reading, the committee that received the bill would organize its time, call for a variety of witnesses based on the lists provided by the recognized parties in proportion to their representation at the committee, hear the witnesses, formulate amendments, schedule a clause-by-clause meeting, call each clause, hear amendments to the clauses, vote on the amendments and the clauses, and then vote on the bill. The results of these decisions would then be reported to the House.
The House, in its wisdom, has even provided a mechanism to allow for variation on this normal progress of a bill through committee, which it called a “motion of instruction”. If I can call again on O'Brien and Bosc, this time under their chapter on the legislative process, on page 752, it states:
Once a bill has been referred to a committee, the House may instruct the committee by way of a motion authorizing what would otherwise be beyond its powers, such as, for example, examining a portion of a bill and reporting it separately, examining certain items in particular, dividing a bill into more than one bill, consolidating two or more bills into a single bill, or expanding or narrowing the scope or application of a bill. A committee that so wishes may also seek an instruction from the House.
If the government were interested in following the rules of this place and wanted to have a variety of committees study this bill, then it could have moved to instruct any variety of these committees to conduct a review of the portions of the bill, allow amendments to those portions, and report them separately.
The power to authorize this variance in the legislative process rests with the House of Commons, not the finance committee. Because we have not received any order of reference from the House and because there has been no instruction from the House subsequent to the passage of the bill at second reading, I submit to you that it is out of order for this committee to have any vote on any amendment relating to Bill C-45.
I also submit to you that this committee has the right to initiate a study on the subject matter, but we don't have the authority to report to another committee, only to the House.
While committees have the power to meet jointly with other committees, a report from a joint committee must report only to the House, not to another committee.
I would like to quote again O'Brien and Bosc, from page 983, wherein referring to a joint committee it says:
If a report is adopted during a joint meeting, each committee may present to the House a separate report, even though the two reports will be identical.
I also refer you to the same chapter, on pages 984 and 985, where it covers how a committee reports to the House. It says:
In order to carry out their roles effectively, committees must be able to convey their findings to the House. The Standing Orders provide standing committees with the power to report to the House from time to time, which is generally interpreted as being as often as they wish. A standing committee exercises that prerogative when its members agree on the subject and wording of a report and it directs the Chair to report to the House, which the Chair then does.
Like all the powers of standing committees, the power to report is limited to issues that fall within their mandate or that have been specifically assigned to them by the House. Every report must identify the authority under which it is presented. In the past, when a committee has gone beyond its order of reference or addressed issues not included in the order, the Speaker of the House has ruled the report or a specific part of the report to be out of order.
We have rules for committees that show that committees receive their authority from the House. They also say that committees report their information to the House. The request for us to somehow become subcontractors to shoddy work by the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Finance should not be given any credence.
I suggest to you, Mr. Chair, that our job is to hear witnesses on Bill C-45 and to report findings to the House.
I do not believe we should entertain any amendments to Bill C-45 because the bill was never envisioned by the House as being dealt with by any committee other than the finance committee.
I furthermore submit that it flies in the face of all of our basic principles of being a committee if we agree that committees should receive their mandates from another committee and should then report to that committee, rather than to the body that gives us authority, the House of Commons.
I refer you to the letter that authorizes us to carry out this farce this morning, this letter that was sent by the chair of the—
Standing Committee on Finance.
The chair, James Rajotte, wrote the following to you, Mr. Chair:Our Committee is currently studying Bill C-45, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures. Please find attached a motion adopted by the Standing Committee on Finance on October 31, 2012, inviting your Committee to consider the subject matter of clauses 206 to 209 of Bill C-45.
These clauses concern the Judges Act and certain amendments.
The letter continues:
The adopted motion also invites your Committee, if it deems it appropriate, to provide us with recommendations, including any suggested amendments.... Therefore, I invite you to send me recommendations, including any suggested amendments, of your Committee by letter, in both official languages, no later than 5 p.m. on Tuesday, November 20, 2012. Our Committee will consider them during its clause-by-clause consideration of the Bill. Finally, if your Committee decides not to suggest any amendments, please notify the Clerk of the Standing Committee on Finance in writing as soon as possible.
I thought I had seen everything, under this government. But receiving mandates from other committees is taking the farce of consultation a little too far. I detest wasting my time, given all the work that we are going to be asked to do.
Usually here, at the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, we do serious work, and we take our mandates seriously. We make serious recommendations and propose serious amendments, and we do not take part in a joke of a consultation that is utterly meaningless.
This is the point of order that I wanted to raise to the committee and to you, Mr. Chair, in this context.
I'm sorry, Mr. Minister. I didn't want to make you lose your time. But these are extremely important issues. Procedures apply in this House, and if we start cutting corners to give a clear conscience to the government, which refused to divide its mammoth bill, that isn't our problem. We do not have to take part in this monumental farce.
Thank you.