Natural Resources Committee on Oct. 17th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Mr. Trost, before you begin, there have been some discussions while that discussion was going on.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Having listened to the back-and-forth in the argument, I think Mr. Cullen's presentation was actually fairly reasonable when he said to just let him reword it, take out what he termed “colourful” and get it into the form of a proper motion. He's not going to win the votes from this side of the House at this point, but then it will be in a proper form and it will be dealt with. It won't end up bogging down the committee in the future or cause relations problems, etc. Mr. Cullen will get what was more of a technical oversight had he split the sentences, and we won't do it.

I can't speak for all of the government members, but I know some of us would be willing to do that. I think it would also satisfy the opposition's requirements. Unless there's a member willing to object, we could then move to unanimous consent to let Mr. Cullen revise it in a way that's acceptable, which sounds like it shouldn't be a problem, from what I've heard him say. We can then go through the vote and the resolution, and if it has the majority of the committee, it can pass today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

I have to interrupt, because we have a motion to seek the unanimous consent of the committee to allow an amendment to the motion, thereby waiving notice of a subsequent motion to the next meeting. What that will essentially do is just allow us to continue and vote on the motion today, as amended by Mr. Cullen to the satisfaction, I take it, of Mr. Trost.

Is that your agreement?

Mr. Cullen, do you want to speak to that before we--

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

No. I thought you were calling for a vote on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

I'm going to ask right now for unanimous consent to waive notice of motion. To be clear, the first motions by Mr. Cullen today have been declared out of order. We are now asking for the unanimous consent of the committee to waive notice for Mr. Cullen to reintroduce a similar motion.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

We have unanimous consent.

Mr. Cullen, would you like to present your motions again? You have the will of the chair.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, colleagues.

I just want to make something clear. I was asked earlier whether this is a motion to be presented to the committee. That is what this is, but then there would be the opportunity to report it to the House, right? That would happen in due course, would it not?

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

No, not unless it was reflected in the motion directly.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

So that has to be incorporated into the wording, “and report it to the House”.

Can I just read, then, how I propose the revised motions? The motion to reinstate the wind power production incentive program would read:

That the committee recognizes that the Conservative government and the Minister of Natural Resources have frozen the popular and effective wind power production incentive program. As a result of this decision, the industry has been thrown into disarray, putting jobs and future investment at risk.

We'd then separate out a new paragraph:

The committee calls upon the government and the Minister of Natural Resources to immediately reinstate full funding for this program, and report this to the House.

On the EnerGuide program—

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

I think you should do one motion at a time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Do you want to do that?

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Yes, I guess we can do them one at a time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Does anyone want to speak to that?

Mr. Harris.

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Could I just hear his words again? Following the words “incentive program” and the period, what was the wording you had after that, Mr. Cullen? It does start now with “As a result of...”?

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

It says, “As a result of this decision, the industry has been thrown into disarray, putting jobs and future investment at risk.”

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Thank you.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

And the other paragraph states, “The committee calls upon the government and the Minister of Natural Resources to immediately reinstate full funding for this program, and report this to the House.”

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

I'd like to suggest maybe a friendly amendment for Mr. Cullen, just a change. I think the words “popular and effective” are an assumption that could be debatable. If you just have “frozen the wind power production incentive program”, we can leave the determination of “popular and effective” to the debate.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

I can accept that. It would therefore read:

...and the Minister of Natural Resources have frozen the wind power production incentive program. As a result of this decision, the industry has been thrown into disarray, putting jobs and future investment at risk.

And then the new paragraph reads:

The committee calls upon the government and the Minister of Natural Resources to immediately reinstate full funding for this program, and report this to the House.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Is there any further debate?

Mr. Trost.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

I'm just curious as to why the honourable member felt it necessary to throw in the “report this to the House” business after saying previously in the exchange that he wasn't really quite sure what was going happen with this, etc. It seems to be quite a significant change from what he'd previously said here in committee and from what he wanted to amend it to.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

I just plead ignorance on that. I should know better after eleven years in this place, but I made the assumption that if a motion were passed by the committee, it would automatically be referred to the House. I apologize for that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Mr. Tonks.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

With great respect to my colleague, if I was going to do this, I would word the motion thusly: “That the appropriate officials and Ministers of Natural Resources and the Environment be directed to reassess the EnerGuide program and the wind power production program, with a view to reinstating the programs, and that this motion be forwarded on to the House for its information.”

It's a dynamic process. It's one we would monitor, with officials coming before us here. We would validate or we would debate the validation of the assumptions, and that would be the end of it, Mr. Chairman.

I respect my colleague very much. He has been around here longer than I have. But where I come from, we would have had the officials here. I think that's where we're very much at a loss here, because we would have had the opportunity to have staff clarify a lot of those assumptions.

If we want to do something about this, I can see that there's going to be an impasse and I can see that my side, our side, whatever side, isn't going to be satisfied with the approach that I take. Well, quite frankly, that's the democratic process.

So if it is in order, I would move that motion in place of Mr. Cullen's motion, and members can have the opportunity to vote against that or not. But that's what I would do.

Is that in order?