Justice Committee on Feb. 4th, 2014

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Jean-François Pagé]

Honourable members of the committee,

I see we have a quorum.

I must inform members that the clerk of the committee can only receive motions for the election of the chair.

The clerk may not receive any other motion. He may not entertain points of order, nor participate in debate.

We can now proceed to the election of the chair. Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the chair must be a member of the government party.

I am ready to receive motions for the election of the chair.

Ms. Boivin, you have the floor.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

I nominate Mr. Mike Wallace as chair.

[The Clerk]

It has been moved by Ms. Françoise Boivin that Mr. Mike Wallace be elected chair of the committee.

Are there any further nominations?

Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?

(Motion agreed to)

[The Clerk]

I declare the motion carried and Mike Wallace duly elected chair of the committee.

Before inviting Mr. Wallace to take the chair, if the committee wishes, we will now proceed to the election of the vice-chairs.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

I would like to propose Madame Boivin as vice-chair.

[The Clerk]

It has been moved by Mr. Dechert that Madame Boivin be elected first vice-chair of the committee.

Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?

(Motion agreed to)

[The Clerk]

I declare the motion carried and Ms. Françoise Boivin duly elected as first vice-chair of the committee.

Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the second vice-chair must be a member of an opposition party other than the official opposition.

Mr. Goguen, you have the floor.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

I nominate Sean Casey.

[The Clerk]

Moved by Mr. Goguen that Mr. Casey be elected second vice-chair of the committee.

Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?

(Motion agreed to)

I declare the motion carried and Mr. Casey duly elected second vice-chair of the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Members, thank you very much for nominating me. I'm very happy to be back in the chair for this next session until...we'll see how long this lasts. Anyway, we'll go from there.

We have no other business for today.

I have a suggestion, and we can have a discussion on it. Before we broke at Christmastime we were about to do clause-by-clause study on the contraband tobacco bill. We're ready to go. I thought we could do the clause-by-clause study on Thursday.

Then, as you know, we've also sent a letter out to all the provincial attorneys general, I guess it was, for their response on the issue of the change to the terms of bilingual services. We have five letters back.

[The Clerk]

Six next week; Ontario was Monday next week.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Monday. We're getting close to having half the provinces respond.

The deadline is Friday, so we'll see what we get on Friday.

My suggestion would be that we have a subcommittee on agenda to discuss.... I don't think clause-by-clause study will take us all two hours, so right after we'll have a subcommittee to discuss where we are with that and whether we can move it, and what we would do the next week, and even look at the next two weeks after that before the next break. Is that okay?

With that, we will be prepared for clause-by-clause study on Thursday. There are amendments that are already in. If you have anything new, please do it quickly.

We have to let the independents know that we're doing it on Thursday. We actually have two amendments from independents.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Mr. Chair, may I ask a question?

I think Madame Mourani is the sponsor of two of the amendments. Will she be here to present her amendments on Thursday?

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

She will be invited.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

It will be up to her, but I'm assuming she'll come.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

We'll have officials, I'm assuming.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Yes, we'll have officials here. We'll do that and then we'll do subcommittee.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Very good. Thank you very much. Have a great day.